robglazebrook.com

As I’m sure you can see, I’m in the midst of Yet Another Redesign. This one is rootarcana v6, or as I like to lovingly call it… um, rootarcana v6. I never really came up with a good name for this one. It’s got a lot of white in it. I dunno. Maybe I should have a naming contest. :p

As I mentioned at the last redesign, v5, the number ‘6′ is somewhat arbitrarily assigned. I know I’ve redesigned my site more than six times, but this is the sixth redesign since I started counting. And since I’m the only one who actually ~is~ counting, I think we’ll be alright.

The biggest change you’ll notice is (duh) the look. It’s whiter. There’s a lot less blue in it (though you’ll notice I couldn’t abandon blue entirely, oh, heavens no). I think I might be committing a design sin by combining red and orange. Other changes include:

• The line spacing is a little wider
• The text is (currently) a little bigger.
• The sidebar has a bit more space.
• The “links” navigational element has become “externals.”
• I added a flickr feed (photos I take as I wander the earth).

I’m not done with the redesign. Really, I probably shouldn’t have pushed to publish it today, but I figured the only way it was ever going to get done is if I made it public and then felt obligated to fix it up. :) There are a lot of changes yet to make, I know. For one, the monthly archives have not yet been updated. They are, as you will notice if you bother to check, still on rootarcana v4, meaning they never even made it to v5. Turns out I get a parsing error in Movabletype (in mt.pm, the big one) when I try to update my monthly archives. I must have gotten annoyed by it the last time and never bothered to try and fix it. My portfolio also has not been updated. Movabletype (we have a love-hate relationship) ATE my portfolio blog, meaning that while the static pages still exist, my CMS has no record of it existing. Meaning I’ll have to rebuild it by hand. These two changes will probably take a while to make.

Smaller changes will be made to the CSS pretty well constantly during the next week or so. For instance, the size and spacing of the text is not, in my opinion, not quite right. And the links in the sidebar are far too widely spaced. And I don’t yet know if three flickr photos will fit side-by-side as they should (I’ll test that shortly). Comments currently have no CSS formatting, and that is probably the next major thing that will be changed.

If you have any comments, questions, or complaints, let me know, and I’ll entertain them (or they’ll entertain me. Whichever). I’ll either make the change, explain why the change can’t be done, or explain why I made the change on purpose. :)

Although most of what I have to mention should be pretty self-evident, I figured I could post an entry about it so that you-all don’t have to freak out about the clowns anymore. :)

First, the Google ads in the menu bar have migrated their way upwards, mostly because I didn’t like they way they looked nestled twixt two longer, wider menus. To combat the loss of real estate on the virtual front fold, I’ve reduced the number of ads from four or so, to one. At least they’ve went from talking about church brochures (where’d THAT stuff come from, anyway?) to baby stuff. Regardless, I figure most of you don’t give the ads a second glance; what little revenue the ads seem to generate (almost, but not quite, enough to pay for my hosting) tends to come from areas other than my blog.

Next, the miniblog has made a triumphant return. Now that I have an RSS aggregator that I’m in love with (which I’ll post about in the near future, I hope), I should be able to find sufficient content to keep at least a good half-dozen links up at any given time. Right now, the miniblog is set to display the last seven days’ worth of entries; if that proves to be too many (ie, the miniblog takes over the sidebar), I’ll lower the count. For those of you who also love RSS aggregators, the miniblog has an RSS feed available here. I’ll try to post a button in the sidebar sometime.

I’m not done messing with the sidebar, either. At some point, I’m hoping to incorporate some sort of a book tracker so that everyone can… I dunno… read along with me? The real problem is going to be, I read a lot of articles and not so many books. As such, I’m considering just making another MT blog and messing with it to get a bookroll, which is how I’ve created the miniblog and the portfolio section of the site. Until I get around to the bookroll thingie, perhaps I’ll just put notes in my posts as to what I’ve been reading, as many of my friends seem to do.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for things to put in the sidebar? I’m always open for ideas on that one.

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Finished reading (in the last few days):
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan.
“Change” in Doing What Comes Naturally by Stanley Fish.
“The Discourse Community in Scientific and Technical Communication: Institutional and Social Views” by James P. Zappen (JTWC 19.1 1989).
“A Patriotic Left” by Michael Kazin (Dissent Fall 2002).
“A Nation Worth Defending” by William J. Bennett (USA Today Magazine Nov. 2002).

Currently reading:
New Media: A Critical Introduction by Martin Lister et. al.
Remediation by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin.
“Instrumental Discourse Is as Humanistic as Rhetoric” by Patrick Moore (JBTC 10.1 1996)

Hmm… that’s a lot of typing. Maybe I won’t do that. ;)

Welcome to the new face of Journal Arcana, or as it is more lovingly known, v5.0. Although this is really more like the 7th iteration in our textual journey together, it’s the 5th iteration since I bothered to start counting.

Things work differently now. Some of the major differences are as follows:

• The whole site has changed! If you came in at the blog level, check out some of the other links in the navigation bar at the top.
• Most all links will open in the same window. If you don’t like this, download Firefox, then middle-click (press the scrollwheel) the link to open it in a new tab.
• No search bar. Again, Firefox makes a search bar fairly redundant. I ~will~ be adding site-specific search functionality later, however.
• Comments open in the same window. This may take some getting used to. It did for me while I was testing stuff out.
• Comments are threaded! This means that you can not only reply to the entry as a whole, but to other comments. Use this feature to ease conversations.

Things are not yet perfect. I’ll be making changes to things here and there over the next week. If you find something that doesn’t work or want something that isn’t there, leave a comment on this entry and I’ll see what I can do.

Yours,
-Rob