In stake conference today, the stake president warned us that we should avoid chat rooms and other similar sites, specifically naming Facebook and MySpace (because of the offensive material some people post on their profiles, along with the danger of getting involved in nasty things). Now, I agree that MySpace is filled with a bunch of garbage, and their graphic design is awful. :) My experience with Facebook has been quite clean and innocent, however, and I don’t think we need to avoid it, but rather use it intelligently.
But I also believe that obeying servants of the Lord is more important. And so, even though I disagree (on one particular level, of course), I just deactivated my Facebook account. It feels good to obey. Sure, it was hard, and I contemplated just ignoring the counsel and pretending like I never heard it, but whatever I may have lost will be made up for in ample measure by the blessings for obedience. And in all reality, I’ll have saved myself all the time I used to spend on editing my profile and all that. There is life outside of Facebook. :)
The question I now must ask myself is, “Is there any other counsel you’ve been given but haven’t obeyed yet?” Time for some introspection…
[tags]Facebook, MySpace, obedience[/tags]
At work today I designed a website for the Basque Family Heritage in the U.S.A. project, and this evening I redesigned TranslatingScripture.com (but neither is live yet — the latter will be up soon, though). Now I just need to make time to redesign these blogs…
[tags]design[/tags]
I’ve been looking through CSS Zen Garden some more, and here are some of the designs that impress/inspire/motivate me:
The thing I’m really noticing right now is how much of a difference having a photo/drawing can make. Time to start experimenting…
Oh, you can see screenshots of all the designs at MezzoBlue.com. It’s a lot easier than having to cilck on each design.
[tags]CSS, webdesign[/tags]
Yesterday I discovered CSS Zen Garden and it’s proving to be a fruitful source of inspiration. I realized that the reason I’ve had this designer’s block lately (for websites) is that I haven’t been keeping up with my craft. To really be good at it, you have to keep reading and experimenting. Staying still is death to creativity. So, I’ll be reading up more on CSS and web design from now on. These blogs keep begging me to redesign them, and I think I’ll be doing that soon as well. I’ve also discovered some nice, free stock photography on stock.xchng, which I’ll probably be using in these redesigns.
[tags]CSS, web design, stock photography[/tags]
You know what makes me want to work on my websites more than anything? (Well, other than getting e-mails from people who visit it.) Seeing the statistics. It’s tremendously interesting to browse the site logs and see what search terms are bringing people to my sites and which pages they’re viewing the most — not only is it gratifying to know that people are actually coming, but it’s also a good way to gauge what the most worthwhile content is (or at least the most popular). The stats really make me want to provide more good, solid content. I think that’s a good thing. :)