So my restlessness got the better of me. I liked the last design (which I only finished a month ago) but it was a bit too much. There was something a bit bland and staid about it, too. But above all it overemphasised the design, relegating the content to a mere element within, when the whole point of the site is the content: the links that I post, the entries and thoughts that I write here, and everything around and in between. It intimidated me, so I held off from updating anything for a few days, save the odd post or two. Then other things got in the way — work, life in general — and those days turned to weeks. Quelle surprise.
In the meantime, over at Kottke’s blog I read all about those fancy new tumblelogs that seem to be all the rage. Sites like project.ioni.st and Anarchaia. Even Jack has started one, and a nice one it is too.
Tumblelogs; just a fancy name for the weblogs people like me used to have back in the day, really, back when Blogger was state-of-the-art. Before Movable Type made us put a title on everything, and suddenly posting a link or a snapshot of your thoughts wasn’t ‘substantial’ enough. Of course then linklogs came along, and del.icio.us and Flickr and all that jazz, and it seemed like every component of what a weblog used to be had been spun off into its own format, its own identity. Like sit-com characters starring in their own shows.
Anyway, the idea appealed to me, and germinated in the back of my head. The idea of just tumbling everything down the page, regardless of its content — whether an essay or a quote or a link or a photo. That’s what attracted me to blogging in the first place, back when it was quick and dirty and long before the obligation to write essays made it a chore.
This is not a chore.
So I took that idea, and make it the basis of this (live) redesign. My remit? Nothing but content. The content is king. Nice big bold blocks of text. All the fancy stuff kept hidden. Consider this post obsolete.
And hey, would you believe it? Today just happens to be this weblog’s fourth birthday. Four years! Wasn’t that long ago, but I was a different person then, blogging-wise. Keeping a blog back then was, I dunno, more fun? I want this blog to be fun again. I guess there’s no better time than now to take stock. To re-engage. To reinvent. (More on this later.)