Hi, lovelies! I’m ducking away from my current occupations (read as: crazy organization/cleaning bender) temporarily to mention a few things here. Because if I don’t, I think it will all be swept from my memory in a haze of Goodwill boxes and shredded paper.

First of all, it was my birthday on August 18th, and I got to have not one, but two different types of cake, so I was pretty happy about that.

Secondly, I’ve updated the design gallery setup recently with a new design that will make things more attractive and much quicker to navigate. I’ve employed (with modifications, of course) the lovely Coda Slider Effect script found at jQuery for Designers, and I love it very much and want to click on it all day.

Blog readers can hit the “design” button up top and check out the sidebar to begin browsing. For the rest of you, the direct gallery link is here!

I’m also adding some new portfolio pieces to populate the new gallery, the first of which is an iOS (iPhone/iPod touch) game prototype that I developed in April. It’s a simple side-scrolling/adventure concept and was my first real foray into the world of Objective-C coding, but in spite of the late nights, I had a lot of fun working on it. I hope to renew my iOS Developer credentials someday and get back to playing! Video game development and I go way back, so it was cool to dust off my old coding chops and produce something for the modern era.

I also made some small general improvements about the site, and for the most part, they’re things that you probably won’t notice at all. My résumé has been brought up to date, so if you’re in the market for contract or other work, please take a look!

Soon to come: things I’m enjoying lately, plugging my talented friends, Chalkdust and TumblOS updates, and the long-anticipated new Tumblr theme! It’s real. Promise. I have a folder on my desktop and everything.

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(Photo: “Sharing Is Caring - Fotosöndag” by Niklas Wikström)

It strikes me—particularly recently, though I’ve had the thought for some time—that we’ve somehow reared two very different breeds of internet user.

I don’t mean that in terms of generations, either. Obviously age demographics will show similarities among themselves and differences compared to other groupings. As a twenty-four-year-old P.Y.T. in the prime of shimmering youth (yes, yes), I don’t expect that my internet usage bears much in common with that of, say, my lovely great-aunt of… twenty-nine. Although, I suppose, we are both on Facebook in some capacity, but I honestly think she uses it more.

No, I mean in terms of sharing, particularly in the era of social media. There’s a stark divide between two stereotypes: the media-obsessed oversharers and the stranger-danger anonyms hiding behind HTTP proxies. Obviously these are a touch overblown (although I think I’ve seen at least a couple of each), but the separation does exist. At the same time that many have embraced the connectivity that New Internet offers, a great many others remain rooted in the old conventions and the relative security that they promise.

I admit to struggling a bit myself with finding a comfortable place in social media. Growing up online in the ’90s, the importance of anonymity was seriously stressed. Every chat contact a potential felon! My first offline meeting with an online friend was treated with all the seriousness of a hostage situation. Things are more laid-back these days, but the old conditioning runs deep. There’s still that hesitation… how much is too much? (I’m not sure that I’ll ever get around to using Foursquare or anything like it. Too creepy. Can you imagine trying to market that fifteen years ago?)

So I’m wondering where others might stand on this. Where do you draw the line? Did others coming to the internet in the early ’90s have similar experiences? Is Foursquare creepy or what? Talk to me. Even you, brave souls of the new media. Let’s reach across the aisle.

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Those of you viewing my posts on the blog itself may notice that I’ve added a handful of social media buttons to single post views. This is pretty much par for the course on most blogs, so I thought it was only appropriate that I append a few of my own. It’s not much—Facebook, for instance, is conspicuously absent, as their buttons are huge, unpleasant, and full of tracking code. But most people, myself included, probably have a personal system for sharing content to Facebook, anyway, so I just went with a Twitter, Google+, and StumbleUpon trifecta. These will probably become more useful once I start writing actual content, which is happening, I promise.

I spent some time and managed to assemble the buttons in a way that’s still valid XHTML, albeit a bit hack-y. It’s a regrettable compromise, as Google’s +1 button uses weird DOM implementation, and the only alternative is HTML5. (Twitter’s button is HTML5, as well.) Thanks to TVD at TechOctave for the base code for Twitter’s button!

I also had to go into the PHP for the Disqus plugin… again… to fix a validation error that surfaced after updating. Guys, you can make your plugin W3C-valid without my help. Promise! (That said, if you want to hire me to do it for you, I’m all ears.)

Alright, lunchtime. I’m out! Ciao, bella!

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Oh my goodness. I’m honestly a little afraid to look and see how long it’s been since my last post. That’s a bad thing, right? I think that’s probably not good, at least.

So I guess I should apologize first for my unannounced leave of absence! Life has been a little hectic, what with post-graduation planning, job interviewing, general life de-cluttering, and just being a busy busy bee. Just because it’s satisfying work doesn’t mean it’s not tiring! I take a decent amounts of naps. I dreamed about camels today. That was pretty fun.

Anyway, let’s get right to it. I can’t go any further here without doling out more thanks for the incredible response I’ve gotten to Chalkdust! Thank you so much to everyone who’s installed, of course, and another helping for those of you who’ve left such kind comments (here or elsewhere). Please keep sending feature requests and problem reports as you’ve been doing. I’ve taken some time to update the code and address a few requests I’ve gotten over time, so I hope this will be a good update for some of you! If you find this release still lacking a feature, do leave a comment or drop me a tweet, and I’ll get right in to add it.

Today’s additions:

• Previously, due to rendering concerns, post titles were capped at a full two lines of text. This remains the default behavior, but you can now turn it off if you’d like to see longer post titles in all their rambling glory.
• The infamous chalk hearts can now be disabled at will! This has been a really polarizing design element, so I hope this option will please some of you less cutesy-minded users. ;)
• Twitter integration is now supported with recent tweets displaying in a sidebar (where your likes, if enabled, also render).
• A few tweaks for general prettiness (mostly concerning typefaces).

Check it out! Install! Go forth! Be merry!

I trust everyone knows the drill by now, but just in case: if you’ve got no custom HTML, the changes should propagate automatically for you once the server gets around to it. If you have custom HTML, you’ll want to save your changes, revert the theme to remove all custom HTML, check to make sure the theme updates have applied (just peek at your Appearance menu), then reapply your custom HTML.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to spread a little more love around! Oh boy!

The masters of social media at Mashable featured Chalkdust last month as part of their “Mashable Picks: Our 11 Favorite Tumblr Themes”. Sob! I’m overcome with joy. Internet, I don’t think I need to tell you that they are great, so this was a pretty awesome discovery, as well as a good reminder that I need to set up Google Alerts for the things I make.

Thank you, Mashable! Thank you, Ms. Stephanie Buck! If I’m ever in NYC, I’ll definitely buy you guys some Babycakes.

Right now priority number one is wrapping up a few freelance projects I have still under wraps. I’m very excited to show you guys what I’ve been working away at! Afterwards, perhaps my long-hinted-at next Tumblr theme? Or maybe I’ll just collapse and take another nice, long nap…

My birthday is this month. I can’t wait to take the biggest nap of my life.

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