Savage///Circuits is coming back!

Well, I’m going to start off by not setting any expectations. I did that in the past and people were disappointed when I couldn’t keep project or other deadlines. Feelings were hurt and I lost support and members. Not doing that anymore. I have enough pressure on my plate now, I don’t want something that is supposed to be fun, to be stressful. That said, I have had some feedback wondering if / when I would ever come back. I do miss building projects and I have enough resources to get started again. So, here we go…

For a while it didn’t seem possible. There was a 2-year span of time in which I lost EVERYTHING! I lost my wife, then my career, then my home and finally the tools and resources I had for doing this kind of stuff, including my domain, which pretty much destroyed my ability to keep my brand. In the last 2 years I have been trying to recover from those losses. It cost me almost $400, but I finally got my domain back. Once I did, I tried to restore my site only to have my host (Bluehost) disable my sites, claiming they were infected and essentially holding them hostage, much like the domain squatter that snagged my domain while I was travelling and cut off from the internet. So I got a new host (Skystra), who migrated my website for free and removed the malware from my site that Bluehost wanted $30/month to keep clean.

Here’s what you can expect…first I am restoring my website, but I am mostly starting from scratch since much of the data from the old site was corrupted and/or lost (Thanks, Bluehost). Things are going slowly. I have had a few people look at the site and offer suggestions and/or corrections, and that’s fine. But, if you suggest something and I don’t take your suggestion, it’s not personal. I don’t want this site to take a lot of energy / time, so I am keeping things simple this time. I’m using WordPress for that very reason. No more forums or complex sites.

Once I have restored my old content, I will slowly start adding new content. Be warned, I lost ALL my reviews and tutorials. I also lost ALL my YouTube videos. I was only able to restore the first 10 episodes of Savage///Circuits TV and these are extremely low resolution backups from my Podcast folder in iTunes. So horrible quality, to say the least. Episodes 11 and 12 are lost forever. When I start doing videos again, I will reboot Savage///Circuits TV. New format, new look, etc. I’m still trying to redefine Short Circuits, which on the old site was tech humor videos. I’m not doing tech humor anymore. It’s time consuming with no real value.

One thing I am planning on is revisiting my roots. I cut my teeth on the 6502 CPU using the Commodore VIC-20 and I plan on building a 6502-based retro computer to play around with. After the 6502 I got into the Z80 which is still today my favorite platform. I plan on building a Z80-based retro computer as well. Some of my old projects are getting an update / face-lift. The projects menu has been updated to include all the categories I plan to cover on this site. It doesn’t mean I won’t ever add more, but this is what I project I will stick with. I did add a new category for PLC Projects, which is an area I never really explored on my website, but am currently spending more time with in my current job.

I want to encourage comments on the projects. I also want to encourage feedback and suggestions. I will respond to feedback and suggestions here in the blog and some of that may turn into tutorials or reviews, depending on content. Again, if you supply feedback, suggestions or comments and they don’t appear, it doesn’t mean anything other than a lack of time. It may appear later or never. I will do the best I can. Most of you will remember how helpful I was on my website before when I had the forums. I was also helpful on the Parallax forums until my original account was locked out and posts on my savagecircuits account were getting sunk as soon as I’d post them. I will try to be helpful again and will always be looking for new ideas, especially for projects. Back to restoring content…