Today (Wednesday) marks the 7th anniversary of my first recap – WCW Worldwide 07/06/97 for DDTDigest. I’d like to think I got better since then. I’d like to think that, anyway.
I can’t believe it’s been that long either, if it makes you feel better. Thanks Bill for taking a chance on a strange post-high school senior. (Bill would probably say that it was great to have me, but no one else wanted to do it anyway.)
By sheer coincidence, I’ve got the day off today. I plan on celebrating by seeing SpiderMan 2 in the early afternoon and Brewers/Cubs at Miller Park in the evening. Maybe I’ll really party and go drop of my dry cleaning and visit the bank. Woo hoo.
This site (or at least this iteration of it) comparatively only dates back to November ’00. Less change in the style there, which got me thinking about making some.
I can’t promise what I will or won’t do, because I don’t seem to meet those commitments as often as I’d like. But these are my ideas right now for the near future
- A site redesign. I’ll never give up function over form, but it’s time to move beyond black and white. Obviously, the whole site could use a new look, but it’s the main page that’s really become a mess and needs a change ASAP. I have the dual problems of never trusting my design abilities (perhaps for good reason) and tinkering with them to a infinite waste of time, but I’ll try to get over it.
- Better integration of the articles on the site. Biggest problem with the Internet is that there’s so much information but you can’t find any of it or get to those things you really want. Least I could do is clean up my own mess – I want to do more things like the SmackDown 2004 TV Continuity Index (link fixed), and to carry those things over into recaps. I may bite the bullet, give up on my homebrewed stuff and use a out-of-the-box article management system to get it done, but I’d take it over the disconnection.
- Increase the opinion stuff on the blog. Turned out to be easier less of a fright when I actually started doing it, but it’s not up to the level where it’s more than just a supplement to whatever else you’re reading. I have this idea that I could actually expound on these ideas into a some sort of bi-weekly column thing for OO or whoever’d take it, but I suppose that’d require competence. This is a step up from the days when thinking about writing a column would make me mentally sick!
- Give myself the time and take effort to edit things.
- Keep talking about stuff I like to talk about, just because I like talking about.
- Keep being annoyingly mysterious and vague when the mood suits me.
- Keep rocking in the free world. We may expand to the non-free world if things break right.
As always, the way to get me to do stuff you want me to cover is to respond to stuff I’ve already done. If I know I’m going to be able to generate a conversation by accomplishing something, I’m going to push it ahead in the priority list, even if it’s critical (what do you mean OVERLY CYNICAL, Rick?) I have my own ideas about what I want to tackle and what I want this site to be, but like anyone else, I’m malleable by audience demands.
The lucha coverage is the my best example of this – I rarely get any feedback about the recaps, and I notice everything being more used as an after the fact information usage, so I’m using my time more on mining the information in prettier ways than to cover the shows. (If there was anyone else covering CMLL at a consistent level I’d enjoy reading, I might have folded up shop and directed people to move on by now.) I get the faintest hint of a direction and I’ll end up following it, so take advantage of it.
I’ve thought about ditching this gig many times before, but I’ve stuck around because it’s seem a worthwhile hobby. Thank you for reading, writing and responding to make it worthwhile.