Nuts and Bolts

Late in 2007, I decided I needed to refresh the look of Brainwidth, and so commenced planning a redesign. I originally intended to have it up and running by the beginning of 2008, but real life intervened, as it so often does. In any case, I finally have my 2008 redesign of Brainwidth up and running. I still have a bit of tweaking to do and some pages to add, but the design is finished enough to go live.

I am by no means a web design professional, so the new look is not built from scratch. The underlying theme is Tarski, by Ben Eastbaugh and Chris Sternal-Johnson. Much of the visible design has been modified to conform with my idea of a more minimalist look, with clear headings and highlighted links for easy clicking. I have to give credit for my inspiration to Emmet Connolly’s blog, thoughtwax, which is a beautiful example of a clean, writing-focused design.

Hopefully my new design will help me write here more often.  I think a better look will be conducive to more productive blogging.  Here’s to good intentions, anyway!

I picked up a wireless mouse on our shopping run today, after years of dealing with tangled mouse cables. While installing Logitech’s software, I noted that it requires 42 megabytes of hard drive space. In comparison, the first PC I remember having at home was a 10 MHz 386 with a 40 megabyte hard drive.

Okay, so it seems I have WordPress re-installed, and I’ve got a new theme up and running. I still have some features to add and a few minor errors to correct, but I think overall the disaster seems to have passed. Let me know if you run into any bugs.

So, I was attempting to upgrade WordPress and play around with some new themes, and I managed to completely bork my WordPress install. D’oh! So, please excuse the mess while I clean things up.

So this is the post where I apologize for the lack of updates and explain that I’ve been very busy with the baby and the job and clients getting raided by the government, &c., &c. Sorry ’bout that.

Okay, so I lied. Well, I didn’t really lie, because I fully intended to shut this blog down, at least temporarily. Surprisingly, I heard from several people complaining that I was taking the blog down. So it’s back. More importantly, I am also writing Music &c., a place for me to write about and link to music, videos, and other media. I will also try and continue writing here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you; posting may be infrequent and sporadic.

This blog, as it exists now, is about to be shuttered. I haven’t written much recently, and frankly, I don’t anticipate writing much more in a similar vein anytime soon. I originally thought this would be blog focused on law, or maybe food, but I feel like I need to try something new. So, soon I will be replacing the blog with something new. The old blog isn’t disappearing entirely; I am keeping copies of the database and other relevant files, so it may come back some day.

If you have visited this site in the last 48 hours or so, you will have noticed that I have redesigned, yet again. I’ve gone through four or five themes over the last year, but I think this is the first one I’m happy with. The last one wasn’t too bad, but was full of spaghetti code and not good for a beginning tinkerer like me. This theme, called plaintxtBlog and written by Scott Wallick, is aesthetically pleasing, but simple enough that I can add bits here and there without too much trouble. I’m using the FAlbum plugin to display my Flickr pics in the sidebar and to create the album pages, and the del.icio.us linkrolls to integrate my recent bookmarks. I’ll be adding more functionality gradually, so check back.

If you’ve visited the site in the last few days, I’m sure you’ve noticed a drastic overhaul in the design. The main design is finished, but I’ll be implementing other bits and pieces over the next week. If you discover any bugs or you think some important functionality is missing, let me know in the comments.

A number of wikis have been created to aid in the recovery effort and to provide coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath:

* The “Katrina Help Wiki”:http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Main_Page is aggregating information on aid agencies, donations, housing, emergency aid, as well as help needed and help offered.
* The Online Journalism Review at USC has “its own Katrina wiki”:http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/katrina/, aggregating information on news coverage, missing persons, disaster assistance, and background.
* The “New Orleans Post-Katrina Info Wiki”:http://wiki.nola-intel.org/index.php/Main_Page#Audio_Streams is aggregating information on coverage and source-level information, including live feeds from police band and national guard scanner frequencies.

Of course, the big-name wikis have coverage as well:

* “Wikinews”:http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page is providing coverage. I’ve linked to the main page, as there are a number of stories simultaneously being developed there.
* Wikipedia also has several articles:
** “Hurricane Katrina”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
** “Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_New_Orleans
** “Damage to infrastructure by Hurricane Katrina”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_to_infrastructure_by_Hurricane_Katrina
** “Hurricane Katrina effects by region”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_effects_by_region
** “Relief response to Hurricane Katrina”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina
** “Political effects of Hurricane Katrina”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina
** “Economic effects of Hurricane Katrina”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina
** “Predictions of hurricane risk for New Orleans”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_hurricane_risk_for_New_Orleans
** “Funding for hurricane preparedness of New Orleans”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_for_hurricane_preparedness_of_New_Orleans

*Update:* Brendan Loy has started “a wiki to collect Katrina resources”:http://www.brendanloy.com/wiki/katrina/, as well.