The layout grid I used for Subtraction Six.5 was improvised and inconsistent — I hobbled it together without much consideration or foresight, more interested in getting something finished than building something that would continue to make sense as I got more and more serious about the writing I post here. Over time, by virtue of repeated use, I became increasingly and lamentably invested in its tremendous shortcomings. When you make fairly liberal use of illustrations in your posts, you essentially wed yourself to the particulars of the CSS you’ve established, creating graphics of a certain width or ordering content in a particular method. It works in the short term, but it presents problems when you sit down to redesign.

Also see A.O. Scott’s and Manohla Dargis’s lists.

It feels a little weird to sit down and write a post after a little over a month on hiatus, but here I am, doing it. I’ve finally got version 7.0 of this Web site in a state where it’s practically ready to launched. If everything goes correctly, I will stick to the announcement I made a few days ago and release 7.0 to the public on Mon 03 Jan, just in time for everyone to get back to surfing their favorite blogs after New Year’s day.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If it turns out to be true, I’ll be very excited.

Nice overview for novices like me.

“Makes the process of selling, managing and rotating text, rich media and… plain old banners on your Web sites easy.” Looks promising and pretty inexpensive.

If you live in Utah, that is.

Twelve typographic illustrations in PDF form, free for downloading. I’d buy a printed version!

Great tip on creating password-protected, dynamically-sized disk images using the Terminal. Easier than it sounds.

Hugely engrossing photographic project and book documents how New York has changed in small and large ways.

“A general purpose utility for Mac OS X… maintenance tools and interface tweaks, all accessible via a comprehensive graphical interface.”

Rick Schaut, a Microsoft developer, defends the “complicatedness” of Word.

I’m finally warming up to this ridiculously well-designed, open source, multi-service chat client.

Global notification system for Mac OS X.

Weblog focusing on the golden age of commercial art.

“…Restores the health of your iPod, iBook, eMac and iMac G5 by bringing back the acrylic’s original factory finish and shine.”

Simple chat room-like interface for user comments.

Now Christmas is past, what’s left to look forward to but a long and lonely winter? A new Subtraction.com, that’s what! I’m getting very close to finishing this redesign. Right now I’m shooting to relaunch on Mon 03 Jan 2005. If I haven’t lost you completely, please come back then!

Ron Avitzur recounts how he snuck into Apple headquarters every day for six months to write software for them for free. An amazing tale.

Beastie Boy/Beatles mash-ups.

“…converts all your songs to AAC… with an easy drag-and-drop interface and full control over every encoding parameter.” Presumably, it can covert AACs to MP3s, too, but I haven’t tried that out.

Heterosexually yours…

Technically impressive, a little scary and unintentionally goofy.

http://webcomicsreview.com/examiner/issue041213/top2004.html

I gotta head to California today to see to my mom, who is going to have a moderately serious operation. The doctors say it will be a straightforward affair, so I should be back in New York late next week. But until then, little to no progress on the redesign. Aren’t you glad you tuned in?

Most of the look and feel is finished. Now I’m rebuilding the templates in Movable Type from scratch, both to correct amateur errors I made the first time around and to take advantage of some of the new features in MT 3.1x. Tonight, I made big progress when I got a rickety version of the home page publishing properly.