A Certain Lack of Focus

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Blog fun

fingersI've been playing around a bit more with blog elements. I ended up wasting a lot of time for almost no changes at all, which is sort of the nature of web design.

Either I'm a lazy web designer or an extremely over confident one. I have no copies of the html content of my blog, so if I make changes that don't work out I just have to remember what it is I changed. I don't really recommend this but so far I haven't had any disaster's. I did end up adding a border to my bio photo because I didn't like how it looked either nudged right up against the green box, or with a white bar in between. I think this looks much nicer even if it is a bit "neat" which kind of irritates me.

drawingSomething I'd like to get done soon is to replace that header image. Although I think it's a cool image (and is part of the reason I chose this template) it's not actually my image so I feel a bit stupid claiming to be an artist when I haven't even created the dominant image on my blog. I've been putting it off though, because at least one of the images is going to require watercolors and they're a pain in the ass to set up. I've got all my drawing tools nicely organized and in easy reach now, but my watercolor supplies are buried in piles of stuff. In fact I'm not even sure I even have any usable paints at this point... last time I did a watercolor the paints were all crusty and nasty and it was that much more of a bitch to get color out of them. So I think the header image might be a while yet.

booksOne new addition to the blog is the sidebar section of "Books I Love." I'll be adding more here over the next few days, and they'll probably change over time, but I'll try to keep the list down to fifteen or so. I think I'll also eventually add a "Books I've read recently" section, but probably not for a little while. I'll also be doing more reviews. I've just joined Amazon's Associates program which basically means if you visit Amazon through any of my links and end up buying something, I get some money. Don't worry, I'll warn you if the book I'm linking blows.

Earlier today I finally had a chance to gather all (or at least most) the books I own that I have not yet read, so I should have some interesting new things to read, depending on how motivated I'm feeling. I tend to re-read books I've read a thousand times rather than starting a new one. Which is why I'm lumping my favorite books with the unread ones: I really have no excuse to say, "I've got nothing to read!" as Matt has heard me whine plenty of times.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I like the picture... you're already way beyond me in terms of blog prettying, btw. :)

Have you ever heard of Library Thing? It lets you catalog what you have and apparently there are widgets that allow you to post some of your favorites on your blog, etc. I can't even get everything put into the darn thing yet, though--too many books here, between Brian and I!

Meagan said...

I haven't heard of it, but I've heard of similar sites. I know what you mean about too many books to catalog... Matt actually bought a scanner (nerd) so we can just scan the book bar codes in to keep track, but we have so many books that it's just too daunting... we haven't even started.

Unknown said...

Yeah... the bad thing with Library Thing is that they get so specific. It's not enough to say that I own a copy of, say, each one of Anais Nin's diaries. No, I have to specify which printing, hardbound or soft, etc. Sometimes the covers are easy to figure out, but other times not so much. :)