Beagle 2.0
Welcome to the second iteration of TheRegalBeagle.com. I would like to offer a heart felt thanks to all who visited and contributed to the first version of the site, for without your posing for a picture, your trip to Nash for Polaroid Survivor, or your comments on the Forum, the first version of TheRegalBeagle.com would have existed in even lesser form than it did.
In Beagle 2.0, I have refined the purpose of the site, scaled back its scope, and allowed for self publishing. The brief successes of The OBLOG, Dr. Phil’s Health & Hygiene, and Subjacency are a testament to creativity and humor of members of this group, and I hope that their demise will not deter any of you from starting your own site. If you are interested in starting a blog, PLEASE contact me. I will gladly provide you with hosting and the software needed to start such a venture.
This Beagle will serve as a source of general announcements (parties, graduations, fund-raisers, babies) for our community, and as a launching pad to other sites and blogs that may be of interest to you.
In the past, due to my cludgy code and my desire to control all aspects of the site, all content had to go through me, which probably didn’t foster a feeling of ownership for anyone other than me. Going forward, I will maintain this home page, the events calendar, and the Catalogue. The rest of the content (if there is any) will come from writers, contributors, photographers, and bloggers such as yourself.
Aside from the Catalogue and the Forum (which will be hosted here) you will find all the old Beagle content at classic.theregalbeagle.com. I’m not sure that anyone other than me will ever look at it, but I guarantee there are a few good laughs to be had throughout those pages.
Some interesting new additions you will find in Beagle 2.0 are:
The Beagle Wiki. Despite the memory of historian Matt Kund, there are just too many stories, too many inside jokes, too many memes, of which to keep track. As I have said, this group is a rich tapestry, and it would have been a lot less intimidating entering this group with a tool such as this. Just think of the time that would have been wasted if we had had access to something like this immediately out of college. Regardless, there is not much content there now, but please feel free to make an account, and start contributing to The Beagle Wiki. If you are confused, try starting here.
Beagle Chat. TheRegalBeagle.com now has its very own Jabber chat server, where you can login with your Beagle account, and chat with other members of TheRegalBeagle.com community. I doubt ANYONE other than me will ever use this, however it may be of use to you if you are having issues accessing AIM or MSN Messenger through your work’s firewall. It is completely interoperable with Google Talk, and there are hundreds of free Jabber clients available for you to use, some of which you may already have installed on your computer (iChat, Adium, and Trillian Pro). Contact me if you are interested.
TheRegalBeagle.com Catalogue 2.0. As you can see, I stopped creating catalogue pages a while back. While they were admittedly very nice (flagrant self kudos), they were extremely time consuming and I no longer had the time to write copy and create a banner image for every night out at Garrett’s. I had automated the process as best I knew how, but it still wasn’t easy enough to post the pictures quickly. Enter flickr. Flickr is absolutely, positively the best way to store, sort, search and share your photographs online. I discovered flickr in the winter of 2005, and have been uploading photographs there ever since. Currently, I have uploaded over 2700 photographs, all of which are tagged with each subject in the picture, are searchable by date and by person, and are protected from the casual online stalker by password.
The Catalogue 2.0 is driven completely by flickr, and as such, you have access to the 2700 photographs mentioned above. However, you will be unable to view the majority of these photographs without a flickr account. So, if you haven’t done so, get a flickr account now.
You can find detailed instructions concerning how to use flickr and the new Catalogue here.
I am sorry it took me so long to get the Beagle up and running again. I had intended to update the Beagle for over a year, but obviously never had the time. After changing hosting providers a few months ago, I removed the old content, and took the opportunity to completely reorganize and restructure the way the Beagle worked. Please stop by once a week or so to see what’s happening here at the Beagle or to poke your head into the Forum. I intend to update the site roughly once a week for the next few months. Thank you all again for your continued interest in TheRegalBeagle.com, and welcome to Beagle 2.0.