Thoughts.

With the zone coverage all but finished (last post I’ve written due Thursday), I’m back to the usual un(/less)-planned writing. Had a handful of other thoughts pop up over the past month and a half, so I’m not starving for information by any means…but if you have any suggestions or desires for anything you’d like me to write about, hit me up.

I’m always open to guest posting too, so if you have an idea to share but don’t have your own blog, let me know.

The poll results are in and I’ll be working to change the banner back. In the meantime I’ve started with some smaller stuff; would love feedback on what’s been done and what’s to come.

Changes made:

• Changed the favicon. Since layout guy is on the outs, he’s off the favicon too–I kinda prefer the new one, anyways.

• Made the “related posts” widget collapseable (default collapsed). Eventually hoping to figure out how to get the arrow used in the drop-down on the archive widget to work there.

In the Works:

• New site banner. Or rather, bringing back the old one. The picture size doesn’t jive as well with the wider layout, and the template needs a little jiggering before it’ll play nice with the top bar. The main issue is creative (figuring out how to display the picture such that it still looks good); the technical stuff will fall into place pretty easily once I get the banner set. (To that end, any enterprising creatives out there are more than welcome to re-work the banner…you can find the original image I used here).

• Re-working category navigation. I’d like to make the top bar be an easy-access way to get at categories here, drop-down menu style, but to do that I need to a)re-categorize for ease of use–the full list is far too long and b) do the programming/find the code elsewhere on the ‘nets. The former is what I’ll be working on next; the latter will take a little while/work.
• Paged Navigation at bottom. Nobody uses the “older/newer/home” links at the bottom of a given page I think. Another one where I need to dig up the code on the ‘net. Plenty of resources, just takes some time to integrate.

Given the lack of feedback I’ve gotten so far I figured I’d make it easy and throw up a survey for the next week.

I can revert back to the old template pretty easily; this one just gives me a little more flexibility (and I think it looks better overall).

A simple “yea” (keep this) or “nay” (change back) will suffice. If you have other comments or thoughts say so: I added an option if you like the look but want the old logo back, too.

Keep in mind things like the collapseable widgets are things I would put into effect in the old template if I reverted; this is purely an aesthetic choice.

(Hat Tip to The Cultimate Opinion for the poll inspiration.)

Been on a productive kick the past few days, redesigning this piece of internet real estate…got a site overhaul in the works–creating a new blogger template (well, making significant alterations to an existing one) is trying my limited knowledge of HTML and java (insofar as CSS resembles the two–which it does), but the creative process behind it is really rewarding.

Anyhow, I’ve officially gotten far enough along that I’m ok with trying it on the main site: would appreciate any feedback, broken links, etc. Content should all be intact; navigation might be a little fuzzy at first.

The changes for now are largely aesthetic, but long-term this structure should allow me to have one site for any blogging I do (and still keep them discrete). That’s the hope, anyways, still got a lot of work to do to that end…

It’ll take me a little while from this posting for a full transition, depending on how long blogger takes to update the template, so bear with me.

UPDATE: That should more or less cover what I’ve got so far. A little bit of housework to do still but tell me what you think, via email or comments, if you’re so inclined. Color scheme? Is the icon up top tacky? I’m open to suggestion.

Planning to re-work the labels in the near future to make the content a little more accessible; would love suggestions there too.

I updated the last couple zone posts–some minor edits for clarity (likely more to come down the road as my the occam’s razor of my mind becomes sharper with distance from writing–brevity is a battle), but more importantly I colorized a bit, trying to draw more attention to the important parts of the setup and trap, as well as make them a little more readable (particularly for skimming, since the posts are so long).

Thanks to Force Flick for the inspiration. Would appreciate some thoughts as to how you think it works–I’ll likely continue to incorporate/refine it unless it’s too distracting/not helpful. Would other colors work better?

UPDATE: Made a few more changes–a little housekeeping with the code…also made a couple changes to the sidebar.

First, you’ll note individual post pages now will have a “related posts” widget in the sidebar–had something like this before but it broke. Should hopefully aid navigation a bit more.

Secondly, in that vein, I re-worked the label list into a label “cloud,” as I have so many that it’s hard to sift them at a glance.

Finally, got rid of the followers widget. It was nice when it was unobtrusive but then google started pimping their friend connect system and it was too much.

Will probably be making more minor tweaks to the coding and layout going forwards–lots of resources to use out there for somebody with a little coding experience like myself.

It’s getting to that point in the season where teams really start to hammer out their zone D sets (and correspondingly ramp up their zone O), so in that spirit, I’m going to tackle the zone issue this month.

Here’s what I’m planning, in a very general sense (I’ve only got a general trajectory right now–filling in the details over the next day or two):

1. Several posts dedicated to various zone D sets (including 1-3-3, 3-2-2, junk (clam) sets, transition zones, and maybe another odd set or two): general overview of strategy, pros, cons
2. A few posts dedicated to various zone O sets, touching on general strategy/goals and roles
3. More posts thereafter from more of a personal development standpoint (i.e., what a good zone cutter needs, what a good zone handler needs)

This will, in all likelihood, run into April, depending on how much content I write. Let’s call it a seasonal focus, perhaps, rather than a monthly one?

In the meantime I want to hear from you about what you’d like me to see tackled. Have information you want to contribute on a given topic (esp. zone sets I haven’t mentioned above and have little expertise on)?

Also, anyone have good recommendations for making diagrams/schematics? Zone is a topic that absolutely begs to be diagrammed. Otherwise I’ll probably default to my MS paint ways…

Shoot me an email or leave a comment.

Also, this is the blog’s 251st post. That’s far too many words I’ve written.

Just a couple notes on some housekeeping I did around here (if I can’t play ultimate proper, I’ll at least play with my ultimate-related blog):

• Swapped out the BananaCut widget for a simple RSS feed. Had gotten complaints a while back that the widget caused slowdown; this is a simple solution (though it maxes out at five articles).
• UPDATE:Just added a link at the top of the sidebar to all the “Overview” linking I did in December. Should hopefully be obvious to any newcomers and make the site a bit more accessible as a resource.
• Changed my “More Thoughts” links on the main blog page from a java-based insertion on the page to a simple link to the post page. Yes, this is an effort to increase the number of page views I get. No, I’m not planning to host ads on this site (by the way, did you know firefox with adblock plus will get rid of any and all ads on the internet?). It’s because…
• I’m looking for more feedback from you. Trying to get data on page views for a per-article basis (previously I’d only see what articles were being linked to by other people, not so much what you’re reading) is a simple way to do it; the other you’ll see below every post I make.

  If you read a post and think, “I want Mackey to write more on this topic,” click the corresponding radio button at the bottom of the post. If you think “I don’t really care to hear Mackey write about this,” click the other one. Quick, anonymous, easy? It’d be cool if you RSS folk would click through and click a button too if something really tickles your fancy.

  Originally wanted to add more options but iframes apparently don’t play nice with blogger (even though it’s their tool!) so we’re keeping it simple for now. Anyone with programming expertise that might care to chime in here, feel free.

And of course, leave comments! I’m always open to e-mail. I’ve gotten a few suggestions to tackle the zone question, and that’s been stewing for a while…would love to hear any other ideas, too.

Or was, if you live on the other side of the int’l date line like me.

In related news, if you ever get the chance to eat Okonomiyaki, do so. The sauce alone makes it entirely worthwhile.