Evergreenfleet.com is a website dedicated to the history of the Washington State Ferries. It is an ugly site, but that’s made up for the by the depth of the content. It’s run by Steven J. Pickens, who is also the author of Ferries of Puget Sound, the book I’m reading now. So you can think of the book as a companion of the website, or the website as a companion of the book, but either way they’re something you should check out.

Six Years ago, in 2001, Seattle was celebrating its sesquicentennial, its 150th birthday. The Seattle Times printed up a series of articles covering different facets of the city’s 150 years of history. I’m just discovering them now. I’m a little slow.

The first article I found is about the maps of Seattle, and how some of the earliest maps were naval surveys of the coastline. Those then gave way to Bird’s Eye View drawings of the city, and then the more accurate street maps we know today. There is also the story of HistoryLink, an online encyclopedia of Seattle history. That story is really interesting to me, for reasons that I’m going to keep secret just a little while longer (tease, tease)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGoxHpZ1VBY[/youtube]

I never intended to go on haitus. It wasn’t something I planned, it was just something that happened. It started with me going a couple of days between posts, then a couple of weeks. And then it started to snowball. I didn’t have time to post, and when I did I had to think about if what I wanted to post was important enough, because likely it would be staying on the home page for a long time. So weeks turned into months, and now here we are with six posts in the last six months.

So it’s time for something new. First, and most obvious, is the redesign. But the redesign is closely tied with the second thing, which is probably the most important. As of today, I’ve moved this blog from Movable Type to WordPress. I’ve been using MT for years and years, having originally switched over from Blogger a long long time ago. But I’ve been using WordPress for all my new projects, and I’ve grown accustomed to how it works. Enough that coming back to edit this site seemed foreign. So it was time to standardize on WordPress.

So along with the move to WordPress comes a new theme. This was by necessity, since the old theme was a Movable Type template and there was no way to move it over. So that left me two options: either replicate the old design in WordPress, or go for something new. I decided to go with something new. I didn’t throw out all the old, of course. I pulled in the old header, and a few other elements, but overall this design is just a modified version of the Winter Day theme. I like it, but I have a feeling I will be tweaking it here and there as time goes on.

So I’m running on WordPress, and I’ve got a new design. But really, those are the easy parts of bringing this blog back to life. You do those once, and you’re done. More pressing is the fact that I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting here, and I’m going to have to push myself to get back in practice. I have been posting frequently at Around Carson, and the kids’ sites, and a couple of new websites I’m building that will be announced soon. But I’m used to the idea of this site being mothballed, and relaunching it is going to take a mental shift.

But it’s something I want to do. It’s something I need to do. I’ve been posting on this blog for nearly six years, and there have been times where I’ve gone a week or two without posting anything. But a break of four months is definitely not okay. I’m not killing this site, I don’t want it to die. I want it to keep going. And that means doing the work to keep it going. It’s important that I have a general-purpose blog where I can write what I want, link to what I want. So I have to bring this blog out of its coma and start posting again.

That’s what this relaunch is all about. Welcome back!