Brad announces that he's getting ADSL soon. That means I have to get back to work on domesticat.

What many of you don't see is that Brad's been responsible for me doing many of the cool things to domesticat that I've done over the past year. The friendly design rivalry between us extends back for almost the entire time I've known him.It began as a geeky game of one-upsmanship: upon seeing what one person had done to their site, the changes inspired the other to make similar changes to theirs—and then go a step further.

Thus domesticat went from a static page to a dynamic one. PHP and strict style sheet usage got thrown into the mix. Song lists were shown. Favicons. Daily entries. Better graphics, quicker download times, more cohesive themes. Search functions. Webcams (I swear mine will return soon).

My sporadic project, over the past couple of months, has been an attempt to make domesticat a fully skinnable site. This project came about because Brad planned to make it possible for readers of his site to choose what colors they wanted for his site. I, of course, couldn't let that one pass me by—especially with my (deserved) reputation of never letting a design stand for more than a month or two without a major tweak.

This project has proven to be an excellent one for me. I have had to revisit every page on cat.net (don't ask how many there are; there are many) to ensure that I have completely separated style and content. Without this separation, truly different skins of the site can't be achieved.

Having to revisit every page on this site has served as a lecture to me of 1) just how annoyingly prolific I've been since October and 2) how if I'm going to undertake something, I really should do it right the first time.

Oh, well. Better learned now than this time next year, I suppose.

If I get the skins working, I'll probably spend the next few months churning out random designs for the site, which will amuse me to no end. It's a graphic designer thing. Don't ask; I can't explain it anyway.

The long and the short of it: get your site up, Brad. Not only do I need the challenge, I'm looking forward to hearing what you've got to say. So much so that in lieu of a site, I'm dragging a goodly number of my friends up to Victoria to see you next week!

(fear us.)

Of to bed. The kitties insist. But first, I must clean up the mess that the Amazing Puking Wonder[tm]—otherwise known as Tenzing—has left us in the hall…

Ah, the joys of my life.