Day: May 17, 2010

A few blog minor blog updates.

At times (OK, quite often) I like to imagine that I have a huge number of regular readers. Dozens, hundreds perhaps. I like to fantasize that they check in regularly not just to get updates on the wacky things the girls are doing, but to see what else I’m reading and writing about. Thus, I like to believe that any time I make minor tweaks to the blog, lots of people all around the world are noticing and wondering about the meanings behind the changes. So, as usual, I ask you to indulge me in my Internet fantasies as I explain some adjustments I’ve made over the past couple weeks.

First, I’ve added a new section called Hotspots that can be accessed from the top of each page. It is a listing of some of the websites I read on a daily basis, if you want to see firsthand how I waste much of my time.

Second, as you may have noticed, the fonts I’m using have changed. I’m trying out a service called TypeKit that is dedicated to helping websites break out of the small number of fonts that blog templates offer up. As I understand it, most modern browsers will go out and automatically download any fonts they encounter that they have not already cached away. So most of you should have noticed the change, although there may be some Internet Explorer stragglers out there. I’ll probably continue to try different fonts for the next few weeks until I find one I dig the most. As of this writing, I’m using Museo Sans.

Finally, astute readers no doubt picked up on my adjusting how I do footnotes. Traditionally, I had used what I’ll call the Posnanski style of footnotes.*

(That’s what Joe Posnanski does on his site. He throws an asterisk in the body of his post when he wants to add a lengthy, parenthetical thought, and then using a second asterisk and italics, offers up that thought.)

That system generally works well. I like being able to put the parenthetical thought close to the original reference. But, in some ways, it is also cumbersome, forcing you to read through or jump past it to continue with the main body.

I found a cool little way of creating true footnotes that I’ve been using for the past couple weeks. It’s pretty slick. I throw in a standard footnote number, like this.¹ Go ahead, click on it.

See, easy.

I don’t know if that’s better or worse, easier to read or more cumbersome, but it looks more official, so I’ll stick with it for the time being.

Three things that don’t really matter, other than to me and one or two readers, but I thought I would share anyway.