nykola.com | bothering people since 1981

Addendum (9/29): This site design will be changing soon.

I am happy to officially report that indeed there is a balm in Gilead. Yes; I have confirmed that there is emotional healing available after a nightmarish web fiasco. I feel like I just went through a nasty custody battle. The computer was trying to take my ~~child~~ weblog. Thankfully, in the wee hours of the morning, I won.

The last few days tested the repetoire of my Christian profanity. The number of "hecks, darns, craps and dangits" I've uttered over this past week are too numerous to count. But since my mother might be reading this, I'm going to say only "10 times" okay, geez.

If it wasn't already bad enough that my re-design sent me into literal configuration Hades, Blogger, my now old and defunct publishing platform went all illegitimate child on me and stopped working. To them I officially say good riddance! Don't let the door knob hitcha where the good lord splitcha!

Special thanks to Erica, a reader, Movable Type installer, and receiver of my late night complaining via yahoo instant messager. Erica, There is a special place in blog heaven for you.

About the re-configuration: If it's not abundantly clear, I try not to take myself too seriously and this is the design at which I arrived to convey that point. It'll make do until I "officially" have to grow up, mature and start using geriatric colors like grey, brown, and chartreuse.

I kept the black cartoon chick by popular demand. Now she's not only fashionable, but also "peering" over the edge of political correctness.

Comments are now imbedded. I'm actually a bigger fan of "pop-up" comments, but at 2 o'clock in the morning, you stop being picky. We'll see how much I like it. Comments from my old site are slowly being imported over. There's too much good stuff on there for me to just let it go. I've not abandoned links either. They are getting an overhaul and will be up shortly.

Lastly, as always, please let me know if you experience any difficulties with the site (e.g. slow-loading, strange layout, missing info, etc.).

Fret not. I'm back with a vengeance. New posts in a bit...there is much to talk about. I'm bursting.

Great design, Ambra (tho, i must say, i thot you might do something about that nearly invisible nose on black cartoon chick -- is that too persnickety?). It's clean, great use of whitespace and colours. Well worth the battle. Congrats! Onward...

"The number of "hecks, darns, craps and dangits" I've uttered over this past week are too numerous to count."

That's Cowboy profanity too. Except we also have Dadburnit. Maybe that's the difference, I don't know.

Ambra,
In you spare time :-), if you have control over the following, consider:
1. Reducing width of left side panel.
2. Reducing size and/or remove BOLD of comment
text.
3. Reducing size of COMMENT/TRACKBACK footer
text. Too large compared to post text.

I like your header panel, but a long nose hanging over the post panel would ad an 'attitude' touch. (just kidding). Hope this helps you.

Thank goodness you are up and running again. It was getting a little embarrassing asking random young people at the mall for an opinion, just one opinion, to fill the void :)

Nice work on the redesign... and nice hat.

Ambra, perhaps you should just move up to running hi-test profanity occassionally. On good quality "Damn!" can cover a whole more lot of ground than a million "Darn It!"s. Oh and God knows the intentions behind your words so using milder swears may not count for anything.

Hey congrats on finding someone you can work with.

Okay, lets be serious here.

Love you.

Love the content.

Love the cartoon chick. ( a whole lot!)

Love the commenters. (who also love you--- deserved.)

But every new configuration gets less and less appealing to the eyes. I liked the tan on brown vertical stripes. They were cool. This looks so "I-T" inspired.

I know that in the 2K, pink was the new "black," but for tha '05, this turquoise business is just uglissimo.

Please chuck the colors.
I ain't goin nowhere tho.

And I also LOVE the preview option.

So Byron, how about you tell me what you REALLY think? MMmm hmm.

Well, suffice it say, I get bored very easily so this desing won't be around for eons. If anything, I had to give myself something to work with in order to change publishing platforms.

But anyway, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. At least my weblog doesn't look like pea soup, or even worse, at least it doesn't have some horrible HTML code with stars on the background and blinking links.

Oh, and Byron, one other thing....you said, "every new configuration gets less and less appealing to the eyes"

Now Byron really...there's only been 3 versions and the first one was tiny black writing on a dark blue background. Horrendous on the eyes. I got email complaints monthly.

Aren't we just exaggerating a tad?

Yo what up Ambra. I think the layout is cool and I really like that you kept the little cartoon chick at the top.

It maybe helpful to put an anchor link like this right above your comments. This will help so that every time someone clicks on the comments link they will be taken straight to the comments section of the article.

This is just a little helpful tip to make your site a little more user friendly. Other than that great design and keep up the good writing.

Lookin' pretty. So pretty, in fact, I think I might finally get around to blogrollin' ya. ;)

Oh, and to add to the "repetoire," I find that "nutbunnies," "thundermuffins," and "great quivering iceburgs" also help add a distinct flavor to human/machine discourse.

But that's just me.

Maybe I missed that first configuration.

I didn't mean to hit any nerves, I just don't really like turquouse, and I really liked the stripes.

Oh and on expanding your name-calling vocabulary, I really like "doofus," or the Americanized plural of "doofuses" as opposed to the original Latin plural, "doofi."