With this new version of WordPress, I can finally recommend WordPress to even a relative novice. Straight out-of-the-box you can have custom headers, advanced menu structures, easily customizable sidebar and footer modules, and an SEO-friendly, professional-looking theme. (No offense to its creators, but the former Kubrick-based theme wasn’t the most visually appealing theme around.)

WordPress has created a nice video introduction to the improvements you’ll find in version 3.0:

If you don’t build custom WordPress themes, you’ll need to wait for theme developers to start using some of the new wp3.0 features or switch to the Twenty Ten theme, which new blogs will be using by default.

To see the Twenty Ten theme in action, head over to Eating Underwood, a new, decidedly un-techy blog that my girlfriend and I recently started. Having recently a set a redesigned Mook Farm out into the wild, I wasn’t in the mood to make another custom WordPress theme.

Thanks to Twenty Ten, I don’t see myself building a custom theme for Eating Underwood for some time, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be tinkering with the blog’s settings and adding useful plug-ins.

So, yes, WordPress 3.0 has standard features that can get most novices started. But a good blog—aside from great content—still needs some work under the hood.

With Eating Underwood, I have a great opportunity to show someone maximize the potential of the default theme. So as you read about sustainable living in the city, check over here for how to get the most from your WordPress blog.

Before I make any big purchase, I always like to research my options and make sure I’m getting my money’s worth. As I delved deeper into the world of cellular phones, I realized that there are two contenders for the iPhone’s throne: the Palm Pre and the HTC Hero.

Remember the Palm Pilot, the device that brought PDAs to the masses in the late 1990s? Well apparently, Palm is still around. In a last ditch effort for relevance, they hired a team of engineers away from Apple and set to work on the ultimate smartphone.  Working from the ground up, they developed a completely new operating system – WebOS – and a phone with a slide-out keyboard.  Like the iPhone, it’s a smartphone with oodles of features and an impressively simplistic user interface.  Unlike the iPhone, it can multitask, allowing you to do such things as write an email while checking Twitter. And it’s one of the most hackable phones, making it a developer’s dream. Although not all of us like to hack phones or develop hacks, we can all benefit from the innovative things that come from those who do.

HTC is a relatively unknown Taiwanese company. For years, they’ve been the manufacturer of other company’s devices. For example, they created the infamous iPaq for Compaq at the turn of the century. More recently, they changed their business model and started branding their own hardware, and they’ve quickly become major force in the mobile scene. Most Americans may know them as the manufacturer of the first Google Phone, the T-Mobile G1 with Google.

Although it hasn’t been announced yet for the North American market, HTC has recently released the new HTC Hero in Europe. Based on Google’s Android, an open-source mobile operating system, this phone has the best looking hardware and user-interface I’ve ever seen. Being an Android phone, the Hero has all of the Android Marketplace apps at its disposal. Although the marketplace is still relatively small, it will soon outpace the iPhone app store because it is open source and it will be used by so many more cell phone users. As great as the Hero seems to be though, the reviewers gave it poor marks for not having the processor power to handle the user interface. A smartphone with lag just doesn’t cut it.

When I finally decided to hand over my hard earned money for a cell phone, I decided not to go with the iPhone. Instead I bought a Palm Pre. Sure the Pre doesn’t have iTunes (with the incredible Genius function) or a huge app store, but it is incredible with its notification system and its multitasking. Although I’ve been an Apple fanboy for years, I was annoyed that Apple rejected the Google Voice app for what seems to be a desire to appease AT&T. Plus I keep hearing stories of iPhone users who have trouble with AT&T’s 3G service and of iPhone users who say that it’s great at everything except being a phone.

After a week with my Pre, I’m more than pleased. I’m sure I would have loved an iPhone if I had gotten one.  But I’m happy to have a less expensive phone and service plan.  And as I wait for my landline to be ported over, I love having the option of using several Google Voice apps!

Never heard of it? Don’t worry, most people beyond the realm of geekdom haven’t. But once you play Dominion, you’ll realize that it’s too amazing to be left hidden among the race of the mucus-nosed and greasy-faced. In fact, I’ve helped get nearly a dozen people hooked on it, many of whom mocked me fiercely until they tried it for themselves.

If you’re brave and ready to be rewarded with loads of excitement, go ahead and buy a copy of the game from Amazon.

Maybe you need more information before you shell out 35 bucks. Perhaps you’re asking, “What’s Dominion all about? Is it like Monopoly or Risk or something?” Actually, Dominion is one of a whole slew of European board games, which are much more sophisticated than the American board games we’ve grown up playing.

Wired Magazine recently wrote a good article on the difference between American and European board games. American board games are aggressive, zero-sum games: In order for me to gain something, you must lose something. As most of us know, this results in more arguments than good times! What’s more, American games are mostly luck based (hence the dice) and geared towards children.

European board games, though, are strategy based games that adults play. They exercise the mind and tear us away from the boob tube. (I’m wasting money on my Netflix account! I’ve hardly watched anything in the past three months!) In fact, Dominion, was recently named a 2009 Mensa Select Winner, so you can tell your friends that you’re smart for playing it.

Unlike some other European board games, Dominion is really easy to learn how to play. After one quick test game, you’ll start to get the hang of it. And after a few more plays, you’ll get so good that you can finish games within 20 minutes.

Before I sign out, I must clarify a few things: Dominion isn’t actually a board game; it’s a card game. It comes with 24 sets of action cards. But when you play, you only use 10 sets, meaning that you can swap out your action cards each time you play. This customizability really makes for interesting strategies and keeps the game fresh.

And when you play, you’ll see that Dominion does involve a good bit of luck. When you’re ready to graduate to a more complex, more pure strategy game, try Puerto Rico, which was for years rated the top board game, but has recently dropped to number 2. (For comparison, Monopoly is rated 5377.)

What games are you playing? Do you agree with Wired’s assessment of American board games? Have you tried any European board games?

Happy gaming and let me know what you think of Dominion.

As several moviegoers commented, I was essentially glued to my seat at the ticketing table in the lobby. After eight 15-hours days of customer service for the festival, I’m beat!

I’ve been doing this for the past 2 1/2 years, and each year, I’m constantly asked the same questions at the day-of ticketing table: “Do you have any tickets available for ____?”, “What’s it mean for a film to be ‘on standby?’”, “What are my chances of getting in?”, “So I buy my ticket now and then wait in the standby line?”, “You don’t have just one more ticket?”, “I can stand in the back. Are you sure you can’t let me in?”, etc.

For anyone who works in ticketing, the answer to all of these questions is obvious, but they are still legitimate questions for other people. Even so, it’s so difficult to maintain composure after being asked the same set of questions hundreds of times each day, sometimes by really aggressive people, sometimes by dense people, sometimes by multiple people simultaneously, sometimes while trying to quickly sell tickets to people in a standby line before their film starts.

Before the festival started, I wasn’t sure if I would have the mental energy to put up with all of this again. But once the festival began, I remembered all of the fun of the festival. There are such wonderful people.  The festival staff is fantastic, and there are always such interesting people who attend.  Everyone is so energetic, and all of us – festival staff and filmgoers alike – go through the journey of the festival together. Like a good story, there is an arc to the festival, and we each travel through it; sometimes our stories converge, sometimes not.

Will I be back next year? Assuming I’m asked to return, it largely depends on how many of my friends return, especially Lucia, who so expertly manages the standby lines. And it depends on how well I remember the positive aspects of the festival next year! For now though, I’m just basking the success (and recovering from the exhaustion) of SILVERDOCS 2009.

The content and sidebar were overlapping with the header, without any regard to my top margins. I checked for bottom margins or padding in header and didn’t find any. I tried making a custom IE7 stylesheet, but the problem wouldn’t go away.

Then today, I removed the header height from my stylesheet and that did it!

If you’re reading this from Internet Explorer, do yourself a favor and use Google Chrome instead. It’s my favorite browser, so fast and sleek. I’m looking forward to the Mac version.

Now that the IE7 problems are solved, I’m going to focus on getting my 404 Error page to load properly. What’s the use of a custom 404 page if it doesn’t work?!

So for those of us who don’t want to fool with the ShareThis API or Javascript, here are simple instructions for adding a custom ShareThis button using only CSS:

1. Follow the standard instructions to add ShareThis to your site.
2. Create your custom button.  Personally, I downloaded the Share Icon set and used Illustrator to edit the colors of the .ai file, and then sized the image down to the default 16px X 16px, and saved it as a .png.
3. Upload your custom ShareThis icon to your site.
4. Add the following code to your page header, just before the </head> tag.

   <style type=”text/css”>.stico_default{background:url(INSERT FULL URL TO ICON) no-repeat scroll 0 0!important;background:url(INSERT FULL URL TO ICON) no-repeat scroll 0 0;}</style>

5. You’re done!

How does this work?  The ShareThis Javascript code pulls in a CSS file to add the button to your site.  Because embedded styles override external styles, your newly added style will take precedent over the default ShareThis style.

Normally, I wouldn’t embed styles, but with WordPress’s PHP files, I know that the code will populate on every page.

So now write your posts and don’t worry about ShareThis.  It will do it’s thing like normal, just with your custom button!

NOTE: Please read ShareThis Icon Usage Guidelines before you replace the icon with daggers, hearts, balloons, or anything else that would diminish the ShareThis brand.  And yes, I do feel a little weird for changing their green to blue, but I think my visitors will still recognize the button, especially because it’s the only button there and it is clearly labeled.

“and on that picture with little Dr. Pib on your shoulder, do you realize that now both of us have pictures on the internet of ourselves with cats on our shoulders?!”

I hadn’t realized it while designing the site, but he’s right.  You can find a picture of Kyle with one of the Kitty Boys on his shoulder on his Play Magazine profile. So where’s your picture of a little feller on your shoulder??

On a related note, I encourage your to read Kyle’s video game reviews on Play Magazine. They are some of the most entertaining writings on the web, even if you don’t like gaming or care about the games he’s reviewing.

I am now freelancing as a web designer, with two sites currently in development:

• Mook Farm
• Awesome Books

Undo Dog is not the old Mook Farm.  This is my springboard for free-lance work and my sandbox.  It is my place to create and destroy web designs and to practice various web technologies.  What you see today may be gone tomorrow.  What you see tomorrow may stay idle for months only to change without notice.  Although I’ll be focusing on the sites I’m developing for others, I’ll come here when I need a moment for myself.

Feel free to watch as I construct worlds and set them crashing down.  And if you need somebody to design a website for you, let me know.