Pattern

Sorry, Jeff, but I don't think that the blue-and-grey pattern works. Maybe red and a lighter shade of red (but not pink) would work better, complementing the blue in the page.

It looks like a boring shirt.

P.S. You trendy motherfucker

Valrus, may I ask who has the better web site design - me or you?

That's right, I do. You on the other hand, use a default Live Journal template. ;-)

I think I'm going to switch up the background pattern in the future every so often just to keep things fresh.

Who in his or her right mind considers a LiveJournal a "web site" in the same sense that jeff.hume.ca is one?

LiveJournals are for people who don't want to pretend that they have any content interesting enough for the general public. I'm not trying to impugn your content, since I don't want to make this too personal, but my point is that your comparison isn't even remotely legitimate.

You've seen the cursory website into which I actually put some design effort when my school isn't fucking blocking incoming requests on port 80 or whatever the hell it's doing. When I get that back up, I may be willing to throw down. You'll probably still win the design contest, but at least we'll actually be in the same class.

If you want to "keep things fresh" though, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that content is immeasurably more important than design. I didn't spread the word about my site, when it was up, because there wasn't much content on it and I didn't see myself having time to add much more in the near future.

And even given that, a background pattern is not exactly either a groundbreaking or a difficult thing to implement, no matter what some dude with a book and a blog says about how they're "coming back."

Bringing up the LiveJournal point was a bad idea. Don't get all ad hominem with me, Jeff. I'll smack you down like the little bitch you are. ;)

Well, I await your site's revival and design.

Granted a background pattern is a very small thing when it comes to ease of design, but cut me some slack. It is taking care of my urge to redesign.

Oh, and the guy with the blog is Jeffrey Zeldman, a renown web designer and standards guy. He's not just "some dude."

I could probably refute your points about LiveJournals not being in the same class, but I'll pass since I don't really care and it was ad hominem.

So, I guess we'll see your site back up after you graduate? I await it.

Oh, I noticed that Jeffrey Zeldman has a book. But I don't care if he fucking designed CSS itself; he's still just some dude, and what he says need not have any bearing on how you design your website. You can give him more weight if you want, but the deciding factor should still be whether you (and perhaps your readers) think it looks good.

For what it's worth, I think it looks fine, but no better than it did before. I guess what irks me is it seems like you're going with a trend for no reason since, in my opinion, you haven't actually improved the appearance of your site much. If you've just got a jones for design, there's gotta be something more interesting you can do.

Valrus, I'm not following a trend. In fact, it isn't really a trend at all. Zeldman was just commenting on how it was once reviled but recently there have been some who have used patterns tastefully. I changing the background would be a cool thing to change just for fun, and then I remembered that old Zeldman post. Not the other way around. I'm not saying this is a huge deal, in fact it's kind of a joke to me.

It's just something to do. I like it. I should have just changed it without posting about it. I'm thinking of doing something more interesting, but there is no time now.

By the way, for anyone who doesn't know, Valrus and I are good friends and he is allowed to be harsh to me. Our bickering is just what we do and there are no hard feelings or anything. He's just a big self-proclaimed jerk. ;-)

Fair enough. We can now let this die; my elitism has been satisfied by your explanation. Now you can deal with that other Ian's complaint.

Patterns suck. 'Nuff said.