“I wonder if some people create and publish Web sites for the sole purpose of tormenting their visitors.” — Jason OConnor, Oak Web Works (marketingprofs.com) Although this marketing professional is really talking about commercial sites and the liabilities their faults create in self-promotion, perhaps these sins are no less deadly for a site such as mine. I have committed, I think, two of the mortal sins discussed here — excessive scrolling (which is really difficult to avoid in a weblog which adds a significant amount of content before it falls off the scroll at the bottom) and, more egregious, slow load time. Adding jimcrackery in the sidebar and importing external content are my major vices in slowing down the load time. There’s a dialectic tension for me in maintaining this site between fancying it up and simplifying it down; I’ll keep at it. At least, the larger, blog content column loads first, so you can read the important stuff while the pageload keeps on going. Last time I asked, the opinion here was in favor, for example, of keeping the little box telling people what is playing in iTunes; it’ll still be there after you read the day’s posts…