Thankfully, there are sites like ThemeForest. ThemeForest works as an aggregator for all those people trapped in basements around the world and enables them to sell their creations on a secure market place. Not unlike how all other market places work. Many theme artists make good money on ThemeForest as well, having sold for a million USD or more. I’m guessing that the creators of ThemeForest also laugh a little when they go to bed at night.

Unfortunately, there isn’t exactly an abundance of responsive premium themes either. Since there is limited money flowing in the blogging sphere – very few bloggers actually make money from their site – premium themes tend to be tailored for businesses and creative professions who need portfolios. I’m neither a business nor creative enough to need a portfolio, and this makes the selection of usable themes even more limited.

So far I’ve seriously considered Rewrite, PixelPower and Angular. Rewrite and PixelPower are blog themes, while Angular primarily is a portfolio theme with a nice blog section. All three themes look great and work well in terms of responsiveness. Previews are also available for all three themes (links above) and this gives the potential buyer an impression how the theme will look with his or her content.

Now, the problem with the previews is that the theme authors use just the right kind of content when the previews are created. I’ve got ten years¹⁾ worth of content with various length, images in all shapes and sizes and everything in a format that can’t exactly be described as “consistent”: The design has changed a lot over those ten years and the content format has changed with it. To be sure that things look good, or at least OK, with a new theme requires that I’m able to test drive everything with my own content. This can be challenging with a premium theme and shelling out $30+ for something untested that might not work well isn’t really an option.

So the hunt continues.

1) Woah! It’s been ten years! Countless hours poured into something that has helped me keep my head above water every now and then.

• WordPress is huge.
• It’s no longer a pain in the ass to run on Windows.
• Responsive web design is the way to go.
• Plugin development is something I’d like to dive deeper into.
• I discovered the distraction free writing feature.

In the short term, responsive web design was the presentation that triggered me the most. I’m familiar with response web design and use a lot of responsive sites. Even this site is somewhat responsive, it’ll remove some white space on a device with a smaller screen, for instance a tablet device. Now I want to make the site’s design even more responsive and better looking on mobile devices. WPtouch is a great plugin, but when it’s possible to get the site to look familiar even on small screen, there’s really no need to use it.

One option would be to make the current theme more responsive, but that will probably be a lot of work for someone like me. Also, from past attempts to do my own redesign from scratch, I know my limitations. So my best bet is what I always do: Find a nice looking, free theme and hack away!

I’ve been looking around a little, and at this point Renova seems like a good option. But I’d prefer to have two columns, not just one. That can probably be arranged, though. It might take a while, but I’m positive the next design will be responsive. For more responsive goodness, have a look at the Media Queries showcase.

But as soon as the worst of the after-party aftermath had passed, I set to work on getting everything back online. Unfortunately, it proved to be hard as the embedded network card had decided that it just didn’t want play anymore. With the network card enabled, Ubuntu (and several other distributions) simply refused to boot. With the network card disabled, everything booted just fine, but not having a network card kind of makes it hard to host anything. The motherboard had to be returned for repairs. Hallvard later suggested that I could just get a USB network card, and this would have solved my problems in a matter of hours. Too bad my mind really wasn’t working very well at the time. And now the ASUS motherboard has been returned for repairs anyway.

I’ve got a Google Apps account for vegard.net, so moving my e-mail was as simple as changing the MX records for the domain. But what to do with the site? I didn’t really want to move it to a shared host after the struggle I had with GreenGeeks two years ago. Also, I would certainly miss the joy of tinkering with my own server, even if it was just temporary.

One of this year’s more dominant internet buzzwords, The Cloud, in the form of Amazon EC2, came to the rescue.

Amazon EC2 let’s you rent virtual servers. It’s a great service, if you are prepared to put the money on the table. I was not, so I decided to go for their cheapest solution, the micro instance, and launched a Bitnami WordPress stack image to get up and running a quickly as possible. A great idea in theory, an utter failure in practice: The micro instance will throttle you down as soon as you’ve used just a tiny amount of CPU. At full speed it was great, but when throttled down the cloud instance was useless. Unpacking simple theme upgrades took forever and ever. Also, I didn’t feel comfortable with the Bitnami stack, with its default usernames and passwords and whatnot. Had I remembered to change every default setting, or was there still a back door available somewhere?

In the frenzy to get the site back online I had forgotten a very important detail: The old vbox, which has been sitting on my desk, collecting dust. It would have been a great substitute while the new vbox was getting its groove back. In fact, I’d already prepped the old vbox as a backup in case of a fatal hardware error in the new vbox. I just didn’t remember until yesterday. After a full week of struggling with EC2, it finally dawned on my that I had a fully working, ready-to-go server sitting on my desk.

The site is now hosted by the old vbox, or slave.vbox-host as it’s been called. It’s not as powerful, needs more air to cool down, uses old-fashioned spinning hard drives and is connected to the internet via a not-so-stable Wi-Fi connection. But it works, and it works better than my EC2 experience.

Since I wouldn’t mind making money by sitting at home surfing the interwebs all day while writing the occasional rant, I decided to add the necessary information Google needs to display both review and author information every time a search result contains a link to my site. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t just start to index the new information automatically, you have to fill out a form and submit your site for manual addition to the sites they display metadata for. But as soon as everything is configured, I can just sit back, relax and watch the money come flowing in.

Great stuff. In other site-related news, I’ve fixed the last.fm information in the footer so that it looks good not only in IE and Opera, but also in Chrome and Firefox. People have told me these are popular browsers. The number of views per entry has also been reintroduced, after I discovered the functionality could be combined with WP Super Cache. I’m not sure how well it works, though, because the numbers I see in Google Analytics and the views recorded by WP-PostViews are not the same. And on top of all this, a nice set of stars are displayed on every review I write.

I spend way too much time tinker with this site.

• “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.” — Jim Morrison
• “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.” — Jim Morrison
• “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.” — Jim Rohn
• “Either you run the day or the day runs you.” — Jim Rohn
• “If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn
• “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” — Jimi Hendrix
• “Fear is the foundation of most governments.” — John Adams
• “Forgive you enemies, but never forget their names.” — John F. Kennedy
• “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” — John Lennon
• “Life is hard; it’s harder if you’re stupid.” — John Wayne
• “Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.” — John Wooden
• “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” — John Wooden
• “Listen if you want to be heard.” — John Wooden
• “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.” — John Wooden
• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Joseph Addison
• “History has shown there are no invincible armies.” — Joseph Stalin
• “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” — Joseph Stalin

• “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” — Dalai Lama
• “In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.” — Dalai Lama
• “Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.” — Dalai Lama
• “Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.” — Dale Carnegie
• “Most of us have for more courage than we ever dreamed possible.” — Dale Carnegie
• “You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.” — Dale Carnegie
• “The cure for boredom in curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” — Dorothy Parker
• “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” — Douglas Adams
• “It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
• “No leader can be too far ahead of his followers.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
• “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
• “What one has to do usually can be done.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
• “You always admire what you really don’t understand.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
• “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.” — Elvis Presley
• “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “A politician divides mankind into two classes: Tools and enemies.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any who.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “There are no facts, only interpretations.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “Leisure is being allowed to do nothing.” — G.K. Chesterton
• “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” — George Bernhard Shaw
• “My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.” — George Bernhard Shaw
• “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” — George Bernhard Shaw
• “Those who can not change their minds can not change anything.” — George Bernhard Shaw
• “Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.” — George Carlin
• “It is better to be alone than in bad company.” — George Washington
• “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” — Goethe
• “Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.” — Goethe
• “I have nothing but respect for you – and not much of it.” — Groucho Marx
• “I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.” — Groucho Marx
• “Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.” — Groucho Marx
• “Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, and I’m going to be happy in it.” — Groucho Marx
• “Advertising is legalized lying.” — H.G. Wells
• “If we don’t end war, war will end us.” — H.G. Wells
• “Our true nationality is mankind.” — H.G. Wells
• “Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.” — Henry Ford
• “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” — Henry Ford
• “The only real mistake is the one from where we learn nothing.” — Henry Ford
• “Vision without execution is just hallucination.” — Henry Ford
• “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t — you’re right.” — Henry Ford

Yeah, the site design has changed. Again. It’s a modified version of Blogum by Wpshower. For the first time I’ve gone three columns and optimized the design for screens 1280 pixels wide (or wider). But if you’re stuck in the past or visiting with a mobile device with a not-so-wide screen, fear not! Through the magic of Media Queries you will be presented with a narrower version of the design if your screen does not support the 1280 pixel wide version. Everything will look a bit crammed together, but it will work.

The original Blogum design makes heavy use of header images in each and very entry. Great if you have a lot of high quality images lying around or if you have the time to hunt down photos with an Attribution Create Commons license. I don’t really have a lot of images lying around so you probably won’t see a lot of header images. This time I’ve made an exception, however; I’ve added two iMacs to the header. Why? Because we all know that every great web designer use a Mac. So now you’ll automatically assume that this is a great web design. You Mac-whore, you.

Most of the features from the old design made it through to the new one, sans the huge footer and the last.fm “last played” widget. A shame, really, because I enjoy forcing my exceptional taste in music on people, much in the same way as I enjoy forcing my opinions on you. But unfortunately, I didn’t find any room for it. Maybe it will reappear in a future revision. Or maybe not. The text size might also be boosted a little, because now it just feels a bit small. Or is it OK? I don’t know. Also, the comments are a bit hidden below the entry and with this font size, I have to write a hell of a lot to make the entry and the comments merge nicely.

But all in all, I’m pleased with the result.

• i cant see from your perspective my head isnt that far up my ass (748 times)
• never argue with a fool (713 times)
• if you look at what you do not have in life, you don’t have anything, if you look at what you have in life, you have everything (600 times)
• stupid is the man given opportunity doesn’t take it quote (380 times)
• the one´s that succeed in life are the one´s that accept their misstakes (157 times)

The most interesting thing about these examples is that most of them generated very few new visits, meaning that the same people are coming to this site searching for these things in a search engine – in most of the cases Google. Often they are generating 10+ hit a day as well. Interesting.

There are three more or less plausible explanation: a) Google Analytics is flawed. b) Some people think that Google is the internet and the search box the portal to a magical world. c) Someone is trying to communicate with me by using Google. And the things they say isn’t very nice.

Here are a few other mysterious gems hidden in the search history:

• i’m a little surprised you didn’t remember a thing i said last time we talked. i’ll take it as you are so into me you forget everything else.
• i didn’t do it for you i did it because it was the right thing to do
• do you tell a lie hoping it will get better or tell the truth
• people that dont keep there word never suceed

If there’s anything you’d like to say to me, you can use this <a href=”/about/#contact”>contact form</a> instead of Google Analytics. As you’ll see, it’s much easier.

Well, at least after we’ve cleared December. It’s traditionally a month when a lot of things happen, and this year seems to be no exception. From the top of my mind comes the annual Christmas party at Terje and Inger’s place where we’ll make fun of Terje because he eats like there is no tomorrow, the Christmas party with BEKK where people will dance on every table and of course the semi-annual gingerbread bonanza in our humble apartment. Last year, Anniken was out and about on her South American tour, but this year she’s where she should be – not in South America. Instead of cramming everything in on a Friday evening, we’re having an open house on a Saturday so that people can just come and go as they please. People are getting kids left and right these days and it just seemed like a better arrangement for them.

I used the Android gingerbread man in the invite, but I doubt anyone noticed. It’s my small contribution in the struggle to wake up the Apple sheep.

In other and totally unrelated news I’ve now changed the profile picture I used on this site. Even though the portrait shot by Life Mary was one of the better pictures taken of me, it was getting old and a little change was needed. To spare you from seeing yet another image taken in a bathroom mirror, I got help from Tray and Matt and their South Park avatar creator at South Park Studios. Life Mary’s picture looked a lot more like me than the avatar, though.

Anyway.

After I installed the new ASUS AT5IONT-I the average load on the VBOX almost doubled for some mysterious reason. Mysterious because the new CPU packs an extra 200MHz, and the average load should, if anything, decrease.

To handle this I’ve installed WP Super Cache for WordPress. With the plugin enabled, the site will serve static files instead of using the PHP engine to generate the page on every request. The pages load a lot quicker now and the average load should drop quite a lot. The one-liners on the top of every page won’t update on every request and the views count won’t display correctly, but with the speed increase it’s worth it.

Now all I need to do is to write an entry that hits the Reddit or Digg front page and I’ll really get to test the cache configuration. Good luck with that, eh?