I was going through some of the stuff on the Google Webmaster site when I noticed that a lot of people have been visiting the 2 year old discussion about Artificial Consciousness recently. Given the age of the post I can understand why people don’t comment on it anymore, but I do admit I’m surprised that its such a high ranking article for the term “artificial consciousness.” I’m definitely a very long way from being authoritative on the subject.

But it did get me thinking. There was a time when I would post a lot of articles that were pretty technical, or controversial, in nature. They were articles of depth and they often generated a fair amount of discussion. More often via email than in the comments (something I still don’t understand, but oh well.)

What is unfortunate is that towards the end of 2006, that completely changed. The moment I started working full time again, rather than floating from one bit of work to the next, the posts to this site really did turn to fluff.

Don’t get me wrong. Not all of it has been bad. My IP subnetting tutorial is one I still get massive amounts of feedback on. Lots of people send me little thank you notes for that one. Apparently it makes it easy enough to understand the basics and provides enough of the fundamentals that they can work with more difficult subnetting problems out there.

I’ve posted a lot of commentary to this site over the months, but most people tend to ignore those kinds of posts. So I’ve been thinking that maybe, just maybe, I’m going to set aside at least a couple of hours on the weekend where I will sit down and put together a proper technical post. I’m going to aim for at least 2 a month.

I started working on a successor to the IP tutorial last weekend. The new one is an IPv4 routing tutorial. I hope to have that finished and in the wiki this coming weekend, but it will take more than a couple of hours to finish off. So time is the big issue there.

One of the side effects of doing these tutorials is that I’m discovering that by going straight to TCP/IP tutorials (layer 3 on the OSI model) we’re missing a whole heap of information that is just as useful to know at layer 2 on the OSI model. So, after I get this routing tutorial done, I’m going to spend a bit of time going over some of the layer 2 subjects.

The hardest part is that these subjects all tend to bleed into each other. For example, understanding the composition of an Ethernet frame is relevant to an IP or UDP packet which is relevant to routing which is relevant to VPNs which ….

I really should’ve planned it out a bit before I started. Subnetting is starting in the middle really. :-)

But, this is my pledge. I will start making an effort to go back to what was the most popular and concentrate on more technical subjects again. This is still my personal blog, but I will create a section that is dedicated to regular technical posts and tutorials about subjects I am at least mildly proficient in. ;-)

A lot of you probably notice that I keep adding and removing stuff to the blog. I say I’m going to do something and never do. Or I suddenly add crap thats just more noise. I get plans to move the blog from Blogger to MovableType or WordPress and then never follow through. I have come to the conclusion that things are mostly fine as they are.

You probably noticed that I didn’t move my FriendFeed.com feed to the main blog RSS feed. I decided against this. Ultimately, if people want to keep track of me, they can just go there and subscribe directly to that feed. I’ll keep the blog feed as just a blog feed.

There is only one major change I will make to the site. I intend to move the blog from the root of the site to a subdirectory of its own. The blog will be at /blog and that’ll allow me a lot more flexibility with the site.

The links app is going to get removed. I haven’t touched that in months and its in a very incomplete state. Too much coding required to finish it that I just don’t have time to do. The gallery is going for much the same reason. Although I may redo the gallery at a later date when I have more time for it.

I’m working on the wiki. First thing I’m doing is building a theme to match the rest of the site. The wiki is there, but its still looking very default and is very empty. This is where all the tutorials and other technical stuff will actually end up. With a link from the blog when each one goes live. :-) Using a wiki will allow a much more diverse taxonomy and make it a lot easier to keep track of the posted articles. The search will also work a lot better too.

Speaking of search, I’m going to add a few features to the blog itself as well. I’m working on a bit of code that will allow people to search the contents of this blog (and eventually the whole site) without needing to go to Google and add a site: parameter to a search query. That is a fair way off though. I’m still trying to get the captcha working for the contact page. That definitely has top priority.

As you can see, I do have a significant number of plans in mind for this site. I’m thinking its time I was a little more active than I have been for the past 18 months. I’m going to make more of an effort and go back to what used to work. If you remember this site (and de-generationx.net before it) as it was between 1999 and 2005, you’ll remember what I aiming to get back to.

The intended side effect of all this? Well, aside from revitalising the blog and getting you guys interested and engaged again that is.

I’m hoping the tutorials and technical posts will help me study for my Linux and Windows certs. But that probably won’t happen until I move from Networking tutorials to Linux and Windows topics. ;-) Not likely to ever finish off working towards my CCIE. At least not while I’m in NZ and doing generic IT work.