Wow, today has gone really fast, but so much has happened. I’ll start with the old and work my way to the new. Five years ago today Halo was released, one of my all time favourite games and to celebrate Bungie has released a tonne of details about the new version. However looking at the new screenshots I can’t help but feel Halo 2 all over again. Anyway, on to bigger and better things.

AudioTracker. My personal music tracking system (much in the same vein as Last.fm), turns one today. The first song I recorded was Breakfast in America by Supertramp almost exactly 365 days ago. And in that time I’ve listened to 12,095 tracks, by 161 different artists. As I would expect my favourite tracks are still at the top of my charts; Hurt, Shadow On The Sun, etc all with over a hundred plays (doesn’t seem that much to be truly honest). However the database is under strain, performing a group query on 12,000 records doesn’t go down too well with results taking upwards of 1.5 seconds (compared to say 0.01 to just get the latest tracks). Mainly down to my bad table design (I was young and inexperienced when I made it) this section is in serious need of a breath of fresh air. Which will come, in due time.

Now for the new stuff. The announcements you have (or more likely haven’t) been waiting for. A new version of HybridLogic is in the works, the designs are finalised and I’m just slicing and dicing them at the moment. Eventually the entire site will be run by Symphony, for which I’ve grown an amazing liking. Whooping the ass of WordPress, Movable Type and even my own homebrew CMS, Symphony can do everything I ever need it to do.

Speaking of websites, SnakeDust, a political blog by me and three friends is really taking off. We’ve had pictures snapped by the local newspaper and the visits are really racking up now, pretty damn surprising in just the two months we’ve been up and running.

And that’s basically it for now, HLv3 should be out by Christmas, expect a tutorial on using Symphony and don’t forget to pop on over to SnakeDust and leave your own thoughts.