…that took a bit longer than expected. And there’s no shortage of things left to be done.
But, it seems well past time to work on putting some content up here, so I’ll fix as I go. If there are any long-suffering readers still out there, please let me know if anything isn’t working with the new design. Ideally, we’re all seeing something that looks a little like this (well, maybe somewhat larger):
More soon!
Well, folks, it looks like the month of December is going to be hairier than usual around HMNH HQ. At the top of the list are some thrilling but time-consuming deadlines from the day job rushing towards me, including a set of illustrations for a new exhibit opening this spring, but needed by January in order to flesh out a little publication that has to be printed and ready to distribute by opening day. Sorry to be so tight-lipped about this project, but there should be more to say very soon!
The upside is that I’m making more time during the normal workdays to paint. The downside is that I’m squeezing it in alongside several other duties that are coalescing around the same exhibit. Actually, that isn’t really a downside, since everything I’m working on is pretty exciting—the real downside is that it will be bleeding into more personal time as the holidays approach. Postings here may tend to be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks as a result.
In anticipation of this, I’ve bitten the bullet and ordered a long-overdue replacement to my aging computer. I’m hoping it will help me accomplish the tasks ahead at blazing speed, but I’m sure its main function will be to serve as a shiny bit of positive reinforcement when I need to hunker down and plug away at some image files or layouts.
Speaking of layouts, I’ve been threatening to redesign this site for a couple of months now, so I really should add that to the list of things that need my attention this month. When I last mentioned it, a couple of comments encouraged me to retire the Titanophoneus skull that has grinned out from the HMNH logo for the past three years, in favor of something a little more appropriately hairy. I haven’t quite settled on what will replace it just yet, but there are a couple of fruitful possibilities…
…so, just off the cuff, is there a kind reader out there able to send me a PDF of the following article?
Hopson & Kitching 2001. A probainognathian cynodont from South Africa and the phylogeny of non-mammalian cynodonts. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 156, p.5-35.
As is typical around HMNH HQ, when things get a little hectic, web updates are first on the chopping block. What is atypical is that this week is looking to be even more harried than usual (mostly due to lots of scrambling at the day job), but I’m going to make an effort to get a couple of posts online anyway.
There are a slew of great paleo-stories floating around out there, and all signs point to more coming over the next month. If you’ve popped in here, chances are you’re already a regular reader of The Boneyard, which has, since my last post, fledged the last bit of its downy coat, spread its newly feathered wings, and left the nest where it was hatched over at Laelaps. It has found fertile hunting grounds at When Pigs Fly Returns and The Ethical Palaeontologist, and keep an eye out for a new edition at Fish Feet this weekend. Check it out for the latest and greatest paleontology on the web whilst I struggle mightily to get the Hairy Museum’s act together.
What am I hoping to accomplish here in the coming weeks? A brief list of plans:
And while I’m mulling over a few new ideas for the site, it seems like a good time to solicit comments from any readers who keep checking in. Is there anything that you’d like to see more of (or just plain see) at the Hairy Museum? Any directions that the site should (or should not) take? Anything I could get rid of, or are there parts of the site I should leave up at all costs?
So, while I was making some corrections to this site’s code, I decided to take the plunge and add a couple of new navigation structures—the online equivalent of upgrading the museum’s wayfinding signage. If you’ll turn your attention to the left-hand column, you should notice a veritable rainbow of options to assist you, our valued visitor, in getting the most out of your Hairy Museum experience.
First up, a usable timeline. HMNH entries have been sorted by geologic time periods almost since the blog began, but they were never presented in any meaningful order or context. But now, everything is in the proper order, and we’ve got context coming out the wazoo! For example, pointing to the ‘Cretaceous’ link in the timeline will bring up a tooltip giving you the age of the Cretaceous Period, and clicking on it will load up every HMNH post about things that happened during that time.
The periods are nested, so that by clicking on the ‘Mesozoic’ link you can load up all entries in the ‘Triassic,’ ‘Jurassic,’ and ‘Cretaceous’ categories. And the colors are reasonable approximations of the hues specified by the Commission de la Carte Géologique du Monde for geologic maps and timelines. So it’s not just fruity, it’s international-standards-compliant!
Below the timeline is a table of categories arranged phylogenetically, or by evolutionary relationship. Right now it’s just the chordates—yes, there are a few invertebrate posts floating around, but for now this is a good start. These categories are also nested: selecting ‘Bony Fish,’ for instance, will load up every post on fish, tetrapods, reptiles, birds, and mammals. (For why this is so, look here.) As far as I know, there’s no international body specifying colors for taxonomic groups, so I just went with my aesthetic judgement on this one.
Feel free to poke through the new organization and see how it works. If anything seems unusual/erroneous/broken, or if you have any thoughts on how it could be made better, by all means leave a comment or send me an email. Enjoy your visit!
Apologies to all visitors who popped in today and found various parts of the site either missing, poorly arranged, or replaced with error messages. In the process of upgrading the HMNH blog to WordPress 2.1, I managed to break the comment functions, blogroll, and (briefly) the entire front page. I think I’ve managed to get everything fixed at this point, and hopefully the Hairy Museum is now back to its regular levels of disheveledness.
…at least for now. Poking through the site’s underlying code has inspired me to begin working on that clutter of categories over in the left-hand column. While that is going on, don’t be surprised if all the archived posts suddenly lose whatever marginal context they once had. I assure you, it will only be temporary, and with luck, things will be a little better organized soon!
