I’ve been pretty busy this weekend with wrapping up several web projects, messing with WordPress database and trying to fit in a SimplePress forum plugin. The latter was the hardest and I ended up using a default skin provided by the author. It matches my theme and I’m happy with it. SimplePress REALLY needs a UI overhaul.

I needed some time off so I went to the cinema and saw 2012. Pretty interesting. Cheesy American stuff some critics may say, but I’m impressed by visual effects and cinematography techniques. I also saw 9, a 3D animation movie. Really great, the atmosphere, the characters, the camera movement, everything was absolutely perfect. Steam-punk genre.

Sunday was a movie day also, this time at home, in bed, in front of the computer. Several nice flicks I’d say, but not worth mentioning here.

Oh, and, by the way, watch this.

I used Windows XP for years more than 8 hours a day, and I got pretty used to it. Servicing and troubleshooting by phone was piece of cake. When the Windows 7 OS took over XP on my notebook, I started noticing features and behaviours that didn’t help me in my quest of taking over the world making things easier for my daily job.

For example, directory browsing is a little jumpy, SHIFT + TAB is the opposite of TAB only sometimes, not always. Also, I can’t record What I Hear, even if the audio adapter allows me to do it, even if Windows XP had no problem with this before. Internet troubleshooting says I need a capable audio adapter, but I don’t have one. Microsoft sucks sometimes. Correct me on sometimes, please.

The Start menu seems a little awkward, but I suppose I’ll get used to it, just like Windows 98 to Windows XP transition. The Run menu is no longer where it used to be, but it’s still accessible via WINDOWS + R keyboard combination. The quick launch bar is there but upon opening shortcuts inside, they disappear. I cannot open two browser windows, because upon opening one, the shortcut icon disappears. Why? I know how to open a new one but it requires a right-click and a left-click.

Windows 7 moved on to becoming a Media station, control panel items are now harder to find, and Windows innards are harder to find and edit.

The idea of prefetching and superfetching is nice, but it’s not tested. Maybe it will be better implemented in a subsequent service pack.

If you don’t agree with what I said, go read my previous article, about what I like in Windows 7.

The first thing I liked as a web developer ever since I booted up my new Windows 7 installation was the sticky note. I used to have lots of TODO lists on desktop and sometimes I used to forget about some of them.

Sticky notes for me are a productivity enhancer. I use them every day, and each day I add and delete new tasks. It helped me so far.

Another feature I like is the graphics. I write code all day and all night, so a little colour and a transparent, blurry window makes my life happier. I just rated my notebook’s performance while writing this article and I got a 3.1 as the lowest subscore. The other subscores go as high as 5 out of 7.9. The lower value is because of the integrated graphics adapter. But, hey, who’s got time to play when coding puts food on my table?

More recent documents. This is what I see when opening the Start menu. Each recent application has it’s own recent documents. Easier to find.

And, if you need more tweaks, get your copy of Tweak 7.

I have updated 3 of my current themes to work with WordPress 2.7 at full potential. This includes threaded comments, pagination and sticky features.

The updated themes are:

Whiskey Air
[download 2.7 compatible only]

Whiskey Earth
[download 2.7 compatible only]

Light Constellations
[download 2.7 compatible only]

Visit my themes repository for older versions.

I’m sure you already started sketching a basic checklist for 2010. I’m talking about blogging, promoting and marketing your money-making web site. Without knowing what your checklists are, I know they should include doubling your content, socializing more, commenting more – and becoming a top commentator on at least 50 blogs -, and improving your branding.

The last point is as important as there is way too much Internet noise: spam sites, MFA sites (we all have one of those), landing page sites, scraped content sites and other low quality, free subdomain sites.

Growing your money-making web site becomes more and more important as the current web trend is buying and selling to the highest bidder. I have examples of local web sites sold for millions of US dollars. I also know international web sites sold for billions of US dollars. And a large amount of smaller web sites sold for tens of thousand of US dollars.

The big fish eats the little fish.

Let’s become little fish and sell ourselves expensive.

My checklist for 2010 is:

• shut down a few unproductive sites and dedicate their time and resources to the ones with higher potential,
• double and even triple the existing content,
• socialize on more networks,
• improve my branding,
• promote services and products.

What’s your checklist for 2010? Let’s make a round-up of checklists.