I've been tweaking the site for a few weeks off and on. Busy schedule and what not. A while back I made a list of things that needed to change: updated links, clearer sidebar, better system for the "mini blog" (coda), and different interior page designs, and every few weeks I've gone through and changed something, until now, when I think I've done enough to warrant a small post about these changes.
In the right column I took all the menus and put them in little "JavaScript" toggles, so that they take up much less room, but when you click on one of the links in the "menu box" above the menus expand for your viewing pleasure. I also did some cleaning up of the links list, and have expanded the list of sites that I'm linking to. I like giving the "real content," a lot more attention, while still keeping all the "sidebar" content accessible when possible.
The second big part of this revamp was to create a more customized "home page" for the site that displayed content productively and clearly, without and endless overload of content that word-press can provide if you're a) wordy like me; b) not careful. Basically I now have a bunch of custom "loops/queries" to pull the right kind of content onto the home page, and I can append "recent articles" lists, to provide access to the content without displaying all of it. On the essays, I even use a toggle script for a couple of entries for some added punch.
The final piece--this last weekends work--has been to change the "interior" page so that when you go to see a specific article the page is much less cluttered. I've also started using disqus for comments, and with some CSS magic I've gotten pretty satisfied with how this works. I really like having unique interior pages.
If something doesn't work on your browser, or you have additional suggestions, I'm all ears. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.