If you are a regular visitor, you might have noticed that the site looks a bit different. I just completed a very intensive site-wide rewrite of all of the pages (excluding the Electronics section, which will be splintered off later this year). The motivation for this was mainly to clean up a lot of my earlier mistakes (future changes will undoubtedly fix my current blunders) and to resize the page width from 1280 to 1024. The new width will be a better fit on lower resolution screens, which there are still an abundance of, apparently.

The page load times should be a bit faster on lower speed connections. I recompressed all of the images to nearly half their original size, without any noticeable degradation in image quality. The header image is now one third the size (in bytes) of the previous one. I also changed the majority of the pages to a two column layout, with just the left sidebar. In all, I feel good about what I’ve done – it looks less cluttered, I think.

One thing I find mildly annoying about some sites is how they are organized – how they are very maze like, a labyrinth that once you go in, you might have trouble finding the information you are looking for or your way out. I assume this is a product of adding content without clearly defining where it should be and how readers are going to get to it (or back out of it). Unfortunately, it’s often the reason why I would not regularly visit a site that has some good material.

There are other sites that are very well laid out and well organized (in my opinion), and I’ve tried to take inspiration from these.

Ok, enough of that, on to some more interesting news. I have a few smaller projects coming up, since I’m still very busy with work and don’t have the time to put into a larger build. These are not “filler”, but real projects that I have been meaning to get to. They have a common trait: they are small enough and easy enough to build in a day or less. The first is tomorrow’s featured article: “Making A Beam Compass”. I got sick of trying to draw circles the stupid way. A new video covering the build will be posted this evening.

Speaking of video, my YouTube channel is closing fast on one million views and should pass this milestone sometime over the weekend or early next week. To be honest, I did not expect to have this number of views at this time. I’m very pleased, to say the least. It’s very good news for the site as well, since the bulk of new traffic is coming from YouTube at this time.

On the home reno front, I’m in the final leg of that journey. I’m giving the basement floor the same treatment as the upstairs, as detailed in this article.
I’m a month (or so) behind schedule, but the end is in sight and as long as I can get it on the market by the end of the summer, I’ll be happy.