Who has two thumbs and just entered the twenty-teens? THIS GUY.
For over a year I’ve been wanting to update this site with a fresh WordPress theme. I had been using the same template since 2008, but because The Journalist was no longer supported (I think its designer forgot about it five minutes after writing the code), I was modifying it as I went. The biggest problem was making it look good on smart phones and pads, and I completely lacked the skill to somehow make it backwards responsive.
There were many things I liked about The Journalist — the clean white layout, the big punchy blockquotes — and so I wanted something that kept those features. Then again, I also wanted something with bigger typeface (I experimented heavily but could never achieve the perfect intersection of font, line spacing, and kerning), a top menu instead of a sidebar, and most of all, to be responsive to devices. I sought and I seeked but my metal detector never uncovered the diamond ring in the sand.
And then, colbie caillat! Earlier this week I stumbled upon Caroline Moore’s Penscratch and installed it. It still needs some fixes: I want to tweak the color palette a little more, and while I like the simplicity of the top menu, I’m not sure how to handle navigation within the blog’s archives without cluttering it up or resorting to a sidebar. The About page needs a rewrite and I wish Genericons (those circular symbols in the lower right-hand corner) supported more social media, though they say some kind of update is in the works. Otherwise I love how Penscratch looks — and in fact, at this point I think the site looks better on my Android than my desktop.
The biggest improvement I could make here, however, is to post something more than once a month …
