Oddball Update

Here it is: Oddball Update version eight, or V8 as we like to call it. You knew it had to happen eventually: I got tired of looking at the old design and decided to do something about it. The decision to put together the new look came about a week ago when I ran across a WordPress theme called “Agregado,” which matched up nearly exactly with the image I had in my head of what the next Oddball Update should look like.

Obviously, I never install canned themes on my blog without personalizing them in some way, so of course, Agregado got the custom treatment featuring my GTO and a somewhat more masculine (if I do say so myself) color scheme. I’ve also switched out some of the stock theme’s features to make room for Oddball Update staples, including “Posts from Last Year” and the ubiquitous “Who’s Online” ticker. There’s also the full blogroll and link list, as usual.

Also as usual, the Photo Gallery area fell victim to the new design and has not yet been re-engineered. I’ve found a much better plugin that pulls data from my Flickr account, but it requires that my database be set to the UTF-8 character set, which mine isn’t. So I’ve got to undertake that conversion — not a task to be taken lightly, I might add — before the photos can come back. Have patience.

Other than the wholesale change to the site’s appearance, not much else is different — all of the usual functionality should still be there. With one notable addition: The “lifestreaming” column on the home page sidebar, which displays a feed of updates from my Twitter account, my latest Flickr photos and anything else I might deign to link in. If I’m not posting blog entries, chances are the sidebar will show you what I am doing.

I’m hoping that having a brand new interface to look at will inspire me to post here more often. In truth, for the last several days — perhaps even weeks — I’ve had idea after idea kicking around in my head, which at any time could have given rise to a new blog entry. For an equally endless variety of reasons, however, none of them ever did. A lot of it has to do with my self-censoring tendencies, or my continuing need to ensure I don’t make anybody uneasy by virtue of my words. However, if I’m going to be so self-regulating, I might as well close down this site and post everything on Private Oddball for the rest of my life. So suffice it to say, I intend to be a bit more open with my opinions here from now on.

I’ll get into some of the stuff that’s going on when I make my next post — tomorrow, if all goes according to plan — but the big news for the week is that Apple and I will be visiting our family in Michigan for a few days. We’ll be staying less than a week up north, but any time is good time, and we’re very much looking forward to it.

More to come.

Tagged as Site, web design + Categorized as Site