I feel sorry for my poor blog. As new things piled up, I put him to the side and forgot to update him. I didn’t exactly forget about him, I just didn’t have the time to pay any attention to him.
So, where exactly have I been? Well, for one, I’ve been busy with school. It’s getting near the end of the semester, so coursework is getting more compressed. Also, I’ll be starting finals soon. I’m also working more. Besides my work at LSU ITS, I’ve started freelancing for the Gatorworks crew. Additionally, my company recently released the Baton Rougean. It’s a hyperlocal news site for my hometown. For our first site, I’m pretty proud of what it’s become so far. I’ve been doing a lot of writing over there, so if you really just want to read my writing, I recommend subscribing.
To make it up to my blog, I spent last night redesigning it. The last theme was becoming too cluttered and deviated far from the minimalism that I had envisioned. This time, I stuck to my vision and thus named this theme “clean.” It’s nice and simple, yet really intelligent. I really like how it turned out. There are two important milestones that I hit in this theme. Starting web developing for an actual web design firm really pushed me to finally learn Photoshop. I’ve put if off all this time because I’d rather just code. This made me a lot better at HTML and CSS, but ultimately I feel behind my peers because I just couldn’t use it. But at the behest of Mr. Chase Swindler, I finally learned, so this design was done entirely in Photoshop. The second milestone is that it validates in strict XHTML. Of course I need a disclaimer on that because WordPress markup is weird and on some pages it won’t be. However, the overall design does. And so does the CSS. Plus, it works in every major browser from IE 5.5, which was a bet I took up with Bryan Culver. Overall, I’m satisfied with the design. Like I said, nice and clean. (On a side note, I made the WordPress comment form validate strict XHTML, which took a little time, but it works. I’ll post the code at a later date.)
In any case, I’ll be finishing the school year soon, so you’ll likely see more overall activity from me.
I like what you’ve done with the place! I have two ideas:
Consider a gradient to white from your header. The transition is quite harsh. Your favicon isn’t as iconic as it used to be (just two big L’s)
Use these ideas as you see fit!
Thanks! There’s actually a really subtle gradient at the top right below the header from a grey to white.
And good point on the favicon.
I’m still playing with a few things. Design is a progressive practice.