Entries from February 2007 ↓

ATTENTION

ALIENS ARE COMING TO ABDUCT ALL THE GOOD LOOKING AND SEXY PEOPLE.
YOU WILL BE SAFE, I’M JUST POSTING TO SAY GOODBYE.

[I will try to post a decent post a.s.a.p. ]

I’ve been going through the wordpress blogs today. Some are incredibly boring and don’t sometimes even make sense. Others are quite good. Most don’t have any comments at all. On any of their posts, and yet they still keep posting! I feel sorry for those. Those that put in so much effort, just to find that no one has discovered them yet.
I remember when I first started (I started because I joined BlogMad, and didn’t have a decent blog), there wasn’t a lot of visitors, and often I’d get discouraged. There are still a couple of my favourite posts from when I started which didn’t get much attention. For those of you who’ve been blogging a while, keep it coming. One day someone like me will find your blog, and leave you your very first comment. For those of you who are so comfortably settled in your blogging clique, make an effort to welcome the new ones. They’re putting in a lot of effort, and there are a couple of promising blogs out there!
Below I’ve made screenshots of five “new” blogs which I found pretty cool. If you have the time, visit them, otherwise you can go and find your own new blogs

Whatever you decide, remember to be kind to the new kids on the blog

If you are new, and you’d like to get more traffic to your blog, visit BlogMad for more information on increasing your traffic for free.

I’m often intrigued by people’s passions. How one person can spend their life training horses, and another can be ecstatic about painting dreamy landscapes. How some people’s creative go way beyond my wildest dreams – entering a faerie tale like world.

Tom Chudleigh is one of those people with outstanding creativity. He builds “Suspended spherical tree houses“, also known as “Free Spirit Spheres“.

Looks more like a caravan on the inside than a treehouse! Don’t know if I’d like to stay in it though – I’m a bit scared of heights!

The pictures you see above is of Eryn. This is the second Free Spirit Sphere that Tom has built – the first being Eve.Based in Canada, Tom decided to start this interesting hobby (or job then), as a way of providing other people with a holiday breakaway they will never forget. Quoting from their website “Uses for these Spheres are limited only by ones imagination. Healing, meditation, photography, canopy research, leisure and game watching are just some of the things you could do.”

For more photo’s or details, visit the Free Spirit webiste.
Source and copyright: Free Spirit Spheres

…by saying something stupid like “I Love You”….

I never use to like that song, but tonight its repeating itself in my mind. Strangely enough, I know more of the lyrics than I’d have thought!

Valentine’s was so nice. Really sweet and romantic, but I’m not one to share too many personal things (right?), so lets talk about something else.

Being February 18th 2007, its Chinese New Years Day! So to everyone Chinese visiting my blog today, HAPPY NEW YEARS! Incase you didn’t know, Chinese New Years day is on a different date each year. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

Today being Sunday I haven’t spent much time online, but here’s something I found. Today’s “Word For The Day” according to Merriam Webster is “scintilla“. I haven’t even heard this word before, but the meaning is pretty simple, its a spark or a trace

Example Sentence:

After the witness’s frank and bruising testimony, neither my brother nor I was left with a scintilla of doubt that the defendant was guilty.

Now I have to say goodnight, as tomorrow is Monday, and I need to get enough sleep to tackle the week ahead.

Sleep Tight!

Yes its that time of the year again where all the shops are filled with red hearts, and cute fluffly stuffed animals.

Its all such a fuss about nothing, but I reckon if you spend Valentine’s day with that special someone, and you don’t get caught up in the money making scheme it really is, its all good.

I can barely keep my eyes open today, as I was up till midnight last night, making a Valentine’s card A pretty yellow card with Dumbo on the front (my favourite cartoon character), and a poem inside from one of my favourite Disney movies. But if you know me well, you’d probably know that I’m kidding, else you’d just be thinking WTF? LOL. Anyway, there’s no Dumbo on the front, and neither does it have any sort of poem inside. Its just a plainish card. I’m actually quite proud of myself – I haven’t made card in ages! If you were wondering, the picture on the right hand side is not what my card looks like, its just a pretty picture

I was reading about some people’s Valentine’s days – how they celebrated it, and I found the sweetest stories!!

The one lady made a jar with notes in. On each little not she wrote a reason why she loved her husband. What she appreciates about him, and just sweet little somethings.

Another guy stuck letter cut out of cardboard on the garage doors, saying that he loved his wife.

Strange how even guys can do the weirdest things – totally out of their character. Suppose its all this love in the air.

If you want to read more sweet stories [Or maybe get some ideas for yourself!], I found the above mentioned ones at TheRomantic

Hope you all have a great Valentine’s Day!! Please let me know what you will be up to! I want to hear all the romantic stories

People are always going on about “Timbactoo“, and I myself am guilty of using this word just because everyone else does it. I don’t know if referring to “Timbuktu” (Correct spelling) is just a South African phenomenon, but its become such an often used term in our language, I’d have thought it could be an idiom! In case its just a South African phenomenon, let me explain when this name is most often used. One would use this to explain how far, or unknown something is, like, I’m so tired feels like I’ve walked to Timbuktu and back. Or if you don’t know where something is, like the airport lost your luggage, and its probably on its way to Timbuktu (as I referred in a comment to my previous post).

If you had asked me before I’d probably have said that Timbuktu was somewhere close to Jamaica, but for interest sake I decided to Google it up. I found that Wikipedia provided quite interesting information about it. Timbaktu is a West African city, located in the country of Mali.

After looking at the photo’s on the National Geographic’s Website, and some other beautiful photo’s which I came across on Dan Heller’s page on Timbuktu, I realized that all these years my picture of Timbuktu was so wrong. I didn’t even have the vaguest idea that it was in Africa!

It is such beautiful country. Though poor and typically Northern African, it is still mysteriously beautiful.

PS. I still won’t wish for anyone’s luggage to get sent here by mistake.

As you can see from the previous post, I’ve been quite busy doing some research on Google. I actually enjoyed it! Don’t ask me why I did, cause I honestly don’t know. Except for the fact that I really do find Google very helpful.

Enough about google already! I’ll write another post soon – a shorter one for those of you who actually have work to do, and can’t sit and read my posts for 4hours at a time. I do apologize about the length of the previous post. It wasn’t suppose to go on for that long.

As you can see [Unfortunately] I haven’t packed my bags and migrated to some tropical island yet , so keep checking this space for updates!

I’ve always been a loyal Google fan. No other search engine has thus far impressed me more. Shockingly enough I realized that not all people even know what is? I suppose I cannot blame them, but as for us bloggers, I assume we all know what Google is, and what it does. Well, maybe not all of it… I was surprised to find a few more items to add to the Google functionality list… If you have a gmail account you get access to a lot of really cool services – all for free! Have a look at the list below, because you may not not about them all. I still have some Gmail invites left, so if you’re interested in getting a Gmail account, you can e-mail me and request an account, or you can leave a comment. I only have a certain amount left, so first come first serve!

…Google AdSense is adverts which you include on your website or blog, and when someone clicks on an advert, you get paid! Easy as that!

…Google Analytics offers very detailed information on who visits your website or blog, where they’re from, what links were clicked etc. Once again you have to add a small bit of script to your page(s).

…Google Calendar allows you to add calender notes, appointments, and birthday, and also comes with an option to set an alarm for each even you add, for which you will get an e-mail reminder!

…Docs and Spreadsheet allows you to either create or upload word documents and spreadsheets. These are not limited to Microsoft word documents, or excel spreadsheets, but you can also upload OpenOffice documents and spreadsheets, as well as RTF and HTML documents. This includes a spell checker, and most of the formatting found in Microsoft Word. You can also download these documents again, as word documents and even pdf’s! You can also share your documents, choose between making your documents public, or only inviting certain people [by e-mail address] to view your documents. You can even publish your documents to your blog!

…Gmail is Google’s web based e-mail service. This is by far the best free web based e-mail account I have EVER had! You can set it up to download as POP3 [Meaning you can receive your mail into Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunder Bird].

…Google Talk is part of Gmail, and you don’t need to download anything to use it!! If you have your Gmail e-mail account open in a browser, you can chat with your friends in the same browser! You can however download the Google Talk application which is relatively small [1.5MB], and enables you to make a phone call to someone else who has Google Talk, send files, and type chat.

…Google Groups allows to join a group of people in a discussions, or create your own group. Groups are divided in categories, such as science, technology etc. When creating your own group you can set it to be public, or private. When set to private, only people you invite will be able to join your group. This is especially useful if you want other people’s opinions on a specific subject, or if you want to create a place of discussion, instead of sending out loads of e-mails to a group of people.

… A personal favorite of mine is the Notebook, here you can keep all your notes. Shopping lists, ideas for birthday gifts, and even notes about your next blog entry.

…Reader is a built in RSS Reader. If you’re wondering what an RSS reader is, its the abbreviation for “Rich Site Summary”. This basically mean that you can subscribe to a blog with the RSS Reader, and whenever there is a new post you will be able to see it in your RSS Reader, without having to go to the blog to check manually.

…Google Video allows you to upload video’s and share them with your friends, or to watch already uploaded video’s. These are again categorized, just like the Google groups, to allow you to find what you’re looking for fairly easily.

… Google Photos is something which I’ve only noticed recently, and haven’t tried out myself. Apparently you can download Picasa for free, or use the Google web interface to upload your photo’s to an online album. Again you can choose to keep your photo’s private, or make them public. There’s 250MB of space to use, which is not too much, but should allow for about 65 fairly large photo’s. They do however have an option to increase your storage space for an annual fee. Here are the different upgrade options: 6.25GB [$25 per year], 25GB [$100 per year], 100GB [$300 per year], 250GB [$500 per year].

…There’s also a pretty neat extention for Firefox called Gmail Space. This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space [2.5 GB and growing] for file storage.

Apart from the features listed above, there are a whole long list more, see below if you’re interested!

Note: The features below don’t require a Google account, and is accessed from the normal Google search page. The applicable keyword must just be entered in the search box along with the commands listen below.

Glossary & Dictionary

…For the glossary of any English word, type define:word for which Google will return definitions. This page includes all the definitions for the word that Google found on the web.

…You can also try adding “What is” in front of the word you want to know the definition for. Like what is sleep, for which Google returns a natural and periodic state of rest during which consciousness of the world is suspended.

Calculation & Mathematical Constants

…Google calculater handles basic addition, multiplication, subtraction & division. But also helps you with more advanced calculations such as, trigonometric functions, inverse trigonometric functions, hyperbolic functions, and logarithmic functions. Just enter the proper formula into the search box, and wait for Google to display the answer. By entering 4 + ((16 x 66) / 2) Google will give you the answer, 542 - easy as that!

…In addition to performing calculations, Google also knows a variety of mathematical and scientific constants, such as pi, Avogadro’s Number, and Planck’s Constant. It also knows the radius of the Earth, the mass of the sun, the speed of light, the gravitational constant, and a lot more. For example, if you’re not sure what the value of pi is, just enter pi into the Search box and press Enter; Google returns 3.14159265, as it should. How about the speed of light? Enter speed of light, and Google returns 299,792,458 m/s.

Converter

…If you want to convert any unit of measure into another, for example 5 minutes in seconds, you type just that, and voila, you get 300 seconds. You can do the exact same with mass, temperature, and probably every other unit of measure you can think of.

…Google lists facts, so if you type in the key words of what you’re looking for, Google will give you the facts. For instance, if you type in William Shakespeare birthday, Google returns Date of Birth: 23 April 1564. Google will also be able to return the population of a certain country, birthplace of a well known person, currency of any country, and even the current president of a country.

As you know there is also Google Earth, which is a application you can download showing satellite images of nearly the whole Earth! Froogle is Google shopping, but I haven’t spent much time researching that, as it really doesn’t interest me. If you know anything else interesting about Google, make sure to leave your comment!

Sources: Google, and Informit

I just did the normal rounds on my own blog. Answering all the comments, and after commenting about 6 times or so, my comments got chucked in the SPAM folder?
Suppose its a safety feature of Wordpress, but I found it rather annoying to see that after I had posted a comment for the second time, it didn’t show up. Then it struck me, check the SPAM folder, and “TA-DA“, there my comments were!!!

So if your comments aren’t showing up on my site, please e-mail me about it? I’ll make sure to “de-spam” your comment(s). If you don’t mail me about it, it might just get trashed along with the other SPAM comments, as I get hundreds of those per day.