What an absolutely fantastic event Gnomedex 8 turned out to be! Held in Seattle USA; this once-a-year event has reached and completed its 8th-time round. Run by Chris Pirillo and his wife Ponzi in association with their sponsors, which this year included HP as the main sponsor, this year’s show was simply awe-inspiring to me as I watched, despite the fact that I was online, across the pond in UK, and in an 8-hours ahead time-zone.

There isn’t much more to say other than the above now it’s over. At the end of the last night, Chris and Ponzi mentioned a chance of there being several one-day events of a similar nature in various locations around the USA; I suppose that would be next year if it happens, in addition to the main venue in Seattle: That would be utterly fantastic; especially if they were all streamed online too.

Having bade farewell to Gnomedex 2008 from my office chair in front of my monitor; (Yes I am still using a 17″ CRT monitor - I wrote a script to make the streamed picture cover the entire screen in 1024 x 768 resolution so that I didn’t have to watch through a magnifying glass.) I leave you with the closing views of the event as seen on the stream:

See this video to check out some stills of the highlights:

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

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You may note that I use the “Serenity-Pink” theme. You may also note that I’ve edited the “Serenity-Pink” theme that I use. I have absolutely no idea how many other bloggers actually use the “Serenity-Pink” theme for their blog: I haven’t seen anyone else using it yet. Maybe it’s not the most popular theme as a larger percentage of bloggers appear to be guys, and not a lot of guys would choose pink; added to which not all girl-bloggers, nor dare I say gay guy bloggers, like pink and/or this theme.

For those who do, however, I may be able to offer you some help if you so want it.

I found a number of things that were screwy with this theme, after I started using it; the main ones being as follows:

The size of the text in the sidebar as well as the default text size in the body also to some extent, were too small: I use an older CRT monitor circa 1999 - Yes I know I’m behind the times but I prefer CRTs http://kkomp.com/archives/46 - and I use 1024 X 768 resolution. It appears that a large percentage of desktop users, whether they use CRT or TFT/LED monitors, prefer this resolution also. My eyesight without glasses or contacts isn’t fantastic but it’s acceptable. (- Just.) I found that I had to really concentrate hard to read the default text in the body if I was more than a metre away from the screen.

The text and links in the sidebar were even worse: Smaller, and baby-pink on very light grey. I could read it if a metre or closer to the screen.

Thirdly the header overflowed in Firefox and some other browsers if the first line was full; pushing the entire header and body to the left and into the pink area . I use IE7 which doesn’t have this problem, so until it was pointed out to me I was blissfully unaware of the issue.

In essence then the theme that I had chosen was virtually unusable in its default state.

Virtually Unusable 

Working with a couple of other bloggers (See end credits.) I’ve edited the theme to a point where it is now workable:

The amendments I made were all made in the folder style.css:

First I edited the “Wrap” container to sort out the overflow problem with the header links with regard to Firefox etc.

An Example as Seen in Firefox etc.

The second amendment I made was to edit the hex. values of the colours so that pink was pink rather than baby pink, also to darken the grey background a tiny bit. The only effect that this had was to change the sidebar and link text from an unnoticeable unreadable small-print to a noticeable unreadable small-print. Added to that was the fact that some browsers; particularly those used with the Apple Mac, were still seeing the grey background as white.

- So I edited the hex. again; this time to a hot-pink: Almost soft-red. I also darkened the grey background a bit more; but the thing that really did the trick was using a larger font-size and different font in the sidebar: I agree it doesn’t look as pretty as it used to - But it’s at least now easily readable.

As for the default text in the body: I left it as it is; but I use Windows Live Writer a lot to edit text, font, style, and to build tables etc anyway. I’m not a fan of Trebuchet MS but I do still use it in a few posts.

Trebuchet MS

My question is; do you use “Serenity-Pink” theme, and if so have you edited it; either in a similar manner or completely differently? If you do use this theme and you think you could benefit from my improvements then my edited style.css file is available in a .zip format HERE. If you’ve not edited your own style.css file at all then all you have to do is replace the existing style.css file in your (Your_domain)/wp-content/themes/serenity-pink folder with mine, and you’ll see all my improvements appear in your theme. If you have edited your style.css file then I suggest that you compare mine with the original to see where I’ve changed things, and change those things accordingly in your style.css file accordingly if you wish to do so.

Note: If you have already edited your style.css file and you replace it directly with mine as above, then all your editing will be lost and you’ll be left with only my edits - So if you’ve already worked on the file then I suggest that you check my edits against the original first; than implement them after you’ve found them should you wash to do so. If someone else has edited your style.css folder for you in the case of you not knowing quite what to do then I suggest you get that person to do the operation if you wish to try out my edits.

Please please back up everything from your original configuration before you do anything: then if you change your mind or bugger something up you’ll have the original files to replace the changes you made with your original.

I would like to know about your edits and changes to the “Serenity-Pink” theme if you use it also - So do feel free to comment, or contact me: serenity-pink at kustomkomputa dot co dot uk.

PINK

CREDITS:

My thanks go to MaXsiM http://mxm-studios.com/blog/ for his help in working with me to address the header text overflow issue; also thanks to davidrisley http://www.davidrisley.com/ for his constructive criticisms leading to the current editing of colours and font/font size.

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