Energy Efficient Blog Layout Design?

A long time ago I remember going to a blog-layout site that advertised "green" layouts. "Green" meaning eco-friendly. This was a foreign notion to me and I didn't really read too much into it other than noticing all the layouts they had available were black or dark. In re-designing my blog layout, I randomly remembered about this and wanted to learn more about it.

Here's a few things I found out:

• Reduction in energy usage can be obtained by designing web sites that use darker colors or shades, particularly within sites’ backgrounds.
• According to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, “White and bright colors (especially in backgrounds) can use up to 20% more power than black or dark colors.”
• Your screen is composed of pixels, and the color of each pixel is determined by the amount light passing through it: white is 100% light output, and black is zero. The takeaway here is that for certain types of devices (e.g. projectors, older monitors, and LED screens), brighter colors consume more energy than darker colors
• If you’re viewing these websites on a state-of the-art LCD screen, the difference in color amounts to pretty much nothing. But with old-style CRT monitors (which are still heavily used) and even LED monitors (which are increasingly being adopted) —the impact of color is significant.
• If you want to save energy while searching the web, try Blackle, a black-bacgrounded version of Google.
• While there is controversy over whether a black color palette is more energy efficient than light colors on a website, there are still proponents of the darker website design.

Sources:
http://www.sproutreach.com/blog/design-for-environmental-causes/energy-efficient-web-design/
http://blog.opower.com/2013/06/saving-energy-by-design-how-simple-considerations-by-web-designers-can-shrink-the-internets-energy-footprint/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/20/making-the-web-a-better-place-guidelines-for-green-web-design/

I have an iMac which has an LCD screen so I guess the color difference is "pretty much nothing," but I figure if other people viewing my blog might have different kinds of screens, it would be good to revamp my layout to be more energy efficient and thus, more eco-friendly.

So I went from a super bright-based layout...

...To what I have now. I opted for a dark background but of course had to have a pop of pink :P

What do you think of the idea of "green" blog layout design?
Is your layout energy efficient?

Tech time! MacBook Pro & iPod Touch :]

Hey everyone! Just wanted to drop in today to do a post on my two latest technology loves:

I had been wanting a laptop of my own for awhile now, and I was starting to need one for school. And awesomely, this special offer for a free (with rebate) iTouch with the purchase of any Mac computer came up! :D So I finally decided to take the plunge into the wonderful world of Apple. I'm actually more of a PC person but I've been getting so fed up with our home computer (UGH, VISTA SHOULD DIE!!!) lately, and I work on Macs at school; so it wasn't a difficult transition.

I decided on the 15" MacBook Pro (and 8BG iTouch -- so the Mister HAD to go out and get an iPhone just to 1up me. Jerk -_-;). It will also come very much in handy since I'm pursuing the field of Digital Media Arts -- graphic design, web design, video editing, etc.

I am so grateful for scholarships :)

So maybe I'll finally start working on getting some videos up? Who knows ;)

My tablet came in today!

YAY! :D Still haven't really hooked it up yet since Windows Vista is a fCkN BITCH!!! I HATE IT!!! I wish we still had XP :( It does this thing where at the most inopportune times, the screen will just go black and there's nothing you can do about it besides turn off the computer and restart it. Does this happen to anyone else with Vista? It's driving me crazy.

Plus, recently, my comp starting lagging insanely and taking forever to start up, etc. I don't recall having downloaded anything suspicious or having done anything differently, but my comp continues to lag and lag and lag. Even after anti-virus, anti-spyware, defragging, cleaning up folders, deleting stuff etc. etc. :(

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