sri-bhagavan uvaca
kalo ’smi loka-kshaya-krit pravriddho
lokan samahartum iha pravrittah
rite ‘pi tvam na bhavishyanti sarve
ye ‘vasthitah pratyanikeshu yodha
                                  — Bhagavad-Gita Chapter 11, Verse 32

I am become new.¹

As you probably noticed, this site has been redesigned, rejuvenated and generally spiffed up by the great people at AlienMelon. It’s a testament to their incredible skillz that they did such a beautiful job despite all my stupid suggestions. You see, it’s one thing to craft a nice webpage. But it’s quite another to do so when you have a heavy anchor like me on your brain, constantly trying to pull you down into the Hades of terrible ideas.

Michael: "I kind of like this website. Could we do something like this, except with everything written in Wingdings?"
AlienMelon: "Hmm. Great idea. Let’s think about it."

Whereupon, of course, they put my e-mail in the trash and clicked on "empty trash." In retrospect, thank God… although, on second thought, perhaps there’s still room for an embedded midi file or two — maybe taken from here. That’d be pretty nifty. (Note to self: Ask AlienMelon goons about the possibility of inserting some classic Slovenian polka music up in this.)

I first encountered the AlienMeloners (who are based in Kranj, the heart of historic Carniola) about a year ago. To be specific: on the night before Slovenia joined the European Union. I’ve been a fan since then. To take a look at some of their stuff visit: AlienMelon (the mothership) Blue Suburbia (Nathalie’s flashterpiece) and their recent work for the Jazz Kamp Kranj.

In short, I was very happy and grateful to have them lead the renovation works.

I never had any serious problems with my old host, Typepad. However, I was running a constant and massive bandwidth deficit over there. (According to their latest measurement, I was 1166% over my monthly bandwidth allotment.) They were very kind about not enforcing this, or penalizing me, but I realized that eventually something had to change. When the goons pointed out a new host that had cheaper rates and more space, the decision was made. Nevertheless, you will see that many of the revisions here were made to keep bandwidth down.

That being said, not everything is completely finished. I still have some things to do, and I still have to get comfortable using Moveable Type. In the meantime, please excuse any oddness. I wanted to put a bunch of animated under construction pictures all over the place, so that people would know that there are still things to do, but for some reason the guys at AlienMelon never answered my e-mail about that. Oh well.

(Many heartfelt thanks to Nathalie and Daniel, and everyone at AlienMelon!)