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This change can be considered a minor update compared to the last one, v 0.94 . This current update should hopefully have a significant impact in the long run. The numbering system is a random system I chose in order to make it easier for both myself and you to keep track of changes. The latest change is v 0.94 .

I hope this update makes it easier for you to comment, as your comment will be published right away once you submit it. This update does mean more work for me as I have to check the site more regularly to make sure no spam got through, though I think such an effort is worth it. If for any reason your comment disappears or does not get approved instantly, please contact me and I will find out what happened to your comment. Thanks for all your comments and support so far. Please let me know if I can do anything else to improve commenting or any other aspect of the site.

I am also going to try some new things on this site: one will be to go through the previous posts and find out the posts which have lose ends. Some ends can be tied, while some blog ends can be kept open. Some ends, like promises or expectations, need addressing. I will try to address them soon.

Thank you for reading this.

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There are four main changes in this site update: shorter site name, new logo, updated links, and related articles and tags.

1. Site name shorter and clearer

   The first change is the name of the site itself. I have reduced it from “The Reasoner dot Com” to “The Reasoner“; it is simpler that way and more appropriate. I thought about this change because of what I wrote before about doing things simply because others did it. Please let me know what you think.

2. New logo in progress

   You may already noticed an interesting change on the site: a new logo. It is very simple, and I like it. I will work on it more or have work done on it a bit in order to make it more interesting when it comes to colors, though it already looks great in my view. What do you think? Please feel free to let me know if you do not like it. It is a logo at this time and not more important than you, so if you do not like something about it, I would be more than happy to make the logo suffer in order to make you happy.

3. Related articles and tags

   The third small change you may have noticed for a while is the “Related articles” area and tags for every post. “Related articles” show you related articles, of course, that you may find interested and related in some manner to the current post you are reading. Tags are like keywords which you can click to find other posts that share the same tags/keywords, in order to find more posts revolving around those same keywords. Try it for this post; you should see the tag “updates” below this post and also a list of related articles that you may find interesting. Following is a picture to show you what such areas would look like:

   
4. Dead links removed

   I have been going around the different links I have on my site, and have removed several links because they do not work anymore. Such domain names either expired or got bought by spamming sites which now show a dozen pop-ups on those domain names. If I removed your link by accident, please let me know and I will put the link back up. If I have not yet linked to you, simply let me know and I will try my best to include it in the links section.

Possible future updates and upgrades

If you have any suggestions for future changes, or any suggestions or comments about anything on the site right now, please let me know. Following are five changes I am considering in the near future:

1. I may change some of the color systems around the site soon. “To what?” you ask; I do not know at this moment.
2. I would also like to incorporate some white space into the header above, though I like the tone of blue that is currently displayed on the top of this page.
3. I may revise the logo and the site coloring system a bit, though it should not be much different.
4. The right hand sidebar may go through a little bit simplification process also, removing things that may be too cluttering.
5. Last thing that I can think of is to incorporate Ronald’s Feed Styler plugin that can allow me to change the design/style of my RSS feeds.

This change can be considered a revision to the last one, v 0.9. The numbering system is a random system I chose in order to make it easier for both myself and you to keep track of changes. The latest change is v 0.94 . Once I have the above possible upgrades in place, I will consider the site updates to have reached v 1.

You can count on the content quality being improved daily!

Content on this site is something that I try to improve every day. Site updates happen from time to time when I want to take a break from working on content, as focusing your efforts on something all the time without taking a break will result in the freshness in your content disappearing.

Thank you for visiting my site and reading this post. I really appreciate your visit and your comments, and I appreciate all the interaction I have with you via e-mail, text and instant messages also. I have come this far because of your support, and I am hoping I can keep on going farther and farther in this blogging adventure with you. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below or e-mail me. I like getting e-mails from you and I like replying to your e-mails also, so do not feel scared typing out that e-mail to me. Unless I forget, I answer all e-mails and comments, by the way.

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The most obvious change is the new name of the site: The Reasoner dot Com . I ran a poll on this site from December 26th, 2006 till January 11th, 2007, asking all users to let me know whether or not they missed the layout with a penguin. 53 votes were cast, and the results show that most people were all right not seeing a penguin every time they came to this site. By a difference of only 3 votes, many people expressed their feelings that they wanted the now-missing penguin. 10 people thought I was crazy and had no idea what I was talking about, and thus they voted “What previous design?” Based on this, I decided to go ahead and remove the penguin from the site for now and make a few other changes throughout the site. I will bring the penguin back if I can somehow incorporate him [him, right?] into the layout and see if everyone is ok with him then.

I classify the changes into the following 4 areas:

1. New title

   For several years I used the name “The Penguin Chronicles” as the title for this site. As cute as that name was, it did not convey a feeling related to the content of the site. I like penguins, but I do not talk about penguins that much on this site. I decided that a new name was in order, and the domain name, The Reasoner dot Com, was a good replacement in my view. As time progresses, I will come up with a related tagline that better deals with the site content. The penguin lives on, but the logo is gone. “The Penguin Chronicles” title with the penguin logo was created around July 24th, 2005 and stayed around until January 18th, 2007. The penguin stayed with us as the mascot for 1 year, 5 months and 25 days [543 days total].

2. Rate every article
   You now have the power to rate each article to show how much you like it. You can rate any post on this site anywhere from a 1 to a 5, with 1 being the lowest rating and 5 being the highest rating. Your ratings and comments let me know how and what to improve. To rate an article, simply move your mouse over the star you wish to rate and click it. This will instantly rate the article and reflect the current ratings. Go ahead; try it on this or any other post.
3. Improved navigation

   The other changes on the site include a simpler navigation system on the top and on the side of the page. I had simplified the navigation before and have decided to consolidate several links into one location further so as to make the site easier to understand. There are now more ways to find out other comments, commentors and posts on this site via the different sections on the side of the page. Also, I have removed the advertising that was being displayed on the side bar. I am trying to limit any advertising on this site in order to make everything as simple and relevant as possible.

4. Updated sections and a new stats page

   A few pages have been updated to make them easier to read. The following pages have been improved for easier reading:

   • Links page. Links are now organized with more description. If your link is listed here and you want a different description, please email me.
   • About page. The about page needs constant changes, and I have included more details on advertising compared to before. You can now see more details about my disclosure on the advertising used on this site.
   • Copyright page. This has been updated to show what can be done with this site.

   I wanted to make more stats about this site available to you, so I came up with a small new section of the site called “Latest activity” that shows the user interaction on this site. On that page you can see the total number of comments, the last 10 comments, the most commented posts and the latest commented posts. If you would like to see something added or removed from this section, please email me.

This change can be considered a bigger change than the last one, v 0.81. The numbering system is a random system I chose in order to make it easier for both myself and you to keep track of changes. The latest change is v 0.9 . Once I have a new tagline and a logo ready, I will add a few more changes and call it v 1.0 .

As with all the changes, if there is something you would like to see or if you feel something should be removed, please email me to let me know.

Thank you for reading this post; I really appreciate it.

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Following are the 5 topics that the Peeve Week is offering posts for the week of January 15th, 2007:

1. Monday - Discrimination
2. Tuesday - Cellphones
3. Wednesday - Techology and gadgets
4. Thursday - Retail
5. Friday - Money

I will try to participate in the different topics available here. Also, I entered my article “Importance of transparency in blogging” into the WTLC Blogging Essay Competiton. Please go ahead and read the entry and rate it depending on whether you like it or not. I would really appreciate it.

Thank you.

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The sharing option is simple; at the end of each post, including this one, you’ll notice a “Share this” link which you can click to see different ways to share a post with different online services and with your friends. This change is simply a minor improvement over the last change, v 0.80.

Please let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations like adding, changing or removing something. In the meantime, I’ll keep taking your suggestions and keep integrating them into the site. Thank you.

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This new layout is part of a visual coding scheme, which comes in the form of a theme called K2. Valerie referred me to K2 long time ago, and yesterday she told me to convert to k2 since it makes it easier to maintain the both the look and the coding of the site itself. The site is now running k2. The layout you’re looking at is something that needs some customization. I’ll be traveling this thanksgiving for my operation. If I can finish the changes before that, great. Otherwise, I’ll try to have a different layout up and running by the 3rd week of December. The previous design is something I want to lay down in the archives. We’ll see if that happens.

You’ll see some cool enhancements to the site like “live” commenting and searching. That means the comments and the search queries will be displayed right away without the need to reload or leave the page. Go ahead and try it. You can also see a cleaner interface and an improved font system compared to before, along with a simpler way to access the archives, leave comments, register and navigate through the site. The new navigation system near the top is something I’m going to play with and probably use as the main navigation menu, moving the most basic and most requested links from the sidebar on the right to the top menu area of the page. No amount of improvement is effective without good writing. I’ll whip up some great posts for you all in the next few weeks, if I’m able to survive through the cutting and stitching.

The previous layout and design served its purpose from July 23rd, 2005, till 2 days ago, November 20th, 2006. That’s a total running time of 1 year and 120 days [combined total of 485 days]. Au-revoir previous layout, and good bye those cool colors. Hopefully some elements from the previous layout will be implemented into the future layout that I’m working on. The Penguin was something that I wouldn’t want to give up completely, since Sumin was so eager to have it be a nice addition to the site since the beginning.

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions, questions or comments about anything on the site, please let me know. There are many links that are being repeated unnecessarily and I want to remove them. There are many things that can be combined together into a single page also. I’m open to any ideas received for the site and will be glad to implement them into the site. Thank you for visiting my site and for reading this; I really appreciate it.

Below is a snapshot of the previous layout for your reference:

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The new Eyeography site will be a place to showcase my published pictures. I’ll try to post a picture daily, with previously published pictures viewable in the Eyeography Archives. I have an account at Flickr already, so I have decided on a small rule for now: whenever I post a picture on Eyeography, I will also post it to my Flickr account within 10 days.

Regarding the Eyeography site itself, in the next few weeks you might see some color changes on the site. I’m trying to test the site with a few different colors, in order to see what works best. If you’ve any suggestions for the design or the coloring system, please let me know and I’ll give you credit for any recommendations that I implement for the site.

I hope you’ll enjoy Eyeography the same way I enjoy taking pictures and sharing them with you. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions. Thank you.

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