On a non-literary note, I did some tidying up on the site, most noticeably in the graphics department. It’s 8-bit time! After listening to some Anamanaguchi I redid the “jd” logo in the corner, jiggered the icons (and the content) on the About page — and made all the images one sprite file. I also streamlined a lot of the code and, using Yslow as a guide, I got my grades from 92-99 out of 100, depending on what page you’re on. I do get interference from the “Share this post” widget, so I may find a replacement or workaround.
Visually, other than the logo, nothing drastic has changed: still no ads, no color palette hemorrhaging, no gradients or reflections or overblown graphics, no distracting piles of WordPress widgets about what my wife ate for breakfast.
The result of all of this is just nice, clean livin’, like a recovered cokehead who wasn’t really a cokehead to begin with. The page loads much faster (I often get under half a second on the generation time that you see in the footer) and is less resource intensive. But sorry folks, I’m still not doing any IE6 optimization — the site is still readable with that “browser”, but not ideal.
Design and usability geekery is done. You can wake up now and read about an interesting new high school curriculum or figure out what’s going on here.
3 Comments
I’m glad someone else listens to 8-bit/chiptunesque music. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to Anamanaguchi, however. Last artists I’ve listened to have been Sabrepulse, Disasterpeace, and NesMetal (however, he’s not necessarily 8-bit; just heavily influenced).
I’m not really too much into the genre. I just somehow got to Ana’s myspace and it was interesting.
Fair enough. It’s definitely not for everyone, but for me, where I remember playing video games with my family more than reading the Bible…it definitely holds a place in my life, whether or not it may be nostalgia.