RetroVetro in English
Finally I’ve redesigned my blog after spending 2 years stuck in a green bottle. I’m no graphic designer, but by surfing the very nice site ffffound.com* for inspiration, and mixing it with a sneaky shoot-from-the-hip photo session I had while slumbering in a park in Bologna last summer, I think I’ve managed to create something that I’ll be able to live with for a while. I’ll be tweaking it some more though.
*Does anyone have a ffffound invitation to spare?
The old Prisma book above gave me the color palette, and I got the style of the pictures from a quilting fabrics shop called Volksfaden. The Volksfaden picture is better viewed in its natural environment where you’ll also find a bunch of other beautiful pictures and fabrics. I have also been quite inspired by a design blog I just discovered by Scott Hansen, ISO50. Any Californian guy who likes The Whitest Boy Alive / Erlend Øye is a friend of mine.
When it comes to the photo I’ve used as an illustration, it’s a part of a series of photos from Bologna where I spied (sorry!) on some cute kids playing in a public park. The footer picture shows how one girl tries to distract the girl in the red (blue) dress, while another one drops an apple on her head. A classic! The original photo was this:
As some may have noticed, I’ve started writing in English now. Hard decision to make, and I actually don’t know if I want to quit writing in Norwegian all together. We’ll see how it goes. The framework for the blog will be in English no matter - I’ve already updated the About page with some delightful lines about myself. The CV page might need some extra work though. As I still will link to Norwegian sites and my own earlier posts, I’ll mark them with an [N] so you’ll now the language is changing. Not the perfect solution, but it’ll do for now.
I know I haven’t been the eager blogger I once was. Now that I’ve kicked that awful bottle out of the sidebar, at least you can follow my life through Twitter (microblogging) if nothing much has happened in the main column. And it won’t until next week, anyway. Tomorrow, I’ll be on my way to Copenhagen for the weekend, leaving my Mac behind, but including my camera and my HappyBook[N].
April 2nd, 2008 at kl. 14:20
Very nice! Nå snakker vi! [N]
April 2nd, 2008 at kl. 14:24
Nice! Very Breivik-ish! Congrats!
April 2nd, 2008 at kl. 14:30
Haha (N)
April 6th, 2008 at kl. 17:29
Friskt.
Jeg funderer over hvordan man kan få fine bilder ved sin kommentar, og det ser ut til at gravatar.com er svaret. De har vist et samarbeid med wordpress, kan det se ut som. I teorien skal jeg nå få en avatar sammen med
dette fingermerketdenne kommentaren.Burde ikke [N] være [No]?
April 6th, 2008 at kl. 18:16
Imagine if my designers would be so daring? Way to go.
April 6th, 2008 at kl. 18:38
Eirik: I was wondering about the avatars too, Eirik. I noticed Janne had figured out how it worked in the previous post. I’ll check out the gravatar.com when I get home. This hotel computer is rather slow, so I have to consider every click carefully :S
Maybe [No] is better… But do you miss the fingerprints? Now that the glass concept is (alsmost) gone, it might be a bit weird keeping the fingerprints…
Claus: I thought I was a designer? At least you’re telling me that all the time ;)
April 7th, 2008 at kl. 18:54
Now I think I have a decent answer for the avatar stuff.
gravatar (globally recognized avatar) is a service that links a picture with a mail account. So when I sign this post with my @uib-account the system (in this case wordpress) looks up my address @gravatar.com. If no match is found, the dull gray default is used (you can change that in your admin dashboard, I think), if a match is found, my image from gravatar.com is used.
The gravatar solution can be implemented on any system, and is just that in the latest wp release. I believe you can do cool stuff from you admin dashboard in wp (in the new version) without dealing with gravatar.com directly. One cool thing that comes to mind (though that has been possible for ever) is to highlight the blog-over (admin/contributer/writher) in the comments. When I think of it, that has nothing at all to do with gravatar..
The [N] vs [NO] issue.
NO is the geekish way of saying norwegian. You could go as far as using [nb_NO] (norsk bokmål Norge) sa there is a special [nn_NO] for nynorsk Norge.
[N] would relate to the country code used on cars, a fear but less geeky reference. [N] could possibly be more confusing than [NO]?
April 7th, 2008 at kl. 20:06
Indeed you are :)
April 7th, 2008 at kl. 22:11
Wohoo! I have my very own gravatar now. Very easy. Thanks for the introduction, Eirik!
April 8th, 2008 at kl. 13:07
I love the new design! Cute dresses on the kids :) :D
Ps: Gratulere med pris på dagsavisen :)
April 8th, 2008 at kl. 13:53
Thanks, Bård. How’s you’re movie doing? I thought the girl would have a regular bike - not a kick bike? Oh well. As long as she gets nice boots and freckles, it’s all good :)
May 5th, 2008 at kl. 13:53
[...] dukket også avatarer opp i kommentarene, uten at noen spurte meg om det først. Dette resulterte i litt forskning i hvordan disse avatarene fungerer (se [...]