I’ve spent my spare time in the last week and a half working on a new version of my web site. And, here it is! It’s still not totally done, but the core of the site is here and seems to be working pretty well so far.

Just for fun, let’s take a look back at some of the designs I’ve had over the past few years.

The first one was flat and pixelated.

After that, it got a little bit more minimal, and had some odd vertical bars.

Then we had everyone’s favorite WordPress theme.

For the new one, I thought it might be neat to try something kind of similar to the first version. I had actually totally written the software for that version of the site myself — it was called Croton — but it was easily overwhelmed by spam so I moved it over to WordPress. Maybe this is kind of a psychological way of going back to the beginning. Who knows? Anyway, the original idea was this.

Which turned out to be nearly impossible to implement in HTML. So it got modified and refined to the current version.

I still need to finish the archives, search, and change a few links. Next up, I need to get work on the redesign of ericstonge.com. I’m thinking I’ll do something similar to this site, but maybe orange or green instead of red.

Day 11 and counting!

• A cool but actually a little bit depressing video about typography that served as the intro to last year’s Typophile Film Festival.
• Passage is a little bit depressing, too.
• Oktapodi does not look depressing, at least based on the making of video. (But, I haven’t seen it, so it still could be depressing.)

From “Mutations,” by Jorge Luis Borges (The Maker, 1960):

Cross, rope, and arrow: ancient implements on mankind, today reduced, or elevated, to symbols. I do not know why I marvel at them so, when there is nothing on earth that forgetfulness does not fade, memory alter, and when no one knows what sort of image the future may translate it into.

• The child singer at the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremonies was dubbed. The fireworks were also faked for broadcast. But, opening ceremonies have been faked for a while now. The 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics used white sand instead of snow because it looked more like snow on TV. SPOILER: Some things you see on TV are not real.
• The 20 Most Addictive Browser Games. How did I miss 18 of these??
• The 2009 Bubble Calendar is pretty cool, but a little pricey at $50 (via k10k). I think I’d be better off with the $12 Cute Overload Page-A-Day Calendar anyway.