Playing Catch-Up
By Shane

Hello, World!

Okay, okay, trite and stupid (and probably gathering a smirk from the programmers amongst us), but it felt like I should begin that way since it seems like it's been forever since we've sat down and had a chat together. We'll have a good one later, but right now it's time to play a quick game of catch-up and let you know about things that have changed around here since we last got together.

First, let me introduce a new member of the Visions staff, Guy Isabel. Guy is an extremely talented man in many ways, from magic to science and most everything in between. You won't see much of Guy on the website other than an article here or there which will show up in Other Visions. However, behind the scenes he will be busy working with me on editing this little ezine you have before you right now. As everyone's schedules get busier and more hectic, Guy has been challenged with the gauntlet and has risen to be the official Slack-Picker-Upper. Well, that doesn't sound too laudable, so let's keep things at least a little professional around here and refer to him as the assistant editor.

Now, before the damned internet rumor engine gets started, no, I'm not leaving Visions. Nobody at Visions had some big falling out and showed their hind quarters or let the door hit 'em where the good Lord split 'em. We're still the weird and loving group we've always been. The simple fact is that sometimes we all get too busy to keep our eyes on all the balls in the air at once. So rather than drop the ball we have more eyes. In Guy's case, they also come with a marvelous mind and attention to detail that make him invaluable to us as an ezine and myself as a friend. Welcome aboard, Guy!

Second, if you'll glance over at the left side of this page, you'll see a little red picture and the words "Online-Visions RSS Feed". There are about two hundred of you that are saying "It's about damn time!" while the rest of you are wondering what it is all about. Quickly, it's a way of being notified when Visions is updated other than an email appearing in your email box. There's a million resources out there for how to make use of this new feature of ours, but the short and sweet is that you'll need a "feed reader" like, oh I don't know, Feed Reader or the like. If you have a "My Yahoo" account, you can also use it there. Nope, no details -- as I said, there are lots of resources to learn about this thing called RSS -- but just know it's easy and very, very slick.

Does that mean the newsletter is going away? Nope. Not even. That will still be sent out whenever we do an update. At this time, email newsletters are still a very standard, very self-contained way of letting you know when we have new content on the site. The RSS feed is simply there for folks that want to make use of that technology.

Does this mean we're going to a more dynamic content delivery? Yes. Absolutely. There are times when things need to be available to you outside of showing up every month or so on some flimsy publication schedule. While most of the content -- challenges, columns, and the like -- will still be available as you've come to know it on a (usually) monthly basis, other items of interest will be available more frequently. Because RSS is not as intrusive as, say, sending email notices, these items will appear instantly on the RSS feed but will, of course, still be available on the website with each update.

It should also be considered a test-run. No, not the technology; me using the technology. So if every once in a while (a euphemism for "mistakes are going to be made because we're human") a problem rears its ugly head, let me know about it! And if you know of ways of improving the RSS thingy, let me know about that, too. Our goal with this is to help make things easier for you; help us do that and we all come out ahead.

Before I leave this one, a huge round of personal thanks to our own Andi Gladwin for helping me out with this whole RSS/XML thing. After I kept getting asked about it for the last three months or so, I decided to bite the bullet and do it. I promptly then got lost in a see of channels and feeds and aggregators and scrapers and... you get the idea. Andi came to the rescue, cutting through all the noise and sending me a solid signal with what I needed to know. Andi, you're the best.

Lastly, over the course of the next few months, you're going to see a few things here and there which have very little effect on the ezine other than to make me sleep better at night. No big announcement here -- this is a website and websites always change -- but just a word that things will be added to Visions from time to time that just aren't worthy of mention except for right here right now. So when you see stuff suddenly get added to Visions with little or no fanfare, well, think about this little paragraph and consider that all the fanfare those little additions are going to get.

So, there you have it. We're now all caught up. And it was reasonably painless, wasn't it? Next month, we'll get back to magic; for now, you know what's going on in our little corner of net.

Except there's one thing you don't know, but you should.

You're important to us. Very, very important to us. Others have said it and gave you lip service about your importance, but just like magicians are useless without an audience, we're useless without you. Your feedback keeps us on track and let's us talk about what you want to hear about and your support of Visions and its sponsors is the life-blood that keeps everything going strong.

So the one thing you should know is how important you are and, because you're just that important, we'll do everything we can to live up to the promise I made five years ago when Visions started: we'll do everything we can to help you become better in the art of magic, from sound practical business advice to getting you to think outside the box (whatever your particular box is). It's the least we can do for you and for the art we all share.

And I won't even ask you to let us know how we can better do that. If there's anything I learned after five years of Visions, it's that you're vocal and thoughtful and you'll let us know what we can do better and how we can help you more. That's the greatest thing about you and the thing that makes you more important than you know.

Okay, let's see... I told you about the RSS thingy, I introduced you to Guy, I dropped hints about changes which are coming down the pike... I've told you how much you mean to us here. That's it. My job for this month is done.

Next month we'll look at the proper musculature required for the inverted muscle pass coming out of a spider vanish of a oblate spheroid consisting of Silly Putty... or not.

Shane