Out with the old...

The Nova Scotia Government homepage has just undergone quite the facelift. For reference, on the left is the old gov.ns.ca look.

The new look is less cluttered with a design that almost borders on Web 2.0-esque. Emphasis is placed on Premier MacDonald's "New Nova Scotia" plan with a nifty pop-up menu on the right side of the page.

A downside to this new look might be that some may find the site harder to navigate at first, as less information is presented in the frontpage. But, rejoice, the handy search tool remains, now without the cheesy "Ask Joe Howe" image that I always felt was unnecessary. Another downer: NSARM lost their link, while museums and other facets of TCH (while you're there, check out the province's first-ever Heritage Strategy) still get plugged.

Government departments will soon follow suite with their own makeovers. I'm excited to see what that means for the NSARM page, as I think a lot can be done to make it more visually appealing.

In other NSARM news, last Sunday's Nova Scotian featured a great article (including quite a few amazing photos) on the Tom Connors exhibit. This was my first time on the other end of journalism, which I actually found a bit easier than having to keep the questions coming.

Oscar Night on Sunday didn't offer many surprises. I was disappointed that Cate Blanchett didn't get recognized for her take on Bob Dylan, but I'm happy Tilda Swinton won nonetheless... she's a great actress who has often been overlooked. One thing that disappointed me was that Brad Renfro wasn't honoured alongside Heath Ledger in the 2008 "dead people" montage. He definitely wasn't as obscure as many of the folks included. Alas.

One of my favourite parts of the evening was all of the references to Javier Bardem's "killer bob" in No Country for Old Men, as styled by Maritimer Paul LeBlanc. LeBlanc won an Oscar for his work on one of my all-time favourites, Amadeus. "Fierce" comes in all shapes and sizes, I suppose!