Category: pushing the sky

Well that didn’t go half so well as I imagined… I suppose no-one significantly noticed, but the site was down last night as I managed to bork it somehow while upgrading to WordPress 2.1. Things are more-or-less back to normal, at least from the front end, but it was a worthy kick-up-the-ass for attempting doing things quick & dirty.

So yeah, any problems, gimmie a holler.

I’ve hard enough of the Hemmingway design. I originally intended it as a way of provoking me to write more per post, but it’s ended up making me write less because I didn’t have the big things to write, or I just wanted to jot down a quick line. So it’s back to the original design while I work something out. Probably to be soon replaced by K2 as a bridge to something more “me” again.

Welcome to Pushing the Sky v3, or as I’ll dub it, “The much-too-lazy edition”. I poked around wordpress for a weekend and a half, but I couldn’t come up with anything I spectacularly liked, so I stuck Hemmingway in there and think I made good.

It’s a bit of a departure, ain’t it? Hmm.

I’ve modified this theme enough to say it wasn’t a total slap-dash job, and I intend to look at further modifications in the next few days, but this would have to be it for most expectations. Which isn’t really a bad thing – it is a very sweet theme, I’d say.

I’ve chosen it because I think it’ll be more suited to the style of posting that I anticipate when I’m in London – less frequent, more long winded posts I came up with somewhere beforehand. The most recent post will be on the left, and will be in full text. The second most recent post will be on the right, and will be just the “excerpt”, so you’ll have to click through to see more. Do try, because the full-post page is sweet! =)

I’ve retained Asides, though it’s questionable how often they’ll be updated. Still, it is there! Look below the mysterious fold. Older posts are listed below the Asides, and the search box has also returned. And did I mention the links! Shall add to that imminently.

From my simple analysis of the visitor figures, this theme also tends to suit you guys; once a post has crossed the first couple of days/posts, it disappears off the radar and is only ever later encountered by searchers. We’ll see how true that is as we go, but I think that’s where blog design is heading, or at least should be.

None the less, I hope you enjoy!

Hey guys,

Had an attack of spam recently (100 spam in one day) so I’ve chucked in a tougher spam catching system (Akismet). Unfortunately it’s a little more strict than it needs to be, so occasionally your comments will be held for moderation when they’re just normal ol’ comments. Bear with me, I’ll approve it as soon as I see it (which at my normal rate will be probably once every hour or so =D)

Thanks.

Exactly 8 months have passed since pushing the sky started, and we’ve reached post 200! This includes:

• 93 random-ass links, asides and quickie posts
• 9 conversations with myself, and 12 times thinking too loud
• 5 fictional peices
• 5 rants
• 2 recipes
• 53 ‘daily’ posts, along with other miscellaneous rag-tag categories adding up to 25 posts (n.b. may not total correctly due to mental maths and multiple category posts)
• 2 post retractions
• 41 drafts dumped
• 703 reader comments, with a guesstimate of about 300 from me alone.
• 600 blocked & deleted spam comments
• one semi-permanent crush
• 3 illusions shattered
• 8,850 page views, from 4,608 visitors, of whom 2,541 returned at least once, at an average of 41/21/10 respectively each day.
• 8,250 km flown
• Much too much money spent.
• 2 half hearted template designs
• 14 failed sketch & mockup level designs

How’s Them Apples eh?! I’m right proud, myself.

My favourite design back at friendlygrocer was the Occasional Coarse Language one, my first design with WordPress and highly underutilised – the seasonal design rotation was both a blessing and a curse. That design even had an awesome splash page!

I’ve attempted in someway to recreate that initial feeling I had from that design. While this looks nothing at all like it, it’s still based on those same principles. While that design was a lot more about construction lines and my early explorations of CSS, this one is more about… well I don’t know really, the black-and-white photo era? draw the conclusions for yourself. Still have to balance it properly and get it more functional, and I want to do more than the aborted job this current design was. I get the feeling I talked about this before…

Coming soon, as the inevitable teaser posters always say.