I don't care if you don't like it

Posted April 7, 2004 at 02:18 EDT under daily.

I didn't exactly strain my mad web skillz, but a big push for the emerging CMDO/CMI redesign has hit a milestone. I'm checking this sucker in.

Sure, it's only style changes right now, and a few links have been moved. The notion is that I'm getting ready for some new design ideas, though I'm not sure that this is what things will look like down the road.

Consider these pages a proof-of-concept.

The nearly greyscale motif is directly related to me trying to understand exactly what type of colour I would like to use. I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with an overall white scheme with an accent colour.

The back-end stuff is a bit more unorganized. I'm trying to move toward a blog that saves static pages with human-readable titles, instead of relying on a database for all content. I'm also tired of hand-coding HTML (and coercing HTML to show real typographical characters) in these entries, and will likely be trying out some authoring tools like Daring Fireball's Markdown to satisfy that requirement. I'll likely be moving toward a blogsystem that at least pays lip-service to emerging blog standards and tries to adhere to correct XML. I'd like to do this without sacrificing a few years of blog entries stored in a proprietory database format.

I'm also going to get rid of a lot of cruft.

As for blog entries, I expect I'll be creating new entries far less regularly. However, a blog entry will generally be longer and in more of an article format. Articles will cover a broad range of subjects, though I'll likely be concentrating on what I know best: tech culture, politics and music. Short stories and poetics are also a possibility, but I'm not sure I want that kind of site. Daily slash-style snippets are pretty much gone forever.

So, consider this the first editorial. Feel free to contact me with your thoughtful criticism or comments. Suggestions for articles are also appreciated.