I haven't done much updating on my site in the past year, and it's been noticeably neglected. No new material, broken URL's, missing pages, and links, it was a mess!

I did at some point change the theme to a dark theme, from a white one (or lite, I guess). This appealed to the sensibilities of my dark, pitch-like heart, but it created further problems with objects or text that where already black, and now were invisible on the page. I've had to go through various pages and see what they look like in the dark theme, and edit them accordingly.

I've also removed certain pages I decided I didn't want to pursue or focus on anymore. I guess it's part of the process of figuring out what I really want from this website, and making it my own, instead of a regurgitation of the internet as a whole. I think this has added to the appeal of the site, but also limited my scope of work, in some ways.

The last couple of days, I've been tweaking a few things here and there, and re-reading some of my old site update posts. This led me to decided to make a new update to let you know of some new...well, updates.

I've already mentioned the dark theme, and the various changes needed to accommodate this. Then there was the decision to drop certain pages and/or articles from the site. Sorry for all the broken links! I may get around to them someday. And I've finally and forever, this time, decided to give up on shortened URL's. The various services I've used never quite worked the way I wanted, and honestly, I think the use of shortened links is coming to an end, or at least tapering off. For my needs anyway, they were never that useful, and as passionately as I wanted to use them, I've had to admit and accept this. I know, everyone of you, meaning myself, will be devastated by this news. It's okay, we must soldier on.

I don't know why having shortened links was so important to me, but for some reason I so desperately wanted them. However, they always caused me more grief than pleasure.

At any rate, I've had to learn to let some things go, and just roll with it. I can't allow my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for perfection run this website, because that would keep me from participating in other endeavors, like eating and sleeping. You know, those fun things I like to do, just as a hobby. 

Shortly after Dave died, I noticed that his daughter had taken the entirety of Dave's work off his website, and "promised" to redistribute his work as soon as possible. Only this time in the form of ebooks, and possible a deal with Hollywood.

Call me crazy but wasn't his entire body of work already available to the widest audience? You don't get much wider than the internet. And even though Dave's website was crap, the content was Grade A excellent, and plenty of people went there to read it.

I don't know how she did it, but she even went so far as to have Dave's work removed from Archive.org's Wayback Machine.

Anyway, it appears my archive is now the only one available. Get it while you can folks. Now, I'm just waiting for a cease and desist letter from a certain member of the McGowan family, telling me to take down this illegal archive of material that was once freely available to the public. We shall see.

In other news...

My website service, Weebly, just introduced an update to their content management system that's got me really stoked!

Of course, a big part of their focus is eCommerce, which I'm not really into. I didn't make this website to make money, but I'm glad they've got a good business model. That just means they'll be around longer than other services that have already gone by the wayside.

So I've already tried out some of the new features, and created a page about the SpaceX falcon 9 rocket exploding on the launch pad, and the possible link of a UFO.

I don't mean to brag, but I am pretty proud of it. It's the kind of website design I've wanted to do for a long time, but was too lazy to figure out how on my own.

Thanks Weebly!

So other than that, I've been working a little bit on Dave's Archive, slowly but surely. I've decided to add links to the bottom of each post to make easier navigation from one article to the next, and cleaning up the pdf files a little bit. Here's an example.

This process is taking some time for me to accomplish, but I think it will make reading the articles much easier and the reading experience nicer.

Aside from that, that's about all the news I have for now. Oh, I almost forgot. As you can see in the example above, I've brought back my shortened links, only I'm using Bitly's service to generate them which is making my job much easier.

​I have some other plans for that in the future, but the bottom line is I just couldn't let them go. I had regretted not renewing the shorter url, and later when I checked for availability, it said it wasn't available. (I'm not sure why, I was the original owner and I didn't own it anymore. And there wasn't a website at futl.work.) My heart broke, and I started to slip into a deep depression. Then one day, I decided to check it again, and it was available! So I snatched it up, and never looked back. I knew I had a good thing when I first registered it, and it was futile to give it up.

Okay, so in case you're wondering, the title was mainly related to my new page about SpaceX, but I decided it still worked since I'm pretty spaced out about being Dave's only archive, and the new features to Weebly's service.

Ironically, a couple of days after I wrote this, I got a DMCA take-down notice. Can't say I'm surprised.

Well I was taken aback, because I distinctly remember this renewal cost for .work domains was $4.99. That's why I bought two in the first place. The two together were the price of one.

I decided to shoot and email to my registrar to see what was up. This was there reply:

Okay, I understand promotions, but what doesn't make sense to me is why the renewal price would be part of the promotion. I guess I could have taken advantage of this if I had registered the domain and then turned around and renewed it for five years. I would think most people do like I do and register for one year and simply renew every year on the anniversary date. Maybe not.

Anyway, due to recent events, I've decided to drop some of my .work domains, which means I'll no longer be providing shortened urls. Let's be honest, I was the only one using them anyway.

July 26, 2016:
For the latest news regarding short url links, please refer to the latest update in the original short links post.

I've been tinkering around a bit with the website--theme changes, new icons for the main pages, page header for the blog pages, etc.-- and I even added a new section, "Quote of the Day".

However, I can't take credit for this section because I'm taking it from a website I started reading awhile back, called theSkimm.

theSkimm is basically a daily digest of news, but it's so much better. I've been posting "10 Things You Need To Know Today" from The Week magazine for awhile now, but theSkimm goes a step further making the daily news a narrative.

In their own words:

Taking the news of the day, they explain it in a fun and entertaining way that's quick and easy to read. I highly encourage you to sign up for their daily newsletter. I'm pretty sure you'll be glad you did.

Either I'm suffering from depression, or I just like punishing myself. Maybe a little of both?

I once wrote an article about my never-ending battle to come up with the perfect domain, called Domain Wars. Well, it's not just about finding the perfect domain, it's also about saving some money, I guess. I just recently changed the domain of this website from nws4.me to nws.rocks only because it was going to save me a couple of dollars. Now I've decided to do it all over again.

The real problem is my domain registrar keeps coming up with all these really neat top level domains (TLD's), and they graciously alert me when they're available. Maybe it's OCD, but it's hard for me not to search for another domain until I come up with a better one, or I'm content with the one I've got.

Anyway, I logged into my account this morning and noticed a new TLD, ".work". That's interesting, I thought. I haven't seen that one before. It's new enough it would probably be easy to get a good domain. (Also, as a side note, I really wanted to get a second domain similar to the main one to be used for shortened links.) Conveniently the .work TLD connotes something you're doing. Something you're working on. I've always considered this website a work in progress, since I can't ever settle on a theme or domain, you know, minor things. And then it hit me. Sometimes this website seems so pointless, so ... Suddenly I had the perfect domain.

Now that my decision's made I have a lot of work to do, changing the links up and other stuff, but at least I'm saving some money, right? For the time being you might see some references to old domains of this website 4n3ws.com, nws4.me, nws.rocks and nws.club, maybe more, I can't remember.

I'm starting to ask myself why I'm doing this. Is there a purpose, or am I just playing around? I'm not sure I'm ready to answer that yet, but until I can I'll just consider this little website an experiment, even if it's nothing but futile work.

So, today I logged in to my domain registrar and noticed lots of new Top Level Domains they were offering, practically begging me to register a new one. It started off with me thinking about a new domain for my shortened links. Something maybe even a bit shorter. I know, I know.

I finally decided on a really cool domain with the .uk ending, "ne.uk". It's a Scottish word for nook. I was thinking along the lines that these shortened links were like a nook I was placing all my links in. However, one must have a presence (actually live there) in the United Kingdom to register a .uk domain. I'd wished I knew that before I started, because it would have saved me a lot of time.

But the domain juices were flowing, and I couldn't stop thinking of alternatives. I HAD to register a new domain. Once I accepted the fact that I'd have to give up the .uk domain (or relocate my family and find another job), my sites were drawn to a new TDL, ".link". Checking the availability of my preexisting news derivative "nws", I was delighted to see that nws.link was actually available. Now I know that nws.link isn't any shorter an nws.club, but the .link address has such a better sound to it, I coulnd't help but want it. When I clicked on the register now button, I was disappointed to see that .link domains do not include WhoIs privacy protection. That's a deal breaker!

After several attempts of some variation of nws.[something], I notice the registrar kept recommending nws.rocks, and it was on sale! Well, nws.rocks isn't any shorter than nws.club, and it's definitely longer than my main domain, nws4.me; however, it was cheaper than the .me domain, and renewing it would save me about $6 a year.

I suddenly abandoned my search for a new shortened link domain, and instead decided my website was finally going to rock! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

I decided to add a search box to my main menu pages; news, curio, archival and site map, so if you're using a browser that doesn't support the header search feature, you can use the search box found on any of the main pages.

You can access these main pages from the home page, or buy clicking on the menu button in the header.
Happy searching!