In a recent post, I outlined a way to create a ‘play area’ for your blog so that you could experiment with designs, themes and plugins to your hearts’ content.

I forgot about another quite elegant solution that works on your own pc or on a USB stick. It’s called Wordpress on a stick! I won’t repeat what is on that other website, but suffice to say, it uses two methods, one with Webserver On a Stick, and the other with Xampplite.

This isn’t for newbies, but if you are careful, and follow the instructions step by step, you can set up your own blog on your own pc, to test stuff! I’ll include my set up once it’s running!

Two caveats: one, don’t use this for serving pages ON the internet, Xampplite isn’t so secure; and two, don’t confuse the two: if you update one, the other isn’t updated! But those are obvious, right?!

I recently visited Skeet’s Blog, and was immediately struck by the unusual but delightful header image on her blog.

When I wrote her about it, this is what Anita wrote:

Mahalo Kenneth! A friend did the art for me after my theme designer tried to sell me on a very chic, Sex-in-the City looking gal for the header. So not me! Goal was to depict me – mature semi-anonymous (like all bloggers) woman, sitting in her clutter, reading a book instead of doing something about the mess. Camera, shopping and books all tie in to the new blogs I’m building. I really love what she came up with. Dogs and Hawaii are central to my life, too, of course.

I’ve mentioned eye candy in several ways over the last few months. And the personalization she achieves by including a sketch of a human being (herself) in cartoon form really adds to the tone and appearance of her blog. Very nicely done. I’ve been posting comments on her environment and finance categories.

Good luck on your blog!

Here’s an interesting tidbit for May 3rd! Yahoo! has launched an in-your-browser messenger service. If you use Yahoo! IM, then you should be interested in this. Messenger in a browser is a useful tool if you are away from your own pc, or can’t access IM through your mobile device. This provides a platform independent way so you can use IE or FF or Safari (no word on other base systems, apart from Windoze or Mac). There are increasingly a number of ways to IM that no longer require the traditional Messenger clients installed. Soon you won’t even need a PC to IM your days away! I’m giving the system a try right now but I can’t find so many people to chat with! Oh, well. Another day!