What I Learned About Making Headers.

You may (or may not) have noticed the new header.

This is what it looks like without the text in it, because...well, because Blogger is frustrating and all their NEW! AWESOME! CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS! don't really work with my old template edits.

My last header picture was one that I took when we went to an exhibit at MOCAD, two years ago. It's been up there that long. I just never found the time to change it, and since I couldn't exactly remember how I got it up there in the first place, I figured I'd probably better not monkey with it. But a few nights ago, armed with my new computer (an early and much-appreciated birthday gift from my mom), this nice tutorial, and some gumption, I decided to change it. I've fiddled a bit with the code for my page; I thought I knew what I was doing. Ten minutes, tops, I thought.

Three-plus hours later, I had learned the following things:

1. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

2. Blogger has lots of choices for tricking out your blog and I don't like any of them.

3. If you're going to pick a photo to crop for a blog header, it has to be one where you only like a tiny portion of the image. If you have a DSLR set on high resolution and large photo size, and you try to use a very close-up shot of something you just end up cutting off most of whatever is in the picture. It also can't be fuzzy or blurry at all because that is only emphasized when you crop.

4. I don't have any photos where I only like a small part of the image. At least not any non-fuzzy or non-blurry ones. I did go through the pain of trying to crop 6 different pictures that were too huge, though.

5. That photo I was certain I took of Piper's feet last summer, when she had her toenails painted cherry red and she was wearing those yellow-and-white retro-looking polka-dot sandals? I never took it. I have 45 other pictures of her feet, but not that exact one.

6. High-resolution pictures of feet look terrifying when cropped close and put up on a large computer monitor. It's like they're going to leap out and kick you in the chin. 

In the end, I had to go all the way back to years-old photos I took with my point-and-shoot, because those were small enough to crop and still give me something halfway nice to look at. It's still not quite right, but it'll have to do until I can get something better up there.