Seems like creating Themes for WordPress is harder than I remember. There’s a lot of free programs and sites out there but they are just building blocks, whereas I want to generate a theme which is more bespoke on the image front. That wasn’t so easy.

I turned back to Artisteer and even that was a little heavy going.

Plus, for whatever reason, it appears the Artisteer generated Theme was the problem when the PHP version was updated – even though my other blog on the same site has an Artisteer generated theme and there was no issue with that when PHP was updated.

So I basically used that with the Bob Shaw Theme header image. It’s not as Boshy as the original theme, which had Bosh specific images down to the RSS feed, but it will do for a while.

I may or may not get around to working on the theme again. We’ll see.

Looks like I will need to change the theme for this site. WordPress tells me I need to update the PHP version but each time I do the site goes to pot and doesn’t even load.

Reverting to default theme and deactivating all plugins worked. Site was up and running just like the other one (which had no problems at all with the PHP version change.)

But as soon as I go back to my Bob Shaw theme. Pfft Kaput.

Default theme until I can create a new one which works.

So, the second item bought from eBay has arrived. The Panther paperback edition of The Peace Machine. The Peace Machine itself being an update of Ground Zero Man.

I was convinced I had this paperback already, mainly due to the cover being very very familiar. While moving some books around I did notice that it was not there. I thought I had lost it then checked my book database and realised that I never had it.

Cheapest edition bought from eBay and a fine copy it is too.

The book itself is a bloody good thriller, whichever version is read. And to be honest the revisions were only to bring it up to date and give it a quick polish.

Coincidentally, adding this to my book database now gives me exactly 70 Bob Shaw books. He didn’t write seventy books obviously. I have all his books in hard back and all of them in paperback, some paperbacks being duplicated with different editions, such as British edition and American edition, or by publisher.

Bosh had a few British publishers, and I have editions of his paperbacks from Pather, Orbit, Pan, Corgi, NEL and Gollancz, or VGSF as they call themselves.

Still got some collecting to do, but that is mainly unread stories from magazines.