As I upgraded, I decided to change my theme. I quite like the new theme, it makes a change to have a bit of colour on my blog, which I quite like, though I do still have the old theme kicking around on the server, should I decide to change my mind. Another change, is the VPS on which this blog is hosted, which is now hosted by Fivebean. So far, no real issues, the minor issue I initially had was dealt with promptly and explained thoroughly, I'd definitely recommend giving Fivebean a look if you're in the market for a VPS

I do have one small issue currently, which I'm not sure whether it is being caused by WordPress, PHP, Apache, or the VPS setup on Fivebean's part, whereby directly after a reboot the RAM usage sits at around 300MB, and refreshing the WP dashboard causes usage to jump upwards by around 200MB. Now I know WordPress likes its RAM, but not that much, it certainly wasn't an issue on the old VPS. Anyway - more news on that as it comes.

I've recently dabbled with some PHP & MySQL on a test server running from my desktop, as I've been meaning to learn PHP for a while. I think it's gone OK, I've learnt quite a bit, but it may help that I know some C (setting variables is very similar etc.). What this little PHP learning experience has done (other than taught me some php), is reignite my passion for programming.

I've always enjoyed programming, that doesn't mean I'm fantastic at it, but I really do enjoy it, the only thing I really struggle for is ideas for programs/applications. What my request to you - the community - is, is whether you struggle for ideas as well, if not, then do you have any you'd like to suggest?

As some of you know, I recently bought a MacBook, and I realised I didn't have a page up on my .com domain, so I decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, and had a play with iWeb '09. The end result isn't bad, and moving the blog over to my VPS provider would mean 2 things:

1) I'd actually be using my VPS for something
2) I'd have a more fine grained control over my blog, because I would be hosting it myself. Currently this blog is hosted by wordpress.com

It could mean I'd need to upgrade my VPS package, because currently I only have 384 MB RAM on there. I guess it all depends on how much MySQL decides that it wants to take, though before upgrading I'd look into tweaking some MySQL settings to see if I can reduce the amount it needs.

Ultimately I'd like to do this just because of number 1 above. But also it would teach me some more about Apache, MySQL, possibly PHP. I may also look into changing the site at some point, possibly to a Drupal installation, but we'll have to wait and see

Any thought's on whether you think this would be a worthwhile move, or any recommendations you have on tweaking various settings on the server (it runs Ubuntu 8.04) would be fantastic!