First of all, here is the promised pic of my new canine friend, Morgan (as in le Fay!)

With my son Scott's help, I've just launched my new web site. It's still a bit of a Work in Progress, but it has at least the beginnings of all the things I want to include. My very first blog over there follows on from the one I did here in August called The Promiscuous Artist. I was inspired by a post on my friend Fiona Leonard's Year in America blog, in which she poses the question "If you knew you could not fail, what would you do?" Please do check it out!

However, I've decided to leave my main blog here,at least for the time being, because I cannot get WordPress to do some of the things I've got used to doing on Blogger, such as putting pictures in the side column. WordPress, however, has the advantage of giving me extra pages so that I can run a "proper" web site in conjunction with the blog. As with most things in life, some kind of compromise had to be found, so I'll keep on blogging here but will put at least one post a month on the other one. It will always be writing-related, while this blog will continue to carry my meanderings on a variety of topics. I'll always give you a link when I update the new blog: here's the one for the new post. I've carried all my other writing-related posts over there, too.

Next week, new Specusphere. Nose down, tail up until then!

Isn't life full of them? No progress on the web site because poor Scott had a computer catch fire, with predictable results - lost files, lost time, lost money. And I had planned to post a pic of my new doggie friend, Morgan - but the battery went flat on the camera just as I was trying to take a pic.

However, I had a lovely afternoon with friends today at a fundraiser for next year's Swancon, Perth's annual SF convention. Our team won loads of prizes both individually and as a group. I scored a bottle of Baileys and some chocolate, among other things - a nice little stroke of luck, for a change.:-)Not that I did much to earn them - I just happened to be with the smartest team. Their collective knowledge, especially on comics, movies and themes from TV shows had me floored. Most of the few answers I contributed were wrong. I guess I was born too early for most of the questions!

Back next week with Morgan and maybe more on the new website!

So here is the brand-spanking new two column version. I was interested to see that Laura couldn't see columns at all in her browser - is anyone else having that problem?

Do tell me what you think: what you like and what doesn't work for you. And of course if you're reading this on Facebook, please check out my Blogger page at http://satimaflavell.blogspot.com

Do you like the new look of this blog? It's an experiment - part of a scheme to combine my blog and two websites in one location. I would love to get feedback from you on these factors:

Whether you like the new look of the blog or not. Tell me what you like and what you don't like!
Would you read the blog if it was incorporated into a private website rather than being hosted on Blogger?
Do you think it's a good idea to combine all my interests, both paid and unpaid, in one place? I've blogged about most of my favourite things: reading, writing, editing, music, dance, astrology, yoga, family history, history generally...so it wouldn't make a big difference to content. I might be a bit more organised about it, thats all!

In other words, what do you think makes a good blog? Do tell - I'm open to new ideas!

BTW, if you're reading this on Facebook, please take a minute to visit the original site - http://satimaflavell.blogspot.com/ - and give me your opinion!