A very late and out-of-time update of Lighter Menus is out. From the changelog:

2.7 includes Chinese-Taiwan translation. Thanks to hit1205 for the effort! hit1205 also heroically helped to fix the "no howdy" feature for Wordpress Chinese. Thanks man! This version also implements a new feature, asked for by Callum on the blog: the ability to optionally show the comment bubble even if there is nothing to moderate. You're welcome, man! :) I also cleaned a little the appearance of the above mentioned bubble, it should look less ugly now.

It remains true, this time for reals, what stated in the previous report: this is the last update for a while; I will work again on this plugin and, more importantly, others, when I'll be back.

So a new version of Lighter Menus, 2.6.8, is out, which features german and japanese translation plus few small fixes. I won't be able to update again for the next few months or so, so I thought it was better to release now what was available. In any case by now this plugin should be steady as a rock... hopefully.
About my other plugins, such as Stray Random Quotes or Wordpress Cabaret or such, I know that they are a little left behind compared to Lighter Menus. I expect to go back working on them as soon as I will be able to go back at programming.
Meanwhile, check out the latest Lighter Menus. Be back soon.

OK, sorry that I didn't updated the feeds dedicated to wordpress plugins in the recent past, I had a problem with the exclusion of categories in the feeds, it was all messed up... Now that everything should work on that side I only wanted to announce that the latest version of Lighter Menus came out yesterday, now it even removes the 'howdy' from the user-menus if you ask so... it has a chinese translation and a bunch of features so, check it out...

I didn't want to update for a while but an issue pointed out in the comment (thanks Karl) as always brought me to develop a very fast fix (only because I have the time now).
The issue was with menus breadth broken by extra long entry names added by certain plugins. The menus now widen and narrow at ease and still look fine. Well, except in IE7, where the fix looks kind of ugly but what you gonna do. Drop that thing, is all. The latest version.

This new update does two things: first merges all the css files into the main php so that you don't have all those files to upload. Second, it comes with a new option page so that you can toggle a couple of customizations on how the menus look. Plus I cleaned the code as usual.
Sorry for the many updates, I had too much free time and too much longing for oblivion. If not for emergencies, you shouldn't get any more updates that fast now.
Anyway. Get the latest here.

Sorry for the many updates. This should be the last one for now. It is kind of important since I never realized that worpress now came with two color schemes.
With this update lighter admin menus recognizes this and adapts its own colors accordingly.
Grab it here.

this update is kin of recommended, I think I fixed a number of significant if small glitches. I also made the bottom corners of the menus smooth, let me know if doesn't make any sense to you.
The plugin is here.

Ok, for all those who have already switched to the new Wordpress 2.5, I have redesigned the Lighter Amin Drop Menus plugin to work with it.

Please note: This update is ONLY for wordpress 2.5 users.

Ok, to respond to the requests of my dear readers or plugin users, here it is. An updated version of Stray Quotes that should work with Wordpress 2.5. More at the Stray Quotes page.

The Wordpress Cabaret is a creator of random poetry.
I named this plugin after the "Cabaret Voltaire", the nightclub founded by Dadaists in Zurich in 1916.
Like futurism, Dada was probably one of the few forms of Art of the first half of the past century that could have performed even better using computers, since those artists loved so much random stuff, graphics, fonts and technology in general.

This plugin is incomplete for now, and it can't do a lot to entertain you. It can be seen in action here.
For now it creates random poetry out of your posts and comments, and clouds made of spam. I think it can be enjoyable and sometimes even somewhat poetic, or funny.
By no means I have finished developing it: in the work it has visual experiences too (!), but since I am not going to have much time to work on it for the next few months or so, I decided to release this reduced version of it.

Download

» The Wordpress Cabaret 0.5
~ 376 new downloads since September 30th, 2007

Changelog

-- 0.5 First release.

Install:

Extract, upload to the plugins folder of your wordpress install, activate.

Usage:

Go to "manage" -> "The Wordpress Cabaret" and click on the function names.
These functions can be used to include cabaret content anywhere on your blog.
Finally, you are more than welcome to share here in the comments the poetic results this cabaret generated for you.

A new version of Stray Quotes, 1.44, is out: it comes with a new field, "source", that allows the user to specify where the quote comes from (be it a book or a website or a magazine or whatever you want). Also added in the option page the formatting elements to put before and after this new field. This version also fixes few minor bugs.
You can download the new version on the Stray Quotes page.

As announced, for Winamp users, Plastic Tunes now works with the "Now Playing" plugin.
The "Now Playing" plugin offers few advantages: it doesn't need other applications in order to work, like curl for AMIP, and it is easier to configure. Theoretically it can also insert more songs at a time into the database instead than one at a time, although this feature has not really been tested with Plastic Tunes yet.
On the downside, Now Playing does not notifies when a song is replayed after being stopped, which causes Plastic Tunes to incorrectly report the player as not playing when it is playing the same song. It is a minor problem, but there are no workarounds so far.

On the Plastic Tunes page is the new version.

For you winamp users out there, I just wanted to let you know I am working to make Plastic Tunes compatible with the Now Playing plugin for Winamp.
More news soon (I hope)

In a effort to round up a few bugs -- leftovers of my mistaken ideas on how to implement widgets, and other small mishaps due to my messy programming -- both Plastic Tunes and Stray Quotes have been once more updated.
Check respective pages for details. Is all.

A series of atrocious bugs in the widget functionality are addressed in this strongly recommended update. I am a very messy programmer indeed. Probably because I am not a programmer? Anyway, you always learn something. The new 1.41 version of Stray Quotes is available now for downloading on the Stray Quotes page.