The big sticking point appears to be the Thesis license, which is not GPL, and which prohibits promulgating Thesis to other sites without paying extra for the privilege.There are some strong arguments on both sides (and since this IS the Interwebs, a lot of emotion founded on idiocy (or vice versa)), but I’m starting to consider alternatives—including the (very, very slight) possibility of moving to Movable Type. Let’s just say the principals and their supporters on both sides could stand to temper some of their public comments.

There are other premium themes, but once you pay for them, there are no similar restrictions on using the theme on other websites. To illustrate (with considerable simplification): If I wanted to create a Thesis theme for a friend’s site, I would have to pay $77 to upgrade to the developer version of Thesis, then pay an additional fee ($35 or thereabouts) to put Thesis on her domain (no restriction my own individual domain). However, with other premium themes, I pay a one-time license fee, then I’m free to distribute the theme(s) to as many sites as I desire.

Now, why a premium theme in the first place? Most of them are designed from the get-go to maximize SEO (not something I particularly care about, but of course commercial sites do). They are also (generally) fairly easy to modify: That’s how I got my theme to look almost identical to the theme I had on my site before I got Thesis. They generally provide a simple way to hook into WordPress’s functions so you can insert content before and after sidebars, for example. Or in the case of Thesis, have a “multimedia box” (which is where I stick the code for the static ads on my site), that can provide loads of flexibility.

Since I’m an inveterate tinkerer, but not a creator, Thesis (or similar themes) give me the ability to play around a lot, without being a “real coder.” I’ve found that every free theme I’ve used has either been very poorly (read: improperly) coded, or is just too difficult to modify, or both.

For the time being (however long or short that is), I’m going to stick with what I have. However, if I become convinced that Thesis does run counter to Automattic’s implementation of GPL, I will abandon it in favor of a compliant theme. Or, if I really get fed up with the rhetoric on both sides, I may just toss WordPress altogether.

Full Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Thesis, and as such, if someone buys Thesis through one of the links on my site, I do receive a payment. So far, I’ve received exactly one such affiliate payment. Thus, my livelihood is in no way or degree dependent on that affiliate relationship. (In fact, what I’ve received may pay for a different premium theme if I decide to go that route—as long as I pick a relatively cheap one.)

WordPress versus Thesis: My Take is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

What Is This?

Every Monday (yeah, whatever!), I document the happenings of the past week. The original (and still primary) intent is to track my progress in meeting my writing goals. Increasingly, I’ve been discussing more than just writing. For example, I’m a sports nut, so occasionally I’ll throw in a sports tidbit. I may talk about World of Warcraft, do-it-yourself projects, travel, food, or beer and wine. I think potpourri fits very well. *grins*

Writing

Weekly Word Count

My weekly goal is 2,000 words. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is add up the “words” column and I’m good to go. Blog posts and creative writing count full credit. Copyediting for other writers is counted at ten percent of the starting word count for the document; style sheets for that copyediting will count twenty-five percent. Editing my own work, if and when I get to that point, will count fifty percent of the starting word count.
This week’s word count: 1,540. Fail x2.

• Blog Post: “Weekly Wrap-Up: May 24,” 1412 words
• Copyediting @ 10 percent: 128 words

I thought about simply copying the comments from last week into this space, but that’s a cop-out. So I’ll just say that there have been circumstances that mitigated against my being more productive. Some of that has been resolved with the completion of the front deck (see below); the rest, I hope, will resolve itself when Mrs. Kestrel returns from her Italy trip next week.

Potpourri

Reading

I’ve been maintaining that activity, at least! Last week, I finished Anne McCaffrey’s The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall, a collection of short stories from the Dragonriders of Pern universe when Thread first threatens the colony. I am so glad I got back into reading (and re-reading) this series!

I also downloaded the second of Jim C. Hines’s Princess novels to my iPod Touch, using Kindle for iPod. I must say, other than having to tap to change pages fairly frequently, the Touch is a pretty good e-reader. For the time being, at least, I’m over my desire for a Kindle or other e-reader.¹ This particular novel is “The Mermaid’s Madness” and involves the little mermaid. Trust me, we’re not talking Andersen’s (or Disney’s) Ariel here! In fact, her name is Leira, and she is Not Nice. However, she has an excuse: An enchanted knife.) I’m only up to Chapter 6, so I don’t know how the situation resolves itself, but once again, Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty (Danielle, Snow, and Talia) are once again up to their tiaras in danger and excitement.

I have not abandoned The Dragonbone Chair: I’ve read enough to have my curiosity whetted, and really need to give the book a chance to really grab me. Thus far, the protagonist isn’t exactly a real sympathetic character, but I’m hopeful that will change—sooner rather than later, I trust!

The Deck

One word: FINISHED! A marathon session on Saturday saw the steps and stoop completed, following some painting late Friday afternoon (there is a step off the front of the deck, and a couple off the left side that are redwood, painted to match the house color). Here are some shots of the finished project:

A friend suggested we need something to break up the huge blank space that is the garage wall. I agree; now to see if I can convince Mrs. Kestrel we need some tasteful artwork up there. Perhaps a huge Hawaiian sea turtle? Also, on the left side of the house, the jungle towards the back are actually raspberry bushes. We should be picking in another three or four weeks, I think. Mmmm…

Tech Stuff

Over the past few weeks, I’ve started watching This Week in Google (TWiG), with Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis. TWiG is part of the “This Week in Tech” (TWiT) network, and is must-see TV if you’re a tech geek. One of the best features of TWiT is the Google Calendar you can embed into your own calendar (and it automagically adapts itself to your own timezone, assuming you have correctly configured that in your Google profile). I confess that I’m lost sometimes with some of the discussions, but it’s fascinating anyway. And I DO learn stuff. If you have any interest at all in timely tech topics and discussion of just about anything tech related, check out TWiT.

Of course you can watch the shows live, but most are also recorded for later viewing/listening. While I don’t always agree with every position Leo advocates, there are few people who can talk tech more intelligently and more on a level that the average person can understand. Highly recommended.

Finally, thank you to the anonymous reader who purchased the developer version of Thesis Premium WordPress theme using one of the links on this site. Late this month, I should receive my very first affiliate premium for that purchase. Obviously, I’m not going to get rich (neither quickly, nor in the long term!), but it’s a nice little bit of unexpected cash. (I can argue that it paid for one of the new tools I got in the last month or so—or at least, part of one!) So again, thank you!

Weekly Wrap-Up: May 31 is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

It continues to amaze me how some of the design elements I now take so much for granted, are missing, hidden, or confusing on other blogs. If we assume the intent of a blogger is to share their writing with others, the apparent (although, I’m sure, accidental) pains some take to inhibit that sharing are comical, at best.

I recently updated the Twisted Nether Wiki with a new World of Warcraft blog. One of the items we request (so I don’t have to go hunting for it) is a link to the blog’s RSS feed. This particular blog was on blogspot.com, and the author stated she wasn’t using RSS yet. Of course, I know better: On every Blogger theme, down at the very bottom of the home page, is an RSS link: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. Somewhat hidden, true, but if you know where to find it…

Item 1: RSS Feed Link

Sure, almost every blog has one, but not all (by a long shot!) are easy to find. This is quite a simple thing to add to any blog (both wordpress.com and blogspot.com support more than the "bottom of the page" default; it’s quite easy to make it more visible).

Your RSS link should be at or near the top of your blog

Your RSS link should be near the top of your blog, definitely "above the fold" (that’s newspaper-speak for the part of your page a viewer sees when it first loads). My very strong recommendation is to place it no lower than immediately below the title of your blog or navigation bar, whichever is lower; in other words, at the very top of one of your sidebars. For example, my nav bar is immediately below my site banner, and my RSS feed links (for both RSS reader and email) are immediately below that. Some themes position the RSS button at the very top of the page; others, as part of the navigation bar. In fact, that’s the default position for Thesis.

You’ll note my RSS links are stylized to fit within the overall color and design of my blog, but that is by no means essential. In fact, sometimes I wonder if they blend in too well! The ubiquitous orange RSS symbol is now a web standard, and there’s not a thing wrong with it. But I’m sure you’ve seen all manner of stylizing, as well. One of my favorites is at Pike’s Aspect of the Hare, and is pictured to the right. If you know hers is primarily a blog devoted to Hunters in World of Warcraft, and if you know also that WoW Hunters use "traps" quite a bit, the awesomeness of the visual pun really hits home.

Want something unique for your blog? A quick search across the ‘net will reveal thousands of possibilities. The most important thing is to be sure you have that link. Oh, and while we’re at it: Be sure all RSS links point to the same place! I’ve found a lot of blogs with links to FeedBurner, but the blogger never redirected the default link. That generally takes a very small tweak to one of your theme files (index.php, footer.php, or header.php), but will ensure, if you’re using FeedBurner, you see a more accurate number of subscribers.

Item 2: Contact Link

Something that is harder to find on many blogs (because it flat-out isn’t there!) is an email link to the blogger, or a link to a contact page. Why is this important? A few days ago, I was visiting a friend’s blog and noticed she had two fairly prominent RSS links, one right above the other. On a hunch (because one was clearly a FeedBurner link, and the other looked like a theme default), I moused over both. Yep, two different links. It’s really not a huge deal: FeedBurner aggregates all feeds from a site pretty effectively. But stylistically, it’s probably something most of us would want to correct. After all, not all of our readers (in fact, probably not all bloggers) might know that either link will provide an equally robust RSS feed.

There will be times when a reader will want to interact with you…give them a contact point!

It was a pretty simple task to find the blogger’s contact page, fill in the short form and give her a head’s up. But there have been other times, when a more serious coding error was evident, that I couldn’t do that, and had to resort to commenting on a blog post to alert a blogger to an issue.

There will be times–perhaps not many, but at least a few–when a reader will want to interact with you outside the comments section of your posts. Give them that outlet! It can be an email link, a graphic that shows your email address (thereby reducing the chance for spam), or, as I have done, a contact form.

Item 3: Tell Your Readers About You

An "About" page tells readers why you are qualified to write about your subject.

There are a lot of people who are very reluctant to share personal information with strangers, whether over the Internet or otherwise. I certainly appreciate that. Your "About" page doesn’t need to be an autobiography. But it should describe you to the extent that it establishes your bona fides: Why are you qualified to talk about whatever it is you’re going to discuss on your blog?

Now don’t get hung up on the "qualifications" idea: A simple desire to write is plenty of qualification for many. But if you’re going to blog about how to play a holy priest in World of Warcraft, a static statement of your experience and other relevant factors isn’t too much to ask.

Many bloggers do this with a simple text widget in a sidebar, with a couple of sentences about who they are or why they’re blogging. Others (the minority, to be sure) provide a life story, résumé, and curriculum vitae! My own "About" page describes my gaming background, as well as some details of my academic and personal careers, concluding with a bit more personal information. I’m not concerned about "Internet stalkers" but I’m also not going to put my cellphone number out there (or my street address).

Share what you’re comfortable with, but try to put something out there to help your readers get to know you better.

Item 4: Provide a Search Box

This is a default in just about every blogging theme, regardless of platform.¹ Believe me, there will come a time when a reader–or you, yourself–will want to find something in your blog.

Give your readers tools to explore more of your blog!

For WordPress, there are plenty of search addons, but I’m pretty happy with the default function built in to the platform. Most addons do more in-depth indexing, so searches may be faster and results more robust. If you find your default isn’t meeting your needs, it’s a pretty easy task to implement a better solution.

The key is, give your readers the tools they need to explore more of your blog…and that is a perfect seque into:

Item 5: Organize Your Archives

I will be the first to admit, I am pretty bad at providing internal links in my articles. In fact, let’s be honest: I suck at it. Complete and epic failure: that’s me. However, I have provided you several ways to find stuff. First, of course, is the (currently MIA) search box. I also have a sitemap listed in the navigation bar. I have a calendar, to show you on what days I published stuff. I use categories (and fortunately for all of us, a lot fewer than I used to have!) for every article and tags for most articles.

I also have a tag cloud (which isn’t as comprehensive as I’d like, but there were aesthetic considerations at play in that area). But most importantly, I have a couple of handy drop-down boxes in the first sidebar. The first organizes all my posts by month, so if you know what you’re looking for was earlier this month, you can pull up a listing of everything I wrote in September. The second lists items by category, which is okay unless you’re looking for a generic WoW article or one on blogging. Hey…I never said it was perfect!

The point is, if you want to find something here that isn’t necessarily on the front page, I’ve given you a lot of tools to do that. Do the same for your readers, and they will love you for it!

So there are my five "must-haves" for blog design. Are there any you find fault with? What did I leave out that you believe is critical to a successful blog? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Friday Five: “Must-Have” Blog Design Elements is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

About 3 minutes ago, I was reading Darren Rowse’s latest update at ProBlogger. While my blogging empire isn’t as expansive as Darren’s doesn’t exist, I dimly recalled stating this was going to be a more personal blog. Maybe, just maybe, I should start writing some of those more personal posts. So on a lazy Labor Day (happy holiday to my American and Canadian readers!), I think I’ll do just that.

The Blog

A few weeks ago, I undertook a significant redesign, and, in the process, I learned quite a bit more about the Thesis theme I use. I’m quite satisfied with the look of the site now, but of course, I’m an inveterate tweaker. Sometimes, the tiniest changes give me the greatest pleasure. For example, I’m very happy with how the subscription area looks now.

Speaking of subscriptions, I should note the Aerie turned two a few weeks ago (August 17, to be precise).  So for you numbers oriented people, here’s what two years (and a few weeks) of blogging have generated:

• 366 posts (not counting this one)
• 13 categories (down from a LOT more, when I was blogging exclusively about World of Warcraft)
• 284 tags (up a LOT, since I converted a lot of WoW categories to tags; I may further refine those soon)
• 2,063 comments (thank you!)
• 9,292 spam comments caught by Akismet
• Roughly 100 spam attempts per day blocked by Bad Behavior ¹
• ~800 RSS subscribers ²
• ~360 Twitter followers ³

The spam got so bad a couple weeks ago, I finally started blocking IP addresses via my .htaccess file; since then, I think the Bad Behavior numbers have jumped up a lot, but the number of comments I’ve actually had to delete via Akismet has dropped by a roughly corresponding number.

World of Warcraft

Yep, still playing, as evidenced by the WoW page here. (The link is in the top level menu.) Quite a few new achievements being reported, including finally getting Osprey credit for Stratholme! (I was there again to finish up my Argent Dawn rep, for the Argent Crusader title.)

In July, we were running 25-mans regularly, but some drama caused by one jerk (yeah, I said it) caused most of the Oroborus members to leave our merger with Closed. My friends and I stayed in Closed, and at least we’re getting some 10-man stuff done (which, sadly, is more than The Oroborus is doing at the moment), but we’re really disappointed not to be running 25-man Ulduar and ToC.

Right now, we’re stuck on Mimiron in Ulduar, and the Faction Champions in 10-man ToC. (I don’t think we’ve downed Freya yet, either.) The Faction Champions fight sucks. In fact, I could probably devote an entire rant to how much I hate that fight and the concepts behind it. Suffice to say, there a LOT of reasons I don’t like PvP, and almost every single one of them is embodied in that fight.

So that’s where Osprey is. Oh…I also bought another 24 mounts, so he could get his Albino Drake. Why? Because I could! 

Kestrel has run some Naxx-25 and gotten a few pieces of gear, so he’s doing okay. Falken, my level 80 rogue, got into Heroic Gundrak twice this weekend, as well as Drak’Tharon Keep once, and got some nice legs out of the former on Sunday. He’s my jewelcrafter, and has started to get back in the money making business. I’m holding steady at 10K gold, down from around 14K, but much of that loss is due to buy materials for crafting and selling.

I’ve also been playing my Druid, Owlhawk, and have him up to level 36. More recently, my second rogue, Talons, has been getting some playing time. Since he’s my enchanter, I thought it might be good to get him to 80 before the expansion.

Almost forgot: Yesterday, I finally respecced Osprey’s off-spec from Discipline, which I used once about a week after dual-specs came out, to Shadow. I then did the Tournament dailies, in his Holy gear. In fact, I haven’t even re-glyphed him for Shadow yet. (By the way, thanks to the bubblicious one for her Shadow spec, which I shamelessly copied. (She was the only person I could recall, at the moment, who has a SPriest.)

So, let me just say: Playing Shadow is so damned easy, it should be considered an exploit. I mean, SERIOUSLY! As Holy, I can kill anything; I have no problem soloing any Northrend content. It just takes a while to kill stuff. As Shadow, undergeared, unenchanted, unglyphed (Prayer of Healing?) and ungemmed (okay, I do have some Int & SP ‘chants and gems, but my +Hit is 86, alright?), my DoTs were killing stuff before I could initiate a second Mind Sear. Redonkulous!

Workshop Renovation

We’ve lived in our house for 21 years. In that time, I’ve always had some kind of work bench in the garage, but over the years, accumulated junk has rendered access to that corner pretty much impossible. In mid-August, my son Bryan and I built a garden shed for Mrs. Kestrel, and she was able to move some of said junk (okay, maybe that stuff wasn’t junk) from the garage. We had an understanding that once her shed was up, I would be able to clean out the garage and reestablish my workshop.

I intend to do a more in-depth post in a week or so (with before and after pics!), but suffice to say, except for one storage unit on order from Sears, the project is about 95 percent done. I still need to complete some organization of tools, but we moved a few large trash bins of stuff out of the garage and reorganized much of the rest. Huge props to Mrs. K for her help in going through all the cra…stuff in the garage, and helping with moving larger pieces of gear. We can still park both cars in there (something we never sacrifice is the ability to keep the vehicles out of the elements!), and I can actually get to all of my tools without fear of having a ton of junk burying me alive.

Sports

The baseball pennant races are in full swing, and my beloved Dodgers are clinging to what once seemed an insurmountable lead in the NL West. As the LA Times noted today, the team really needs an identity. While Manny Ramirez is seen by many as the face of the franchise, I see him more as a hired gun. I appreciate his contributions (not including his 50-game suspension earlier in the season), but it seems he did a lot more at the end of last season than he’s done this year.

The Dodgers really need a clubhouse leader to emerge, to energize the team and point them to the postseason. Joe Torre’s done a fantastic job as manager since arriving in Los Angeles, and I hope he stays several more years. But the real work gets done on the field, and it seems to me it’s been a long time since the Dodgers have had a galvanizing force on the field. I thought catcher Russell Martin might be that force, but apparently that isn’t the case. Except for Manny, the Dodgers are generally a faceless team, and faceless teams don’t win World Series.

College football kicked off this weekend, and I spent all of Saturday with the television on one game or another. Kudos to BYU for knocking off Oklahoma; I thought they could do it and it was nice to see my hunch proved right. I also caught the last quarter of UCLA’s season opener against San Diego State. The Bruins looked pretty good, considering how they imploded after their season-opening upset of Tennessee last year. We play Tennessee again next Saturday, and while I expect we’ll get beat, the Vols better not be complacent.⁴

I’m hopeful UCLA will improve on last year’s 4-8 debacle, and end up in a bowl game at season’s end. Doubt they’ll play in January, but on or after Christmas Day would be nice. I look forward to watching the game from Kauai!

Next weekend (well, Thursday), the NFL season starts. I don’t have much hope that the Kansas City Chiefs will be significantly better than last year: Their offensive line is pretty, well, offensive. However, I think there’s a chance the St. Louis Rams could shake things up a bit in the NFC West. That said, I’m picking them to lose to Seattle on Sunday, but I expect the game to be close.

I’m not a fan of either of the more popular teams here in South Dakota: the Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings. The Broncos don’t have much hope of surpassing the San Diego Chargers (my choice for the Super Bowl), and I don’t think they’ll even be in contention for a wildcard spot. The Vikes, on the other hand, have Super Bowl aspirations with Bret Favre at quarterback. However, both Green Bay and Chicago will have a lot to say about who wins the NFC Central. If nothing else, that race should be an exciting one, which is good, since those are the games I’m most likely to see on Sundays.

Finally, our minor league hockey team here in Rapid City is about to start its second season. Bryan and I went to a game in December when he was here for Christmas, and I think I’ll try to get to a couple games this season. Might even get Mrs. K to come along! 

Personal

Mrs K is leaving at oh-dark-thirty Wednesday to visit her best friend in San Jose; she’ll be gone for 10 or 12 days. When she gets back, we’ll be going to see "Mamma Mia!" in a touring production here in town. Mrs K saw the London production several years ago, and we both thoroughly enjoyed the movie version last summer. Yes, we’re ABBA fans, but then, we’re old enough to be!

I’m continuing to work on lowering my weight, but the traveling and then all the company we’ve had this summer has compromised that a bit. However, I’m down 11 pounds from when I consciously started working on it in April. With daily weighing, as well as knowing when I abuse my diet, I’m confident I won’t gain that back. At some point, I want to devote a more in-depth post to this; right now, I just want to acknowledge there are several blogging friends out there who have inspired me, and I will definitely recognize them in that upcoming article.

It looks like we’ll be heading down to the St. Louis area in late October (Halloween is the target date, right now). And last night I was informed our route will take us through Des Moines this time, so Mrs K can visit a large quilting festival there. I’ve no idea what I’ll do that morning. Any Iowans want to meet up in Des Moines for a couple hours around the 28th?

Finally, as I hinted above, we’re going to celebrate Christmas in Kauai this year with the family. We’ve already paid a deposit on a large house to rent for 10 days, and our tentative plans are to leave here on the 21st, then fly back on New Year’s Eve, getting home about midday on January 1. Mrs K’s brother and his wife will also join us after Christmas for a few days. Alie is already pretty excited about that (I think because she gets to see both of her uncles again; Uncle Bryan is almost as silly as Grandpa!).

So…for not having much to say, I’m glad I was able to squeeze it into such a small article! *snicker*  As always, I’m interested in your thoughts: Feel free to share in the Comments!

The State of the Kestrel and of the Aerie is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

Right now, my frustration mostly stems from my very, very limited knowledge of php coding, and trying to incorporate changes via the custom_functions.php file in Thesis.

"Out of the box," Thesis comes with a sample file. However, simply adding functions (generally, code pasted from "how-to" sites) seems to break the file, resulting in a completely blank web page. Definitely, NOT a good thing. 

I have figured out a kludge (I think; at least it works for the most part, so far), but I suspect it’s too simple, and will fail me when I try to do anything especially fancy. I started a thread on the Thesis support forums, however, so we’ll see whether some kind soul will take pity on this poor birdie.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in viewing the progress (well, the changes, anyway), I’m documenting them via webshots, using Little Snapper and Ember. You can see the progress so far on this page. I do need to be sure I’m capturing a single-post page, so you can see how the Comments section evolves.

Things to Do

• I’m still not completely happy with the comment styling; it’s better, but not great. Main concern is threaded comments.
• I still want to work on the backgrounds for the post area and the sidebars. I want to use gradients, but I have had thoughts that that may not be the most attractive way to do things; on the other hand, maybe I need to use fancier gradients. I really like the blue bar just below the nav menu and above the content area, and the way I matched the sidebar background to it.
• I want to play around with trying to substitute code within Thesis for some of my plugins, but that’s probably the longest-term item on the list.
• I really need to put in a blogroll or links page; however, I really don’t know yet how I want to do that. Part of the homework Tami gave me will include getting some good ideas for that. 
• Oh yeah…and then there’s the homework assignment I have. I really need to quit putzing around with changing stuff, and go look for what looks good!

*Sigh*

And it appears that something I’ve done with custom_functions.php, while still able to render the site, has mucked up my ability to preview posts from within WordPress. *grumble* 

Slowly, But Surely, We’re Getting There is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

As you may be able to tell, the Aerie is undergoing a bit of a renovation (no, really! don’t trip over any power cords or sawhorses!). One reason is because I’m reveling in the awesomeness that is the Thesis theme for WordPress: For a non-coder such as myself, the ability it easily change virtually every element of the site is like putting my wife in a quilting store with a blank check. Seriously.

Another reason is in keeping with the changes for the site I alluded to in early June: To redirect the Aerie into a more personal, but more broadly-based direction, rather than so narrowly focused on World of Warcraft. You can see some evidence of this new direction in the modified banner at the top of the site. The fonts are modernized, instead of the Celtic title font, and the tagline has been changed to reflect my vision for the Aerie: to present "An Eclectic Collection of Musings on Life, Living, and Blogging."

Sure, I could create a sandbox site and play with stuff there, out of sight (and not inflict some of my not-so-great design thoughts, no matter how transient, on the casual passer-by). But that involves a bit of work on its own. Instead, I’ve copied all the files I’ll be changing to my desktop, so at worst, I can revert to what I had here on August 2.

The current color scheme is very similar (especially the content column) to an earlier version of the Aerie; I’m sure some of you will remember it. I doubt it will remain close to what it is now, but these backgrounds are what I had that was working when I knocked off for the evening. (Yes, I know the footer’s a bit wonky, believe me! You should have seen some things that were going on with the header, too!) But the great thing is, I learned a couple small lessons about design here as I played around today. So the learning curve isn’t quite as steep as it was. (I do try to catch those thermal updrafts when I can, you know!)

For the next few days, there probably won’t be a lot of changes, for a couple reasons. First, I doubt I’ll have as much uninterrupted computer time as I’ve had the past two or three days. Second, I have homework. I’ve enlisted the aid of a consultant in the person of the lovely and superbly multitalented Tami Moore.¹

I was flailing wildly today, and in desperation reached out to someone whose artistic sense I not only respect, but greatly admire. Tami was gracious enough to offer some suggestions that gave some direction to my flailings,² but she also established some goals and expectations I need to work toward. (Since her assistance is pro bono, I decided I better follow her suggestions, or I expect she’ll either present me with a bill, or just give up on me. Or both.)

So while you’re here, go ahead and dust off a chair before you sit, and try to ignore the occasional outburst if I hit my thumb with a hammer. Again.

Please Excuse the Twigs is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

You may not see it now, especially if you’re looking at this in a feed reader, but the Aerie is about to undergo a major overhaul (see what I did there? gotta be a word for it!).

I just purchased the Thesis premium WordPress theme from DIYThemes, with an eye to making this place look semi-professional (or at least polished).

I’ve been considering Thesis for several months, and finally bit the bullet (and spent the cash) today. Some of the reasons I was sold on Thesis include my attachment to the 3-column format you’ve seen on the Aerie ever since my move to self-hosting (most of you don’t even know from pre-self-hosting ), as well as the ability to tweak the theme every-which-way. Of course, that feature feeds right into my thirst for add-ons, plugins, and gadgets.

I’m not sure when the first changes will appear, although I suspect I’ll try to turn it on sometime Friday (unless I get really productive in the next 2 hours). However, Arrens is distracting me in BA Chat, and Softi went out without her jumper today. So who knows?¹

At any rate, you’ve been warned. I promise to try not to break anything too badly…but then, I get clumsy at times.

Hard-Hat Zone! is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie