The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

“And they said that it would never happen in this lifetime…”

Um, no. Actually, “they” have all been encouraging me to make it happen the whole way. Heck, just ten minutes ago, I was asked in IRC why on earth I actually bought a .info domain name! (It was actually free at the time in 2005, but I have paid a bit to keep renewing it over the years.) Nevertheless, today, Webmacster87.info passes on to that great bit bucket up in the sky, and is replaced by my new site: The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell. Yep, yet another weird name for you to make fun of. Whatever. I like it.

So why did I make this switch? Well, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’ve always loved the webmacster87 name, ever since I first came up with it back in April 2004, as a play on words between “webmaster” and “mac”, with the 87 really just being a random number that I picked for no reason. (Its first use was actually a .Mac username, if you can believe that.) That username is not going away. However, a common issue for me has been that it is a difficult name to spell/type correctly (I’m sure that whoever webmaster87@gmail.com is, they’re not too happy with me right now), and I would like to start using my own name a bit more. Hence the reason that my site is now hosted at DouglasBell.us, and my e-mail address will be transitioning in that direction as well over the summer. Another primary reason is that I’m currently preparing to make a major transition in my life as I head off to college. This fall will be the first time in my life where I will living away from home for more than ten days in a row, and a lot more people from my neck of the woods are going to be interested in following what I’m doing. That means that my blog will be opening up to a much wider audience, and so I want something that’s a little more professional-style and more reflective of this new purpose for my blog.

So not only does my site change its colors, it changes focus. Yes, it will still be a personal blog, but it will be a little bit more topical than before, and it will focus a bit more on my personal life than it did before. (Though in reality, anything is still fair game.) Oh, and I’ll post on it a lot more than I did during this past school year. So, let’s take a look at this concoction that I’ve been working on for the past three weeks in more detail…
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