It was this post about GDM themes in the new version of Ubuntu that prompted me to install the latest version of Ubuntu tonight.

GDM (short for Gnome Display Manager) themes are a fast and convenient way of changing the default login theme for Ubuntu with very little effort. Check out the Tech Source post I linked to above to see examples of sexy login screens you can simply download, install and use.

Sweet! A new version of Ubuntu is always an exciting occassion: the release schedule is always way more frequent than Windows, and there's always some fascinating development that makes the upgrade worth your while.

So, tonight I'm upgrading my older version of Ubuntu from 8.10 to the latest release, which is 9.04. Otherwise known as Jaunty Jackalope, although the emphasis on animal names seems to be significantly played down on this version.

Last Wednesday I got dragged to France. I've never been to France, although I have tried their method of kissing before and even their ticklers once or twice.

Lisa and I had taken the kids to London for Easter weekend, their first visit to the city. That visit is another story entirely - hint: try dragging a 3 year old around London for a weekend with the Circle and District lines under repair. We returned home on Monday evening, went straight to bed. Upon waking the next day, the first thing to happen was a phone call to say that my father was in hospital...in LOURDES!

There used to be a plugin that would scan your WordPress blog for posts that were past a certain age and close the comments functionality on them.

Why? Because when the conversation dies down, sometimes you want to move on. Plus, old blog posts are generally a target for spammers.

I'm not sure when this happened, but the ability to auto-close comments has been built into the core of WordPress now, and I'm going to show you how easy it is to configure this feature.

A few weeks ago, I decided to rebuild this site using a minimalist template in order to see if it would affect the search engine rankings. So far, there's been no discernible impact, in case you're wondering.

However, I've been wondering if the stripped-down theme might have other benefits. Perhaps in terms of calls to action at the end of the post. I know that since changing the design, I've experienced more comment responses to the site, which I'm very grateful for.

Here's another quick Drupal 6 tip: if you have the Update Status module enabled, you can get notifications by email when updated modules for your site are available.

This is a handy thing to have, particularly for security updates. As I understand it, the Update Status module periodically checks against the Drupal website (on each cron run) and will notify you if updates are available. I think it only checks activated modules though, so if there are updates to inactive modules, it won't notify you.

If you were reading a couple of weeks back, I was musing about the effectiveness of minimalist blog designs and their impact on search engine optimisation.

Something that bugs me in Ubuntu is the default text size for window titles and desktop icons - it's far too big. How do you change it?

Well, in Ubuntu 8.10, you browse to the System -> Preferences -> Appearance programme, and on the Fonts tab, you should be able to set the font size to your liking. I shrunk the font down to 8. I think this is pretty readable and saves a bit of space on screen.

I've read a few interesting blog posts recently about minimalist blog designs. Specifically this Tutorial9 post showcasing streamlined designs, and more recently this Devlounge article by Dustin Boston.

I love the idea of thoroughly streamlined designs, where the content is virtually the only thing on the page.