Going back was nice. Even though there are now 9 years since I left, it mostly looked the same. The pub/night club where we used to hang out every now and then had been demolished because the owners wanted to build a hotel. Unfortunately, they’d forgotten all about getting the right permits for building a hotel and when they finally applied they didn’t get them. They used to have a night club, now they have parking space.

Even though the weather changed rapidly during the weekend (sounds familiar), we got to experience Grimstad at its finest – sunny summer in the South of Norway. I went home to work every summer when I studied and left the city when the really nice weather and the tourists came. But this time I even got to go out on a boat! With a life jacket, of course. We also went to Cafe Galleri where they served sub-par drinks but played some nice music. We even met Stian and I stumbled across Guro, who I lived with in a shared apartment for a year or so. Unfortunately, there was no time to hang around and chat. Gotta be moving, you know. Next time!

The rest of the weekend we spent drinking beer and Akvavit, playing Yahtzee and Trivial Pursuit, and me and the missus totally rocked in both games. Fearing that no one would believe that I was able to beat anyone in Yahtzee, I brought proof with me home: The results are hanging in the kitchen, feel free to come over to gaze at my unreal accomplishment.

I was thinking about post some pictures from the trip, but just now realized that Anniken took our camera with her to Nesodden yesterday. Maybe later, then.

Now for something not even closely related to traveling: I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, and you probably haven’t, but I’ve added a Facebook Like-button to every page (not blog entry), for instance the one-liners. Since I like visitors, why not click on it and promote the one-liners on Facebook? With half a billion people on Facebook right now, it’s bound to attract some new visitors. That’s right, I have no shame.

What, don’t have a Facebook account, you say? What’s the matter, don’t you enjoy social pornography?

So, what’s up anyway? Not that much, really. Yesterday night I worked a graveyard shift for the first time since the Tahiti earthquake and I hope I won’t be doing it again for a very long time. Even though last night’s work went surprisingly smooth, I simply loathe working during the night. I blame it on the the five years I had of 24/7 office hours. But at least one good thing came out of last night’s session; the bike ride home in the sunrise at half past four in the morning. It was surprisingly cold, but pleasantly quiet and it smelled like spring. Marvelous. So great, in fact, that I’m considering getting up early a Saturday morning just to have another bike ride like it again.

You might have noticed a subtle change on the site as I’ve added a little button from AddThis to every entry. It allows you to share anything you might find interesting on this site to 260+ other sites, like Facebook and Twitter. Not surprisingly, the one-liners are the most shared page. But then again, about 87% of the page views are the one-liners. The front page only get a measly 4% if the page views. I love you, Google Analytics.

What else can we see from the Google Analytics numbers if we look at the past 30 days? One of the more interesting things is that Firefox is about to overtake Internet Explorer in usage, with 33% and 37% respectively. Globally, Internet Explorer still has about 53% if the users. My favorite browser, Opera, only weighs in at 2%. Disappointing.

The United States is my number one fan, with 15,736 visits, followed by the United Kingdom, India and Canada. Norway is all the way down on 7th place, but with a much higher average pages per visit and average time on site. Interesting. The number of new visitors from Norway is also much lower than the other countries, so I’m guessing my Norwegian visitors are mainly people I know who is actually reading what I write.

I’m sorry, you guys, for not writing much and not really entertaining you when I am! And why do I bother writing in English, maybe I should just switch to Norwegian. I’ve had this discussion with myself before, a couple of years ago. The result then was, as you can probably guess, that I was to keep writing in English. It’s probably the better thing to do as it keeps me on my English toes, at least to some degree.

Anyway. It’s time to get to bed, I still have some sleep to catch up. I’ll be back later.

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.

There is one project, however, that I’ve been thinking about lately: Global Happiness Index. By looking at incoming Twitter statuses, and search for words associated with being happy or sad, it should be possible to get an indication of global happiness. For Facebook, something like this has been done before, and I’m sure something similar also exists for Twitter, but it would still be an interesting project. I don’t know much about how to present information visually, but I know how to collect data and I also have some experience with data mining. That said, it all sounds like it might be a lot of work and require more hardware than I currently have.

One thing I know for sure is that it’s about time to call it the night.

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.

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.

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.

Tomorrow it’s Friday, which means that the weekend is coming soon. After I began working at the NRK, I’ve really started to appreciate weekends. It’s a bit weird, because it was when I was in my last job I really should have embraced every weekend as it was my last. It might be because in this job I really feel that I’ve got the time off from work, while I was never really able to completely forget about my previous job when I should. And let’s face it, most of last year was a very, very long weekend.

I’m spending Friday with Hans Olav, we’re making dinner and if we’re able to get out of that without food poisoning – we usually do – the plan is to go to Revolver and listen to a some guy Hans Olav knows play in his band. Or perform solo, I don’t know. On Saturday morning, I’m going to the gym, and that’s pretty much all the plans I have for this weekend. My 2010 workouts are going quite well, by the way. So far this year I’ve been to the gym 9 times. You can’t see it, but I’m padding myself on my shoulder now. Good work!

I should, however, make more plans, because I’d like time to fly like a bullet*. The reason is, of course, that there are still way too many days left until Anniken returns. Talking to her on Skype today was great, but it also made me miss her even more. She is having a lot of fun, and I’m very happy that she is, but I dearly wish that I was with her to share the good times.

But, being rational; we’ll have all the time in the world to share the good times when she gets back home. Tomorrow is January 22, meaning that there are only ten days left until February and then we’re half way there in terms of months. February is only 28 days this year – not like 2008, when I was counting down to quit my job and February was totally screwing me over by being 29 days – and 28 days is like nothing compared to both December and January, which both were a whopping 31 days! And after 28 days of February, the last month will fly. Like a bullet.

This is me being rational. I’m wondering what I’m like when I’m rambling.

Anyway. 69 days and counting.

I hope you’re not getting too tired of reading entries like this – I know I would have I wasn’t the one writing it – because it’ll continue until she gets home.

*”Time flies like a bullet. Fruit flies like a banana.” Oh, I’m killing me. More

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.

So, after work, I got home, restarted the box and everything was online again in a matter of seconds; the Ubuntu Server startup time is very, very low. Unfortunately, I was not able to find anything about the incident in the logs, the last thing that happened was that the Amazon S3 backup started. That might of course be the problem, but it has been running for a while without any problems.

My best guess is that the VIA CPU on the motherboard and the Linux kernel isn’t the best of friends. I’ve had problems with the same CPU model before when using Debian, so I’m guessing that’s the most likely cause. A few weeks ago I ordered a new Mini-ITX motherboard with an embedded Intel Atom based CPU, and that CPU should be 100% compatible with the kernel and it’ll arrive in about two weeks time.

Until then, if the site is offline, there’s no need to panic! It’ll surface again shortly. Also, if you sent me any e-mail from 07:00 to 17:15 CET today, it’s probably a good idea to send it again. Your SMTP server should retry for at least 48 hours if the recipient server is unavailable, but you never know.

Now I’m getting some dinner and then it’s off to the gym, meaning I have to take the bus back to work to go to the gym there. Being a web host provider sure is hard work!

The best place to find inspiration is on the internet, because there are a lot of very nice site designs out there. Another source of inspiration might even be my own previous designs. While looking for some old pictures today, I stumbled across this one:

It’s taken at work in May 2007. Why I took the picture, I don’t know, I’m guessing it wasn’t long after another redesign of the site. Please don’t mind the mess on the desk, the incoherent ramblings on the post-it notes and the fact that I have Steam installed on my work computer. Have a look at the design. The first thing that hit me was “that’s a nice design, I like it. It’s clean and pleasant to look at”. However, since I made it myself, it’s probably not too surprising that I like it. One of the elements I really miss in the current design is the calendar widget on the sidebar. The one on the picture was one I made myself for my own, homegrown CMS, but I’m sure someone has made a similar, and most likely better, widget for WordPress.

One of the layout related changes I’ve decided to do is to make the site wider. I will keep the width static, but make it fit 1024×768 screens. Today’s design is aimed at 800×600 screens, but only a mere 2% of my visitors use this screen resolution. The rest either has a higher screen resolution or they are visiting on a mobile device. The latter will not be an issue as they’ll get the WPtouch version of the site anyway. WPtouch is a great plugin, by the way, if you run a WordPress site and want to make it accessible for mobile devices, WPtouch is the way to make it happen. Making the site wider means that I can make both the main section and the sidebar wider. I’ve often wanted to make the sidebar wider, but it would make the main section too narrow. With more space to play around with, that won’t be a problem anymore.

Then on to the inspiration. A quick search in Google for “web design inspiration” shows that there are no lack of places to go to find some. The problem, however, is that most of the designs showcased require a Master’s degree in visual design and ten years worth of PhotoShop experience, and I have neither. Because of that I have to stick to minimalistic design, but to be honest, that’s the style I prefer anyway. With a new search for “minimalist web design inspiration” I found designs more suited for my skills.

In the process I found minimalsites, a site dedicated to showcasing minimalist web site designs. It features a lot of designs, most of them with white or a very light colored background. A slight kick in the nuts, perhaps, since I’ve decided to go with a little bit of color this time. But I’m sure it’s possibly to make a simple design with colors as well. Another thing I noticed was that nearly every site use a grid model for their layout. This makes the site look nice and tidy and I will probably do the same by using the 960 Grid System, which is well-suited for my needs. A few clicks and I’ve got the HTML and CSS I need for the basic layout. Great.

I also learned once that pen and paper is just as good as a computer to get the creative process started, so I quickly drew a sketch of a possible layout. It’s a marvelous mix of English and Norwegian notes and doesn’t look too different from the current layout. That’s because I will most likely not change the layout too much; it’s a tried and tested model that works.

So there you have it. I’m taking baby steps, but I’m getting there. This will be the last entry describing the broader parts of the site redesign. From now on I will focus on the details, like header, footer, sidebar, comments and things like that.