Hey readers,

Occasionally I get comments. However I only check my spam-filter not-so-occasionally.

If you leave a comment and are sad it didn’t hit the actual blog pages, it isn’t because I don’t like you - it’s because I am lazy. Email me, DM me on Twitter, whatever it takes. My contact details are at my main page, link in the sidebar as always.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll try to be better!

Chris

Yes, I’ve moved my domain.

Please redirect your links and feed readers.

I am now located at:

http://chrisvanpatten.com/blog/

Feed is at

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cvp

Thank you!
Chris

Over the past few weeks I’ve been mulling over making a few changes to the site. I’ve decided that I will make them. Without further ado:

• Figure out the comment situation. I used to get a ton of comment spam. It isn’t so bad now, but instead I’m starting to get legitimate comments held in my moderation feed! This needs to be fixed, top priority.
• Blog more. I’m not sure how to do this. I like the looks of other blogging systems such as Tumblr and then piping those feeds into this one with some sort of aggregator, but this is ultimately something I have to make myself do.
• Polish the theme. I like this theme, but there is a lot wrong with it. Widgets make it slow to load, it has a few problems with displaying accurate information about posts, and there are stylistic faults as well. I may scrap it, but this is not a short-term issue.

I am also considering moving the domain (again!) to a more personal domain. We’ll see about that…

I love blogging but I sort of fake it. I do half the work necessary and then make excuses for the rest. No more! Summer is here, so it’s time for me to crack down and finish up all the projects that I started. I’m getting out of my funk. No more whining and complaining.

Time to get to work!

Huw recently shared the news that he had been accepted into the Text-Link-Ads publisher program.

Somewhat jealous, I signed up as well, expecting the worse. Surprisingly, I was instantly accepted, no strings attached. I don’t know how I’ll fare - I submitted as an “other” because I actually fit into two primary categories!

We’ll see what happens though, I’m optimistic. Hopefully this will help me produce more top quality stuff over at YouMakeMedia and the Oratos Network, as well as some original content here.

Chris

I finally sat down and executed codename Rosebud, the redesign of my blog.

Rosebud, as film aficionados know, is the name of the sled that Charles Foster Kane owned as a child in Orson Welles’ classic, Citizen Kane. The term has no relevance to this blog other than Citizen Kane is one of the best movies I have seen, and one of the fist words that came to my mind.

The design has six key points (though only four are operational). They are:

• Zooomr photos - Not operational. A stream of the latest photos from my Zooomr account.
• Twitter updates - As a card carrying member of the church of Twitter, I routinely post updates to this addictive site. I decided it made sense to display these updates here.
• Current song (from Last.fm/Audioscrobbler) - Not operational. Since I moved to OS X, I have also started using Last.fm. I do not use it so much for social purposes, though they’re interesting - rather to display my current track across the web.
• Shared Items from Google Reader - I doubt I’ll keep up on this as much as I would like to, as the application I’m using to read Google Reader doesn’t easily allow me to mark items to my shared feed. I will try though.
• Del.icio.us bookmarks - I bought a license for the wonderful Pukka today, because I realized I had so many links I never remembered to write down. I am a fan of del.icio.us, so I hope this will keep my bookmarks in order.
• Blog - First and foremost this site is a blog. Updates, as always, will be sporadic (at best), short and sweet, but most of all boring.

I hope you enjoy my new site design. It is not quite done yet, but I’m working on it.

Let me know any errors you come across…

Chris

Wow, I have a blog.

And people read it.

Neat-o!

——————–

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working on a redesign. This redesign has been awfully slow, however I decided to mock up my idea tonight.

Here’s what I’ve got:

I’m pretty happy with it. Now I need to transform it into a design! (oh I forgot a few feeds, like my Last.fm feed will need to be somewhere on there… oh well)

Now for everyone out there saying “oh my god, so many widgets!”, you would be correct. That was, in fact, my objective. Cram as many widgets as possible into an incredibly small space. I count five major widgets that will show up there (the image does not show two of the widgets, the del.icio.us feed and the last.fm feed). That is what I know of now. In a week or so, I may have a few more crazy ideas lined up to integrate some other crazy things into the design.

Web 2.0 overload ftw.

Chris

sorry about the fugliness at the site, new theme in progress.

cvp