This blog has been horrifically overdue for a jump-start for far too long now. I can’t imagine anyone disputing that my blogging report card this past year is one giant F-. Why, I even had the audacity to “relaunch” with a new design a little less than a year ago. Since then, I’ve posted three (3) full blog posts, and possibly a dozen aside updates. I should be ashamed of myself, and as luck would have it, I am.

Fortunately, as luck would further have it, I’m not too ashamed to admit my mistakes and move past them. And in this case, moving past them looks a whole heck of a lot like what you’re seeing right now.

I started the redesign process with some vague ideas and sketches in early June, but it wasn’t until mid-July that I really started to spend a significant amount of time on it. One big hurdle was that I wanted to design it from scratch myself. This being the first site that I’ve ever actually designed as opposed to just focusing on the code, it took a good deal of practice, experimentation, scrapped ideas, and helpful feedback from a few friends. In the end, I ended up picking a color scheme and general visual style and running with it, designing it largely as I coded it.

Early on, I was significantly influenced by the hyper-retro visual and musical style of the iPhone game, Eliss, as well as the indie, subtley-throwback sound of Phoenix’s latest album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Clearly, these weren’t direct inspirations, but they helped point me toward the style I eventually went with, and I think the blog still considers them grandfather figures.

So now, two months, dozens of hours, a thousand lines of CSS, and countless iTunes playlists later, it’s live. Still a work in progress, mind, but live and functional. I’m definitely happy with where it is, and very excited about getting back into the habit of posting new content.

And yes, as the Recent Cabeebage section of the sidebar may lead you to believe, I am going to start putting up some technical (by my standards) posts. And Websinal? Well, I suppose it’s those posts that fall somewhere between Personal and Technical. Gadgets, apps, life on the web, social media, technology, etc. It should probably be called Geeksinal.

I should probably be called Geeksinal.

One can welcome oneself back, can’t one? When it’s done in a rhetorical sense, then I think yes. Yes one can.

It’s been nearly four months since I’ve made a post on Cabeeb.com. Absolutely inexcusable, if you ask me. The lapse is due largely in part to my blogging energies being focused on redesigning and rethinking this site from the ground up rather than trying to feed fresh content onto what was already there.

Therefore, four months later, I give you Cabeeb 2.0, in which I decided to completely change up the format with the new design. To help differentiate the content, the single pipeline approach has been done away with. Instead of having one stream of incoming content, I figured it would be better to complicate everything and have several. This serves many purposes. First, I’d hope that having lots of different content will make the site more interesting to visitors. Not only is there more to consume should you so choose, but every time you visit, hopefully at least a few of the streams will have new posts. Which ties directly into purpose 2: it’ll make it easier and more enjoyable for me to put up new stuff. Maybe I don’t feel like writing a full post, but I’ve got some video footage to post, or a new book that I can put up. I can, and I will. So, what are these new sections? Oh, I’m so glad you asked.

Articles
These are the posts that, up to this point have completely made up my blog. Poignant thoughts, intriguing conceptualizations, bone-jarring revelations; these are just a few of things that you should not expect in these articles.

Video Blogs
A new sensation in my world. Instead of writing something, why don’t I SHOW you?! Or better yet, just uninterestingly and monotonously say exactly what I would have otherwise written. Hey, it’s a work in progress, so give me a break.

Random Videos
Videos that I think deserve their place on Cabeeb, but don’t fit into the “blog” category. Most of these will be short clips of something stupid or ridiculous happening. Maybe even stupidly ridiculous. We can only hope.

Archive Post of the Week
I’ve been writing on this blog for over two and a half years. Most of the stuff I wrote way back then sucks, but there are a few gems. Why not capitalize on work that I’ve already done? I can’t think of a good reason, either.

Musical Addiction
I get addicted to songs to varying degrees. And like any true junkie, I want to share it with all my friends. To consolidate space, I will hereby redirect you to the official explanation of the Musical Addictions section.

Reading
I read quite a bit and I want to tell you all about it. So, as I’m reading a book, I’ll put up occasional updates/thoughts about it, and then write a quick post-thought after I finish. I’m not exactly sure how it’ll work, but work it will. Trust me.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but I’ll be adding even more sections as time goes by. I’ve got lots of ideas that I want to implement, but I decided to pass on them for launch. And generally speaking, there’s still tons to be done in functionality. I haven’t really worked on the searching or archive post navigation at all. And I am aware that the design is very stale and unpolished, which I’m going to shortly rectify. I’m all about function over form when it comes to my blog, so I wanted to get it working before I made it pretty.

So there you have it. Cabeeb is back; hopefully with a fury. Feedback is very, very welcome and appreciated. Unless I don’t like it; then it won’t be welcome nor appreciated.

Love.

1) In an attempt to boost the online presence of Fuor, of which I am a founding partner, we have all decided to revamp our blogs and become more active in the blogging world (ie blogosphere).
2) This design is pretty much a near-direct rip of another site originally meant only to be a temporary filler.
3) Cabeeb’s new layout will integrate my identity in several outside web-aps in one place and hopefully make the site more dynamic.

Stay tuned.

But, yeah. I’ll be making somewhat regular posts from here on out. Everything from the pointless and irrelevant (Light) to the deep and complex (Heavy). Though, I expect that the former will far outnumber the latter. Comments are always welcomed and appreciated. I will try to frequent the blogs of those who frequent mine, but again… no promises.

Welcome to the first day of the rest of my life.

Seeing as how Josiah and Meagan are the only people who have commented thus far, I think it is safe to say that I am pretty much writing to myself here, since I will probably delete this (and all other posts) when I officially “launch” the site, which will hopefully be within the next week.

This is truly The Final Countdown.