Well, I re-skinned my Blog (A "skin" is the look, structure, and formatting of something. It doesn't change the content of stuff like the posts or dates or links; instead, it affects the actual placement, font, color, size, etc of how that content is displayed). It turned out to be a major overhaul. On a whim 2 days ago I did a search for "Blogger Templates" and lo and behold, there's hundreds of templates out there that work with Blog Spot (which is also called Blogger.. If there's a difference, I dunno what it is.)

So I decided to re-structure my blog so I can have 2 columns (aka sidebars) of links instead of just the one. My intention is to be able to list my current stuff in one column and my all-time favorites in another column. It took 2 days (Mainly because I was distracted with Violet's and Drake's blogs... more on that later), but I am fairly happy with the results.

In the middle of doing this, Violet noticed my new blog's look (skin) and started looking for one for her own blog. Since updating our blogs over the 4th of July weekend seemed to be the thing to do, I also FINALLY updated Drake's Blog (mostly motivated by the awesome new skin I found for it). Drake's blog took me a good part of yesterday morning.

By the time I was done, Violet had found one that suited her tastes. I ended up spending most of yesterday afternoon and evening editing the XML figuring out how it was all setup and worked. I ended up making her a new, customized header image because she didn't like the one that came with her "Hobbit" themed template. I also made it wider and edited the template images to make everything fit. I think the results turned out well.

The process reminded me of what I do at work, actually. A lot of the work I do concerns the UI (User Interface) of the game, especially this late in the development cycle (I'm mostly fixing bugs and applying polish... most of my C++ code has already been written). I'll edit the XML and reload the UI, just like I was editing the blog XML and reloading the blog sites. I'll routinely add some code or change some numbers to see what changes, just like I do at work. That way I can learn how the system works and then its easy to figure out how to add, edit, or adjust things to suit my purposes. I'm certainly not saying it's the same.. it isn't(For one, our blogs don't use LUA). I'm just saying that overall, I've noticed that there were peculiar similarities.