Return of the Student

It’s great to be back.

So great that the statement deserved a line of its own. It’s been nearly a week since I was hacked and thought I’d lost everything on this blog. Not looking to belabour the point here, because I’ve actually been snapped up for a guest post about it tomorrow over at Website in a Weekend (I’ll link you when its up).

This post isn’t about the evils of hackers or security holes, it’s about what you do when the chips are down and things look bleak. Or we could be boring and say its only about future blog plans. I vote we go the more interesting route and have a little story first.

Spiders have it sussed.

We’re all spiders (at least for the duration of this story). We belong to a long line of arachnids that have been making a decent living in an old, virtually abandoned forest. From the moment we hatched out and cast our webs to the wind in search of a place to call our own, until our latest fly we’ve been left in peace.

Our webs haven’t been damaged too badly, apart from the odd wasp – which of course we just gently untangled and left to go on its way.

We’re happily minding our own business, waiting for the next round of flies and feeling slightly bloated when we’re struck down. No idea what did it but you’re web’s completely gone and now it looks like this giant thing in the sky is coming down to crush you. You run off and abandon your old web-site.

But now you have a choice – do you go back? Do you build again?

You’re a spider, it’s not really a choice. It’s a matter of survival. Of course you return! And if you’re smart you change your web slightly to avoid further detection.

The Altered Web

I’m back and ready to rebuild my web. Much of the underlying structure is still there – but it’s got a long way to go, and honestly I think it deserves to be better than the one we had before.

Here’s what I’m going to do:

Mondays are going to be guest posts – at the moment it’s the continuation of Eleanor’s Series on Children’s Literature. Reposting from the beginning I’m afraid, but I hope you enjoy them as much the second time around.
Wednesday is Tutorial day. Or, for the moment, Practical Tip day. I’ll be losing access to 3D software for a while over the summer, so most of these will be written ahead of time.
Friday is going to be Polish and Publish day (it sounds so much better than ‘Repost Day). The older articles on this site have some good information in them, however I’m dying to give them a face-lift and shine. They’ll cover the same material but in a more thought-out and helpful way.
Saturday is Webcomic day. But not on this site – I’ve moved them to a sub domain of their own. Don’t worry, I’ll be updating this site to point you to that site for the next month until we’re all used to the new format.
The Categories and Tags system has changed now to be more coherant and easy to search through – Let me know what you think.

Before I leave on holiday I’ll update you again for the summer plan; this is very much a test and trial period. When I return again in September there’s going to be even more new things and changes. The plans there are mostly drawn up, but if you’ve any suggestions they’re more than welcome! I’ve already had a few and its forced me to take other things I hadn’t even thought about into account.