Reboot? No, I'd Call It Facelift

Today is a happy day in elanland. Thanks to amazing design work of Patrick Craig, elan3 now has a brand spanking new design, and a whole new attitude. I can't say enough about how happy I am with the new look and feel, and it has really granted me an opportunity to re-evaluate my markup, and take a step in a more professional direction with the site. You can't be a winner without a winning attitude, right? Well you can't have a great site without a great design.

I've got a lot of ideas on more ways I can expand the site, and I've come to embrace this little sandbox as my professional outlet and showcase of my work. I realize now that I need to write. I need to write a lot. It's important not only to hopefully spread new ideas to others, but also for me to process new concepts that I'm grappling with, and to get feedback on topics I could be way off-base with. I see it all the time on even the random technical rants I go off of in more recent postings. Peers and colleagues comment with different perspectives, and it forces me to think twice before making certain decisions.

Showcasing projects I have worked on is another important item I should be doing on my site, and haven't been. When I did my second cycle of elan3 back in 2004, I wrote all kinds of copy about the projects I was working on, even if nobody ever read them and could never view the finished product. I would like very much to have all of that copy back, if for nothing else, to be able to recall in more detail what I put into those projects. It would be nice in years to come to have a more historical view of my work.

Lastly, I want to build a good, clean RSS new aggregator. I've wanted a very custom, personalized one for some time now, and I miss the one I had from the 2005/2006 cycle of elan3. I want to make it cool and highly usable, and then who knows? Maybe I could open-source it.

At any rate, that is my vision and I'm sticking to it. I hope you enjoy the new design, and if I forgot you on the wire page, please make sure to drop me a line and let me know. Enjoy!