New blog template

Partly because I was bored... partly because it was conflicting with Blogger... partly because it was a good time for change given changes in my life that are unfolding...but whatever it was, I decided to change to a new blog template. The prior theme was a hack of two different ones and I'm going to miss it.

I narrowed it down to a Canadian-oriented theme (Kanata), a fancy-looking one (Stubborn), a clean minimalist one that I loved on first sight (Somewhere There) and a dark one I decided to go with (Night Sky 2.0). I was thinking of using 'Somewhere There' but it requires too much editing of the source code to insert some missing stuff (like menus, heading formats, better blockquotes, etc.)

The one I decided to go with, Night Sky 2.0, doesn't quite fit an investment blog. It's more of an artsy theme—surrealism— yet it sort of fits me and what this blog represents. After all, this blog is very unusual. The way I write, and the topics I cover, are all over the place and I don't write professionally—for instance, you'll notice that I write in first-person and direct challenge individuals or ideas, whereas many other investment blogs are written as a third-person even though there is only one person writing his/her personal views on those blogs.

I'm sure there will be issues that need to be worked out over the next few weeks so if someone notices something, let me know. I also hope that I didn't mess up something (one has to be careful to copy over widgets, menus, etc, when upgrading in Blogger.) Unfortunately, it looks like I lost my comments from the js-kit commenting system I was using (it discontinued a lot of the free features and I was going to leave that at some anyway.)

Some benefits of the new template:
  • Better compatibility with Blogger
  • Slightly wider text area (I write a lot and was looking for a wider template)
  • Blockquote text won't be the eye-piercing gold on red :)
  • Hopefully the page will load faster (there were some conflicts with javascript code that probably made the page slower...I'm not sure though)
  • Better search (I will be using the integrated Google search which, finally, displays a legible title of a post :) )
  • Menu bar near the top (linking to portfolio, watchlist, etc) have been moved to the very top (this is actually a negative change but until I figure out how to insert a custom menu, I'll leave it as is)
I'll still make some changes over the days, hopefully for the better. I am still deciding whether to leave the main black-on-white text or to switch to Kindle-style black-on-grey like I had before. I'm also not sure if I should increase the main font slightly (looks kinda small on high-rest monitors)... hmm... I will probably also make the quotes more legible than now.


I'm going to miss my hovering birds :( Can Turtles Fly as of January 17 2010, before the last update:



Don't forget to vote on the poll at the top-right...

Comments

  1. MrParkerBohnJanuary 19, 2010 at 7:28 AM

    Is there some sort of issue with old comments?
    I consider the comments part of the content on this blog, and it looks like a lot of them are no longer showing up?

    I'm fine with any format, so long as it doesn't get in the way of content (though I will admit I kind of miss the color-scheme of the old layout, but that is probably just what I was used to seeing.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sivaram VJanuary 19, 2010 at 3:00 PM

    The comments looks like they are messed up :( For whatever reason, all the comments after I started using the new upgrade of the 3rd party JS-Kit/Echo commenting system a few months ago seems to have been lost. This is a terrible thing and I personally am looking into seeing if there is a way to bring them back. From what I understand, the comments are supposed to be there but it's not syncing with the Blogger comments.

    Like yourself, I consider the comments very important to the blog. Your comments, as well as several others', were very important. In addition to providing additional insight, they correct some of my mistakes. If I do lose them, it will be a big loss and I apologize in advance. I even wrote up a big response to your Mega Brands post last week and it has dissapeared... but I'm trying to get them back (one of the widgets I use actually sees those missing comments so I'm not sure what's going on.)


    I can see how this colour scheme is not everyone's cup of tea :) I don't think this fits an investment blog but I kind of wanted something weird and different--probably because of how my life is changing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MrParkerBohnJanuary 20, 2010 at 12:52 PM

    Well, I guess do what you can with the comments. Hopefully losing the comments is not also symbolic of changes in your life :P

    I have another issue that I'm just noticing, which is that I can't navigate the comments as I type them. What I mean is that the arrow keys don't work in the comment window, and neither do Ctrl+C, & Ctrl+V. The pointer can still move my cursor here apparently.

    Wow, this means I can't paste in text from an external source... (I typically write any longish post in notepad & paste it in).

    I will check later and see if this problem also occurs from my computer at work, but this seems like a bit of a big deal. Anything that makes it harder to comment is not happy:(

    ReplyDelete
  4. MrParkerBohnJanuary 20, 2010 at 12:58 PM

    Ok, looks like I've found the issue. I seem to be able to navigate and paste properly if I use IE, but not Firefox (my default browser).

    Hopefully this can be fixed, since everbody knows that each comment by a Firefox user is worth 2 comments by an IE user:P

    ReplyDelete
  5. MrParkerBohnJanuary 20, 2010 at 1:08 PM

    Specification: The issue I noticed is with Firefox in XP. I don't know if it would also occur in Vista or Win7, but I figured bug reports should be specific.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sivaram VJanuary 20, 2010 at 2:01 PM

    Thankfully, I retrieved most of the "lost" messages :) But your Firefox issue is surprising to me. I tested it on my machine (Firefox, Windows Vista) and copy&paste doesn't work here either :(

    I'm actually surprised to see that the theme (or any basic webpage) can impact the cliboard functions. I'll see if I can resolve this issue. Like you alluded to, copy&paste is a necessary feature. I'm glad you compose your posts elsewhere before posting them (I still do it in message forms and have lost a few :( ). In the worst case, I can try going back to the 3rd parth Echo message commenting system. I'm still puzzled why the theme messes it up. Stay tuned...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sivaram VJanuary 20, 2010 at 2:05 PM

    Of course, you can take the blue pill--in Matrix lingo--if you choose and join the dark side.

    That means ditching your allegiance to Firefox and joining the evil forces of Internet Explorer ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJanuary 20, 2010 at 2:14 PM

    Test...

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousJanuary 20, 2010 at 2:53 PM

    <span> I went back to Echo... grr... wanted to drop that but not sure how to fix the Firefox copy/paste problem with that... hopefully we are back to where we were before the new theme was installed...</span>

    ReplyDelete

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