So if you’re reading this, I’m sure you’ve notice the overhaul in the look and feel of this blog. (If you’re not at least a semi-geek, the rest of this paragraph won’t interest you in the least, so feel free to skip to the next one) I mentioned earlier I wasn’t happy with blogger.com, and was experiemeting with several other blogging tools. Of the 5 I tested, I wasn’t completely happy with any of them, mainly because they all lacked one vital feature: the ability to upload and insert images and thumbnails directly into a post. They all had that feature in one way or another, but you either had to do the thumbnail creation yourself, or do the upload via a seperate FTP program, or something. So I thought I was going to go with b2evolution, but then I stumbled upon an outstanding set of plug-ins for WordPress, another system I was looking at. These plug-ins did exactly what I was looking for, so I immediately chose WordPress. If anyone else is interested in setting up a blog for any reason, I would recommend WordPress. The installation is rediculously simple, and there are ample plug-ins and themes to choose from.

So you may have noticed (but probably not), the address of this page has changed to blogs.thalions.com/joe. You may want to update any bookmarks you had for the old address, thalions.com/joe/blog. You don’t have to, through, because all traffic to the old address is automatically routed to this new address, so you can safely use either URL. UPDATE - The URL has changed once again to joelion.com.

If you’re curious, the picture on the header of this page was taken by a co-worker last week while they were on their department team event - a hike in the Alps. My previous post details my team event, a bike ride through the foothills. Our bike ride did not produce any stunning photo-ops like the hike did, so I’m including here some other pics from the hike that our co-workers shared. Note that I haven’t actually been to these places yet, but you can bet that I will soon!

UPDATE: Click here to see the full gallery of views of the Alps. Below are some samples.

Hope you enjoy the new blog. There may be some changes coming yet, especially to the sidebar on the right and the header, so don’t worry if some of the links don’t work or if it’s cluttered - I’ll take care of it in due time!