This year marks the 10th anniversary since my graduation from the University of Alabama.

Honestly, this was at the back of my mind for a while until I got a phone call from my mom yesterday evening. She was having a conversation with a customer who stopped by her batik factory, and when the customer told her that he was from Alabama, she mentioned about me. Before the customer left, he laughingly gave my mom a message to pass over to me, and added that I would understand this if I did go to Bama.

I heard a few words spelt wrong (like “d” when it was suppose to be “b”), so I didn’t quite understand the message when my my told me the first time over the phone. But in the wee hours of the morning today, I finally figured out what the customer’s message was — WAR EAGLE BEAT BAMA! Whoa, that certainly gave me good burst in the morning! With what school spirit rage still within me, I texted my mom back, “If he ever comes back to the factory, tell him, NO WAY! ROLL TIDE ROLL!”

Ah, the good ol’ college years

I couldn’t agree more.

I’m passing on the chain of posts to promote Daniel@Gallivanter’s bloggers’ meet at Kota Kinabalu. I think it’s better to call this a gathering of bloggers in KK rather than a gathering of KK bloggers, don’t you think? So if you’re around Sabah, Labuan or even Brunei, and wouldn’t mind dropping by, then by all means. It’s best if you could confirm your attendance with Jacq@Caneeliea (here for list of confirmed bloggers), for a possibility of being sponsored by Nuffnang

Logistics (updated 2 July 2007):

• Date: 6th July 2007, Friday
• Time: 7.30pm
• Venue: Toscani’s, The Waterfront (the seaside facing Gaya island and nearby Centre Point and Warisan Plaza) Pirates of Borneo @ Jesselton Point (the jetty)

As for me, I’d like to go but won’t confirm until the last minute — it’s challenging to stick to a social appointment when you’re a blogging momma to a hyperactive 6-year-old and a drool fountain-producing 6-month-old. My husband may freak out if I leave him to babysit for two hours or more! (kidding, he’s the best husband and dad in the world, honestly) I have confirmed, seeing that there are more than 40 people confirmed at this point of posting (28 June). The more the merrier!

To annihilate all sickos like these people:

Police smash paedophile ring
By David Barrett, PA Home Affairs Correspondent
Published: 19 June 2007

Police have rescued at least 15 British children from horrific sex abuse after launching an audacious “sting” on a UK-based paedophile ring, it was announced yesterday.

The kingpin of the vile internet chatroom - where perverts queued up to download images of children being raped - was handed a jail sentence which could see him stay behind bars for the rest of his life.

Suffolk-based brewer Timothy David Martin Cox was handed an indeterminate sentence at Ipswich Crown Court after one of the biggest ever crackdowns on online child abusers.

Here for full news.

Can someone please tell me what the heck this is?

http: / / webgrrrl.net/ / public/ slider/ addineyeV2.html? strBanner= gEbServerData= ‘1.0: : 244213: : 470804: : Site- 251/ Type- 11/ 470804_ FE24BF70- 4A2B- 4516- 84CD- 43AECF82EAC1.js: : ExpBanner: : 0: : ebLoadScript(”ebPlayScript”,”http: / / ai656.insightexpressai.com/ adServer/ adServer.aspx? bannerID= 18593″): : : : 0: : - 1: : : : 0: : 0: : 0: : 37414: : 0′;gEbBannerData= ‘59194235810219241182137473531: : 1: : 300: : 250: : : : webgrrrl.net: : 0: : 0: : 30: : false: : false: : true: : 0: : 0′;gEbInteractions= ‘[_ eyeblaster,http%3A/ / ad.doubleclick.net/ click%253Bh%3Dv8/ 3575/ 3/ 0/ %252a/ d%253B110807295%253B0- 0%253B0%253B16717987%253B4307- 300/ 250%253B21364406/ 21382296/ 1%253B%253B%257Eaopt%253D2/ 0/ 3d3b/ 0%253B%257Esscs%253D%253f,]‘;ebBSmallS= ‘http%3A/ / ds.serving- sys.com/ BurstingScript/ ebBannerServing.js’;gEbDbgLvl= 0;gEbFlashVer= 9;gEbWMPVer= 10;gEbResolution= 16;gEbTemplateName= ‘ExpBanner’;gEbAdUrl= ‘Site- 251/ Type- 11/ 470804_ FE24BF70- 4A2B- 4516- 84CD- 43AECF82EAC1.js’;gEbDynamicResHost= ‘ds- ll.serving- sys.com’;gfEbUseCompression= true;gfEbCacheResources= true;gnEbLowBWLimit= 120;gnEbMinZIndex = 10000;

I got this from looking through my MyBlogLog’s site stats.

Could this be the work of a splog? In the morning, my WP dashboard did show a pingback from a blog that was snatching posts from other sites, not just mine. But by the time of this post, it has disappeared. I’ll check my browser History later and see if the site is still up.

Update 19/June/2007: And the splog is still up, and made from IP address 75.126.199.186. I’m going to e-mail and demand the site be put down. If ever the site owner said “I didn’t do it on purpose, it’s just a test”, you don’t think I would believe — or care for that matter — do you? Here are the snapshots from

• http://testsubdomain.netmoviehost.com/top-commentators-widget
  -in-wordpressorg-plugin-directory-coming/
• http://testsubdomain.netmoviehost.com/junk-url-and-splogging/

Update 23/June/2007: Holy Willy Wonka! Based on my web logs, the junk URL may very well be a referral from All Things Digital, one the WordPress CMS sites I was raving about. If it really is so, then slap me on the fanny and call me silly — if it’s just a pingback visit, then it’s fine by me.

webgrrrl,

Your plugin hosting request has been aproved.

Within one hour, you will have access to your SVN repository at
http://svn.wp-plugins.org/top-commentators-widget/

with your WordPress.org username and password (the one you use on the
forums).

To get started, look at our Using Subversion page:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/svn/

We’ve also addressed some common questions:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/faq/

Enjoy!

I’ve been waiting almost 2 months before I received this in my mailbox. If you think that my cyberlife is gonna get way more glamorous after this, you’re dead wrong — I figured I would have to take a week at the soonest to get the repository properly set up and documented. Let’s hope it’s sooner, so that it’ll get more exposure, and more debuggers for that matter

The ever popular Split post with More tag. I use it pretty frequently for my long entries, although lately I’m rethinking whether to use it or not at all. Splitting post is great for users who despise having to scroll down through web sites. However, it’s proven, from single-paged ad and marketing sites such as those used by e-book marketers, that we would be willing to read through a series of text if the information is interesting enough. I personally prefer to scroll down and finish reading a whole post, and when I do see the Read More link on a post, I sometimes go, “Ah, forget it, I’m too lazy to click and wait for the next page to load — I’d better read the other posts.” I do skip on a lot of posts I find enticing — and I mean a WHOLE lot than I care to admit — just because of this reason.

Maybe a WordPress plug-in like Content Show/Hide by BillH could solve this issue. This plug-in allows your readers to stay on the main page to read your full post after they click on the Read More link. They can hide the post back, and go through the rest of your posts without interruption. On the blog owners’ end, it is just a matter of changing the text on the Read More link to something else that makes sense, like Click here to expand this entry, then that won’t scare me off from reading the article in full.

I love tags. I love being blog-tagged and I love reading other people’s tags, so long as it doesn’t follow with some curses along the lines of “if you don’t reply this tag or not forward it to 5 other people you know, you will be blown into pieces and you’ll be damned in hell.” Idiots.

Here are a few interesting tags I just found:

1. Why do you blog? (the most common)
2. Five things about themselves that relatively few people know (2nd most common)
3. Layers tag (the outside, the inside, do you.., have you been…)
4. How full is your glass?

What’s your favourite tag?

I would have thought everyone knew about how to receive funds without needing a US bank account, until I accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation by a couple of people complaining how hard it is to take out money from their PayPal accounts.

Well, it’s not hard. Here’s a totally free instruction on how you can do so. Applicable for anyone and everyone regardless of which country you live in. And it still works, despite what has been commented.

So stop whining already!

I’ve been contemplating for some time on becoming a WordPress site developer, focusing on WP being a Content Management System (CMS). With a clearly thought-out web site structure in mind, my experience so far tells me that WordPress can go further than even other CMS like Joomla! and Mambo could, thanks to a reasonably low learning curve, and the ease of developing plugins and widgets under WP. No less important is the fact that a majority of WP plugin developers are very generous, and provide their plugins for free, and who doesn’t like free?

I googled my way through various articles by bloggers and web site owners who agree about the potential of WordPress as a CMS. I even found one fine article in WordPress.org that discusses the elements and views that can make WordPress an effective CMS.

Now, with all the ideas that I get from reading these information, it’s no less important for me to look at WordPress-powered CMS sites for inspiration, and I am more than a little impressed at what I’ve seen so far. (more…)