Firstly, I’ve made the site a little less “Vince-centric” and more about the content itself. As such, I’ve changed the title of the site to Numinous Nonsense, though the website address is still vincenthorn.com. The reason I’ve shifted toward Numinous Nonsense is because while I’m certainly the driving force behind everything that is written here, the “brand” that I’m trying to communicate has more to do with the weird confluence of interests that I have which seem to converge mostly around 1) Integral Thinking, 2) Meditation, & 3) Technology. Though I write about other things, and will continue to share that stuff here, I’ve highlighted those 3 categories of writing, as being the most essential to what I’m trying to communicate here.

Also, I’ve highlighted the different “articles” that I write, which may or may not be on these topics. I do this because my blogging has shifted in the past several months, away from shorter posts toward more full-length articles that are fairly well researched and thought out. It’s a shift in quality and in quanity—I write less frequently due to the fact that I put much more into each post.

In terms of the back-end technology, I’ve updated to Wordpress 2.5 (I love WP!), and a brand-spanking new theme which I love. I’ve also re-designed the logo—though I’ll admit I’m not graphic designer! All in all, I like the new look, feel, and emphasis and I hope it serves my readers well (all 20 of you).

I took advantage of a new feature in Wordpress 2.1.x that allows you to set any page as your front page and set your blog in a different location. For the longest time I’ve known that I wanted the site to be more than a blog, and now it can start be that.

Some of the new features you’ll notice aren’t really all that spectacular yet. I have a place with information on the projects I’m working on, as well as a new sweet-arse archives section. You know when you’ve been blogging for some 3 and a half years, that the archives on the sidebar ain’t going to cut it anymore. I’ll eventually have an audio section too, and lately I’ve been considering adding a podcast. After working on the Buddhist Geeks podcasts I’ve realized how fun (& rewarding) that kind of thing can be. We’ll see though…

If you have any suggestions, criticisms, or words of praise, I’m open to all. If you couldn’t care less, I’ll understand that too.

The other change to Numinous Nonsense comes in the form of my first vlog, which I posted yesterday. A vlog is basically a short video that is blogged (video + blog = vlog). I’ve also created a category named vlogs. All new vlogs can be found there, and hopefully my editing skills will get a little bit better… hopefully.

Don’t you just love annica…?

One of the coolest things about the Recent Links, are that they have their own RSS Feed and their own Archive Page! So in many ways it’s like a mini-blog that is fully integrated with the larger blog, Numinous Nonsense. In any case, keep a look out for my Recent Links. That is of course, until I go on retreat in two weeks…!

Well, today I finally sat down and used my time to discover a solution that would end this manual bullshit. It looks like there’s a pretty kick ass spam filter plugin for Wordpress called Akismet, and after installing it and watching every single one of those evil little spam comments get obliterated I’m convinced I’ve found a solution (at least a temporary one). If you have Wordpress, or are thinking of using it, Akismet is key.

The design has changed quite a bit. But before I tell you what has changed (if it isn’t already obvious), I want to talk about my design process. You see, I’ve never considered myself much of an artist or a designer. Images, designs, etc. never come fully formed in my mind’s eye. I know what I like once I see it, but usually tinker with images, colors, layout, etc. until I find something that fits. That and I borrow awesome design elements from sites I digg.

With this particular re-design, I took an existing wordpress template and begin heavily modifying it. I borrowed many of my design ideas from a wonderful zen aggregator site, blangha.com. It’s bizarre how I work. I take elements from other designs that I really like, occasionally add something new, and merge them until a design pops out the other end. It’s probably the most inefficient method of design, but hey, I gotta work with what I’ve got! The header above is the combination of a free brushstroke font I found, mixed with a beautiful zen calligraphy circle. The rest of the site is a mixture of different colors, CSS design elements, and photoshop tweaking. The end result is a blog that I think that is fairly minimalist, clean, and functional. It still runs on WordPress 2.0, and I’ve saved my old design just in case I ever want to revert.

One more bizarre thing I wanted to share about the design process. Especially with web-related projects, when I start a project, and get clear on where I’m heading, it very literally consumes me until I’m finished. I spent all of last evening, and much of this morning working on it, until it was at a finishing point. I’m not entirely sure this is a healthy process, but I’ve heard from other “artists” that a similar process happens “to them.” Anyone have any experience with this?

The one thing you will notice though, is that I’ve found a way to integrate my first two years of blogging (the blog I called Numinous Non-Sense) into this blog with the newest WordPress. If you look to the right, you’ll see my archives now extend back to
December 2003 (including both the posts and the original comments). I’d been trying to do this for a longtime now, and am so glad I finally found a way to do it.

wordpress 2.0, blogging

I’ve named it About 1.0, cause I’m thinking I’ll likely be updating it here and there, taking out any informational redundancy, and adding new fractal iterations of Vincent-Madness. Also, I was thinking of storing old versions (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc.) somewhere that could be accessible, so as to see the evolution of my biography. We’ll just see how narcissitically geeky I can get! But hey, this is VincentHorn.com, so if you don’t like it you know where to go…

This blog/site is being run on the WordPress platform. Thank you to WordPress for creating such a cool and versitile product. Also thank you to Vladimir Simovic for the free template Landzilla, which I’ve used as the starting point for the design of the site. Rockin!

I have yet to fully envision what this site will be, although it’s quite clear that the main page will be my personal blog. I will have stopped writing for Numinous Non-Sense (my old blog) in another few weeks, and then will be on retreat for 6 weeks. After coming back (early November) this will likely be my primary blogging space, as well as my personal site. I’m looking forward to creating something new and innovative, and think prosumption is awesome!