Whohooo, I’ve been working on this design for the past two weeks and now it’s finally done!

I started this blog 5 years ago, and realized last month that I had the same design for all those 5 years. And that I was completely bored and tired of it. I also didn’t like reading posts on my own site anymore, preferring to read them in my rss-reader; it’s like being a chef and not eating your own food, or being a fashion designer and not wearing your own clothes. The old design had done its job, but it was time for it to go.

So I sat down, thought out what I wanted in a new design and built it up from scratch myself. Making a wordpress theme is a whole lot easier than I thought; it’s definitely become a simpler process since I worked on the old one 5 years ago!

The main change is I switched from 2 to 3 columns. I know there are people out there who usually don’t like 3 columns and think it gets too busy, but it feels like the right one thing for MissGeeky. In the left sidebar you’ll find info about me and stuff I’ve recently tweeted/watched/read/played. In the main middle column you’ll find the blog posts, with on a single post page also the comments and share buttons. Finally, in the right sidebar you’ll find popular posts, related posts and related ads.

Next to that, I’ve decided to highlight the categories more. There are now 8 main categories and each post will belong to one of them (well, they will once I’ve gone through all my old posts and retagged them). I love the icons I’ve found for all of them!

So what do you think? I personally think it looks a whole lot cleaner than it was before, and I’m more inclined to browse around and read stuff on the site. The one thing I’m not completely happy with is the comments area; I’m tempted to take a look at Disqus and see if that might be a better solution.

Take a look around and please let me know what you think of it all in the comments!

Upcoming Events:

• July Sandpit – Movement and Spectacle (Sunday 15th July): Come along to Holland Park (in the Orangery, between Kensington High Street and Notting Hill) from 2:00-5:30pm on Sunday 15 July, for a free afternoon of games around the themes of movement and spectacle. I love the Sandpit events, I’m hoping it will be good weather!
• Geeks of London Movie Club (Monday 16th July): We’re organizing the first GoL Movie club meetup! The idea is to meetup at Wagamama’s near the O2 for some dinner first and then to see The Amazing Spiderman at the Cineworld’s Skyscreen.
• London Web – Sidestep and Twist: Interesting looking meetup with James Gardner, author of the book Sidestep and Twist. I met James a few years ago when he spoke about innovation at Lloyds (where he worked at the time) at a GeekDinner I had helped organize.
• The Genius of Hitchcock (August – September): The BFI Southbank are showing all Hitchcock’s movies. Now I’ve only seen Psycho and Rear Window… *waits for people to get outraged*… Calmed down again? Which movies would you suggest I have to see?

Links:

• Summer School for Geeks – 11 New Sci-fi and Fantasy Books: Great list of books coming out this summer. I’ve already finished one of those and two are on my wish list, but I’ll have to check out the other ones.
• Video Games, I’ve Let You Down: Interesting post on explaining games to non-gamers.
• How Movie Theatres Should Be Laid Out: Harsh, but a part of me wishes that this was true.
• Interview with Text From Dog: I love Text From Dog! Some of his texts are brilliantly hilarious, and this interview with him gives us a better understanding of his psyche.

• Reddit Unlocks the Secret of Cryptic Subway Code: A homeless looking man hands a cryptic looking note and a $50 bill to a Reddit user, who then tries to figure out what the hell the code means.
• My #1 Cause of Back Problems: As usual, Cat vs Human is so spot on!
• Cosmo’s 44 Most Ridiculous Sex Tips: Made me laugh.
• Martin’s BarCamp Berkshire Photos: Martin always takes great photos and we asked him if he could take photos of all the crew during the weekend. The photos turned out great!

• Moneyball 2.0: How Missile Tracking Cameras Are Remaking the NBA: Great read on how analytics are changing basketball. Data mining FTW!
• Science Museum’s Codebreaker Challenge: Cute code breaking game to promote the exhibition about Alan Turing at the Science Museum.
• Paper Birds and Wildlife: Pretty birds and other animals made from only paper.
• A Geek Venn Diagram: I wasn’t expecting that:

Wow, this etsy store has tons of cute geeky necklaces and rings! LicketyCut designs an awesome range of laser cut acrylic jewellery, referencing old Nintendo games to newer games, like Portal and Mass Effect. They do tons of different designs and I’ll only be featuring my favourites here, so make sure to check out the actual store!

Retro Batman Symbol Pendants $20 (a single one is $12)

Classic NES Controller $25

Portal’s The Cake Is A Lie $10

Mass Effect Paragon and Renegade Pendants $20 (single one is $12)

Pokemon Necklace $25

Cute, right? They’ve got a lot more designs in their store, including necklaces for DragonAge, Legend of Zelda, World of Warcraft, and more.

These shoes from etsy store Aisha Voya are so glittery! I don’t think I would ever wear these myself (unless for a fancy dress party or something like that), but they’re definitely geeky.

Pikachu Pokemon Glitter Shoes $70

1 Up Mario Mushroom Glitter Shoes $70

Star Wars Rebel Alliance Glitter Shoes $70

Sailor Moon Artemis and Luna Glitter Shoes $85

Yesterday during RegentTweet (more about that later this week) I came across this figurine at the Swarovski store:

It’s Stitch!!! So adorable, right? I’m normally not that into the crystal figurines, but this one I wouldn’t mind having. Only problem is: it’s £205. *gulp* I like it, but I don’t like it THAT much.

Here’s the official photo from the Swarovski site:

If you want this adorable Stitch figurine, head on over to the Swarovski store to check it out.

I love sushi. It’s not something I’ll make myself though, but if I did, I would so want this bamboo tray! It’s got three depressions into the wood, making perfect spots for your soy sauce, wasabi and ginger.

It’s a bit pricey at €47 per board (and if you don’t want to dine alone, you should at least get a second one too), but it’s a gorgeous and unique way of serving sushi. If you want one, head on over to Fab to check it out.

Aw, this is such a cute t-shirt! It’s also exactly what my cat’s resumé would look like. I think the only things that are missing off their one though is “alarm clock” (they’ve been waking me up at 6:30 for the past week) and “interior decorator” (the amount of hair they’re shedding is awful).

You can get the tee for $15 on shirtwoot!.

Here are some cool and interesting links I’ve came across the past week:

• Whatever Happened To The Original Cast of ‘Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers’?: I knew what Amy Jo Johnson went on to do, but it’s interesting to see what happened to the others.
• Space Archaeology’s Prometheus Review: I totally agree with this; a lot of what was wrong with Prometheus comes from having stupid scientists.
• What If Things Had Ended… Differently? FED by Mira Grant: Mira Grant gives us a glimpse of what could have been the ending of Feed. I’m glad she didn’t go this way though; I much prefer the actual ending.
• Pocket Princesses: Awesome comic series from Amy Mebberson featuring the Disney princesses living together. It’s currently on hiatus, but they’re so funny, I hope it returns soon!

• Joss Whedon’s Interview with Rutherford D. Actualperson: Awesome letter from Joss to his fans about The Avengers.
• The 22 Rules of Storytelling According to Pixar: Storyboard artist Emma Coats tweeted a list of storytelling rules that’s she learnt while at Pixar.
• The Git Rap: “I won’t git merge your branch if the code is bad, your pull request has no tests and you know that’s sad”
• Paramount Celebrates 100 Years of Glory on Cool Gallery 1988 Poster: Awesome poster with 104 movies. How many movies can you recognize? Here’s just 9 of them:

• Hangman – You’ve Probably Been Playing It Wrong!: What order of letters should you use while playing hangman? This post actually looks at the frequencies of letters in words from a dictionary and shows how you should play.
• Valve’s Handbook For New Employees: Valve looks like such an amazing place to work!
• Toy Adword Wordclouds: Visualization of the words used in ads for toys. Guess which one is for boys an which for girls. It’s from more than a year ago, but still interesting to see (and I predict there wouldn’t have been any drastic changes in the past year for it to be massively different now).

• The Floppy Disk Means Save and 14 Other Old People Icons That Don’t Make Sense Anymore: I don’t agree with all the examples he gives, but there are definitely some icons which might seem a bit strange nowadays.
• Museum of Endangered Sounds: Cool idea, but I’m kind of disappointed that the dial-up sound of modems isn’t among them.
• Why I Write “Strong Female Characters”: Good post from comic book writer Greg Rucka.

What if the afterlife was ruined by lawyers? This is an awesome video created by Tom Scott. It’s been out for a while now, but I just hadn’t gotten around to posting it; ah well, better late than never:

As a kid I used to love Lego, and I always find it cool when it’s used in interesting and different ways. This is such a fun photo series by Elroy Klee, called Mindplay: bricks on me, where he gave his models Lego as hair! Can you imagine how uncomfortable that must be? Also, I’m guessing the model in the first photo has her head bent like that, cause otherwise the Lego wig would fall off.

Via FashionablyGeek