It's on

I've been fighting with Blogger's themes and layouts for a couple of hours now.

As I mentioned earlier, I chose to use the new "Contempo" theme and the default layout, almost untouched.

I did it on my laptop where the resolution is 1366x768. The side bar on the left always collapses on this resolution and the blog looks OK to me.

However, when displayed on my larger monitor (1920x1080), it doesn't look OK. The side bar is expanded at all times. And it looks awful.

The issue is that I have a disabled/hidden default gadget at the top of the side bar - "About Me".

I am a big fan of privacy on the web, although I am fully aware that it is not really possible nowadays. Especially in my case of using Google Blogger to run a blog. (This is a topic for discussion in another post.)

So while I am just starting here, I've decided to keep myself anonymous for now to the extent it could be possible:

1. I use a randomly selected display name for the Blogger's blogs, which works as a pseudonym.
2. I don't show the display on posts.
3. I don't show the "About Me" gadget.

My real name is not that important in a blog like this. At least now.

However, not showing the "About Me" gadget makes my blog look worse than I expected.

So now I am looking into a few options:

1. Using a totally different theme, probably an old one, which I am accustomed to and can change as I wish.
2. Replacing the "About Me" gadget with something else - some other gadget. However, that gadget looks natural up there and replacing it with something else may not help, after all.
3. Showing the "About Me" with my pseudonym, which I might also need to change again from a randomly selected word to something more pseudonym-like, for example, "John Doe" :)
4. Showing the "About Me" with my real name, which I prefer not to at this point.

I guess you'll see what option I'll have ended up with in the next few days.