The new Innocent Bystander...

Here it is...the new Innocent Bystander, redesigned and rethought for the new year!

Increasingly over the past few years, photography has become a major creative outlet for me. I wanted to do something--beyond the alliterative "Friday Foto"--which would incorporate my photos into the blog, and I think I've come up with something. That something is the banner at the top of the blog. More on that in my next post, though, coming right up after--well, above--this one.

I've given a lot of thought to redesigning this blog, and picked out a Typepad template that gives me greater freedom with the banner and more room to write (alas, I can't customize the fonts and colors, though). The sidebar stuff has been simplified (no more Flickr photos, no more obnoxious Amazon.com wishlist), and I've added a top bar with a series of buttons that will link you to long articles on the original Innocent Bystander (my self-published comic books of the 1990s and the Geeksville series of the early 2000s), my first "IB Book," The Dispensanator, and also my Twitter and Facebook page, if you're into those things. We live in the era of vertical integration on the Internet. This is my feeble attempt to keep up. I both love and hate all of this stuff, depending on the time of day, the direction of the wind, what I had for lunch and whether or not I've had a nap.

I'm hoping this rejuvenates my take on this blogging thing, something that has been an important constant in my life for the past seven years and something I'm a tad reluctant to give up. I hope to introduce some new features, including some looks back at the IB comic books, with some rare material. That stuff may interest me and only me, but that's okay. If you haven't figured it out by now, the very definition of blogging is self-absorption. And that's a topic on which I'm an expert. Stick around and I'll prove it to you over the next year...

Please note: Older posts may look a little wonky with this new design. Rather than go back and resize 208 Friday Fotos, we'll all just have to live with it, but it'll keep only one of us up at night: the really anal Gemini.

Comments

[Tony Kim]

Congrats on the new design- looks great! Looking forward to a new year of creativity.

[Kitchen Encounters]

The new format looks great, and, I'm so happy you're going to be featuring your fabulous photography with your stories!