04/01/07(11h43)- its hard to believe again, but its been nearly an entire quarter that ive sidelined smalrus.com. however, i’ve got different plans for it this year. for starters, im an eyeing a migration to the popular wordpress format come september, for the 10th anniversary of the smalrus website (hard to believe its come this far. those beginning times were posts nearly every 10 minutes). the fact of the matter is, my website is becoming completely obsolete in the age of web 2.0 and to do the various features i’d like the site to have, i have no choice but to either hire my own site developer or to capitulate to the fact that i cannot program for the next generation and take a simpler step. i dont have the time to advance myself to the stage at which web development is currently at (end with preposition). thus sometime in the next year, the things on this page will start to gradually undergo their first major design overhaul in about 5 years. because lets face it, theres no easy way now to do commenting, to do permalinks, to do rss feeds, or any host of things that web 2.0 lets one do. in this way, ill be able to integrate more site features to move with the direction of the internet. besides, web pages used to be about designing and building the site, but that is outmoded. now its about dynamicism and content and what you can do with the site.

to that end, i also have some ideas for the content of this site. as i am growing older, the day to day mundaneness and social bickering that exists on myspace pages and livejournals and xangas and facebook is starting to wear out. i went through that part of my site way back in high school. and you know, a lot of smalrus.com was about a journal where i could express my thoughts and vent and things of that nature, but also keep track of the goings on in my life- movies or concerts that i had seen, places i had visited, something interesting that i had picked up at the store… and thats still an integral part of this blog (if i dare call it a blog because id never really been attracted to the linking of “smalrus web site” to “blog”).

that said, i’m opening up a new chapter starting in 2007. this semester, i am starting research for my masters thesis in corporate social responsibility. as such, i dont have a formal lecture that meets, meaning that i only have three lecture days a week. however, in efforts to keep myself on track, i am still trying to schedule that fourth class day as an official thesis day. to this end, i will be going down the tracks of where a few of my favourite authors have gone with my favourite books, i have enjoyed, John Battelle, author of The Search and Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, and start soliciting opinions and advice along the way of my thesis research. this is an idea of something i have to address with my thesis advisor in terms of what i could, or could not actually publish on my website, however given that this first semester is devoted more toward research, i am hoping that i can use this site to drive ideas on the things i am reading aboout each week and get feedback from the few readers i have left out there about how corporate social responsibility works or doesnt work and what can be done differently.

on that note, i am off for now, but i have not forgotten that i need to post my top 10 albums of 2006. keep reading…