I’ve been meaning to redesign this blog for a while now. Most of all I wanted a better sidebar setup which would accommodate more links and wider ads widgets. In fact, the old Papertrail theme I was using has only a very rudimentary widget support, and with the recent success of this blog I needed more flexibility.

Although still a work in progress, I quite like the results so far. It’s cleaner, it uses less Flash(*) and it loads extremely fast. The design still needs work and I definitely need a better tagline (wanna help me out with that one?).
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I’m testing a little plugin I whipped up in 15 minutes on this blog. It allows you to copy paste code snippets into a text area (located on an options page under ‘Design’). That code is then inserted into you blog’s footer without the need to edit any template files.

I can’t believe there isn’t a plugin already that does this. Doesn’t everyone have lots of little code snippets that need to be added between the body tags of the blog? Doesn’t everyone hate having to copy those from one theme to the next when switching themes? Am I missing something?

Would any of you consider using this? Should I try developing this into something worth releasing?

I usually do plenty of research before buying gadgets so there are very few purchases I regret, but this year there’s one that I feel really bad about. My Logitech MX1000 laser mouse. Not because it’s a bad mouse, quite the contrary in fact, but because it lacks a tail.
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In a move that’s somewhat unusual for Google, they released version 1.0 of their Chrome browser today. This probably eliminates the last reason not to try this new browser for people who are hesitant to try beta software. Versions 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 were already pretty stable, and judging from the announcement blog post they’ve managed to make it even faster.
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Google Chrome’s default tab length works really well with Google’s web analytics system…

We used to have a similar problem over on Choking on Popcorn, where Bringing Down the House became Bringing Down the Ho. We felt really sorry for Queen Latifah…

I’ve been fascinated by this new trend in computing. Every hardware manufacturer seems to be introducing low power components aimed at simple ‘internet PCs’. Not everyone needs their PC to be able to run Crysis at 60 fps. I think it’s great that manufacturers are recognizing this, but it really is a shame that most of these products don’t quite fit together just yet.
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I ran across this new ‘browser’ this morning. Blackbird is a rebadged version of Firefox for the African American community. It offers features like ‘Black Search’, ‘Black News Ticker’ and ‘Black Bookmarks’. This sounds like a walled garden to me, and basically like a very bad idea.
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Last weekend marked the return of the ‘HCC days’ here in The Netherlands. Ever since the dawn of the home computer, enthusiasts would gather in Utrecht once a year to admire the latest models and buy stuff a discount prices. In the age of the internet, with prices being even lower in web shops and blogs detailing every new gadget long before it hits the shops, this formula lost most of its appeal. What I found most interesting about the event however was to browse through old an refurbished stuff and find stuff worth gambling a few euros on to see if it still works. Luckily, the new formula still allowed for this kind of stand. Because this year, I wanted to replace my ‘TVPC’.
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I’m a movie fan. I go to the cinema as often as I can, but I also watch a lot of movies in the comfort of my own home. I’ve got a neat little setup that is not at all high-end and hasn’t cost me an excessive amount of money. I did hand-pick every component. But because I bought all the components one by one and didn’t quite go through all the specs beforehand, some things didn’t work out as well as they could have. Here are some things to be aware of when buying AV equipment.
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This week, Gmail introduced a set of skins (”themes”) for their web email application. Luckily, there are a few that are quite functional, but there’s also a large number with obtrusive graphics and terrible color schemes. I was quite relieved to find there was a ‘classic’ theme that looks almost exactly like the old familiar gmail interface. Am I the only one not ‘getting’ this skinning thing?
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