What's that stuff up there?

"Burned poster remains" (cropped), by Stewart Butterfield, who thoughtfully made his photos "some rights reserved." (You don't set your Flickr photos to the creativity-thwarting "all rights reserved," do you?)

It's from his "Roman Textures" set. Any of these would also make a great background image for your computer's desktop. (If you want to do so, click on a photos thumbnail, click the "all sizes" button above the photo, click "original" size, download the photo to your computer, and go into your control panels to set the desktop photo using the downloaded file.)

How do you like the new banner? Would you prefer one of the other Roman textures instead?

By the way, thanks to three AskMetafilter users for helping me edit my template to make the linked text the right color to stand out from the background. One of them was so nice as to send me a follow-up email to give me a completely unsolicited tip about how to spice up all the links on this blog. OK, so it's not as awe-inspiring as using AskMetafilter to find where your grandfather lived in Vienna before fleeing the Nazis, but it reaffirmed my confidence in the internet as a machine that fosters people helping other people.

So, do you see what I did to the links?