I am not one to write about Wordpress themes but I have seen a lot of poorly designed crap in the theme world and have been impressed with the high quality GraphPaperPress themes bring to the table. In a nutshell, “Graph Paper Press is a repository for Wordpress themes created by photographer and multimedia producer Thad Allender. They pedal minimalistic modular designs that can transform your blog from a tubular list of posts into an aesthetically-pleasing news magazine or portfolio website.“ 

I currently use  Monochrome Author that I am constantly tinkering and dinky donking with. I enjoy the flexibility and customization that their themes provide for someone like me with just enough CSS  and code knowledge to be dangerous and break stuff.  If you are looking for a flexible clean theme to differentiate your site from the typical hokey pokey blog theme,  I recommend purchasing a GraphPaperPress premium Wordpress theme or downloading one of their free premium Wordpress themes. 

You can also purchase all the themes for a steal at $99.00 with a personal use license and below are couple links to a samples of their products.

Gridline Magazine Download | Demo

Visualization Download | Demo

I’ve talked about this before and from an outside perspective and from someone who skates there twice a week, here is my take.  The City is suing for rights to take over the park. An assumption is that it seems the city needs the Skate Park revenue to pay for their money pit projects…ahem the ice-park.  I bet the skate park is the only profitable park in the city and it’s not owned by the city, so of course they want to take it over. 

The list of “issues” in the article are skewed to make the “problems” seem bigger than they are. Anyone can present raw data in a way to send the message “they” want.  Sensationalizing ocassional issues, shows a lack of awareness and exposure to the Skate Park by the people at the city. Anytime you put a bunch of teenagers together your going to have an occasional issue. Spending quite of bit of time skating there, the “problems” are not the norm. I have a feeling there are more problems at the local mall, so maybe they should take that over as well. 

Other cities run stellar skate parks, but if ours can’t even keep the pools open in the summer, I”m concerned about how they will keep up the park. If they do end up taking it over, I really hope they treat the employees and regulars with the respect they have built and deserve.  And I hope they do not ruin the culture that makes the Skate Park a safe friendly community environment for kids, parents and old skaters like me. If not, they will run it to the ground, get a crappy corporate sponsor and no-one will go there, which would be sad thing.  Full story at The Springfield News Crapper.

In the new issue of Wired, Kevin Kelly provides an interesting observation that the Internet has now hit approximate computational equivalence to a single human brain. The nifty little animated info-graphic is worth the look. 

Each time a person clicks on a search result or creates a link to a Web page, the One Machine is being programmed. Each new link wires up a subroutine, creates a loop, and unleashes a cascade of impulses. As waves of links surge around the world, they resemble the thought patterns of a very large brain. 

The One Machine contains a million times more transistors than you have neurons in your head. And, unlike your brain, it’s growing at a rate that outpaces Moore’s law. By 2040, the planetary computer will attain as much processing power as all 7 billion human brains on Earth.

The full article is here and Chris Anderson’s take on the subject is at The Long Tail. 

Via directly psfk. In recent years, we’ve witnessed many examples of internet fueled fame. From Corey Kennedy to Perez Hilton, Tila Tequila, to Ze Frank, they all jumped from obscurity to a kind of niche fame (with some going on to mainstream celebrity). What’s the formula for this meteoric success, and is it based on talent, or is it all just hype? Rex Sorgatz explores the issue and discovers microfame is attainable if you follow the rules:

It’s easy to be cynical about this new class of celebrity. The lines between empowerment and self-promotion, between sharing and oversharing, between community and cliques, can be blurry. You can judge for yourself whether the following microcelebs represent naked ambition, talent justly discovered, or genius marketing. The point is that renown is no longer the exclusive province of a select few. Nano-celebrity is there for the taking, if you really want it.

Full story: New York Magazine: “The Microfame Game and The New Rules of Internet Celebrity”