Commitment issues

I have commitment issues when it comes to blogging. I start for awhile, then stop for awhile, and it becomes difficult to start up again because i always find it a daunting task to post on a regular, or at the very least a semi regular basis.

Regardless, I've been toying with the idea of blogging again. Why? Because i realized that it means more to me to be able to come back in 10 years and reread the crap i felt was important enough to share with the rest of the world, than what random strangers are gonna think about me slacking off and not putting up a new rant or review or sob story.

Plus, whenever i read my old posts, its always a weird experience cuz i don't recognise my own writing style. Its like having a ghost writer write ur autobiography. U know what happened cuz u were there, but the perspective is different because its never exactly how u remember it.

I then share it with whoever my partner happens to be at the time, but they usually never seem to be particularly interested. However, that's probably due to the fact tht a large number of my posts are either about my exes, or about things that i was doing with my exes (like the restaurants we went to or the dramas we went through... Please extract your mind from the gutter).

Even though i swore to myself tht my first post wouldn't be about why I've decided to start blogging again, looks like this is what its turned out to be. I guess it's become sort of a tradition for me. Lol. Oh well.

Mehhh...

Well, as you can see, I've changed my template. Blogger's come up with some fabulous new configuration options (and about time too!) and I just had to take advantage of them. Despite the huge selection of templates and backgrounds, as well as the several hours I spent on tweaking it, there haven't been all that many major changes. Guess I like things simple and user friendly.

Not that anyone would be interested, but just for my future reference (because I stupidly forgot to take a screenshot of how my blog used to look like), here are the major changes I've made:

1) It used to have a plain black background, but now its just a grey-black pinstriped background. More striking and less drab, no?

2) I also now have an additional sidebar on the left, and rearranged some of the widgets and deleted others which were only there because I have itchy fingers. I'm pleased to note that I've finally gotten around to deeming them unnecessary and deleting them, mainly because I am abit of a packrat and tend to collect useless junk.

3) I've added the Nuffnang ad units as widgets instead of spending ages to hunt through the mass of html in the Edit Template section and painstakingly adding them one by one...only to have to re-do them each time I want to update my template. The only exception is the 'Large Rectangle' ad unit that cannot be made into a widget because it only appears at the bottom of the 1st post.

Additional edit: 4) Also added a widget which allows me to view the live traffic on my blog. Most people probably won't even glance at it, but its interesting to me because until now I'm still fascinated that there are actually people out there (besides Nic, who reads it to see if I did anything naughty behind her back) who are interested enough to actually take time from their busy day (pure assumption here) to read the crap I put out. ;P

Everything else is pretty much the same, but I don't think anyone will be able to notice any further changes. I love tweaking my template. Lol.

If any of this stuff bores you (and I'm pretty sure it did), like I said, it's mainly for my reference because I didn't take a screenshot of how it looked before. :( How am I supposed to see how much my template's progressed if I don't know what it looked like previously? Silly me...

Widgeting.

Was working on adding more widgets to my blog last night. Was trying to add Blogumus, the Blogger version of the aesthetically pleasing WP-Cumulus by Roy Tanck, which has now been officially 'adopted' by Wordpress. It's a gorgeous flash and javascript label cloud which allows your blog labels to literally float and rotate in a cloud, according to your mouse movements. Click here to view a sample. Unfortunately, for some damned reason, the supposedly hassle free install didn't work for me, and nothing appeared. Hopefully the coding gets fixed sometime soon though.

After giving up on that, I came across the Grooveshark Widget website. For those of you who don't know (I didn't know what it was either), Grooveshark is a free online music database, and the widget page allows you to create and customize your own widget by choosing what colors you want it to be, and what songs you want to have in it.

So I added 930 songs to mine in 2 minutes, just by adding playlists made up by other people. Cheating? Yes, I know. But this just demonstrates the ease of use of the website. My playlist is made up of only 3 artists, Armin Van Buuren, Paul Van Dyk and ATB. Mmmmm...my favourites.  XD

After clicking on 'Finish', then came the most time consuming part...uploading it as a widget to my blog. The website might be called Grooveshark Widget, but it doesn't actually give you a widget. It just gives you the flash code to add to your site. This might be fine if I had an actually website to add it to, but I don't. I was trying to add it to my sidebar as a widget.

What I eventually ended up doing was using Widgetbox to convert the code into a proper widget to be added into my sidebar. Though that worked fairly well, and was pretty easy to do, I now have to put up with the occasional advert located in the widget itself. However, I consider that a small price to pay for the many hours of wonderful music I now have at my fingertips. In addition, with the discovery of Widgetbox, I now do not have to limit myself to the (usually) crappy widgets that Blogger provides, but am able to make a widget out of virtually anything at all. Très cool, is it not?

Do check out my new widget if you have the time. Like certain other widgets I've added and deleted in the past, this one will only stay up for as long as it continues to amuse me. :P

Now if I could only get Blogumus to work...

Update: Managed to find something within the existing Blogger widgets that's a lame, sub par substitute of Blogumus/WP-Cumulus. Decided to install it anyway in my sidebar, though it's nowhere near as pretty as the original. I've already spent too much time trying to install Blogumus here. 

Things that happened 8 years ago...

Solely due to a twist of fate, I accidentally keyed in the wrong username while trying to access Blogger from my phone. Imagine my surprise when Blogger listed a very old blog of mine, then asked if I'd like to link it to my current blog account with Google. Naturally, I said 'yes'.

After the link-up was complete, I started reading some of my old posts. I had a jolly good time with them too, even laughing about some of the stuff I had written before. I'd forgotten alot of the things I'd written about, like 'chucking a sickie' from work just because I was too broke to go (I didn't have a car and was still forced to take public transport then). When I came to the end of the page I realised that there was no "older post" option that you would see on this current blog. I was frantic because I really wanted to continue reading. Because I didn't remember alot of the stuff I'd written about, reading it was almost like reading someone else's blog, except for the fact that everything seemed familiar. So I went into Blogger's template editor and tinkered around for abit (it was the old html type of template) until I could access my archives.

I've always liked reading things that I wrote years ago. Each time I do, I'm always amazed that I could write that way, and wonder if my writing style has changed. Reading back some of what I wrote whilst in college and in the early months of my working life, makes me really miss those times, and just stand in awe of my younger self. I can't believe half the stuff that I wrote actually happened to me. I was such a different person then. I guess time and experience really can change a person so much they don't recognize themselves anymore. I used to think that I haven't changed much since Uni. But since I started reading my old posts...well, let's just say that I'm pretty sure that if I could go back in time and talk to my 21-year-old self, my younger self would probably alternate between staring in disbelief, and shaking her head in disappointment.

Growing old really sucks, you know that? And I havent even hit 29 yet! (Technically speaking, of course).

By the way, if anyone's interested, the link is here. It's also in the sidebar under the list of links and blogs I frequent.

Blurb

Kennysia was right when he said (or blogged) that Twitter has hurt blogging. However, unlike him, I don't really plan my posts. I just have a vague list of the topics I wanna blog about in my head, and I basically blurt out whatever comes to mind whenever I'm writing about a particular topic. Such as this particular post. For me, the most time consuming part is the editing. If I'm just writing out random text, then that's fine. But once I include any sort of images, then I usually need to re-publish my post 6-7 times in a short span of time just to make sure I get the layout right. However, because Blogger's post manager (despite being user friendly), is also pretty icky when it comes to alignment, sometimes I can never get the layout to work right no matter how much I try.

Just the other day I had the mini-shadow of an image I had previously put up just hovering behind the text on the topmost post displayed on my blog. It took me several days to figure out that it wasn't a problem with that particular post, nor the one that followed it. The image actually originated from the original post, and I finally managed to rectify the problem by going into the original post (which had been posted some weeks before) and deleting the mini-shadow. What was weird was that the mini-shadow image was fully clickable, and was somehow coded to appear in the exact same spot of my blog page, regardless of what post was displayed.

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to say, I've got lots of things to blog about, things that have happened fairly recently in my life. Some of them I've already posted, and some have yet to be even written. For example, there was this time in the last week or so that I somehow or other managed to end up spending over RM2,500 in 2 days. Its not something I saved for, nor planned for, but still it happened. My bank is happy, my credit card is melting, and my white hair is increasing in number as the days go by. But that's a story for another day (if I ever get around to it).

For now, I just wanted to put up a short post (that wasn't on Twitter - the guilt is nagging at me) because I'm avoiding work (again). I'm more efficient when I'm pressed for time. It leaves me more time to relax and just chill out. Heh.

Au revoir for now.

PS - I just saw an email from NuffNang that my first ever ad campaign will be by Sloggi. Whee! I'm (sort of) an underwear model! I advertise underwear! When you see it, please click because there (should) be lotsa pretty girls in their undies for you to see...I know I will, but then again, everyone already knows I'm a pervert anyway.

Advertising me

Decided to ignore my work for most of today and make some changes to my blog. For a Monday, its been surprisingly quiet so far, and I even managed to fit in a short nap. Spent about 2-3 hours putting up a new post, registering for Nuffnang (decided to sign up for it despite not having the recommended 20+ unique clicks a day), inputting the Nuffnang HTML code into my template (that took about an hour because I couldn't find the damn place to put the code for the sidebar ad!), removed the Google Adsense ads (which took all of 2 minutes to do), and also removed my Fishies application.

Though I love the Fishie application because it's pretty, my sidebar's starting to get awfully cluttered, what with the new Nuffnang app, Twitter app, blog and other links, Follower's app, archive and list of tags. So I removed the Fishie app because it was the least important.

I initially did not want to succumb to my empty pockets by putting up any sort of advertising on my blog because I didn't want to bother any of my readers with gaudy, flashing, annoying images. However, upon further contemplation, I changed my mind. After all, I have clicked on a few of these advertisements before because they managed to stimulate my curiosity. Plus, who knows? In a year's time, I maybe I'll be able to cash out a RM50 cheque of free money. By that time, with the way cigarette prices are rising, it might be just enough to buy me a pack or two...(okay okay I admit, I was exaggerating a little there).

I'm still waiting to see if I'll be tempted enough to add those widgets that try to pull traffic off random Google searches. Oh well, only time will tell. 

Success!

Today when I signed in to blogger, I noticed something new. Well, new to me anyway. On the far right of my Blogger Dashboard, next to my blog title, it now states that I have 1 Follower! Unfortunately, being the usual 'blur cock' that I am, I have no friggin' idea how long it's been sitting there waiting for me to notice it.

Whee!

In any case, my blog now has 1 official follower. Thank you Big Cow! As an additional gesture of appreciation, I have hyperlinked your name to your blog address so that the rest of the gazillion readers *cough cough* who visit my blog can click on it and visit you too.

So to celebrate, I decided to sign up for Nuffnang and maybe eventually earn RM50 and buy myself some ciggies. XD

Though the amount of traffic I have is so non-existent that it might take me at least 2 years before I'm able to earn even that teensy weensy amount of cash, free money is still free money, right? So I went to their website, browsed a little bit, and finally clicked on the 'Sign Up' button. What did I see then?

Well just great. I'm lucky if I get THREE unique visits daily, don't say twenty. Who do they think I am, Kenny Sia or something?

Kenny, I 'pinjam' your picture only hor, don't sue me okay? :P