Today was greeted with some rather unwelcome news: the loss of a longtime friend of mine to suicide. Instead of moping around the house and getting drunk I decided to keep myself preoccupied. I find that putting something like that in the back of my mind and doing something else helps tremendously.

But that’s not what this post is about. I present to you, dear reader, a new design for this tumblr blog. You’ll notice some of the posts immediately below this were posted over a year ago. I had originally planned for this blog to be a temporary fix so I could post things while working on a more proper ExpressionEngine powered blog.

Well, after having built that blog, torn it down, and designing half a dozen revamps (and never launching any of them) I thought that I would power through a day of design and code and get this old stand by going again.

I discovered that while I had my ExpressionEngine blog I posted less frequently and with less enthusiasm. I put the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the complexity of running an ExpressionEngine blog. To be quite honest, for my simple needs it was way too much power.

So here I am back on Tumblr, ready to rock with a refreshed look and a renewed dedication to writing and posting all the crap that comes across my browser. Hopefully you’ll find some of it worth while.

For now, this design is a huge work in progress. What you see now was done in a single day. It is by no means complete and not quite as tight as I would generally prefer, but in the interest of getting going here it is.

Update: I should note that this is looking better right now in Safari (or similar Webkit browsers) rather than in Firefox. There is some odd spacing issues with the typography in Firefox that I’ll need to take a look at. But for now, sleep.

staff:

Now testing: Pages

You can now add static pages to your blog, with a few very useful options. Head to your blog’s Customize page and click the “Pages” menu to get started. There are currently three types of Pages you can create:

• Standard Layout. Create a simple page with a title and body using your current theme.
• Custom Layout. Create a page with a completely separate layout.
• Redirect. Forward a route to a page on another domain. Useful for maintaining links when moving your domain name over to Tumblr.

Developers: Check out the Theme Docs for instructions on implementing the new {block:Pages} tag.

I’ve found that moving to tumblr has far more positives than negatives. Like Cameron says there are definite trade-offs. I still see Tumblr as being relatively undeveloped for those of us who demand more control. That said, the ease to get going with content far outweighs the loss in executive control.

A premium tumblr theme by Meagan Fisher. Avast!

This journal uses Tumblr, and I love it, so I accept their apology and wish them luck with scaling their excellent service.