Birthday and Sailing Experience

Posted on September 27, 2009 in: Life Experience, Travel

decks01Yesterday was my birthday, and I have to say that it was probably the dullest birthday I’ve ever had. First, I forgot about it until late Friday night. I was like, “Wait, today’s 25th? So tomorrow’s my birthday? Huh??”. That just goes to say that time just moves too fast for my brain to catch up. Seriously. It’s been raining non-stop in Auckland the past couple of weeks. It rained yesterday too, of course. I spent the day indoor listening to the strong wind howling throughout the whole apartment. It was a downright creepy sound too. Before I knew it, the day was over and 27th came (Happy Birthday Akmar!!).

But today is like a wonderful post-birthday celebration of sorts. Our class went on a sailing trip (though we were on two separate boats). It’s the first sailing trip I’ve ever had and it’s probably going to be the last one too.  Can’t afford it otherwise (this trip was sponsored, so…). I’d rather spend the money traveling on planes to different continents if I can afford the luxury. The wind was nice. The view was nice once we get past the docks. No one got seasick~ We were practically standing on the seats.

At first, we were so in the ‘BOAT RACING!’ mood, but then the wind was too nice to even think about competing. Lol. Just before we end the trip, our boats docked side by side where everybody brought out the cakes and sang a birthday song to Akmar and I. The cakes were also meant for Eid ;) I didn’t know there was going to be cakes. The cheesecake was awesomely delicious. Just a little bit saltier than usual but delicious nonetheless. Next comes the lunch. Fried rice from Angie’s Kitchen. The best thing was that…

…we ended up eating lunch where it says ‘No passengers on decks‘. Pfft. Just like us. Just like in the picture;  it was taken where we definitely shouldn’t be at.

This trip, I have to say, is a very memorable one for me. After the dull day yesterday, this Sunday is definitely several times more awesome.

Now I have to return to my deadly EDUC348 assignment. For some reasons, I’m not freaking out at all although I’m calling it ‘deadly’. Hmm. I must have snapped.

p.s/What’s with the sudden onslaught of Russian spams? They were in Russian before, but now the comments are in English. The comments are so funny too. Pfft.I guess spammers really do try so hard to fail at life evn though they’re already so full of fail

p.p.s/ Mom, I’m not as anti-social as you think, lol. I’m just an indoor kind of person, like a disproportionate chubby, overweight hamster that’s too comfortable in its cage ♥♥♥

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Aidilfitri Celebration at The Cambridge and other stuff

Posted on September 21, 2009 in: Life Experience, Rant

C4 Cake

Isn’t the cake cute? I love it. The one who made it is cute too ♥♥

Eid Mubarak! Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to all Muslims around the world. I know the first of Syawal was yesterday for the most par of the world, but for us in New Zealand, it’s today on Monday. One extra day of fasting for us over here. This is my last Aidilfitri in New Zealand, yay! I miss celebrating with my family and friends.

  • We had lots of food. Every apartment (or any group) brought at least one dish. Mira and I made Nasi Himpit and Kuah Kacang. Other food include cupcakes, chocolate mudcakes, assorted cookies, lontong, beef rendang, different types of rice vermicelli etc. We totaly stuffed ourselves silly (not really).
  • Playing and singing to Guitar Hero on the X-Box with Sheryll. I should get the video uploaded after the internet quota is reset tonight.
  • Staying back with Mira to play Scene It! with Nigel, Wira, Dyau and Faris. Most of us were guessing wildly at the most part anyway. Well, I’m totally not a movie person, so yeah… Clicking ABXY randomly is fun.
  • Randomly washing the dishes and brought back leftovers from the party XD Since Mira and I are so sadly and poorly broke, we appreciate the extra food for storage. Really.
  • Need to cook chicken rendang for our apartment. For our own celebration (somewhat), even though we’re broke like whoa.
  • I think a certain someone should totally be disowned/banned from our cohort. I don’t care if she finds this entry. This is beyond rational. I bet she regrets being a member of Cohort 4, and I bet she thinks of most of us as lower than her standard – whatever that standard happens to be. Not that I care. Go and join your circle of friends. Go on. Don’t come to meetings with Sheryll, please. Disregarding prety much everything Cohort4 organises means you’re totally out, so go.

Regarding that old, old OLD post about Tesco Kota Bharu

One sentence from me: Shut the hell up, you racists.

I wish people would read the posting date before leaving comments, because seriously, commenting on entries over a year old makes them seem pretty stupid.

What the hell is up with random visitors from Malaysia googling for Tesco Kota Bharu and leaving retarded, simple-minded derogatory comments smelling heavily of racism on my entry written almost two years ago? Why do you care what I’ve got to say? This is my place, so I get to have my say. Go write your own blog entry, retards. I’m well aware that I’m being rude and I’m not sorry. If they can leave thoughtless comments, I can respond crudely as well.

You try building your own business empire if you’ve got so many things to say. Empty words may sound pretty to you, but they stink like rotten fish in reality. Stupid racists and stupid simpletons.

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In which I may be the only one who cares

Posted on September 7, 2009 in: Life Experience, Musing, Myself, Nerdy and Geeky, Opinion, Rant

Warning: If you’re (a) Someone whose site is laden with google ads or whatever other type of sponsorships, (b) someone whose online presence is only (read that again: ONLY) for business and making money, (c) someone who obsesses over SEO, pagerank and all the publicity-related stuff, and/or (c) work for webhosting/SEO companies or similar sites, then please do skip this entry. Well, not that anyone reads my rambling. I just feel the need to put a warning there first.

Writing For People vs Writing For Oneself

People are hard to please. When you write for an audience, you lose your freedom of speech. What started out as ‘I write because I like this topic’ becomes ‘I write this because many people like it’. It’s horrible. It’s like you’re doing a 3000-word assignment and hoping to get A+, but in the end managing to scrap only a B+ at most (Oh my, why am I comparing this to assignments? I really need to get mine done ASAP.)

My biggest pet peeve when it comes to writing: People who literally begs for comments and reviews.

Let’s take good ol’ dumpster Fanfiction.Net. You find people begging for reviews everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Worse still, there are noobs who write comments like ‘I won’t update the story/add a new chapter until I get at least [insert number here] reviews, so READ AND REVIEW PEEPS. Kthnxbai!’. Seriously, what the effing hell is wrong with those people? That’s even worse than begging. Ordering readers you don’t even know to review your story, especially when you’re new and still struggling with grammar building readership, is a big no no. Ugh.

Right. I’m rambling. My point is that when we write for the purpose of meeting someone else’s expectations, our tone of writing is noticeably different.

The Web Hosting Scene

Why can’t we have subdomain hosting that rocks on the English speaking side of the world too? I don’t need more domain name. I want something nice and cool and isn’t long like thisismydomainlolz.TLD

I’m kind of dismayed that we don’t have services like the ones offered by Japanese companies like Lolipop, Chicappa (and all other services under GMO), Stepserver, Sakura Internet and some other hosts. They provide pretty list of domain names to choose from for your subdomain. It’s paid service, I know that. I also know that many people frown at having to pay for a subdomain hosting. Random reader who accidentally stumble upon this entry might think I’m crazy, huh.

Yes, we have many free hosting services. You can have subdomains if you don’t have a domain name but your host would have lame names that don’t mean anything to you. I wouldn’t want my site to be hosted on a subdomain with the word ‘host’ in it. It’s just so uncool. So not unique. If there’s a company offering paid subdomain hosting with great support, with choices of domain names that actually have wonderful meanings, I’d be glad to pay. What we have over here is domain name squatting. I fucking hate that lame ass strategy of buying domain names and keeping it, looking to sell it for 1 million bucks (excuse the exaggeration, please). At least develop the damn domain OR design a better looking ‘parking lot’ for the ‘oh so beautiful’ domain names. The closest I could find is the cute free hosting at Bubble.Nu. Some pretty awesome domain names available there.

The practice of holding back expired domains for years and years and years is another infuriating thing. After estdomains went poof, and the registrar of one of my domain names disappeared along with it, keeping me from renewing the domain (That guy I was dealing with was Malaysian!), I’ve been waiting for that domain name to be released. But nooooo, it just had to be kept. Fuckers.

Okay. Signing off now before I get more too aggressive offensive.

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From MediaTemple to SharkSpace + WP Issues

Posted on September 5, 2009 in: Blog Updates, Life Experience, Nerdy and Geeky

queriesseconds

-Before moving to Sharkspace. With WP-Super Cache half-on. Last straw? Lol -

As much as I love Media Temple, the move just needed to be made because I won’t be able to support the hosting cost. Maybe I’ll go back to it after graduating and getting my first pay, but it’s goodbye for now. Anyways, after two months of hesitating, I’ve finally made the move. I’ve moved to Shark Space because observing it for two days shows that sites hosted by Sharkspace loads faster than some other hosts I’ve been eyeing. The move, however, is not flawless.

1. Missing visual editor in WordPress 2.8.4
I was frustrated when I couldn’t get anything done to restore it back to how it originally was. I tried re-installing wordpress, deleting and replacing wp-admin and wp-includes folder – nothing works. I thought it was permission problem. Checked the permissions and saw everything CHMODED perfectly. The SCP transfer from {mt} didn’t have trouble at all.

The only thing that worked for CT to restore the visual editor was to add the following line to wp-config.php

define( ‘CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS’, false );

I’ve never used this line before.

Oh well, I’m not the type to bother my web host until I’m damn sure it’s beyond my capabilities (but hey, Shark Space has this utterly amazing response time! I’m totally impressed~). It’s not pride. It’s just learning to be independent. For now, this seems to work. When things stop working, maybe then ‘ll find another solution or finally relent and plead for some help from the technical team XD

2. Missing directories for Add-on Domains & Subdomains
To avoid clutter, my add-on domains and subdomains are always placed outside public_html folder. The weird thing is… I couldn’t access the files inside the folders. They all seem to be missing. I thought I’d get 500 or 503 error messages when I tried to access some files directly (files that I know are there), but I got 404! I’ve deleted the domains and subdomains. I’ll try again and see what happens then.

3. SMF Database Restoration Error
Apparently, the new database doesn’t like all strings connected to the smf_shop plugin. Everything else worked fine. Just that one plugin. Something about MySQL version. I should have see this coming.  I was moving the databases from version mySQL 4 to mySQL 5. Ugh.

It would be wonderful if I can solve the missing post body problems with Junjou. If thep problem persists after the move, then maybe I’ll consider starting afresh with new content and keep the old entries in a subdirectory in case someone wants to access the old contents still.

Right. Back to work.

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Making the Move

Posted on September 4, 2009 in: Blog Updates

If you can see this post, that means Caramel Toffee is now safely residing on a new server provided by SharkSpace. I’m stil in the process of transferring files. I still need to get WordPress to display the visual editor because it doesn’t work at all for the time being. So depressing.

I’ll blog later when the transfer processes are all done.

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