As most of the regulars know, we have but two themes for the macosxhints.com site -- the default white/blue scheme, and darker "classic" view that recalls the site's early days. Well, today, after many long months in development, and a very full final day (it's 11:59pm on the 1st, according to my clock) of pounding on the CSS, HTML, and Geeklog's layout templates, I'm pleased to reveal the third official macosxhints.com theme, as seen in the image at right (click the image for a much larger view):

My objective in working up this new theme was to capture the simplicity, elegance, and power of Derek Zoolander's patented "Blue Steel" modeling pose. Using Derek's work as the benchmark, I looked for design inspiration from many sources. After a long and arduous search, I finally identified the perfect Blue Steel counterpart to use as the basis for my design: Spinal Tap's Smell the Glove. This landmark album featured an all-black cover, and when I recalled its simple yet powerful imagery, it struck me: this is perfection in design! So thanks, Spinal Tap, both for the music and the inspiration for the site's newest theme. I owe much to your groundbreaking design efforts!

Registered users will be able to activate "Spinal Tapestry" very soon now; I'm just putting the finishing touches on the CSS, and hope to have it all wrapped up sometime tomorrow. It's been a long day of final-rush coding and testing, preceded by many months' worth of setup work, but I think you can all see that the end result has justified the energy expended on the theme's development!

If you'd like to know more about this theme's early development, you can read any one of these four background articles; they cover the process in great detail.