Big exciting changes

Well folks, the time for expansion has come. I am hard at work on a new location for TLGS, complete with my own server space and dedicated domain name.With luck, it should be ready to go in a somewhat rough form within the next couple of days and then of course will have to undergo the usual process of refinement for a while. I’m having some difficulty figuring out some of the coding bits, as I haven’t had to do any web coding whatsoever in years since WordPress.com does it all for you. Big big thanks to my ol’ buddy Alexia P. Bell for her innumerable gifts and assists in this process.

I will post here when the new site is ready to roll and of course will keep the content here long enough to give everyone time to update bookmarks and feeds.

The new site is going to be strictly chinese medicine, so there will soon be a new site for the martial content (haven’t forgotten you guys, honest!) which I will announce here. I’ll take my time in closing down this site of course so no one gets left behind.

So why the changes?

Well, there’s a couple points to it.

#1 It will allow me to run ads and accept donations. Ok look, I’m a student still. I am really REALLY broke all of the time and don’t have the option of a ‘real job.’ I came to the realization this week that I really needed to find some way of generating income when the following events happened: my truck broke down and I couldn’t come up with the money to tow it. Nor could I come up with enough money for bus fare + parts + tools at Autozone. Nor could I consistently come up with enough money for bus fare for two weeks until financial aid comes in. Then I attempted to enter an online Poker tournament with some friends from the UK that I was supposed to be playing in and couldn’t because the minimum deposit amount for the site was $10. Then I tried to register a domain for $6 and realized I couldn’t because I only had $4.98 in my bank account. All this plus the inimitable Yaro Starak convinced me that maybe I needed to consider monetization of my blog, since I was looking at at least another year of this exact same situation (and maybe worse since next semester, of my $3800 in financial aid after tuition, $2500 has to go straight to NCCAOM for board exam fees and licensing. Way to put the screws to the poor, guys.) Anyway, you get the idea.

#2 Significantly improved content options This is the part that really concerns you guys. I want to start expanding the content significantly with things like newsletters, podcasts, downloadable PDFs, etc. I plan to start including a lot more explanatory and how-to information on things like Shang Han Lun herbology, COM theory and techniques (COM=Contemporary Oriental Medicine, aka the work of Dr. John H. F. Shen and Dr. Leon Hammer) and especially material to help the student and new practitioner get to grips with the real root of our medicine in a useful way. I also want to be able to have any number of documents permanently available for the layman who is looking for something other than Western Medicine to answer their health difficulties. Dedicated domain takes care of all of this.

Now, I have no plans to get my ugly mug in front of a camera any time soon so fear not. However, I am starting to work on podcast ideas that will be less conversational than your average podcast and more of an editorial essay series and see how that goes (look out Edward R. Murrow!)

So thank you for your continued readership, the new digs will be all decorated and working properly before you know it.