And a happy new year to all of you, mes amis. I can’t believe that 2007 has gone by so quickly; it was only yesterday that I was still packing my stuff to get ready for my first year in an English boarding school. Tee hee. =)

I think there’s been a chain of “news” now: New year, new layout, new approach to the netizen-community as well as YM.net. If the layout’s malfunctioning (it shouldn’t; I spent 8 hours cross-checking it in IE, FF and Opera), do let me know.
As it is already, I cleared out the old post categories and renamed some. Now here’s what I’ve got:

- Academia: School-related stuffo.
- Connexions: Musings about people all around.
- Cyberspace: Self-explanatory.
- Edibles: Bloggage related to GCSE Food Tech, or just about anything related to my work in the kitchen.
- Randomness: Refer to my note on “Cyberspace”.
- Rantage: Rough situations? Here they are.

I’m trying to keep the names short and simple instead of too long-winded. It’s a bit unpractical if they’re lengthy, so to speak. I’ve got some more categories to add so I can segregate my posts a lil’ easier – but I’ve yet to name them. =) Besides the categories, I already cleared out “Ariane”, rewrote bits of my profile (still working on it), and am also in the process of rewriting all the pages under “Site”. Might have stuff under “Interactive” in the future but I’m still planning. (That’s my problem; too much planning and not enough doing sometimes! Tch. -_-) And if that wasn’t enough, I cleared out most of the old posts. Less clutter = a happier Ariane.

I should say that while I was clearing out the posts, it’s hard not to noticed how much I’ve changed. It’s probably just me, but I’ve become less naive and a bit more serious in my approach to writing here on YM. Perhaps it’s the incidents with Lucy, Kimmy and gang which have shaped me a tad; or perhaps I’ve come out of the whole “14 year old whose life revolves around webdesign” character. I reckon some of my older friends may feel the same way – I’ve noticed how many of us are either dropping off the face of the design-sphere – or simply retreating to becoming less active with our sites. We still have the design spark; just that we don’t interact *that* much anymore.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel that when other pals start withdrawing from cyberspace, the still-designing ones who get left behind sometimes find it hard to break into the circle of the newer designers (or we probably can’t be bothered, feh. xD) I mean, get real. We’re growing up, and we realise that while designing is a fun and rewarding activity, there are still other more crucial things that demand attention. Or something stupid happens and we realise sometimes it’s not as sugar-sweet as some people make it to be. It’s somewhat like the budding athlete who bases his/her whole life banking on a poor career and suddenly needs a wake up call (i.e. something serious like a bad injury, or even finding out that he/she’s not cut for it) to see that there’s more to life. Okay, people; feel free to speak up and say I’m wrong. They’re just opinions anyway.

So, just a blurb on the layout. I decided to take YM.net back to the simplicities of its first “improper layout”…if anyone even remembers the days of the blue boxy layout with a few clouds and a rainbow. Inspiration this time came from my mug of coffee – and the chocolate layer cake that I had beside my computer one day. I was finding it a bit hard to design something which wouldn’t overpower the content since YM is content-heavy; if too much goes on at once, it’s a pain to read the blog. So away with the excess fanciness and in with something which makes the site easy-to-read. If there’s one thing I learnt from the previous layout (V5: Misfit Much?), it’s that if you go overboard with the layout design, the coding’s gonna be a pain. And “Misfit Much?” proved that with all the boxes and whatnot which wouldn’t align properly when I wanted. I *might* take the old header and do something with the “blended” portion of the image, or turn it into a wallie; but I’ll see if time’s kind to me.

Digression aside, if the designing was easier for me, the coding wasn’t. Wait, scratch that; it was a tad easier with the new “Coding a Layout” guide at Skyefairy.net; thanks Skye for such a good + comprehensive write-up! All this while I’ve been doing patchy jobs on my layouts and catered to FF first. Now, I learnt that I should cater to IE first – and I had to “unlearn” what I “learnt”. And when you have to “unlearn” things, the process can be painful.

Anywho, tomorrow my brother will be going for his secondary school orientation (Senior school for my UK counterparts; 7th/8th grade for those in USA/CA) I hope he’ll be okay by himself – last time he started primary school, I was there to show him around and all. This time I’m not going to be in his new school to fish him outta sticky situations – though I’m not implying that he’s going to be a sitting duck/emotional wreck there, I really hope he’ll be all right. None of his friends are going to the same school as he is, but I do have faith that he’ll be able to make pals and settle in easily; still, if all hell breaks loose later on, I wonder how he’ll cope – bear in account that he’s hit puberty and is slowly showing the signs of “isolating” parents out of life. Nah, I should stop worrying – I’m just being and overprotective sis. Tch. -_-

Right, I should get going as it’s snooze-time. Later.

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