Letters From a Silverware Thief

The long wait is now over. Silverware Thief 4.0 is here and in a day or two all traffic to http://homefront.silverwarethief.com will be redirecting to www.silverwarethief.com. You can go there and check out the new site now, if you want. But before you do, and before I get into the gritty details of the website changes, I have two important technical messages for my readers regarding this upgrade.

1. Important information for e-mail subscribers: I am switching my e-mail notification software. I have been very pleased with the e-mail notification software I am currently using, and I regret the need to change, but I have decided the change is necessary because of limitations in the current program. If you wish to maintain your e-mail subscription, take note. I am switching my e-mail subscription handling to Feedblitz. In a day or two I am going to import my current subscriber list to that program. For the transfer of the subscription to take place make sure you will receive any e-mail message from feedblitz@mail.feedblitz.com. If you have any spam filtering in place on your e-mail account you may need to add that address to your whitelist or address book. Further, be on the lookout for the message from FeedBlitz advising you that the subscription change has taken place.

If you have decided that you no longer wish to subscribe, please only un-subscribe using the link provided in the Feeblitz e-mail, not by using your ISP’s spam or abuse button. Thank you.

I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause. Hopefully it will go smoothly.

2. Important information for RSS feed subscribers: If you are subscribed to the RSS or Atom feed for http://homefront.silverwarethief.com your subscription should roll-over when the sub-domain is rolled over into the main domain. Possibly previously read posts will show up as unread, but otherwise there shouldn’t be any problem. However, you may wish to resubscribe by going to www.silverwarethief.com and subscribing to the RSS feed offered there. If everything works right, this is not required but, as I will explain later, there is a reason you might want to do this anyhow.

If either my e-mail subscribers or my RSS subscribers have any difficulty, you can e-mail me and I will try to assist you.

That is all for the important messages. If you’d like to know more about what is up, what’s happening, and what’s ahead, then continue reading.

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On April 2, 2003 this website was brought into the world with my first post. That was Silverware Thief 1.0 (as I call it now) and I’ve been going at it ever since. In late January or February 2004 I implemented my first real design (previously the site has sported a very spartan layout) at which the fork made its appearance. This design was bland but nonetheless was my first distinctive design and I still find something appealing in its simplicity. That was Silverware Thief 2.0. At the end of March-beginning of April 2005 I upgraded my site back-end software from MoveableType 3.15 to WordPress 1.4 and also unveiled a new design–a more sophisticated appearance with the black and white silverware and pen photograph header. That was Silverware Thief 3.0.

Which brings us now to May 2007 and Silverware Thief 4.0. (The astute reader will notice that I mis-spoke in my previous entry when I said this would be Silverware Thief 3.0). I’ve upgraded to the WordPress 2.1 series for back-end website management and refined and tweaked my previous design, the primary visual change being from a two column layout to a three column presentation. But the biggest advancement, by far, is going to be in website content.

Back in the early days I was unsure of my larger goal for this domain and so I tucked my first experiment away into the corner under the sub-domain homefront.silverwarethief.com. Having now ruminated over the matter for four years, I’ve finally decided to do something with the larger domain as a whole. Silverwarethief.com is my personal website and as such is intrinsically experimental, sometimes messy, and perhaps a bit quirky. It is a place where I try new things, learn, and perhaps apply some of that hard-earned knowledge to my professional website, Creative-Vapors.com.

As this is my personal website, I decided to expand it to encompass more of my interests. I’ve plucked my Letters From A Silverware Thief out from its back corner and made it part of a larger website showcasing a more diverse supply of things Rundy. Presently, there are two central parts of this new website, with more to follow. There is:

1. Letters From A Silverware Thief. Long-time readers are familiar with this large collection of essay-like writing. This particular portion of the website is expected to continue as before–ie., with the same lack of frequency in writing–the one modification being that some of the entries will now have photographs to add more interest to the writing.

2. The Odd Bag Is the closest thing on this website to a traditional blog (falling short perhaps only in that I don’t update it consistently). This section concerns itself primarily with things other than my own writing. The Odd Bag chronicles what catches my interest, whether it be a bit of history, a quote, an interesting website, or anything else. It is in essence the opposite of Letters From A Silverware Thief. I already have a bit of content in this section, so long time readers are encouraged to check it out and get a feel for what it will be like. Those who enjoy my writing may find the interesting tidbits of The Odd Bag to be very dull, in which case you will know to avoid that section in the future. Others among you may find it more entertaining.

In the near future I intend to add a section devoted to my photography. Initially I had experimented with using Flickr but while there are great opportunities to be discovered by others on the Flickr website I was unhappy with the limitations on free accounts and am too much of a penny pincher to pay the yearly subscription price when my own web host now has more than enough space to host all my photographs. None of the other free accounts I looked at satisfied me entirely, either, so I’m going to attempt photo sharing and cataloging on my own. Being something of a control freak, this appeals to a certain part of me anyhow.

I am playing around with the idea of adding another section to this site after photos, but that is further out and may not occur.

So, take a look around. Explore the website afresh. If something strikes you, or if you find a bug, let me know.

Finally, some of you may be wondering why the change in e-mail subscription software, and why I would suggest RSS subscribers re-subscribe. The answer is that because of how the new Silverware Thief website is constructed the old methods risk flooding the reader with excessive posts. Previously, I posted an occasional letter on Letters From A Silverware Thief and people would get it either in their RSS feed reader or as an e-mail. That was nice and good. But now that Silverwarethief.com is tracking more stuff it is possible for too much stuff to be sent out. Suppose I post one tidbit at The Odd Bag and then uploaded fifteen photos to my (not yet existent) photos section. If I filed my photos in individual posts, there would be a total of sixteen RSS entries coming up in your reader or sixteen e-mails hitting your inbox. While not my intention, the effect would be similar to spamming.

The solution I devised is that I have a custom feed linked on the sidebar for Silverwarethief.com which broadcasts only the RSS feed for the category “Site Update.” The Feedblitz e-mail program picks up this one feed and re-sends it as an e-mail summary. Thus, no matter how many entries I post in a day, I write one summarizing post and file it under “Site Update” and readers who are subscribed to the RSS feed on the homepage will get one nice little post telling them how much new content is available, not a dozen notices.

The complete RSS feed still exists, it just isn’t explicitly linked to on the website. Anyone who wishes to continue pulling in the raw RSS feed for the entire site is welcome to do it, but I’ve warned you what the results may be. As far as the new e-mail subscription program is concerned, I don’t feel it sends out as nice an e-mail as the latest iteration of my previous e-mail subscription program, but Feedblitz could do what I wanted, and my old program couldn’t . . . so e-mail subscribers will have to suffer with it. Trust me, it is better than getting sixteen e-mails informing you in detail where I am filing my photos on the website.

The past four years writing on this site have been fun for me, and I’m looking forward to more creative work ahead. I hope you will join me.