Universal Overhaul

By cevans on March 4, 2007.

The French have a Internet neologism that I particularly like, "Internautes," which of course is a sort of digital traveler, an Astronaut of the web. If any word is more fitting for this blog's readership, I don't what it is.

Welcome, Internauts, to this new version of Universe. We were long overdue for a design overhaul -- cutesy deep-sea creatures are a thing of the past, as is darkness -- and this one, appropriately, is a wonderful collaboration between myself and the Team Yacht one-man band. Influences: Charles and Ray Eames, 60's IBM advertisements (often one and the same), the wormhole to Vega that so brilliantly concludes the 1997 film, Contact. With this redesign, 'nauts, we will plunge headlong into another year's worth of great changes. What will be addressed?

Among many other things: messages pointing upwards from Earth and into interstellar space, Arecibo, Carl Sagan's weed-smoking treatises, sounds made by the human body and the shuttering beat of pulsars, more Interviews, SETI, new Science Fiction, tensegrity, money, writing, the patterns inside of envelopes, "the thing's hollow -- it goes on forever -- and -- oh my God! -- it's full of stars!" Starting from Planet Earth and panning out, out, we'll pass by the planets one by one (the radio signals aging, growing fainter as we go), then the whole galaxy, and then our galaxy will dwindle to a pinprick among the other galaxies, and so forth, forever.

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Ok, I'm sure this is already considered "Old News" on your radar, but the emergence of the the Virgin Galactica is entirely new to me.

An LA Times article on the subject began, "Sometime between the end of the Apollo missions and the shuttle disasters, space lost its shine."

Well, the Virgin Galactica may be bringing said shine back for $200,000 a pop. But you, my friend, and your technically savvy cohorts, have proven it a possible task with something as simple as a new color scheme and graphic.

Oh and I'm totally freakin obsessed with the opening scene of Contact.

I just added some more stuff! Now there's a nice navigation bar underneath the header image with quick links to everything Universe related. BOOM!

beautiful, looks so nice! the font in the sidebar is a little tiny for my old eyes, but that's what apple + is for!