Where do the days go? You meet me in a confused state of mind at the moment. I am on tablets to prevent migraines, yet they further manifest on my being by imposing an extra hour on my day. This drug makes me ever-tired and ever-hungry. I have been able to, as in most of my life thus far, been able to control my appetite but I have struggled with, as I have for the past fifteen years or so, sleeping.
It has left me rather disoriented, forgetful and dazed. Things that happened in the morning feel like they had happened in a previous epoch yet other past events seem to repeat themselves in a strange déjà vu. And my dreams haunt me. They prey on my mind day and night, as I live them and relive them in cycles. The same people crop up, and there isn’t much I can do about it. It is somehow worse that I can only remember fragments of my nightmares, as they seem to develop but conclude as the nasty things I do recall. Yet I don’t think it’s my medication that’s the cause, however they may be a catalyst.
In this time I have redesigned two of my websites… somehow. I have also ditched much of www.stephenbroughton.net, which was my personal CV (really, absolutely no-one cares right now) and changed it into something that might be a little more “commercial”. We’ll see how it goes.
...with no replies just yet.
Since Media Temple have updated their 1-Click Applications to make WordPress 2.7 available as an upgrade, I upgraded WordPress and decided it was time for a new theme.
I won’t lie, I pretty much nicked it from one of the themes available on iWeb. I figured if people are allowed to build websites with this theme for their own use I should be able to get away with falling short of stealing it. To be fair, it was hard work to make the theme WordPress friendly and generally easier to understand when looking through stylesheets and templates.
I guess I should also have tested it on other browsers on other platforms (so far I’ve tested it only on the latest versions of Safari, Firefox and Opera on Mac OS X) and God only knows what it’ll be like on Internet Explorer, for those still brave (read daft) enough to use it!
...with one reply so far.
I’ve just moved geoffbrady.net to Media Temple and bought another domain while I was at it. I bought stephenbroughton.net and intend to use it as a site dedicated to me.
I wasn’t unhappy with eUKhost — in fact what they offer on their cheapest package would probably have sufficed for me — but there was always a nagging doubt about them in my mind. Media Temple certainly seem more professional.
So that is why geoffbrady.net has been up and down these past couple of days.
...with no replies just yet.
So far this week, two major patches have been released: Patch 2.4 for World Of Warcraft, and Patch 2.5 for WordPress.
The new WoW patch was implemented on Wednesday, promising yet more content, including more daily repeatable quests and more dungeons. But it’s not what I really wanted. Who wants to do the same thing over and over again? And that is what WoW is once you get to the maximum level: performing the same tasks over and over again, for better gear and gadgets. It sounds silly, but it’s too much like real life!
WordPress 2.5 is rather different. It’s taken a little getting used to, but it’s offered more of the features that I wanted — tag editing is the biggest improvement for me. By some sort of subversive underhand programming, every time I tagged "friends", it changed it to "Friends" which is rather different as far as I’m concerned…
So some change is good.
...with no replies just yet.
I have my site registered on CommandShift3.com. Visitors are given a choice of two sites and are given a sample image of both. The visitor then chooses the one he or she thinks "looks best". The process is repeated over and over again until the visitor either questions his or her sanity or finds something to do.
I have a few problems with it, to be honest. You can check on my site to see how it is doing at CommandShift3. It isn’t doing so well. This is because whereas CommandShift3 should be celebrating good design, it simply rewards those whose websites are a distraction from its purpose. This is because most people don’t know what web design is.
For a start, it takes experience. I’ve only been doing web design for just over four years now. Design has changed a lot since I started. There is this thing that came about called "Web 2.0", where everything on the web is meant to look like it was made out of glass. Backgrounds need to have diagonal graded stripes, and the only colours you are allowed are electric blue, pink, black and white. And every reader is a sucker to a great big seemingly irrelevant photo. Apparently, that is what constitutes good design. Bollocks.
I propose "Web 3.0". Websites serve a purpose — and that is not just to look pretty. I see Web 2.0 inspired sites as being the ‘bimbo’ sites of this world (wide web). For the most part, websites have a purpose. Design is secondary to that purpose. The design of a site is meant to help that purpose. That is why Facebook looks simple. It is why the best blogs are easy to read and navigate. It is why the best websites load quickly.
As soon as everyone else learns that web design isn’t about diverting eyes away from the site’s very purpose, we will have a proper web revolution.
Lesson of the Day
If you see a website made from glass, you have permission from me to smash it with a hammer.
...with 4 replies.
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