I noticed that eudyptes’s journal was looking rather spiffy, so I asked him about it. It turns out he’s using Bloggish, a new-ish layout for users of LiveJournal’s S2 system. (I consider anything since Refried Paper to be “new,” though.) So I went to check out Bloggish for myself.

It turns out it’s based on Six Apart’s default design for TypePad, which can be customized using CSS. There are several themes available and you can always create your own layer for more. I did notice a few problems with it, though, so I checked out s2bloggish and was pointed to this custom layer to fix some of them. Now I can see communities on my friends page, and hopefully the long reply box won’t make my page do weird things anymore. I’m still not satisfied, though, so I’m not sure I’ll keep it.

One problem, though, is not the fault of Bloggish. It’s entirely my fault that every time I see ljgenie in the default Bloggish font I read it as “lingerie.”