Well, here it is. After multiple days of trying to find the right look, tweaking, and modifying, the new layout has arrived. For those that forget already, here is a before and after…

Before

After

What do you think? I also updated the bio as it was over a year and a half old…

After being down for a couple of weeks, the site is back up and running… Sorry about the delay.

Now that college is finished for the school year, I’ll most likely be looking at updating the site’s layout as well as its various sections (ie: bio and links). I’m not sure how soon it’ll happen, but it’s on my list of things to do, so stay tuned…

Wow, last month we shattered our previous statistical records in terms of numbers of readers on this site… Welcome to all who have hopped on board since June.

Many of you reside in the United States, so I wanted to wish you a happy 4th of July! Hope you have an awesome and safe holiday!

I’m going to do one of my regular entries about current radio singles soon, where I list a bunch of them off and say what I think about them. It’s been a while, so it should be fun. Stay tuned for that…

I’ve decided that I am going to get a 15” MacBook Pro. Though it probably won’t be right away, I am certainly considering the jump soon (a month or two at most… or if I just can’t wait any longer. Whichever comes first). I figure that I have about $500 built up in vacation pay to cash out (it would be more if I wait a little longer), I have $100 that my mom decided to give me a while back for my passport fees (thanks mom!) that I set aside for something special, I can save $200 using an education discount, I am trying to sell my PSP, and I would try to sell my current HP laptop I bought in December with Windows Vista after I buy the Mac. So when you add that all up, it really wouldn’t be THAT much coming out of my account. Ha. I miss my Mac… And these things are so darn attractive and mesmerizing that they would even make Bill Gates drool. Step back Bill, they aren’t water resistant.

My first three days of work are finished, thank goodness. Tomorrow I need to drive myself down to Toronto for a Sony PlayStation 3 training thing from 10 to 4. Considering I can probably teach them a thing or two about the unit, I have a feeling it isn’t going to be very exciting. I’m just hoping there will be some free swag. Josh likes free swag. At least I’ll be getting paid for a regular shift while having a change of scenery and will get a nice freeway drive out of it. Nothing like blasting the tunes while having the car to yourself… Then I have Friday off and I’m back in the shop on Saturday. This will finally mark the end of a crazy week, only to have me back in for work on Monday. Eek.

The add-on I use for integrating Twitter into this site was down yesterday for some reason by the way, which is why there weren’t any updates on the right hand side for a while. I really was sending updates to Twitter and they were being posted, but you would have only been able to see them on my profile. If there is ever a lull in updates, check over there to see if Twitter Tools (the add-on) is down or not.

A certain project I’m helping with is coming along slowly but surely… About a year in the making, I’m pretty excited to have it finally in actual production. Stay tuned as the monster will be unleashed soon (and I mean it this time)… It’s quite a bit different than anything else I’ve been involved with before…

A bunch of the guys from work want to play on Xbox Live tonight as it’s been a while since we last had a big match. I guess I should get going and hop on. I’ll be shooting them down with snipers and rocket launchers while hovering above them in my oversized jetpack as the blatant product placement is flashed in front of our faces constantly. Yes, we’re playing Perfect Dark Zero. Good guess. Hey, it’s certainly no Halo, but it’s a fun FPS diversion to goof around with.

Game on.

It is late into Tuesday evening… I have tomorrow and Thursday off, then I work Friday and Saturday before the big trip to Nashville Sunday morning. These next two days are going to be crucial for me get all the loose ends tied up before I hop onto the plane and cross the border.

The good news? I’m almost finished preparing everything. I have one or two more interviews to prep as of the time I’m writing this (I’m actually procrastinating prepping one. ha), then I need to get things in place for the “live” coverage, make a graphic or two, and get all of my contact / location info in place and on my Treo. It’s the final crunch, but I think I’ll make it.

The bad news? This blog has been a little neglected as I prepare for the trip. Sorry about that. But with the ease of Twitter and Tumblr, I’ve been able to quickly throw brief entries online to let you know what I’m up to without slowing my progress down too much. That’s why it’s a good thing to keep an eye on them. Just think though, in a matter of days this blog will be getting multiple entries per day from Music City USA. Now would be a good time to subscribe to the feed to make sure you don’t miss any of the coverage!

So stay tuned. We’re almost there…

Rock on.

My Nashville Map (click for location details):

With less than two weeks to go, I’m beginning to work full force on material for my trip to Nashville on the 22nd. I’ll be covering it live through blog posts, vlog posts (though, again, they may come after the fact), Twitter entries, and Flickr entries. But don’t worry, it’ll all tie together.

Of course, I won’t be able to update during the blocks of time I’m doing interviews though. And I have a lot of interviews. Because I have so many interviews, I’m beginning the process of prepping them in advance to make sure they all go smoothly. I have about fourteen or fifteen to prep before I leave, but because of working at Future Shop I really only have Wednesdays and Thursdays to work on them during the week. That leaves me with four days to prep fifteen interviews (including today) and I only have four finished so far. Yikes. I need to pick up the pace tomorrow…

My Mute Math merch arrived today. I was pretty happy. The picture is below.

I’m really liking my Tumblr account. It is quite handy… I am always posting things I find on there; usually a few links/pictures/videos a day. I could post more, but I’m afraid to sometimes in case readers lose interest. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it and just let it all out. ha. Either way, I hope you’re following it too because there are some good reads/views on there. Check it out.

So how do you like my various profiles? For example, is there a point to having a Tumblr account or would you prefer me to have it all bundled on here (links, pictures, and videos I find)? I was under the impression that most seemed to enjoy having the two separate, but that can always be changed. Just want to double check to see the response.

Okay, Lost is coming on soon… Time to run…

Rock on.

Recently Added on Flickr:

If you subscribe to this blog or any other of my feeds, this entry is for you…

I have decided to move my feeds over to Feedburner as it is much easier to maintain and control. So if you subscribe to any of my feeds (and I know there are a number of you), it would be very much appreciated if you could use these URLs from now on. It’s the last change to the feed URLs, I promise…

This Blog - http://feeds.feedburner.com/joshmcconnelldotnet
Tumblr - http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mctumblr
Flickr - http://feeds.feedburner.com/McconnellPhotos
Twitter - http://feeds.feedburner.com/TwitterJoshMcconnell

The feed links are updated on the sidebar now too. So any future subscribers will automatically have the new links.

Thanks a lot guys! I appreciate it you doing this.

Rock on.

I’ve decided to get rid of the Twitter archive feature… I’m not sure why it didn’t include a few of the latest tweets in the archive entries, so I figure if people want to read what I’ve been doing through the day they can click the link over on the right. So keep watching it! Or better yet, join and add me as a friend…

Linkin Park released their first single from their highly anticipated new album this week (the album drops May 15th). The song is called What I’ve Done and the album is called Minutes To Midnight… It’s not too bad, but I’m not really blown away. It’s different and a lot more melodic, but I would have preferred to have more of Mike’s vocals… His background Nah, nah, nah’s just aren’t cutting it for me. I’m intrigued to see what the rest of the disc sounds like though…

My free upgrade to Windows Vista Premium arrived yesterday. Despite all of the harsh criticism it has received, I’m still really wanting to give it a throughly run for its money. I would have installed it right away, but I don’t want to touch it until after I get back from Nashville later this month. I have my laptop working the way I want it to right now, so I don’t want it messed up before I go. ha. I’ll definitely let you know what I think of it once it is installed at the end of the month though…

So today has been a productive day. I wrote four reviews for starters. Yes, you read correctly, I actually wrote reviews again. ha. It’s been a while… So expect to see those go up next week on the magazine. After that, I did a couple other things on the computer and vacuumed the house. While I was writing the reviews I was also running back and forth to the basement doing laundry all day. So it’s been a cleaning day for me on my day off. ha. Now I’m going to relax tonight and watch Lost in ten minutes, then American Idol. I’m not sure what I’ll do after that yet, maybe play some Xbox 360…

There are a number of new singles on the radio again. I think it’s almost time for me to do my semi-regular singles run through. Watch for that soon…

Alright, Lost approaches… I’m out. Remember to join Twitter and add me! And subscribe/bookmark my Tumblr while you’re at it!

Rock on.

It seems the added social features to my site are generating a fair share of interest. Last month this site had over a thousand more readers than past months’ totals, so welcome to all of the new readers! Thanks for dropping by…

So Avril Lavigne’s new music video… After hearing a few things about it yesterday, I thought I’d YouTube it. First of all, the song itself has always driven me crazy due to its simplicity, so needless to say that I wasn’t a big fan of the song going in. But it wasn’t the song that I wanted to watch the video for, it was the content. As you know, Avril has had a tom-girl image since the beginning of her career and repeatedly stated her dislike for pop girls or anything else related to being a “pretty girlie girl.” However lately it seems she has had a change of heart by dressing up in dresses and now doing a synchronized dance in her video. Ha! It’s so funny… If you are interested in seeing it, head over to the entry on my Tumblr account. It’s around 2:34 in the video.

As I said on Twitter earlier, the Junos weren’t all that exciting this year for me… I wonder if Nelly Furtado knew what sort of crazy antics they would force her to partake in. ha. That mock video of Promiscuous was brutal. The sound during the performances was kind of funky too… Though I’m Canadian, I’ll take the Grammys over the Junos any day…

I have quite the week ahead of me. My work schedule has shifted because of the holidays so I don’t have as much free time to prep for Nashville. But I’m going to have to start working on it soon or else I’m going to fall behind and will get tight on time. I have at least fifteen interviews to prepare alone… Yikes.

I’ll worry about that in the next couple of days though. For now, I’m heading to bed…

Rock on.

Recently Added Picture:

So far so good, I’m digging the new layout. Things are so much smoother and easier to maintain from a behind the scenes point of view. It’s all under one roof, Wordpress, so I like it. Thanks for all of the e-mails expressing your opinions on it, I appreciate them. Feel free to comment as well and share your opinion.

Have you been following my Tumblr account? I’ve been having fun with that one. I have it set up in Firefox that if I find something cool I want to share, I simply have to click one button and it is posted in a matter of seconds. I actually think I’m going to keep it now… So continue to check the site or subscribe to its RSS feed.

As you can see, my Twitter updates are now integrated right into the sidebar on the right. As I said a few times, I was never a fan of that old gray box. This new software also has the option of posting an entry that will list all of my Twitter updates for the day. I think I might turn it on and try it out, just to see how well it works. So if you see entries that say “My Twitter Updates,” you’ll know why.

American Idol… Not much of a surprise for the results this week. I wish Sanjaya would just go home already though, and hopefully before some of the really good talent get the boot. Gwen Stefani’s performance was rather rough too, wasn’t it? Her voice isn’t normally that low and off… Usually she sounds much better. It’s too bad the contestants weren’t limited to only singing her songs (both solo and in No Doubt), now that would have been really fun.

Lost… Crazy episode. Pretty creepy too. But it seems a number of people missed out on a few references and comments throughout the episode, causing them to think the opposite of what they should be. ha. People can’t blink when watching this show or else they’ll miss something. It needs your full attention!

I just noticed a black spot on one of my LCD monitors. I think I have a burnt pixel. That’s the problem with stinkin’ LCD technology. Oh well, if it is I don’t really care…. Actually, now it is gone. Odd.

Anyway, I’m off for now. Thanks for hanging in there in the midst of the changes. Don’t forget to subscribe to (and/or keep checking) this site and McTumblr. I’ll try to keep it interesting.

Rock on.

Well, I think I am finally finished updating the website. What do you think?

Major thanks to Brenten for helping me fix some of the coding. He was a huge help.

Don’t forget to update your RSS feeds!

Rock on.

Just an FYI for you (especially those who are subscribed to my feed), I am going to be upgrading my blog software today. Depending on how well it goes, I might make some changes to the site too including the URL for the blog. So you will most likely have to update your RSS Feed subscription and bookmarks.

Keep checking JoshMcConnell[dot]Net to see if changes have been made… If it goes to the same page it goes to now, then you won’t have to update your bookmarks/feeds. If it’s something brand new, then you know you’ll have to update.

Rock on.

Okay, so after a number of e-mails and a couple of comments, I’ve tried a number of different browsers over the past day or two. Thanks to everyone for the feedback!

I’ve decided to stick with Firefox as my guinea pig. I have been playing around with a number of extensions and themes and I am going to keep fooling around with it for a few more days at least. So far I only have three complaints (but I haven’t been thoroughly testing it yet, too busy):

- The font isn’t as smooth as in Internet Explorer. I’m a sucker for that extra little touch on the tiny things that don’t matter.
- When I try searching for something on Future Shop’s website, it doesn’t find anything and claims I didn’t put anything in the search box before I hit submit. Weird…
- I’m not a big fan of the RSS feed option or the popular RSS add-on you can download. If I can’t find a decent one, I guess I’ll still have to use a separate program for RSS feeds. That sucks.

Let’s hope the search box problem is just a temporary thing applicable only to Future Shop’s website. But when I open up Internet Explorer it seems to work… That’s not a good sign…

On the other hand, I love the auto spell-checker built into Firefox for when you are typing something in an entry field. Really cool.

I’ve been fooling around with a couple of plugins for this blog too. I tried to install a couple of Twitter ones so I can use something that is easier on the eyes than just the grey box to the right, but they didn’t seem to work properly. Dang it. I’ll keep looking…

The biggest plugin I added onto this blog can be seen at the bottom of every entry. It’s a Share plugin that allows you to send a specific entry to any of your favorite social networking websites (Ie: Digg or del.ico.us). When I first installed it, there must have been thirty or forty little icons at the bottom of each post… I cut it down to what I think are the most popular sites so it is less cluttered.

I’m just going to try the Share plugin for now and if it seems too distracting or cluttered then I’ll get rid of it. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions to make the blog better.

Rock on.

I think I know why I am so fascinated by networking sites and projects that revolve around staying connected. I’m a big fan of transparency with people. I enjoy having that sense of knowing the person is real and tangible, someone you could contact and find they are exactly the same as what you read. What you see is what you get. No strings attached and no need for fancy writing or false publicity hype. You can hear or see things straight from the source, taking a walk in their shoes.

This is why I could spend hours on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, and so on. Whether it is people I know in person, over the internet, or perhaps just through television or music — if they have a personal profile on these sites, I can get to know them and see life through their eyes. And I love that…in a completely non-stalkerish sort of way. ha. I just love meeting new people and getting to know them. Plus if you happen to meet these people in person or shoot them an e-mail, you already know what to expect because there isn’t some fake facade that you might find through other mediums (depending on the person and their job).

This has always been what I’ve tried to achieve through my website and various profiles on sites around the internet. I’ve always strived to have a level of transparency so what you see really is what you get. And I suppose that is why I have been so intrigued by these various networking websites over the years. They are new ways for me to communicate myself to other people online so they can get to know me and make our relationship more personable.

I really don’t want to be just another name in cyberspace. And now, thanks to the various sites, look at what I can get across:

- This blog lets me speak my mind and tell you what I’m up to. It also allows me to share with you various things I find throughout the web.
- Twitter lets me share with you what I am doing up to the minute/hour, every day.
- Flickr lets you see what I have seen through photos.
- Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook allow us to communicate quicker and easier while allows us to meet each other’s friends in the process.

With the exception of Flickr, which I pay $30 a year for unlimited everything (well worth the upgrade from the very limited free version), all of these sites are completely free. And with them at my disposal, plus a few others that I am currently considering trying, anyone who has interest can see what I’m like as a person with no strings attached. Of course, whether they like it or not is a different story altogether. ha. That being said, I can also get to know others in the same fashion. It’s awesome. It’s like we are all connected and now anyone can have their own personable presence online should they choose to.

Anyway, that’s my rambling for now. Hopefully it gives you an idea as to why I keep experimenting with these new sites and love trying them out. Sure, I love playing with them, but it is also so you guys can learn more about about the guy behind the screen. There are literally thousands of you who read this site and I hope these new tools give you some extra content to have fun with.

Rock on.

P.S. I uploaded pictures from the U2 concert I attended in 2005 on my Flickr profile. It was an amazing show and we had great seats. Check them out and comment away. Here are a few teaser pics:

After having the domain expire, the domain renewed, some DNS and IP refreshing problems, and even a mean old hacker having some fun with the site, JoshMcConnell[dot]Net is back up and running for round two. A very many thanks to my two friends for helping me get it back to where it is now. You know who you are.

As you can see, the blog has had a bit of a facelift. The software I have always ran the blog on has been updated to the lastest version, and that meant the old look had to go bye bye. I still wanted to find one that fit the rest of the site though, and this one seemed to do the trick. Let me know what you think.

Finally, I’ll hopefully update my bio and resume on here soon, as they both seem to be out of date. But for now, I need to run out and do some errands. So go watch some Vlogs in the meantime.

Thanks for your patience over the last few days. Rock on.