Update

Why it started:

I wrote the first Opera Lover series several years ago because I wanted to explain to people why I used Opera. Trying to explain a browser to someone (or, trying to explain why one browser is better than others) is difficult. My experience with Opera led me to believe that to understand why Opera was better, you had to use it; however, if you didn’t know why it was better, you probably wouldn’t even try it.

So how do you explain it? I wanted to give an overview of some of the power features that made Opera great, and not just great, but better, by which I mean that Opera lets me (and, in fact, helps me) work more efficiently, requiring less effort to set it up the way that I wanted it to work, and allowing me to control my web experience better.

The original series accomplished that. It was responsible for getting a number of people to switch away from Internet Explorer. What was even more remarkable, perhaps, was that several people emailed me to say that they were long-time Opera users who had learned new tricks from the series. It was truly rewarding.

Why it has been delayed:

Obviously the series has been very slow in coming, the past few entries. The title “30 days” was never intended to reflect the time that it would take to read the series. It was meant to refer to 30 sequential (and, by implication, regularly scheduled) days when the new entries were published.

The main problem is simple: time. I wrote the bulk of the series between midnight and 4 a.m. Each day took several hours to write, correct, gather screenshots, edit, etc. One day might take anywhere from 4-6 hours.

Several things have happened which has made it much more difficult to write the latest update. In no particular order, they are:

1. Not being as young as I was (29 vs 32) has had one significant difference: I need more sleep than I used to. I can’t function as well on 4 hours of sleep (which was what I was doing before). I owe it to my employer, my family, and myself not to push myself beyond what I can do.
2. Ethan is now 3, and as much as I love Opera, the series takes a back seat to him, and to my wife (we recently celebrated our 10th anniversary). There are things much more important than blogging, computers, and all the rest, and I don’t want to miss any of them because I was behind a computer screen because of a volunteer project.
3. Change in employment. I have changed jobs since the previous versions of the series, and went from being part of a support-staff to head-of-staff. For a great many more things, the buck stops with me, which means a greater amount of time beyond a “normal work week” is necessary (see previous 2 points again).
4. Additional for-pay web work: I have a few side ventures that I am working on, and by “working on” I mean that I’m getting paid for them, which is a really nice thing. This isn’t to bemoan the series as not being a money-maker, just the reality that when faced with a limited amount of time and the option to choose between paying work and non-paying work, I choose what you’d choose if you were in the same situation.
5. Significant time away: I was fortunate enough to travel overseas for 2 weeks and then had to be gone for another week+ recently, both of which then required additional time at work before and after to prepare/catch up.
6. Transition from broadband to dialup: If you haven’t lived through the change from going of broadband to dialup, let me assure you it is painful. Not only that, but I am my own dialup provider, and have spent a significant amount of time configuring and maintaining that setup which saves us from having ISP costs. Broadband is not available here, and we’ve traded convenience for savings by getting rid of our previous ISP. You wouldn’t believe the time this has taken (there have been nights it took me 30+ minutes just to get online).
7. The low-hanging fruit has already been picked. The first and second series were a bit easier to write because I hadn’t discussed some of the basics yet. Now that I have already done that, it takes more effort to make sure that the material is worth your time to read. I want to make sure that each “day” is worth my time to write and yours to read.

Why it will continue:

That said, I still believe that the series has something to offer. There are more Opera features I want to discuss, and more converts yet to be won.

I know some will read this and think “What lame excuses.” For those who want to think that, fine. I offer them not as excludes, but as explanations, without apology. I want to be honest about why it is going so slowly. If some people are annoyed with that or think less of me for the reasons I’ve given, well, quite honestly I can live with that. But I felt it was time to explain to the rest, the majority, who probably simply want to know what is going on, and who will understand because they have lives and families and jobs of their own.

So my best suggestion is to sign up for the Atom or RSS feed and set it to check daily for updates. The rest of the days are coming, eventually. In the meantime, thanks for reading, thanks for your patience, and do make sure that you’re getting enough time away from the keyboard as well.