April 17, 2006 [LINK]

Web site Spring cleaning

As part of my relentless, never-ending efforts to make this Web site more automated and interactive, I have begun a transition to a new blog system that will entail a slight change in Web site addresses. Unless I have slipped up somewhere, you shouldn't notice any differences in page format or functionality for the time being. In a slight departure from blogosphere custom, the blog entries on the archives pages will henceforth be listed in natural chronological order, starting with the earliest date. To me, that makes it a lot easier to review old material. For the time being, the "legacy" blog and archive pages (".shtml") will remain intact, and they will eventually have an automatic redirect to the new pages (".php"). As part of this transition, there will be feedback features in the near future, as long promised. Note that the new Macintosh & Miscellanous page serves as the residual catch-all for all blog posts that don't fit into any other categories. That means general culture, religion, music, movies, science, computer technology, and non-baseball sports. From now on, the monthly and categorical archives pages will include all blog entries, up to and including the current date. Therefore, there will be some overlap between current blog pages and archive pages. Here are the new and old addresses for the main blog categories. Please adjust the bookmarks in your Web browser accordingly, and as always, "thank you for your $upport."

One of the tradeoffs with this new system is that I will lose flexibility in making cross blog posts between more than one category. From now on, each post will appear on one, and only one blog category page. That is why you will see this blog post (classified as "miscellaneous") on the old Baseball blog page, but not the new one.

UPDATE: Another change is that for each successive day, blog posts on the central blog page will henceforth be listed from top to bottom in reverse alphabetical order of their category (wild birds first, baseball last), irrespective of what time of day they were originally posted.

Reminder: Legacy blog pages (ending in ".shtml") will not be updated after today. Please choose one of the new blog pages.

April 7, 2006 [LINK]

Princess leaves the nest

After two and a half weeks of brooding, Princess finally gave up on her one remaining egg today, and wasted no time in resuming her usual routine of flirting in the perch next to the window. Her excitement is no doubt related to the large number of "eligible" male goldfinches outside the window; they are quickly turning into their bright yellow breeding plumage.

I finally managed to get a good closeup shot of Princess' face today; note that the tip of her beak is always green because of all the kale, spinach, mustard leaves, etc. she munches on. You can also see the black pupil and the dark brown iris, as well as the reflected window light. Compare it to the closeup of George I took last October.

I also put some old photos of Goldie on the Canaries photo gallery page. Some of them are newly-enhanced photos I had posted years ago and later deleted.