I’ve been busy the last few days!

Both of my readers may have noticed that the skin changer option was removed for a while from the sidebar. This was because I wanted to create a new theme — a real WP 1.5 theme and not something remade from an old skin. The only way I could figure out to do this was to remove the skin changer, upload my new theme in its own folder, and use WP commands to access that theme while testing.

Then I found this great tutorial from Tamba2 on how to use XAMPP on a PC running Windows. XAMPP sets up an Apache server right on your very own desktop, complete with PHP and MySQL. And thus, by loading in a backup of my blog database and a copy of my WordPress installation, and a bit of extra work to get the Carp Newsfeed and Homeland Security scripts working, I am able to test my new format locally just as though I were running it out on the web. But you, gentle reader, are not subjected to the vagaries of my new design, which in no way works correctly yet.

So the theme switcher is back. Feel free to use it. When the new theme is ready I’ll make it the default and post an announcement.

I can see that having a local, working copy of Persistent Illusion is also going to be way convenient next time I want to upgrade or try out a new plugin!

In other news, on the knitting front I’m more than 1/2 way up the ankles on the Wildfoote socks. I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed in this yarn. For the price one has to pay for a 50 gram skein, one would think that The Brown Sheep Company could at least provide a single, unbroken strand of yarn. But I’ve found at least two knots in both skeins I’m working with. I like working with this yarn, but I’m less likely to buy it in the future if this is common.