For a few years now I have been working with a few friends on conjuring up a personable news source for our local community: happy hour specials, entertainment, events, and the normal local news. However, I have found it very difficult to bring the creativity from my brain to the table of development. Honestly, using Wordpress as the blog engine and CMS makes perfect sense; but what about a theme to really utilize its full potential.

There are various elements that one really must utilize to make a news source or magazine style website successful. Lots of content, accessible content, feature rich columns and navigation and a beautiful design to go right along with it. Adii from Live Wire has done just that with his new professional news and magazine themes at Live Wire Series from PremiumNewsTheme.com. The themes are feature rich and hearty with design flavor. They’re very top-notch, similar to the styles found at Revolution Theme from Brian Gardener.

I spent a few moments surfing around today and checked out Gazette and the Red Live Wire Series templates. They’re both absolutely beautiful! Then, my good friend David introduced a give-away he is having on , to give away a theme from Adii!. It does not get much better than that, if you asked me.

So, what would I do with the theme? I would hack it all to hell and make it completely functional for my personable news site, which URI will keep secret for now. However, I would definitely put the theme to work and overtime in providing news and content to my fellow local community bloggers and readers. Travis would probably appreciate the fully developed theme to work with as well.

Now how do I acquire it… thats the real question! Working capital for blog startups is always ridiculously tight around here. I often use my pocket book to fund projects that I can guarantee a little return revenue, but I think this is completely worth the money spent.

Great work Adii!

First, this seems to be one of those audio applications that has a ton of potential, however, it will more than likely be gone within a very short amount of time. For those of you who do now know, Last.fm is an online application that allows you to listen to music via a personalized web stream. The music you listen to is a playlist generated from your current preferred flavor of music.

It seems as though many bloggers find sponsored postings and compensated insertions bad. I could understand a blog being pretty annoying if every other post was a sponsored article; but what if that person was just making some extra money? That is exactly what I plan on doing.

I’ve never been one to really get too big into the monetization of my personal website; party because I did not want to fill the site up with advertisements or any text-link-ads. However, over time, I have slowly realized that this is not so bad after all. I can still maintain my pretty little design template while placing a few ads here and there.

For those who are not familiar with theme and plug-in development for Wordpress; it is not exactly a simple task or undertaking. It takes an incredible amount of time to strategically plan, develop, design, release, and support these resources.

The Wordpress community is enormous!

Imagine having a plug-in that is being tossed around the internet like a viral video of two beetles playing texas hold’em. Next, imagine the influx of mail messages in your inbox related to support, feature requests, questions, and overall kudos from fans. Although I enjoy every message I get, despite not being able to respond to every single one — the overall quantity is overwhelming.

Therefore, I have an idea. I’ve noticed that most developers and designers have a method for contributing to their cause. I’m not asking you to contribute just because you use my work. I’m simply suggesting that you give back. If my plug-ins, themes, comments, statements, link love, suggestions, negativity, feelings, photographs, conversations, or any other element you can conjure up and give me credit for has effected you in a positive way — return the favor.

I keep a pretty busy schedule between my work, projects, education, and modest social life. Therefore, I have to prioritize the projects and scenarios that are going to benefit my website, pocket book, and overall me the best. If donations come and I can justify sitting in front of my monitor for four hours cranking out bug-fixes, hacks, tweaks, or any suggested mods — I will.

I do not want anyone thinking I do not pay attention to what is said and such in comments related to these plugins and themes. I definitely notice; at the same time I cannot get too into the testimony from everyone to fix things; because it isn’t bringing anything in to make it worth my while other than some “publicity.” Then again, my website is not well monetized to even make that worthwhile..

Cash donations are not the only compensation efforts I will accept; have an idea.. contact me.

Confusing title huh? I know I was confusing myself just writing it out, however it seems as though all the confusion witnessed within that title, is the same confusion I am experiencing today. Unfortunately my confusion is turning into frustrated in terms of finding a new way to save a few bucks on my automobile insurance.

Allow me to break it down

For the past seven years, I have been a satisfied and loyal customer to Allstate insurance. However, it seems as though they are not exactly keen on keeping my pocket book satisfied and my payments loyal; therefore I have found myself on the constant search for new insurance. The hunt for reliable and affordable car insurance reminds me of the battle against good and evil.

The good providers are all over-charging for their services based on this point system: credit score, traffic record, citations, accident reports, and association with particular organizations. On the flip-side, evil, less good, and mediocre insurance providers are stepping up with their offerings of coverage at an affordable rate — with an overall sacrifice in the quality of protection.

It seems as though I have fallen into the non writing trap of the blogosphere. I guess it is a hole I will eventually get out of, but honestly I am not sure when. So I figured I would inform everyone on five things that are keeping my time pretty occupied.

1. The University of Tulsa
2. Freelance, Freelance, and Freelance
3. MoFuse, Grow!
4. Sleep
5. and even more studying..

I’m trying to stay above water but I’m beginning to get overwhelmed. Let’s see how March goes!

There are a few objects and elements on this website that are currently broken. I am currently away for the holidays and I am unable to fix it. Once I return home I will correct the conflicts screwing up the site. Hard to do so via mobile telephone. Technology just isn’t quite there — yet.

Power is out — this sucks! I’m at the mall in the Apple store updating this post. And the end.

Over the past few weeks I have spent a large portion of my time studying, moving, and working on various projects; which have taken priority over my own. As much as I have found myself wanting to upgrade my Wordpress platform, work on thistulsa, or build new blogs in general; I just haven’t had the time.

I really need to:

1. Upgrade Wordpress
2. Upgrade Transmit3
3. Upgrade Unison
4. Clean-up my iTunes Library
5. Backup my MacBook to prepare for Leopard and Time-Machine
6. Kick this sinus infection
7. Pay my 37signals basecamp bill (new cc #)
8. Cancel my un-used services with misc companies
9. Catch up on “The Office” and “30 Rock”
10. Find Chapand Maura a wedding gift.

Needless to say, I’m really falling behind over here. I guess I could do other things too that are important: write on my blog more, check my email more often, and perhaps I should return phone calls. I’m really feeling lazy; being ill doesn’t help give me any energy to get anything done.

After my summer project came to an end; I was left with a laptop, camera and contract for an EV-DO connection. I still am not quite sure what to do with this equipment. I could sell it, or I could just keep using it! For now I have removed the vitals page and created a lifecast page where my live video feed can be viewed.

Check it out