I’m still in a state of mild disbelief about it, but apparently it’s true–the last time I posted here, it was amid musings about birthday cake. And now, I’m back to post again, just a few days following this year’s birthday. I don’t even know what to say about that.

I’m sorry. That’s a good place to start, perhaps.

I hope you’re all doing well so far in this lovely year of two-thousand-and-twelve! I’ll dispense quickly with the business talk: I’ve done a major overhaul of the site for this year, which I hope you might take a peek at if you’ve a moment to spare! Among what you’ll find therein: HTML5/CSS3 pretties, new gallery setup with custom styling, and a wax seal power button that glows when you mouse over it. With credit to my handsome beau for that bit of inspiration–it’s a pretty cute effect, non?

Please do take a look if you’ve got a minute or two to spare! And as long as we’re talking site stuff, a big thanks to those of you who slipped below my radar and “liked” the site on Facebook, quietly before there was a button on my index page to rat you out. You sweet, sneaky things, you.

Okay, now, the fun stuff: Chalkdust update talk! No, it’s not ready yet. (Sorry. Again.) I’m compiling a list of feature requests to address, along with things I’d like to add on my own time. These are the ones that come to mind–if you’ve got a missing feature you’d like to see added to the next update, please leave me a message here or on Tumblr (link to my ask box), and I’ll add it to this post. I don’t anticipate that I’ll have to veto any reasonable requests, but there’s a chance that not every requested feature will make it to release. But you are, of course, free to modify your own personal install(s) of Chalkdust to your heart’s content! You don’t even have to ask!

My Desired Updates

• Embedded fonts for consistent visuals
• Reconfigured display for larger screen sizes
• Larger side panel for links/long descriptions

Requested Features

• Infinite scrolling
• Disqus support

I’ll do my best to keep this post updated with feature requests and progress notes, but if you really want to keep up to tabs, your best bet is probably to follow me on Twitter. I’ll try to keep you all posted as best I can!

Hi, lovelies! I’m ducking away from my current occupations (read as: crazy organization/cleaning bender) temporarily to mention a few things here. Because if I don’t, I think it will all be swept from my memory in a haze of Goodwill boxes and shredded paper.

First of all, it was my birthday on August 18th, and I got to have not one, but two different types of cake, so I was pretty happy about that.

Secondly, I’ve updated the design gallery setup recently with a new design that will make things more attractive and much quicker to navigate. I’ve employed (with modifications, of course) the lovely Coda Slider Effect script found at jQuery for Designers, and I love it very much and want to click on it all day.

Blog readers can hit the “design” button up top and check out the sidebar to begin browsing. For the rest of you, the direct gallery link is here!

I’m also adding some new portfolio pieces to populate the new gallery, the first of which is an iOS (iPhone/iPod touch) game prototype that I developed in April. It’s a simple side-scrolling/adventure concept and was my first real foray into the world of Objective-C coding, but in spite of the late nights, I had a lot of fun working on it. I hope to renew my iOS Developer credentials someday and get back to playing! Video game development and I go way back, so it was cool to dust off my old coding chops and produce something for the modern era.

I also made some small general improvements about the site, and for the most part, they’re things that you probably won’t notice at all. My résumé has been brought up to date, so if you’re in the market for contract or other work, please take a look!

Soon to come: things I’m enjoying lately, plugging my talented friends, Chalkdust and TumblOS updates, and the long-anticipated new Tumblr theme! It’s real. Promise. I have a folder on my desktop and everything.

I really wanted to sneak in sometime today and switch over my Tumblr themes to use Arial Black typeface and animated GIFs or something like that, but Tumblr theme updates need to be approved before they’ll propagate to everyone. So there went that idea. Well, it was fun in my head, at least!

People visiting the main site or main blog since yesterday will notice that I’ve redesigned the site again! I hope everyone is cozy with this one because it’s likely to stick for a while. If you aren’t, I’m very sorry, but I hope we can still be friends.

I suggest everyone on Google Chrome (yeah!) view the site with this extension for best results. Bellissimo!

I’m over my illness and will have some new things to share soon, including new art and a new Tumblr theme for you fine ladies and lads. (Ooh! Ahh!) For now, signing off, your eager servant, Caro.

Well, I wanted to make a big announcement of this, but it went live today and I’ve already got over 200 installs so far. I can’t get anything past you guys!

Anyway, as the title would suggest, Chalkdust v.2.0 is now available for your theming pleasure!

I’ve made a lot of improvements from the first release–most notably, this one is a lot tighter and more attractive in general, with improved detailing and typeface variation. A few design elements are color-changeable, and you can mix and match to your hearts’ desires. So if you want lots of pink or prefer greenboard to blackboard, you can do that. Support for Twitter, Flickr, and Last.fm linkage is available. It’s all pretty self-explanatory (this is Tumblr, after all), so if you like the look, I suggest installing it and playing with the settings yourself!

Something important: due to the way the title is arranged, long titles might be clipped, so I’ve added an option to change your title font size. The default is already filled in, so if you want it bigger or smaller, feel free to play with the setting until you’re happy with it.

As always, I welcome any and all comments, questions, bug reports, whatever… thanks so much to the terrific Tumblr team (TTT for short) for creating a lovely blogging platform and helping me get this release distributed to you guys! And much thanks, of course, to everyone who’s installed my themes so far. I couldn’t be happier!

Well, I wanted to get this done, so it’s done now! It’s been live for a few days, so some of you may have already noticed that the site and blog are sporting a new look for February. Ooh la la!

Of note is a revamped navigation that should improve usability quite a bit–the main site sections have been consolidated into the upper navigation, with secondary links (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) in the side panel. As it should be. And, of course, it’s a little prettier than the last… or I think so, at least. I hope that the redesign will make life somewhat easier for everyone! As always, if anything breaks or if you’re absolutely burning to throw in your two cents, comments, e-mails, and tweets are all welcome. Or if you want to love or hate it quietly, that’s cool, too.

I’ll be expanding on some site sections in the coming days, so more word on that as it develops. Until then, my lips are sealed…

Maybe I should just post more food in the meantime. Everyone likes food, right?

Alliteration is great, isn’t it?

So I was looking at my stats reports for this blog recently–try it; it’s fun–and I happened to notice, glancing over my search keyphrases, that the number one search query for this site is “tumblr themes by caroline tucker”.

Sob. Thank you!! I’m blushing.

I guess this means the people have spoken, so I’ll be working on at least one more Tumblr theme in the weeks to come, though I’m not sure yet what shape it’ll take. I’m also working on a revamp of Chalkdust now that I’m home from the holidays and happily reunited with my graphics tablet. (Why didn’t I bring it with me? I don’t know.) Producing a theme like that on a notebook trackpad is… tough. Seriously.

Other than that, I’m hoping to add more and varied art pieces to the main site, and I’d like to work on some extra linkage for this site. With thanks to the handful of lovely friends who have allowed me to link to them thus far–if you’re reading from Tumblr or FeedBurner, do drop by the main blog site sometime and check out their sites in the sidebar!

And other than that, I’ve been mulling over such Fascinating Topics as HTML5/CSS3 and where the hell you get batteries for the model of Leica I’ve recently come into. Maybe Amazon will have them. Amazon has everything. Remember when it was just books…? Ah, the long long ago.

After a considerable amount of time and effort, as well as a dumb mistake or two (double-check your closing tags, kids), round two of the Tumblr theme party is up for your consideration! Here’s TumblOS.

The idea came about in a half-sleeping haze, and I’m glad that I stirred from my nap long enough to grab my phone and jot it down. Pixels! Icons! Pull-down menus! The interface should be pretty familiar to anyone who owned a Mac in the ’90s–a lot of inspiration there. I have fond memories of my first Mac. Countless hours spent playing with HyperCard…

The window setup is achieved with the aid of David Desandro’s amazing jQuery plugin, Masonry, which couldn’t be a more wonderful thing, truly. Your main pages will show up with clustered tiny windows, but click the expand button or another permalink (this also applies to pages), and you’ll get an expanded single window view, like so!

Language localization is built in by default, as well as support for custom background colors and images. I’d love to see someone dig up some old tiling backgrounds to use here… heehee. The icons (save the RSS one) link to services specified via the Appearance pane, with support for Twitter, Flickr, and Last.fm. You can use all or none of them, of course. And the icons themselves are pixelated versions of IconDock’s beautiful Vector Social Media Icons. Huge thanks to them; they’re perfect!

Again, this is a new theme, so Theme Garden approval is pending, but if you like what you see, please feel free to take it for a spin! And if you use it, I’d be thrilled to hear back from you, even if it’s just in the form of a “like” on Tumblr!

I’ll be updating the main site with both themes later today. I hope you all enjoy them, and I hope everyone has a great 2011!! Happy New Year!!

Never say that I don’t still love you, Tumblr–my first public Tumblr theme is set up and ready to be installed on lovely tumblelogs the world over. Yay!

The theme is brand-new and is as of this writing still awaiting moderator approval for the Theme Garden, but I wanted to go ahead and share and talk a little bit about it! I’ve wanted to do a Tumblr theme for a while now, so I’m happy to have made my first foray into this world, so to speak. It’s a fun blogging platform for which I have plenty of respect, all technical issues and other growing pains aside. And the Theme Garden, I think, is a great way to provide designers with a platform and users with a broad array of options. So this is my initial contribution: Chalkdust, a graphical theme drawing inspiration from blackboards and the chalk doodles of my childhood (and maybe yours, too).

The theme is live on Tumblr’s servers as of 5 AM EST (yes, I pulled a late night to finish), but I’ve recently added some changes for proper language localization, and they don’t appear to have propagated yet. Those of you whose tumblelogs display in English won’t be affected by the changes, though, so feel free to preview and take it for a spin if it looks like your speed! I’ll be sure to post again once the changes are fully cleared, and I hope to announce it if the theme is properly approved for Theme Garden exhibition!

I’d like to produce some more Tumblr (and possibly WordPress) themes as time allows. If there’s anything in particular that you’d like to see, I’m open to ideas and suggestions!

Gobs of amazing resources for mostly web designers, although graphic designers could definitely get some mileage out of a lot of these. I’ve been in a downloading fit. Life is good and beautiful.

Well, it’s the first post of the new site blog! And what better day to mark it than a day dedicated to supporting web standards?

Actually, this is purely coincidental… I didn’t know there was such a thing, but lo and behold, the internet delivers again. I don’t own a blue beanie, though. Maybe I’ll do some pixel art or something. Everyone likes pixel art, right?

To be quite honest, it feels a little like sacrilege, talking about web standards on a tumblog. (Edit: Well, it was when I made this post.) The iframe that Tumblr embeds before the closing body tag contains a handful of ampersands that break validation, in spite of my best efforts. This is after having to fall back on XHTML 1.0 Transitional just to hammer an iframe through in the first place. Somehow, the fact that the lack of validation isn’t my fault makes it so much worse. It’s out of my hands! It’s positively giving me hives.

But still, happy Blue Beanie Day, kids! Support web standards, validate your code, stay in school. Maybe consider a W3C donation, if you’re feeling in the spirit of giving? ‘Tis the season, after all.