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. 

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. 

Eww...

Someone made me clean the house toilets today...thankfully there were only 2. I'm so tired and wet (with water!). All the strength has gone out of my right arm. Thankfully, it isn't my 'business' arm. ^.^

Just read a friend's latest blog post. Her house was just broken into for the 2nd time in just over a year. Poor thing. I wanna help, but I don't really know how. Right now what she needs most is a cheap place to stay. Suggestions, anyone?

I've been finding myself unusually grumpy recently too. Which is probably the reason why I keep arguing with someone. Its not really her fault too. I admit, she can be difficult to live with sometimes, and so can I, but still, there's gotta be a solution to it. Perhaps I'm just extremely irritable, which probably means I'm due some quiet time to myself. However, she keeps talkinggggg....... >.<"

I realised that the Fishie widget that I am so fascinated with doesn't work right when viewed from my laptop (I installed it at work when I was setting up the blog...it was a slow day for me :P). Its quite frustrating when something I like doesn't work the way I want it to. Which probably explains why I'm having so many problems with...everything!

I've been so busy...

...tinkering with the template and adding stuff to the sidebar that I almost forgot to post. Heee.... XD

Then I was so fascinated with with the gadget I added with the colorful fishies swimming around that I almost didn't want to post. I just wanted to play with them all day.

I wonder how long it'll take for me to get bored of them...hmmm...

I also wonder how long it'll take before I start getting too lazy to post. Hmmm...lol!