I have a new favourite CSS Zen Garden design: Hedges. Very funky, cartoon-type stuff.

A lot of the new entries are worth a look. Not too take away from the excellent previous entries, but the newer ones seem to be a generation ahead. Good stuff.

This is (very) old news, but Eric Meyer’s Color Blender is helping me a great deal on the redesign of my site.

I’ve done about 5 different beta designs: each one taking about 20 minutes from getting a clear idea in my head. The first 4 were scrapped for varying reasons (from “crap” to “too bright”). The last one though, I think this is a keeper. Not as bold as this design, but a lot more relaxed. Fits in more with my idea of the site’s title, Solitude.

I think relics of the previous designs have crept in (“Keep the best, throw away the rest, repeat till complete”), but this one is a lot more distinct. I’d probably say it’s quite Anti-pixel influenced. Make of that what you will.

The second album by Biffy Clyro took only one day to record, yet sounds as highly produced as any other modern rock album. Titled “The Vertigo Of Bliss“, it is not as immediately catchy as their previous efforts but the pay-off comes in the long term.

After a few listenings, it becomes clear that it’s a more mature album with enough hooked chorus to make each song of anthemic proportions. All I can do is recommend it, and their previous album “Blackened Sky“. Fantastic stuff.

There are a few styles of blog posts. Note: this is not a comprehensive list.

• Personal – Posts about the writers personal life. I tend to avoid these as much as possible.
• Subject-based – Take a subject (film, music, web design etc) and write about it, or a subset thereof (a particular film, song, technique etc). I do a fair few in this style, and always have.
• Link-based – A collection of links to other interesting stuff on the net, maybe with a small amount of commentary. This is what the rest of this post is about.

When I started this site, there were practically no link-based posts. I didn’t really think them to have much value, preferring to add something to the blogosphere rather than just passing on other information.

A while ago, I realised this was a mistake. There is nothing wrong with being a conduit for useful entries. In fact, it’s one of the biggest contributions you can make to the blogosphere. By the simple act of linking to something you find interesting or useful, you help bind the web and allow others to discover articles that they find interesting. As link theory suggests, the more people linking to something, the more people will see it. This effect rises exponentially.

So really, there is no shame in having links based posts. You’re just doing your part to keep everything fresh and good. Nice work!

Simon Willison has been talking about comment authentication, even building a prototype (which seems to act a little flaky to me – but it is just a prototype). I like the idea, but it will always have trust issues and currently has a reasonably high entry barrier.

For one, you have to trust the server doing the authentication work and storage. If it is comprimised (either by the human running it or through technical means), then the whole system becomes worthless. This is obviously a big concern for such a comment authentication system, and one which is very difficult to overcome (although, I’m pretty sure Simon can be trusted).

The current implementation, however, has a high barrier entry. It requires that a person has an email address and control of a website. The former is not so much a problem, but the latter is. How many web users actually have a website? I’d imagine it’s a fairly small percentage. On this, the system severely falls down.

I’ll keep watching this one for when I eventually provide comments (hopefully not as far away as it could be).