Well folks, that software update we have been talking about lately happened today and something rather catastrophic happened: Our complete image file got nuked.

Now that my convulsions have stopped, I can lay that out for all you readers. This means that the images for over 1800 posts, spanning more than 3 years will have to be reconstructed. This is going to be a monumental task. Fortunately, we still have most of the images on file but as you might guess, our filing process is somewhat lacking.

On the really positive side, this will give us lots of practice with some of the features this new version of Wordpress offers. All of our galleries will now be hosted right here in The Garage, rather than using Flickr slideshows. This should be pretty slick, but it will be taking some time to get it all sorted out. Like maybe even months.

Please bear with us, we’ll get all of our pretty pictures back where they belong!

We’ve been hoping to grown the team here in The Garage for some time now, but it’s been a bit of a challenge finding someone who is the right fit. Someone who, like The Garys has somewhat of a background in the auto industry and is a total gearhead to boot. Someone who likes to have a bit of fun with a topic, but has the knowledge to back his or her opinions up. So we’ve gone and done it. We’ve brought in a real live jurnalist type who has actully been published and stuff. Aw crap, that means he’s gunna judge owr writin.

That’s right, Mike is a real, live journalist type, with an actual degree in journalism. He’s been writing for a living for the last 10 years, and now he’s here in The Garage to write for free! Well, let’s hope it’s not free for long, or I’m gonna go broke. One thing that has been sorely missing around here is some focus on the biz side of cars. Even though I work in the retail side of the industry, I have little or no knowledge of the big business end of the industry. That is Mike’s specialty, and working in the Detroit area, he has access to some of the industry’s big wheels. If we’re lucky, Mike might even bring us the odd interview. Plans are already in the works for The Garage to make an all out assault on next year’s Toronto and Detroit auto shows. Business stuff gets a little boring at times, so Mike will also be flexing his fingers and publishing the odd road test or news story.

Welcome aboard Mike and try not to knock over that oil drum in the corner!

As you may have noticed, we’ve changed things up a bit here in The Garage. Thanks to our techie guru Jaimie, we’ve got a cool new header and a cleaner look. The new look is more than just a few ad blocks and a new header image though. There are some cool new features in this new format that will make The Garage a more useful place for you, the reader.

First off, maybe the coolest feature is the ability for readers to change the page size to account for aging eyesite. When you are in The Garage, hold down the control key and then you can resize the page with the + & - keys. It works best in Firefox, but it also works in Explorer.

For those who want to keep track of their fave scribe, each bloggers content can be seen by clicking on their name at the top of a post. Coming soon will be a bio to go along with these pages.

Another new function is called asides. This feature will allow us to post those occasional, simple, one or two line thoughts that aren’t worthy of a full post.

As you can see, we now have some ad blocks built into the sidebar. We work hard to bring you a quality read here in The Garage and a few ads here and there will help keep the great stuff coming. If you have something to advertise, be sure to drop me a line at gary at blairvalleymedia.com

Keep a sharp eye, as I have a feeling there are a few other exciting little changes that are going to pop up around here soon.

For some time now, I’ve wanted to add a few new faces to the writing staff here in The Garage. My vision of where I want to see The Garage go will take a lot more content than I have the time to write. The key is though that it has to be quality content that you, the reader, want to read. The Garage really is a big part of who I am and any new writers must complement the feel we’ve already have come to enjoy.

With his long racing history and the fact that he owns a repair facility, Gary Faules was a welcome addition to The Garage. He has wonderful stories to tell and knows the car industry inside and out, not to mention that he has friends in the car hobby around the world. Our other west coast contributor, Aaron Von Minden is a bit more shy, contributing stories and images of the California hot rod scene. It’s a world I can only imagine and I’m becoming addicted through Aaron’s work. Now we just need a handful more enthusiastic bloggers to round things out.

Enter the CASC message board. I posted a few days ago looking for folks who might be interested and a whole bunch of guys responded. There were technicians who race, a racer who is an engineer in the auto industry, corner workers and a gentleman who’s been a racer since the Sixties. What they all share is a passion for cars and the experience to back up their passion. Just what we need here in The Garage. Later on today, we’ll introduce our first victim!

If you are reading this post in a blog called Motorupdates, then this content has been taken from The Garage without permission. In other words, you are reading stolen content.

To the owners of this aggregator, you have not sought permission, not has it been given. Please remove all of our content from your blog and stop reposting our property.

If you do not stop, the legal team will spring into action!

From it’s beginnings over at Blogger, The Garage sure has changed over the past year. Version 2.0 was super cool, but with all the cool visual features it was next to impossible to add in more funtional features and some folks had a tough time reading the grey on black fonts.

Enter The Garage v3.0 where we can keep the look, but offer an easy to read and navigate format that reflects the look over at Blair Valley Media. In the near future, we should be able to show videos and hopefully even a podcast or two. So keep watching for more new and exciting stuff here in The Garage.

Over at the Blogger’s Blog this morning there is a post about blogs that are celebrating an anniversary. It got me thinking that we’ve been working on The Garage for a long time now. I took a peek at the archives, and lo & behold The Garage celebrated it’s 1st birthday in August. It’s been a fun year, with a lot’s of growth and learning. We’ve made some good friends in the blogosphere.

We’ve got even more stuff coming down the pipes including The Garage version 3.0 with a clean new look that will be faster loading and easier to read.

So Happy Belated Birthday to The Garage!

We’ve been working on a few new features to make The Garage an event better place and it seems some of the new features don’t want to play nice with some of the old features. We are working away on solving some of these issues and all of the functions you are used to will start working again soon.