i've decided to change my weblog provider. the blog is now hosted by Blogger, a Google subsidiary, instead of here at livejournal. Blogger has a bit more of a 'serious' reputation than LJ (it doesn't keep asking about how i'm feeling, like an insecure teenage girl in the middle of a relationship crisis, for instance!) the customisation options also seem a lot better, and it has full API access via an Atom XML-RPC / HTTP interface.

one thing that was a bit annoying was porting my old posts across. i ended up exporting from LJ as an Atom feed and then manually importing each post by editing the HTTPS requests to the API in Blogger. i tried writing a short bit of Java to accomplish this, but kept getting 500 server errors? the export/import process also lost all the comments from LJ, but there aren't that many.

another thing that interests me is the AdWords integration, which i'd like to play with (i have some clients that require the same service) and the ability to get listed on search engines and blog listings sites automatically, to attract more readers. the templates for page design are also much more flexible - the CSS / HTML is fully editable so i'm going to be adjusting the layout for a while, and see what looks best.

and now... please update your bookmarks (to http://grkvlt.blogspot.com/) for more of the same tasty chunks of random goodness:

C O N S O N A N T S