What started out as "I’ll update once I’m settled in" quickly turned into "I’ll update when I have something worth posting." Ultimately that desire transformed to "I need to redesign the site before I do anything else on it." The old design had served its time, but I’ve always felt it too crowded, disorganized. I needed something simpler. The quest for this holy grail of designs spanned over six months, and as far as I can count, four distinct layouts. Sleep was lost during this quest of epic proportions; blood was shed. Finally after too many hours in Photoshop and SkEdit, the design you see before you was born.
The changes are many: vastly improved usability, new feature within the archive system, redesigned photo gallery, Gravatar icon caching, integration with my delicious account, feed improvements, and many more. The first two, usability and the archive system, I feel warrant some further discussion.
However, that discussion will have to wait for later.
All that matters for now is that I finished the design in time for my self-imposed deadline of the Fall Reboot. The Reboot is an effort to get web designers to relaunch their sites with spiffy new designs all at once, promoting standards compliance though the use of CSS. I didn’t get to finish everything I wanted to in time — I’m probably at 90%. You may still see a few things change a bit over the next little bit, but the bulk of the work is done.
More importantly, this is the point where I’m expected to summarize what has been going on in my life over the past six months since I got down here to Maryland. Well I’m not one to dissapoint.
The job at ’heed has been going well. I found a department that does web-work for other departments in ’heed and I’m on that project for a year or so. I still spend my time in the "holding pen" they have set up for people waiting clearance, but at least now I actually have work to do besides read every web comic I can find.
Otakon happened in August. Of course, being the only one of my friends living in Maryland, I was the host this year. Isaac showed up, unexpectedly, with three computers. We never got to gaming but many computers were built over the weekend. Maura had dictated earlier in the year that as a group we would be cosplaying characters from the online comic Dominic Deegan — Tragically, there are pictures documenting this over in the album I put up for this year. The con itself was as enjoyable as last year, and somehow I managed to walk away without purchasing a katana.
Around the apartment things have slowly come together. A comfortable bed was acquired, for free, from a co-worker. Ikea trips helped populate rooms with furnishings. I’ve replaced the old Playstation 2, that Arielle took, with a nice new slim one. I built a computer, which stays connected to the TV, to act as a media player that doubles as a Tivo recording all the shows I’m not around for.
Free-time wise I spent an entire weekend (OK, OK, week) obsessed with the recent movie Serenity. I’ve become a follower of the ABC show "Lost". I haven’t been playing World of Warcraft nearly as much as I’d like even though I’m up to level 56. Art stuff has been on hold too. Maybe now that I’ve finished and launched, I’ll have time for those things again.
No promises, but now that I’ve gotten back on track with this site I’ll be trying to keep up a weekly posting schedule, hopefully more useful things like articles (gasp!) as opposed to blog entries. Maybebe even get back into regularly CGing Megatokyo strips. We’ll see how that goes. For now, go look around, get used to the new design, and tell me what you think.
