Automattic has just released WordPress 2.7 and it’s had a complete overhaul to the administrative interface based on lots of user testing and feedback.

I’ve been using the betas for a while and have grown to love it, especially:

• the design and increased usability of the admin interface (backend)
• upgrading WordPress from within WordPress
• adding new plugins from within WordPress

Download WordPress 2.7

Follow @sitepointdotcom on Twitter or visit Sitepoint’s Twitaway page, and get your own free pdf copy of The Art & Science of CSS by Jonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, and David Johnson.

I’ve read the book and recommend it - especially for free. Hurry - the offer is only for two weeks.

I use VirtualBox to run Windows XP as a virtual machine within Ubuntu Linux and periodically like to compact the virtual drive (VDI) file.

Being a bit boneheaded, every time I do this, I spend ten minutes searching for instructions, so I thought I’d post them here both for myself, and for anyone else it may help.

Steps to Compact a VirtualBox WinXP Guest in Linux

1. While in your Windows XP virtual machine, download the sdelete program and save it to your c: drive in Windows.  This program allows you to ‘zero out’ the free space on the drive by writing zeros to the unused sectors.
2. In WinXP go to Start/Run and type ‘cmd‘ to open a command prompt.
3. Change directory (cd) to the location where you saved the sdelete.exe file.
4. Enter ’sdelete -c c:/’ to execute the program.
5. Once sdelete is finished, shut down the Windows virtual machine.
6. Open a terminal in Linux and cd to the directory that contains the VDI you’d like to compact.
7. Type ‘VBoxManage modifyvdi xxxxx.vdi’ compact where xxxxx.vdi represents the filename of the virtual disk you’d like to compact.
8. After the command is runs, your VDI will be reduced in size.

There’s a ton of information on Sun’s VirtualBox site and forum.  Here’s a forum thread that I found especially helpful.

I’m more invested in this Presidential election than I’ve ever been. It’s the first time I’ve felt strongly enough to donate and volunteer for a campaign and the first time in years I’ve believed good changes might actually be coming for America.

For months, I’ve subjected my lovely wife to countless hours of MSNBC, CNN, and The Daily Show. Like an addict, I jones for the latest political news from the moment I wake up, and have even had political nightmares, waking up in a cold sweat.

If you haven’t voted, and you’re here in America, tomorrow’s the big day, so get off your duff and exercise your rights, dang it.

Not sure what I’ll do once the election’s over, but in the meantime, I’ll post a geeky widget because, well, that’s what geek news junkies do, right? [widget removed 11/06 - see MSNBC for full details]

Final Electoral Results: Barack Obama 364/173 John McCain

P.S. Watch Rachel Maddow. She’s darling, goofy, and wicked smart.

P.S.S. If you’re having trouble deciding who you should vote for, I believe the correct answer is Barack Obama!

I needed a better way to track the time I spend on web design, development and maintenance projects, and several months ago, a friend recommended Hamster.

Tracking Time with Hamster

Hamster is a Gnome application that sits in a panel so you can access it easily. It’s available in the repositories of several Linux distributions and, if you’re an Ubuntu user, there are APT sources you can add to install via Synaptic.

After tracking my time for several months, I’m consistently surprised at the blatant discrepancy between how much time I thought I spent on a project and the actual amount of time I actually worked.

If you’re looking for a way to better understand and influence where your time goes, give Hamster a try.