I spotted a butterfly on some particularly vibrant flowers earlier tonight and couldn’t resist getting up close and personal.

Here are the results, snapped with my beloved Nikon D40:

It’s been only six months since installation, and yet Akismet — a plugin that blocks spam comments on blogs — has prevented 1,000 spam comments on this (quite small) site. Thank Akismet!

Being a non-dual-booting Mac user, I hit a snare when working on a website the other week. I knew that it worked fine in both Safari and Firefox, but it was untested in Internet Explorer. For as much as people tend to rag on Internet Explorer, it still dominates the browser market share, and because of this, ensuring a site works in Internet Explorer is critical. Even on this blog — one I would think to be pretty technologically savvy — 62% of my visitors use Internet Explorer.

Now, back to my original dilemma: I had a website untested in Internet Explorer, and had no way of getting Internet Explorer on my computer. After some Googling, I came upon Netrenderer. It allows you to paste a URL you’d like tested, and unlike other services, instantly outputs a screenshot of your site as it would appear in IE 6 or 7, based on your preference. Though it does cut off at the fold, or the bottom of the browser window, this has proven to be an invaluable tool for me in ensuring compatibility in IE for sites I design.

I recently re-discovered a gem of an app for Mac that I believe to have downloaded several months ago called Quinn.

For as much as people tend to rag on Mac OS for its small selection of games, Quinn is, surprisingly, a free, bang-up rendition of Tetris (or the “popular falling-blocks game which, according to the Tetris Company, must not be named here,” according to the site). I can honestly say that its being a game aside, Quinn’s interface ranks as one of the best I’ve encountered on Mac. With its multi-player functionality, and ability to host games, I know that I’ve spent countless hours trying to top others’ scores as well as my own.

If you’re not a serious gamer, but are interested in a largely mindless and simple, classic game to occupy those few spare moments you might have in your day — which may be far too little time once you become as obsessed with it as I! — I highly recommend Quinn.

Oh yeah, I have a blog — I seem to have forgotten about that. In any case, what’s a guy to do when he lacks interest in actually blogging? Redesign his blog, of course. In launching this theme, this blog is on its third design revision in its near year of operation. I would say that out of every design this is by far my favorite.

Entitled “Redux,” this design is the result of my wanting a more minimal, toned-down design. Hopefully its succeeded in doing this. Also: now with at least improved IE compatibility, as I’ve been too lazy to ensure total compatibility, yet. Also, as of this writing I’ve not ensured W3 validity, but will do so shortly.

Any feedback is appreciated, and hopefully you enjoy the new design.