Cha Cha Cha Changes
I’ve made a few changes around here. No major design changes, but I’ve added a few new features and brought back a thing or two from past versions of Mindless Chatter. Let me show you around. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the updates.
As you can see, the most recent post will always be large and in charge here on the front page. The font is also brighter to draw your attention. Am I drawing your attention? I hope so. Instead of putting the date the most recent post was published, I’ve put how long it’s been here on the front page. That way, when you see this still here six weeks from now, you’ll know I’ve again fallen off the face of the earth. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
Below the most recent post on the front page (just imagine you’re still there) I’ve brought back the “From the Archive” post. Every time the page loads you’ll get a blast from the past — some article that has been doomed to the pages of history will be brought back to once again grace the front page of Mindless Chatter. I can’t guarantee each “From the Archive” post is a winner, but each one is a part of site history. As you can see, I’ve also gotten rid of the “Featured” article. I’ll still feature stuff from time to time, but those features will be considered regular posts rather then receiving special treatment.
I’ve changed up the first column to the right here, I’m calling it the information station. There’s a little “About Justin Cox” blurb in case you want to know more about me. Below that you’ll find the Recent Tracks section. This little guy updates automatically if I’m listening to music. How does it know what song I’m playing? Well, if you remember back to my feature on Last.fm then you’ll know that Last.fm keeps track of what music I play and now I’m sharing that information with you. Below the Recent Tracks section you’ll also see that I’m sharing with you Recent Movies I’ve seen. Each movie gets a quick rating out of “5″ and a short review.
The far right column on the front page has been given the Google Ad treatment. I don’t like ads on websites and think the internet should be completely ad free, but I’m putting these here for the time being. They won’t be there forever, I promise you that. But for now they’re there. Please click them. Please. The more you click the shorter they’ll be there. 
I’ve also changed up the Archive page a bit, getting every single post ever written on there divided up by date. Give it a quick look see. You might like it.
I made a change a few weeks ago that all you poor saps still using Microsoft Internet Explorer might have noticed. This little “button” only shows up for you IE users and is my strong encouragement to switch to a better internet browser. I don’t earn any money of you click on the button, it’s just there as a service to you. If you’re using IE then please visit Browse Happy and see what you’re missing, I’m sure you’ll be surprised. And for all you FireFox/Camino/Netscape/Opera/Safari people out there, you already know what’s up. Props to you.
I’ve also made a change behind the scenes here at Mindless Chatter. I’m trying out a new publishing program for WordPress called BlogDesk. This is basically Microsoft Word for blogs. The only real reason I’m using it is because I get spell checking functionality. Which, if you are a frequent visitor to Mindless Chatter (there are a few of you, right?), you know I need.
Well there you have it, the quick and dirty updates to Mindless Chatter. There may be more in the future. I want to get more header/logos so I can again randomly rotate them around. We’ll see. Hopefully by this time next month I’ll be publishing to Mindless Chatter from a Mac, so that may very well bring some changes. Again, we’ll see. Hope you like it. If you do, leave a comment and tell me. If not, well get used to it.