Ok, so these past few blog posts have really opened up my eyes to how bad my design for this site is. Something about the look, just screams “ewww.” Not exactly sure what it is, but it’s certainly visible. I’ve never been very good at design, but this is simply… boring. Not what I intended.

When I started this current version, I was really enamored with Dan Cederholm and Jason Santa Maria’s web pages. And you can certainly see inspiration from both of those sites in my version. The Georgia font and sidebar titles are almost direct replicas of Jason’s prior version. The header is a sad knock off of Dan’s Simplebits. The problem though, is that both of those guys are talented. They’re spectacular designers. So when I try to emulate them without blatantly stealing (which I kind of did), it looks horrible. Also, it’s darker than I wanted.

Since Ficlets is down, I decided to go ahead and start looking at the design of my blog again. I hit up Khoi Vin’s blog because I know he has a cool link section to a ton of great designer’s pages and started looking around for inspiration. I visit many of the sites he links to every once in a while, just to see what sort of cool stuff talented folks are up to, so I’ve seen much of the design that’s out there. But a few guys have gone through changes recently, like Jason Santa Maria (whose new design is very sweet) and Shaun Inman. And while those sites are cool, I’m looking for something with a little more… color, I guess.

I happened upon Dan Rubin’s SuperfluousBanter, which I had seen before, but really inspired me to go for something different. You can see how colorful it is, without being gaudy. I think that’s an incredible feat. I really like his use of color in the sidebar links, and the way he sticks to a single base color and gets so much out of it. It’s really quite nice looking.

Now, I’m not going to rip his site exactly, but I think he’s helped push me in a new direction, away from the monotone white, grey, and black of this site. Sure there’s a little red and blue thrown in, but it’s not quite enough. So, as of tonight, I’m going to start on a new WordPress template for the site, and I’m hoping that I can accomplish what I want using WordPress without having to resort to coding the whole thing in django or Ruby on Rails considering I don’t know either of those languages. I’m fairly proficient in PHP, so sticking with WP is really in my best interest at this point.

For the next week or so, you may the template for this page switch over to Kubrick or an in-progress version of MutedSound 2.0. And yes, I do realize that I’m talking to myself as there’s not many people who actually come here (none on a daily basis). Though, a couple friends from Ficlets do seem to stop by on occasion (Kwatz even added me to his blogroll, how awesome is that?).

Apparently the comments aren’t working properly.

I hastily threw this thing together thinking that if it were up, I might actually post something worthwhile. As anyone can plainly see, that did not happen. Yet, in my haste, I didn’t actually test the comments. So now, even if someone does comment (why would they?), it won’t show up.

Looks like I’ve got some work to do tonight. Maybe I’ll even work on putting up that one post about why I hate John McCain so much.

I promise to talk about something new soon, but who cares since nobody is reading this anyway.

As of last night, my ficlet Pink Cigarette is the second most popular ficlet on ficlets.com with over 460 views. Yesterday afternoon it only had around 70 views, so something drastic happened but I haven’t the faintest clue as to what. I wish I knew because knowing that hundreds of people are reading my story is exciting. Especially considering all of the comments and ratings have been positive. I would love for the same thing to happen with a few of my other stories that I’m particularly proud of.

If anyone makes it here from my profile link there, please accept my most humble thanks for taking time out of your day to read one of my stories. I’m sorry that there isn’t more here at the moment, but there definitely will be within a few more months. Feel free to come back at some point. If you liked any of my ficlets, there’s a definite chance that you’ll enjoy something else that I create and post somewhere on this series of tubes.

Well, I finally got the website somewhat presentable, so I’m going to try and actually start using this thing now. It will be pretty bare bones until I find some time to write something interesting.

One thing I can post about now is something I read about on Wil Wheaton’s Blog. As he is prone to do, he blogged about writing. This particular post extolled the writing of Ficlets, more specifically writing a prequel to a ficlet. Ficlets are short stories told in no more than 1024 characters. The exciting part, as Wil mentions, is the fact that users are encouraged to not only create their own tiny stories, but to write prequels and sequels to other users existing stories.

I thought the idea sounded like tremendous fun and a great way to try and get back into the swing of actually putting words together in a coherent manner. Thus far I have had mixed results, but have had tons of fun in the process. My current Ficlets are:

• No More Tequila For Me (first attempt)
• Bob Should Move (hopefully a full series)
• Sorry (someone even wrote a prequel)

My other two Ficlets are sequels to a story that was originally created by Ridcully Calvert called A New Job. Steve Fairweather (the nice man who wrote a prequel to Sorry), took the story in a whole new interesting direction with The Same Old Life. I had a tremendous amount of fun running with that and creating Paying The Price, which Ridcully followed up with the amazing A Mysterious Package that totally changed the dynamic I was going for. This is exactly what makes this whole process exciting and a useful learning experience. I created a scene that I had anticipated going in one direction, but someone else took it someplace completely different. So far the latest installment is Sending A Message, a Ficlet I created today.

I haven’t had this much fun writing in a very long time. I find myself checking Ficlets.com every so often just to see where this little story we created goes, while keeping ideas for new stories in the back of my head. Hopefully this will help me become a better writer; even if it doesn’t, I couldn’t think of a more fun way to try. Do yourself a favor, and sign up with an account and tell your own little micro story in 1024 characters or less.

If you want to keep up with the stories I currently have running, here’s my profile. I’m going to try and figure out a way to keep a feed of my stories on my Portfolio page here. When I find time to pull myself away from writing that is.

Update: My ficlet feed is now automatically updated on my Portfolio page. Awesome!

This post is simply here as a placeholder. I just moved servers (finally), and am now going to try and actually finish this darn site that I’ve been effectively working on since 1995 with limited success. 13 years to launch a site is beyond procrastination. Although technically it has existed in many different forms and states of completion since I started putting my wanna-be The Spot clone with mental patients up on GeoCities, it’s never been fully realized into something I could actually just start typing things into.

I also need to move my mom’s site over to this new server at some point. Hopefully I’ll get that done soon as well.