Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Change is coming

For those of you who were curious about more photos of our trip to Australia, you can try going here. I've been ignoring Flickr for most of the past year. Part of it was that loading photos the site always seemed so slow. And I guess with that surging popularity of Facebook for putting up photos, it made more sense to use that.

But two things happened. Unless I'm mistaken, Flickr is using a new uploading program, which makes things a lot easier. And secondly, Cathy and I have different sets of friends. That means we'd realistically have to upload the photos twice. Which is a pain in the ass at the best of time given northern internet speeds, but with caps to take into account, well, it just seemed easier to put it on Flickr and tell people to go there.

Not all the photos are up yet, but I'd say about 90 per cent of them are. The only ones not up yet are some of the interior of the Sydney Opera House and some night shots of the opera house and the bridge.

I may bring back the Flickr badge, just to make it easier to find the photos in the future. Actually, I'm going to have to do some tweaking to the blog in the next week or so. Aside from the Flickr badge, I need to change the header on top (the walruses need to go back to modelling for me again) and I also have to face a small quandary. I now have enough former Nunavut bloggers who have moved elsewhere that I want to keep track of. But since they're no longer Nunavut bloggers, what do I do with them on the sidebar? I'll figure something out.

I also want to put up a dedicated link to my most read post, by a mile, which is the Moving to Iqaluit FAQ. I also need to update that post with some new information I think. And I need to do all of that without making the sidebar too cluttered.

I really need someone to design me a website one of these days, like Megan has. Anyway, some changes will be coming in the next week or so. After all, I have some time on my hands.

In the meantime, I hope you like the Australia pictures.

Last Five
1. Evening gown - Mick Jagger
2. Negative attitude - Lloyd Cole
3. Real love - Regina Spektor*
4. You have placed a chill in my heart - Eurythmics
5. Happy - Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins

2 comments:

Megan said...

Shauna really is awesome. She has a gallery of recent designs: you could poke around and try to get a sense for what you like.

It took me a while to figure out what my site's actually about. After that, the general look came together pretty quickly.

Megan said...

OK, I've spent some time considering your design as opposed to shamelessly whoring my designer out.

I really like your change-em-up headers. They are a neat way to show what you're doing from month to month. I also like the dark text on a light background.

The sidebar is way too crowded: although I confess that I am very fond of the mascot, you have way too many links and gizmos.

I bet a lot of the stuff about the north could be moved onto the "Moving to Iqaluit FAQ" page. The Twitter widget and Cultists could go onto an About Me page.

Blogrolls are tough. You've got several of them. I wouldn't get rid of them entirely, though: I found several of my favourite bloggers on your sidebar. I set my blogroll up in Google Reader so it refreshes with the newest posts I think people will be interested in, but it's a long way from being a perfect solution. I'm not sure how much use they get, anyway. I use my reader more than links from websites.

As for the non-northern blogs, I think you have to decide what the purpose of the blogroll is. Is it to direct people to northern bloggers, or to direct people to blogs you think they'll like? Maybe the list of northern bloggers could go on the "Moving to Iqaluit" page, now that I think of it.

I wonder if you could put some things in tabs or drop-down menus. It shouldn't be hard.

Meandering Michael just switched up his template. He might be able to recommend something in Blogger that would be perfect (and free!). I haven't been on Blogger in a while, but I know there are a ton of free templates.