A first level, amateur video blog noobie

Let me tell you this, in my mind, I think I speak impeccable English with somewhat an accent of a British woman trying to talk with an American accent. And I think I could pull off an interesting video 'journalling' like ones we always see on Reality TV shows where they cut to the one person interview/reflection moments.

In reality however... I made all the mistakes a newbie/noob makes all in a single, very first vlog video.

1. Didn't realise I have started recording.
2. I accidentally recorded the video Upside DOWN!
3. Spoke to softly and with a lot of 'umm' fillers.

Haha. I have successfully made a fool out of myself there. 

I am also a guest blogger

It has been a while since the last post. I've had some love-hate relationship issues with posting thoughts on blogs, which explains the sudden 'wipe-out' from the web. In addition to that, twitter, facebook and pinterest has reduced my long winding thoughts into a sputter or bursts of status updates crammed into 140 characters limit.

I am back again, now with another blog. Nothing much to shout abut as I am only a guest writer there. It's an engineering blog, simply caters to engineering society written by engineers. It's still in it's infancy stage as I think the only people reading it are like 10 people only. However I do we we could collectively contribute and inspire others with our 'technical philosophies' and maybe create a following like Engineer Blogs.

Here's the link: http://mianengineer2011.blogspot.com

Moving on

Goodbye old blog.... no more familiar page that'll greet me and make me feel all warm, safe and fuzzy.

Hello new blog. Will try to get used with your face (I think it's a little bit cluttered).

Let me know what you think. This page will be improved.

Comment box is working weirdly.

I have problems writing comments in other ppl's blogs. The comment box keeps flashing 'Yes' or 'No' pop ups again and again, preventing me from writing a decent comment. Therefore, I send out this entry of comments in hopes you guys will read it: (not hoping too much though).

Mama Sarah:
Sorry to read about poor Amar.. hope he gets well soon and go home running.

Mynn:
Do you mean, the kit lens that comes with the camera is normally a 'lau beh' (not good) lens? I noticed that after you change your lens to the new one, your pictures are much more clearer and sharper.

Anne:
Aiskruk tu bila makan bunyi 'kruk, kruk, kruk' ke?

That's all..

Wimbledon Week!!!

Argh! Apesal tak boleh log into Blogger ni?
Ok, got it! Now, if you have problems getting your browser to get into Blogger.com, you should try to log in via comment box (make a comment in your blog or other blogs), then, from your blog, click on the small 'B' button on the top left hand corner. This will bring you to your Blogger dashboard.

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Anyway, don't forget to catch Wimbledon matches this week.

Despite being held up for a few hours due to rain, the lawn continues to host great matches today. Earlier it was Maria Sharapova who was defeated by Venus Williams. A total whitewash by Venus, although she had to eat dirt in one of the game.

Another heated match today (on going right now) is between Justine Henin and Serena Williams. They've seen each other last month on clay at Rolland Garros, and Justine came out as the winner. It's hard to say who's going to win today, on grass, because Justine had never won this Grand Slam, ever. And Serena is not a stranger on the grounds, being the champion for two years in a row from 2002, tapi kaki macam kena balut tebal tu.

("Ouch!! Justine had just got hit by a ball on her face! That must've been very painful knowing how hard Serena will always hit the ball. Paling tak mau 80mph at least.")

I want Justine Henin to win.

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I was also tagged by Anne to do this meme for a good cause. Let's do it for the children.

Rule:
If you are tagged, you need to write an entry related to the meme. At the end of your entry you just need to tag as many person as you like. You will then leave a comment in their blog to let them know they have been tagged. And to include this message, "By doing this meme you are contributing rm127 to the Darul Izzah Orphanage". Then please copy and paste this rule somewhere in your entry.

1. A person is only as good as what he says he is only if he practices what he preaches.

2. Friendship is always a good 'I got your back beb' and worry-free when you are honest and understand each other.

3. To love is to be able to give without any conditions.

4. Money makes me start thinking and planning ahead on how to manage it.

5. I miss the good 'ol days.

6. My way of saying I care is by sending Hari Raya cards out every year. Heheh... (Raya card je ke?)

7. I try to spread love and happiness by being nice, polite and help others.

8. Pick the flowers when they fall on the ground and never from their stems.

9. To love someone is to love Allah first, then Nabi Muhammad SAW, then yourself, then your parents, then your family, then your pets, then your friends, then your country, then your environment, then your possessions and then lastly, baru someone else (kesian!).

10. Beauty is 5th gen white Ipod video.

11. When I was thirteen, what I remember the most was I was crazy over Ryan Giggs (of MU).

12. When I was twenty one, I remember having the best backpacking trip of my life to Spain and Belgium (and also living a nomadic life).

13. I am most happy when I got what I wanted.

14. Nothing makes me happier than knowing I don't need anything else to make me happy other than what I have right now.

15. If I can change one thing, I will change my bos (boleh tak?)

16. If smiles were all access cards then everything is free and accessible; museums, theme parks, airfare, concerts, cinemas, public transport, etc. Good!

17. Wouldn't it be nice if we could completely diminish the habit of making snap judgements and prejudice towards other people.

18. If you want to win then you have to put in effort and get your feet in there.

19. Money is not everything but still you need to have it. You can't just live on looovee, can't you?

20. The most touching moments I have experienced is when my parents didn't scold me or asked me a lot of questions on why I screwed up my Malay IB paper pretty badly, instead they consoled me. I am also indebted to my friends at that time who provided all the emotional support that I needed. huhu... terima kasih.

21. I smile when I am happy.

22. When I am happy, I smile.

23. If only I don't have to work tomorrow, then I wouldn't worry too much sleeping late tonight watching this high suspense Henin-Williams quarter final match.

24. The best thing I did yesterday was to find the root cause for a major problem faced by the team. Hoho! It was my lucky day. And I also went to watch Transformers. Double Hoho!

25. If I ever write a book, I will give it this title,"Cooking during advertisement time... and it's delicious!"

26. One thing I must do before I die is to watch a Wimbledon/Rolland Garros (men/women) finals from the front seats.

27. Doing this meme, I feel good, and I hope I have contributed to society.


Okay, the next thing to do is to tag other people.. hmm.. I don't have a lot of friends who blogs frequently, the ones who does (you, anne) have already done the meme.. let's try the docs; Yat and Doc Del if you have the time in your busy schedule. Hiyoshi?

There's a geeky toyol?

You might think, "Where's my review on the new gadget?". Well, I've written it already but I'm yet to take some good pictures. You see, I lost my camera battery charger a couple of weeks ago and can't seem to find it anywhere. I'm saving the last of the battery energy for this coming weekend event at Tasek Gelugoq (I hope the battery lasts!).

In my house, if we lost something, it is as good as gone. We had this joke about having a toyol-tech-geek in the house, since all that was missing was mostly our electrical and electronics stuff like, chargers, cds, remote controls, rechargeable batteries and extension cords. But that is tahyul isn't it? The house is neat, but we have soo cupboards, with many compartments, that it's impossible to turn everything inside out without making a mess and see a frown on my mum's face when she looks at our rummaging activities.

Normally, when someone kept/hid something properly in good will that it will be safe and sound, like not somewhere where people will usually keep something in it. Later, when they want to get it back, they forgot the place where they've kept it. Itulah, susuk comel sangat.

And normally, after you've bought a replacement for it, or when you don't need that thing anymore, it will nonchalantly surface into existance in front of our face... Sokmo lagu tu la.

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On another note, here's a website for all you IT inclined girls out there, like me. Clearly shows that liking gadgets doesn't mean you can't be fashionable ;P

Link: http://www.techboutique.co.uk/

New layout

As Told by Dyanna is back online! and with a 360 degrees turnaround.
I'm keeping it simple this time and with a little tinge of orange in it. The best thing I like about Blogger Beta is that it's faster to apply changes/new posts and adding new links is easy peasy.

I'd say today is quite a productive day for me. Completed writing one technical paper, did troubleshooting on radios, went to PaRam (Pasar Ramadhan), read the latest Digital Photography magazine, change blog layout and etc..

One more thing I need to do --> Bayar zakat. Tomorrow, if Allah willing.

Blogger Beta migration: Work in Progress (Final Update)

Sunday is already calling it's curtain down (6.30pm) and this is my final update for my test blog transformation. I think I've nailed the basic concept of BB (Bl0gger Beta) html codes.

Here's my the final view of my template... (click picture to follow link).

Ta-da!!

The few final tweaks were: (i'm just gonna be brief this time)

1. Actually I managed to get the sidebar box to float inside the main wrap. But you can't see it now since the main wrap is neatly camouflaged with the background image. One simple thing I did, add margin to the sidebar command (top and left by 4 px each).
2. Added a border around the main entry box. Double lines.
3. Inserting a command to call the background image into the main wrap. If you can see from my previous post, the background of the wrap was plain green.

The basic thing is done, although there's one more thing that I can't manage to do.. that is take away the header section and actually replace it with a banner. (I know, I know.. just delete the header command. But if I delete it, it'll reduce the amount of traffic directed to my blog if they search for me on Google..{yeah.. perasan!}). So, it's up to you whether to keep it or just minimise it like I did.

Don't stop reading yet!

A very useful hint. Actually a secret tip before you go plonking into the html code of your beta blogger.. it's wise to do carry out alteration by the tab sequence (in the Blogger section). Start with Page Elements, then followed by Font and Colours, AND THEN edit your html code (Please press the 'Save Template' button). By doing it this way, you'll save yourself from accidentally reverting back to your old template and you have to re-invent the wheel again.

Good Luck.

I will migrate to Beta next weekend or earlier... at the moment, I'm cherishing my moments will the 'just-plain' Blogger.

Blogger Beta migration: Work in Progress (Updates)

So far, the alteration work on the test blog is running smoothly and looks promising enough. I hope to get this done by the end of the weekend.

I'm sharing here my editing process (but sparing you the overwhelming coding talk.. well, there may be a bit). Sorry girls, I know talking about technical stuff is very unsexy of me. Basically, my aim is to customise the look and feel of my own blog from the server's square template to what I am using now.

My customised blog.

1. First, to reduce the amount of editing to be done, I've chosen a common Beta Blogger template that has almost the same layout as my As Told by Dyanna (ATBD) blog. Here, the template chosen was Denim Washed.

Blogger automated template. I want to change this...

2. After saving the chosen template, the first thing that I did was add some links into the side bar. I have to praise Blogger Beta for making adding links and other elements easier for its user. No more <.a href ="...">xxxx html usual editing grill. All you need to do is type in your link's name and it's url and you're done.

Then, I tried to add a more complicated element; the Tag-board. But this task turned out to be quite an easy one... I've added a new element and choose to an add html element. Copying the html script of the tag-board (provided by the tag-board server) and pasted it into the html box and I am done. This is the same for adding my Google Adsense. Easy!

1st editing session

Next, I've move on to the next tab; Color and Fonts and changed the colour of the background, entry wrap, side bar wrap, header background, adjusted the font, etc... and called it a day. However, there's one thing that needs attention, the main section (where the blog entry is) has taken up the sidebar 's space and pushed the sidebar to the bottom of the main wrap.
[Time taken to edit: 2 hours; most time spent was on picking the template and decide what colour to use, adding links and tag-board only took 30 minutes].

3. This is my 3rd editing session.. and it's quite technical because I have to start looking at the html codes. Read the Testing Blogger Beta to get tips on how to add image at the header. Expanding the widget option, I've edited the header bar to activate 'add element' widget to the header section. After doing so, returning back to the first tab, I am able see there's an option to add element at the header section. Added element and inserted html codes for the banner. Done! Thank God the blog didn't crashed! However, the banner is placed on top of the main header and it looks extremely horrendous that way, so to minimise the 'eek-ness' I've reduced the size of the header's font.

2nd editing session

Next is to add the background image. More html code analysis... to make life easier, I've contrasted the colours of each section available so that I'd be able to recognise which section I'm altering when I've edited the codes. I've pinpointed the sections; background, header background, header wrap bakcground, etc; and added a url to fetch the image and add it as a background. (Notice the sidebar is still misaligned, no where to be seen).
[Time taken to edit: 1 hour.. read ref and editing]

4. The 3rd editing session gets more technical than the previous one and I'm thrown out in the field alone without any references. The task is, first to expand the size of the area that wraps the main and the sidebar together so that both items are levelled. Then move the sidebar to the left and main to the right. Both actions were done by rectifying down the codes that defines each section, then changed the size of the overall wrap value (from 670 to 990 pixels) and changed the alignment position of each section (This is actually easier done than said!). Finally, I've changed the colour of the side bar so that it looks separated from the main section.
[Time taken to edit: 1.5 hour to analyse codes and editing].

Viola! Compare the top (test blog) and the bottom (ATBD's original blog) images.

5. This is close enough that I could get to ATBD at the moment.. only minor adjustments left:-

• Align the banner to center.
• Adjust the alignment of the sidebar to make it float inside the main wrap (now it is shoved to the upper left of the column.
  
• Add more links.

Eventhough I haven't tweaked (or hacked) the template's html coding, I think I am comfortable enough with controlling the template as I please (well, not 100%, but it's OK). I guess I can say that I am ready to migrate to Beta :) (ye ke?)

Blogger Beta (work in progress)

I am seriously thinking of migrating to Beta Blogger... there's nothing wrong with the old Blogger,it's just that I've been patiently putting the idea on hold for 3 (or was it 2?) months now and it has been too long.

I've tested the Beta version (opened a new account) and tried it.
My only concern is that I'm not sure whether I can still use my custom made template with Beta or not.. trying to hack the HTML template seems to be quite mind numbing after receiving countless error messages when I try to upload my current template codes into the system.. Apparently they're using a slightly different coding method.. Reading the help files didn't helped much though..

However, helpful Bloggers out there generously shares their information with regards to my concern. One of the helpful fella is this one.

I'm trying to copy the look of my current blog into a test-blog to see how I am doing.At this moment, I have successfully inserted a tag-board (copied from current blog). Added links, labels, put up a banner, a Google adsense and stuff.
Things to do:

1. Arrange
2. Change color
   

It's a good idea to do this first before making the actual leap..and screw up like I did with my blog once upon a time ago...

Categorising Blogger.

Succeeded in setting up the categories section... followed the step-by-step instructions from blogger-tricks using its "Easy Method". Not at all complicated as I thought at first.

The only thing left is to categorise my previous posts! Huuu~~

Another interesting link on categorising is added below. It uses GreaseMonkey,I am unable to comprehend after reading it a few times... but I think it is doing some stuff by altering the codes in Blogger... Tested it...and you can see a link on yesterday's post that leads to nowhere...
Greasemonkey Method: Update for Firefox 1.5 and Greasemonkey 0.6.4 - Freshblog