I’ve realized, over the past couple of weeks, that perhaps the rebirth of fidgeting.net was not as planned out as it should have been. I originally had this grand vision that I would post every other day on current topics in tech and the internet, but I really have found out that that sort of thing really doesn’t interest me quite as much as I thought (as evidenced by the long time between posts).

That being said, I think it’s time for me to switch gears a bit with this site. I’ve decided I want to go in an almost completely different direction and create a site with news and reviews for movies. I really love movies, and I also really like researching them as well, reading reviews, trivia, and so on, so I think that a movie site will be a more natural fit for me. Right now, I’m not sure on the details—the site may still inhabit fidgeting.net, but I might also decide to create a completely new site for it.

Posts here are likely to become rare as I think about the new site, but hopefully in a little bit I will be able to launch a far more interesting site (for me and for visitors).

Fidgeting.net is finally looking as it should, in a design created solely by me. It feels good to be rid of the standard theme I had before and to have something original. Here’s a look into what went into the new design:

Keep it Simple, Stupid

With the redesign of the site, I really wanted to make sure everything was reader friendly—I hate sites with overfilled sidebars and inaccessibly content. I (hopefully) made it easy to read and browse—the simple 2-column layout helps this, and I tried not to go overboard on extras. I also reduced the number of full entries on the front page to 3–this way the it isn’t as intimidating, and it will load (slightly) faster.

This Redesign Brought to you by…

A lot of the underlying code was inspired by Cutline, a fantastically modifiable WordPress theme. I also referred to the SimpleBits stylesheet if I ran into trouble coding the design.  Also, all the icons are from the Silk set.

What Comes Next?

I’m certainly not done tweaking the site—there are a lot of things I still need to play around with until I get them right. I’m also taking this as an opportunity to go back and rewrite my static pages. Once I finalize how I want to do it, I’m also going to have a portion of the sidebar dedicated to the recent movies I’ve seen. I have that featured pretty much finished, I’m just working on how to best implement it. Beyond that, who knows? In a few months’ time, I’ll probably be fed up with this design and ready for a new one. Also, as far as cross-browser compatibility, I’m sure this design sucks. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it accessible to many browsers, but for right now, I only know that it works in Firefox and IE7. Enjoy!

I’m sorry if things have been slow around here—I’ve been working hard on a new design. Hopefully in another week or so, it will be ready to go live. In the meantime, here are a couple of interesting places I’ve been online recently:

• RIAA lists top 25 universities handing out piracy notices – Lehigh, unfortunately, didn’t make the list, but UMass (where a good number of my friends go) just barely missed the top 5 at #6. Congrats!
• Amazing 3D Photos – these photos are made from moving the background back and forth very quickly—real cool stuff!
• Bleikamp.com – Just found this blog recently—some interesting web-related stuff to be found
• WordPress Source/Functions – This has proven extremely valuable in creating a couple of plugins for the redesign.
• Bowler picks up a ridiculous two-lane spare – This is just nuts—you have to see it to believe it (via kottke)

So that’s pretty much it—last week was rough, as I had three midterms, but spring break is only a week away, so I have that to look forward to.

To finish things up, here’s a preview of the new design:

Just a quick note—I just added a sidebar item on the right that shows the movies I currently have at home from Netflix. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have my ratings, but I’ll see if I can tweak the plugin to get that working (I’m using Albert Banks’ WP Netflix Plugin)

Just a note—I’m playing around with tags for my posts, so they probably won’t be working perfectly for a little bit. So, if things seem to not quite be working (with regards to the tags), just try to ignore it until I get everything sorted out.

So, it’s been awhile, but fidgeting.net is back. It’s been almost 3 years since I had the ghastly orange and green layout, so I thought it would be time to put something new in this empty space. I’ve learned a lot in the last 3 years, so hopefully this time around fidgeting.net will turn out to be a much more interesting site to visit. I have a few goals for the new incarnation:

1. Write quality posts. In fidgeting.net’s previous lives, it was dominated by poor writing about nonsense topics. I intend to try to make interesting observations about the world, and also let you, the reader, have an interesting look into my life (yeah, that means no more nonsense posts, hopefully).
2. Share my thoughts on technology, the internet, and the college life. Yes, I am in college now; I’m a freshmen at Lehigh University. I’ll be sharing my experiences there as well as some of my views on the current state of technology and the internet (take for example my first post about the iPhone). I’ve always had an interest in technology, and I like to think I know a thing or two about the internet, so hopefully my thoughts will interest others as well. I’m sure I’ll be posting about many other subjects as well, but I’m going to try and keep the majority of the site to the above three topics.
3. Have fun. I’m going to try as hard as I can to not worry too much about who’s actually reading fidgeting.net. It would be nice to have lots of people coming by, but really I’m doing this for me. But, don’t let that stop you from joining in! I love comments and discussion, so if you have anything to say about a certain post, say it!

So, this is the new fidgeting.net! Yes, I know, I’m still using a default WordPress theme, but I’ll be (hopefully) designing my own soon, once I get the chance. Once again, welcome and enjoy the site!