Tagged by Euri
Rule #1
Copy all the links below and replace a single link under the appropriate alphabet. If your domain name, or even the title of your blog, starts with an “A,” you’d replace the link under that alphabet and put the replaced link at the bottom. Also, don’t forget to credit the tagger, or where you got the list from, at the end of the list with a full URL of the post so that a pingback gets generated.
For me, maintaining multiple blogs is very difficult. I don’t have the luxury of time, not like when I was still in high school. I’ll keep this blog, my review site, and my LiveJournal where I publish entries not intended for the whole reading public, as for my other blogs, well, I don’t know what I’ll do with them. I suppose, I’ll just cross-post the entries that I publish here in my other blogs when I have the time and when I don’t feel lazy. I added a new category here which I named “Shameless Shots.” The posts which will be labeled with this category will have a photo that I took (unless specified), and a description of the photo. Please take note that I’m not converting this personal blog into a Photoblog. I will still post regular entries about my life and my rants about life, things, and of course, school.
And oh, I’m just an amateur, and the camera that I’m using is an old model of Sony CyberShot.
For donations to help me buy a DSLR, feel free to contact me. Lol. Joke. 
*****
This photo was taken shortly after a program during my high school days. I can still remember that the program that we had before this photo was taken was the drawing of the lucky winners of the raffle tickets which we were forced to buy bought for Php 50.00. This kind of raffle started in my school, I guess, during my third grade. And this is done annually during the foundation day of my school. For eight years, I paid Php 400.00 for the freaking tickets. And never in that span of time that my ticket number was called. I was never a winner.
Right after the announcement of the winning ticket of the jackpot price, everyone stood up from their seat and left the covered multipurpose court. Everyone who didn’t win looked disappointed. Some even shouted “Punitin and sedula… Punitin1!” Then they tore their raffle tickets and threw the fragments into the air. So if you would notice, pieces of yellow-green colored paper litters the place in the photo.
You know what? I miss the programs that we had during my high school days. Today, programs seem to be scarce. Not all students are invited to watch a program. Only chosen classes are given the chance to watch a show. This is just one thing I miss about high school. So to my readers who are still in high school (and even those who are grade schoolers), enjoy the most out of it. And as what I always say, college is hell, believe me.
Photo taken with a SONY DSC-P73 on September 28, 2005.
As I write this, I’m sitting on a chair on the fifth floor of one of the buildings in school with my energetic and noisy classmates, and at least eight instructors in our room. My blockmates are waiting for their turn to perform a certain activity in front of one of our professors and as I am already done and passed with flying colors in our activity, I decided to write this.
Actually, I don’t know what will I write. I guess, I’ll just let my mighty 0.5 mechanical pencil lead my hand. You see, thoughts and ideas are overflowing in my mind and I don’t know which topic I would expound. More than that, ideas would sprout from nowhere like wild mushrooms at the most inconvenient time (e.g. while you are shopping at the mall), and when I get the chance to put my thoughts into writings, I’ve already forgotten them. My ideas are as if they were place inside a top hat and a magician transfigured them into a rabbit or a bouquet of roses.
Currently, I have two articles marked as drafts here in my blog (one of which is my original essay that my professor had marked with “Lifted Article?”). The other one is my own account of one of the most tragic events in my life which still needs further revisions. Besides, I’m waiting for the right time to publish them.
As I’m writing about blog entries, I may also write something about my LiveJournal account. It has become stagnant — mosquitoes started to treat it as their abode — and the entries that I posted there were just excerpts of my entries here. I guess, I’ll revamp it and make it as my private blog. I have so many things that I want to write and publish in the Internet but are not intended for the whole public to read. But I always forget or get lazy to revamp my LJ whenever I get the chance to do it. My other blogs has entered hibernation as well and I don’t know when I’ll be able to update them. I’m also planning to open again a photoblog but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to maintain it. This is the main reason why I hate maintaining multiple blogs. I cannot maintain them due to my busy schedule. But of course, this blog is updated more often than my other blogs.
Well, I guess, I’ll end this entry so I can draft my review of one of the books that I have recently read as I still have loads of free time.
Note: This was originally written two days ago. Today, I have successfully revamped my LJ account. I will also post my review of Marti Leimbach’s “Daniel Isn’t Talking” later or tomorrow.
It’s been almost three years since I posted my first entry in the blogosphere. Sure, there are so many things that have changed in the world of blogs. The blogs themselves and their owners.
For almost three years, the blogosphere had helped me in so many ways. I have met great people like Shari, KT, Robbie, Talamasca, and Hazel to name some. Sad to say, bloggers do come and go. And I’m just glad that even though I have a hectic schedule because I’m overloaded in school and sometimes I find myself frustrated with the blogosphere, I’m still here. I’ve also learned a lot of things. Back in 2004, I was blogging manually, and now, I’m using the most abused blogging software available, WordPress. What amazes me is that even though there are so many users of it who don’t really know how to use it, they are still comfortable with it. I wonder if these people know that it is documented and there is a support forums for it. An advice: stop posting your questions about WP in your blogs, either you search the codex or post your questions at the forums. Further more, don’t be afraid to experiment (but be sure to backup your database) and read! Reading can really save you from looking stupid. It’s been also my outlet of frustrations. The entries that contain my frustrations to my siblings, classmates, teachers, and random people are scattered in this site: some are available to the reading public, others are password-protected, and a few are marked as private.
In my first year of blogging, it’s very seldom that you’ll see blogs written in Filipino (and published by a Filipino). I can still remember that those people who started blogging before me were desperately looking for Filipino bloggers. Like them, I was also looking for some. A year or two later, the blogosphere was infected by stupid Filipino bloggers. Okay, I’m going to try to be more constructive. There was a sudden outrage from the pioneering Filipino bloggers. There was even this blogger who does not even know anything about PHP, he’ll ask whomever he thinks is good at PHP. And I was one of his victims. He asked me if I can help him. Even though it was my first time to meet him, I gave him a helping hand. Because of my stupidity, I gave him a zipped copy of one of my old themes1. The next thing I knew, he used my theme almost as is! I asked him to remove it because it’s very stupid, and not to mention rude.
Because the post where I originally wrote this is password-protected, let me quote some paragraphs:
If you don’t know something, it’s okay to ask for some help. But not to the extreme that you will ask somebody for help every time. We have other things to do like our studies, projects and our own sites. And most of all, do not get mad or laugh at me when I can’t solve your problem or I did not get your instructions! Remember, it’s me who is helping you! And mind you, be sure that you really know what your problem is before asking for help, otherwise, nothing will happen. I don’t have all time just to look at your codes and find the source of your problem.
Kapal mo hu?
A friendly advice, start with HTML (better if with CSS), do not proceed to PHP and other advanced programming languages if you don’t know HTML and CSS!
There are other issues that happened a year ago. After some months, I did not experience these issues because some bloggers (and that includes me) addressed these issues. They were really annoying. The most annoying were the spam comments from legitimate people. Don’t you get agitated when you read a comment that contains only a single smilie or does not have any connection with the post in question whatsoever?
I’ve been receiving a few lately. It would be better if you’ll not post your comments if you won’t read the entry itself. Remember, we don’t blog because of ranking, more so, not just to get multitude of comments. Besides, leaving comments in other blogs does not guarantee you that the blog owner will pay you a visit and leave a comment.
Another issue that I’m also having lately are post notifications via IM. You don’t really have to IM me that there is a new entry in your site. That’s why there is RSS, isn’t it? RSS notifies me that there is a new entry in your site whenever you post one. Most blogging softwares automatically publish your feeds. I can read your entries without even visiting your site. Do you get it?
Also, don’t forget that blogs are not really diaries. Yes, you can post something about your life. But if you’ll only discuss your life, your readers might get bored.
I can only suggest one thing: read! As what I had written above, reading can save you from looking stupid. Believe me, it’s true.
PS: Want to install PHP plus Apache plus mySQL in you own computer? Try Xampp! It’s for free! With this, you can run every single PHP file in your computer. This is not an advertisment from B2P. Actually, it’s currently installed in my computer.
Months ago, somebody asked me how do I display the latest posts of the people in my reading list. During that time, I was using Google Reader’s feature to put them here in my site. Personally, I don’t like it because it’s customizing options are limited. What’s more, it’s not XHTML valid (I’m not sure though if this was already solved).
I tried looking for a plugin to do this, but to no avail, I did not succeed. The plugins that I tried were not the plugins that I was looking for.
And now, I have finally found the solution. Yes, I’m sharing it to you.
So what you do now is to subscribe to the feeds that you want in Google Reader (but that does not mean that we will use Google Reader to republish your feed to HTML). Make sure all the feeds that you want to share are tagged with a common tag. After doing so, click “Options” (in Google Reader), go to the “Tags” section. Share that tag that you want to share. From there, you can click the “add a clip to your site” to start sharing the feeds that you’ve selected. As what I’ve said, its customizing options are limited. So read on.
Now,click “email a link,” you’ll find there the URL of the feed of that particular tag. It compiles all the feeds that you specified and it publishes all the posts in a single feed. It’s being published in Atom.
If you’re using WordPress and have the plugin Widgets installed, you can log to your WP admin panel. From the “Presentation” tab, select “Sidebar Widgets” and change the settings of a RSS widget, you can put there the title of the feed, the URL of the feed and how many entries it will display. Word of caution: it will render wrong URLs for the posts. I don’t know if this is a bug in WP. Besides, the feed that Google Reader provides is Atom, not RSS, right? Don’t worry, there is a solution to this.
(I don’t know if there is a site out there that do something like Google Reader but publishes the feed directly in RSS. Technorati does this, but it’s not reliable.)
FeedBurner can convert the format of your feed, so use it. Burn the Atom feed (the one Google Reader has provided) in FeedBurner. Once done, go to the “Optimize” section of the settings of the feed, disable “SmartFeed”. After that, select “Convert Format Burner,” from the drop-list, choose “RSS 2.0″ and activate it.
Luckily, FeedBurner also has the feature like that of Google Reader that republish your feed back to HTML, and hey, it has more customizing options. It also render correct and valid XHTML. The catch: there is this annoying banner of FeedBurner (this is true for free accounts, I’m not sure with the paid accounts). And I know, you don’t like that. This feature of FeedBurner is called as “BuzzBoost” and you can find it at the “Publicize” tab.
For WP users that has the plugin “Widgets” installed, you can prevent the banner from displaying by going to the “Sidebar Widgets” (in your WP admin panel) and supply there the URL feed of the feed that you created in FeedBurner.
If the URLs don’t work (and you think you followed everything in this post correctly), just wait for a few moments and the URL will be corrected.
I hope this has helped you. If you’re looking for the finish product, you can find it in my sidebar (the one with the RSS icon). Sorry for those people who don’t understand this (talking about the newbies).
Copyright © Christian Evangelista. 2005-2008. All rights reserved.
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