Fire Releases Early October
After you’re done reading Catching Fire, how about reading plain, ole “Fire.” Releases October 5, 2009 on Amazon.
After you’re done reading Catching Fire, how about reading plain, ole “Fire.” Releases October 5, 2009 on Amazon.
I’ve been asked about the Thesis theme for WordPress now and again so here are a few words why I’m a fan of Thesis.
Yup, I am a fan of the Thesis WordPress theme. I was a little apprehensive paying for a WordPress theme since there are good ones freely available. I forget the exact reason why I went with Thesis, but I’m glad I did. I think it was reading through the Thesis docs and user guide that convinced me. Or it might have been the many sites that started using Thesis as well.
Why Thesis? It’s easy. Plain and simple. Many of the common customizations of blogs can be done with some CSS knowledge. With Thesis, you don’t necessarily need to know CSS, even for somewhat complex customizations since they are all configuration items of this theme. What to show, what not to show, how to show it (font, size, etc) are all controllable by Thesis via checkboxes, drop down menus, etc. Thesis has defined styles for notes, alerts, drop caps, and frames around images to make your stuff look good without having to figure out the CSS.
Thesis makes common changes easy to implement. It has dedicated sections for adding scripts in the header and footer. You can change your RSS syndication feed to Feedburner for example. I know these are not hard changes to make, but Thesis puts these common options right in front of your face.
There’s a plugin called Thesis OpenHook that makes placement of items on a blog even easier. Thesis has these defined hooks where you can stick code/text. With OpenHook, it better exposes these defined areas so you can place items exactly. For example, there’s placement for Before Header, After Header, Byline, Before Sidebars, Before Sidebar 1, After Sidebar 1, etc. so you can easily place a Google Adsense ad, images, or anything else you can imagine.
Lastly, the Thesis support forums are actually good. There’s a lot of activity and really helpful people. If you have questions, issues, or want to know how to do it in Thesis, it’s probably covered in the forums already.
Oh yeah, the Thesis creator, @pearsonified, is on Twitter and frequently points out 3rd party mods and changes to Thesis, so you can see how others are using this theme.
I’m sure I missed something describing Thesis, but for me, Thesis is the ONE thing that got me off of Blogger and on to WordPress full time. I was always looking for a solid theme to start Pulpconnection on WordPress, and once I started with Thesis, I got so far so quickly there was no turning back.
First, I need to apologize to Kanye West for poking fun at him. Right after a few Kanye posts, Pulpconnection experienced a service meltdown that I couldn’t repair. No, it wasn’t a storm of traffic that brought this blog down, just a runaway Apache web service. This out-of-control service sucked up all my hosting resources leaving nothing to power the pulp. See the prolonged spike in the red line? Not good.
After some troubleshooting on my own and even after suggestions from “The Genius” Ryan Kanno, I still wasn’t getting anywhere. I was about to file a trouble ticket with Dreamhost when I saw their Live Chat feature. I tried it, and Max responded. I told him my issue, he looked into it, and as a seer of all, Max discovered and repaired my renegade apache service. All in a matter of minutes. Thanks Max!
Max also politely pointed me to a wiki article about WordPress fine tuning, and now I got WordPress Super Cache running to help tame things.
Lessons learned: Dreamhost live chat good. Enable caching for WordPress good. Angering Kanye West bad.
Thanks to Threadless.com, I am nude no more with the arrival of my Threadless shirts from my 9/9/09 order.
Electric pulp shirt.
Tag inside the shirt.
If getting a caffeine jolt during your morning shower isn’t enough, how about adding in some delicious fat in the form of bacon soap? Okay, okay, this is only bacon scented soap, but who knew bacon was so versatile?
Will you see your extended ohana at the grand opening of Babies R Us? The first Babies R Us in Hawaii is having its grand opening from September 18-20. Located across the street from the Pearl City Walmart at 1150 Kuala Street, the store is having all kinds of specials.
There will be visits by Dora the Explorer, Arthur and DW, Geoffrey the Giraffe, and more. The store is also giving away a limited supply of baby sun shades for your car and with purchases over $100, you get a free umbrella stroller.
So head on down this weekend, and you’re sure to see someone from your (growing) ohana. 😉
This is how Wayne’s World fared in Week 1 of the NFL.
Good burst at the end!
Make no mistake who still runs this town. Hova, aka Jay-Z, is the undisputed king of ROC Nation and still calls the shots. One can only wonder if all that has transpired is part of Jay-Z’s blueprint?
Kanye West’s disrespectful interruption of Taylor Swift. Uncalled for and uncool, yes, but controversial and attention grabbing? Yes. Observe the spike on Twitter after Kanye went off. Hey Kanye, who brought you into the game? Oh yeah, your “big brother” Jay-Z.
Who did Kanye say should have won for Best Female Video of the Year? Beyonce, who later did win for Video of the Year. For her acceptance speech, Beyonce let Taylor Swift finish her words after being interrupted. What a classy move, Mrs. Jay-Z.
Rihanna’s most recent stint in the spotlight is something she would rather forget… and quickly. All the attention is just a reminder of her victimization by Chris Brown. Don’t want this attention and want to get back to the music? Find something else for the media to target. Big Brother, please have Kanye step forward at the MTV’s VMAs.
Hey look who performed on the premiere of Jay Leno’s new late night show. It’s Kanye, Rihanna, and Jay-Z to promote the release of Jay-Z’s latest, The Blueprint 3. Good timing. Run this town!
But the Jay Leno show provided Kanye the venue to publicly apologize to Taylor Swift (and gave more airtime to Mr. West).
And on Tuesday morning, Taylor Swift was a guest on The View to talk about her VMA experience (and get more fans). After the show, Kanye personally called Taylor to apologize for his heinous act which she supposedly accepted.
My oh my, what a blueprint Hova has architected, and we are all witnesses! Take us out Rihanna…
[audio:run-this-town-short.mp3]What?! Kid Cudi could be involved as well? Maybe not, but he is from Kanye’s stable and released his Man on the Moon today.
Today’s Amazon music special is Kid Cudi’s anticipated release, Man on the Moon. 15 tracks for only $3.99 on 9/15/09!

Didn’t know who Kanye West was before? You probably do now. Yeah, so it might be for the wrong reasons, but go ask Howard Stern if that’s necessarily a bad thing. A white, female country singer interrupted and dissed by a black rapper, oh the juxtaposition is so rich!
How many ways did this episode strike a chord? There’s the interruption itself with people calling Kanye all kinds of unflattering names.
Even his shoe designs are being disrespected. You didn’t know Kanye designed shoes for Nike and Louis Vuitton? Now you do thanks to the negatory hype. Don’t know what Kanye’s music is about? You’ll probably have to sample some songs just to know those are the songs you now hate. And, there’s now a video mashup of Kanye interrupting President Obama. Kanye mentioned in the same sentence with the President of the United States stemming from this incident?!
Not lost in this is Taylor Swift. She still is the winner of the VMA Best Female Video and now fans and new fans are rallying behind her. I don’t know her country music, but I’ll have to check out some songs. Out of sympathy, some are even buying Swift’s music. Taylor Swift will be fine.
Rap wars are all played out. But how about country versus rap battles? Now there’s a remix that might be interesting… and who would benefit from these musical fights? How about a Music Television channel?
And did you catch the latest New Moon trailer that aired during the VMAs? I’m sure all this publicity isn’t hurting the viewership of this trailer, right. Oh, the trailer is good, but all the extra emotion swirling around the VMAs just intensified the anticipation of New Moon.
So for all that transpired at the VMAs, I say again the hype and name of Kanye West just went into the stratosphere.
Here’s the controversy so you can judge for yourself.