Colophon
When I felt the urge to publish again in the end of october I first had to find a solid and modern publishing system.
Very soon I identified only three possibilities: Movable Type, ExpressionEngine and WordPress.
Of the three, WordPress was the most ugly solution but also the fastest moving. So it got my choice. As I said somewhere else I don’t want to be a pioneer again.
Then I had to a find a theme that suited me well. It was the hard part. Noting satisfied me completely. I did find some nice themes but I could not imagine me under these disguises.
What I was looking was quite clear: I still have the same tastes as 20 years ago (and more). I have strong opinions. My colors were and still are red, black and white. I have no real consideration of “nuances” (and that’s why I understand very well Steve Jobs). I think they are a kind of cowardice.
At one time I though I would standardize around the Thematic Framework. But it was then that I found the Subtraction site. The design was very close to what I was looking for. And at the very same moment Khoi Vinh and Allan Cole were delivering a new theme for WordPress based on Subtraction.com, Basic Maths. That’s what I choose ultimately after some hesitation with another theme from Allan Cole called Neutica+.
I then had to modify heavily Basic Maths to make me feel at home. I used for that Smultron, an orphan now and TextWrangler. But the best was without any doubt Coda. It’s a pleasure to work with Coda. it’s certainly the best of the bunch (as are all their other programs = pure Cocaoa pleasure). But as I don’t make a living building sites and used it just once it’s hard to justify the price. So I used the demo as much as possible. But I would buy it without hesitation if this site would pay for it. Don’t forget I have zero readers as I write this.
As you know if you’ve been somewhere else around here, I already published the hard way. I mean printing to paper. That’s something the “bloggers” should have to taste… at least once. And I had already tested the way my takes could be the most appropriately treated. I needed a good dose of black but also a font that would subtly stay between the black and the white. On paper I had found that New Century Schoolbook was the font I needed but on screen serifs were of course excluded. I’m not satisfied by the way Helvetica appears on screen in small sizes (outside of title sizes). It’s absolutely uneven and it’s a shameful fact that Arial looks better in these sizes… Helvetica Neue is no better. That’s when I found that Verdana 11 was absolutely the best for me. It’s the more even and the more readable that I could find. And what’s more it’s in every Mac OS X installation! I choose 11 because 12 is not so perfect. I salivate the way it contrasts with the bold at the same size. It’s exactly what I was looking for.
At this step I needed a solid server. One that doesn’t disappear when they find you. I had seen many people (out of the WordPress Theme developers) claiming that this or that server were not up to the reputation but that other was. They had of course a reduction coupon to say that. Me, I prefer to pay a premium to have a real service. That’s why I have been a Mac (and NeXT) user for the last 26 years. I finally had the idea to look at the server used by John Gruber. He’s a smart guy, has a lot of hits (I would be happy with only 10% of his) and if he he stays with the same server that means the server is OK. Thats the reason why I choose a Shared Accelerator from Joyent.com.
The only thing missing at this step was a good analysis program. There was no question I would use any of the WordPress Flash plugs-in! I hate Flash with a vengeance and I’m infinitely happy to see that the end of that crap is comin’. So I ended up with the best Cocoa program for this: Mint. I also use Google Analytics since Flash is not mandatory on my site and there’s a very good chance they’ll scrape that thing soon on their site too. And finally I use MarsEdit to fill that site. There’s no other solution.