Lately I’ve been reconsidering what direction the blog has been heading in. Although it’s been great starting a new series and having content flow consistently, lately the blog has felt more like a newspaper or e-magazine of sorts instead of a personal journal. For example, the game reviews that are being published are now usually like a month behind where I am now, which can be confusing for you as a reader and also throws my blog into a weird clashing timeline.

As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can do to fix that, and I’ve come up with the following items in order to better optimize my time and produce content that better fits my vision for the blog:

Starting next week…

1. Thursday Go Tygem will now be discontinued in order to pave way for #2 and #3.
2. Monday Go Meditation is going to undergo a reboot with an updated format that takes some elements of Thursday Go Tygem and should improve the overall quality and value of the weekly column. In addition, I will be clearing out the queue in Monday Go Meditation in order to make way for current games and realign the blog with the games I’m currently playing as opposed to games I played weeks or even months ago.
3. There will be a new post every weekday (i.e. Mon-Fri). This might seem extreme and be a point of concern for some, but I’ve reached a new level of comfort with my blogging that should make this very viable. I’m hoping that this should help the blog start to return to its origins of being a chronicle of my journey (in real-time).

In addition, you’ll start noticing little changes around the blog like new tagging or categories appear as I restructure the content in order to make it more user friendly, but those shouldn’t impact your reading experience on the blog much.

Starting in July…

1. I’m going to update the format and change the schedule of Friday Go Forward - Although some don’t realize it, Friday Go Forward currently captures my progress from the last Friday afternoon/evening to the next Thursday evening since it gets published every Friday morning. In order to better capture my weekly progress, I will be changing it to Saturday so it fully captures that week. In addition, everyone’s feedback was really helpful on figuring out next steps, so be on the lookout in the future for an improved format!

Whew. Been meaning to unload that from my brain for some time. I’m hoping that you’ll like these new changes; but as always, please be sure to leave feedback in case I’m missing something or you see something I can do to improve what you’re seeing here on the blog. See you around!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

As I promised last week, today is the grand opening of the new redesign for BenGoZen! It’s time to change your bookmarks, because BenGoZen now has its own domain name and is hosted on a completely new platform!

www.bengozen.com

For those who haven’t visited in a while, here are some of the new features that will be accessible to you on the new design!

• Easy Email & RSS Subscription!
• Embedded Eidogo Kifu so you can view the game right in the post!
• Updated content layout for easier reading experience and better searching!
• Translator tool in case you want to read my blog in another language!
• Easy contact form so you can send me emails at any time!

And in case there is any confusion, there will no longer be any updates here on the Blogger platform. All comments have also been disabled to prevent any confusion as well, so make sure to come on over to the new site! I assure you that it is worth it.

With that in mind, hope to see you over at the new site!

Also, for those of us that are being bombarded by Hurricane Sandy, I hope you are doing alright and have the good fortune of having electricity and internet so that you can be reading this. Take care!

As much as I hate to do this, BenGoZen will be on hiatus for the rest of the month to prepare for a brand new blog redesign. I am currently working really hard to not only implement a brand new look and feel for the blog, but I’m also completely revising and improving the information architecture and content quality to make the entire experience more enjoyable and worthy of your time!

To get you excited for some of the new changes coming in a week, here are some things you can expect to see!

1. Subscribe via email and RSS with ease!
2. Eidogo Player back in full functionality so that you no longer have to leave the blog to see my games!
3. Easy translator widget that will allow you to view my content in many languages! (Although I won’t be able to verify fully the accuracy of the translation, the content will now be available to more people!)
4. New integrated comment system that will allow you to login from various social media avenues.

Looking forward to seeing you on the grand opening - Halloween, October 31st, 2012!

It’s been five days since I last played a game of go, but it has felt like an eternity. Haha. I found myself logging onto KGS multiple times a day to look at game records of my friends or watch other games just to prevent myself from getting entangled in a game. It doesn’t quite measure up to playing, but it helped to satisfy the urge to just play. I’m looking forward to my game with Nate tomorrow, but I’ll probably be avoiding ranked games for a little.

Read More

For those who are new or still following, a lot of my reviews and links are currently outdated at the moment. In other words, some products that I reviewed are no longer for sale, some stores are no longer selling go equipment, all my old kifu’s are broken, etc.

Fear not however! I will be working hard these next couple weeks to completely redesign the blog for your reading enjoyment and so that this blog will continue to be a great source of reference for you or anyone you know looking to play go.

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment below so I can consider it in the redesign!

So in lieu of trying to gain more credibility as a Go expert and blogger, I’ll be trying to implement the following goals for increasing blogging content:

1. 5 posts a week concerning my personal progress as a player.
2. 2 Go book reviews per month.
3. 1 Go equipment review per week.
4. 1 Go Guide per week.
5. 1 Weekly and Monthly Overview on my progress as well.

Let’s see how this goes for the month of October.