Monday 19 January, 2004 at 5:56PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (4)

Ok I redesigned the layout and I prefer how it looked before (although I'm still playing around with how the weblog posts appear). The reason I changed it was because nobody was really looking at anything other than the weblog (except for the few people who came in via search engines looking for something specific). I figured the reason for this was that the site navigation was very inconspicuous, so the main point of this redesign was to have an obvious site menu on the left, much like the general 'standard' weblog layout. However, I like a clean-looking uncluttered site, and I'm afraid this new design just does not meet my own standards. I'll probably revert back to something similar to what I had but with a more obvious and expanded horizontal site menu along the top.

It's been friggin freezing here over the last week, with temperatures hitting near record lows of 1°F/-17°C, and windchill hitting nearly -30°F/-34°C on one night. That's getting dangerous.. I believe when windchill gets colder than around -40°F your skin can freeze in just 1 minute, and that ain't good I'm sure. We've had a fair bit of snow too, although today freezing rain and wind overnight have left everything really icy. For the first time since I've been here (over 2 years) I arsed over on the ice this afternoon while walking to the shops. I recovered well and managed to land in a kind of lop-sided on-one-bended-knee stance, but it's still a wipeout in my book. bah.

I was just looking at my referral stats and noticed someone had reached the site by searching on google for "sulfur+charcoal+salt+peter", which many people know are the basic components for making gunpowder. The entry they arrived at on this weblog was back in July 2002 where I wrote about Guy Fawkes Day in New Zealand and some of the mischief we used to get up to blowing up letterboxes and a public toilet etc with [censored] bombs (or [censored] bombs if we didn't have enough components for the [censored] ones). I included in the entry the % of each component required, where we got hold of them, and how we made the ..err ..extreme firecrackers - basically the full instructions of how to obtain the materials and construct the bangers. I then had a rather disturbing thought.

I recall (and wrote) a while back that some dude who ran a popular political site (that usually criticized the US govt with some controversy or another) was arrested and fined big $ under that Orwellian terrorist act under the guise that he was providing methods for creating explosives which could then be used to overthrow / destabilize the US govt (actually he was jailed too). While a [censored] firecracker could do neither of these things in anyones wildest dreams, I have to wonder if I should censor that post since we were writing about virtually the same thing. hmm. Yes I think I better do that. Just another example that freedom of speech in the US is becoming history. Yeah sure you can speak, just as long as it's not about a subject that 'the authorities' deem as anti-establishment, which in reality could be construed as pretty much anything if you put your mind to it. It's sad to see. I will add that I don't really oppose the anti-terrorism act in essence and what it was supposedly intended to achieve, but I do oppose it being abused like it has been under the guise of national security. End of rant.