01 28 06

Workin’ on it… it’s kinda done.

Yes, today is my designated day of creating my own wordpress template. So if the site seems a bit wonky to you, I appologize. At least you’re seeing this message which means that I haven’t screwed up too badly. It will be done, even if its the last thing I do (today).

So it took longer than what I had originally estimated but the website is in a somewhat usable state. If you do ever think about creating your own wordpress template here are a few thoughts that I’d like to leave you with in the hopes of preparing you better when creating your own template.

Learn wordpress. Specifically, learn how to manipulate the wordpress templates and tags. Coming from blogger (blogger is damn easy) and being a somewhat competent web developer, I thought it was going to be a relatively simple task to create a template from scratch. Of course, “relatively simple” turned into “harder than quantum mechanics” after the 6th hour of figuring out why my blog posts weren’t showing up. I think I might’ve lost some hair. Here are a few invaluable links that helped me out:

Mockups, make lots of them. The main page, the post page, the post page with the list of comments and the comment form, the post page without any comments and the comment form, a post page with comments that has comments turned off, a post page without comments and the comments form turned off, the archive page, the about page … etc. Yes, making 1 mock up (the main page) isn’t enough. Especially when you’re at your 6th hour of coding and you realize that people can’t comment on any post because you don’t have a comment form.

Make the CSS and XHTML first. This was probably the one thing that I did right. After I did my mockup in fireworks, I created my CSS style rules along with my XHTML markup. By doing this, I knew exactly how my markup was going to look like and it was a simple matter of finding a way to import in my css style rules correctly.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the way the site turned out. I’m still missing a few tweeks to the template but those things can hold off for now. I’m a big fan of the “phased release approach” aka. procrastination.

12:58 pm 6 Comments


01 23 06

I’m not a big fan of the number 4.

However, this post is brought to you by the number 4 and the letter ‘d’. Why? I’m not entirely sure but there you have it. Usually, when I get tagged for these memes I only find out about it once a few months go by and by that time the meme has fizzed off.

But here goes:

4 jobs you’ve had in your life

  • McDonalds… I figured, I was hanging around there enough I might as well make money while pretending to be macho and gangster.
  • Inventory counter… I kid you not, worst job ever. It gets even worse if you have ADHD like me. 1 toothbrush, 2 toothbrush, 3 toothbrush, 5 toothpaste, 16 condoms… I still can’t walk down the aisle of Shoppers Drug Mart without the the need to organize the products on the shelf.
  • Web developer/designer… This is my current job. I enjoy it, its fun and I get to interact with a lot of smart people, some not so smart.
  • Instructor… By far the most rewarding and fulfilling.

4 movies you’d watch over and over (and over) again

4 places you’ve lived

  • Philippines, Quezon City to be exact… Where else would my mom get her accent?
  • Richmond, BC
  • Vancouver, BC
  • Well, I spent enough time in the Bay Area to say that I’ve lived there

4 TV shows you love to watch

I don’t really watch a lot of TV but when I do, I watch a lot of stupid things.

  • 24; damn you Jack Bauer. When will you stop saving the world?!
  • Bromwell High
  • CSI, CSI: Miami
  • Anime (Naruto, .Hack//Sign, Gundam, Inuyasha… I never got over watching cartoons)

4 Places you’ve been(/want to go) on vacation

  • Puerto Vallarta
  • Japan
  • London
  • New York

4 websites that I visit regularly

4 of my favorite foods

4 places I’d rather be right now

  • In my warm bed
  • In a coffee shop with free unfiltered wifi access
  • Shopping
  • Under a warm blanket, couch, and good book.

4 bloggers I’m tagging

  • Archie (Because he’s my buddy)
  • Nelson (Because he’s wearing a bra on his head)
  • Mona (She always gives interesting answers)
  • Sarah (Well, because she probably needs to take her mind of things)

 

2:49 pm 4 Comments

01 21 06

Friday night…bordeom

When did friday nights become boring for me? It used to be about the hanging out, spending time with the friends while raising hell (ok, we’re good kids, so it’s really more like purgatory). These days I find myself wanting to be at home by at least 9:00pm.

Take today for example, I’m home by 8:30pm and I’m couch surfing, catching up on the TiVo’ed shows. The only thing semi-exciting thing worth mentioning was Java having a nightmare (while he slept on the floor), waking himself up and coming to snuggle with me while I watched TV.

Bordeom, to me, has a similar effect to drugs (not that I’ve ever taken drugs mind you…Hi mom!). My mind starts wandering…

Do you ever get those moments when you feel that you might be old enough to sportin’ a cane? Then you realize that you really shouldn’t because there might be an old person who is in the process of falling down some stairs because you stole their cane? Then you figure out that there probably isn’t a shortage of walking canes so you decide to just kick a bunny rabbit for amusement instead? Yea, I thought so.

12:06 am 2 Comments

01 11 06

Computers…

After the little get-together with Colene, Nelson and Ms. Fubsy last night, I started rebuilding my development/staging server at home. It got me thinking about my start in computers, more specifically what programming language did it for me? The one where I said, “Yea, this could work for me. I can do this.”

If I recall correctly, the first language that I was completely facinated with was BASIC. It was simple and logical, the syntax wasn’t the best in terms of logic, branching and loops but it worked. I was 9 years old and I took a BASIC programming summer course in my grade school. I remember my instructor was very funny and very passionate. First lesson in endless loops?

10 print "Hello, Ritchie!"
20 goto 10

After, I remember logo (which was really more of a graphics app) and building a stick figure house (complete with barbed wire fencing and flower beds) with my mom for homework.

Eventually, I was hacking up custom scripts to manage my short-lived BBS. C/C++ code to perform mind-reading games and eventually Object Oriented Java. Wow, admittedly that’s pretty geeky! It wouldn’t be very far-fetched to assume that my one and true friend was my computer at the time and a 28.8 baud modem. Today, there’s a lot: php, ruby, python and perl, etc.

In short, really there wasn’t really one absolute language that hooked me in. It was a combination of things over a period of time.

12:28 pm 4 Comments

I've never been good at writing about me/site pages. It seems too much like self-promotion and being the stereotypical passive-agressive asian; I would rather walk around a crowd and into a train rather than interact with a bunch of people. I'm shy that way, which also contradicts this website that talks about me and my life. My friends and family would care to disagree though, since they've seen my crazy & loud side. More »