Now Requiring Word Verification for Comments

I've been getting an increasing number of spam comments lately, so it's time to implement word verifications when you leave comments. I'm not changing anything else, you can still leave comments anonymously, I just want to eliminate trying to figure out if people or spambots are leaving the message. I personally can't stand using verifications because they can be so hard to decipher, but in this day and age they are a necessary evil. It's a shame that some few have to ruin things for the rest of us, but the sad fact is there are lots of these kinds of people in the world that care only about themselves.

I hope this doesn't discourage you from leaving comments...if I get negative feedback from you readers I can always turn it off. Just let me know if it gets to be a hassle.

New Wider Layout

I've gone to a wider layout to expand the width of post sections. It always felt so cramped! The width is now 1024. I apologize to any of you who are still running 800x600 resolution. I'd like to go wider, maybe 1200. if anyone has objections to this, please let me know...

News, News and More News

First let's start with the poll. It's gone. I really liked the concept, but it was poorly designed. I could not create it without voting myself. Others apparently cannot vote even though they were signed in. And though I don't use Internet Explorer, the poll doesn't even look correct under IE. So I have removed it until something better comes along.

Second, early opinions are that I should start working on hi-res PDFs of Champion's Odyssey and Sig cards for people to download, so I will start this soon. I thought I would need Acrobat, but apparently Photoshop is capable of creating PDFs.

Third, C.J. has given me his blessing to continue making Sig cards using other artists. So instead of stopping at 100, I will produce more Sig cards soon.

I hope you'll all bear with me on the recent changes and layout experimentation. I am committed to a goal of continuous improvement and excellence for this blog.

Trying Out Poll Feature in Sidebar

I'm going to try out the new Poll feature over in the sidebar to see how useful it is. If I don't get much of a response I will probably get rid of it. Unfortunately I believe you must be logged in to vote. I have tried hard to make it easy to post on this site, allowing anonymous comments and not requiring word verification (meaning I must police the site regularly for spam postings). For the voting, though, my hands are tied...logging in is a required feature. I could not find any other poll gadgets, so this is all I've got. If you'd like to vote and don't have a Google (Gmail) account, take a moment and sign up. It's free, relatively painless, and you don't have to do anything with it (except log in and vote, if you wish).

So the first poll will be about what I've been discussing lately - what's coming up next for the blog. The poll asks what would YOU, the reader, like me to work on next? Enter the poll to let me know.

Note: You can vote for more than 1 selection, and you can also change your vote. Please let me know here in the comments if you experience problems voting...

New design features in sidebar

I have not changed the layout of this blog in a LONG time. C.J. has made me aware of two great tools which I have incorporated into the sidebar.

The first is Recent comments that show what has been posted lately. The second is most popular comments so that you can see what has generated the most buzz.

Please make use of these features and see what C.J. has been up to. And please leave comments for him...he is, after all, the designer!

UPDATE: I have removed the popular posts but left the recent comments feature. The popular posts goes off of page hits rather than quantity of comments, and I didn't feel it added enough to bump the links and archives so far down the page. In addition, I added a poll feature for future use...