I had promised Alex a new blog design a while ago. He’s a team member on SNW. Our SNW team members were all offered a free blog. Alex is a frequent blogger so I figured he deserved to be the first team member to get a decent custom blog theme!

The theme was made for the newest Wordpress (version 2.5.1). It is widget-friendly (two sidebars), something Alex really wished for. The theme is supposed to have a web 2.0, clean and simple look. I think it turned out pretty good. Alex is really happy with his new theme. I myself had fun making it.

Although I have decided to take it slow this week. I haven’t had a decent weekend in months. I haven’t played any game since the beginning of February. And if it wasn’t for those games, I wouldn’t even have SNW. I will start working again after the weekend. I’m already working on some new projects. So keep an eye on Miss Design if you want to know what I’m up to!

I just pledged on Spread Firefox! I will download Firefox 3 on the Download Day, to set a Guinness World Record!

All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours – it’s that easy.

Plegde now!

Okay, so it’s not all about food, but the majority of the pictures in this post has food on it!

Junior and I had a photo shoot last week for his new blog, which should be online very soon. Junior is of course a famous star, so he can’t afford it to not have a new photos series to upload once his new site launches. Well, at least you’ll get a peek at one of the pics!

Some of these pictures (the daisy, the dandelion and the ladybug) were made a year ago, when I was pregnant and often went for a walk in my old neighborhood on sunny days. The other pictures are more recent and were made while I was walking near the Maas (Meuse), the river I live close to.

Find me on Flickr, Deviantart and MyShutterSpace.

I admit, I am addicted to IKEA. Half my living room is filled with IKEA furniture. That’s what brought me to make this IKEA illustration a while ago. It’s supposed to be funny. This came out. No, I don’t hate IKEA. No, I don’t want to compare IKEA to a drug. This is just some humour. It’s fine if you like it. And it’s fine if you don’t.

I’ve uploaded a bunch of new pictures to DeviantArt and Flickr. But I’ll also show them here.

I read on TechCrunch that Facebook is getting a new look on its member profiles. The screens reveal most of the nifty, much better look. No, I’m not talking about new colors. It’s still white and blue. But the profile pages aren’t as cluttered anymore. Content is divided into several tabs (Feed, Info, Photos, Applications).

You can also view a screen of the new Facebook design on Inside Facebook. On that screen is showed what the general menus will look like, because it’s not just the user profiles that will change. The change is due in June, no exact date known to my knowledge.

In the past year, Facebook has changed many things. It has added translations, chats, friend lists and some more. However, I stopped using Facebook for a while. I didn’t cancel my account or anything. I just didn’t feel like uploading more pictures and sharing more personal information. I’d rather keep some things restricted.

So, another blogpost about Twitter. It’s becoming a regular subject. There’s the Twit-out that took (and is still taking) place today. And it doesn’t seem to have much impact on Twitter. No, even worse. For a while it was down. Again. Anyway, I didn’t join in on this Twit-out. It’s not for me.

Another topic about Twitter and its downtime. Well, you see that block on the right here? The one with a Twitter script in it? When Twitter is down, my site loads very slowly! It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a few days now. I really, really like that Twitter block. But if Twitter keeps on going down every day, I cannot afford to keep the block on my site. It will annoy my visitors, I know for sure.

The third and last thing I’d like to rant about is again something about Twitter. It came to my mind to blog about when @thattalldude talked about it on Twitter today. He has also blogged about it on his own website. There are people who start following you just so they can gain followers. In my personal experience, I’ve had people who started following me. I followed them back within the hour. And then they decided to unfollow me. It has happens more than once. And it seems some people are trying to build up a nice set of followers so he/she can look good. Well I won’t be used for that. If you start following me, do it for the right reasons. Of course, it’s possible to make a mistake. But it’s quite obvious you’re doing it for the wrong reasons if you immediately unfollow me on the moment I have just started following you! Don’t do this. Gives you a bad, bad reputation in the end.

I frequently visit other blogs from people I follow on Twitter. @hjortur also has a blog, and that’s where I found this ‘Twittoholic Screening Test’. It’s to check how addicted to Twitter you really are. The results are here.

1. Have you lost time from work because of Twitting?
   Yes
2. Is twitting making your boss unhappy?
   Basically I am my own boss. And I am not unhappy about me Twitting, so no.
3. Is twitting affecting your reputation?
   I have no idea, maybe? I guess not. You’d have to ask others who follow me.
4. Do you convince yourself the affect on your reputation is positive which is why you not only should but must continue to twit?
   No
5. Have you ever felt remorse after twitting?
   A little. So that would be a yes.
6. Have you ever twitted when you knew you should be doing something else?
   Yes.
7. Have you ever continued to twit when asked to stop?
   No, then again, no one asked me to stop.
8. Have you ever jeopardized your health or the one of others by twitting, (like mobile twitting while driving)?
   No
9. Do you feel irritation if you haven’t twitted for some time?
   Yes
10. Have you ever twitted before breakfast?
    Yes
11. Do you want to twit the next morning?
    Yes
12. Does twitting interfere with your sleeping habits?
    Not really, my sleeping habits are screwed up anyway.
13. Has twitting caused arguments or disagreements with your spouse?
    No
14. Has your efficiency decreased since twitting?
    I don’t think so.
15. Do you reply to twelebrities (twitter-celebrities) to build up your self-confidence?
    No, if I reply to twelebrities it’s probably. because I feel like having a conversation with them.
16. Have you ever lied about what you were doing while twitting?
    No
17. Have you ever hid your twitter homepage when someone is around?
    No
18. Have you ever turned to third party applications to twit when your boss has closed for access to the twitter homepage?
    No (see #2)
19. Have you ever had a loss of sense of time because of twitting?
    No
20. Has your tech staff ever had to treat your computer because of twitting?
    No
21. Have you ever been to a hospital or institution on account of twitting?
    No?
22. Do you twit alone?
    Lol, no.
23. Are you in denial and lied or “stretched the truth substantially” when answering any of the questions above?
    Nope.

If you answered 3 or more of these questions with a Yes it is a definite sign that your twitting patterns are harmful and possibly considered twitter dependent or twittoholic.

I guess that means I am a Twittoholic. Though I don’t really feel it that way. I answered yes 6 times. Once Twitter is back up, I will tweet that I am a Twittoholic. However, I do have to add that I am not that addicted, that I can’t live without Twitter. Seriously.

I am into social networking, new media, web 2.0 and all that. That means I have a ton of services I use, basically to try out. Some because I just really enjoy them. Twitter is one of those services I often do enjoy.

There have been issues with the downtime on Twitter. Some people really can’t stand the downtime at Twitter. See, I don’t like it when Twitter is down, because I have a few scripts running on my website which slow everything down if Twitter is down. And naturally that’s something I don’t want. I want my visitors to enjoy my website. If I visit other websites and those websites won’t open within a few seconds, I know myself, I will get impatient. So I can imagine my visitors getting impatient as well. And I don’t want that. So no, I don’t like the downtime on Twitter.

But, with all do respect, there are people out there who just can’t handle Twitter being down. If we have to start boycotting a service because it happened to be down a lot lately, then what are we doing? Let’s not forget that Twitter is a free service. It always has been a free service and afaik that’s not going to change either in the near future. You do not have to pay for Twitter. Hell, you don’t even have to use Twitter if you can’t handle the downtime. Remember, no one is forcing you to use it. Twitter doesn’t make a whole lot of money off of this website either. They do have ads, but only on the Japanese pages. At least that’s what I’ve seen. My own page doesn’t have ads. I also read some statements that ‘we are the community, we make Twitter what it is’. And that is true. But do you really think a few hundred people will make a difference? It’s not like the staff doesn’t already know what ‘problems’ the site (or basically, the server) has. Not using Twitter for a whole day doesn’t make a difference either. I respect the people who are going to boycott Twitter. However, I don’t think I will join. I want to use Twitter when I feel like it.