This morning I got up and looked at the site and suddenly everything just “clicked.” I’d been meaning to clean some things up for a little while now without success. Today, I figured it out.

I’d long known that the major traffic draws for the site have been the cross stitch projects I began posting last winter. I always expected that they would be. It wasn’t until recently that I realized just how badly a blog structured site is for displaying such works. Remember, way back in the “wild west” days of the Internets when there used to be static content? Stuff that didn’t just get filed away in long archive lists? I did, and I thought it might be worth trying to emulate such antiquated sites.

So, I put them up front, moved them to a new section, and plan to keep on building from there. Yes, I know that the structure is still very “blog.” I’m trying to think of a better way to put that section together.

I’m going to be putting the rest of them up over time, roughly in the order in which they were created. I’ve started with the moblin.

Despite making little or no inroads into encouraging cycling — to the best of my knowledge — Richmond has proven herself rather amenable to a bicycle based commute. Many of the streets in The Fan are quite pleasantly wide enough to allow a cyclist ample space apart from traffic. Speed limits, tempered by abundant stop signs, are low. A great majority of the drivers on the road are mindful of cyclist’s rights.

I have, however, experienced a number of close calls. Many of these were squarely my fault and I accept all responsibility for them. A few were solely the fault of selfish drivers to whom I have angrily displayed my middle finger. While surely not the best tactic to foster good will towards the operators of two-ton crushing machines, this act did provide some solace.

I have been yelled at once, by an older fellow as I squeezed past a line of cars awaiting a left-turner. I was in the parking lane quite content to maintain momentum through a green light when this asshat decided he needed to move directly into my path to skirt around the turning automobile. Despite inconveniencing him for no more than a second or two he felt the need to shout something at me. I only caught the word “idiot” as the rest was utter gibberish.

A jerkwad towing a trailer forced me off the road in a turn. Unmindful of the swath of space his trailer occupied he whipped about the curve at full speed. I narrowly avoided being sideswiped into the dirt.

Just the other day a woman at a stop sign decided I mattered less than any oncoming motorized vehicle and turned directly into me. Or would have, had I not come to a screeching halt in the center of the intersection. I would point out that I had no such stop sign to contend with.

Yet, apart from these few incidents my commute has been pleasant. I catch more admiring glances than angry glares, or so it seems to me. Were the heat not so oppressive of late I would have nothing to complain about.

You may notice a few awkward changes around here. I’m in the midst of a redesign with very little inspiration to guide me. I decided to go ahead and cut clean my script.aculo.us usage that I might use the lighter mootools instead. Not knowing what to do with the content that once got served as JavaScript menus I set them free along the side. I’m none too pleased with the outcome, but will make efforts to repair it shortly.

Hi. I’m not dead.

For the past few weeks, having totally recovered from my surgery, I’ve been slacking off on my online duties. That’s not to say that I haven’t been away from the PowerBook. I’ve been working — very slowly — on a redesign for my friend’s label Bop Tart Records and hitting my head against a wall on the design. I know what I want to do. I know that I want to use mootools to do it. I just don’t know how to get there.

So my routine has been to load up the mootools docs, the mootorial, and TextMate and bang away at a few things that never quite come together. I know I need to just get the basic functionality in place and then worry about the style elements but it’s difficult to be inspired by ugliness. So, I just give up after a few hours and pledge to try harder later.

I also need to change this site from the prototype and script.aculo.us setup I’d put in place to mootools. Unobtrusiveness is particularly needed. I just. . . keep slacking off. I want to make progress on the label before doing too much to my own site.

For you, gentle readers, I will make every effort to do just that. My apologies.