And Now, The End Is Near...

It's with a tear in my eye that I say, after 10 years of "service", that Lazylaces is now going on extended hiatus. Those of you that know me will know that this is not easy decision, which is why it's "extended hiatus" and not a straight "goodbye", but I no longer have the free time, or energy, to maintain and enjoy Lazylaces like I would like to.

My life has been getting more and more busy (for lots of great, beautiful & fantastic reasons, not just work), and I've been having to squeeze in work on Lazylaces in earlier and earlier, and shorter and shorter, bits of the day, to point where it's now all getting a bit ridiculous. I've barely visited my own website after 7am for over a year now, I have to set an even earlier alarm for the days where I have lots to post, and having time to write more than a sentence per post is a luxury I rarely get. The days where I got time to play & enjoy each and every game, and comment/hint/walkthru with other players, are long gone, and really without that it's very difficult for me to find a reason to continue.

At some point I'm likely to start completely winding down the site, but I don't have an exact schedule, or indeed any idea of how/what/when this will be yet. For now, at least for a while, the site, and it's archive, will be staying online 'as is', and I would think that "something" is likely to continue being here in perpetuity, even if it's just a holding page. I'll also be keeping the Facebook page open, and maybe I'll even occasionally update it (and the twitter feed too, but I never did get to like twitter, so don't expect too much from that).

Thank you for visiting, playing, and taking part at Lazylaces over the years. I hope y'all find somewhere else nice to waste your time :) Feel free to look me up online if you want to keep in touch, and remember to check the wastepaper basket for clues.

Graeme :o)

Entry 5738, Friday, November 16th 2012, Filed In Diary
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Back Soon

Apologies for the unscheduled break, I should be back tomorrow for more fun & games :)

Entry 5485, Wednesday, March 7th 2012, Filed In Diary
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Site Updates: New Pages For Links & Hosted Games

I've been working on a couple of site updates for Lazylaces recently which have just gone live:

New Pages For Links: Over the years I've lost count of the number of people that have asked me to change the links in posts so that they open in a new page/tab rather than replacing the lazylaces page they are on in the the current page/tab. I always kind of liked it the way it was, but enough people have asked me now that I've bowed to the pressure and made the change, and now I must admit I kind of like it too.
Hosted Games: I'm trying out a new thing with hosted games. I'm just trying it out with Little Samurai (from a while back) for now, but you should see at least a few more of these in the future.

That is all. Cheers,

G :o)

UPDATE: One more thing I forgot to mention: The whole "New Pages For Links" thing is retroactively applied to all the existing posts, it's not just for new stuff.

Entry 5020, Thursday, September 1st 2011, Filed In Diary
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Site Updates: Paging, Searches, Vaults & More

I've been developing a few site updates over the last few weeks, and this morning I've finally put them live on the site. In no particular order they are:

Paging: For those of you who manage to scroll to the bottom of the page on a regular basis, your friend the "older" link, used to go back through the pages of content, is now joined by a "newer" link (where/when appropriate) to allow you then then go back forward through the pages. A few people who like to go over the older posts had asked for this one, and despite it's apparent simplicity, believe me, it was a real nasty one to implement. Enjoy, and let me know if you find any bugs or snags.
Searches: Search results for the site search (see top right of every page) have been updated to give a count of the results, and an index of dated pages containing the results for you to chose from (that can then be paged through - see above). Hopefully this will make finding what you are looking for easier, and make older items more accessible (you don't have page back through a 100 pages now). Also at the bottom of every search results page the "older" and "newer" paging links are joined by an "All Search Results" link to take you back to your index of search results.
Vaults: The Lazy Vaults, a repository of everything on the site, also linked at the bottom of every page, have also been restyled as an index of dated pages (like search results), again hopefully helpful for finding older stuff and navigating around posts generally. Also you can now browse the vaults by category, eg just the games.
More: I've fixed the lazytweeting widget that appears on every post so it no longer has problems with punctuation and special characters. I have also ported the RSS feed over to Feedburner/Google. Anyone currently subscribed should be automatically redirected and you should not need to change your subscription (but if it does all go wrong, just pick up the new address).

Cheers all, more games soon of course.

G :o)

Entry 4833, Tuesday, June 28th 2011, Filed In Diary
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Technical Issues Resolved

UPDATE: Lazylaces has had a bunch of intermittent loading problems (slow to load, or won't load), and/or error message issues recently (especially earlier today), but hopefully they have all been fixed now. It turns out I was chasing thin air looking for the source of the problem in my coding, it was actually the fault of the server the database was running on. This has now been replaced by my web hosts, so all should be well again, and from what I can see the site is feeling particularly nippy now, with the pages, dare I say it, loading faster than they ever have (although possibly I am exaggerating slightly there, they are going pretty quick though).

Entry 4583, Monday, April 4th 2011, Filed In Diary
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Site Update: Comments Layout

SITE UPDATE: I tweaked the layout on the comments today to make them slightly easier to follow, which is nice I'm sure you'll agree. Check out the Hot Gossip page (or the comments for any post) to see them in action. I'm also considering reversing them so that the newest comments will be at the top of the page, and the older comments will languish down at the base of the page. I think that'll be cool, but I haven't decided for sure yet. One thing is for sure though, it'll be a bunch more work for me, so maybe that'll have to wait a while.

And if you are wondering how to get your own avatar for comments, pop on over to Gravatar and register for your globally recognized avatar (or just use your email address when you comment and get assigned a random-ish one).

Cheers All

G:o)

Entry 4506, Monday, March 14th 2011, Filed In Diary
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Lazy Facebook

Finally you can fulfill your lifelong dream of clicking a little "thumbs up" icon to say you "like" Lazylaces on the fantabulous, all singing, all dancing, brand new, revolutionary Lazylaces Facebook Page! And you thought this would be an uneventful Wednesday evening? Where else can you get exactly the same content as lazylaces, albeit very cut down, and in blue & white, with a "like" button? Ain't technology marvelous? Socialize that network people! Next thing you know there'll be a Lazylaces Twitter Thing that I never update because as far as I can tell twitter is the most useless thing ever.... although referring to LazyTweets might be somewhat satisfying.

Entry 4447, Wednesday, February 23rd 2011, Filed In Diary
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Please Do Not Adjust Your Set!

Please do not readjust your set! Normal programming will resume shortly. And in the meantime ~~please prepare for all out global thermonuclear war~~ we bring you another musical interlude...

UPDATE: *phew* Comments are working again now :)

Entry 4417, Sunday, February 13th 2011, Filed In Diary
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Mountain Time

Ok, so just to clear things up, for me as much as anyone else, it looks like Lazylaces is living on server in Pheonix now, after the work I did the other day, which is why the comments now seemed to be timed in Mountain Time, rather than Eastern Time, and why you should use a minimum of SPF15 when adding comments...

Entry 4388, Thursday, July 29th 2010, Filed In Diary
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And We're Back....

...a little bit earlier than expected (but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for some games posts as we need to step away from the computer right now).

So why have we been away? Well, it's a dull story, even if you're into web development, but the long and the short of it is that we've been away changing all sorts of bit and pieces at the back end of Lazylaces to take advantage of some cheaper web hosting options. Suddenly (after an email reminder) we were one week away from web hosting renewal (it's been a couple of years), and we were facing a $400+ bill for the coming year, and Lazylaces doesn't make a cent to pay for it. So anyway, a few hours worth of recoding later (all around the day job etc), and we're now all renewed for another couple of years, all for about half the price. *Result*. Anyway, as I say, we hope to be back properly tomorrow, and apologies for the unexpected break in service...

Oh and hopefully everything still works (and there's even a new "blasts from the past" feature in the right-hand column to give you a view on what was being posted on the site 5 years ago), and maybe the site will even run a bit faster than before, but please drop me an email (address link in the bottom right of every page) if you do find something that's broken.

Cheers

G:o)

Entry 4381, Tuesday, July 27th 2010, Filed In Diary
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Way Out West

Apologies for the brief unannounced interlude, but after a quick trip out to Arizona, taking in Phoenix, The Grand Canyon, and Sedona, we're now back with more games, and no more cacti.

Entry 4117, Wednesday, January 13th 2010, Filed In Diary
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Christmas Break

Happy holidays everyone. We're hitting the road for a couple of days to see family and friends, and then we're doing it all again as hosts, so all in all Lazylaces will be taking a break until at least Sunday or Monday. If you are doing the same - enjoy, if you're not, or if you don't already have more than enough to do, and you're pining for more games, try finding some yuletide repeats using the Lazylaces Random Game Selecta, or try perusing one of the other fine sites listed under 'more games' to the right of your screen.

G :)