This is another UAPSA (and thus filed accordingly under the category of Public Service Announcements, and not Weekly Drivel®).
I try not to make a habit of reading Owljones.com, but once in a while–in a moment of weakness or temporary insanity–I make the mistake of stopping by the blog. I’m usually disappointed, but this time I was horrified. It seems as though Owl has decided to run with scissors and go against the flow (imagine that!) by assigning a black background to his website. Sensible and widely-accepted design principles will tell you that any dark background is bad enough, but at least most often a black background is accompanied by white text. So while it’s still hard on the eyes, it could be worse. Like using neon green, for example, which is exactly what Owl did. The glare caused me to tap out before I could even read the entire entry, which I had somehow gotten sucked into reading. It was all I could do to leave a comment, to which Mr, Jones replied:
Clearly he is a stubborn man. Fortunately the Common Sense Cavalry, in the form of The River Damsel, rode in to back me up by attempting to talk some sense into Mr. Jones:
Her mostly sage words fell on deaf ears, although for a fleeting couple of moments Mr. Jones did assign yellow as his text color. And it helped, though only marginally so. I let him know as much and pleaded with him to listen to the River Damsel’s words of wisdom:
I don’t believe he took my suggestion to offer Owl Jones Contrast Diffusion Goggles seriously. I was serious. I wanted to go back and argue some more with him, but my eyes just couldn’t take it. This is the last comment in our discussion:
So what I would suggest to you all is to boycott Owljones.com. If you’ve been there before, or are a regular, don’t go back. If you’ve never been, consider yourself lucky and keep it at that…at least until he changes his background to white, with black letters. And to those of you who are contemplating the use of a black background, please reconsider. If you really feel you must have a black background (highly discouraged) at the very least use white text.
Hear Hear! Suppose it makes no sense to tar and feather him while we are at it.
No, it makes perfect sense. I’ll organize a posse.
Amen to all of this. I have to boycott black-blackground blogs by default of having bad-eyes….gosh darnit…I already have glasses! 😉
Yesterday I lost two flies because of poorly tied clinch knots. I blame Owl Jones and will be invoicing him for said lost flies.
Owl whowho’zat ?
Never heard of him.
Yeah, that has to go. I read most of his stuff on RSS, so I missed the text swap till I saw your G+ post.
I have a feeling it’s here to stay. But if he issues Owl Jones Contrast Diffusion Goggles for his registered followers, then all will be OK, and ultimately he wins!
Oh man…where will I get my “fishertainment”? But in the name of solidarity, I will grab my pitchfork and join this posse…
I’m not giving up all hope just yet, Sanders. Remember, he may still issue us all goggles…
Eh, I don’t mind it. Owl zigs where others zag. I don’t like black backgrounds either but at least the font is big enough for me to read. If you cannot, I suggest Lasik. 😉
I mean EVERY WordPress blog can’t look alike…or maybe it can… #freeowljones
Zigging and zagging is good. Living life requires all colors of the rainbow (except neon green on a black background)…
I hate to have to say it, but as a disability adviser who works with elderly and visually impaired folks, I have to always, always be mindful of that fact that they see and react differently to different colors. Where some people can read odd colored text on black background, a large number of folks can’t. Many who fly fish and who may wish to read Owl’s blog are color blind or have other seeing difficulties. It’s about serving your consumers. Owl, don’t let your stubbornness stand in the way.
Howard, I doubt that Owl’s quest for world domination includes listening to the likes of you.
Or me.
In fact I believe that he has already won…he cleverly manipulated me into
wastingdedicating an entire blog entry to his website colors…;)If you’re ‘usually disappointed” when you “rarely visit” then there’s not much reason to worry about what colors are used! 🙂 lol
So far, complaints about the new colors are about .001% of the readership. You need a bigger posse. 🙂 Maybe your boycott will work! I’ll check the stats and let you know if you like?! Of course, I’ll post the stats on my site so you’ll have to go and read ’em there I guess. Maybe you could hire someone to read for you? To you? Whatever….
As was said above you can always subscribe or whatever and then – issue solved! Although I do wonder sometimes if the quality of the posts are less for subscribers? I have a bad, bad habit of editing a post after I’ve already posted it. I’ve tried to break the habit, but it’s hard to do. I like to review the finished product as I edit. Black letters on white paper is…well…boring.
Good luck with the boycott! Maybe you can get Tom over At TUderground to help you with it? Oh and Moldy Chum. they’ll get on board, I’m sure. lol 🙂
Mr. Jones, you’ve got a lot of nerve showing yourself over here after dealing the damaging blows to my eyesight a few days ago. And I will NOT stop by Owljones.com to see that you’ve made changes, even if those changes may be an improvement–although I’ll tell you that cyan is no better than neon green 😉
Lets just save the black and neon green for streamers OK?
And bike shorts.
How did I get involved in all of this??? Well, all is well today. Owl Jones.com is back to white background. Boycott lifted. Mission accomplished…for now! UA…you are such an influence in the blogger community.
You became involved in this by being a voice of reason in the quest to save eyesight everywhere from an owly demise. I’m not so sure we should lift the boycott just yet. Owl is a crafty one- he may be lying in wait for us to let our collective guards down and return in droves to his blog…then, without warning he’ll flip the switch and flash black and neon at us again. We must proceed with caution.