Designing in code, twenty-ten, and writing again (in no particular order)

Before I forget, Happy 2010 to everyone – sorry I’m 40 days late, but managing two kids, working full time, and taking care of the house while my wife goes to school at night pretty much wiped out what free time I used to have.

Twenty-ten

Since this is my first post of the new year I just wanted to bring this up. From here on out, I will be saying “Twenty-Ten” and not “Two Thousand and Ten” because I never once referred to 1998 as “Nineteen Thousand and Ninety Eight”. Sure I used to say “Two Thousand and Nine” but I’m going to consider those first 9 years a fluke.

The void

I’ve let this blog slip into the void that is the blogosphere over the past year. During that time, I decided I just couldn’t concentrate on this site and that it was cool with me, though I still managed to keep of list of things I wanted to write. Those ideas will give me plenty of ammunition now that I’m beginning to get my time back.

Writing again

During the past month and a half, over many 20 minute spurts (because that’s about how long I can keep the kids entertained without having to intervene), I’ve managed to write an article that I’ll be contributing to an unnamed online design magazine. I’m really excited about this one and I’ll have more info when my first article goes up. Hopefully that will turn into a regular gig.

A new design

Also, in the random 20 minute spurts, I’ve managed to “realign” the design and structure of this site. Currently it’s about 80% where I’d like it to be. I love where the color landed, how I handled the individually designed posts, and its general simplicity. I still have plenty on my to-do list to tighten it up.

For those of you that are too lazy to click out of your feedreader, like myself, to view the site, here are a some screenshots.

The new homepage:

The new portfolio page:

The new default post page (for when I don’t feel a post needs a custom design):

A custom designed post:

Another custom designed post (this one!):

Designing in code

For this iteration of the site, I made it a point not to open an image editing program and instead prototyped and built it strictly with code. I greatly enjoyed doing it this way and I think it helped keep the design simple.

A development environment

Unlike all my previous re-designs, I finally setup a proper development version of this site on a local machine so that this new launch would go much smoother. I completely forgot several templates in my 2009 redesign and ended up scrambling to fix them. I ended up with over bloated CSS files that bugged me for ages. What the hell was I thinking?

R.I.P. old design

As with the many re-designs I’ve done in the past, here are screenshots of the old site so that they can live on in infamy.

The homepage (R.I.P):

The portfolio page (R.I.P):

The default post page (R.I.P):

A custom designed post (R.I.P):

In conclusion

New design, writing more, not saying “two-thousand and ten”. Enjoy.