October 13, 2004
Sho 'nuff do be cookin' in my book!
So this is the new look for the blog. Pretty sessy, no?
The feedback I'd received on the old design was unanimous in saying that it was difficult to read. No, not my effervescent parlance, through my verbage was singled out a few times...more on that in a second. Basically, the thing was too monochrome for the text to easily stand out from the background. Also, the text itself was pretty difficult to read - I had Futura set to an uneven point, and it appeared flat.
Well, now all that's fixed.
The text is at a symmetrical point setting, and the letter spacing has been reduced. The background is warmer and not so washed out - actually the background is one of my photos of Rockefeller Center, filtered for a better temperature and gaussian blurred to near obliteration.
One thing I will solicit some feedback on - I've set the blog to justified text, which I like, but which I know can look monolithic and put-offish to some. How does it look to you? Now that I've fixed the setting that kept unregistered users from commenting, everyone is free to tell me on da blog! Yay!
The title graphic is an homage to the cover of The Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds , which you should have known already and if not shaaaaaame on you. :-)
So to accomodate those who made a point of noticing that oh, the writer has an expanded vocabulary and we should tease him for it cuz like our President we think that's just puttin' on airs, I've included a word lookup to the greatest language resource out there: www.onelook.com. They index almost every major dictionary, encyclopedia, and lexicon that's online. Their "Browse Dictionaries" list of the 113 sources they index is by itself worth the free admission.
Let's see - oh, the left bar is set to 'fixed,' so for Firefox and Opera users will enjoy the lookup box there all the time. It just scrolls with the page in IE. Still, why anybody would still use IE when it blithly refuses to support common standards is beyond me.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is the like George W. Bush White House: it stifles innovation with arrogance, ensures ubiquity through questionable dealings, it leaves you prone to attack, is unwilling to support the basic standards that the global internet community agrees on, and is now replacible with another option that is far better than "the lesser of two evils." Using IE allows Microsoft to dictate the terms of what you and I can do online. That cramps my style, inhibits my creativity, and royally pisses me off.
As for Firefox, ya know it seems the more we talk about it, it only makes it worse to live without it.
So let's talk about it.
Wouldn't it be nice?
The feedback I'd received on the old design was unanimous in saying that it was difficult to read. No, not my effervescent parlance, through my verbage was singled out a few times...more on that in a second. Basically, the thing was too monochrome for the text to easily stand out from the background. Also, the text itself was pretty difficult to read - I had Futura set to an uneven point, and it appeared flat.
Well, now all that's fixed.
The text is at a symmetrical point setting, and the letter spacing has been reduced. The background is warmer and not so washed out - actually the background is one of my photos of Rockefeller Center, filtered for a better temperature and gaussian blurred to near obliteration.
One thing I will solicit some feedback on - I've set the blog to justified text, which I like, but which I know can look monolithic and put-offish to some. How does it look to you? Now that I've fixed the setting that kept unregistered users from commenting, everyone is free to tell me on da blog! Yay!
The title graphic is an homage to the cover of The Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds , which you should have known already and if not shaaaaaame on you. :-)
So to accomodate those who made a point of noticing that oh, the writer has an expanded vocabulary and we should tease him for it cuz like our President we think that's just puttin' on airs, I've included a word lookup to the greatest language resource out there: www.onelook.com. They index almost every major dictionary, encyclopedia, and lexicon that's online. Their "Browse Dictionaries" list of the 113 sources they index is by itself worth the free admission.
Let's see - oh, the left bar is set to 'fixed,' so for Firefox and Opera users will enjoy the lookup box there all the time. It just scrolls with the page in IE. Still, why anybody would still use IE when it blithly refuses to support common standards is beyond me.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is the like George W. Bush White House: it stifles innovation with arrogance, ensures ubiquity through questionable dealings, it leaves you prone to attack, is unwilling to support the basic standards that the global internet community agrees on, and is now replacible with another option that is far better than "the lesser of two evils." Using IE allows Microsoft to dictate the terms of what you and I can do online. That cramps my style, inhibits my creativity, and royally pisses me off.
As for Firefox, ya know it seems the more we talk about it, it only makes it worse to live without it.
So let's talk about it.
Wouldn't it be nice?
