Hello! Hopefully you've noticed that the PlaidScape looks different. If not, you might want to push refresh on your browser (or maybe your brain) and try again. It's okay, I'll wait.
How about now? Good!
Well, now that you've noticed the difference, I'll tell you what it's all about. The main goal of the redesign was really two fold: first, I wanted to address some of the problems people have brought up about my website in the past, and second, I wanted to settle things down a bit and make my site look a little more professional (more like a page with content and less like a page trying to sell something).
So, first things first - what does the new layout fix? Well, I've gotten rid of the frames. This should make navigation slightly easier as you'll be able to hot-link to any page you're visiting and you will always get the menubar etc. The cost, of course, is longer load times, but I'm hoping that will not be too much of a problem. My other main purpose of this layout is ease of readability. I got some complaints with my old layout that the lack of good contrast made it hard to read. Hopefully now you can all read it a little easier.
The other thing was to make it a little more professional. This meant giving some things the axe and generally cleaning up the site a bit. The first things to go were the sections of my page for which there was no content - my old layout forced me to plan ahead on content, but this one doesn't, so I'm not going to. My next objective was to refocus my web site on the main thing that gives my site content - my blogs. In addition, I've been talking to some friends of mine, and I'm working on putting together a group of irregular bloggers with the intent of provide somewhat more regular content through this channel.
So, that's the motivation, now you see the result. I don't have everything completely stable yet (still importing bits from my old blog), but the important parts are done, so stay tuned!
Have Fun!
--The Plaid Mentat