Let's X that Twitter

So, uh, I had forgotten that a long time back I added a Twitter widget to this blog. Let's just get rid of that X now, shall we?

Five years later ...

It’s been five years since I decided to (finally) start a blog. My original inspiration was A’isyah, and today she turned five. It seems a lifetime away, and in many respects, it was. I have nothing against how my life has changed from then. But no matter what, A’isyah plays a big part in my life.

When I started blogging, I never intended to exhaustively chronicle my life, or my parenting, or A’isyah’s growing up. As a matter of fact, looking back at my blog - which really won’t take that much time - I’ve touched on a wide range of topics. There have been times when I blogged frequently, and even liveblogged while watching TV.

In all, I’ve delivered a little bit of everything, and nothing, just as I promised. :-) Here’s looking forward to the next five years! And other things to celebrate!

Starting a photo-blog

So, I’ve decided to start my own photo-blog. It’ll probably be as infrequently updated as this blog (hehe), but I wanted a place for me to share certain pics. I haven’t decided yet how public I’ll be, but I recently set up a Flickr account to share pics with certain people. That didn’t work out very well, so my Flickr account was just lying dormant. Then I decided I might as well use it for something. Plus, I didn’t want to clutter up this blog (which is sorta like a journal) with too many photos.

So here we go! What I see welcomes visitors.

Citing online images

How does one cite an online image? I had no idea (it’s been a while since I’ve written anything academic), so I searched online. A Google search for “bibliography reference for internet image” led me to a useful page at a virtual middle school library site (how appropriate).

To quote from that page:

Photographer's or artist's name (often not given)
Name of subject or title of picture
Date of picture (often not given)
Title of website
URL
Date you accessed the picture

So, for example, my table on divorce rates in Malaysia, which seems to be quite popular, would be cited as:
Yahya, Meor Azmal. Average Divorce Rate (2000-2005). 18 Nov 2009. on Everything, on nothing. http://lothaq.blogspot.com/2009/11/divorce-statistics-in-malaysia.html 22 May 2010.

What happens if there’s more than one image at that URL? Hmm. Needs work. Hehe.

Btw, citing the site I went to should be done like so:
Bibliography Format. Virtual Middle School Library, The American School in Japan. 12 May 2010. 22 May 2010. <http://www.asij.ac.jp/middle/lib/BibliographyFormat/Bibliography%20Format.htm>

Who? Sara. SARAwho?

Well, looks like I’m now showing up on the SARAwho blog aggregator as well. Thanks, boringest, for the add!

I had earlier written about my search for local blog aggregators, which took me to SARAwho. Of the ones I reviewed, it was the only one with a regional reach, although how regional is up for debate.

I’ll admit, even though when I do visit the site, I don’t click through most of the links, it’s still useful as a snapshot of the current conversation. There’s something appealing about the simple presentation, with only posts within a set timeframe showing. It focuses your attention only on what’s current, instead of sending you scrolling through post after post until you notice that you’re reading posts from a couple of days ago.

Only wish there were more regional blogs on SARAwho though. That would make it more interesting.

Ending self-imposed exile

It’s been close to a year since I took my blog private, by stopping to ping PPS. Since then, I’ve ceased to utilize PPS altogether. I even checked out other blog aggregators to continue finding interesting posts to read. Now that I’ve decided to come out of the woodwork again (so to speak), I signed up at blogged.my and will start pinging there. It seems to be a fair bit easier to ping there than PPS used to be, although it would be much easier if I were using Wordpress.

So why am I ending my self-imposed exile now? Probably for the same reasons I started pinging PPS: just to share my voice.

Hello, world. Again. :-)

I read, I write

And I share too! :-) I just started a new blog here, where I'll be sharing some of my writings.

Decided on those blog aggregators

Well, seems I’ve made up my mind on which blog aggregator to visit regularly. I find myself drawn to blogged.my and Negaraku, with an occasional visit to SARAwho. Those sites are responsive and offer a good choice of blogs to discover, with interesting posts that I’d actually click through to read.

Considering alternative blog aggregators

An anonymous commenter on my previous post pointed me out to several alternative blog aggregator sites. I’d already discovered one of them, and heard about another of them, but two were completely new to me. So I decided to try them all out and compare them. My first impressions below.

blogged.my

The site loads up fast for me, including the different ways of viewing the site. They do have one interesting feature in the “most popular” section, akin to a mini digg section. Here you can view the top ten pings in the last 24 hours, week, month, or year. Their pings are listed as short blurbs. It’s paginated, so you can view previous pings as well. You can navigate by browsing tags, the most popular pings, and even by popular tags via the tag cloud at the bottom. They also have a search box on the sidebar near the top.

SARAwho

I found out about this one at the same time that I discovered blogged.my. It’s supposed to be for Southeast Asian blogs, even though it seems to be pretty much dominated by the Malaysians right now. I’m not sure if that’s a function of the prolific writings of Malaysian bloggers, or the level of outreach for the site. Judging from the number of updates, I’d guess it’s due to the latter reason.

SARAwho has a few feeds on the right sidebar, and you can view the pings from the last 4 hours, 8 hours (default view), 16 hours, 1 day, or 1 week.

Beras Padu

I’d heard of Beras Padu before, from other blog posts, but I’ve never visited the site. This is laid out in similar style to SARAwho, although I’m not sure which site copied which. There are certainly more malay bloggers pinging here, and overall it gets a lot of pings.

The site loads up pretty quickly. Beras Padu has a “reader community” and the right sidebar has links to selected blog posts. You can view the pings from the last 12 hours (default view), 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week. There’s even an RSS feed for Beras Padu, although you’ll have to click through to the owner’s site to grab the link.

Planet Malaysia

This one is new to me. Planet Malaysia started as a small portal for Malaysian bloggers, and it seems to have grown in time.

The site takes awhile to load up for me, probably because it doesn’t just list links to other blogs. I’m not sure how their members ping the site, since the site has more than just links to blogs. The individual entries seem to be in custom formats, with text, formatting, and pics. The way it’s done, you may never need to click through to the original blog.

The site isn’t paginated, and there’s no way to filter posts. On the right sidebar you’ll find links to archives, a blog roll, and links to recent posts.

Negaraku

Another new one for me. They have a Facebook Group, and member profiles. Their banner, however, doesn’t display correctly on this system and looks quite bad.

The site loads up pretty quickly. Arranged at the top are Category links. The posts seem to be “rated” for buzz, and you can view those popular posts. The right sidebar has links to the popular posts of the day, the previous day, the week, the month, and the year. They also have a tag cloud. The post listings have short blurbs, and some even come with full-size photos. The site is paginated, so you can browse the pings in batches.


I don’t think there’s a clear “winner” in this list. They’ll all appeal to different people of course. For myself, I haven’t decided yet which one(s) I’ll visit regularly.

PPS no more

Boy, am I glad I stopped pinging PPS some time back. (Leave aside the fact that I don’t have many posts in the first place. Hehe.) I just visited PPS recently, and have discovered that it has a new owner. I figured there was change, what with the addition and re-arrangement of ads on the site. And I don’t think I like the new direction the site will be headed. So, I’ve started my search of alternatives. First up is blogged.my, which seems decent. I’m not gonna start pinging again, but I’ll “vote” with my clicks. I’ll be visiting that aggregator instead, for updates on the Malaysian blogosphere.

Pulling in visitors from around the world

Well, I guess I should send a shout-out to Sgt. Al Thompson. My post on that Iraq gold scam certainly has brought in a lot of visitors from around the globe. Sure testament to the reach of that particular scam email.

And it seems myth-busting in general draws in visits. No surprise there really, since there’s not much reason for random visitors to find my blog. This here is just a personal blog. So here’s a shout-out to Nichole Dishuk (RIP), and kids ball pits!

The only other posts that have received random visits are a tech advice piece on ntrights, a clarification on the difference between dateline and deadline, and my post(s) on colgate toothpaste.

I’m probably gonna continue getting visitors on those topics from around the world, and may even capture random visits on future posts. It’s a bit strange for a non-specialist blog tho, I think.

No matter tho, since I’ll just keep on doing my own thing. As Eek the Cat says, “It never hurts to help!” :-)

Going (semi-) private

I’m taking my blog semi-private. That only means that I’m not going to ping PPS. But I’m not unlisting this blog, or making it private access only. So people can still find me, and those who already visit this blog anonymously (I’m talking to you, person who lives in Klang and works in KL) or not, can continue to do so.

But I’m rediscovering the reason why I started this in the first place. It’s just a place for me to record my musings. Not quite a journal or diary, but some sort of record.

Because someday I will want to share this with someone. And it’ll all be here.

Time to play catch up

It's been a long time since I posted anything. Too long. And I don't have an excuse for it. I just didn't set aside the time for blogging.

My last post was on 16 Aug 2006, about the Dell battery recall. A lot has happened since then. The biggest change of all is that I'm now in Dubai. I'm sort of settled in, and ready to start posting again.

Still, there were a few updates I wanted to post before this, and I've even drafted some posts already. So I'll be posting some "new" posts, backdated to the time I want to post them. Each of those posts will be time-stamped 9pm exact. Once I've caught up, I'll post new stuff. Hopefully playing catch up doesn't take too long.

Did I just jinx MyTeam?

Just saw Malaysia score one on MyTeam, putting them one up.

So the pressure's now on MyTeam. I won't hold it against them if this is the final score. They made some good plays.

Maybe I shouldn't be blogging while supposedly watching TV. ;-)

Hello World

unknownVisitor = StatusCheckCookieCrumbs()

IF unknownVisitor
    Display("Hello World!")
ELSE
    Display("Hi! Just announcing myself on Project Petaling Street")
END IF

The Malaysian blogosphere

Wow. There're quite a few Malaysian blogs out there.

When I started this blog I wondered how many other Malaysians were into this blogging thing. While browsing around, I actually came across a few Malaysian blogs. Of course, the next thing I wondered was whether there was a list of Malaysian blogs out there.

Just recently, I stumbled into the Petaling Street Project, a Malaysian blog-tal. Probably the Malaysian blog-tal. I haven't really explored much for others like it.

So, the Malaysian blogosphere is larger than I thought, and there's a wide range of voices out there. Definitely something for everyone.

I'll probably list myself there sometime.

New Beginnings

I'm starting my blog today, and this coincides with the birth of my first child. She was born yesterday, just before noon. I've been meaning to start a blog for some time now, but I kept putting it off. Those who know me won't be too surprised at that. :-) But now, I just feel like sharing my good news with the world!

So, here's to New Beginnings! To my wife, who starts her life as a mother; to my baby girl, who starts on this adventure we call life; and to my online journal, may I bother to update it once in a while.