That’s right, banner picture! As previously mentioned, there will be some big changes coming soon! Most notably, the site theme is due for a change. It’s not that I love LOST any less, but the show has been over for more than a year and … wow it really hurt me to even write that … but it’s just been past due time to update. In addition I haven’t been writing on here as much as I used to and chasinglilly.net just hasn’t been as popular as it used to be. A change has been long-coming. The change will be abrupt. Indeed, many of you who dislike the idea of layout changes may be quite cantankerous toward the fact. Those of you who follow my Twitter may not actually find this change very surprising. I’m not going for a general template. I’ve never been much for them. The new theme will follow:

The Hunger Games.

Yes, my new theme will be based on the best-selling book series by Suzanne Collins, which is also being turned into a movie by Lionsgate to be released next Summer. For those of you who have never heard of it, do yourself a favor and PICK UP A COPY! They’re amazing books, and I am so incredibly psyched for the upcoming film(s).

The change actually makes a lot of sense. For a while now my blog has been utterly baseless. I’m sure most people who visit the site react like…

It’s fine. It’s cool. But there’s nothing to latch onto. Other than the LOSt-inspired theme, there is no commonality upon which to build a group of readers. It used to be based around LOST with the Dark Territory podcast and write-ups on the episodes and such. That was my (to steal a line from Jim Groom) digital story. For the past many months the blog has kind of LOST it’s way (heh see what I did there?). My realization of this fact makes me feel…

So, yeah, this Hunger Games decision is great! I’d been planning to hack out a template based around it, but the entire writing theme blew my mind! And it just came to me tonight and my reaction was like…

Thus beyond simply being a blog-image-template, The Hunger Games is going to be my new THEME. This will help me get posting more, start spreading information, and help me get involved in the various communities surrounding the series. I’ll be posting stories related to the books, news on the upcoming film, Suzanne Collins in general, etc. Don’t worry, I’ll still be posting pointless stories about my life. It also helps that The Hunger Games fan base is really just starting. Of course, that’s not to say it isn’t already rather well, okay HUGE. But compared to Harry Potter or LOST, the fan base is starting it’s exponential growth period. And I want to be part of that.

Of course there are already quite a few great fan sites out there like mockingjay.net, Hunger Games Movie, Hunger Games Trilogy, Down With the Capitol, and The Hob just to name a few. Those are just the ones I follow on Google Reader. Of course there are many others, but I would like to make an impression of some sort on the community. And with support, we can! I think it would be awesome if I could start blogging news and maybe Will and I could even start up a little podcast of our own about the series. I converted Will to a Hunger Games fan a few weeks back. In fact we have already been talking about doing a Hunger Games short film as a future project, something I am very supportive of. I hope this idea has your

and that you all will support me in this endeavor. And be sure to go support the fan sites already in existence listed above!

Happy Trails,
Sam.

For a beginner in web design, a CSS template like that is pretty tricky. So far I’m working on the basic page look in Photoshop. It’s not finished yet, but in the screen shots below you can see the sort of look and feel I’m going for. The multiple shots show examples of different backgrounds the site would have. Obviously I want the backgrounds to look epic, and I’m going to make them all pictures I’ve taken (or else taken of me). (click pics to enlarge)

At the same time, I don’t want to look all cocky and have huge pictures of me show up every time someone loads the page, so I’m really trying to mix them up. Except for the third one, which was too cool-looking to leave out. So that’s it so far, I haven’t even gotten to the coding yet. Any thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? I’m trying to learn on the fly, and this is really a great way to figure this stuff out. Mo’ stuff ta come.



Happy Trails,

Sam.



P.S. – Keyboard Cat is awesome

Yes, you all know about Violent Blue. But did you know we now have our own website? Chances are you didn’t, so go check it out at violentblue.net. Having your own website is a big step for bands in today’s digital generation. Thus while the band itself is a big project, another big project for me will be creating/updating the site. Will and I agreed it would be great if each member of the band had his own blog, so I got Will set up with one of his own at violentblue.net/willmccarry. You may notice he only has one short post up, so go comment on and yell at him to start updating it more!

Right now the site is up and functional, though it looks terrible. It was just a custom page I threw together in an hour or two using a [terrible] CMS called concrete5. For now, it’s passable. It has a video of our single, and is also running the RSS feeds of our three blogs under our epic pictures. It’s also running a feed of our latest Tweets, and I’m going to put a box linking to our Facebook Fan Page. So it does work in terms of being a sort-of HUB for our future fans to be socially in touch with us. But don’t worry, the look of the page won’t stay white, weird, and boring for very long. Like I said, concrete5 is, while easy to use and great for beginners, nearly impossible to personalize. So for this site I’m moving away from it, and any other CMS for that reason.

I tested numerous others such as Drupal and Joomla, too. While many people I know use content management systems like concrete5 and Drupal effectively, it just isn’t what I’m going for with the site, even if I wanted to take a more community-driven approach. However, I don’t want to use services like WordPress or Blogger for a home page. While I could even strip a theme down so it has a more basic homepage, I don’t like the non-static feel or annoyingness of blog-driven band pages.

So basically the whole point of all the above writing is to explain why I’ve chosen to build the site from the ground-up by myself and code a crisp, clean, CSS template from scratch. This will be quite a learning experience for me, and I don’t want any of you “smarter” web developers laughing at me as I crawl and cry my way to a cool looking site. Obviously I won’t post the site until it’s completely done, but I will keep updating the process on this blog as it comes along. So it looks like this is the only place you’re gonna get that info which… you probably don’t actually care about. Hahah no matter, I’m the one running this blog, so I decide what gets put up, even if it’s boring and loser-filled.

Happy Trails,

Sam.