I’ve changed the blog theme to the Zinmag Futura. However, I don’t need most of the flashy gizmos, and so I disabled them. But I love the thumbs and the rotating front page featured and slide/glide menu. The only issue I’ve had was with the thumbnails links not working correctly (discussion thread), but hopefully that gets cleaned up soon. Also, I just found out that Zinmag Redox had exactly the things I wanted without the extra features (for anyone that wants to save an hour or two in setting things up).

I added Sociable and Akismet, I love these two plugins. My amazon link plugin (which really speeds up getting the book pictures) doesn’t work with the latest version of wordpress. I also used the built-in tag cloud feature of wordpress. In the future I plan to add a photofeed and a connection to 43things.

I’ve also been cleaning up the categories. I don’t have it fully planned out, but the plan is to simplify and make them more natural. Most of the book posts will go into the book categories, financial stuff will go in its own category, job stuff in its own category rather than being split among three or four. I don’t know how relevant this categorization stuff really is since I don’t believe in categories (tags are a far better metaphor for describing the world) but nevertheless we all categorize things to help us make quick decisions (for better or worse) so for now I’ll play along. It’ll also help with the thumbnails (for posts which don’t have a specific thumb, adding category-based generics makes sense).

OK, time to go study. Have a great day.

Update:I’ve switched to the simpler and cleaner “Statement” theme by Blog Oh Blog. (BK – 08 May 2009)

This morning I wanted to add some stat measures and change the layout a bit, and to my horror, the host couldn’t be found. Panic.

Did someone attack the site? Did it get banned for some strange reason? I went into the dreamhost panel and everything seemed legit. I checked the server status and again things seem ok. Then I reread the email from the registration and it said:

Hello,

Your registration of … has been processed.
It will probably take 1-3 days for your domain to begin to work as the new dns information propagates across the Internet!

“1-3 days” – Perhaps there’s no need to worry yet. I submitted a report just in case, but I guess I can still take a shower and eat and attend to other business while everything gets set up. There’s nothing else I can do there anyway.

Update: Everything was back up within two hours.