The exercise, which I qualify as a success on many levels, resulted in the most post-active month on the site ever (January 2009 was the previous record holder with 15 posts).  The site activity also saw other great changes:

We got more people to visit, woo!

• A new Google Plus page (which you should definitively follow )
• The resumption of Equanimity posts
• A new netZoom format
• Some new site logos
• Some new site pages for the Regular Series
• A doubling in the number of visitors to the site

So what’s next?

Well, I’ll try to keep up with a post a day, but only if it allows me to keep up post quality.  I’ll strive to share interesting and fun things I find on the web, to post Equanimity updates on a more regular basis.  I’ll also look at how to better engage visitors, what with the last comment on the site being 5 months old. Finally, I hope to take a look at different other mediums available to me for posting (i.e. audio, video), something I’ve always wanted to do.

So, the next couple of months should be quite interesting.  I hope you’ll join me for the ride!

You can find the pages in the menu right below the banner at the top of the page.

I slacked off over the past couple of days due to being overwhelmed by uncontrolable external forces, so I’m going to be making up for it this weekend.  Expect a handful of posts to appear over the next couple of days, all of them interesting things I wanted to discuss over the past week.

And by the time Monday comes around, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program.

Enjoy

Learning the language as a child, there were some things that confused me about it.  The “-ed” used to identify past tense for example, or the difference between “Three” and “Tree”.

“Without using numbers, represent the number 9.”

“Dat’s easy”, the French man says, and draws three trees.

“What in the world is that?”

“Tree ‘n tree ‘n tree makes nine, no?”

Now I’m an adult, and though I speak French at home, most of my work is done in English. Still, in spite of my knowledge of this somewhat adopted language, there are parts of it that baffle me.

It took me a while to understand that “‘s” was used to indicate possession (for example, we infer from “John is holding Jane’s book.” that the book belongs to Jane), but once you understand the rule, it becomes quite simple.  That is, until you find out there are exceptions.

“It” is a rebelious word, and as such it does not adhere to this possession rule.  In fact, the sentence “The dog is gnawing on it’s bone.” is incorrect, and should instead be “The dog is gnawing on its bone.”, because “It’s” is really a contraction of “It has” or “It is”.

Ugh, really? But why?

Well, the good people at Word Detective provide an interesting look on the history of the word “It” and its rebellious behaviour with regards to apostrophes.  They explain that prior to the 19th century, “It’s” did indeed indicate possession, and the contraction of “It is” or “It has” was actually “tis”.

Even more confusing is the explanation that the “‘s” can be used on nouns in both cases and still be correct.  From the Word Detective article:

Another point to consider is that when we are using nouns (as opposed to pronouns), the “apostrophe -s” form is used quite successfully to cover both the contraction and the possessive: “Jane’s (Jane is) going to the meeting, but Bob is carrying Jane’s (belonging to Jane) notebook.”

I’ll admit that after reading up on this subject, I’m extremely tempted to declare this an 18th century site.  Then again, if I did such a thing I guess I would have to adhere to all sorts of rules from a couple of centuries ago that I do not know and do not care to learn.  So I guess I don’t have a choice but to learn and move on.

Still, that won’t stop me from calling this out as a Stupid English Rule!

The new netZoom logo was announced last week, and now I’m proud to show you three more logos for other article types we find here on Folaji.com.

Enjoy!

Three New Logos for Folaji.com

New netZoom Logo

New netZoom articles will be shorter, and will be about one subject at a time.  This will allow me to write more focused articles more frequently, hopefully resulting in a better quality of articles overall.

The first of these new articles is now up, and you can read it here.

I hope you enjoy the new format, and also keep an eye out for the other changes coming up.

Mystique, the theme previously used on the site, pushed a new update that, although awesome, broke the majority of the customizations I’d made to the theme over the years.

Now don’t get me wrong, Mystique is a very powerful theme, and I would definitely suggest that anyone with a WordPress blog take a look at it.  The difference between the update and the previous version was so great, however, that I found myself having to rewrite the majority of my changes.

Add to this the fact that I could no longer edit or create new posts with the new theme, and I decided it was time for it to go.

I’ve therefore updated the site to use WordPress’ default “TwentyTen” theme which, as you can see, is a lot simpler and lean.  Its also easier on the eyes when it comes to reading, thanks to the serif font.

So, now that the site is back to its regular self, we can start the machine back up again.  Keep an eye open for some new Equanimity and Flash Imagination posts!

I hope we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program shortly, in the meantime I apologize if the site changes looks while I complete the configuration.

UPDATE:
And there we go, I think we’re all back up. Let me know if you find something out of place.

The rant below was posted to replace the site while the update took place. Enjoy!

Caution...!

We’re doing some very late spring cleaning…

We’ll be back on Monday, July 18th!

(or ealier, it really depends on how productive we are. Which isn’t really productive considering we’re just sitting here, writing this message explaining why the site is down…

I mean really, who turns off a website? Isn’t the whole idea behind the internet the fact that it grants access to everything to everyone 24 hours a day? Or was it more just to network computers…?

Regardless, there’s no hiding the fact that the internet has grown into a global red light district. I mean seriously, how many of you are here because you thought this was an adult site? Come on, be honest, you saw “Fola” and didn’t take the time to read the rest, right? You were just so excited about seeing some porn that you just clicked right through, didn’t you? Ya perv… (or at least that’s what my girlfriend would say)

Though if everybody does it, does that make the few who don’t do it the pervs? And you know what else: I read somewhere that more woman look at porn than men now. I swear I read it somewhere…

So yea, who’s the perv now Stacey, huh? Last time I checked it was still majority rules, so stop looking at me with your judging eyes!

ITS NOT LIKE YOU’VE NEVER LOOKED FOR YOURSELF! I’VE SEEN THE BROWSER HISTORY! SO SHUT YOUR FAC…. Oh crap… my boss is coming…)

So yea, no site till Monday, sorry for the rant

They're back: Blog Tool Reviews

Blog Tool Reviews

One set of posts I want to bring back to the mix are my Blog Tool Reviews.  These posts detailed the different tools and services I commonly use on Folaji, and served to document helpful hints and tips for those out there who were looking to create their own blog or site.

The series, which originally started on this site, was moved to a new site a while back.  I was hoping to use this new site to post Software Development and IT posts, but quickly found out that I did not have the time to run two sites at once.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed writing these posts, which is why I will be bringing them back into the Folaji fold.

This dog will be replying to your emails (when she feels like it, of course...)

Ask Koji

A new series of articles I’m going to be bringing to the site are fan letter responses written from the point of view of my dog: Koji (a 3 year old female Basenji).  This is an idea I’ve been toying with for a while now, and I believe it’ll be fun to see how Koji would react to certain fan written letters.

So if you have any questions or comments you would like to send our way, you can leave a comment on this post or take a moment and write an email to koji@folaji.com.

Equanimity

Obviously one of the new series on the site will be Equanimity: the short story I’ve been preparing for almost the past year.  I expect we’ll see some posts for this story before the end of the month, so keep an eye open for them!

I have a camcorder!

Some Kind of Video Project

I’ve finally taken the plunge and bought a camcorder a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve since been walking around and taking random videos of things, but I’m looking for ideas for videos that I could post online.  As some of you may know, I had a blast making videos with friends while in highschool (take a look at this for an example, though I warn you that its both in French and pleasantly horrible  ), and with my new camera, I hope to start making videos again.

I’m not quite certain what I want to do just yet.  I have a few ideas rolling around in my head (mini web series or mini documentaries for example) but nothing concrete at the moment.   Regardless, once I’ve something ready to show, you can bet I’ll post it here.

In the meantime, if you have some ideas as to what I could do video-wise, feel free to share!