Yesterday I successfully transferred my blog to Wordpress! It was quite easy, in fact. I’d say the setup and transfer took all of 30 minutes. Formatting my template was the hard part and I still have some tweaking to do. Now I can post from my iPhone, which was one of the major factors in my decision.

I am in the process of switching my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Hopefully I can get this done before Mr. Baby arrives. So there might not be much activity here for a few days (not that that is anything new) while I try to switch everything over. If I can’t get my custom template working in Wordpress then I might just use one of their standard templates for a while… so if the look of this blog suddenly changes on you, that’s why!

A co-worker forwarded a really fantastic article from Smashing Magazine, about new standards in web design. The good news is, I appear to be doing a lot of things right in my design work. Although the survey analyzed large blogs, I think the results can apply to any type of site. Here is a summary; the percentages in parentheses indicate the percentage of surveyed sites conforming to the standard:

• large blogs require a multi-column layout solution (usually 3 columns suffice) (58%);
• layouts are usually centered (94%),
• layouts usually have a fixed width (px-based) (92%),
• the width of the fixed layout varies between 951 and 1000px (56%),
• 58% of the overall site layout is used to display the main content,
• CSS-layouts are used (90%),
• the background is light, the body text is dark (98%),
• the most usual (not necessarily most user-friendly) line length lies between 80 and 100 characters,
• Verdana, Lucida Grande, Arial and Georgia are used for body text (90%),
• the font size of body text varies between 12 and 14px (78%),
• Arial and Georgia are used for headlines (52%),
• headlines have the font size between 17 and 25px.

 

Hi! Yes, I have changed my masthead from that indescribable mass of orange and green brushstrokes to a photo of storm clouds.

My annual urge to redesign my blog has taken over. Stay tuned for the final version.

OK, people, help me out here. I’m anonymizing (is that a word?) this blog, and as such, I am going to remove my name from anywhere it’s mentioned. But I need to call myself something. Should I just use my first name? Is there something else you can think of that would work? Should it tie in to the name of the blog? (Something Shiny Disorder)?

I know that there is no shortage of opinions amongst my readers, so chime in!

This weekend I am making A Big Switch. No, not the kind where a PC user sees the light and switches to a Mac. I got my first Mac in 1995 and never looked back, except fondly on my previous Apple experiences which included my dad’s Apple ][ and Apple ][e in the 1980s; PCN's Mac Classic – or was it a Plus? – in college on which I played many a game of Risk and typed many a paper; and the Mac LCII (with a COLOR SCREEN and blindingly fast 16Mhz processor!) that I got to use at my job in college.

But I digress.

For a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm beginning to really need a professional site promoting my growing freelance art and design business, I plan to break off this blog and my personal pages from the rest of this website and put them at a completely new URL: somethingshinydisorder.com!

The two sites won't be tied together anymore, mainly because I don't necessarily want my professional clients to have a direct link to my personal rantings and ravings. Also, I think that I'm going to go anonymous with somethingshinydisorder.com. I'm not sure if I will go back and edit previous posts that refer to myself or my friends and family by name. That would be a lot of work. I might just take out last names, although I'm not sure if I've even used those anywhere.

So if you have my "old" site bookmarked, my blog won't be there anymore. Please bookmark www.somethingshinydisorder.com!

Who are you?

I’m interested in knowing who reads my ramblings. Please post a comment and tell me your name, where you are located, and how you found my blog. You can also link back to your own website if you like. Feel free to leave any other comments, too!

Thanks! :D

according to my site statistics, people find me most often while doing searches for the following keywords:

• filliam h. muffman
• naked boobs (which i think i mentioned ONCE in a post about renaissance faires)
• holy hand gernade (yes, misspelled)
• stump google
• kyocera lip fungus

and my top hits actually come from people doing google image searches for…

1. this image (thus the “naked boobs” search term, methinks)
2. this image
3. this image
4. this image

yeah. i don’t know what gets into my head.

i’ve spent three to four hours for the past two nights trying to fix my new layout so it will work in internet fucking explorer. that is its official name, by the way: “internet fucking explorer.” i don’t care if 90% of the world uses it as its primary browser; it is a piece of shit.

so, anyway, this OUGHT to work better. at least, it works structurally in IE for the mac, most of the time. i have no idea what it looks like on IE for the pc, because, in a when-hell-freezes-over kind of way, i do not own one. i can check it at work tomorrow or if one of my three very kind and helpful pc-using friends whose names start with a “b” can check for me, that’ll be even better. :)

i’m beyond caring how it looks on IE mac, but i would like it to work in IE pc simply because i have a lot of readers who use that particular platform and browser — and much as i would prefer that to be different, it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. anyway, mac IE seems to be a good litmus test for pc IE — at least IE5.5.

i forgot to upload this last week. it actually rained!! i was so excited that i took photos on the way to work, but forgot my camera’s usb cable so couldn’t actually upload any. don’t worry, i had the camera stationary on the steering wheel and just hit the button without actually aiming or composing. my eyes were on the road the whole time!

this first one was taken at the intersection of northwest highway and buckner.

 

this one was taken at the end of my street, looking across plano road towards the sonic (open for breakfast! shining that bright red neon glow through the windows of the houses! “you’ll never forget we have tater tots and strawberry cheesecake shakes, any time of the day or night!!!!”)

i spent much of the weekend practicing my CSS, and have thusly refined my blog template. i’m not sure that this works in internet explorer for the pc… i suppose i can find a pc at work and check it out. i know that it blows up in ie for the mac. i’m trying to decide if i care, or if i can find a workaround either in CSS (preferably) or through a javascript browser sniffer and redirect.

if you’re on a pc and are having trouble with my site, please let me know. sending a screenshot would be most helpful!

i always feel kind of sneaky and vaguely guilty when i read the blog of someone i know.

now rationally, i’m fully aware that if a person doesn’t want their thoughts to be public knowledge, they wouldn’t post them to the world wide web. at least, if they’re savvy enough to have their own website, they ought to know that is rule number one. but for some reason, i feel as if i’m snooping. or reading their diary.

the diary that they left open on the middle of the table in starbucks.

at any rate, a post on my friend yvonne’s blog has inspired me to write this:

eight ways that i know my husband loves me.

1. he takes care of me when i do something stupid to injure myself (taping a broken toe, washing a detached fingernail, bandaging cuts, catching me when i pass out).
2. he sings silly lyrics to songs, and laughs when i come up with a good one.
3. he lets me sleep as late as i want on the weekends.
4. he sends me sweet little text messages on my phone.
5. when his phone died and he lost all his information, he was more upset about losing our text messages back and forth than all his phone numbers and calendar data.
6. he tells me stories about the characters and images he sees in my paintings.
7. he encourages me in all of my five hundred different creative pursuits.
8. he hasn’t written a song about me.

looks like it worked to send a post from my cell phone. i did that while on the bus this morning.

however, the length of that post is about the size limit that i can do from my phone. i probably could have added three or four more words before it cut me off.

at least it will force me to abbreviate my thoughts into little packages of clarity.

actually i got that idea from arushi, who wrote a stunning story, bridget-jones style, in short prose on her cell phone. she ought to write more, and publish them.