Change of pace

Well things looks a little different around here don't they?

Actually a lot of the visible change is just cosmetic, but I'm glad to have this done now. If you are a blogger you might find it significant to note that if you are using Google's Blogger software like me you are going to have to (eventually) switch your blog over to their new suped-up Blogger Beta system, instead of the clunky old regular Blogger. I'll say that again just so you know. You are going to be forced to upgrade to the new Blogger Beta. Not that really its a bad thing, but I was a little surprised that they're not advertising that yet. As expected it wrecked havoc on my blog during the initial changeover but after a few hours of tweaking and whatnot I think that Adventures in a Strange Land is looking better than ever.

I can already tell that this upgrade is much more robust, on the outside it really doesn't look too different but the dashboard (Blogger control panel) behind this blog looks to have much more functionality, and the ability to grow much easier. The biggest change you might notice is the tags that I put onto all the old posts. these seem kinda cool, so now if I talk about the Transformers movie, which I've done a fair bit, you can just click that tag and get a list of all the posts where I talked about that. Obviously the site is blue now. The design is the same, I mean the template is, and for now it should stay like that. I'm also now able to change all the fonts quite easily so I got rid of that stodgy old Ariel and put in the much cozier Times New Roman. I tried Georgia, as that's my favorite 'standard' font, but unfortunately it just looked a bit too crowded. The sidebar is also slightly different now. I added the Wiki and IMDB widgets that I got off the Google Gadgets page. I wanted to add the countdown timer for like maybe new films or something, but am not totally sure it would work right, or I'd remember to update it etc. Those are really just for fun anyhow.

After having done this I'm a bit worried knowing that I just created the new On Hold... website, and I'm basically going to have to go right back in and redo it. Fortunately it's a much simpler site that something like this snazzy blog here. Anyhow, I'm sure I'll manage it.

There were a few options on things that I noticed that I didn't try putting into the blog. Like upgraded Google Adsense integration, and that now you can syndicate blog comments. I kind of think that the comment thing is only useful on blogs that get tons of traffic, and while one day I may be there, for the moment I'm definitely not. I'm pretty happy generally speaking with the upgrade. The new control panel is a bit tricky at first, but you can still get right into the coding and hard code everything you really need, so you know you wont get too lost.

Good tweaks all around. ooooh, like a nice new spellchecker that I just noticed. Anyways, that's all for now, let me know if something doesn't work right, or if you do/don't like the redesign. Podcasting tonight even though I have like nothing to talk about. Oh well something will come to me. Talk to you all later. Peace.

ps - oh yeah, the one thing I forgot, is that now you HAVE to use a Gmail account in conjunction with Blogger... hmmm... something aobut that doesn't sit totally right with me. But then again I should probably be thankful that the site is still free. Just an FYI.