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It doesn’t happen to me very often, but every once in a while a creative attempt of mine goes well. Really well. Well enough that it matches or exceeds what I had in mind. (As opposed to falling far short of my expectations, which is normally the case.)

When this happens, I often have a visceral reaction — deep pride and satisfaction mixed with surprise. And if that feeling is what an artist experiences routinely, then I can understand the sacrifices some of them make to pursue their art.

One time this happened to me was about a year after I’d started this blog. I was still very new to blogging, and had not yet begun my career as a web developer, so each customization I made to the blog was time-consuming and often disappointing.

But at some point I was playing around with cropping header images and defining color schemes to match that image, and BAM! It happened. I knew immediately that I had something worth keeping. And with the exception of very minor tweaks, the theme for this blog has been unchanged since then. Until now.

Recently it struck me that my theme has started to seem a bit crowded and dated. And so today I’ve retired the classic theme in favor of something more modern and with more breathing room. (Based on the Bandana theme, of you’re interested.)

But considering that I created the previous theme in May of 2007 — almost exactly six years ago, that’s not a bad run.

You may notice some strange characters and missing images. I just finished upgrading the fabulous and free WordPress that makes this blog possible. And, while I’m pleased that I didn’t screw the whole thing up and that you’re reading something other than “page cannot be found”, there were some…irregularities…

I’m getting things patched up though. For the most part you shouldn’t notice any difference. Which — yes — does make me wonder why I bothered to upgrade in the first place…

In the last two weeks I’ve really put a lot of work into the blog. I think it looks great, and yesterday I wrote a bit of C# code that allows me to easily post big batches of pictures. So now there are a lot more pictures (although at this point they are not new pictures).

Most of the feedback I’ve gotten is, “The site looks fine, but why aren’t there any new stories?” I guess I’ll need to work on fixing that next…especially now that I re-did the side-bar so that the stories are displayed more prominently…

I just finished re-vamping the theme for this blog. WordPress (the software behind this blog) makes it incredibly easy to activate a new theme (and there is an amazing number of themes to choose from), but there are lots of things that I tend to change beyond just the theme, ranging from the color scheme to the order in which things appear. If you’re curious, I’m using a theme called “Black”, but I’ve modified it quite a bit, including the header image, which is based on an image that I took just outside my apartment building.

I’ve been snickering about this whole “blog” craze for some time now.

For one thing, would it be so popular if it were merely called a journal? I doubt it, because everyone knows what a journal is, but a blog — well, that’s new and exciting. Even if it is just a journal.

Another thing though, is that in order to have an interesting blog, you’ve got to have something interesting (and on-going) to talk about.

So, when people started asking me if I’d keep a blog when I moved to Denmark, at first I scoffed. But then it occurred to me that this is as good a time as any. Besides, I found so little information on Denmark (particularly from the American perspective) that I figure any extra information might benefit others that follow suit, or are just curious about Denmark, and Copenhagen in particular.

So here we are. I have a blog now.