Hi. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What have you been up to, I wonder? I’ve been sitting around waiting for various Government departments to get their act together, whilst staring at shelves and wondering how on Earth I’m going to get all this stuff from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

Oh, and making chocolates. As ever.

Last time I was here, I said that I was going to take a break from the blog for a while. The idea was that I’d work on a new design in secret, and then I’d blast back onto the scene after stepping off the plane in North Carolina, regaling you with all my tales of settling into a strange world were purple means grape instead of blackcurrant.

It was a good plan. However, it was also a plan that did not take bureaucracy into account. Silly. So here we are. But! In a surprise twist, I actually am going to North Carolina next week, and for a month to boot, so perhaps I can entertain you instead with tales of a temporary visit in the meantime. Come on, I know you’re all just aching to see if I walk to Target for a third time, aren’t you?

Right now, though, it’s time for the boring bit, the part I’m making you sit through because I’ve spent time putting this new site together, and by golly, I’m going to tell you all about it. For those of you not interested in blog design, er, here’s Kenickie’s Nightlife video.

For those that remain, then. Things have changed a little both behind the scenes and in your browser window. Firstly, in a possibly retrograde step, I have stopped using MovableType. And I’m not using WordPress or Drupal either. Instead, I’ve dropped all the way back to static files. Writing posts in a text editor again - how punk is that? (all the cool kids started doing it over a year ago, idiot - Ed.) Instead, I’m using a Ruby-based system called Jekyll, which simply transforms text files using a set of templates. There’s no management console, no database store running everything in the background; nothing but a set of HTML files.

Why would I do such a thing? Well, for a start, I no longer have to worry about upgrading MovableType any longer. I don’t have to worry about possible hacking attempts on the site, and well, I’m on an old-school kick at the moment, so the idea of having everything in a bunch of flat text files is appealing. Plus, by the time you read this, the files will be stored in a Dropbox folder so I can add content using my iPad or iPhone from anywhere in the world! Exciting, I know (and yes, I know that you could do that with a proper blogging CMS too, but using Dropbox allows me to use something like SimpleNote or iA Writer instead of a specific app).

“Aha!” I hear you cry. “But what about comments? Yeah, those things that haven’t been working here for months because you got bored with dealing with spam fifty times a day. What are you going to do about them?”

To which I reply: “I switched them off so I wouldn’t have to hear you whine! Also, I have enough viagra and Nigerian gold now to last a lifetime. Oh, and Disqus.” Yes, I’ve hopped on another bandwagon, outsourcing my comments to a third-party service. What could possibly go wrong?

Anyway, that’s the backend changes. But I’m guessing that you didn’t notice that I had junked my CMS when you first got here. I imagine it was more along the lines of “What? Has Ian forsaken HELVETICA, of all things? Are these indeed the End Times?” or “Oh, it’s changed. Not sure if I like it.”

Yes, I have thrown out Helvetica, if only for the moment. You can rest assured that my love for it remains as strong as my love for Apple, Lauren Laverne, and the original coconut Boost. I just thought it’d be nice to have something a little different this time around. While I was coming up with the last redesign, I did have a brief period where I wanted to re-do everything in a McSweeney’s style; heaping on serifed text designs and keeping things image-free. That didn’t happen, but the idea remained, and this time around, the serifs finally won out, though I expect there will be a counter-attack by the forces of sans-serif in the future (as you can see in the Snappish Thoughts link at the bottom, they’re still around, if vastly diminished).

Out with Helvetica, and in with Hoefler Text (my first choice would have been Garamond, but Hoefler has the advantage of being installed on most Macs and iPads), falling back to Times if you’re some sort of heathen. Or run Windows.

(as an aside, it really does look much better in Hoefler; Times works but eh, it’s not half as pretty)

(as a second aside, a shout-out must be given to Mr. Tom Parnell’s splendid wine website for throwing up Hoefler as a possibility when I was looking in his CSS files. Although Tom does default to Garamond if you’ve got it!)

I use a bit of @font-face for the Snappish Thoughts logo, but there’s not too many HTML5/CSS3 tricks included on the page right now. I’m saving those for a few other projects. More soon…

Right, that’s the boring stuff out of the way. I will now completely forget that this blog exists for a month and then write something apologetic when I get home from Durham. Talk amongst yourselves.

(oops, one more. If you’re using a version of IE prior to IE9 to view this site, I’m so sorry. So very sorry.)