Tuesday, March 31, 2020

A Fresh New Beginning

Last week, I made a bargain with myself. I'd splurge on an awesome mechanical keyboard, but only if I made a commitment to write more. The keyboard is here, my first blog post using it is published, and I hope to keep up at least a somewhat consistent pace. The timing is ideal, since both you and I have more time on our hands these days.
As part of this renewed commitment, I also finally got around to doing something I've been meaning to for years. The name of my blog, Techetysem (a portmanteau of Technology, Etymology, and Semantics), besides being a truly terrible name, reflected what I initially thought I would write about, but not what I ended up writing about. Sure, there are a couple of posts about Etymology and many about Technology, but the blog is much broader. So I decided to rebrand it, and, while looking through my photos for a nice background image I came across a photo that I heavily cropped to result in the image you see on the right. I love that photo for many reasons: it was taken by my wife, it was taken at one of my favorite bars in my favorite city, and the expression I'm making is both genuine and typical.
I had found the right image for my blog, and the image inspired its new name. Azout Askance.
Besides cleaning up the blog's layout, I also removed the ads. The comically minuscule revenue from Google AdSense did not come close to justifying the negative impact the ads had on the reading experience. No more ads.
There's a new "Follow by Email" feature, so in addition to subscribing via RSS (which has always been available), you can now sign up to receive an email notification whenever a new post is published. There's a new "Blog Archive," so you can still search for a post using keywords, but now you can also look up posts by year, month, and title. Lastly, there's a contact form you can use to quickly email me, which I hope you will, because I welcome and appreciate your feedback, negative or positive.
New keyboard. New branding. New layout. New features. Hopefully a rejuvenated writing schedule. I hope to see you here again soon.
Thank you so much for reading.