WordPress, the excellent (and free) software used for this blog, now supports threaded comments, like those shown in the picture (taken from the linked article). This should make comments more readable than the former linear display of comments.

Now all we need are comments. Readers?

I hope you like this blog’s header of a goofy barbarian holding a Blackberry in one hand and an iPhone in another, and with a keyboard instead of arrows in his quiver. The header was created by Rob Heinsman. Rob describes himself as “an artist, illustrator and animator hell bent on world domination.” Rob hasn’t yet achieved world domination, and given how the US and world economies are doing, may want to rethink his ambition. But in the meantime, you can check out Rob’s online gallery at his website, http://www.robheinsman.com/.

I use WordPress‘ blogging software for this site, and the K2 theme to make this site more attractive and functional. This afternoon WordPress told me (software talks to me a lot, probably not a good sign) it was time to upgrade to version 2.5. Following my patron saint pictured on the left, I blithely upgraded without checking if the upgrade might be incompatible with my plug-ins or themes. After I upgraded, I had only one minor problem; clicking the link to display the Administrator’s Control Panel resulted in a blank page. No error message, just a blank page.

Those of us who troubleshoot problems with software are used to this kind of problem, similar to your wife glaring at you when you come home; you know you are in deep trouble but have no idea why. Turns out that the code base I used for the K2 theme is incompatible with WordPress version 2.5. Of course, I only figured this out after many hours of false trails. Sound familiar? At least my FileZilla FTP client got some exercise as I deleted and re-uploaded directories before I finally realized I needed to upgrade K2 with the latest beta (gulp).

Anyway, if this site was down or acting weird Sunday afternoon, that’s probably why.