I've been working on SimpleLog 1.1 for a few days now, and I'm getting close to releasing it for testing (see more on that below). What started out as a simple (no pun intended) update turned out to be a fairly massive one—in addition to moving preferences into the database (and also creating a preferences page in the admin section), fixing issues for Window users, and simplifying the post form, I've also put a basic theme system in place, based on the theme_generator Matt McCray wrote and released.
Don't get nervous—it's not a theme system in the sense that you need to learn a new language or any of that. Everything is exactly how it was, it's just easier to modify your site because all the layout/views/javascript/stylesheets/images for your site are in one place.
The good news is that this means future upgrades will be easy to manage—you'll simply overwrite all of your SimpleLog files and then copy your "theme" back into the themes folder.
The bad news is that upgrading from 1.0 to 1.1 is going to be a pain for some people who have customized views and such. Not in the sense that I've switched to a template system, but more in the sense that the move of the configuration to the database required that I change a lot of the references to configuration in the views. Also, I've changed nearly every other file of the package with this change.
So it might be a bit of a pain.
But it will be worth it—this version of SimpleLog will effectively future-proof adding preference features (right now, if I add a preference, you'll have to add it to your customized site.rb file by hand when upgrading—yuck!), and make it easy to upgrade without having to recreate your views. Plus, down the road, you could share your SimpleLog templates as well.
And hell, this is only 1.1. There are plenty of other little things coming after this release, but the pain is necessary to make the system better.
I'm going to be in need of some testers again for 1.1. I'd love it if you only contact me if you're sincerely interested in testing SimpleLog—you'll need to at least install it and let me know how it goes. Interested individuals should send an email to garrett at maniacalrage.net with the subject "Test new SimpleLog."
Update: Have enough testers now, thanks!