While I Were Out

…rogue web designers did not bust in and redecorate the place, though I wish they had. It seems that we’re not done with the incessant color switching here, but I have the makings of a cunning plan, my lord.

I’m going to go over towards the Mac side, by way of island style. I think.

And now I’m looking at color swatches, and it’s almost as bad as standing at the paint counter at Home Despot again.

We went to our local sushi joint (needs Japanese character set) tonight to get out of the house and away from computers, keyboards, unfinished projects, and plumbing repairs that are just holding the next Ice Age at bay until the guy can come out in more clement weather.

When we walked in, we were surprised to see that they had completely redecorated the place and were in the process of adding new partitions and even some private rooms. There was a lot of soft color and some new art and molding, and suddenly our little storefront sushi joint has taken on a more upscale yet still elegantly casual look.

After eating my share of dragon roll, a Philly roll, some negihama, and an entire spicy salmon roll in this new and improved atmosphere, I realised with a sinking feeling that I was thinking about changing the colors around some more and tinkering with the borders and margins again. I figured David would be bored by Yet Another Conversation About The Damn Blog Already. But we were discussing design aesthetics from the blogging/journaling point of view – specifically the kind of design sense most often found on MT blogging sites, and he surprised me. This is a guy who hasn’t made that many entries in his blog yet, mind you – he said:

“I’m thinking of moving all of my web pages over to Moveable Type and not using Front Page anymore.”

I asked him why he’s gotten interested in doing them in MT when before he simply used Front Page as a quick and dirty (and admittedly butt-ugly) tool to create them. He admits that he likes the simplicity of MT-produced pages. And I think he likes getting under the hood and tinkering around and changing the look and adding plug-ins.

And I, in my technically limited way, do too. And I’m coming around to the Way of the Muted Palette, though probably not all the way to Whitespace/Grayspace-Do. A pure white page on the screens at home and work is hard work to look at for more than a few minutes. Ouch, in fact, typing long entries is hard on the eyes, too.

OKAY, OKAY, OKAY, WE ADMIT IT. UNCLE. AUNT. WHATEVER.

Attention Mac people – we’re Windows people in this household. But the two of us will now grudgingly admit that the Mac-based (or Mac-similar) webpages and blogs that we’ve seen are usually very pleasing to the eye… and now when I see a very busy page with animations and bright colors, I think “gah!”

Don’t get me wrong, we’ll still be flag-carrying slaves of Bill’s evil empire. We’re just going to wave flags in somewhat more tasteful muted colors.

Is that Steve I hear doing the Happy Bum-Wiggle Footy Dance of Mac Rulz, Windoze Drulz? (he’s a Mac guru).

Meanwhile, back in the restaurant, surrounded by the soft colors at the sushi joint, I remembered the similar palette found in fine Hawaiian art and I though “Aha – that might not suck.” So while I finished off the last of the sake and maguro, I completely redesigned the site in my head – and there were of course no problems. It looks great, except that I don’t know exactly what the colors are yet. But it’ll be soft and tropical. Done.

Except for all the multiple rebuilds and hairpulling and restoring from backup, that is.