I had a little time this week, so I decided to rewrite my WordPress template. I liked the overall look of it, but I just customized somebody else’s work, and things were just a little off.

I’d never written a template for WordPress from scratch before, but it turns out to be pretty easy. I used the Blueprint CSS framework because I’ve really come to love using it, and I added a graphical logo to the header instead of plain text.

I also made changes to the categories.  I felt there were way to many, so I consolidated them into 5 areas.  After that, I think that it’s important to utilize tags instead of categories.  As a result, those of you who subscribe to my RSS feed probably saw a lot of old posts show up.  Sorry about that.  Wordpress automatically adds an edited post to the feed.

So, let me know what you think works, or doesn’t work.  If there’s a problem in a particular browser/OS, let me know that too.

• Yahoo! UI Library: Grids CSS
• jQuery Fling | Command-Tab
• Songbird – Open Source Music Player
• calaboration – Google Code
• Zend Framework

Even though I’ve been really busy with consulting work these last few months, I always seem to find time to start a new personal project.  It doesn’t seem to matter how busy I get actually.  There’s always so much to learn.  So many new technologies, methodologies, frameworks, platforms, you name it.  It never stops.

I think that the best way to learn these new things is by working on personal projects.  Especially, if you’re going to learn a few new things at once.  Otherwise, you may dig yourself into a hole that will take weeks to get out of.

So, my new project.  I’m writing a web-based bit-torrent interface for linux servers.  I haven’t quite decided which torrent client to wrap it around yet though.  It’s meant as a replacement for Torrentflux which I find a bit too cumbersom.  My vision is to build something more streamlined, both functionally and visually using PHP with CodeIgniter, Blueprint, and JQuery.

I’m sure this is going to take forever because I’m so busy, but it’s meant as a learning project as much as anything.  I’ll post updates as it progresses, and eventually the source code.

• D.I.Y. Hot Sauce – Bitten Blog – NYTimes.com
• CSS Cheat Sheet
• Mysql automatic backup script – AutoMySQLBackup
• Fashion Your Firefox
• Hatebook – Welcome to Hatebook

• ElfYourself by OfficeMax – Powered by JibJab
• Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test – Browsershots
• 960 Grid System
  CSS Framework
• Blueprint: A CSS Framework | Spend your time innovating, not replicating
• Redzone Leagues – Sports League Management made easy and FREE!
• Bookmarklet Compiler | Moxley Stratton