After one and half years, sensory output has been given a fresh new look. Infused with “WordPress”:http://www.wordpress.org/ v1.5 and a customized “Hemingway”:http://warpspire.com/hemingway theme by “Kyle Neath”:http://warspire.com/, I can put my mind at ease for a while, basking in simplicity and a hint of panache. Granted, I did have a new version of the sensory output when I moved from my custom-rolled WordPress theme to “Michael Heilemann’s”:http://binarybonsai.com/ infamous “K2″:http://binarybonsai.com/wordpress/k2/, but it never sat very well with me as I think it tries to do too much for too many people.

While on the surface, you see a new look, much more was done deep in the underbelly of the beast that is the WordPress database. You see, long, long ago, -in a land far, far away- in the MySQL database, I did not understand the intersection between PHP’s inability to handle Unicode, the MySQL database and WordPress’s latent, hidden abilities to make up for PHP’s lackings. Per this miscommunication, I set the encodings of my database (every database, table and field) to unicode in the hopes of achieving geeky nirvana. In this dastardly moment, all of my rich postings (i.e. all the wonderful Unicode characters that Mac OS X’s character palette makes so readily available) to this blog were slightly altered, as if my database were switched with one of an alternate universe.

To undo this, I used my knowledge of various sci-fi flicks to swap out the evil, alternate universe version of my database for the one and only belonging to this reality, effectively undoing most of the catastrophic warpings of my words. Still, as I was pondering the inner workings of the database, I went further still, and I removed silly HTML and other oddities, converting posts to Textile-only. This was a lot of work despite the paltry archives, my fingers swiftly removing @<a>@ and @<img>@ tags.

After that fine work, I set out to implement Kyle Neath’s great theme. It lacked a few basic items: blog roll, pages listing, and other bits of CSS. Overall, however, it is performing swimmingly and far and above my wildest expectations. Granted, I have not yet figured out what the deal is with WordPress functions like @is_page()@, @is_archives()@, or @is_home()@, but I routed around that minor issue.

Then, I overhauled the secondary pages on my site, namely my “portfolio”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/portfolio/, “projects”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/projects/ and “fun”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/portfolio/ pages. All of these pages are now true WordPress pages, formatted with Textile and a little custom CSS thrown into the Hemingway theme stylesheet.

Finally, I implemented a few necessary plugins, namely:

• “Extended Live Archives”:http://www.sonsofskadi.net/extended-live-archive/
• “Related Posts”:http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/
• “Del.icio.us Cached”:http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/
• and “Dunstan’s Time Since”:http://binarybonsai.com/wordpress/timesince

Whew. Maybe this is just the impetus I need to get back to writing more regularly. I certainly do have a _long_ list of topics to explore, including network neutrality, political rancor, and most near and dear to my heart of late, medicine.

For the most part, I’ve looked at my site in Safari (1.2.2), Opera (7.5.1), Firefox (0.8), Camino (0.8), and Netscape (7.1). I imagine that compatibility with other Gecko-based browsers is in order. There is a clearing issue on the #content div when the content takes up less room than the #menu stuff, but I don’t see that as an issue as long as I have plenty of verbosity with respect to the former.

I tried to implement a quick solution for IE5 Mac, but it needs more work. For now, no compatibility with IE5 Mac.

Lastly, I have yet to check Sensory Output in IE Win, any version. I need to re-install Virtual PC before I can do this, so give me time. I’m pretty sure the box hack is in order for the calendar and nav bar. I’ll get those fixed ASAP(as soon as possible).

Finally, I certainly do not advocate this site as “best viewed in XXX,” as that defeats the purpose of open standards. I can say, however, that given their support for some CSS3 (transparency, text shadows, etc.) and excellent typography rendering, that I prefer to use Safari, OmniWeb, or Camino on Mac OS X.

Design is such a process for me. Left-brain vs. right brain, always duking it out. Fortunately, I do have some creativity left to finish this weblog’s design. Don’t get me wrong, as I enjoy it. It’s just more difficult for me than others. (Or maybe, they just make it look easy!)

On top of just the visualization, fighting the inconsistencies of CSS display across browsers is starting to wear me down. Don’t worry, I’ll try to hang in there.