Wow. I . . .
I'm sorry, I'm just, uh . . .
Whoa there! A little bit emotional on my part.
As you can see, we've just unrolled our long-awaited blog redesign, and we're bustin' our buttons about it. I thought you might like to hear from some of the team that made this possible.
We'll be chatting with:
knotalex, our director of marketing and programming "guru";
pnotalex, our art director and webmaster;
and gnotalex, our "creative" guy and all-round bon vivant.
These are busy guys, and it took some doing, but I eventually got them all in the same place at the same time and switched on the tape recorder:
notalex: Let's start with a general question. What was the impetus for this change? Let's go around the table.
knotalex: The blog had become . . . stale.
pnotalex: Predictable. Time to shake things up.
notalex: Was there a pivotal . . . no, . . . a tipping point?
gnotalex: When you stuck your head in the office and yelled, "MAKE IT SO!"
[laughter]
notalex: What changes can the average reader expect to see?
pnotalex: It's quite dramatic. Whereas the previous blog was very, uh . . .
gnotalex: Brown. It was brown.
knotalex: More of a reddish-brown. Something like Red Ochre.
gnotalex: Then you've got the brightness on your monitor turned up too high.
pnotalex: I thought it was green!
[laughter]
notalex: And now?
knotalex: Definitely, uh, bluer.
gnotalex: Don't forget the grey. There's dark grey, and light grey.
knotalex: How do you remember how to spell "grey"? I'm always getting it mixed up with the American spelling, you know, "g-r-a-y."
gnotalex: The best way that I've found is to think of the Grey Cup. I mean, the "Gray" Cup just doesn't look right, does it?
pnotalex: I thought it was green!
[laughter]
notalex: How difficult were the technological challenges?
knotalex: Whew! [laughter] At some points we were working with raw HTML code.
pnotalex: There were a lot of heated arguments, and on one occasion --
knotalex: an actual fistfight. [laughter]
pnotalex: More of a shoving match. But it was intense.
notalex: For the benefit of the people too stupid to figure out how to read this on their computers, HTML is . . .?
knotalex: It's like a different language or something. I just know that it's unforgiving. You miss an angle bracket here or there and all of a sudden the page looks like shit.
gnotalex: I've just gotta say something here. I don't know anything about this computer mumbo-jumbo. I just know that what they do makes it possible for me to do my work. [singing] All the little people, where do they all belong?
knotalex: Listen, you pompous a--
notalex: Speaking of the little people, where do you see your audience, and how do you hope to expand it?
knotalex: I guess I should take this one. We've done extensive research that indicates we've got a crucial foothold in the 34-50 male demographic. We've further isolated it down to Arthur Rutkowski (Artyman the Partyman!) of Vegreville, Alberta, a 35-year-old unemployed man who lives in his parents' basement and consumes reckless amounts of beer and Quaaludes.
gnotalex: Which is a critical detail. Beer and 'ludes, he's got a maximum of --
pnotalex: Five minutes, tops, of viable blogreading. That's a very narrow window we're shooting for.
notalex: Has there been any discussion on how to break out to other depressive pharmaceuticals?
gnotalex: Xanax.
knotalex: We did look at Xanax. We still see possibilities there.
pnotalex: There was a lot of discussion about Valium.
knotalex: But that's a girly drug. Valium and white wine. [laughter]
pnotalex: And we realized that gnotalex would have to get more in touch with his "sensitive" side to hold any female readers.
knotalex: Now that's a creepy prospect.
gnotalex: Heh.
notalex: Any thoughts about hallucinogenics? Peyote, mushrooms, LSD?
pnotalex: Nah, we figure that Warren Kinsella's got that crowd locked up.
notalex: So where from here?
knotalex: Onward and upward, man. The die is cast. This is the new paradigm.
pnotalex: Unless someone complains. Then we'd change it all back.
gnotalex: He's only got five minutes. What are the odds?