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The Network5-25-2009: Welcome!
Today marks the second or third attempt I've made in engaging myself in a license plate commentary site during the last few years.
In the past, I tried to go for a simple approach: Static, individual pages in the spirit of Jon Upton; who pioneered license plate hobby commentary online twelve years ago. It could have worked...but unfortunately, the hassles in dealing with fully-formatted pages for each entry eventually caused me to lose enthusiasm with the project.
In an ideal world, I would have written my own content-management system from scratch after that...but unfortunately, I know too little about server-side technologies to even dream of doing that venture. So, I resorted to plan B.
Like my Web Journal, the new Idle Pen is based on a severely hacked and cut-down version of PolkaDot; a simple PHP-based weblog system devised by one of my various online acquaintances. It may not be perfect (and I broke the RSS generator in the midst of my modifications), but it gets the job done with reasonable ease, flexibility, and minimal overhead.
Lately, my license plate interest has perked once again. I have a number of upcoming projects out of that vein up my sleeve, so I felt that there was no better time than now to bring the Idle Pen back. Some of the content I'll post will be short; some of the pieces will be long. I'm not sure how often I'll update the site, but you can count on me doing so more frequently and regularly than before.
See you soon!