Got this email from Dolly as I was working on the new “I’m outta here” splash page:

love your site – just happened upon it randomly this morning
thanks for posting music…

Simple. Nice. Complimentary. Strangely, it’s the first time I’ve received an email like that. And it came at the most perfectest time. Just as I was shutting things down.

It’s not for a lack of blogging love that I’m doing this. No, no, indeed, I love the whole blogging process. I love the act of designing blogs, I love the publishing, I love sharing the tunes, I love processing the pics, I love all of that.

But I love the fiction-writing more. I’m good at it. And at the end of the day, when I’ve done my work, I’ve got something that feels good and heavy in my hands.

A blog demands attention like a bully, like a class clown, like a co-dependant partner. And attention equals time. And I’d rather spend that time working on the two-dozen writing projects I’ve got stored up. They want attention, too. And when I think about what would make me happier, what I’d enjoy doing more, it’s the writing that wins. Hands down.

I’ve certainly done the hiatus thing before. But I’d always point out that a return was imminent. This time, no such promise. I may still blog, but anonymously, and far away from here. And there are always the other sites.

I’ll leave this stuff up. I happen to like the blog, and too many peple visit the Thomas Newman stuff to let it all go away. And the email will remain, so you can always write me. Say hello.

But to quote Dennis Miller, “That’s the news and I am outta here.”

For fun, courtesy of the (finicky) Internet Archives:

Sixsquare 2002 – The site’s earliest incarnation, when I knew more about the migratory patterns of the black-faced spoonbill than I did about HTML.

Sixsquare 2004 – The blog looked like a screenplay back then. Cool design. The Wayback Machine may not be able to pull off a full reconstruction, alas.

Sixsquare 2005 – When I was blogging about HOLLYWOODLAND.

Over a year ago I wrote this:

Did you notice? I haven’t posted anything in a couple weeks. That’s because this blog is going on a temporary hiatus. Very temporary. I’ll certainly be back. And when I return, I’ll be blogging with more focus. As much as I enjoy blogging about whatever strikes my fancy, I decided that this thing is in serious need of some fine tuning. I’m going to narrow things down.

Well, I did. Sort of. But the word “temporary” was apparently grabbed off the street, hustled into that blog post and forced, at gun point, to stand in for the words “absurdly long.” I’ve been blogging in earnest since about November, and I even attempted a vague remodel of the site. But that remodel really only consisted of buying a couple throw pillows and arranging them over the old site. I was never happy with it. The red letters emblazoned across the top reading, “Under Construction,” became simply part of the decor. I wanted something more complex, more functional, more representative of me. I am, after all, rather complex and functional and, if this blog is to believed, well-represented by torn bits of paper.

So here it is. I hope it pleases the eye. There are a few features and issues you might need to know about. If you’re interested, read on after the jump.

Music Player change. I’m ditching PodPress. I liked the little embeddable players, but there was a lot of under-the-hood messiness that drove me a little crazy. I’m trying out the Yahoo music player instead. It’s easy to use. Click the little play button beside the song title in question and away you go. And when that song is done, it automatically moves on to the next track in the queue, which the player generates from all the mp3′s present on the page. Very nice. You can see the little tab down low on the left. Go ahead and hover. And press PLAY. I’ll miss the random access capabilities of the PodPress player, and that you could pop it out of the site to play a sing was a great bonus. But I love the playlist feature and the volume control of the Yahoo player. It’s also much easier to post a tune.

Twitter Feed. Sixsquare now has its own feed over at Twitter. Post titles are automatically sent out as updates, with a link back to the post in question. And I’ll be augmenting the feed with extra music and movie stuff and the occasional witty movie quote. Follow the feed here. And if you care to, hop on to my personal feed as well. I’ll prettify the Sixsquare Feed later. For now, enjoy the color light blue.

Music Downloads. The PodPress machinery made it possible to prevent downloads of the audio files. That was helpful in keeping bandwidth down. The new system allows direct download of the mp3 file in question, so I’ll have to keep an eye on the little red meter over at Dreamhost. But I’ve set up some pretty strict anti-hotlinking barricades, so if I can keep those leeches at bay, I should be fine. Incidentally, same goes for all the MySpace image thieves…

Works. On the right is the jump station for the screenplays. Go ahead and click away, but there’s nothing really there now. Eventually I’ll restore the access to the stuff I’ve written.

Category Icons. Above each of the posts is a little icon. Sometimes a few. Those will link you back to the category pages for each of the items.

Site Headers. There are forty of them now. Eventually there will be a hundred. All of the images were either taken by or taken of me. Refresh for an all-new image. What fun!

More on the way… I have plans to include informative pages about music and writing and general site information in the future. Right now there’s just a picture of me in the sidebar. Wearing a hat.

Known Issues.

1. I hate IE. With a passion. If Internet Explorer were quietly removed from every computer on earth I wouldn’t even notice. But I’ve managed to pull IE into shape on all parts of the site except the recent music posts column in the sidebar. For IE users the rollovers are pretty screwy. I’m working on it.
2. Also, for some reason, images on the page pull blanks on search results pages. Sometimes. I’ll have to work on that as well.
3. The Archives and the Category Lists are in the footer. I’m trying it out there, but I don’t think I’m going to love it. More than likely, they’ll be pushed to their own page.
4. Thanks to some .htaccess trickery the permalinks have changed yet again. They’re cleaner and more beautiful than ever, and in fact, the server is configured to automatically correct incoming links to older permalinks. But the really old links are all screwed up. Through the same process I should be able to do the same thing with those. Lotsa broken links for now. They’ll go away.
5. Most older mp3s are gone. I could recreate the stores of music, but the process would be nothing short of painstaking. I’ll probably leave them alone.
6. Finally, there are a hundred other little bits of style that need to be smoothed, grooved and improved. But the worst of the work is done.

That’s enough. I’m going to bed. I’ll post something real tomorrow.