Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

So a couple of things about this website have changed. Perhaps you've noticed.

Firstly, I changed the background. Much as I love that dark linen image I was using, it's really obviously "the apple background", which carries connotations I didn't really want to project. The first place I saw it was on an apple device, granted, but I wasn't using it because it's the apple background. The new one is similar aesthetically, yet distinct enough that I don't think it screams "fanboi". It'll do for now. More on that later.

I've also removed that cool effect where the background and title remained static, and the actual content appear to slide up an over them. Again, I loved it, but it made the scrolling really janky on a lot of devices. I'm choosing to assume it was the combination of the drop shadow and static background which was causing this... and since the slide effect doesn't work anywhere near as well without the drop shadow, but the drop shadow seems just fine without the slide I've decided to move over to plain old normal scrolling. Unless you're on a really small screen, in which case the drop shadow should disappear as well (try resizing your browser window, you'll see what I mean).

Lastly, there's a small ad at the bottom of the sidebar.

Say what? Oh no your didn't! Why? WHY!?

As you may or may not be aware, I work on the AdSense team at Google, and our management has encouraged us to actually become AdSense publishers. I've been resisting this change for quite some time, but decided it was probably time to bite the bullet and start eating my team's dog food. It bothers me a bit, I have to admit. I'm going to play with moving it around and changing the settings on the AdSense Front End and see if I can achieve a situation where:

• It doesn't bother me so much;
• It's actually effective.

I hope it doesn't bother you too much. Don't worry, this isn't me trying to monetize you. There will probably more some more changes coming, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.