In fighting clutter, thanx to the Dropdown Archives plugin for WordPress, I folded my archives into a neat dropdown menu just under the Search bar on the right. Let me know what you think!

I also installed the Simple Recent Comments Widget, which I'll give a spin for awhile because it makes it easier for me to see who's commented here last. It's an improvement over the default widget because you can style the comments (I've italicized mine) and select a # to display.

I also installed WP-PageNavi but haven't used it yet. It should make it easier to backtrack through pages, also with a dropdown menu.

Even the casualest glance from me picks up on details of what I should add, remove, or enhance here: I've become increasingly conscious that downsized Flickr snapshots have excellent visual quality but are hefty in filesize. Sometimes, the smaller, autogenerated sizes take up more disk space tham the jumbo original (!). I believe better JPEG compression could be used, especially when you compare the 500×367 downscaling of the "retailtherapist" image (211.07 KB) I recently Flickred vs. downloading that smaller version, JPEGing it again, and uploading it anew (151.14 KB).

I want my home page to load quickly for everyone who visits, so it's only natural I feel this way!

On a lark, I had fun sending an audio comment to Beth Kanter for her screencast project about widgets. More context here. What's intriguing is I didn't put all that much thought into how widgets help add value to a blog's community until after recording it. Of course I'm all for fun things to do; my website's like the busybox I always wanted to have as a baby+.

[MORE VEHICLE ANALOGIES NEEDED]

O, and one more thing: my classic Flash music player with full-length streams of some of my eclectic compositions is back in action. You can find it all widgety on the right under the "Techno Music" header.