I’ve been working on a new design for The Geekorium. I’m constantly revising and trying to get it looking right, and I’ve previously made my own themes, but I’ve never been particularly happy with them. The problem with creating a design for yourself is it’s far easier to distil the essence of someone else into a few key elements based on what you perceive as their strong and sellable points, but far more difficult to do it to yourself. So the themes I’ve created have not really been “me”.

Well I’m trying again.

I’m happy about where this one is going. I’m still in the design stage, so it’s probably going to change a lot, but I’m proud of the work so far and I thought I’d share the direction I’m going with it and ask for some feedback. Normally my feedback process on my personal site design is to ask my wife, but I want to widen my base and get an idea from some of the people who read it. I realise I’m not giving you much to go on, but I’d love some off-the-top-of-your-head thoughts.

A sneaky peak

So what do you think?

Creative Commons Configurator
Adds a Creative Commons license to your blog pages and feeds. Also, provides some Template Tagsconfiguration panel.George Notaras

I’ve used this plugin here and elsewhere to add a Creative Commons licence to the items I publish. Publishing something as Creative Commons means you still retain full copyright to the material, but gives others permission to use portions (or all) of your work on their own sites as long as they meet your guidelines. The choices can be a combination of the following:

• Attribution — the person who uses your content must link back to you.
• Non-commercial — the work they do must not be used for commercial gain.
• Share Alike — the work they make must also be put under a Creative Commons licence with the same terms.

The nature of the web is to share and republish things you find interesting and useful and to add your own take on it. By making my writing CC licensed, people can share what I write without fear of copyright claims (as long as they agree to my terms). I in turn other people’s CC licensed photos in a lot of my posts. CC helps to make the web richer and more useful by opening up things that might otherwise be locked away on their own sites.

If you don’t plan to sell your work or make money off it, or feel like contributing to your community in some way consider putting your work under a Creative Commons licence.

I DIDN’T KNOW MY SISTER WAS A BLOGGER THEN I FOUND OUT THAT SHE IS AND SHE DID A POST ON CREATIVE COMMONS AND PUBLISHED IT BEFORE I DID AND MY MIND IS BLOWN SO I’M LINKING TO HER POST ON CREATIVE COMMONS SO YOU CAN GET MORE INFORMATION IF YOU’D LIKE TO READ IT SHE STUDIES COMMUNICATIONS AND SHIT SO SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE’S TALKING ABOUT AND SHE HAS A TWEETER ACCOUNT TOO. HOLY CRAP.

Due to me not using Twitter any more, I can’t just retweet this, so I’m blogging it instead. Overkill: yes; necessary: yes.

I used Twitter for a while there and got quite into it. Then I got annoyed with it and stopped using it a bit, then came back, then left, then… you get the idea. Eventually I officially left. I’ve also been trying out pretty much every other social site out there and other than Facebook (which I use primarily because most of my family do), I haven’t found one I like.

The Cat of Apathy by KateMonkey.

Here are the things that would get me back into it. Pretty much only one of these things need to happen for it to get me moving back.

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