Looking For A New WordPress Look

Okay. After some on-off discussion with a famous local blogger (ahem), I’m decided to test around with new templates, so don’t be surprised for the next few days to see some changes every now and then as I test a few new looks.

I just struck me a few days ago that I’ve had this template (Golden Grey by William Pramana, just in case you’re reading this after I’ve changed the template) for exactly one year, so I think it’s high time to ring in some changes.

This template was chosen from Alex King, who organized a template design contest some time back. You can look through his website to see all the winning designs, but in the advent of 3 column designs and WP2.0, some of them look a little dated, partly due to them being widely used by other bloggers across the world.

So I’m testing. Looking around for new skins. It’s a time consuming process, and time isn’t something I have in abundance, so wish me luck, guys. And if anyone can recommend a site with lots of templates to choose, feel free to send them my way.

By the way, I got this off Digg, this website gives their version of top ten WP plugins. Interesting, but you may want to check Darren Rowse’s list here.

Technorati Tags: Problogger, Darren Rowse, Alex King, WordPress, WP2.0, blog, blogging, digg

Top Ten Signs Your Neighbour Is a Big Time Football Bookie

Top Ten Signs Your Neighbour Is a Big Time Football Bookie.

• The annoying sound that come from his house in the few hours just before kick-off – the incoming calls placing bets from as far as Azerbaijan, the CB radio listening in to police frequencies, the humming sound of dedicated servers running the online gambling websites (16millions hits for just the Germany game), the non stop shouting from the 16 staff working as if they’re on the floor of the stock market…

• The new Mercedes and Nissan Murano parked outside. And the Hummer in the porch.

• He already told you Subra would lose 933-495 – LAST WEEK.

• Big groups of Hong Kong gangsters (wearing suits) come and visit him during Chinese New Year… calling him ‘Tai Kor’ and laughing at all his crummy jokes…

• After the last Euro Championship, he bought a yatch. After the last Champions League final, he bought a race horse. After the last World Cup, he bought KFC Holdings.

• The 4 guards with loaded guns and walkie-talkies sitting outside his gate 24/7. Don’t you just hate it when they throw ciggarette butts and pee on the ciku tree outside your house.

• There’s a sticker on his car that says “I RELEGATED JUVENTUS“.

• 4 days ago you heard him talking loudly on his handphone (while watering his plants), offering RM400,000 “if you score one from freekick lah, nice one” to some guy name David.

• Most people have one Astro satellite dish on their roof. Your neighbour has a 20-ft wireless tower in his garden.

• 4pm – he asks you if you’re willing to take ‘Ghana, i give you one ball’. 8pm – his offer is up to 2 balls. 10.30pm - he’s now sweating and persuading you to put RM1000 in ’3 balls for Ghana, first half only’…

Technorati Tags: Football, Bookie, World Cup

Making Money During The World Cup

As much as I like watching football, there seems to be an overload of World Cup related exposure everywhere I turn these few weeks. It’s everywhere – on the idiot box, on radio, in the papers, incoming text messages, on the billboards, every available space is filled with it.

Football translates into money, even in a country like Malaysia, which isn’t even remotely participating in the games (at least Singapore has a few referees there…). With non-football fans and the everyman on the street going ga-ga over Argentina and Brazil (“Brazil sure win one, I only support Brazil!”), there millions of bucks to be made. Here’s who I think makes the most money in the whole World Cup month:

Bookies – this goes without saying. Actually, they make money every month of the year on everything – horses, EPL, share market, MIC elections, etc. It’s just that come World Cup once every 4 years, there are suddenly more suckers willing to part with their money for just ‘one more ball’.

The mamak stall operators – Have you seen these places during matches? Suddenly Malaysian traffic code is suspended temporarily when they take over the whole road with their chairs and tables. Granted, you need a freaking big projection TV to draw the Astro-less football-kakis, but if you have one, and if the weather is good, the crowd will come. Downside, some cheap blokes order a cup of ‘teh tarik’ and nothing else, or worse off, run off after the match without paying.

The telcos – Believe the hype. Considering the amount of money they spent to be the main sponsors, you can imagine the revenue they need to rake it to make up for it. But no worries for them, Malaysians have a tendency of sending an average of 5.5 text messages during the course of one game.

The pasar malam stall guy selling fake football jersey – want to own an almost authentic Ronaldinho jersey (although the last time you kicked a ball was in Primary 4), but are too cheap to pay RM256.99 for the original Nike? Worry not! Go down to the pasar malam or Pertama Complex and get it for RM39! You want the Beckham red England one? Can! We even got a cheaper RM24 one if you want! But of course quality not so good lah. What’s that? Luca Toni ah? Sorry lah, itu talak lah… Henan Crispo mau?

Happy 3rd Birthday, PPS! / Fansign / Finally, A Pic of Simon!

June 23rd is Project Petaling Street’s (PPS) birthday, and this year it’s the third. Most bloggers will remember the big birthday bash last year at Charlie’s Place in KL, I remember there were plenty of postings about it, and not to mention the many pictures popping up everywhere… including The Star’s In-Tech.

PPS has changed a lot in the last one year, least of all the look of it. When I first joined PPS some time in March last year, it still had the ‘classic’ black and white look. I know it’s really the right usage of the word classic, but it my first impression of it back then… then on National Day 31st August 2005, there was a major revamp to a white and blue interface, premiering a few other features like the PPS blog directory and RSS feed.

The next major rework of the page is the current one we see (not counting the few beta versions), and it’s still in use today. I understand Aizuddin is working on another re-design, I wonder how it will look like?

Other than the face of the page, I think the content PPS on the whole has changed dramatically, but I really don’t want to go into all of it… But in short, too many sploggers and CnP’ers flooding the page everyday, it’s getting harder and harder to find good posts to read. But anyway, i just avoid the detritus, after awhile you can tell by their post and blog titles. I still come to PPS almost everyday, although most days I don’t click on any of the links.

****

Coming back to the PPS Bash last year. I didn’t bring my camera there, all I had was my crappy camera phone. I took only 3 shots all blurry and dark. Believe it or not, I only uploaded it to my PC a few days ago, they have been sitting in my phone for the past one year…

This is the first one, it’s Jeff Ooi giving his acceptance speech for ‘Ping of The Year’. Mack Zulkifli is standing next to him wearing white, but he is totally obscured from sight by Kenny Sia (I think). Damn cheap camera phone…

This next one is of the crowd listening to Jeff. If someone sees themselves here please let me know. Damn cheap camera phone…

This is the crowd in the entrance foyer. I think I need to buy a better phone.

OK fine, i didn’t say they were GREAT photos, but it’s one of those things you had to be there…

****

I promised a fansign and a picture of myself. Okay, let’s kill two birds with one stone.

At the risk of sounding passé in this day and age of the Malaysian blogosphere, Happy 3rd Birthday, PPS!

(Yes that’s my 3 fingers…)

An Introduction to Blogger and Blogspot

A friend of mine, who has been following this blog from day it started, has decided to start her own blog. She’s using the popular Blogger‘s blogspot platform, which I would say is a good way for newbies to start.

(Side note: She has since migrated to Blogsome. Hmmm…)

She actually didn’t tell me about the blog, I saw the incoming referral link on my sitemeter, it sort of shocked her I tracked her blog down hours after she set it up, without her telling me about it.

As you can probably tell, I’m hosting my own WordPress 1.5.2 (i haven’t upgraded to WP2.0 yet). But long ago I used Blogspot too. Most Malaysian bloggers I know start off with Blogspot, heck most of the ones I know are still using it. When I started blogging, there weren’t many guides to help me out, so I’m writing a beginner’s guide to Blogger and Blogspot.

In 1999, Google bought over a small blogging platform called Blogger, to further their grand plan for world domination. They hosted it on their servers, and provided the platform for anyone to set up their blog for free, and they call it Blogspot. You can still host your own Blogger platform, but who would want to do that if WordPress is available? Anyway, blogspot is excellent for newbies. It has got a clean and easy to use interface, it can host pictures via Picasa, it provides unlimited bandwidth and disk space, and millions of people use it.

My first blog was on Blogspot. At the moment its still there, and I also have another separate blog about books. It’s actually quite pathetic, so I won’t mention it here. With a little HTML savvy, you can make your blog look awesome, like these examples that I know. Or you can actually download lots of templates designed by other people, but of course it doesn’t hold a candle to WordPress. But if you’re not too particular as to how your blog looks, you can anytime pick one of the standard templates (and share the same look with a few million other blogs).

One downside to Blogger is that is sometimes goes down for maintenance. I don’t keep tabs on it status now, but I remember a time it was unusable for 2 days. But I reckon it’s very stable these days.

So why did I migrate to WordPress? Well, primarily I wanted by own domain name, and at that time I was quite pissed off with Blogspot for a few other reasons. The other reason was that Blogspot used Atom (XML) feed, something I didn’t like. At that time, my blog was featured at the sidebar of the PPS Blog page (not the main page, only the famous Malaysian bloggers appeared there) and they only accepted RSS feed, not Atom feed. PPS is proudly (right, Aizuddin?) running on MoveableType, another established blogging platform quite similar to WP.

Well, I had a few options. I tried using Feedburner, which worked quite well converting the Atom feed, but I didn’t like the idea of going through a third party to do it.

So I decided to host my own blog, and got help to migrate all my archives to WordPress. And what of WordPress? Ah, that would be a long story, it is uber-cool. There are innumerable templates and plug-ins to choose from, anyway there are lots of local WP gurus that are more qualified to talk on it than me.

If you want to have a glimpse of what WP is like, you can try the free Blogsome (which, before the release of wordpress.com, I refer to as WordPress Lite), or the official WordPress.com. but its nothing like the real thing…

For some examples of how they look like, I’ve given some examples:
MovableType – Danny is guru in this…
Blogsome – I reckon it started with a bang, then it sort of fizzled out, with only a few regular local blogs running now. Like this one.
WordPress.com – i’ve played around with it quite a bit, but i think not able to put Adsense or any advertising on it makes it a little unattractive for a lot of people…
WordPress.org – well, you’re looking at one example.

Some other older blogging platforms:
Blogdrive – S-Kay and Jolene are two people I know using it. Is it just me or it’s a little slow to load up?
Negimaki – i can only remember leona‘s, but she’s since migrated to WP, too…
Diaryland
LiveJournal – offhand, I can only remember Prema’s.
Tabulas – Lainie‘s a good example.
Xanga
MSN Spaces - (thanks to Sashi for corrected the mistake, would’nt want MS suing my ass off…)

Technorati Tags: blog, Blogger, Blogsome, WordPress, blogging, Google, Atom, MoveableType, Adsense, Blogdrive, Negimaki, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Tabulas, Xanga, MSN Spaces

My Lucky Day

Her: “Hello is that Mr. Simon?”

Me: “Yes, who’s this?”

Her: “Hi, Good morning, my name is Chia, calling from XXX Cards. How are you today?”

Me: “Oh, no. Well my day was fanastic right until I picked up this call… What is this regarding?”

Her: (showing no signs of understanding my slight at her company) “Mr. Simon, we are pleased to let you know you’ve been selected as one of the lucky few cardmembers to receive a special RM25,000 free insurance coverage.”

Me: (sotto voce) “Oh wow. A telemarketer AND free insurance? This IS my lucky day…!”

Her: (again, no change in chirpy coffee-filled voice) “First of all, let me congratulate you on being selected…”

Me: “Aw, shucks. I bet you say that to all the guys…”

(Side note. I never get selected of the hundred of job interviews I applied for, nor do I get selected to win any one of those supermarket lucky draw offering RM100,000, BUT I get selected on these things… end of site note)

Her: “So, Mr. Simon, all I need is to confirm your mailing address and IC number for us to send the details to you…”

Me: “Oh, wow, gee… I usually don’t put out until at least the third date, and this is only our phone call…”

Her: “I’m sorry?”

Me: (having enough already) “Look, I already cancelled my card with you guys four months ago.”

Her: “But Mr. Simon, it says here on my computer system that you still have an active account with us…”

Me: “I don’t care what our system says, I cancelled my card with you people, but you people refuse to process my cancellation, and its been 4 months, and let me be frank with you (although my name is still Simon), you guys are not doing your company’s PR with this kind of service!”

Her: “Um, ah, OK… in that case, thanks. Bye.” *click*

Anybody else wants to call and congratulate me on winning a free subsidiary card or insurance cover or loan transfer or whatever?

Dads Are Like Moms Except…

The media isn’t going to let you forget that this Sunday is Father’s Day, not when they want you to buy the latest massage chair or spend RM88++ for a buffett lunch.

I saw this funny posting by our own millionaire recluse Viewtru, so i’m nicking his idea (eheheh…) for this post…

Dads Are Like Moms Except…

Happy Father’s Day to Wings, James, Willwolf, Buaya69, Skywalker, and all the other blogging dads…!

Remembering Football

Jogo Bonito, The Beautiful Game.

The other day, driving home in one of those gnarly KL traffic jams, just a few days before the the World Cup started, I saw one of the many buntings flashing the words ‘Jogo Bonito’. I believe Pele used those words to describe football (‘soccer’ to you Americans), but I doubt he was the first to use that phrase.

I remembered back when I was in primary school in a small town, football (and to a lesser extent, badminton) was the primary sport all of us knew and played. I wasn’t all that crazy about football, but we played it all the time, nonetheless. We played it during our Physical Education classes (‘Pendidikan Jasmani’), we played it before school started, we played it sometimes during recess. Some of our friends played after school (or before, if it was the afternoon session), and almost everyday during the holidays.

I remember back I was in Primary 2 (back in those days it was called ‘Standard 2’), we had 3 periods of free time in the week. Why is that so? It’s actually ‘Agama’ period – Islamic studies for the Muslim students. Which meant the 15 non-Muslim (or non-Malay) students are supposed to spend quality reading time in the library. Yeah, like hell we’re going to sit in the library – most of the time we ran havoc all over the school while everyone had classes. The teachers, well, you could say they ‘closed one eye’. (That was supposed to be a political joke. Haw haw.)

In between playing ‘galah panjang’ and ‘biawak hitam’ (hmm, probably need to write about these in some other post), we played football in the field with a small rubber ball. Goalposts were usually small mounds of hay collected from around the field, or whatever objects we could find. We weren’t good at it, we were, after all, only 8 years old.

During PE classes, the whole class played together, all 40 of us. PE time football was a little different, for starters we used a bigger, proper football, and goalposts were standard issue broomsticks stuck in a Milo tin filled with concrete so that it could stand on its own. Obviously 20-aside footie was a little different from FIFA sanctioned 11-aside, we played as most kids did, everyone swarming around the ball like bees, or like rugby. Anytime a slightest infringement occurred anywhere near the goalmouth, some kid would shout ‘PENALTY!’ and everyone would follow suit. I dunno, taking penalties seemed like the pinnacle of the game, every game had usually a few.

Football back then was fun, although it was very much different from what we watched on ‘Big League Soccer’ or ‘Road to Wembley’. For us, it was a beautiful game, though we didn’t appreciate it as much as we do now.

Next: The MSSD tournament in Primary Six.

Technorati Tags: Jogo Bonito, football

Nuns and Elephants, Again

I’m sick of my job. I’d rather be in a sunny beach.

Bleargh.

Somebody tell me a joke to cheer me up. No jokes about nuns or elephants, please.

IMDB’s Top 100 Movies

Read in one of the PPS blogs last week where this guy listed down the worldwide top 100 movies in the IMDB website.

I took a look at the list. (I’ve reproduced it below this article).

I starting marking out all the movies that I have watched, but after about 20 movies, I realized it would be much easier to cross out the movies I HAVEN’T watch before. Anyways, out of the 100, there were 13 that I have yet to watch. That’s quite a lot considering that the ease of access to movies we Malaysians have (if you catch my drift…).

The 13 I HAVEN’T watched are:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (HP4) – I watched the first 3, but not this one yet. Frankly, I find the movies totally awful, they never seem to capture any of the book’s essence, not that the books had much good going for it. Like HP1, I found it disjointed, never really catching the attention span of the viewer. Yeah sure, everybody says the movie is too short to encompass a long book, but movies should also be judged as movies per se, and in that sense I found them lacking. I’ll probably watch HP4 on DVD, if I can find someone’s copy…

Passion of Christ – Don’t ask. :/

War of the Worlds – I heard it was utterly boring. So I ditched it. Anyway, there are only so many summer blockbusters with fiery explosions I can take. I wonder if anyone mistook it for MI:2.5?

Da Vinci Code – Haven’t watched it yet. However, I always pictured Robert Langdon as a thin dry man with neatly cropped hair, nothing like tubby Tom Hanks and that disaster of a hairstyle. And I can think of 4 other French actresses I had thought of for Sophie Neveu. Ah, well…

King Kong – DVD sitting at home. When my 5-year old saw it the other day, she said, “What’s this? King King?”

Saving Private Ryan – I borrowed this movie years ago, but never got to watch it partly because my player was on the fritz at that time. Never was a big fan of war movies, though. Ditto for Tom Hanks (see Da Vinci Code above).

Pretty Woman – my friends can only express horror when I tell them I have not watched this VHS classic. Oh well, after a period of time, you lose interest to watch certain actors and actresses from a different decade. Maybe one day, if I’m watching and it comes on…

Bruce Almighty – again, I had the DVD, but someone took it back. Must watch it one day though.

The Last Samurai – so boring I gave up after 10 minutes.

Cast Away – what did I say about Tom Hanks? At least I watched ‘Big’.

Signs – Patrick says, ‘the aliens looked quite tacky’…

Minority Report – if you notice the trend here, I’m not too crazy about Tom Cruise either.

Basic Instinct – same with Pretty Woman. Besides, Sharon Stone can hardly be called a fantastic ‘actress’. The only decent show I’ve seen her in is Diabolique (Isabella Adjani, woo-hoo!)

All in all, 87 out of 100 is not too bad, eh, Patrick?

The IMDB list:

1. Titanic (1997)
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
4. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
6. Jurassic Park (1993)
7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
8. Shrek 2 (2004)
9. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
10. Finding Nemo (2003)
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
12. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)
13. Independence Day (1996)
14. Spider-Man (2002)
15. Star Wars (1977)
16. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
17. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
18. The Lion King (1994)
19. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
20. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
21. The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
22. Forrest Gump (1994)
23. The Sixth Sense (1999)
24. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
25. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)
26. The Incredibles (2004)
27. Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
28. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
29. The Passion of the Christ (2004)
30. War of the Worlds (2005)
31. Men in Black (1997)
32. The Da Vinci Code (2006)
33. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)
34. Armageddon (1998)
35. King Kong (2005)
36. Mission: Impossible II (2000)
37. Home Alone (1990)
38. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
39. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
40. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
41. Ghost (1990)
42. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
43. Aladdin (1992)
44. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
45. Twister (1996)
46. Toy Story 2 (1999)
47. Troy (2004)
48. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
49. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
50. Jaws (1975)
51. Pretty Woman (1990)
52. Bruce Almighty (2003)
53. The Matrix (1999)
54. Gladiator (2000)
55. Shrek (2001)
56. Mission: Impossible (1996)
57. Pearl Harbor (2001)
58. Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
59. The Last Samurai (2003)
60. Tarzan (1999)
61. Meet the Fockers (2004)
62. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
63. Men in Black II (2002)
64. Die Another Day (2002)
65. Dances with Wolves (1990)
66. The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
67. Cast Away (2000)
68. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
69. The Mummy Returns (2001)
70. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
71. The Mummy (1999)
72. Batman (1989)
73. Rain Man (1988)
74. The Bodyguard (1992)
75. Signs (2002)
76. Madagascar (2005)
77. X2 (2003)
78. Gone with the Wind (1939)
79. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
80. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
81. Grease (1978)
82. Ice Age (2002)
83. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
84. Godzilla (1998)
85. What Women Want (2000)
86. The Fugitive (1993)
87. Hitch (2005/I)
88. True Lies (1994)
89. Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
90. Notting Hill (1999)
91. Jurassic Park III (2001)
92. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
93. Planet of the Apes (2001)
94. The Flintstones (1994)
95. Toy Story (1995)
96. Minority Report (2002)
97. A Bug’s Life (1998)
98. The Exorcist (1973)
99. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
100. Basic Instinct (1992)

Technorati Tags: IMDB, Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise