All Ready For The New Year

Just wanted to take a moment to update everyone regarding some changes I’ve made to the site. For starters, I’m almost finished with managing my sidebars. I’ve been assigning widgets to specific areas of the site where I think it makes sense to display them. Speaking of sidebars and widgets, you should be able to see the Jeffro2pt0 poll back on the front page. I’ve also added my link blog which is nothing more than a list of shared items from my feed reader. Last but not least, I’ve added a text widget on the about page which allows me to cut the length of the page in half.

As for the About Jeffro2pt0 and WordPress Weekly pages, I have gone through and updated them with relevant information. For the WordPress Weekly page, I have included special notes regarding where to find show notes for episodes 1-22 and 23-current. This was mentioned by Andrew Rickmann and so I’ve included directions on how to obtain those show notes. As for the About Page, I’ve revamped it keeping most of the history in tact while adding personal information to the sidebar. At the bottom of the about page, I’ve included a list of sites and podcasts for which I am working with or for. I’ll be updating the page as necessary to keep everyone up to date.

Last but not least, I’ve fixed the styling issues for the Page-Navi plugin. When you update Lester’s Page-Navi plugin, the CSS files are overwritten and thus, I lost my changes. Thank goodness for backups. I’ve also changed the header from my favorite forest look to a Winter look as we are now officially in the Winter season.

In Closing:

It’s these types of changes that if left undone for a period of time, end up amounting to a ton of grunt work. It’s usually the easiest, simplest things which are left undone. At any rate, I should be all set to start off the new year fresh on this blog. I have no idea what will happen but I do know that I plan on continuing this journey I’m on. I’ve made some incredible pit stops along the way to what I hope will be a successful career in podcasting/writing. I’ve still got plenty to learn and much to improve upon but that will come in due time. One things for sure, I know that there is a core group of people out there that really support my work and what I do. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support (even though I’m trying to right now) but it means a lot to me.

With that said, I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday! P.S., I’m 25 years of age now, woot!

Series Of Updates

No Shortage Of Birthdays

The Birthday Boy

I’d like to start off this post by saying thank you to each and every one of you who stopped by to wish me a happy 24th birthday. I truly do appreciate it. As you can see from the image above, there was no shortage of birthday wishes to go around. What’s funny though is that, I receive happy birthday emails all year around. I only configure the correct birth date on forums or websites that I take seriously or that I know I will be able to be apart of. So during the year, each website or forum that I signed up to for one reason or another generates a happy birthday message on some of the most unusual days of the year. How many of you guys are reminded by your inbox that it’s your birthday?

New PC Build

Speaking of birthdays, I happen to receive two gifts that will make there presence known in the new computer I will be building for myself. So far, here are my thoughts as to what I’ll be building:

On my birthday, my girlfriend purchased me a Creative X-FI Audigy Gamer card from BestBuy for about 100$. Then, I picked up a 700 Watt, RocketFish power supply via the giftcards I received. Now that those two items are out of the way, here is what I need.

Case – Thinking about getting the CM Stacker case. This thing is big, roomy, not meant for LAN parties and also has a bit of style. 2 Huge 120mm fans for cooling and plenty of bays for expansion.

Ram – I’ve made the choice to purchase DDR2 ram instead of DDR3. Apparently, DDR 3 gives you high clock speeds but with higher latency. DDR3 is also pretty expensive.

SATA Hard Drive – This one won’t be too hard to find. A low storage SATA drive on New Egg. Don’t care who makes it.

Video Card – Still undecided on this one. But it will be an Nvidia based GFX card and I will most likely not be going in the direction of SLI.

Motherboard and CPU – Not sure on this one either except that I’ll be going Intel instead of AMD. Going the AMD route would be like throwing money in the garbage.

If you have any suggestions as to which route I should take as far as single graphics card solutions, motherboards, Ram, and Intel CPUs, I’d be willing to hear them.

Ongoing Forum Discussions

Not to be forgotten, we do have a forum attached to this blog for discussions YOU want to begin. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you a few of the discussions that are currently ongoing:

What happens…? – Mark Lima, a brand new user to Forum2pt0 has brought up the question, “What Happens When Jeffro2pt0 Goes 2.1?

Got Some New Toys – This thread is for my PC Building project. Again, suggestions wanted.

True Life MMO Messes up family – I posted a link to a YouTube video where you can hear a child being scolded at by his parents for being obsessed with his computer. It was funny to me, but you have to wonder how many families are actually struggling with this issue of their children being obsessed with MMORPGS.

My Apologies

I have to take this time to apologize for leaving the blog go post less for a number of days. Apparently I, like so many others, have succumb to the holiday season. I’ve been busy spending time with family members as well as reading books and generally, just doing things other than blogging. I plan to get back on track before the new year. I’m also hoping that I can prepare a new years gift that I really look forward to hearing your feedback on.

Also, I’ve written two posts so far on WeblogToolsCollection which have bother garnered a good amount of positive feedback. I do have a few more posts in mind for WeblogToolsCollection that I hope produces the same amount of feedback, but we’ll have to see.

Conclusion

I’m reading, writing, and coming up with ideas behind the scenes. With the beginning of 2008 around the corner, I am trying to develop a timeline or series of goals that I would like to accomplish in the blogging world for the new year. I started this blog back in May and I can’t believe that at the end of 2007, I have the opportunity to write for one of the biggest blogs pertaining to WordPress.

I wanted to take this time to thank YOU, the people who have subscribed to the blog, the people who visit this site on a daily basis, those who contribute, either by sending me a link via my contact form or by leaving a message in the shoutbox, all the way to those who post messages on the forum. I really appreciate the sense of community you guys and gals provide at this particular blog. I love being around like minded individuals who contribute to conversations. Differences of opinion are welcomed here as well.

I hope each and every one of you had a happy holiday season. I hope you’ll be here with me as we progress through the year of 2008. What will happen to Jeffro2pt0 during 2008? I don’t know, but it sure will be interesting to find out.

Five Christmas WordPress Themes

It’s not Christmas yet, which means you still have time to take your WordPress based blog and dress it up for the holidays. I present to you, 5 Freely available WordPress themes you can use to get into the holiday spirit.

Christmas Gifts Theme – The Christmas Gifts theme is a bright colored, two column design which features a festive looking blog header. The text is dark green which suits the accents of red spread throughout the theme.

Christmas Gifts Theme

Vermilion Christmas Theme – The Vermilion Christmas Theme is a modified version of the Christmas Gifts Theme and in my opinion, looks much more Christmasy. The theme is two column based, features a dark green background image and a very festive looking header featuring pine trees.

Vermilion Christmas Theme

Merry Christmas Theme – The Merry Christmas theme is a recently released, professional looking theme that features three columns, a Christmas night looking header, a dark red and green background image for the two sidebars and last but not least, an included script that makes it appear as if it’s snowing on your blog.

Merry Christmas Theme

Christmas Days – Christmas Days features a two column design, built on top of a light blue ICY looking background. The header has a mistletoe which is a nice touch and the tops of the sidebars appear to have a small pile of snow on them.

Christmas Days

Christmas Gift – Christmas Gift is a three column design that highlights dark green colors with a couple accents of red within the navbar. The header is pretty large and shows off a couple of snow flakes with presents underneath a Christmas tree on the left hand side. A basic yet nice Christmas design.

Christmas Gift Theme

As I said before, it’s not to late to dress up that blog and with these 5 themes, you shouldn’t have any problem editing your own, or installing a pre made holiday theme. As far as I know, all of these themes are free. If you come across one that you need to pay for, please let me know and I’ll edit the post.

New Month New Poll

Jeffro2pt0Banner

Last months poll asked the question,  Which OS Do You Use? As I figured, Microsoft leads the way with 38 votes with Apple making a close second at 18, then some form of Linux at 13 with Other coming in at 3 votes. The results don’t surprise me. What might be interesting to find out is how many of those who chose Microsoft are using Vista or XP. Thank you for taking the time to vote in last month’s poll, not it’s time for another.

Keeping with the holiday spirit, this months poll question is, Do You Celebrate Christmas?  I do, but not everyone does.

Holiday Icon Packs

The holidays are fast approaching and it would only be appropriate to spruce up your blog or website with some colorful holiday icons. Dezignus.com has released a Holiday Icon pack in (eps) format which contains everything from candles to party hats.

Happy Holidays Icon Pack

If your looking for Christmas specific icons, then you should enjoy another icon pack released by Dezignus called X-Mas icon2, also in (esp) format. Some of the icons featured in this set include a Christmas tree, snowman and a snowglobe.

Xmas Icon Pack

Last but not least, Xmas Icon Pack 1 (esp) format. This is more of your typical icon pack with various trees, candy canes and the infamous gingerbread man.

X-Mas Icon Pack 2

Happy Thanksgiving To You

Just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. If you are traveling, I hope you have a safe trip. As for myself, I’ll be doing a little bit of traveling tomorrow but after that, I’m going to be hunkered down in front of my PC to play Call Of Duty 4. I’ll be eating the traditional turkey and associated side dishes. What will you be devouring at your dinner?

Spooky Sticker Icon Set Released

http://iconfactory.com

David Lanham of The Icon Factory has released a Spooky Sticker icon set for the Mac, Windows, or iContainer. The icon set contains Halloween themed stickers which make a great addition to your desktop around this time of year. This icon set will also look good on Vista as it was built with large resources. To download this icon pack, check out Spooky Stickers.

SpookyGhost SpookyPumpkin SpookyWoman