Monday 28 November 2011

Makeover

Next week I plan to give this blog a makeover. The idea is to make it more minimalist. For instance it now has text in three colours (not counting black); I intend to get this down to one. We want to move away from purple prose and other youthful follies, and towards a layout more befitting of lists, aphorisms and proofs of Euclidean geometry. (Is there such a thing as an excess of minimalism? We may be about to find out.)

There is much to be said for minimalism, though for obvious reasons its greatest adherents – like Master Yun-Men (A.D. 949) – tend not to say much. Among other things, it imparts an aura of profundity – an effect I have been aiming for since early infancy.

Take for instance what is reportedly the first coherent sentence I ever spoke (to a visitor who called for my father): বাবা বাজার গেছে (Father has gone to the market.) Simple, beautiful, direct. And untrue (my father had not in fact gone to the market).

So in the meantime, if you have any suggestions – features that should go, features that should stay, new features, font suggestions – please do let me know. Minimalism has its place, but it should never extend to the comments section.

23 comments:

pangolin said...

My own blog has undergone metamorphosis almost monthly till date. So, the idea of a makeover sounds good to me. But. MORE minimalism?
Do not get rid of 'Certaine Queries Answered', please. Please, with cherry on top. The customers love it.

Kroswami said...

what lies!
your first reported coherent sentence was

"Have landed safely. Stop. These human beings are strange. Stop. Will now attempt blending in. Over"

Don't deny it. Its on wikipedia

Anonymush said...

i don't care if you go monochromatic or not..your words add enough colour to my life <3 i louv you!

Sroyon said...

@fdl: Heh, wasn't planning to. I kind of like it myself. :)

@Kroswami: Don't believe all that you read on Wikipedia.

@Anuj posing as Anonymush: You my friend are a powerful argument for disabling the anonymous comments feature.

Kroswami said...

wtf
that was not me at all!!!

Shrabasti Banerjee said...

Does this perchance have anything to do with your Zen monk friend? :D

And My Hobby 11, pliss!

relativelytruthful said...

so i'm just going to take a moment to preen on behalf of freshly dead blog.

dead blog, but deadly theme, eh? :)

Sroyon said...

@Shrabasti: I'm waiting for inspiration to strike. :)

@rtf: I will not gainsay it, it was a beautiful template. But I may not have it in me to achieve quite that level of minimalism. There will probably be a couple of pictures, and a blogroll on the main page.

Unknown said...

Text in sans-serif please!!!

Rara Avis said...

How can a blog possibly be more minimalistic than this in terms of content? Don't get rid of anything! I love the dice, the blogroll, the CQA. And if you mean minimalistic in terms of colour, well, I guess you could turn it all black and white and get rid of the Wendy chhobi which I also love. And change the name of the blog into something smaller and write it the way they write "Clifford Chance" in your firm's logo which is the most intimidatingly minimalistic logo I have ever seen, and least pleasant/reassuring to the viewer.

Rara Avis said...

Have you ever read the posts you have under the label "Religion/Philosophy" together? :P

Priyanka said...

go the white stripes way then :P

Sroyon said...

@Kavana: Yeah I was thinking about that myself. I'll try out a couple of sans-serif fonts, but if I don't like it I might just stick with TNR.

@Raktima: Think I'll get rid of the name altogether.

@Priyanka: Don't even know what the white stripes way is!

R said...

pop-up window for comments instead? not minimalist, i know. but less annoying.

Sroyon said...

@Test comment:

@Fish: Guess what, I used to have pop-up windows. Prefer them, in fact. But apparently they weren't working on our university LAN (there were juniors jobless enough to actually complain to me about this). But I might give it another try.

Tommy said...

Keep the e at the end of Certaine and lose the S at the end of 1 COMMENTS.

R said...

No. No, nononono. We are not carrying 'Fish' forward as a nickname.
Also wrt Tommy, you could say Comment(s) except that might be a tad bit anal. And pessimistic.

beej said...

pop ups can be read on LAN now. and on wifi. :) oooh! and, since yesterday, youtube works too!

Pratiti said...

Nahiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin. Don't change please. No. Please. Perfect as it is. I don't like change, also. As I keep telling people.

And I love Anonymush. :D

Anonymush said...

Thank you Pratiti! I like you too! But my louv is reserved and deserved only by Sroyon <3 <3 <3

beej said...

ooh. or maybe it's sroyon pretending to be anuj pretending to be anonymush! it's the kind of narcissistic thing i wouldn't put past him.

Anonymous said...

strip it down, i say! peel off the colour, give yourself a stern font. Having experimented with a large variety of fonts, however, I must say that I always eventually veer back home to TNR. Such a lovely, classic old-world font.
That said, it looks like such a friendly little blog, as is.

Srin said...

Excellent! Do away with the colours. Black and white or white and grey.