Apologies for the site downtime yesterday – it appears the server was having a major panic attack but hopefully things are stable for now. We’ll be moving to a new server in the near future which should hopefully improve matters.

On a related note I’ve been thinking about making a few changes to Randomwire to make old content more accessible and better highlight interesting things to new visitors. To this end I’ve been customizing a new design (based on the Traction theme) which gives the main categories their own menu right at the top and has a section above the most recent posts to feature interesting / popular ones. It’s still a work in progress but here’s how it looks so far:

Before making anything permanent I’d like to get your feedback so if you’d be so kind as to make your voice heard on the poll below I’d hugely appreciate it. If you have any other suggestions feel free to leave a comment below (in particular I’m not sure about the dark background).


While we’re on the subject of change I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane at how randomwire.com has evolved over the years:

I started blogging in late 2003 while I was at university (and had much more free time!) – at this stage the concept of a personal blog was fairly new and the software available was limited. I coded the entirety of the first version myself and it was a very basic affair (all using tables and no CSS). At this time I was obsessed with Linux so most of the content was about compiling OS kernels and other mindlessly complex stuff like that.

New Site

Later in 2004 I discovered a nifty open-source blogging platform called WordPress. It was then in its infancy but I soon saw the potential and migrated my site over to it with a much more beautiful theme called Kubrik (amazingly still the default theme for WordPress blogs today). It was at this time I also become interested in Asian film and started learning Japanese at university. At lot of my posts back then were film reviews and various links I’d found.

Over the next few years I constantly tweaked the design, moving over to the K2 theme. During this time I graduated from university, got a job in London (2005), and eventually had the chance to work on a project in Beijing (2007) which was hugely exciting. I also visited South Korea a few times which was equally fascinating. All of this gave me some great original content for the blog and the hits slowly began to build.

In late 2008 I made the decision to relocate to China and so began a new chapter in my life which has so far provided ample inspiration for my writing and hopefully a lot more to come. In early 2009 I changed to the Vigilance theme with some fairly heavy customisation which is what you see today. I still like this design but feel I could do a better job of exposing older content.

Watch this space ;)

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