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Few days ago, when I was in bed, cant remember whether I just lied down or woke up in middle of night. Either way, somehow 君が好きだと叫びたい (Kimi ga Suki da to Sakebitai) (1993) by BAAD (1992-1999), a Japanese rock band, SLAM DUNKing into my mind out of nowhere with a nostalgic smell just like going back 20 years in school gym.

Dont ask me what the song title or lyrics mean, I dont speak Japanese, but Wikipedia has the translation for it, I Want to Shout I Like You, and the video also has translations in it. Its the first opening theme song for Slam Dunk (1993-1995/1996).

It was two decades ago, where was I? Junior high? Anyway, there was quite some Japanese animes on our television channels, and Slam Dunk was one of them. I cant say I watched all but quite a lot. You know how Japanese animes go, the comical dramatic scene and the sudden seriously stern talking, both can go with shouting, just emphasizing in different aspects.

I wasnt good at any sports, in fact, pretty bad, but that didnt stop me watching this anime and I was not the only one. I dont know if this anime was popular in other places in the world, but it was quite big here at the time. If my memory is correct, some years later, when I was in dorm, some students still watched it.

Dont you feel somewhat strange, not just Japanese music or drama, it seems many shows either has English title or one or two lines in English in the lyrics, but virtually nothing else is in English. I wonder way.

About a week ago, I resumed blogging and started to revamp this blog. I felt there was too much thing going on unnecessarily.



I removed gadgets at bottom, took down many JavaScript codes and CSS rules, removed theme switching. Now the blog has only dark theme, it used to have switch for color, font, and other style. Fonts have been changed, because I switched to Google Web Fonts, I don't want to serve from Google App Engine. Sooner or later, the bandwidth usage will reach the cap. It actually looks nice with those fonts, though it's quite in different style.

640 pixels, still 640 pixels in width for post content, the same width of most images. Some lines and background color are removed, it looks more seamless when you scroll from top to bottom.

One important benefit from all of these is loading time down to around 5 seconds from 10 seconds. The reduce of loading time is expected since I removed the heck of many things. If I don't use them, then don't put them in. While I was planing the revamp, I checked many blogs which I have subscribed to. 5 to 10 seconds loading time is very common. I've achieved a nice result.

There was one thing I noticed most, other people's blogs don't use footer much. It seems to other people, other than me, they love sidebar. By love, I do mean love. I would say 9 out of 10 blogs have sidebar, and probably half of which don't have footer if you don't count the typical copyright statement line.

I for one who doesn't really like sidebar. I don't have a particular reason, maybe they aren't very useful to me. I always look at top navigation and stuff at bottom of page. Many bloggers stuff too many widgets to their sidebar, it's not a bad behavior, just sort of wasting because visitors don't usually pay much attention to those. At least not after first visit.

During the process, I also tried to find a web service for feedback. At first, I thought GitHub Issues should be good, but not everyone wants to sign up for an account just to post. I didn't want to use very commercial-like service, those have too many buttons and options, I have no idea how to use them.

I then recalled the Google Moderator, that could be a better option, simply because most people have at least one Google account. It's even better when considering the voting, people can rate suggestions or ideas. Most of all, it's simple.

I quite like how my blog looks now, there might still be something I can improve.

Simplicity is a word I like.

Or both, all day?

Now, you can be both on this blog. Click on left-top theme switcher, you will have Light Geek or Dark Geek.

It's a simple thing, every text will be using Envy Code R, which I got permission to use a half years ago. I immediately replaced.

I was searching if any other bloggers say that they prefer simplistic blog design. I didn't find any because it's really hard to set keywords. All I could find is about blog templates. I want to read is blogger's thought about that and how their journey of reaching their goal went.

While I was trying to find a blog post, an idea suddenly came into my mind. What if I use one font only? After I switched fonts using jQuery, unfortunately, it looks well in my eyes. I have seen some blogs use monospace, they look somewhat awkward. I don't know if it's because system monospace font doesn't look good or it's my blog so I think it looks good in my blog.

I took the chance to fix clicked link highlight, I felt the clicked link's style is too blurry and too wide. Also, I removed some text and box shadows, I didn't like blurry shadows or gradient effect very much. They often make the text a little bit hard to read.

Anyway, I'm converted. Be a geek!

The post title should have told you why this theme is named 3am.

I want a theme which is dark, very dark, so you can work while the light is off and the room is pretty dark. At 3am, you must be tired, any bright text would burn your eyes. Darkness, FTW!

3am is modified from bora_black, whose author wrote a nice guide, and there is a Fluxbox Style Guide on ArchLinux. If you want to create, those would be great to start.

A week ago, I re-installed Arch Linux on my one of my computers. At that time, I decided to use GNOME as usual. But I changed my mind, why not have another Desktop Environment? Then, I installed KDE4.

It's just as if you run QT applications in GNOME, it must be ugly if you do nothing. You would see ugly GTK applications in KDE, too. Here is steps to prettify by changing themes:

1. pacman -S gtk-qt-engine
2. systemsettings/Appearance/GTK Styles and Fonts/Use my KDE style in GTK applications.
3. Re-log in.
   

Matching the themes

1. pacman -S qtcurve-kde4 qtcurve-gtk2 gtk-chtheme
2. For QT applications: systemsettings/Appearance/Style/Choose QtCurve
3. For GTK applications: gtk-chtheme/Choose QtCurve
   

Now you can also "Spice up your inbox with colors and themes." I see 31 different themes, which you can choose from. I use Terminal:


That Gmail logo is very cool. Some themes require your location, I am not sure what would they do with location.