Welcoming a new child into the family makes me feel like I have to re-learn how to be a mother again. However, since I did it twice already, I had thought that the re-learning would be less hard, and I would be more prepared with dealing with it.

Nothing would have prepared me with Edry. He came into my world on 19 June, about 20 days earlier than his due date. He came out of my womb, shrieking like my other 3 sons had. He was healthy. And he was different. He has Down syndrome.

It’s not about re-learning to be a mother anymore. It’s about re-learning to live my life, and looking at my life in a whole different angle. Some days are fine, some days are questionable. I’m learning and coping with this reality one day at a time. Actually, that’s not entirely correct. I can’t handle it one day at a time. But I can take it, one task at a time.

Blogging-wise, I’m not sure where this will go. Priorities have changed. Expectations are different. I know I will still blog, but not the way I used to. But maybe… this is just another task that I will need to tackle, when the time comes.

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Since I am currently working on several (count eight) web development projects at the same time, life has been hectic but very productive. With my improved energy levels, I’m better motivated to learn and do more things at one go, but I felt that I needed to use more new arsenals in the form of web development tools that I hope can speed up the development process and the project as a whole. Preferably those arsenals are free and goes hand-in-hand with my prototyping methods of finishing my projects.

One of the things I don’t really enjoy doing is designing forms. I have to think about client-side validation, and making the fields more appealing and user-friendly with tooltips and whatnot. However, since forms are an integral part of data entry in a web application, I can’t get away without it. And then, there’s the wireframing for layout and functional visualization, very important for documentation. I prefer pencil-sketching. It’s easier to control where everything goes, rather than using my mouse to navigate the precise location of a certain text within Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks. I have wireframing sheets printed out and hand drawn, and I would clip them into my handy-dandy notebook, which, at some point will be overflowing with stuff that it just won’t be practical to drag about.

I’ve just discovered and worked with at least two spiffy apps these past week that made project visualization and forms development much faster and easier for me.

JotForm is not only a form builder, but it also hosts the forms and data for you. I personally like the smooth design that comes with the form. It has the ability to not only get those validation and tooltips in, but it highlights the section of the form you are selecting. Once I’m done, I can either just use the embed code, or if I want to integrate the form with my database, I just copy the whole HTML layout with its CSS and JavaScript codes intact into my app, and voila, pretty form. Happy days.

And wireframing using a computer isn’t as bad as I thought after all. Or maybe it’s just Mockingbird making it easy for me. The widgets and forms that are available for me to use are just enough for me to design a nice website wireframe, and I particularly like the align grids that shows automatically every time I insert a new object in. Once I’m done, I can share the file with anyone I want without having to generate the file as another format and upload it elsewhere. Mockingbird is fast for a web application, most probably because it’s programmed with Cappucino / Cocoa, a relatively new open-source programming framework that runs on a client, giving itself the feel that you’re running a software that’s installed in your computer. Very impressive and very nice.

Evolus’s Pencil and Appnitro’s pForm deserve a special mention here; both look promising and worth a try when I have the time to spare. Pencil is a free prototyping/wireframing tool that to me looks even more powerful and richer than Mockingbird, and runs either as a Firefox addon or standalone app. The free AJAX-powered version of pForm provides a simple click-and-drag way to create forms from a variant of design sets available in the site; the commercial version, in the meantime, has MySQL, e-mail and autoresponder integration for unlimited amount of sites.

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This week, I was planning to continue with my WordPress plugin development for a GEDCOM viewer, after making myself busy with OS upgrading and testing, as well as niche blog building since last year.

Alas, when I checked the WP.org Extend directory to request a repository for my GEDCOM project, I’ve found that a GEDCOM viewer plugin has already been developed. So I thought that since mine is still a beta, I might as well not reinvent the wheel and let someone else do the hard work (and believe me, there’s a lot of hard work and reading going on with my GEDCOM plugin development).

l’ve decided to stop development of my GEDCOM plugin, and instead recommend you to check out WP Family Tree. There is also one simple but pretty-looking GEDCOM viewer called Family Tree PHP, which you can install if your web hosting provider supports PHP and MySQL. Last but not least, PhpGedView is one other option if you’re interested in a more extensive genealogy application on the Web, and was the basis of my WordPress plugin.

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After almost a year lying dormant, my namesake web site is finally revived. I guess. A few explanations on why I chose Tumblr instead of WordPress are as follows:

1. Tumblr is perfect for microblogging, which is what I do most of the time. I’m more active on Twitter now than in Facebook, but it doesn’t mean that I’ll stop twittering. Tumblr will auto-fetch those tweets periodically.
2. I decided to use that site for personal rants after all (just like what most of you recommended), instead of going for a specific niche. I’m focusing on enough niche sites which are taking its toll on my energy and time.
3. I love how those templates differentiate between video, audio, image, link, chat and normal posts. The theme I currently used for the site highlights those differences by colors.
   
4. I’m freeing up some space on my web hosting account, and will only use WordPress for some serious blogging and niche building. The latest releases of WordPress have made it easier for all to upgrade (both the platform and the plugins), but not easy enough once you own 10 or more of those blogs with all those deemed-as-necessary-for-SEO plugins. 10 blogs x 10 plugins per blog = ?
5. I’ve always wanted to use Tumblr for fun.

I almost went for Posterous, if not for the fact that the blog design is so bland.

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I only recently found the need to use sticky posts in a couple of my WordPress niche blogs. Sticky posts are basically blog posts that remain prominently displayed in the main page of your site, and won’t get bumped even as you post up new articles or posts into your blog.

Although this is a permanent feature made available in WordPress 2.7 and later, you also have to realize that you need a sticky-friendly theme to go with it in order to make them work. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Many of the popular WordPress themes out there aren’t, in fact, sticky-friendly. Such is the nature of one of my favourite WordPress AdSense templates called ProSense, a design made famous by Dosh Dosh.

But fret not. It’s actually quite simple to modify your choice WordPress theme to make stickies work, as long as you’re comfortable doing a little bit of HTML/CSS editing or are familiar with the Theme Editor section of your WordPress blog dashboard. Quick Online Tips has a short and sweet step-by-step on how you can DIY, while Nathan Rice delved deeper into the innards of sticky posts, if you’re into those sort of thing.

Are you using ProSense, and would like to get the sticky-friendly version of it? Yeah, I have it. Just click any of the following links to download it: ProSense (original brown color), Prosense Blue, ProSense Grey.

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Allow me to rant before I get to the actual content of this post (if you prefer not to read it, skip right ahead to steps on solving the problem):

<rant>

My foray into the world of Ubuntu since installing it in my Acer Aspire One did not come smoothly.

No, I’m not talking about its installation, which was a breeze. Nor was it about hardware compatibility; the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) distribution made sure that all my hardware worked immediately.

My actual challenge was to choose the right software that would fit my needs, and they were many! Holy cow, if I knew how many free software was out there for Linux, I would have switched sooner!

My main chagrin about a few of these software is its user-friendliness, not in terms of software usability, but in terms of documentation.

Take, for example, getting KompoZer to open PHP files. I did the usual configuration of having all files with the .php extension to open with KompoZer, but KompoZer defiantly denies it and kept prompting me to select a different program (you know, the equivalent of Open With… in Windows).

I found that the KompoZer extension called HandCoder would do the trick; all I needed to do was to download HandCoder from its site and add it via KompoZer’s addon manager.

The problem was… there was no fracking download link! Instead, there was only one link with the word “download”, which points to HTML Tidy, which I was not interested at all. I was hard-pressed to find the place to download it, only to find hours later (through a very short description somewhere within the page of some other KompoZer / Nvu extension description) that there is actually a link there, although not very obvious. Alright, I better stop ranting or else I won’t be able to finish this blog post.

</rant>

To open PHP files in KompoZer for Ubuntu, follow these steps:

1. In the Files and Folders view, right-click on any PHP file.
2. Select Open With / KompoZer. Or, if you don’t see KompoZer listed, go to Other Application and browse to /usr/bin/kompozer.

   

3. Visit the HandCoder website, and click on one of the flags (based on your language preference) to download the XPI file (or just click here to start the download). Click on the flag to download — hah, who freaking knew?! Remember where you save it.

   

4. Open KompoZer. In the menu, select Tools / Add-ons.
5. In the the Add-ons window, click the Install button on the bottom.
6. Navigate to the location in your computer where you saved it, select the HandCoder XPI file, and click the Open button.

   

7. Once you see HandCoder listed under the Extensions section, close the KompoZer program and reopen KompoZer again.

You should now be able to open PHP files with Kompozer in Ubuntu.

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I’ve tried to quit paid postings for quite some time now. However, I realized that paid-to-posts are a blogger’s answer to quick money, and the temptation to fund my sudden shopping splurges get the best of me at times. So, I succumbed to several paid posts, which I would receive by the end of the week and nicely be more enough for me to have my lunches at fancy restaurants for a week or two.

After going through my other online income sources for last month, I finally decided to put my foot down and stop paid posting programs for good. It’s a liberating decision, because finally I don’t have to work so hard to earn money online. My sudden repulsion to go online while I’m pregnant certainly wouldn’t help if I rely solely on paid posts.

Of all my online earnings, paid to post programs are the only online revenue streams that constantly need my effort and time. The rest are all passive income. I’m so glad that AdSense, Chitika and TextLinkAds are working out for me; these programs have really spoilt me. I love passive income!

I’m glad I’m so good at organizing my posts with paid links, so cleaning out those pages were easy peasy. So, don’t expect to see anymore of my paid posts here.

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Since last night, I’ve been busy uploading and tagging, tagging and uploading photos and videos of this year’s fine Sabah Bloggers Gathering. Seriously, I don’t know where to begin, so I’m just gonna do my story-telling in bullet-form. But before that, here’s how I looked like.

I am Soulja Grrrl. Get it? *ROFLs to self*… Dressed to kill, coz I’m a mean grrrl. And playing too much Half-Life: Counterstrike will do this to you. I also made it a point to have an “official” pose to make things more tacky, like so.

• Enemy spotted! The first costumed guest I saw as I went out the elevator was a Japanese-uniformed dude. And he had no weapon! Dead meat
• My action plan was to get to know as many people as I could, under the pretense that I wanna take pictures of each and everyone who came to the gathering. AND EVERYONE FELL FOR IT! MUAHAHAHAHAHAH! Seriously, though, everyone was so cool, and you can count only a handful out of more than 100 guests didn’t come with costumes. I really enjoyed taking pictures of and with everyone. You peeps really rocked the house!
• The Allies ruled! It was three Allied US Army soldiers versus one Japanese Axis soldier sans ammo. But I’ll exclude the masked terrorists (you people know who you are). And luckily our War Correspondent was neutral, though he did don a US Army colour. Yeah, lucky Axis guy   The cool thing was us army troops – Charlie, Vera and I — were lounging together in the same table. That’s the spirit — stick together, team.

More photos!

• I sat with Margaret as well, coz she was one of the few people that I know personally. You know how DIFFICULT it is to do some ice-breaking alone. I dragged poor Margaret along wherever I went so that I didn’t feel too embarrassed to introduce myself, and have her be my official assistant photog! Heheheh Margaret, you’re a lifesaver!
• So glad I met up with more familiar bloggers, namely Chegu Carol, Alus, Pai, Massy and Alvin Ting. Siok!
• I was psyched to meet the performers for Sabah Bloggers Gathering this year, as they are well-known nation-wide as well. However, I did not expect to NOT recognize Alvin MY of Infinatez. I even asked him who are you, and what is your blog’s name? Oh god, that is embarrassing now that I think about it. Because, honestly, he is way more good-looking in real life than his promo shoot at SBG’s web site. Thank goodness he’s such a gracious guy. Loved his performance, too!

More photos!

• Performances by emcee Jonathan Tse and supremo guitarist Roger Wang did not disappoint. Jonathan’s simple but melodious music is simply melodious (hihih on the almost-pun). Yes, I’ve heard his songs online and, I’ve got to admit, his voice complements his songs very well, and I see a bright future for Jonathan’s music career.
• And Roger. I’d like to call him the Andy McKee of Asia, but he’d probably wouldn’t want to be compared, because Andy is Andy and Roger is Roger. In any case, words do no justice to his classical and fingerstyle compositions. When he plays with just his guitar, it’s magical.
• Imperial International Hotel did not spare any expense when it comes to theming up the place for Halloween! Food, decor, and servers are all in character! Now you know where to go when you need to organize your next big bash. Don’t believe me? Check the pics below.

For the full set of photos and videos I took that night, head over to my Flickr’s SBG2009 set.

I’ll save this space right here to give a shout-out to the bloggers and non-bloggers who I’ve met and taken pictures of/with at Sabah Bloggers Gathering 2009. I can’t do this right now, coz I have loads of tagging and uploading left to do on my Flickr and Facebook photos and videos.

Now, for my obligatory shout-outs (those that I didn’t mention above): Amy @ Life Here ‘N’ There, Earthy Emily @ Chronicles of a Taurean Lady, Sheila @ She Says, Dazeree @ The Sky’s The Limit, Joan @ Joan Says, Fairy Fenelly, Vienne @ Life Is Wonderful and hubby (?), RaggaMan Clerence, BuliBahKalauKo peeps, Aleaf @ I’m Not a Green Bag, Ricky @ hushmonkey, Kinky Jasmine, Jacq @ Caneeliea, Wei Chuen, (more coming).

Thanks to the organizers for giving us the time of our lives, and especially all of you party-goers for making Sabah Bloggers Gathering a happening party and a night to remember.

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Honestly, I have no idea what to do with Twitter Lists as of this moment, but it’s nice to see that the option is made available for me to use once I figure it out. A post in Marketing Pilgrim suggested that it could be treated like a blogroll, i.e. collection of favourite Tweeters based on a theme. The trouble is, as pointed in another of their posts, having such lists will probably attract a bunch of whiners. For example, if you create a list of WordPress Experts and I don’t see my Twitter handle in that list, then doggone it I’m swearing you and your Twitter followers off to Twitter hell! It’s kind of in the same lines as people who whine that I’m not following you anymore coz you don’t follow me even though I’ve followed you and read your boring tweets for days and you still don’t care, nyeh nyeh boo hoo.

Yeah, whiners.

I created a list called Blogging Fu, just for the sake of it, although I have a feeling that I might be deleting that one soon. Since Twitter did say that I shouldn’t tweet about it yet, why bother having one?

I wonder if anyone of you reading this blog are seeing this option? Are you planning on using it, and how?

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Oh em gee, Sabah Bloggers Gathering is barely a week away! What makes this year’s gathering special is that it’s held on Hallow’s Eve, and you bet everyone’s gonna get crazy with their costumes!

Speaking of costumes, the theme is suppose to be anything really freaky looking, but I’m not planning to dress like that. I worry that my kids may have nightmares when they see their mom dressing up as a boogie (wo)man. Therefore, I am dressing up as something else but no less grrrl-looking, and I’m keeping it to myself till that night comes.

The hot and hunky organizers are doing a great job, yet again. Venue will be the the scenic loft of the classy Imperial International Hotel, in the heart of Kota Kinabalu city. Local supremo guitarist Roger Wang, and Alvin from the Malaysian reality show group Infinatez will be joining the list of entertainers for the night’s show. And, will Nuffnang and our wonderful bloggers from Tawau make a surprise appearance?

So for those of you who are in Kota Kinabalu and would like to crash the party, entrance fee is just RM20 per head. If it’s anything like last year, get ready to delight yourself with some scrumptious food and gourmet/premium desserts! It’s so worth it just for the food itself!

I’m off to pick up my kids, and then do some costume shopping, see you all there!

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