A New Way to Subscribe to The Straits

Now that I'm getting my blog back in order, I keep finding things I want to tweak. I just found one of those things and I wanted to make sure you're aware of it.

I now have a way to subscribe to my blog by email. All you have to do is click on the link on the right hand side  of my blog. Once you are subscribed, you'll receive a notification by email when I post to my blog. Pretty cool, huh?

Tidying Up the Ol' Blog

When I decided to revisit my blog yesterday for the first time in two years, I found there were some things that needed to be cleaned up as part of the design. Today, I took some time to clean up the sidebar to make it a little more relevant. Here's what I did:

1. I removed my Facebook badge. I really can't remember the last time I friended someone on Facebook that I haven't met in person. That's what Facebook will continue to be for me, for now. I'd much rather connect on Twitter and G+ right now, it's a simple fact. (reminder: blog about my social media habits)


2. I added a link to my Google+ profile. I haven't done much on G+ as far as posting is concerned, but I have started to comment and +1 to try and get myself more involved with it. Twitter is still my 'go to' network to share and post for now.


3. I removed my FriendFeed link. Yes, the last time I blogged, FriendFeed was relevant.


4. I removed my "What Am I Reading" section. It was linked to my Google Reader feed. While I still maintain that feed so I can push it into other aggregating apps on my iPad and iPhone (like Zite), I haven't been pushing anything to that feed in a long time.


5. I made a minor modification to my tag/label cloud, removing the amount of tags number from each tag. It makes it look a little cleaner.

That's about it for now. I'll keep making small tweaks until I decide to either do a major overhaul (if that will ever happen) or to switch platforms altogether. This was more of an update to make sure all my links are relevant. I want to make the blog more about my writing than anything right now, instead of aesthetics.

Two Years!

It's been two years since I last blogged on this site. That's ridiculous. A lot, and I mean a lot has happened to my family in the last two years. I think it's time to pull this blog off the shelf, dust it off, give it some love and start blogging again.