I spent yesterday evening tweaking the design of this site and drinking rum. Rum is delicious, and an excellent design aid, apparently. Just getting the OK for an image I’ve used and it’ll all go live. Very excited, weirdly, it’s a huge improvement!

I’ve made a couple of changes. I’m grateful for everyone who reads this drivel, and if any change I’ve made pisses you off, please tell me. The changes I’ve made are fundamentally small, but have a pretty substantial result.

Firstly, I’ve removed the sidebar. It was getting huge with all the archives, tags and categories and it distracts from what I really care about and want people to read and that’s recent content. Any other relevant content is found by search engines anyway (far-and-away the most-read post on here is the one about PHP and mail() on OSX, and that’s 100% from search engines, so that’s indicative to me that people aren’t using the site to find specific things they’re looking for. In honesty, why would you be?!) so removing these was a no-brainer a bit. Search box is gone, but search still works – saying that, when I’m looking for something on the site, I always Google site:jspr.tndy.me because it gets better results that the built-in WordPress one. Links to friends are one thing that I wish could stay, but I want to start writing more about what my friends write about anyway, so irregular posts about why you should read what my friends write will hopefully improve that. No-one clicks those links anyway (according to Google Analytics).

I’ve forced the post body font to be sans-serif. Adam mentioned to me the other day that the font on allyouseeis.me (NSFW) is Times and that sucks, and it got me thinking that I tend to rely too heavily on my default browser font (Helvetica Neue) and I probably should force it. Seriously, though, if you hate Times; why is it your default font? The intention, anyway, is for serif headers and sans body. Should look way better for everyone now.

Finally, I’ve removed the little comments number circle. No need for it. Looked OK, but it was distracting and annoyed me more than it served a purpose.

If any of this stuff pisses you off, I value your opinion on the matter and will consider any request. I can’t imagine anyone’s here regularly enough to actually care about this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t give the option, right?

Sam Hardacre reminded me that we have one of these in the office. Cool-looking camera.

I’ve made some changes. If you see anything that looks wrong (and you don’t use IE6), let me know.

Time has just disappeared this evening. I’ve been trying to put together a preliminary concept for a new design for the site. It’s going to incorporate a couple of new areas, so it’s not right around the corner but the design is something I’ve been wanting to do for absolutely ages. That’s the problem when you work with really talented designers; they make it look so easy and you’re like “I can totally do that” – then you go to do it and it turns out you can’t! The new design is going to be based around excellent type, and a greater observation of spacing. Basically it’ll hopefully show some acknowledgment of uniformity and at least make an effort, unlike the current layout.

I’ve been reading type sites forever, and it’s given me a great big love of yellow and black so, unless everything changes drastically, that’s what we’ll be going with!

Exciting.

(Widow. Sorry Matt)

Today has been a day of medium to heavy overeating, with an emphasis on apple-goods. I’m not normally a fan of stewed apple, but these are really smooth and light.

Sadly, today has also been a day of complete lack of inspiration. I can’t seem to layout the text for my new layout and it’s driving me crazy. I want to keep it simple, but simple-looking != simple-doing. I’m really going to have to look at a few more sites before I do this, I think. Damned internet.