Unabashed

The site’s wearin new clothes; if you’re a regular visitor I guess you noticed. It’s curious; there are about a hundred million themes on the internet but it’s damn hard to find one I like. But I like this one well enough, so. In case you’re wondering or love it so much you’ve got to go get it for your own site, the theme is called “Mortgages.” I found it on the wordpress.org website.

This change is coming about, as with most changes, because I’m tired of that tired old theme I was using. And besides that, I have a feeling the blogosphere is about to change again. I think people have gotten so used to having sidebars filled with Categories and Blogrolls and Archives that they’re about to start changing things up. That’s what I’m wanting to do.

I’ve been thinking about Broadsides. Not a military broadside, as in 36 guns a-blazing, no, but the advertisement broadside they invented in olde England, a one-page sheet used to disseminate news and ideas. Nowadays we use flyers, which are the modern version of the broadside, I guess, but I don’t think it’s quite the same thing. Anyway, as a method for conveying information, I’m interested in the thought and I’m going to twiddle with it a bit. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.

I also think the blogosphere is about to make a turn into a content-first philosophy. I know it’s hard to think of blogs today and not think of all that original content on every page and in every post, but how much of it is really original? Original ideas are rare, and six hundred billion pages does not guarantee an original thought in the lot of them. But they are there, and blogs are coming of age now. They’re not just those little fancy things we used to get. Livejournal and Blogger.com are upper-middle-aged in Internet years. Wordpress is still cranking out updates so they’re staying on top of things, but the users, the bloggers themselves, are finding new ways to express themselves. I think it’s going to continue to change and soon, the blogosphere may not even resemble its old self. We’ll see.