As always, we here at Showbits send holiday greetings in a musical style perfected by the inhabitants of the Satellite of Love. I'd like to use that tradition to honor one of the great actors we lost this year, Patrick Swayze:

On December 1, 2007, one such conversion occurred on Gamebits, my first Web site from nearly a decade ago, dedicated to discussion of the electronic entertainment industry. Though I've not maintained that blog as well as Showbits (it takes longer to finish an RPG than it does to watch a movie), it's definitely seen more regular activity under WordPress than it did as hand-coded HTML.

Today I'd like to add another member to the blog family: Wordbits. Just as the Showbits blog was designed to replace a defunct message board, Wordbits was conceived as a successor to the literature review and composition forum known as Prolific Quill. Of late, it's taken a slightly different approach, as my interests have been caught by the accelerating field of electronic publishing. Whereas movies and video games are remain relatively consistent experiences regardless of improvements in technology, the publishing field stands to be completely revolutionized — or dismantled — based on the success or failure of both traditional and emerging print models. It's a fascinating time to be a consumer or producer of written media.

Each of these three *bits sites has in its navbar links to its siblings. I hope you'll navigate among them and enjoy each blog for its various perspectives on digital media. Please use their RSS feeds or email subscription options to keep abreast of new discussions as they emerge!

• Two weekends ago, I performed in a community theater production of Guys and Dolls;
• One weekend ago, I published a quarterly issue of the last remaining Apple II publication still in print; and
• This weekend, I am riding in the Cape Cod Getaway, a two-day, 150-mile bicycle event to raise money for and awareness of multiple sclerosis.

Each of these landmarks required many nights of rehearsing, editing, and training — time that would otherwise be given to Showbits. I regret that it's left me unable to offer commentary on the passing of such luminaries as Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. I hope to eventually do so, and to review films such as Fanboys and Up.

In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying your own holidays. If you haven't already, check out the seven films that made up Showbits' summer shorts special. It'll give us something to discuss when I return!

If you read the blog using either of these methods, please let us know what you think! Or if there are additional ways you'd like us to get content to you, please leave a suggestion.

I didn't want to leave the site in a precarious position while away, so once I'm back and available to smooth out any bugs, I'll be upgrading Showbits to WordPress 2.6 (that being the software that powers this blog). If, while I'm under the hood, there are any additional features you'd like to see implemented, please let me know!

In the meantime, I may be blogging on my journeys for my day job, so if your interests are not just cinematic but also retrocomputic, surf on over.

"The toughest part for me is changing my thinking habits. Every time I see a movie or read a book, a part of my mind is dedicated to relating what I'm experiencing to someone else in the form of a message or email. Now, without that audience, I have nowhere to express those messages — so it seems pointless to be mentally composing them."

Peter's inspirational response:

"Maybe you'll just have to start a blog. You know, there's no blog I read regularly at present, but yours I think I would. I really did look forward to Showbits each day — even when I didn't really have time to read it!"

Thus did Peter flip my mental switch. The next week was a flurry of activity, and on December 15th, Showbits.net had a soft launch in the form of an email sent to a small number of Syndicomm Online refugees. After two weeks of their feedback, the site officially went live on January 1st. So though the actual one-year anniversary is not for another three weeks, today marks the genesis of a year of activity, community, and writing — 184 posts so far, or nearly one every other day.

Today also marks the one-week anniversary of the relaunch of Gamebits.net. That site maintained an almost identical structure and style since its creation seven years ago, remaining immobile while the Web around it changed. The lessons learned in creating and finetuning Showbits has afforded me the opportunity to recreate Gamebits while preserving its 700 pages of content. And there are more 'bits to come, too, which you'll hear about as they go public.

So thanks again to my first reader, Peter — and to everyone else who ensured he wasn't the last!

– The new subscription page offers a variety of ways to access our content, including email subscriptions: if there's a new post that day, you'll receive it, in full, via email around 6 PM EDT. If there's no new post, there's no email. No annoying ads, no teaser excerpts to make you come to the site; unsubscribe anytime. Simple!

– Also by reader request: the sitemap now includes a page of external links (aka the blogroll).

Enjoy!

Also, I've added some new, minor functionality to Showbits. When reading individual posts, look near the bottom of the post (just above the comments) for a link that says "Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it." to get a printer-friendly version of the page, or or "Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it." to send the page to a friend. Voila!

I've upgraded the site's blogging software to WordPress v2.1. Numerous bug fixes and enhancements exist primarily on the administrative side — but let me take this opportunity to ask, what changes or features would you like to see? I've disabled the unused "Rate this post!" feature, which I'd hoped would provide some feedback on the kinds of posts you most wanted to see. So let me ask directly for your thoughts on Showbits style, content, presentation, and mechanisms — by either leaving a comment here, or sending a private email.

Speaking of which, here's some reader feedback. First, from Dayton Ward:

I enjoyed your piece about going to see the re-issued Star Wars in '97. I went to those, too, but I'm also old enough to have seen the original SW in '77. (Yes, I do feel old.)

And some (unintentionally?) double-edged commentary from an old friend, fearhubris:

I'm gonna bookmark these and read some of your stuff, it sounds intelligent yet I can tell it's yours.

If I've not been writing much to appeal to those readers lately, it's partly because I've been acclimating to a new workplace, which has granted me yet another blog. Fortunately, I have plenty of movie material for this week. Stay tuned!