Mike Oren.com

After rolling MikeOren.com over to version 2.1, I went ahead and updated the page on grad school and my CS project. I also added a new content area--although right now it's hosted by blogspot and is unique and seperate from the rest of my site--the new blog is geared at offering news and information about any type of technology related topic that I'm interested in at the time. The blog can be found here (mikeoren.blogspot.com). I'm keeping it seperate from the rest of the site as I feel my audiences for the two areas are seperate, however, if I begin to see some overlap (or if enough people post comments asking for it to be hosted on my main site) then I will go ahead and merge the two. I actually still need to upload some more pictures, but I'll get around to that later tonight.

There were some issues with this whole upgrade process at first, so I may later actually end up running my own blog software. Currently, however, I have Blogger/Blogspot posting my updates to an unpublished page and then I just copy and paste the actual content into my main page. I chose this route because trying to embed my blog into my main page made my main page kind of ugly and posting the blogspot post directly to my main page adds a blogger bar to my main page that I'd have to edit the code to take out each time any way (and the formatting of the page isn't correct). But this method now means my occasional updates can still be read via RSS, although using the links in the feed will take you to a static page of just that post and with my blogspot template (which includes a link at the top to take you to my main homepage and all postings will link to my home page--but it also includes that blogger bar because I don't want to bother editing it out).

Updates for the other sections are still coming, and when they do arrive, I'll announce them here (I may also add them to the RSS feed). Also, be on the look out for some new content. Graduation is in a few days, so for all family members who are still looking for something to get me, check out my gift list (Word document).

Since my home page has become pretty much just a blog, without the benefits of RSS feeds and easy archiving, I decided to go ahead and embed my old blogspot page into it. I've had the blogspot for awhile, but never really bothered with it. Now I figure it's the easiest way to keep my homepage updated (and archived) without having to maintain my own blogging software for my website. I'm also hoping this will help me in my war of the web Mike Oren as I have found a good 3-4 other Mike Oren's that currently outrank me on the Google search results (this of course ignores my old Angelfire web site as that's just an embarrasment). Expect updates to the rest of the site within the next week or so, particularly the grad school page, CS Project Page, and some additional photos. Those are currently the most viewed areas, so I want to try to keep things up to date.

In other news, I have switched my browser of choice from Firefox over to Opera 9 Beta. Firefox does a better job of rendering pages (making them look nice/right) and it's more customizable. However, Opera seems to be a little tighter--making it slightly more secure (although Firefox is decently secure) and giving it better memory management than Firefox. Plus, with the widget feature of Opera 9, I can still customize my browser. Just for fair warning for anybody considering Opera 9 Beta--it IS a beta and as such it isn't as stable and may crash on you (I didn't have that problem with the official Opera release, but I have had Opera 9 crash multiple times already).