However I find it so hard at times to find the balance between giving it all and yet holding something back. It is so ironic sometimes. What’s the point of publishing on a public platform, although personal as it may sound, when you can’t really express what you actually wanted to say? It feels like showering with your clothes on, which totally fails to serve the original purpose.

Sometimes I just abstained from blogging altogether for some time when I’m in a subdued mood before I did anything that I might regret later on because I don’t know who reads or will read my blog. You won’t know for sure who will stumble upon your blog one day.

Hope this simple trick helps you in your picture editing endeavour .

Imagine a sandwich, the header of a page is similar to the upper layer of the sandwich, the first slice of bread on the sandwich. The ingredients for the middle layer is really up to you to decide what kind of sandwich you want it to be, be it a tuna, eggs or ham sandwich, it is absolutely up to your desire.

The middle part of the sandwich can be used to describe the body part of a web page, how many columns you want your web page to have depends on what you want to display on it. The last layer of a sandwich is similar to the footer of a web page where your page won’t be complete without it.

2. Putting together the header
I wanted my page to be colorful and bright. That is why the many flower collage. The complete header and graphics are done using Photoshop. The flower motives that I used are cut out from my own pictures and I added some watercolor effects using Photoshop. <--- I deleted the flower motives!

The bamboo background of the header is actually a real bamboo mat, that I used for rolling my sushi . I came up with the idea while browsing through a magazine for home decoration. Sometimes ideas just popped up out of nowhere while you just aren’t looking for them. Besides looking colorful, I wanted my page to have a ‘writing a letter or postcards’-feel. So that is why I came up with idea of using some postcards and pictures at the header. Those are real postcards that I received from friends . I scanned them and sized them down a little and voila, the header is almost done!

As for the letters of ‘Mistymaze’, I decided not to have it too fancy, so as not to crowd the header with too many stuffs. For the navigation bar at the header, I used some pins to anchor the sticky notes and the background comes with a pin board look-a-like ‘wall’.

3. Placing the body parts
This is took me the longest to accomplish. I wanted the two columns on the far right side of the body to look as if they are on some stashes of papers being binded together with a paper clip. Everything is completely made in Photoshop with some research on the Internet. However placing the columns wasn’t that easy due to some browser defect.

4. Footer
I decided that the footer should be a complement to the header and some postcards to come with it.

The final result is what you see on this page. If you have some feedback to share, I’ll very much welcome it .

I have tried and tested my site on browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Opera and even Safari. It all turned out the way it should. However the one browser that I have left out was on Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). The reason was because I don’t have IE6 anymore on any of my computers. So I assumed that it should look alright on IE6 also.

This is one mistake for a beginner like me in building a website that is easily overlooked. My page looked downright badly composed if not hideous when viewed via IE6 as I checked later on. The right sidebar content was totally misplaced and my navigation bar was somehow mispositioned.

So it took me another week to hack IE6 bugs that caused all the layout problems. After some research over the Internet, I found out that IE6 has been known as a nightmare for website designers, so I’m not alone . If you are planning to build a website, keep these in mind:

• Always crosscheck the layout of your site on various browsers including IE6. A page that looks alright in Firefox might turn out looking disastrous on IE or Opera. This is because different browsers can sometimes interpret CSS commands differently.
• Before debugging your page, it is always advisable to validate your HTML code in your page and also a valid stylesheet (CSS) to come with it.
• The Internet has a HUGE resources on tips and tricks on tweaking your CSS. It always pays to do some research beforehand.
• Use a tool for checking and debugging your CSS code. Firefox has an Add-on which serves this purpose perfectly. I use Firebug. As you can see in the picture above, there is a extra window opened when you activate Firebug on a web page. This window will display the HTML code of the web page and on the right side of the window, its corresponding CSS code. This allows you to inspect and monitor your HTML and CSS codes. That is one real great tool!
• Check out some beautifully CSS designed sites like here, here and here.

These are just a few pointers that I’ve learned while revamping my website. Maybe they might turn out helpful for you , who knows.

Part of it was because I balked at the idea of committing myself to a blog. The idea of constantly updating it didn’t seem so appealing to me then. What if I have nothing to blog about? I knew that my interest would die out after a few months. However I decided to give it a try anyway and voila, I’m still continuing to blog on quite a regular basis. I surprised even myself that I could keep up with it thus far. *pat myself on the shoulders*

This blog has gone through many facades over this short period of time. I started first at WordPress with its free hosting but I felt a little restricted with its limited space for my loads of pictures, so I turned to Blogger but after some time, I felt the same restriction too. Then I decided to take up a domain of my own powered by WordPress and after this step I never look back. I love the freedom that comes with it.

Throughout the whole period, I developed an interest in editing photos and CSS for my site. For me it feels sort of relaxing after a day at work to come back and updating on my blog and pimping it once in a while. I find it enjoyable to learn new tips and tricks on how to tweak my CSS or hack the WordPress code and I’m still learning.

So if you ask me now whether I’ll give up my blog, I’d say no. Not at the moment. It has become a part of me, like an unfaltering buddy that keeps an open ear to put up with whatever gibberish that comes out of me. Listening without complaining.

It’s hard even to find a human being that’s so agreeable, don’t you think? So, here’s to another year!

That’s what I feel about this blog. I feel like it’s time for a change again I’m still in the process of improving the outlook of this blog. So bear with me when there’s some downtime now and then.

I hope I’ll be strong to overcome this. Should have seen this coming. So just brace myself and hope that it’ll be over soon.