I’m curious to see if writing in John Gruber’s Markdown syntax works on our blog now that I’ve activated the included plug-in. I’ve become addicted to Markdown in my every day life as a blogger and writer, so it’d be nice if I could use it here too.

(Yes, it works. Hurrah!)

Anybody else notice the “Incoming Links” section becoming very pared down or disappearing entirely from your WordPress dashboard? I blog on more than one WordPress-running site, and have noticed that this section has just about disappeared from all their dashes (but people are definitely still linking from time to time)…

I would like to maintain my stance that blogging here is a project that we may shamelessly abandon at any moment. That said, if we’re going to un-abandon it after a long hiatus, and then start getting links from friends, it would make me more comfortable if the design were slightly more personalized – but not too personalized, because it is very unhip to look like you’re trying to look cool. Also, who wants to do a major overhaul on a site you have a penchant for abandoning?

After listening to me whine about this for awhile, Dan gave me my Christmas present early, which you see before you now (unless you’re reading this in the archive much later and we changed it since). I think Dan sums this change up best, in this snippet excerpted from an IM conversation:

So, there. Our blog is marginally less boring. A year and change after we started it and like six months after we supposedly ended it. It’s like the fricking Big Dig of blogs.

Side note: the funny thing about incorporating a rough doodle into a web design is that it can actually be more work than making an image on the computer from the outset. I could have just drawn something with my old Wacom tablet, but I felt like that wouldn’t look half-assed enough. After doing the doodle with whatever pens/highlighters were handy, I actually had to reboot my computer in Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) because there are no drivers freely available for my scanner in 10.4 (Tiger). Then I had to move it to another hard drive, reboot again, clean it up in Photoshop, arrange it next to the letters I doodled, and make a mockup using a screenshot. Easier than a real site redesign, but still.

Also, please excuse us while we fiddle with link colors. Thank you.

If I’ve done this right, when I say that I’ve switched us over to WordPress here at the doomlab, you’ll be scratching your head and saying: “Really? It looks just the same.”

Excellent.

Then again, maybe you tried to check the blog during its brief downtime this morning. If that’s the case, please expect a visit from our specialized memory-erasing team sometime in the near future.

Crap, now that I’ve told you that I’ll have to send them again.

Anyway, if you run into any problems with the site, let me know (you can probably figure out my email if you don’t know it already). All of the posts and comments from the Blogger site should have transferred though. You shouldn’t need to make an account to comment now either (hurrah).

The only difference might be if you had subscribed to our RSS feed through blogger. You can find the new RSS feed here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled doombot, already in progress.