5

So this humble blog turned 5 years old yesterday. I suppose I ought to have some remarks prepared about what I've learned so far, or a list of favorite posts from over the years, but I haven't gotten around to that. I kind of meant to do something like that for the 1000th post, and failing that the 1024th, but I was busy and just didn't get around to it. In part I think it's that anniversaries like this are of no possible interest to anyone but me, and they're of only passing interest to me. On top of that, I also have a birthday in a few days that I'm kind of dreading, so looking backwards over all the many years that have passed just doesn't feel very compelling.

I have been tinkering around with the blog, though. I thought it was looking a bit dated so I've been doing a bit of template tweaking. What's changed so far:

• I thought the sidebar was getting kind of cluttered & junky, so I moved a bunch of stuff off to static pages instead, like the ginormous Link Tree and my paltry About info.
  
• Speaking of static pages, this humble blog now has a navigation bar up top, including links off the site to Flickr & Twitter (instead of the sidebar Flash widgets I used to have for them).
  
• The post area has been widened so Flickr's new 640x427 image size fits. I've been going back and updating old posts to use larger images, starting with the ones listed in the Popular Posts widget, and continuing with others as they get hits. Speaking of the Popular Posts widget, would anyone be too upset if it went away? I'm of two minds about it right now.
  
• Reduced the number of colors used, and toned down the remaining ones. The post background is just white now instead of yellow/cream/whatever. I tried to find a more subdued version of that color first but didn't see anything I liked. I think the thing's a lot more readable now.
  

I admit the new static pages aren't too fabulous yet. That's still on the TODO list. Lots of things are still on the TODO list.