Why is it so hard for me to pick a theme for my WordPress blog? I have probably spent quite a few hours this past week, just staring at the huge variety of themes out there. I had been using the Barecity theme for some time now. Its absolutely clean, lets you concentrate on content, and has no distractions. Adding thumbnails of my Flickr images did provide some needed color. Eventually it just seemed bland.

I started thinking about what I was looking for in a theme:

• Clean (not cluttered at least)
• Minimal graphics
• Some color, preferably bright (but nothing crazy)
• Easy to modify

Now, that is a whole lot to ask for, but I figured I would hopefully find a couple that would interest me. So I just started looking around.

The WordPress Theme Viewer is one of the best resources around. I downloaded a few and tried them out. Having done some minor CSS and Javascript work a while ago for my day job, I quickly remembered why I could never make it as a web designer. CSS is its own beast and trying to modify someone else’s stylesheets to work in Firefox, IE6/7, and Opera, is time consuming and practically impossible. Granted, there are probably better tools than the “Edit CSS” tool in the Firefox Web Developer add-on, but I wasn’t looking to spend that much time on it.

To make a long story short, I eventually settled on what you see here. If the theme seems familiar, its the theme used at Blogging Pro. I like the blue and orange colors and didn’t have to make a whole lot of changes besides moving around some content on the sidebars.

Then I moved on to getting my tumblelog to match my blog somewhat. If you haven’t heard of tumblelogs, its just a way of aggregating things that you find interesting. So if you have lots of different accounts at sites like del.icio.us, flickr, Google Reader, etc, its an interesting way of letting others know what caught your attention. There are plenty of sites that do this, I’ve been using tumblr.

We’ll see how long I stick with this theme before I get tired of it and start searching again.

The Ubuntu Georgia US team held its Ubuntu 7.10 release party this past Saturday. We had 10 people show up, with three laptops in attendance. A few Ubuntu and Kubuntu CDs and stickers were passed out as well.

Joshua Chase did a great job taking care of the arrangements!

Next up: The Ubuntu 7.10 Install Fest November 10th, 2007! To find out more, visit the wiki.

Some topics covered:

• New MOTU Team Members and MOTU Council Changes
• Full Circle Magazine Issue #6 is out
• Launchpad 1.1.10 Released
• Ubunteros Tribe on TribalWars
• Ubuntu Forums News
• In The Press and In the Blogosphere
• Meetings and Events
• Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, 7.04, and 7.10
• Translation stats
• Bug Stats

Read it here. And if you like it, digg it.

If you are interested in writing for the UWN, join and introduce yourself to the the marketing list.

If you think you have a story for the UWN, email ubuntu-marketing-submissions@lists.ubuntu.com.

Some topics covered:

• Ubuntu 7.10 Released!
• Ubuntu Developer Summit for Version 8.04
• Ubuntu Open Week Starting Monday 22nd October
• Dell to Ship Ubuntu 7.10 on Desktops and Laptops
• In The Press and In the Blogosphere
• Meetings and Events
• Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, 7.04, and 7.10
• Translation stats
• Bug Stats

Read it here. And if you like it, digg it.

If you are interested in writing for the UWN, join and introduce yourself to the the marketing list.

If you think you have a story for the UWN, email ubuntu-marketing-submissions@lists.ubuntu.com.

Previously, I declared my everlasting love for Weechat because of its ability to split horizontally and vertically:

That was on a 17″ LCD. Recently I got hold of a 21″ screen. Now I can look at this all day:

Ok, maybe, just maybe, my fondness for Weechat isn’t healthy!

On a side note, a Georgia US LoCo member, who goes by heathen on UF and IRC, had mentioned the wonders of conky. Prompted by the awesome .conkyrc posted by Matthew Helmke and Mike Basinger’s conky RSS additions, this is what I have on the laptop:

The transparency of conky on KDE required a bit of tweaking, but it rocks.

The BBC has an article saying all Russian schools will be running Linux by 2009. Many schools were using illegal copies of Windows and schools were being prosecuted since Russia joined the WTO. Schools will slowly be moved to Linux over a period of 3 years.

Alexey Smirnov, Director General of the Company ALTLinux, says that free software should be good enough (not sure why he thinks it is inferior in the first place), and “schools should teach the main principles of all software anyway.”

It is not good to teach exact software. But if you learn Open Office, you can easily understand Word, and vice-versa… if we want to give really good education, we should make it possible to look inside how it is working, at least for those who are interested in this and how to do it.

Exactly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7034828.stm

Also, check out the cool booth that the Portuguese Team had at the First Forum of Free Software - Lisbon:

Some topics covered:

• Ubuntu 7.10 Release Candidate is Now Available
• Ubuntu Open Week
• MOTU: Jonathan Patrick Davies and Laurent Bigonville
• Gutsy Release Parties
• Ubuntu Forums Interview
• Launchpad Bug Statuses
• In The Press and In the Blogosphere
• Meetings and Events
• Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04
• Translation stats
• Bug Stats

Read it here. And if you like it, digg it.

If you think you have a story for the UWN, email ubuntu-marketing-submissions@lists.ubuntu.com.

In the midst of two babies, SPARC installation issues with the 7.10 release candidate, and severe lack of sleep, Rick Clark, head of the ServerTeam, gave a talk at the ALE LUG meeting Thursday night.

Rick had slides prepared, but the projector wouldn’t cooperate, so he just went on and talked about Ubuntu, the Server Team, and upcoming UDS.

The Server distribution started in 2005 with one person, but has now grown considerably. Canonical is looking to hire developers who are interested in working on it. Some things to be discussed at UDS for Hardy and down the road: an enterprise management framework, Ruby on Rails stack, and creation of customized ISOs for enterprises.

Thanks to Rick for taking time out of his hectic schedule to do the talk!

While trolling for UWN material today, I came across some interviews posted on Sun’s site from Ubuntu Live.

Now, I like the Java platform quite a bit, and do it for a living. While Sun has done a decent job with Java, they should have made it open source years ago. But I wonder if this emblematic of Internet speed at Sun: Ubuntu Live was held July 22-24 and Sun posted the interviews on October 9th!

Anyway, there are interesting interviews with Mark, Jane Siber (Canonical COO), Tim Gardner (kernel developer), Daniel Holbach, Jono Bacon, and Matt Zimmerman.

http://blogs.sun.com/SDNChannel/

Some topics covered:

• Archive Frozen for Gutsy Release
• Gutsy Countdown Script
• Philipp Kern Joins MOTU Team
• Bolivian LoCo Team To Release UbuntuBolivia
• Ubuntu Forums Interviews
• In The Press and In the Blogosphere
• Meetings and Events
• Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04
• Translation stats
• Bug Stats

Read it here. And if you like it, digg it.

If you think you have a story for the UWN, email ubuntu-marketing-submissions@lists.ubuntu.com.