All Systems Are Go!

Hello again everyone. As some have suspected, I am back (for real this time).

I apologize for the rollercoaster back and forth of saying I was coming back and then disappearing again for some time. While some of it was a need for mental space from the game, it was really due to a large number of other factors.

Overview of My Sabbatical

Without getting into the details of everything, here is a brief update of my life over this last sabbatical:

• new job
• moving to a new state
• tough familial situations
• lots of traveling
• playing League of Legends with my brother
• playing Overwatch and Pokemon Go with co-workers

In the entirety of that, there was always a nagging voice in the back of my mind to play go. And sadly to say, that’s what it was to me: “nagging.” As you can imagine, that hardly served as any motivation for me to start playing again.

Why Returning Failed to Stick

As many of you saw, there were multiple times where I claimed to have come back and only disappear again for weeks (if not months) at a time. It is something that bothered me since I kept wondering why it wouldn’t stick.

While there are other reasons worth mentioning like my mental state toward the game, it turns out the main reason was that WordPress* was giving me problem again and again. Not only did I receive numerous emails about constant attempts to hacking my site, but one time they were actually successful and took down my entire server.

This was around the time that I had really taken a step back from go, so it was pretty painful to suddenly feel like I had lost all my work (along with other projects on my server). So the negative association did not help whatsoever.

In addition, the workflow around blogging in WordPress was starting to make it very difficult for me to not only write consistently; but those past events made me realize just how little control I had over my blog** which I had spent so much time on.

Without getting into technical jargon, it is suffice to say that I have Nate to thank for giving me the nudge I needed to get out of WordPress once and for all.***

* It should be noted that I’m referring to a personal installation of WordPress and not the site or service.

** This was a particularly frustrating point for me since I do front-end development professionally, but could never bring myself to spend a ton of time learning WordPress development for the blog.

Why This Time is Different

For those who have followed me since the beginning, you know that the first version of this blog started on Google’s Blogger platform. The second iteration of it came with WordPress. And now I’m proud to say that the blog has taken another step forward and is now powered by Hexo.

Not only will it be easier for me to manage my blog and provide incremental improvements over time; but I am also now working in the very same text editor and languages that I use all the time in the field. And oh yeah, no more hacking attempts on my blog!

And last but certainly not least, the nagging voice in my head is gone. It’s been replaced by a clear and calm serenity that yearns once again for the click and clack of stones while beautiful patterns emerge on the board.

While there are still some kinks to be worked out on the blog, I have put myself in a solid position that will allow me to work through each and every one. It’s been a lot of work to get to this point and I am proud of the foundation I’ve built.

So without further adieu, welcome to the official launch of BenGoZen v3.0.0. All systems are go!