I'm shutting down this blog.

Yes, you read that right.

When I first started this blog three years ago my goal was to have a place where I can write down all the thoughts that have been important to me and that I wanted to share with the world and preserve in the memory of others.

However, my life has changed since the the first day when I gleefully sat down to write a 3,000 word blog post. Over time I found myself enjoying the act of taking action more than the thought of writing thoughts.

Instead of a blog, I will now be writing monthly emails of my  lessons learned. You can sign up at
http://blog.kortaggio.com

As I grew and matured as a person over the years, the content that I wrote previously is no longer reflective of my current personality, and the opinions that I had years or even months ago are no longer reflective of the opinions I have now. This is why I have decided to move to monthly emails instead, as an email is more ephemeral and present-focused than a blog.

To give new readers a chance to catch up on content they put off reading until later, and to give old readers a chance to relish one more time in the best content of this site, I will keep this blog online until November 30, 2012 at 11:59 PM Eastern.

You can expect the same calibre (well, arguably better calibre) of insightful and thought-provoking content on my monthly email as on this blog--except the difference is that the new content will be more action-driven and (hopefully) more motivating than the content in the old blog.

One thing is for sure: I'm grateful for this experience, as forcing myself to churn out 1,000+ word articles every week did wonders for my writing and communication skills, as well as endowed me with a greatly expanded vocabulary. Sharing ideas with other bloggers has allowed me to connect with writers in the community and make me define my passions. Messing around with the site's layout and design taught me HTML, CSS, and Photoshop. I don't have a regret for committing to this website.

I'm humbled by the 7,500 unique visitors who decided to traverse my blog, and their appetite to collectively view over 20,000 pages of content. These last three years have been a phenomenal learning experience for me and I hope they have been for you as well. I'm open to feedback in the comments. Thank you for sticking with me and being a loyal reader, thank you for contributing your opinions, and thank you for the encouragement and support.

See you all on the other side of the fence. :)

- Kortaggio


Questions answered:

Q: Are you sure?
A: Yes.

Q: Really??
A: Yes.

Q: What will happen to the old content already posted here?
A: The articles will stop existing in cyberspace, as a hard drive on some server somewhere exhales its last hum before erasing the data. But the ideas contained in the articles won't stop existing in the memories of those who chose to read them.

Q: So, are you embarrassed or something?
A: No I'm not embarrassed. I just think there's something aesthetically pleasing about knocking down an old dilapidated house in order to turn it back into the earth from whence it came.

Q: What about all the unpublished articles you still have lined up?
A: Hm, now that I think about it there are still articles worth thousands of words hanging around with the word "Draft" stuck to them. I'll have to figure out what to do with them later, however, rest assured that content that deserves to be shared will be shared.

Guest Post

I was invited as a guest author on Techvibes to write about the Facebook IPO, check it out:

"Facebook Is Down" Now Has A New Meaning

Stock Pitch Timelapse

I was building a presentation last month, and thought I'd record the entire process from start to finish in order to share it with you guys. Watch it in full screen, high definition for the best experience.

Professor Salaries

A friend showed me some public salary data for my alma mater, and I decided to run the usual statistical analyses on it. I think the "Cost of salaries per student" metric speaks the loudest.

Keywords: Average Queen's Professor Salary, Cost of Paying Professors per Student

Psychology of Change

I was playing around with Google Correlate when I found this interesting chart:



Notice that the search queries peak around the end of December and beginning of January of each year, then tail off gradually through the rest of the year. The most obvious explanation for this pattern is to attribute it to the aftermath of setting New Year's resolutions, only to lose focus of the resolution and "fall off the wagon" as the year drags on.

Are our personal dispositions to change so nearsighted that they come around only once per year, when change is popular? If that is the case, then the easiest way to pull ahead of your competition would be to challenge yourself to change, improve, and grow personally every single day.

Happy 2012!

Many of you may have been wondering why I've been posting so infrequently in 2011 compared to 2010--in short, I have been preoccupied with "real life". Rest assured I have had very many life-changing experiences in 2011 and will be converting my reams of notes and thoughts that I've taken on these experiences into published blog posts as time progresses; although, the publishing cycle will be decidedly infrequent compared to what it has been in the past. I have also noticed that my quality of writing tends to improve if I have time to organize and structure my thoughts, and you guys only deserve to read the best stuff.

Why?

Because the most important lesson I've learned in 2011 is:
Acting is better than talking.

Carpe Annum.

Reinvention

"When a caterpillar enters the chrysalis, enzymes dissolve it completely into fluid. Then, the entire body of the butterfly including all its organs and nervous system is rebuilt from scratch using the available cells."

Every day is an opportunity to reinvent yourself.