So... The age-old question. What shall I write about?

First, let's clear up a thing or two about how the new Lounge works.

If you're logged in, you may have noticed the "access" field accompanying many of the articles. (I'm still twiddling with how, when, and where the indicator gets displayed.) As you have probably guessed, it exists to allow certain pieces of content to only be viewable by people I select. This feature is the reason I did not simply restore Bitscape's Lounge with the old code last month, when I was otherwise ready to return to the classic format.

Yes, sadly, the days of everything I write being available to everyone in the world are over. I have my reasons. Some people might wander why I didn't do this a LONG time ago, as it might have saved me some hassles over the years. I guess I geneally felt that on balance, the risk was worth it.

That all changed last fall. For those who don't already know what happened, I might elaborate a bit more on it a little later.

You may have also noticed that some items are marked "Semi-public" (this one being an example). What does this mean? It means the content can be accessed by anyone, even if they're not logged in, provided that they have the url. Semi-public items won't show up on the main page or in archive indexes unless you are logged in with access privileges.

For the time being, the overwhelming majority of the old content on the site has been placed into this category, including items that were previously public. At some point, I may go through and re-declassify more of it, but it takes a lot of time to wade through so many years of writings!

Why did I do it this way? Again, it's a matter of balancing the risks vs benefits. Anything that's semi-public can still be viewed piecemeal by the world at large (i.e. by following links from other sites), and people interested enough to use the rss feeds will also be able to see the recent items. (Yes, that's right -- semi-public items will show up in the rss feed, but won't appear on the main page if you're not logged in. That's intentional.) At the same time, it will make it more difficult for anonymous snoopers looking to dig up dirt, or other unwelcome guests.

Those regular visitors who never log in at all and don't do rss can still see all the public posts, of course. But if you want to look into my private life, including the past, I've come to the point where I'd rather know who it is that's looking. (OTOH, if you do fall into the anonymous, non-rss-using, regular visitor category, you probably aren't even going to see this unless it is specifically pointed it out to you. So you can remain blissfully unaware that any of this even exists.)

Then, of course, beyond the semi-public stuff, there are the more normal style friends-only categories, through which I can make content available to selected users with logins. I'm not going to elaborate on what all these categories are, as I'm not even sure I'll ever get around to using all of them. But they're there. And for the most part, nobody should really need to worry about it anyway.

Enough about access controls.

Another feature I added is for a new type of content: links. Ok, so that's not exactly earth-shattering, but I plan to use it a ton. I want to get in the habit of posting every noteworthy article or website that I run across as a link. In a way, I suppose this will largely replace the practice of url-flooding Content Solutions (for me anyway -- everyone else can keep spewing those urls into the chatterbox 10 times a day for all I care), but it should make it somewhat more easy to review sites I've visited in the future.

And of course, in the left column, I've added a static list of highly useful/entertaining sites I visit regularly, to replace the old auto-generated bloglines box.

Scribbling Wall.

Since September, I've found that my urge to frantically draft new page layouts and color schemes on a daily basis has waned. But I might still throw up special designs every now and then. Whenever I want to, it's now a part of the engine.

Legacy Content. I'm partway through manually copying livejournal posts from the past few months into this site. I like to have all my writings in one place. One database dump away from the complete Bitscape Archive.

Eventually, I may even get around to importing web excursions from the pre-1999 era into the db using the scribbling wall engine. Hey, anything is possible. The more obfuscated the url strings, the better.

And yes, I am still insane, I have always been insane, and will always be insane. My insanity merely takes different forms and appearances, depending on changes in the air pressure, varying levels of ambient sub-microwave radiation in the atmosphere, and phase changes in the patterns of butterflies flapping their wings somewhere near the coast of New Zealand. Among other variables.

Anyway, that's that. I need a drink of water.