Macrolog

Remake/Remodel

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.)

Tue 01 Nov 2005 at 23:59   ·


Comments (3 responses so far)

Posted by Jack
Wed 02 Nov 2005
at 13:55

Keeping a blog back then was, I dunno, more fun? I want this blog to be fun again

That was exactly my thinking behind my tumble thingy. Funny that the latest fad in weblogging is a return to weblogging as it once was…

Posted by Jack
Wed 02 Nov 2005
at 13:56

P.s. - it’s quite spoolish around here now. I like it!

Posted by MacDara
Wed 02 Nov 2005
at 16:59

Thank you! I’d completely forgotten about spool. It’s really more of a rip-off of Angermann, crossed with Barry Frost’s homepage.

I need to play around with the link colours, and update all the templates. It’ll look a bit arse-wise for a few days methinks. And I need to do something about the comment Javascript which never seems to remember my details.

Post a comment


 
   Required
   Required
   Optional
 

Please Note:
This forum welcomes any notes, queries or criticism, but please, keep it to the fair and relevant kind. Any instances of flaming, trolling or spamming will not be tolerated.

You may use basic HTML inline tags if you wish; any other tags will be stripped automatically. If you want to include a link it must be tagged manually. Markdown syntax is welcome if you know how to use it.

About

qrcodeThis is the personal website of MacDara Conroy, a twenty-something production editor living in Dublin, Ireland. Read more »


Details

You are reading Remake/Remodel, a Macrolog entry by MacDara Conroy. It is filed under Housekeeping, and was published in November 2005.


Continuum

Fri 04 Nov 2005 at 00:47
Tue 01 Nov 2005 at 23:59
Wed 19 Oct 2005 at 20:17