Now that I've moved to a more mature web space, I've decided to formalize some official commenting policies. Thankfully I've never had much of an issue in the past, but it's probably useful to have something on the books.
I'd consider it a work in progress so any feedback or comments would be appreciated.
Within the new guidelines, that is.
Dear Loyal Readers,
It's been nearly five years since the big move from first moved domain names from Blogger to YUCS and we've had a great run on the 'ol server. Sadly, the future of YUCS is uncertain at present1, which meant that I needed to start looking for actual paid hosting to handle both the blog and the Jewish guitar chords archive and then to port everything over.
Today I am very pleased to announce that the transition appears to be complete. Thanks to a great deal of hacking and the good support people at tweakedhosting.com, both the chords and guitar database are up and running at their new homes:
The new site for YUTOPIA is:
The Jewish guitar chords can be found appropriately enough at:
For the time being YUCS is redirecting all traffic to the new site,2 but since I don't know how much longer YUCS will be in operation, I'd like to ask if you could please update your links and feed subscriptions accordingly.
I don't have metrics just yet, but it does seem the site runs slightly slower and loads a little weirder than before. On the plus side, I've sorted out most of the new glitches and thanks to the new system I've even added some cool features such as this nifty little new contact form for direct spam-free feedback.
It also seems to be a good time to update the Blogroll on the side. If you'd like to exchange links or if you're already linking and would appreciate the reciprocity, please let me know.
Thank you all very much for your help and support. It's been an exciting time lately, and it doesn't look to be slowing down any time soon.3 I hope I'll be able to continue sharing in the next adventures of my little YUTOPIAN world.
1. And if and when it ever does go down, I'll write up a history. Tentative title: "From 501 to 404." (Yes, that's an obscure but relevant reference).
2. Some pages might not be working due to previous movabletype upgrades. I'll fix those as they come up.
3. Another big announcement forthcoming, and no I'm not getting engaged.
By now my extended absences from blogging should come as no surprise. I've always held that real life must take precedence over any virtual identity. However, since I did promise an explanation, so here's the scoop.
So yeah, it's been an intense couple of months with neither respite nor resolution imminent. 5 Much has been neglected personally - I simply haven't had the time to take care of myself as as I should.6 Despite the immediate concerns of job and dwelling, I'm still optimistic in the macro sense that this is yet another instance of being forced out of a comfort zone to grow in some way or another.
There have also been a few changes in the blog itself. I recently ported over all templates to MT4 which as you can see went must better than last time. Aside from some minor cosmetic changes, the significant perk is that commenting with the captcha actually works! This means no more bugs and no more Typekey registration.
Finally, I registered the domain names http://joshyuter.com and http://jewishguitarchords.com for this site and the chords directory respectively. Currently these URL's are only a masked redirect, but this may change in the future.7
And that just about covers it. I may try forcing myself to write again more regularly to maintain the outlet, but no promises.
Stay tuned for future developments...
1. Which I later found out to be another casualty of the Bear Stearns buyout.
2. Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that I didn't chose the topic, but it was assigned to me from a faculty adviser. The problem was he left the university and the replacements didn't like the new topic.
3. Advisers are on vacation and won't look at it for another week. If it passes I'll blog a summary.
4. More precisely, my perspective on which I hope to elaborate at some point.
5. Thankfully before I descended fully entered into "woe is me" mode, I found Kathryn Bertine's recent and possibly final installment of her series "So You Wanna Be an Olympian" and found the last section to be particularly helpful.
6. I've even ignored my own 5 year blogoversary!
7. At the rate things are going it's a good thing I don't have a good pun for "Brave New World."
Well it looks like the MT4 experiment was a complete disaster.
Let us never speak of this again.
While we were otherwise preoccupied, Jewish Blog Awards winners were announced, and not surprisingly we got trounced in all categories for which we were nominated. Given that the JIBs are an open nomination/open voting award, I find them indistinguishable from a "people's choice" award, which will naturally favor those blogs with greater readership.
Still, no cause at all for bitterness. In fact we're happy to see friends Curious Jew and Abacaxi Mamao win something and the JIBs introduced us to Rabbi Without a Cause (another winner) who had a similar take on the conversion. Also many thanks to Seraphic Secret for your kinds words.
As we've said before, we never got into this thing for awards and this changes nothing. We'll still keep up our sporadic and often delayed schedule of blogging, while hopefully maintaining the quality you've come to expect.1
1. Editors welcome, apply within.
It looks like we made the finals for the Jewish Blog Awards in all the categories for which we were nominated:
While it would be a nice ego boost to win in any category (i.e. go vote!), I realize that it's a popularity contest and we're up against stiff competition in all categories. When YUTOPIA started nearly four years ago there was no expectations of readership let alone awards - and the same goes for the individual posts. Personally I am proud of the posts on the Conservative Teshuvot as an honest Orthodox response to a watershed moment in American Judaism and regardless of the voting outcome the contents are still there people to find and read.
Thanks to everyone who voted in Round 1 and feel free to continue voting the the Finals (and pass it on). Either way we'll keep blogging sporadically as you all expect.
I've also been informed that we've been nominated for "Best Small Blog." You'd think I'd hear of these things in advance. Regardless, vote if you'd like while Round 1 is still going on.
I'm also mildly amused that someone thought to hack the system. Anyone remember when blogging was lishma?
*sigh*
We've been nominated for the Jewish Blog Award for "Best Anti-Establishment Blog as well as for our coverage of the Conservative teshuvot on homosexuality. It seems to be an open voting (read: popularity) contest which given the open nomination process needs to be conducted in rounds.
Anyway, if you'd like to vote for YUTOPIA and give me the opportunity to add another snazzy graphic to the sidebar, you can start with the best in class voting (the best post and series voting is not open yet).
I'll post updates as needed.
In a move sure to placate literally tens of people, I have removed the TypeKey requirement for commenting on the blog. As an alternative, all you need to do is enter the name of this blog (case insensitive) in the supplied field and your comment will be posted automatically. Otherwise you will not see an error, but your comment will be labeled as "junk" and will likely been discarded with the blog-spam. If you were one of the few who registered, your TypeKey account will still work and will let you bypass the filter.
Hopefully people will find this mechanism to be less intrusive than having to register with TypeKey.
Thanks again go out to Shaya for the plugin installation.
Dear Loyal Readers,
I am very pleased to announce that we have just won our first J-Blog award! YUTOPIA is a Silver Winner in the "Best Jewish Culture Blog" category because apparently if there's anything I know it's Jewish culture.
In all honestly I have no idea how these things work especially since I'm not sure I'd put 2006 as one of my best blogging years (a 5 year retrospective will be forthcoming around May). In the meantime I must thank the newly redesigned Town Crier for the initial nomination and now I get to add this snappy little graphic to the sidebar:
