Playing with the size and orientation of my mug is now a lot easier. Wish I could alter said mug with this too

I for one am fairly keen on the new in post image editor, I think WP has been needing this for some time and I’m very glad we now have one! It is a little basic, allowing you to crop, rotate or flip your image as well as change it’s size. While true, this does cover the basics I would still like to have seen a few slightly more interesting features.

Whilst on the subject of images I also really like the fact that your posts can now have images assigned to them. This has been possible through plugins for some time but never built in. I like the fact that I can add some extra colour to a post now, having chosen while making the theme where the posts image will go, not sat there tinkering for half an hour with css in the post editor.

From the development blog:

Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)

I really like the sound of this, utterly custom content types could open up a swathe of opportunity for creativity and allow wordpress to be the muscle behind even more types of website – not just your average blog.

This release brings with it far too many new changes for me to simply list here. Suffice to say you seem to be able to do more with WordPress every release and 2.9 brings more great features than I’ve seen added in a while. I’m looking forward to seeing how I can push their new template tags, hooks and filters to create some of the most interesting themes yet.  Now with the ability to create custom themes bundled with plugins, surely the sky is just not a high enough limit!

As you may have guessed from the title of the post – I’m currently upgrading to Karmic – so when it’s finished I will be able to fill you in some more.

Should also have some kubuntu information to empart as well as I’ve been using KDE 4.3 for the last week or so… and it does have some very nice features – the desktop widgets are a favourite of mine and something which is missing from the gnome desktop; certainly such ease of deployment is missing anyway. It is still buggy, I think most of my kde programs have crashed at some point this week, specifically the package management apps. I really think this is something the Kubuntu team need to work on for Karmic; the Gnome Desktop alternatives: Add and Remove and synaptic especially form a combination that’s hard to beat.

Anyway, more to come as I tinker over the next few days. I can’t help but get the Alpha releases; me, wait a whole six months for Ubuntu goodies? I don’t think so!

webdesignbooth.com/wordpress-28-and-10-things…

The article covers most of the improvements/updates succinctly so I won’t go into too much detail here but I will say the wordpress team have put ever more work into simplifying many of a blog owners functions and tasks.

The widgets configurations screen is a vast improvement, no fiddly save settings – everything is accomplished through seamless AJAX. I also really like the new html/css editor for your themes; now with functions lookup and syntax highlighting, making editing template files online now much quicker.I tinker with my layout too much for this not to be a great addition.

After all, who can keep all the functions in their head at one time? The wordpress codex has become my most visited site in the last few months according to firefox..

Anyway, to sum up: thumbs up; fantastic new additions to the wp backend and overall productivity within the blog.

All I will say is that I’ve been a gmail user for years now and love the way they handled emails, adding coherency to your mail, linking threads and similar conversations. Wave seems like a logical move from there.

I will be watching the development of this product very closely though. Looks like google are onto a winner. Plus I love the fact that it’s html5. Most browsers are moving towards this, apart from IE which edges forward then has to double back to fix errors. Tsk tsk.

Google Wave – Read More

It’s improvements thus far, while occasionally quite good, are obvious userbility tweaks which should have been present in Vista.

I’ve never been one for Microsoft and have argued against its use and policies before. But just as I often can’t stop trying out distros of Linux I thought I’d try this. Hey, I got into the beta program for free and downloaded it for free. Up to that point – what difference is there between this and Linux? Well, quite a few actually but to that justice I need to delve a little deeper to form a more complete opinion.

Until then, enjoy these screenshots of my currently running system and tell me what you think. It definitely looks good. That much I can say!

A few months ago I was assaulted at work. It has been a crap time in all honesty but if I can take one positive thing from the experience it is that I need to get organized. I really do love working at Plonkers (who wouldn’t want to work at an off-license called that!?) but it’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life.

So, right now I’m throwing all my spare time (well, a lot of it) into getting this site ship-shape enough to call my portfolio. Going through my hard drive(s) I’ve designed a great many web templates and themes over the years, used or not, which go some way to illustrate my capabilities and go hand in hand with my favourite thing – Open Source technologies. I am a strong believer in community development and really do trust that one day Microsoft will be toppled and everyone will buy computers with (preferably several, I like quite a few and that’s kind of the point anyway – people having the choice about what operating system they use on their PC’s) whatever OS they want, not the enforced default as Windows has been for some time. But I digress, that’s merely a personal pet peeve…

The reason I bring up Open Source is because I refuse to use proprietary software to get something done when free options are staring me in the face and asking for my feedback. When was the last time your average Windows user was given the opportunity to contribute something to the Windows operating system? Yeah sure, if you were quick enough to download the windows 7 beta you could have a look at it, but only if you were comfortable repartitioning your hard-drive – if you even knew what that meant.

Note, I’m not trying to patronize users here. I’m merely highlighting Microsoft’s “keep them ignorant” user policy (not a quote you’ll find on their website I’m sure). MS is quite happy keeping users in the dark about what goes on underneath the hood of one of their operating systems, and many users are happy with that state of affairs. But what happens when something goes wrong with the computer? You’ve got to pay to get it fixed. Either that or do a heck of a lot of research and learning.

But again I digress. It’s so easy to do – no wonder I drive my family/girlfriend/friends mad with this topic!

I design websites using four things:

1. A web browser, pretty obvious really. Firefox and the web developer toolbar is a must.
2. A text editor, gedit for gnome is a personal favourite but if I’m stuck in Windows then notepad plus isn’t bad.
3. Inkscape, a fantastic open source vector image editor, great for initial layout design and some brilliant logo’s.
4. Gimp, The GNU Image Manipulation Program, to my mind the most useful bitmap image editor ever created.

All these tools are freely available to anyone. Inkscape and Gimp are even also available to Windows users so you don’t have to use linux to gain access to these great apps. I thoroughly recommend anyone looking to edit images or do some designing of their own they start with these programs. There are thousands, maybe even millions of users out there eager to offer help and many who’ve set up tutorial websites to get you started.

Hopefully by now you’ve guessed where I’m going with all this – if not I apologize, I do have a tendency towards tangents. All my designs are created using open source software and so I see it as a kind of celebration of what can be achieved with them and that their really is no limit to their functions. You don’t need to remortgage your house or take out a loan (fat chance currently) to start creating beautiful designs. All the tools are but a few clicks away.

If you’ve read through all this (firstly congratulations…) and want to share my passion but aren’t so hot on running a website or coding for that matter, get in touch and show me what you can do – there’s always room at the Inn.