For a while I’ve wanted to update the theme of my blog but not really got round to it. So when I had a spare evening a couple of weeks back I did a bit of a search for free WordPress themes and came upon the one that now graces the area around this post (also known as Notepad Chaos).

When I set up my blog, back in March 2006, I adorned its posts (and pages) with the RedStripes theme. Which was particularly exciting because, despite never having seen PHP previously, I managed to fix a bug in it!

The RedStripes theme was always slightly awkward because it didn’t resize very well (either if you changed the size of the font, if you used page titles that were too long, or if you just added too many pages). While also rather pretty, IMHO, it was also slightly dated (I like to think ‘retro’) in style, even at the time I adopted it.

So, having seen the bang-up-to-date artistry of Jono Bacon and Stuart Langridge’s blogs (basically the fact that they have natural curves that emulate the real world, rather than straight lines), I went looking for something similar.

Notepad Chaos was one of the first I found and no matter how many themes I found this one stuck out because, well, it doesn’t look like a WordPress blog.

So I spent another couple of evenings customising it slightly to fit the content on my blog, including creating the tag cloud pinned note, and tweaking meta information in the post footers, I give to you my new theme–unless you’re reading this on the blog rather than via RSS, aggregated, or on Facebook – which would make it all rather pointless!

P.S. Coincidentally, when I first applied the new theme to my blog so that I could see how it looked and how much customisation I’d have to do, @benjamindyer was searching for something, came across my blog in the search results, and tweeted his reaction and observation (though I can take no credit for the actual design)!

A couple of nights a go, I had a go with del.icio.us (which I struggle to spell, let alone get the dots in the right places!). I registered a bit back but, once logged in, had absolutely no idea what to do next. Someone suggested I install a delicious (sack the dots!) extension for Firefox. There turned out to be three available (when I searched Firefox’s extensions) so I installed the Yahoo! one (Yahoo! own delicious now).

Rather nicely, after installation, it launched a wizard that stepped me through importing my bookmarks from my local Firefox file. They imported okay and were saved as private. I then did some spring-cleaning and deleted out-of-date bookmarks, then tagged and re-tagged others. The imported bookmarks were automatically tagged according to the bookmark folders they’d been in, which was helpful.

So, anyway, here are my delicious tags. If you click through a tag, you’ll see the bookmarks that I’ve classified with that tag.

First, this is my new penguin who lets me know if my phone is ringing (taken with my phone in poor light – sorry about the quality):

Whenever my phone rings or I receive a message, the penguin starts to spin round and flash lights to let me know. In fact, he even starts to spin and flash before my phone even starts to ring! How clever is he?

Second, this is my funky gorillapod – a kind of tripod for my camera but, unlike traditional tripods, it doesn’t have to be set on a flat surface. In fact, it thrives on uneven surfaces…like the back of this chair.

Cool huh?

Ho-hum, blooming users!

As you may notice, if you hover your mouse over the little icon at the end of the following link, the Snap Shots previews (formerly known as Snap Preview Anywhere) now works fine and dandy.

The nice Erik Wingren, head of UX Research at Snap.com, posted a comment in response to Saturday’s blog-post about how I couldn’t get Snap Shots working on my website. His comment prompted me to check that I had the latest and greatest version of the WordPress plugin (I didn’t) and to try it again. This time it kind of worked but not always.

So Erik posted another comment to say that my unique key was too short. He was right. I registered for a new key and now it works! I can only be impressed that it worked as much as it did with the abbreviated key!

Slightly sheepishly, I did check the old version of the plugin in case I’d always had the key wrong but I hadn’t – so I’ve no explanation why the old plugin didn’t work. But the new one does, which is the main thing. The WordPress plugin makes it incredibly easy to install (if you’re used to installing WordPress plugins) so I’m not sure what Snap.com could’ve done to make it more idiot-proof.

Good UX research from Snap.com, I think. What a great way to meet your users. I wish it were that straightforward to get feedback from users of business middleware….

p.s. Here’s some blurb that Snap.com provide to explain just what Snap Shots is about and how you can disable the previews if they drive you up the wall when you’re reading my blog (though I suspect that most people who read this use an RSS reader and probably have absolutely no idea what this entire post was about):

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you “look ahead,” before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

If you’re any good at those frustrating stereograms where you cross your eyes and look ‘through’ the picture here’s a cool twist on it: an animated stereogram.