Oookay. This is a biggie. I just registered stephthegeek.tv. Why, you ask? I'm going to be splitting the site into two.

My driving philosophy has always been to keep everything in one place. I am one person, with a geeky side, an intelligent side, an erotic side, a playful side, a professional side, a social side -- I wanted them all under one roof. I wanted to show that you can be all of these. But I'd become so dogmatic about this philosophy that I realized it was ruling the other important aspect -- freedom.

When a philosophy becomes a limitation, it's time to re-evaluate. I call it "the camera problem". When I got my Pentax Optio 555 after extensive research, it was supposed to be the best of both worlds. It was small enough to carry around everywhere (but not nearly as small as my Casio Exilim, which I did carry around everywhere), but it had a good zoom and a bunch of manual controls. So what did I end up with? Something too big to carry around everywhere, and not advanced enough to satiate my desire for an SLR. In other words, by trying to get the best of both worlds, I ended up with something that satisfied neither polar opposite. This is what I've been feeling with the site. I'll take an explicit shot but I won't feel like I can leave it up. I'll try to wrangle software together that was never meant to do what I'm trying to get it to do for something that members don't really care about. I'll have an idea for something promotional, but worry that non-members will see it as "porn-ish" or selling out. Not to mention the extensive technical problems I'm still facing. Honestly, I can separate and create a new additional site in less time than it's going to take me to fix the frankensite I've got right now.

It looked good on paper (screen?), but really, Drupal, aMember, Gallery, and numerous other packages just aren't ready to work seamlessly together. I don't regret for a moment the skills and knowledge I gained by six straight weeks of effort on it, but I'm just not happy with what I ended up with, and I know a lot of you aren't either. I'm an experimental kind of gal, and I'm willing to admit that this is an opportunity to keep making things better, not feel like I'm stuck with what I've got. It has become an inefficient use of my resources, rather than being able to focus on the content and living my life.

Then there is the other issue that drove this to a head right now. I haven't gone into it much here, but the cams/site have been a major issue with some members of Chris's family, due to the boys. While I do not want to cause reckless turmoil in their lives, I am less concerned with intolerances and control that others are trying to force on us, and much more concerned about the actual issues of their comfort and privacy. They are teenagers, and they are completely informed about my site and the contents of it. We discuss openly what they are comfortable with and not comfortable with when it comes to what I share online, both visually and in the blog. They have been raised to be extremely open minded and communicative about how they feel. They have said over and over again that the cams really don't matter to them and and they don't understand why others are taking such issue with it. I do not blog their names or identifiable information. I do not expose them to the more adult areas of the site or my life. I do not have any cams capturing their private spaces. But legally speaking, it is a grey area that has no precedent set for having images of minors on the same site as adult-themed images, whether connected in any way or not. This is not a fight I'm willing to fight at this point in my life. We don't know what the future holds, in terms of where they will be living and visiting.

This is a frustrating time to live in. It feels as though people are becoming less tolerant of the role of sexuality in life. I do hope the pendulum will swing the other way.

So, specifically, this means that all photoshoots, shows, videos, other erotica, etc. will be moved to to the new domain, and there will be no adult content on stephthegeek.com. The cams will also be split based on their content. Both sites will have the main webcam and a cam pointed out the window at the hills. .com will also have whatever the ceiling overview cam ends up being (ie. kitchen, office, living area), which will have an off switch for privacy. .tv will have the bathcam, a show cam, any streaming cams, and if anything ends up being in the bedroom area. The two sites will not be linked to each other at all. Of course, they will both show up in search engines for anyone who knows what to look for.

Phew, any questions? This decision was not made lightly and I do believe that these two sites separately will have the strength and potential to go further than one.