Changing Links order *without* plugin

Hi

I’m trying to use WordPress for a professional blog and want to list my publications in the “Links” section. Unfortunately they’re currently sorted alphabetically, which means not by the order in which they were published (i.e. since I’ll add them to the DB as soon as they are published online I want to order them by link_id). My host has limited space so I don’t want to use a plugin. I do some php scripting too, so it bugs me to not know how to do this in the underlying code. I’m using the Technical Speech Theme, in case that’s relevant. My blog is at http://blawg.intellectual-property.it

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Gareth