Yes I do.
My old theme, however cool-looking, depended very heavily on A) a huge wide banner image at the top and B) dynamic image replacement for the post titles. Result: long loading times. And of course I sometimes have the attention span of a stressed hamster on meth,thus I got bored with the look.

This theme, by the way, is called GenkiTheme 1.0, and is available right here. Of course I’ve edited it here and there, but I kind of dig the cleanliness while still looking colorful and…well…cheery.

Hope you dig it too.

Let’s tie them up together with some spammers and script kiddies and throw them in a lake.
Any blog writer will know by now that the comments get jammed with oodles of spam automatically, but today I have some new comments in my Akismet spam queue (love that Akismet!) that post a link to blogsrate.net, which is a site just for distributing viruses. I run AVG Free 8 (a very nifty virus scanner…and it’s free!) which was kind enough to warn me:

The page you are trying to access has been identified as a known exploit, phishing, or social engineering web site and therefore has been blocked for your safety.

In fact, the site tried to push a download virus/trojan to my PC. The bastards! Ah well, another asshole is thwarted by up-to-date virus scanners (hint righ there, people! UPDATE!). And here’s the asshole in question:

Domain Name.......... blogsrate.net
Creation Date........ 2008-06-22
Registration Date.... 2008-06-22
Expiry Date.......... 2009-06-22
Organisation Name.... Michael Cautillo
Organisation Address. P O Box 99800
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. EmeryVille
Organisation Address. 94662
Organisation Address. CA
Organisation Address. US

Current Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
IP Address: 68.180.151.31 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)-CALIFORNIA-SUNNYVALE
Lock Status: clientTransferProhibited
DMOZ no listings
Data as of: 14-Jun-2005

Well, Michael Cautillo of EmeryVille, CA: You’re a jerk, Cautillo. A complete kneebiter.
Words are yet to be invented to describe what you are, but you are one. A total one.

The blog is low on updates now, I’m getting my brain detailed on a VMware training this week.

In case you’re wondering: it’s pretty good. Good teacher, and I’m actually learning some new facts and features here and there. Plus the lunches are good

The first update for WordPress 2.5 is out, aptly numbered 2.5.1. Get it and upgrade, it’s quite painless

The long-awaited WordPress 2.5 was released this weekend, and of course I just had to try it.

The upgrade process is as easy as always:

• Make a backup,
• Deactivate your plugins,
• Overwrite your current WordPress directory from the downloaded TARball,
• Login and run the automatic upgrade scipt,
• Activate your plugins,
• Done!

The admin interface is quite different when you log in, but the new dashboard is easy to get used to and use, so no major learning curve ahead. I found all the features I used before very quickly, and everything works fine as expected. For my blog the upgrade broke nothing in my customisation, so the upgrade was extremely painless.

Get the upgrade.

Yes…well…ahem…erm…I guess I’ll give my blog another chance. The previous incarnations died because I either wanted to post too much which took up way too much time, or I restricted myself too much which meant I just didn’t have the content to put up.

I’ve also got rid of my previous default name ‘mark01′, mainly because people (i.e.: non-geeks) didn’t get it and thought my name was Marko (which it isn’t).

So, without further ado, here it is: Marked. All me, with loads of artificial additives.