Announcements

In case you’re wondering why I have a new layout – my blog was recently hacked/hijacked (not sure by who, or how – but some fuckers injected some code to redirect visitors to other sites. I’m not sure when it happened – but I think it’s probably due to some security issues and me using an old-ass outdated theme. I may or may not have fixed the problem – if you receive any warnings or get redirected please let me know.

I spent a few hours today trying to locate the injected redirection code but thought it was more trouble than it’s worth – in the end I decided to just replace all the recently modified files with the default files from a fresh installation of wordpress. The security plugins on my blog are still detecting issues, so this weekend I’ll work on doing a full wipe and reset of this blog to make sure this place is free of any shenanigans. Don’t expect any new updates until I get the problem fixed. Hopefully it will be a walk in the park.

Some of you might have noticed that my blog has a new look now (it’s only obvious if you’re browsing on your desktop). Since I launched blorgy.net way back in 2007, I’ve only been through two revisions. The other day I was just thinking about changing up my site a bit since I had some funky keycaps which I could use to recreate my original logo and I just continued working on the site from there.

blorgy.net 1.0

I compressed the archives and categories section in the sidebar since I don’t think people use them too much, and they were getting a little too long for my liking (I can’t believe I’ve actually managed to keep this blog running for over ten years!). I added some social media buttons, removed dead links, and reduced the number of posts on the front page. I also added ‘related posts’ at the bottom of each post since I’ve got a wealth of posts to link to now (I’ve written over 700 posts to date). Hopefully it doesn’t link too many cringey posts.

blorgy.net 2.0

Overall, they aren’t huge changes, but I think the site looks a lot better now. Also, the color scheme is based on the Vortex Core keyboard (the keys in the logo are from the keyboard). I’m a big fan of its retro color scheme. The font used is Bryant Regular, which is similar to Gorton Modified (couldn’t find the font for that) – the font used on the legends of SA keycaps. Not sure if I managed to change all the elements of my site properly, but based on my initial checking, it seems fine. Let me know if I missed anything.

Prior to this, I hadn’t touched CSS or HTML in a long time. I had to do tons of Googling for simple things like changing the background color. It’s crazy how much I didn’t know or remember! Anyway, it was a fun experience and I’ll probably make additional tweaks over the coming weeks if I think of anything else.

As some of you will know, I’m participating in Nanowrimo this year, so until the end of the month I will put my blog on hold as I don’t believe I’ll have the capacity to write my novel (I need to churn out about 1.7k words a day!) and update this blog at the same time. On the bright side, I have about 10 years worth of archives to go through if you want to read my work (haha). I may post something here every now and then, but it’ll likely be unsubstantial. For all those of you who are doing this year’s Nanowrimo, all the best! And if you’re thinking about it, go ahead! Make sure you sign up at the Nanowrimo website and feel free to add me as a writing buddy. I’ll also be posting my daily word count to Instagram. Here’s to a fruitful November!