The Severed Cortex

Hope you like the new look to the site. If you don't see a significant difference from what it looked like before then your browser is holding something in the cache. Hit refresh and if that doesn't work, clear out your browser cache. I have to say I'm not overly satisfied with it, but it does look a lot better than the plain old vanilla one. I think the biggest thing I did, other than the giant moon jelly background, was change it from 800x600 to 1280x768. If you're an 800x600 person I suggest you buy a bigger monitor the next time you're out at the store buying Geritol.
Although it may appear like I might know what I'm doing, I didn't necessarily do this the right way. I sort of faked it. The right way would be to make a whole theme and build all the PHP files to write the DHTML out exactly like you would want it so you take advantage of what things to show and in what order. I was lazy and didn't change any PHP. I just used whatever the custom theme PHP files gives me. There were only a couple of instances where I wish I had some control, but I made due. Yes, I know I'm talking dweeb stuff here.

I struggled for the longest time with the design. I wanted to do something using pictures I had already taken and my first crack at it was a slice of a pic of me on the PCH with the Bixby Bridge in the background. Almost no Photoshop (or in my case Fireworks) was used on it other than to clean it up a bit. It really is me standing there with the Pacific in the background and the Bixby Bridge in the distance. I also had another picture of the bridge itself that I was going to use, but once I dropped it in I realized the difficulty of finding a text color that would be easily readable sitting on top of a multi-hued picture. I decided to look through more old digital pics for something more monochromatic and I ran across this giant moon jelly. The original picture had sort of a red tint to it so I countered that by taking out all the color and brightness. Then I changed the now white moon jelly to a transparent background. I fuzzed it up a little to give it sort of an ethereal quality. You know, like brain mush on pavement if it's been squashed under a car tire. On a hot day with flies.

... anyway ...

It at least gave me enough mostly black and white that I was able to find a text color that would show up. I originally was going to go with a whole ocean theme of color, but it didn't seem to work out quite right. I settled instead on using good old Light Steel Blue as a base and then built some complementary colors around that. Most of the text colors seem to be fine against the background. It ain't perfect though because sometimes the #a0c0e0 doesn't read well against the transparent background. That could be me. Maybe you guys can see it fine.

... and once again, talking dweeb.

Just so you know, I tried to suggest fonts in the CSS, but it's really up to how you have your individual browser settings. I know I sound like a suburban soccer mom when I say I like Comic Sans MS, but I really do like Comic Sans MS. And Pilates. I think the site looks looks pretty decent using that font. Tahoma also looks nice and if you have to, Arial Narrow will work well enough that it won't offend me if you use it. I catch you viewing it in Bookman Old Style and I will hunt you down if it's the last thing I do.

Oh ... and I changed the little flag that shows up on every post. By default it's the country your blog is hosted from, but I changed the flag file to be a jolly roger instead. Why? Because I have an eyepatch, a peg leg, a parrot, scurvy, and my favorite instrument is the guitarrrrrrr.