This Useless Post

The last time I updated my blog was on the 1st of September, 2010 and that was 13 days ago. This useless post will tell you what I’ve been up to since that day and why I am being such a jacka$$ for not updating this blog. Not that it is an obligation to update anyway.

I just got myself a domain and a hosting thanks to Exabytes. Been thinking of moving this blog to a dot com for some time now and am glad this is gonna happen soon.

Problem is, since the blog is gonna be powered by Wordpress, I am having difficulties finding the RIGHT theme for my new blog. I need a REALLY COOL DARK THEME and I can’t find it! Yes there are hundreds and thousands of themes on the internet but trust me, I’ve been in and out of sites offering free themes and yet, I have found none to my liking! I tried matching light-colored themes to my blog but nah, I’m all gloomy and emo so it doesn’t work that way.

So there you go. I am basically annoyed that I can't find the right theme though I've decided on a theme yesterday. Am not satisfied, but that's all I have. I can create my own theme but time is simply jealous of me.

And yeah you can say it’s difficult to please me.

On another note, I guess I have not wished my Muslim readers Selamat Hari Raya but I can still do it right since “Puasa sebulan, Raya pun sebulan!”. LOL. It’s the fourth day of Raya and traffic this morning is still awesome. Left Shah Alam at 7.25a.m and arrived at my office in Kerinchi at 7.50a.m. So you guys can take the extra leave until the end of this week. I approve all your leaves! Haha!

Anyway, before I start talking nonsense (like this make any sense, duhh), I would like to wish Selamat Hari Raya to all my Muslim readers and bloggers. As much as you ask for forgiveness from your friends and family, remember to forgive them as well. Don’t hold grudges too long.

Life is short and life is so temporary.

p.s. I'll be moving soon so keep your eyes on the next post!

MTV World Stage 2010 anyone?

I missed the MTV World Stage last year because I was in Beijing. I pretty much thought that it would not return to Malaysia ever again. But what do you know! MTV World Stage 2010 will be happening right here in Malaysia on the 31st of July! This year’s line-up includes Bunkface, Tokio Hotel, Katy Perry and Wonder Girls. Not as interesting as last year but what the heck, I’m game for it!

And what’s more interesting is I have got my passes to MTV World Stage 2010.


So how did I get my passes?

I won it. LOL!


The passes will not be on sale, so you gotta win them through various methods. One way to win it is via the MTV Asia World Stage website.

The passes will be given out at different time slots daily on the website. The time slots will be announced on the countdown clock on the HOME page. When the countdown strikes zero, you need to spot these two icons: ‘Junior’ or ‘Bee’; which will appear randomly on the top or the bottom of the site during these specific time slots.

Spot either one of them: Junior (the naked toyol) or Bee.

If you spot the icon, click it and answer a simple question about MTV World Stage (or the artists performing) and submit your details. If you get the answer correctly, a verification email will be sent to you to verify your personal details. Then just verify it, and walaa, you’ve just won yourself a pair of passes to MTV World Stage 2010!

It seems like an easy task but it’s not! I only won the passes during my Nth attempt. ‘N’ because I don’t know how many times I’ve tried previously! Your chances are pretty much slim because Junior and Bee does not land on each and everyone’s page. If you search in Twitter using the hashtag #worldstagemy, you will be overwhelmed by the frustration and angst of aggravated fans. Some has been trying since Day 1 of the contest and still have not won.


So how could I have won the passes?

I admit, I just got LUCKY.


There’s pretty much nothing you could do to ensure you WILL win the passes because the icons (Junior and Bee) will randomly land on someone’s computer screen. All you could do is click on every link in the website and pray that Junior or Bee will land in YOUR page.

Contest ends July 17, 2010 so you still have plenty of time to get lucky on the game! Meanwhile, STOP BEING SO WHINY. You might just win if you loosen up a bit.



* FlyFM is the official radio station for MTV World Stage 2010, so they will be giving out passes on air soon! Source: FlyFM on Twitter
* You can also head to Sunway Pyramid on 17 & 18 July for the MTV World Stage roadshow to score express lane passes. Source: KLue website

Cekap la wei!

You know how many of us are very skeptical when it comes to government service? I’m one of those people too. For the most part, I hate the fact that most government websites do not load properly on browsers OTHER THAN Internet Explorer. It’s time these government offices sack their current webmaster and hire someone who knows how to tweak the website to support all browsers.

Oh, that’s not the point of this entry.

The thing is, my road tax will be expiring this weekend. I know we can renew it at the post office but I’m just too lazy to 1) prepare the documents to be brought to the post office and 2) find the nearest post office to my working place. Okay fine, no 1 is an exaggeration. Padahal the ONLY document I need to bring with me is the car registration card. LOL!

Ahh well, the kesimpulan is I’M JUST LAZY okay? So I opted for the online road tax renewal via MyEG Services website. Perfect for the lazy bums! It only requires some basic information like your name, NRIC, delivery method, address, car registration no and renewal period. No need to upload anything, no lengthy details and you just need to log on to your online banking account for payment transactions. Totally hassle free!

Summary of transaction:
Road tax renewal fee – RM 45.00 (6 months)
e-Service charge – RM 2.75
Delivery charge – RM6.00

Worthy? YES! What’s RM6 on delivery charge compared to my travel cost to the post office and lunch time used to run the errand!

Now that I have submitted my road tax renewal via MyEG, it’s time to sit and wait for the delivery lah kan? How long do you think it will take for the road tax to be delivered to my home? 1 day? 2 days? 3 days?

None of the above. It only took them 6 hours to process and deliver it! Yes, you read it correctly. I went online in the morning around 9 am, received a call from an officer at 12 noon, and my sister acknowledged the receipt at 2.30pm.

Damn cekap la wei. Seriously, I did not expect things to be fast at all. In fact, that was one of the reasons why I submitted the renewal 4 days earlier than the expiring date. I must admit, I am caught off guard by MyEG Services. Keep it up guys! You’re doing great. You might as well take over all the other government sites. LOL!

* Thinking about replacing my MyKad via the portal too.. Hehe..

[Twitter] Having followers is serious business yo!

So there's this person in Twitter that I use to follow, and recently she posted several tweets mentioning something like "I will know if you unfollow me after I follow you back. then 100% i will unfollow you!". I got a bit annoyed because she thinks it's super important for others to follow her when she follows you. So I took the first step to unfollow her simply because I think it is inappropriate to force people to follow you. And soon when she found out that I unfollowed her, this is what I got in reply.

What the..??!! Can someone explain how I ended up as being the cheater here? Come to think of it, great sense of humor she has! LOL.

So tell me, how does the number of followers represent you in Twitter? You have more power? You become super duper awesome? Or you can go invisible if you hit the highest number of followers among your friends???

Foot note that will not self-destruct: To whom it may concern regarding THIS TWEET, sorry friend, I can't tolerate your friend.

LinkWithin

Thanks to Luvly Mya, I have finally installed the LinkWithin widget without further procrastination! What's that? Ouhh, it's that thing were you get to see a few related posts below each post in the form of thumbnails. Get it?

All you gotta do is, go to LinkWithin's website. Find the box like below. Fill in the details, and it will prompt you to install the widget.

From then onwards, just follow the simple steps as given by the site. Like seriously simple wtf.

And walaa! Here is an example:

Ouhh, you might wanna customize the text that appears above the widget because surprisingly, the automated text would be "Anda mungkin juga meminati:". Ehh, in Malay language? It probably recognized my blog as a Malay blog or something? Whatever it is, I changed mine to "Have you not fallen asleep bla bla.." to add more personalization to this blog. If you wanna add your own text, just go to Blogger Dashboard>Layout>Page Elements>your LinkWithin widget, and add the line below to your HTML code. Eh, this one for Blogger aaa..

Okay, done. Let's grab some lunch people! Ikan masin with sup sayur. Wah wahh!!

*It doesn't matter where the widget is in your Page Element, somehow it'll appear below your post.

Does your blog contain annoying elements?

Confession: I do blogwalking religiously.

I do it almost everyday. Okay, maybe not religious enough? Haha. Well the thing is, I find that a number of blogs contain somewhat annoying elements. Some elements are too annoying that I would not hesitate to close the tab the moment it appears. Some elements are bearable, but staying too long on the blog may cause diarrhea. Sheesh!

Because I have kept this to myself for a little too long now, here goes a list of what annoys me most during my spree of stalking blogs in no particular order.

Auto-play music

Leave the Myspace users in Myspace, and your blog in a BLOG! Your blog SHOULD NOT be a Myspace!

This is one of the most annoying features in any blog. People could be in the office, have the volume really loud, playing iTunes on their desktop OR they just don’t have the same taste in music as you! Be considerate and don't force your taste of music on your readers, please.

Pop-ups

Whether it is a pop-up to greet your readers when they first open your blog, or advertorial, pop-up doesn’t interest people at all. In fact, I would quickly click away from any pop-up because it is a distraction from the subject of interest.

Disabling right-click

I just don’t get why bloggers love to disable right-clicks for the external links. Wouldn’t it be better if you just leave it as it is? By disabling right-clicks, you are only making your readers LEAVE YOUR BLOG earlier because they would just left-click and go (unless whatever they click opens up in a new tab). I normally do right-clicks because I prefer opening multiple tabs and reading each blog carefully. So please, don’t chase your readers away.

Too many ads/widgets/items on the sidebars

Your sidebar should be clean and simple. When there are too many ads and/or widgets placed in your sidebars, your blog might as well experience a slow loading time. This can frustrate new readers and they might leave even before the contents load. Plus, I would not bother to browse through your sidebars if it’s too crowded, or colourful. You’re trying to hard to impress, but it’s not working!

In-text advertising

In-text advertising is sort of like a combination of two annoying subjects above – pop up and ads. It's the pop-ups that show up when you hover over a link.


Another example I came across is when you hover over a link and it displays, “You have the nth most popular outgoing link.” Seriously, why would I care? Oh, same goes to snap previews. Enough said, google it.

Self-playing videos

Honestly, I don’t like it when Nuffnang’s blog writes about a new movie preview that comes with a self-playing video trailer. I prefer it to be optional because; don’t we read the content first before looking at the video??? It’s worst when you open up several posts in new tabs at the same time, and EACH video is playing at the background! Plus, it EATS AWAT my bandwidth. It would be nice if Nuffnang could re-consider this option. Heh.

Too much embedded crap

Like I have mentioned, you’re trying TOO HARD to impress us, the readers. But seriously, I wouldn’t bother to continue reading if your blog loads slowly or TOTALLY STOPS loading because you have too many embedded crap like external gifs that won’t load anyway!

Blinking text

HELLO, blinking text is SOOOO YESTERDAY! Ouch. Mah-eyeszzz!

So tell me, does your blog contain any of the so-called annoying elements? You can BEG to differ! Haha!

I knew it!

I was right in my earlier post! As I have suspected, BUNKFACE is THE band that sang the song which got the whole nation buzzing! I found out about this from the Everyone Connects official website. Yeay me! Gotta ring Sam and say, “Gotcha!” – oh wait, I lost his number. Haha.

Bunkface also made a statement through their Facebook Fan Page which I thought was pretty thoughtful and humble:

“Through My Window - This song is not ours, it’s everybody’s. This song is owned by the public who collaborates to sing this song and believe in what it’s promoting… We’re just lucky to be the initial band behind this song. So, follow up guys!! There will be so much more!!”

But then again, without the constant update from the Facebook Fan Page for Everyone Connects, I wouldn’t have known that they revealed the band. They were constantly updating us day in-day out about what’s all this hype about and what more to look out for. It was really fun to read all those comments from fans. Can you believe that someone actually suggested the artist who sang “Through My Window” is MAWI???!! If that was EVER true, that’d be soooOoo SPOOoOOkY! *faints*

As I have further suspected, the song is only an ‘introduction’ for a BIGGER SURPRISE. After the official site revealed the band name that first created major havoc with the song “Through My Window”, they begin to put the puzzles in place for us. Apparently, this is a promotional idea to promote the banner concert where online banners are converted into concert stage. The banners lead to a contest where auditions will be held to find the performers with the best rendition of “Through My Window”. If you’re one of the best, you might as well stand a chance to perform live at their event!

It may not be a fresh-from-the-oven idea, really, but it is definitely a bracing idea in Malaysia! I mean, who came up with that idea HERE?? It’s a very risky idea! What if it didn’t turn out the way they wanted it to be? What if no one cared about the song that was used to promote the banner concert?? Oh well, it’s ALL GOOD now! Haha.


P.S.
Have you seen the ad on TV yet? That’s such a sweet ad! I love the expressions they gave to each other when they felt pity for the paper-boy who was looking out at the paper-girl. It kinda tells us that the body language can get us connected to one another and that feelings can be expressed through expression and words need not to be spoken.



Download the song, the ringtones and the video at http://www.everyoneconnects.net now! Where else can you get FREE entertainment?! Oh - and I freaking love Shila's rendition!

Iconized

Not bad lah kan for a 5 minutes effort? Haha~

* Seriously, you steal, I kill.

Adding Wings to My Writing

Ahaa. Not really. I'm simply in the process of revamping my other writing blog. View to read.


Credits to RoseOnTheGrey for the wings.

Ho-Yeahh!!

*say it with the Chinese slang*

How do you like my new template? The original template can be found here and it looks like below:


Yeahh, it WAS a clean template. I thought of using the white one, but when I tried inserting my articles into the template, it looked SUPER-awkward. Too many emo posts aren't suitable for such clean look. So, I figured I should just stick to the same old EMO me. Alas, this edited template you're looking at!

Yet, I am NOT done. The header above is just temporary. And my sidebars are in a slight mess. Will get back to it tonight.

* Dem. I didn't do a screenshot of my previous template! All is lost. Uhh~
* Fortunately, I didn't have to re-do my widgets installation. Thanks to this article.
* Sepeket, time to change your templates!