I know, you were expecting more. So was I.
In keeping with the May 1st Reboot, I'm relaunching, but the real version 5 is a couple days—or weeks—away. I came up with some ideas about where to take the site's next design that had me really excited. Unfortunately, the real world interfered, and I found myself too busy with other priorities to really get going on this site.
The header (which, by the way, is actually an implementation of the DIR) is symbolic of what's going to be driving the redesign. I started planning it out in my sketch book, it will likely be very influenced by Jakob Nielsen among others, and I'm probably going to consume quite a bit of coffee working on it.
Speaking of coffee, do you have any idea how hard it is to get a good coffee ring stain? Coffee is like brown gold to me, so I almost never spill it, going so far as to use a straw with CoHo cups to make sure I get every last bit—a habit that makes me an object of mocking by Nathan, who is infamous for his coffee-stained, free Blood Drive T-shirts.
Needless to say, I wasn't sure how to actually make a stain. After some thought, I decided to go as authentic as possible, brewing a pot of coffee and pouring myself a cup. I figured the stain comes from placing the cup on a saucer (which I never use), and the coffee in the saucer comes from the teaspoon you stir the coffee with. It was a little painful for me to actually spoon some coffee into the saucer (I was so tempted to lick it off). After putting the cup down on the paper, I was disappointed by the result…it looked too faint. So I tried again, this down pressing down a little to really get it to soak in. And what resulted is what you see above.
My work schedule was cleared up significantly from the marathon that was this past week, so hopefully you'll see the real version 5 shortly.
Glad to see you're up and running again, and if I would have known how much Nielsen was going to influence your redesign I may have ignored the "don't buy this for me" tag on your wish list :p
When I saw that you were doing the May 1st Reboot, I wanted to do the same but I knew I couldn't finish the redesign so I chose not to.
Anyway, good to see you back again. :)
mmmm......coffee....a cup a day keeps the sleep away.....
(I know in the case of Al or Nathan it's a lot more, but it would have sounded worse)