The Next Big Thing?
Posted 23:45 CET Friday February 19th, 2010 (19 days ago). 132 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Personal, Site News.
I added a photo I once took of a road sign to this post so you can have a look at what Lightbox has to offers. Personally, I think it looks really nice, and I wonder why I didn’t make the switch until now. I’ve also made a couple of other minor changes based on feedback from you. Thank you. This is probably more or less all the work I will do on the new design, which means that I can now move on to a new Project – with reference to “Half-Assed Efforts” entry.
I’ve been rambling on about various projects for a while; everything from writing a novel to creating an Android application or even a computer game. The computer game is the least likely thing to happen. It will be a lot of work for one guy, even though it’s been done before. But the new Project is supposed to be a hobby, not a second job. I’ve already got one of those, and one is quite enough. Continue reading "The Next Big Thing?" →
Redesign: Version 1.0.
Posted 21:26 CET Thursday February 18th, 2010 (20 days ago). 128 views. 8 comments. Tagged with Redesign, Site News.
After two evenings of playing around with CSS, HTML, PHP and other web related abbreviation, I hereby present to you the new design in its version 1.0 form. It’s a merged version of two themes by Theme Lab; Keep it Simple and Fresh Pick. Some things might change, though, like the contents of the sidebar and footer, font sizes, the header and stuff like that.
Am I pleased with the end result? Well, at least it’s something different than the old one. The navigation is better, the entry calendar is back (yay), and both the sidebar and the main section are wider than before. This gives me more room for images whenever I post that. The only bug I know of so far is the popup used by the NextGEN Gallery, but that’s not something I’ll bother with now. Also, I’ve only tested the design on the latest stable release of Opera, which is v10.10 at the time of writing.
If you see anything fishy going on or have any suggestions for improvements, please let me know.
Update: As Miguel points out in his comment, you won’t see any changes if you are visiting this site on a mobile phone. Mobile phones get pages modified by the excellent WPtouch plugin.
Redesign: Progress.
Posted 21:46 CET Monday February 15th, 2010 (23 days ago). 91 views. No comments. Tagged with Redesign, Site News.
Yeah, how’s it going with that redesign I’ve kept rambling on about lately? I’m happy to announce that there is in fact some progress, and here’s a little teaser for you.
You’ll notice there is no trace of the color palettes I spent a week looking for and you won’t find the fonts I dug up from the darkest hole on the interweb. In fact, the only thing I planned to use that you’ll also see above are the rounded corners. Why is that? Well, several times I sat down to start to work from scratch on the new design and every single time I ended up ripping my hair out while I was banging my head against the keyboard, cursing CSS and all the things I couldn’t make it do.
It’s time to face the facts. I once knew how to create magic style sheets, but I never did manage to keep up with all the new things that have happened since the last time I designed something from scratch. In the end I sat down to look at free WordPress themes, and I eventually selected two themes from Theme Lab that I will merge and modify to my liking.
I wrote the first entry about the redesign all the way back in December last year, so you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for anything to happen. Still, the progress has been quite good tonight, I’ve finished the general layout, the navigation, the header and implemented the one-liners.
I should probably also mention that the new server is working a lot better than the old one, both in terms of stability and performance. Good, although nerdy, times.
Bright Blue Light.
Posted 22:35 CET Thursday January 21st, 2010 (48 days ago). 144 views. No comments. Tagged with Personal, Site News.
The new server is now up and running, serving both this site and my e-mail accounts. There were of course a few minor hiccups when it went live, but they should all be sorted out now. Time will show if the new server is more stable than the old one, but one thing is for sure: It’s a lot faster, with an insignificant load average compared to the old server. Now all I have to do is to sit back and wait for the one-liners to get picked up by another high volume site and see if the server is able to handle the peak traffic.
There are two minor annoyances I’ll have to solve, though. First of all, the CPU fan is too noisy. I kind of already knew this before I turned it on, and I’ve ordered a new one that should be more silent. If it’s not, I’ll still need a backup fan. Then there are the two LED lights in the chassis’ front panel. They are literately illuminating my living room. Why do case manufacturers install LED lights that could easily double as head lights for a MAC truck? I don’t know. Disconnecting them is not an option, because I want some visual indication that the hard drives are working every now and then. It can probably be solved with some semi-transparent tape, though, so it’s not a biggie.
And now for something completely different. Continue reading "Bright Blue Light." →
Redesign: Bits & Pieces.
Posted 11:07 CET Saturday January 16th, 2010 (53 days ago). 113 views. No comments. Tagged with Redesign, Site News.
So you thought I’d forgotten all about my redesign project, did you? I have to admit I’ve spent more time working on the new server than the redesign lately, but sometimes you just have prioritize differently than you initially planned. Sounds familiar? Well, that’s probably because it happens to all of us all the time.
I’ve been surfing the internet for inspiration, selecting design elements I like that I’d try to implement in my own design. These are some of the bits and pieces I’ve found so far:
- I’d like to have both a header and a footer that span the entire width of the screen, no matter how wide it is, but still keep the width of the actual content fixed. Also, the footer color should be high contrast compared to the page background color. I might even put more content in the footer than I have today. Trent Walton’s site is a good example of the kind of footer I’m talking about.
- I’m semi-active on Twitter and will soon hit 300 tweets. Not that much, but a lot more than the average Twitter user. Personally, I think it’s a good way to just get something out there without having to write an entire blog entry. I’m seeing people visually identify the tweets on their site by using an icon or image resembling the Twitter bird. I’d like to do something similar, and it looks like there are no shortage of free images to choose from.
- A feature I’d like to reintroduce in the design is the entry calendar. It was great for displaying what days I’d written something and it will also generate a bit more traffic by people who get lost while browsing around on the site. I don’t think I will set off writing my own calendar, there are most likely other WordPress users who have had the same need and made excellent plugins already.
- I’ll try to cure my shyness by adding a picture of myself in the About section. You might have some privacy concerns, but I’m already sharing more than enough information to feed the stalkers on a weekly basis anyway. Besides, bonding with the user can result in he or she becoming a regular visitor.
- I’d like to add some kind of indication in the navigation that shows the user where he or she is currently on the site. Robert Alan’s site is a good example of what I’m thinking about. An even nicer navigation can be found on Brian Hoff’s site. He also has a large footer section that pretty much sums up my footer thoughts.
- Gradients are a popular effect to use on the site background. My PhotoShop/Gimp experience is so limited I don’t even known how to make a gradient background, but I’m sure there are some tutorials floating around out there.
All in all, these are a lot of design elements that are nice by themselves. The great challenge now will be to get everything to work together and to start the actual implementation. As you can tell, many of the design elements I’ve found have square corners and thus breaks away quite clearly from the rounded-edges-design I’ve been going on and on about. But, once again, plans are made to be changed.
You're visiting the blog and personal web site of 
