There’s going to be some changes. First, I’ve switched to the Blue Grace/Amazing Grace theme by Vladimir Prelovac. It’s attractive without being overly-garish, so we’ll see how it goes. Second, I’m going to go through old posts, and I fully expect to send some of them down the memory hole. Even I say something stupid occasionally. Third, I expect to simplify categories and tags, as I currently have a lot of overlap between the two. Fourth, I’m not sure, but I’ll probably think of something.

The first to go: WPG2. I hardly knew you, but while I did, you were nothing but a pain in the ass. Good bye.

I haven’t decided about the K2 theme yet. There’s potential here — if it’s ever finished. Moreover, changing something as simple as the headline font requires hacking around in CSS. While some people love that stuff, I can think of other things I’d rather do, like stick my hand in a fan.

But what would I replace K2 with? I thought about going back to blog.txt, but it doesn’t render tag clouds correctly. And, 95% of all other themes out either have garish colors, cutesy graphics, or are just plain ugly. So, my search continues.

It looks like I’ll have to break out some glue.

Fortunately, switching out of TF2 long enough to save the screenshot seemed to resolve the problem, at least temporarily — the break gave the video card a chance to cool down.

I spoke to several of the bloggers who had accounts locked and every single one was convinced that it was Obama supporters who had flagged the blogs in some kind of concerted effort to silence them. But when I asked for specific evidence of this, most simply pointed out that only anti-Obama blogs were targeted — a fact that is certainly suspicious but not especially conclusive.

Not all members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy are exactly unimpeachable, but this kind of chicanery seems more prevalent among the Left.

WASHINGTON – Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents.

Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing’s record on human rights, said the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said he’d been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said four of his computers were compromised beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said two of the computers at his global human rights subcommittee were attacked in December 2006 and March 2007.

Wolf said that following one of the attacks, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.

These kinds of security breaches are not only preventable, they are inexcusable.

It’s easy to blame the attacker, but real problem lies at home. Congressional computers should be some of the best-secured PCs on the Internet. The fact that they apparently aren’t indicates a problem with Congress, not with China. I don’t know whether the blame lies with lax or crappy admins, or with ignorant congresscritters who inevitably will get their way when they whine, “but this anti-virus thingy makes it too hard!”. If action on the floor of the House and Senate to address the latter is necessary, then the more technically-sophisticated members of Congress need to get busy.

Slashdot post here.

I’ve already found a couple of issues. The “Advanced Navigation” is broken, so I’ve disabled it — easy to do in K2’s control page. Images wider than the main column aren’t being shrunk down by the CSS either (see this apropos example).

I’m also going to be playing with the WPG2 plugin, so I can integrate my photos into my blog. (WordPress’ new built-in gallery is OK for basic stuff, but not nearly as powerful as Gallery.)