genzaichi

Welcome to the genzaichi/you are here edition.

現在地 【げんざいち】 (n) present location; current location; “you are here” (on map)Jim Breen

It’s that “present location” bit that’s been resonating with me since those 29 walks in 2006 and taking a closer look at the locale maps at the Yamanote stations.

Beyond a physical existence, being present in a location also suggests to me being alert to what is going on there. ‘Nuff said.

I’ve already talked a bit about why I felt it was time for a re-design, so this is what we’ve arrived at:

Blog

Shifted to centre-stage. This is where most of the content is; this is where you get a more accurate picture of who I am and what I’m about.

The feed address is www.npugh.co.uk/feed/

Comments

A year and a half out of graduation and feeling the bite of lack of critical exchange. Commenting on this site is possibly long overdue. Let’s find out…

Mailing list

I hereby pledge to use it more often. (Not too much though.) Get yourself signed up if you’re not already.

That profile page.

The very idea of pinning things down in print makes me cringe, but I can’t read this one so that’s not so bad. Thank you to all the blind monk contributors.

Current Projects

That’s what those blocks on the left hand side are: the main things I’m working on at the moment. Sort of. Not all of it. Consider them edited highlights.

So, what do you think? Let’s inaugurate that comment form with some feedback on the new design: any questions? what do you think about the approach? what doesn’t work on your browser? any ideas on how to tune fonts in sIFR?

time for a change

(Again.)

Prompted by several things (not least of which was the opportunity of being able to observe someone else using it on someone else’s equipment – there’s nothing like seeing your shortcomings projected onto a large screen!) this site is due for another overhaul.

Significant chunks of the last few weekends have been spent re-coding the page templates from the ground up and then, whaddyaknow, WordPress announces another release due for tomorrow! Hey ho.

I’ve mostly finished the new site, however that means I’m now up against The 10% Wall. You know the one: where the last 10% of the work manages to take up 90% of the total time. Sigh. Perhaps time to back off a bit and then come back to it with fresh eyes later…

What I thought I’d do in the meantime was to put some thoughts down here just as a way of keeping the juices going.

Here’s a quick teaser-screenshot of the forthcoming Genzaichi Edition:

As you can see I’ve gone back to the light background and white-space of previous incarnations. Also a return to the sort of flat graphic style that I seem to gravitate naturally towards. In fact, there’s really not a lot of obvious decoration in this one at all. Probably why I’m having to spend so much time tweeking the little details…

The other big change is more functional: I’ve decided to give commenting another go.

After bad experiences with spam on the weatherproject site, over the past few years I have avoided giving other people the ability to leave comments on posts. The tide is changing though. I’m assuming WordPress now has better inbuilt protection against spam, but I also see the people around me becoming more au fait with blogs and the idea of commenting on other people’s sites.

Add to this the recent announcement of the upcoming closure of Midwest (strange how the fora have just sort of died off), and really positive experiences of utilising blog commenting to help drive collaborative projects, I’ve decided to give it another go. If it all goes to pot I can always disable the function, but I hope it won’t come to that.

Of course, the other thing to consider is that there might just be a horrible silence…

What else can I say? JavaScript libraries, sIFR and IE are nearly playing together nicely. All I’ve really got to do is wait for some blind monks to get back to me…

[I’ve run out of steam now. Can you tell? Perhaps I should just go back and have another look at the line heights…]