So I was reading the BOFH column over at The Register and it seems he’s got the same opinion of Windows Vista that I do:

BOFH: “You should go to Vista.”

Boss: “So you like Vista?”

BOFH: “Not really, no. I run a Vista simulator.”

Boss: “Virtual Server?”

BOFH: “Nah, I just turned on all the flashy crap in XP, changed the background image, took some memory out of my box and clocked down the CPU. Then broke Media player. Works like a charm.”

In all fairness, the BOFH didn’t talk about the royal screwing that people who view or listen to digital content on their computer get with Vista.

Happy Birthday, Judy!

Is your mind in the gutter? I heard a “new” word that can determine that. That word is “weenis”. The definition of weenis is …

So, it’s your first kiss and several questions might come to mind:

• Is it the right time?
• Is anyone watching?
• Does your partner even want to?
• Is your breath fresh?
• And… Should you use some tongue?

Then you lean in and just go for it!!!

Happy Birthday, Buck!

Happy Birthday, KC!

As you can see from the sidebar, KC’s birthday is only two days away. This last weekend, I got a group of our friends and family together down at the Missipi Brewing Company (The Brew) and had a nice little celebration. KC’s brother Eric and his friend Brenda came in for the celebration; I thought this made it even better! Her side of the family is all about a two hour drive away and they all have kids that are involved in a lot of activities, so it’s really great when they can come over and partake in celebrations like this.

So I reserved the area known as “The Garage” in The Brew. This is a nice little area (about three or four tables’ worth) where there is no smoking. Makes a nice area for us because none of us smoke. We all sat around and had a few beers and generally just shot the shit. You know: talk, talk, talk. Of course, that’s kind of nice because visiting with friends is ALWAYS a good time! I had requested, from KC of course, that no one bring gifts; many brought cards for her, though. All were well-received. KC hates being the center of attention, even for something like her birthday. She did, however, put up with the attention from this.

The other great thing about this was that Spatterdash played later. We got together about 8:15 or so and the band started at 9:30. My friend Chris (the lead singer) even wished her a happy birthday. (To which she immediately turned all shades of red!!). So a good time was had by all. I’ll let you all know how outrageous (probably not very) I’m going to be on Wednesday for her birthday!!

Now I’ll be the first to admit that while I do OK on theme design, I’m no Norman Rockwell. Here’s my process:

• Find a picture that I like. (No copyrighted images, please!) Since my site is titled “View from the Bench” I prefer to have images with benches in them. People in the benches are optional. Google image search and Yahoo image search are valuable tools here.
• Crop the picture down to size. It needs to be a certain width and height for the theme. I’m currently working on a them with the image fixed on the left and no header image.
• Submit the picture to the Color Palette Generator. This will give me the RGB values (in hex) of the primary colors of the picture.
• Choose one or two (or maybe three) colors for the main color of the site. Submit these colors to the Color Picker to get complementary and contrasting colors.
• Decide on other graphics; separator bars, heading backgrounds, footer backgrounds, content backgrounds, sidebar backgrounds, etc. Again, Google image search and Yahoo image search are valuable tools.
• Start with the SAME files as any other theme – the only thing to really edit is the CSS (along with changing any of the image files).
• Edit the comments in the CSS file; that’s where WordPress reads the theme name, author, etc. Tweak the CSS of the “new” theme in order to make it look like I want. Eventually it all comes together.
• Take a screenshot and place it in the same folder as all the other files of this theme.
• Edit the ReadMe file so others can read about the theme and see what’s available to them.
• Zip up all the files in the theme and upload it to the WordPress Theme Viewer. Check back often to see how many times the theme is downloaded.

That’s my process. For development, I use the following tools:

• Google image search and Yahoo image search to find the images I’ll be using.
• Firefox web browser with the Web Developer extension installed. I test the pages in Opera; they always render flawlessly as they do in Firefox. I also test with Internet Explorer just to see if the pages work, but since Microsoft disregards the W3C web standards I don’t feel that it has to look pretty in IE.
• PSPad to do any PHP editing that I might need. PSPad is an excellent Windows freeware program that works a lot like UltraEdit.
• TopStyle Lite to edit the CSS file. TopStyle Lite is a freeware program that has a few bells and whistles (TopStyle Pro has all of them!) to help me see what the CSS will look like before I actually render the page.
• XAMPP Lite. This is not just a simple tool. It allows me to run an entire webserver (including PHP and MySQL) on my USB flash drive. I’ve got a 1 Gb flash drive and it fits very comfortably along with all my themes, a number of plugins, and TWO versions of WordPress. I’ve also got a number of Portable Apps on the flash drive. It is possible to run XAMPP Lite on a 256 Mb flash drive.
• Patience. Without it I’d pull out what little hair I’ve got left trying to resolve minor issues.

I only do this stuff in my spare time so sometimes it happens in a week or less, sometimes it takes months. With my recent theme downloads (I have five themes that have been downloaded over 6000 times from the WordPress Theme Viewer) users have found errors that simply didn’t show up in my testing. I’ve been fixing the minor bugs and re-uploading the “patched” themes.

Well, now it’s time to move on to my “Sitting Around” series of themes. I’ve done a few “Season” themes (I’ve got 4 more of these to do), but I’m ready to do something non-seasonal.

The Pope took a couple of days off to visit the Rugged Mountains of Alaska for some sightseeing. He was cruising along the campground in the Pope Mobile when there was a frantic commotion just at the edge of the woods.

A helpless Democrat, wearing sandals, shorts, a “Save the Whales” hat, and a “Down with Bush” T-shirt, was screaming while struggling and frantically thrashing around trying to free himself from the grasp a 10-foot grizzly bear. As the Pope watched in horror, a group of Republican loggers came racing up. One quickly fired a .44 magnum into the bear’s chest. The other two reached up and pulled the bleeding, semiconscious Democrat from the bear’s grasp. Then using long clubs, the three loggers finished off the bear and two of them threw it onto the bed of their truck while the other tenderly placed the injured Democrat in the back seat.

As they prepared to leave, the Pope summoned them to come over. “I give you my blessing for your brave actions!” he told them. “I heard there was a bitter hatred between Republican loggers and Democratic Environmental activists but now I’ve seen with my own eyes that this is not true.”

As the Pope drove off, one of the loggers asked his buddies “Who was that guy?”

“It was the Pope,” another replied. “He’s in direct contact with Heaven and has access to all wisdom.”