A new day, a new theme

So in light of all this crazy COVID-19 shenanigans, we’ve all suddenly got a huge amount of time at home.

Rather than doing things I should probably be doing (like tax, or writing more articles), I decided to try a new theme on my site.

The result of which is…

I’m going for a “I can’t believe it’s not an architectual diagram” kind of theme. You know, boxes, lines, technical things. Not a real architecture diagram of course, but one that describes some sort of computer system. Only this time, it’s just wrapping around the content on my site.

Say, what?

Yeah so maybe it’s not that convincing yet, but I’m still working on it.

Things I’ve learnt (this time)

• Procrastinating by playing with themes is a good way to avoid having to write content
• SVGs are actually pretty cool, I mean just look at the smoothness of this logo:

• You can actually draw pretty good vector art (like that toaster above) using diagram tools like draw.io
• OK, so I think it’s pretty good art for an outsider
• My lack of CSS skills means I’m Googling for every solution, yay
• I’ve gone for menu buttons that actually look like buttons in response to the general loss of good design practice over the years (I’m looking at you, flat designs. Links without underlines. Hidden scrollbars. Buttons that look like text. Yergh where has computer system design gone in the past few decades?!?)
• Not that I’m pretending this site is particularly well-designed, but bring back the button I say!
• Keeping things light and speedy with the nice ‘asset’ and minification features of Hugo is great, but probably has diddly-squat real impact on the SEO performance of my site (refer to point about need to write more content)

Some more bits

Here is a code block

This is a blockquote. Nice!

As for the future?

Well I’m sure I can fix up a few inconsistent lines here and there. Plus I’d like to make it even more diagrammy, but at this stage it as close to looking like a diagram that I’m willing to do.

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