I'm going to be upgrading the Thinklings site to the newest version of Bloo starting at 5:30pm central time.

It's not an earth-shattering upgrade (although this is the first release candidate for production version 1.00 - no more beta! - so cool) but there are a few nice additions. Much more will be coming in the release candidate 2, due . . ., um . . ., later.

I'm out of town while I do this, so if I screw up, Thinklings will be down for more than a day. So I hope I don't screw up.

See you on the other side, blogosphere . . .

Update: 6:30pm: Successfully done.

Some notes about this upgrade - and you can see the full release notes here:

The main difference in this version, outside of some nice new options relating to blog configuration (such as being able to set time formats, number of posts to display, etc), is that this version of the software is now timezone-aware. Many blog packages force you to enter the difference between your local time and the server time (which is often in a different timezone) or your local time and GMT. Personally, I've long been intrigued by the platonic-ideal of Greenwich mean time and have wanted to have Bloo facilitate time zone processing, so the blog admin doesn't have to know or care where the webserver is in relation to their own timezone. But programming a blog to be timezone aware means programming the handling of all the local complexities of daylight savings time, so it's a bit of a chore and requires some careful design. Bloo now handles all timezone processing automatically - no more knowing how many hours distance you are from GMT or your server, and no more pesky adjusting twice a year for DST. It's set and forget. And, for those of you interested, all times stored in the Bloo database are now stored in GMT. They are, as you can see, displayed in the local timezone.

Also - a caveat: I haven't programmed all the DST handling world-wide - Bloo currently handles all the U.S. timezones, plus an Eastern European timezone (as there is an active Bloo blog in Eastern Europe). The rest will be filled in as I find the time (no pun intended).

I realize to most people timezone-talk is pretty boring. But I get into it. I'm such a geek . . .