Year: 2005

On web design and my blog

Once in a while I stop and think about the reasons for changing the design of my blog.

My first reaction to such self query usually results in insults to myself. It has been some time since I noticed the design of any other site. This is mainly caused by me using RSS aggregator to read most of the websites on my daily menu. And with RSS the design of the actual site does not mean much anymore. All of them appear the same and exactly I want them to.

But I wouldn’t have had a blog if I’d only insult myself. Thus I continue.

I am updating and improving the design for a few reasons actually.

  • There are still a whole lot of visitors here who don’t use RSS at all or use it to get the notifications when I post new items. They all come to the site with their browsers.
  • First timers. Almost half of all the visitors on this site are coming here for the first time and will not return.
  • Historical reasons. There are some services, like archive.org which store the pages as they are. It is interesting to compare different stages of my blog evolution after some time.
  • Themes and perfectionism. I always wanted a professional website. I couldn’t make it myself because I am simply not a webdesigner. And I didn’t want to pay for it. Yet. Modern CMSs allow me to use themes developed by other people, who know what they are doing.
  • Boost of activity. Every time I play around with the maintenance part of my blog, I tend to use it more afterwards. I start posting more often and my posts get longer. I generally consider this to be a good thing.

Resume: as much as RSS is important in my daily surfing and in the lives of other people, there are still reasosn to pay attention to the look and feel of the website itself.

As if he is riding a motorcycle

Maxim has discovered a new play for himself. It looks like he is riding a motorcycle, find the perfect motorcycle for you at Shoppok! . When I lay him down on his back to change his diper, he would stretch both of his hands up, perpendicular to the surface of the table. Than he bends his legs and squeezes his fingers into fists. He than twists his right fist exactly the way he would do it on a motorcycle when using accelerator handle.

His hands move a little and often together, while everything else is motionless. Very much like with a real motorbike indeed. Only the sound is missing, but, I’m sure, he’ll get to it pretty soon.

For those who don’t yet have their driver’s license Motorcycle licence course Melbourne is designed for beginning riders of all ages. More than 8 million motorcyclists nationwide have graduated from a Rider Course.

Site changes

As you can obviously see, I have changed a few things around here. Let me introduce these one by one.

  • New theme. This is the most obvious change. The old one with white background and blue header started to get on my nerves. I also needed a theme which had support for navigation bar (more on this in a second). I liked the color scheme and how things were organized. I also put my ugly face in the header image. With all the blogs on the web using just a handful of themes I thought there should be a better indication that you are in a right place.
  • Navigation bar. Links to other sections of this site, like my Photoblog and Family Tree are back once again. There will now always be in the navigation bar, which is currently located at the top of each page. Search is there too.
  • Posts per page. Until now I used to have a fixed number of posts per page. It was like 10 or 15. I have decided to try a different approach. Now all posts from the last three days are displayed (RSS feed is not affected and still show the last 10 posts). Let me know what you think about this mode.

I am also still fixing small bits here and there that appeared after all my migrations. If you notice any weird behaviour – let me know.

Driving in Spain

I accidentally found this page, which provides a lot of information about driving in Spain. Rules, laws, and tips are all there. The article is written with British audience in mind, which is nice, since everything said is easily applied on to Cypriot audience.

I am amazed at how strict some laws in Spain and EU are. I guess these will be coming soon to Cyprus too. On one hand I do support expensive fines and license removals for traffic rules’ offenders. On the other hand, I am an often offender myself and I will surely suffer from a draconian system.