ClockWorkBlogger

Linux Substitutes for Windows Software

Łukasz Sobek — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:39:34 +0000

Having moved to Linux quite some time ago I realized that finding substitutes for most software would not be easy. Some software just does not exist outside the Windows platform. I was quite suprised to find that most of the substitutes turned out better than expected, some even better than the original. Geany in my opinion is better than notepad++. Filezilla is the same on both platforms.

One piece of software I am really missing is Windows Live Writer, as there is nothing on Linux that even comes close. I do run VirtualBox, but do not find the idea of typing my text in a virtual windows appealing enough to try it. Lets just say I like WLW very much, but would prefer to keep it Windows-free.

Another program i can’t seem to substitute under Linux is Paint Shop Pro, one of my favourite image editors. I know there are a multitude of alternatives readily available for the Linux platform, it’s just that every one of them either seems to do too little or too much. With PSP I was right at home. Unfortunately trying to use wine resulted in a disaster as PSP would randomly crash while I was working away happily.

Linux is not always great …

My unportable laptop

Łukasz Sobek — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:57:45 +0000

I quit having a desktop computer more than five years ago. It was a really bulky midi tower occupying most of the space below my rather short desk. One day when I was returning home I saw a nice looking piece of equipment in the shop window of my local computer store and went in to ask about it. At first I was very skeptic as to whether I would be able to make a theme on something thinner combined than the old box alone, so for a while I kept both.

Some people say the colours a CRT monitor can provide are much better than what a laptop is able to produce. I really have to agree the colors are juicier. On a laptop it has sometimes been difficult to distinguish the different shades of gray when the difference was just #ccc versus #ddd. I know there are some pc notebooks that have very high quality displays, but me not being a designer made me choose something cheaper – with a decent display, but not perfect.

I opted for 17 inches, which is not really something pocketable but I have never regretted getting a slightly larger display. When I need to travel the notebook still fits into my backpack. When I need to work there is always enough screen real-estate to watch a movie while coding or just having the stylesheet and corresponding php file open side-by-side. I’ve tested laptops with smaller screens, but found them much less comfortable.

My themes are white

Łukasz Sobek — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:24:10 +0000

Somebody once pointed out that my themes where “so white”, and taking a step back to look at what I coded both here and commercially I really had to agree. I like white. Not that there is anything wrong with beautiful and shiny themes, but I really feel drawn to the idea of black on white with not much more than a splash of colour added.

One reason for this fact might be that when I have to create something with more than three colours it usually turns out a big mess. I prefer plain and simple. It may not always be exactly white – sometimes slightly beige or a light blue are nice too, but the idea behind the theme remains the same.

I have created several inverted themes and they look great, but I have always had a feeling there was something missing in them. Maybe its the amount of white frying your retina or just a question of having gotten used to the blazing white background. Whichever may be the case resulted in most of my themes being as they are – very bright.

Why there are no new WordPress themes here

Łukasz Sobek — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 16:11:45 +0000

Some time ago my themes were kicked out of the WordPress repository because ClockWorkBlogger was hosting banners for Elegant Themes (and it still is). Obviously the creators of WordPress had a problem with … I really don’t know what it is they have/had a problem with, but there are always people willing to step in to fill the void – in this case the almost completely empty themes repository was quickly filled by more compliant developers.

This removal was the straw that broke the camels back and although I very often thought of making another theme I just did not have the motivation to do so. I have to confess, I like popularity – the 100 comments below a post and being number 500 on the list of 1000 most popular WordPress Theme/Plugin developers. Since they decided to take that away from me I lost motivation to contribute. It’s just as simple as that. Everyone expects some form of gratitude for their work.

From that time on my themes have been hosted on dropbox, which is a much nicer alternative than the theme repository, no crappy subversion, no revisions, no waiting – just create a new version package, change the links and your updated theme is live. But the lack of motivation remains. Thus no new themes.

WordPress themes with lots of files

Łukasz Sobek — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:43:52 +0000

Usually when I download themes off of wordpress.org (yes, I do that sometimes) it makes me wonder why people stuff dozens of files in their template. Not all of them, there are some themes that the more you look at how the author coded them the more beautiful the lines of code become. The normal scenario, however, goes like this:

You see a theme you like and think it would be a good match for your current project. You download the file to your computer and extract it to a folder on your hard drive. Suddenly – “KABOOM!” It’s like a bomb exploded in your folder with file bits flying around, people screaming and … you get the idea.

For me having more than 10 files in a template (excluding image files that is) makes the theme unbearable. Most of the time if you want to change a tiny little something you have to go through all the files replacing the target piece of code one-by-one. In such situations I usually tend to get lost.

I don’t know about you, but I find it so much easier just to open up a file selected from a list of 5-10, go to the appropriate section of the code and add some conditional statements. I know this may not be the way to go for everybody, but then again I do not think having 30+ files in your template is the way to go.

Why I prefer minimal WordPress Themes

Łukasz Sobek — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:21:56 +0000

I have always thought minimal WordPress themes to be better not because they look more beautiful to me (which they do), but because they have to potential to be the foundation of your next project. You take a theme like that and just start building until you arrive at the final layout. More or less like a framework such themes in my opinion boost creativity and motivate people to do more with less.

I am aware, however, that the consumer, a person looking to copy and paste a theme, may not always be happy with such an approach. My themes do look basic, sometimes even childish and not as elaborate as many of the powerthemes out there. This is the way I prefer them and consequently the way the themes are built – light, lean and flexible.

That being said I also strongly believe that choosing a theme is a question of taste, some will prefer the lightweight speedsters while others will tend to employ a Juggernaut.

You do not have to like my themes, and although I stopped making new ones a while ago I still refer to the ones on this website as foundation for other projects.

WordPress Theme: Virus

Łukasz Sobek — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:08:39 +0000

Second of the three Dark Side Series themes, “Virus” means getting back to theme creation. It’s been some time, so I have some catching up to do. The idea for the theme came from Windows, bugs and viruses. As I am now officially migrated to Linux it is sort of an in memoriam theme.

This post will change in a couple of days to present more background info and specs on the Virus theme.

See you soon.

WordPress Theme: Black Belt

Łukasz Sobek — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:08:49 +0000

Black Belt is the first of three themes in the “Dark Side” series which is also the reason for the different naming. It’s a 960px fixed width WordPress theme, which is prepared to work either as 2 or 3 column layout. It’s got plenty of whitespace to help your reader find what they are looking for fast. The Theme features the following:

A dropdown category list
A dropdown page list
An out-of-the-box breadcrumb
4 widget areas in the sidebar
Author Comment highlighting
Built-in recent post and recent comment display

Screenshot

Live Previev of the Theme

Download

Download the latest version of ClockWorkMint here

Version history

v1.0.5
Fixed a possible misuse of the breadcrumb

WordPress Theme series: Dark Side

Łukasz Sobek — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:10:23 +0000

“Dark Side” is my first WordPress Theme series inspired by, well, click the DARK SIDE Tak Wiele Milosci link to see the source of the inspiration.

The theme series will consist of 3 themes. A quick preview of the first theme in the series is already online – just look at the current theme of Clockworkblogger.com.

WordPress Theme: ClockWorkAir

Łukasz Sobek — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:19:52 +0000

ClockWorkAir is a 900px fixed width WordPress theme and like ClockWorkMint and ClockWorkSimple prepared to work either as 2 or 3 column layout. If I had not already named one theme “Simple” ClockWorkAir would have been named that way. ClockWorkAir features the following: