Just today I finally stumbled across a theme that really speaks to me and that I instantly liked and felt like it “fit” this blog. So, obviously, this new theme that you’re probably looking at right now is… the new theme!

(The theme, in case you were wondering, is called Green Park 2.)

I’m quite happy with it – it has everything I want in a theme:

• It’s clean and clear
• It has great typography
• The focus is on the content, not flashy extras
• It has 2 sidebars (I have lots of links to put over there, so having 2 columns is very handy)

It also doesn’t hurt that green is my favorite color, either.

Coincidentally, it also has a link for my Twitter status – which you can see in the upper-right corner. I think this is pretty neat, and since I use twitter from time to time now, I figured it’d be nice to have here.

All in all, I’m very happy with this new theme, and I think I’ll be keeping it for quite a while!

I still can’t seem to get quite the right “look” for this website. The first theme I tried was iNove, and I liked it quite a bit – especially for it’s use of icons and the way it formatted comments. But on the other hand, the text was a bit cramped together, and in general it was a bit to “busy” – too many links all over the place for things, and it just distracted from the content.

Next (and currently) I tried the blue variation of the i20 theme. Although I’m not much of a fan of the glossy, glassy appearance, the text formatting in this theme is quite nice – just enough spacing to make it easy to read large passages of text – and there’s not too many links/icons all over the place to distract you.

As always, I’m trying to achieve an ideal balance of:

• Simple, clean, modern style
• Easy to read text
• Clear structure
• Not too distracting/flashy

Which, I should point out, is not as easy as it sounds.

I really wish I had more artistic style – maybe I would be able to make one of my own – but sadly I just don’t have that kind of talent. I’m horrible at matching colors, and althoug I can use graphics tools like Paint.NET and Photoshop, I can only manipulate existing pictures – creating new ones of my own are basically beyond me (or, when I do try to do them, they come out looking very amaturish).

So, once again, here we are – trying a new theme. I’ll give it a few days – maybe a week – and see how I feel about it. But if you see it change again, don’t be surprised. Eventually I’ll find something that “fits!” (I hope!)

OK, I’ve updated to a new theme. I’m going to give it a try for a while, to see if I like it. (I do like the liberal use of FamFamFam’s Silk icons, though!)

We’ll see how I feel about it in a few days… but in the meantime, enjoy it!

Yeah, I think it may be time for a new theme for Core Dump here.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the design I’m using now, but somehow… it seems too… bland? I’m not sure how to put it. But sometimes I look at it, and it sort of reminds me of those nasty place-holder websites you see if a domain isn’t registered yet (the ones that show results based on what you typed to get there). You’ve probably seen them before.

Anyway, when my own site gives me that sort of impression… well that’s how I know it’s time for change.

So it looks like I’ll be spending some time in the WordPress Theme Directory today. If I was a better artist, I’d do something myself, but let’s face it – I suck at art.

So, expect some changes around here pretty soon!

I know it’s a silly thing to do, but I sometimes like to look at the visitor stats for this website – as well as for the buns’ website and Amanda’s blog.

Of course, sometimes these statistics are a bit depressing – but that’s neither here nor there. For “entertainment purposes,” here are some recent statistics:

As you can see, the Bunnies are clearly the most popular overall. I get more “total” page views because I have over 1,000 posts stretching back several years which cover a lot of different topics. (My post on Manual vs. Automatic is still the #1 page, with my Desktop Madness series being next in line thanks to Google Image Search.)

But Amanda is really coming up strong – since starting her blog less than a month ago, she’s had nearly the same number of visits to her site as I have in the same time period. Amazing!

I think I’ve created two blogging monsters!