This month it's nine years since I started my blog. That makes The Lost Fort if not a dinosaur so at least a mammoth of the blogsphere, though with the difference that it hasn't become extinct. And I plan to keep that prehistorical animal alive for a long time to come - I got enough material for another 500something posts. :-)
I wanted to celebrate the occasion with a slightly altered layout that takes into account the increasing number of wide screens, and add a second sidebar to the left. But the new templates are all ugly as sin and not really editable, at least not to an extent I wanted to change things (not to mention tons of extra code for display on mobiles and stuff). And my old template from 2005 is an unholy mix of HTML and CSS to begin with and my tampering with it hasn't made it any cleaner, I admit. There's just no way to add a second sidebar; I've tried for hours.
So I decided for the second best option and split my existing sidebar with some tags usually used to insert tables. That took some code fumbling as well, but I finally got it to display nicely on Firefox (though the display on IE8 sucks, but who's using that one still, lol?). So I got sort of what I wanted: a new look that's not fundamentally different from the old one - I definitely wanted to keep the colour scheme and some other features.
I've added some photos to this post that illustrate the extent of my travels during the years I've been blogging. I did go further west than Iona during a school trip to Avranches in France, but that's really long ago. That there's water on all of the photos is no chance; I love water and if I can't get to the sea, I try to at least have rivers or lakes on my trips.
From the Danube to the Barents Sea, from Iona to St.Petersburg, encompassing 11 countries (if you count Wales and Scotland as part of the UK), albeit some only for a short visit; going farther east and north than the Romans - not a bad result for nine years of traveling and blogging. :-)
Some of my readers have followed me from the beginning as I followed their blogs, many have joined me during time. I've met a few of my readers in real life, but what I really gained are a number of online friends from places even beyond my travels. I cherish you all and hope you will stay with me for another nine years.