Inconsistencies Ended

As I write this post, Carol of the Bells has gone through another major revision, this time to Version 5. Now not much may be apparently different, but I’ll detail that later on. Right now I want to tell of how this all started.

From December 2004 until June 2005 I was in a state of almost pure depression, isolation, and abandonment for reasons I might reveal someday. Being alone, you tend to build up a lot of ideas and views, but with no outlet to express them. So, after taking into account my older sister’s blog and website, I decided to start my own little nifty blog. I had prior experience with Blogger because I used to run a Lost rumor blog way back then, so I chose to stick with it. Version 1 of “Carol Of The Bells” was created on June 27, 2005 under the Minima template. I used it to tell my daily adventures at a special program during July. Back then I was so different. I was so carefree and Buffy/Angel were almost the only things on my mind. I thought everything was going to be like Sunnydale High and that everything would be so easy. Of course, I was wrong, but not by much.

On July 11, 2005 the Temple of Andrex was born onto Geocities, again modeled after my sister. I just thought I had so much to offer the world and believed that dozens of people waited on baited breath for updates. It actually helped cement my writing style, now that I think about it. Back then, the concept for Glitch was so different from what I’m currently hoping it will be. Back then I also had a similar game called LiFragment, where in a 2D ORPG you go around my high school and kill vampires (again, Buffy bleeding into my life). That was scrapped pretty soon after I discovered I wasn’t invincible and I couldn’t stretch myself too thin. My most common foil is biting off more than I can chew and then losing interest down the line, which is why I’ve taken much more conservative steps with some of my current projects. During this I think Carol of the Bells was updated once more to Version 2, sporting a Kubrick template but remaining pretty much the same.

The next major revision came in February 2006, when Carol of the Bells was relaunched into Version 3. It sported a custom layout I bummed off the internet but I tweaked the hell out of it. I also erased all previous posts for the sake of my own peace of mind, although I have them saved onto my computer for later laughs. I turned slightly emo that month but quickly shook it off when March and especially April came. April was a huge lead-in for what would become the ending to my best year of school ever, as well as the most consecutive nerdgasms I’ve ever had. During March I replaced the template again, to a lesser version of the one you see now. Called “K1 Black” (I think), I used it for its powerful sidebar and clean interface. In continuing with Version 3, Version 4′s template was predominately black. I tweaked it and tweaked it over time, keeping up the “one-post-a-month” thinking that has kept this blog alive.

On August 11, 2006, the Temple of Andrex saw it’s first major revision to the much hyped “iI” template. I was very excited because it was the first real HTML work I’ve done. I was hoping to use CSS for it, but oh well. It turned out pretty well but it just wasn’t the huge upgrade I was thinking it would be. From then until December 2006 both the Temple of Andrex and Carol of the Bells received minor updates. I wasn’t super excited about upgrading either so soon, but time makes fools of us all.

On January 1, 2007, the Temple of Andrex launched into what I dubbed the “Gradient” template. It was much more professional and I felt comfortable posting updates for my projects there. It even had a comment system on every page, and I was very proud of getting the CSS to work with Freewebs’ Guestbook code. Of course it crapped out later on but it seems to work now. Afterwards on February 26, this blog saw a “minajor” update; a better banner, an icon in the address bar, and a move to blog.andrewrabon.com. That was Carol of the Bells Version 4.5.

As I pondered in the post before this one, I kept thinking about the benefits and disadvantages to integrating the Temple of Andrex and Carol of the Bells. And apparently I decided to go through with it. “Carol of the Bells,” as it was formerly known, is now being moved to www.andrewrabon.com, and has had a few other changes as well. The two most apparent being the new name and the new banner.

I said before I didn’t want to abandon Carol of the Bells after all I’ve used it for, and it is my favorite song after all, so I decided to go “back to the basics.” On doing some research, I discovered that the song Carol of the Bells is based off a Ukrainian New Year’s song, but that makes its melody no more haunting or endearing to me. I of course had to change the banner to make it in line with the new name, and while it is largely similar to the previous one, this one is thinner and uses black font on the white snow. I think it’s an improvement, what do you think? For context, the comment system is now fixed and I would love some feedback.

Another addition is the search box on the right. I was very frustrated when making the last post, because I coudn’t find my previous post on “aura.” This search function will make things much easier for you and me. Below the search box is an edited About section, and below that possibly the best feature of Carol of the Bells Version 5/Shchedryk Version 1: actual pages filled with content taken from the Temple of Andrex. That means anything you can find there will now be accessible here, after I finish adding it of course. While I will never completely get rid of the Temple of Andrex (as it now has www.andrex.info for it’s main domain), and I do still need Freewebs for hosting most of my non-picture files, I wanted an integrated homepage for all things Andrew and Andrex. A “rebranding” was the only way in my mind, and I do hope you enjoy the “new” website. Please believe me when I tell you this is the same site launched almost two years ago, just with it’s looks, posts, and name changed. I have been using the same Google interface now since Carol of the Bells was launched and I don’t plan on leaving, abandoning, or ending my posts to this blog. There’s just no way.

The code for the template is essentially the same as Version 4+, but I imported it into one of my programming APIs and basically indented the heck out of everything for more legible coding. I also removed a ton of dead code too, as it was the comment code from before. It was Javascript, which the new Blogger doesn’t allow as I found out yesterday. I do realize though that the navigation on the right becomes centered for individual pages that don’t have comments, but I am working on it. The result of the new banner and new source code is a site that loads quicker and is easier to edit.

With all the features I’ve added over the years (wow, years… in plural!) I hope I’ve made the process of getting up to date about my life and my head easier at least. Dark backgrounds are much easier to read than white ones, and bolded text is easier to read than normal text. The “Latest Posts” links and Archive pages are also there to aid in ease of use. And now, you can access all my content from this single, unified page. From my blog, to my games, to my pictures, it’s all at your fingertips at one, easy to remember domain. This is what I mean by saying inconsistencies are ended.
-Andrew