And that’s all I’m gonna say about it.

Great meme/list snarfed shamelessly from Mikey at Electric Bugaloo. The stuff I’ve done is in bold. Read more .. »

I hope no one thinks this is in poor taste, but we all need a bit of levity from time to time. Fresh from my e-mail in-box, the top 10 reasons why Hurricane Season is a lot like Christmas: Read more .. »

There’s some lively discussion over at Electric Bugaloo regarding men’s and women’s names and how they factor into the “hot or not” factor of said man or woman. As I commented, I absolutely loathe and would not date any man named Leonard (Lenny is okay, tho); Corbin; or Harold. However, Gabriel (or Gabe), Paul and Victor — are you paying attention, boys? Cuz I’m all yours! What names are absolute turn-offs for you? And what names make you pant?

Okay, so it’s Saturday already. Give me a break. Please. From Floopie.com. Read more .. »

Matt Mullenweg, fellow Houstonian and one of WordPress‘s developers, had this to say in a discussion about the Kubrick theme/template:

. . . . The fact of the matter is that people are turning away from WordPress because of the default template. There are basically three types of people: those who are never going to change the default, those who will tweak it as long as they don’t have to learn anything, and those that will change everything. We want to give something as usable and aesthetically pleasing to those first two groups.

Matt, you left out what I hope is a large fourth group: Those who know nothing about HTML, CSS or design and who have enough disposable income to hire a designer to create a new design. And if the client is restless and not content with one design, all the better for the skilled designer. Just offer them up a platter of skins (uh, that didn’t really sound nice, did it!), er, designs — the more the merrier. You get to charge a premium for your work, and the client walks away with a veritable album of designs to choose from — keeps him and his readers happy. Now all he has to worry about is coming up with exciting new content. Sorry, can’t help you there! Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about. I’ve been working quietly, behind the scenes, on a WordPress test bed and have created several new designs that work with WP 1.2, with a slight modification. This modification is common to ALL the designs I offer so you need only download the modified index.php file once; and of course, you can use all my designs and Alex King’s style switcher to create a skinned site. Visit my web design site for more details. WordPress 1.3 is on the verge of being formally released, so I understand. I hope it gets here by Christmas! That would be a lovely present. Meanwhile, the speculation continues in the WordPress forums about what styles and themes will or will not be included in the release. I’m not sure that really matters. If people don’t like what’s offered up by default, then they certainly know how to find the free templates and blog designers out there willing to rework and redesign their blog for them. Don’t they?

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A while back I went on a big fat seamless tiled background feeding frenzy. I just grabbed a bunch of tiled backgrounds I found on the net and stuck them in a /Patterns folder. Yeesh. So here all along, I thought I was using a tiled background from Pixel Decor, when in fact, the tiled background for the Hearts Afire skin, which was the source of some amount of angst earlier today as I thought I was violating terms of usage, came from Taz at Citrus Moon. My apologies to both designers! Let this be a lesson: If you are going to go hog wild downloading right and left, have the forethought to set up subfolders for each site that you download from so that later on, you can properly attribute the backgrounds. I’m going to go sit down before I hurt myself!

I took my Hearts Afire skin down temporarily until I can find a background to use that is not in violation of someone’s terms of use. As a designer myself, I like that people enjoy my work and want to use it, but of course, on my own terms. I didn’t realize that her wonderful tiled backgrounds are to be used ONLY for desktop wallpaper unless prior permission is granted. And I didn’t even think to ask, and for THAT I apologize. But once I realized it, I was horrified and ashamed of myself and I couldn’t get that hearts-afire style folder deleted fast enough! Update: Jen, of PixelDecor has generously agreed to allow me to use the graphic in question. And please, don’t make the same mistake I did. READ her terms of service and ASK permission to use anything that is there. And of course, it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), as with any other designer’s freely shared creations, hitting their WishList link or PayPal button to show appreciation for the design is always in good taste! Thanks, Jen!

Brian, at Memento Moron, is urging everyone to help out fellow blogger Da Goddess in her time of need. I’ve found a neat program perfect for this cause and others like it. This program, Drop Cash requires a Typekey login and a PayPal account to use it, but these days, who doesn’t have both? I’ve set up a DropCash account for Roberto, in fact, right here. See how easy that was? I’m wondering how long it will take WordPress to jump on that bandwagon. Oh, and lookie here, I already created a button (or as Greg says, a “butt-on”) for you to save to your hard drive and link to your own drop cash campaign. (Or mine. Or Joanie’s.)