One of the reasons why I haven’t been paying much attention to this blog is the fact that I have started several new meant-to-monetize blogs over the past couple of months. Being very particular about my blog themes, I have been tweaking themes here and there while referring to the WordPress Codex for the template tags.

An issue I was trying to solve within this past hour was my Gravatars setting. I would like to display Gravatars only on normal comments left by visitors. I thought it makes no sense at all to display them on pingbacks, when all you get are those mystery man icons.

You’re suppose to add the following code to enable Gravatar support on WordPress comments:
<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, 32 ); ?>
The code by itself doesn’t solve my dilemma. In other words, that code will display Gravatars on all of my comments, regardless of whether they are normal comments, pingbacks, or trackbacks.

The following simple hack, though, does exactly what I wanted:
<?php if($comment->comment_type=='') { echo get_avatar( $comment, 32 ); } ?>

Surprisingly, I couldn’t find any online documentation concerning disabling Gravatars on pingbacks, so I had to look through some of my very own customized themes as well as a little reference to my WP database to understand how I can go about solving it.

Sweet, eh? Try it yourself. WP theme developers may find this code handy.

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I haven’t gone to church for months, so in trying to feel good about myself, I decided to do the next best thing — microfinance someone. You could say that a microfinance is like a venture capital that you invest in a business, but really it is more of an investment opportunity where your money can be used again and again to help the poor get off their feet and attain financial freedom. In other words, microfinance is a glamour word for what it actually is — a donation (I know I’m oversimplifying its actual meaning, but that’s what I wish it should be anyway).

I heard about Kiva.org through my favorite daytime show, Oprah, when they were interviewing Bill Clinton, and he in turn introduced the Kiva founders, a couple named Matt and Jessica Flannery. Kiva’s business model is very simple.
1) Kiva lenders collectively funds a listed enterpreneur of their choice with a loan.
2) The money is distributed to the chosen enterpreneur via Kiva’s microfinance partner.
3) The enterpreneur repays the loan to Kiva lenders.
4) Kiva lenders can re-lend the funds, donate them to Kiva, or withdraw them.
Like so.

I like the fact that Kiva supports PayPal payments where all my online income is going into, and so I did my first Kiva funding of USD25 (check out my Lender’s Profile while you’re at it). I know that isn’t much, but that’s what’s left in my PayPal since I haven’t been actively making money these past couple of months.

Still, it feels good knowing that I’ve helped made a change in someone else’s life. The best thing is that when Patricia manages to pay me back, I can do the whole good deed all over again, and that would be double my happiness! You know what karma says — what goes around, comes around.

For this reason, I am at this moment declaring that 25% of my monthly earnings from this blog (which translates to roughly around USD50 including ads and paid postings) will go to funding Kiva as well as another of my chosen non-profit organization. It’s highly likely it will be Doctors Without Borders, the group of people responsible for introducing the life-saving Plumpy’nut and end malnutrition deaths among infants and children in the Third World countries (! watched this amazing peanut-butter like food helping infants as young as 4 months old stayed alive through 60 Minutes). I just hope they accept PayPal ’cause I don’t have a cheque.

p.s. Will this make me feel better about not going to church? Unlikely

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I’ve just finished having fun after a friend in Facebook shared with me a site called YearbookYourself.com. The Flash-enabled app takes your uploaded photo and transforms it into a yearbook-like pose that you can select, ranging from the 1950s up to the year 2000.

I downloaded the snapshot of every one of the photos I generated through the site.

Original photo for YearbookYourself.com

Here are a few of the yearbook photos generated which in my opinion are as hot as real ol’ me (in other words, laugh your head off):

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1998

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1996

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1994

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1982

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1978

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1976

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1972

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1966

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1960

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1952

And if I were a dude in 1956, I’d be a damn fine looking one:

Have a look at my Flickr to see the whole set, or see some scary photos of countless of other people who have used YearbookYourself.com.

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No one really bothers reading a product’s EULA until it’s too late, and that includes me. A good thing that Wil Wheaton gave a head’s up on a particular term of service on Google Chrome, which read as follows:

Matt Cutts has clarified this with their legal team, and pretty recently retracted the few lines I have bolded out, citing that those lines were taken from their standard TOS. Wait, really?! I should be checking the TOS at Google Docs and GMail in that case!

Here’s another good related post I found highlighted at WWdN: In Exile.

Beware the Google God.

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It’s a sad day for free speech in Malaysia. The government-run body MCMC has ordered one of the nation’s major ISPs, TMnet, to block the alternative news media Malaysia Kini. Malaysians may still access it, though, by following the tips posted at LiewCF.com.

I suppose that since Mahathir is no longer in power, his promise that the government will not censor the Internet is no longer relevant.

The Malaysian Government is turning into a totalitarianist.

Well, I just want to say this: thank you, Pak Lah, for your cowardice. I will be waiting for the day we turn into becoming another Myanmar.

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I’m sorry, but I don’t see why people should be excited about Anwar winning.

Here’s my personal take on why I’m not so fond of him in politics. Look, what did he do when he knew he was gonna get caught by the police for his sodomy charges? He hides at one of his international friends’ house. Because of him, people from outside the country want to interfere with our politics. Do you Malaysians really want that to happen? Why not get help from his opposition friends in DAP or PAS? Or is Pakatan just a sham?

People don’t realize what he was planning on doing during the 1998 economic slowdown. He was going to agree with IMF on taking the World Bank’s loan to “improve” our economic well-being. Does taking a loan and getting into debt going to help? LOGIC! I say thank God for Mahathir! And Anwar swears on an economic reform? Is he going to get more of his international friends to help? You really want foreigners to take over the country? What’s the point of “Merdeka” when after 51 years we can’t handle our own economy?

You really think that Anwar, or any other politicians in this country can curb our inflation? Face it, Malaysians, inflation is happening around the globe, not just in Malaysia. Stop being so manja with our gas and rice subsidies, because relying on these will only take our country into the brink of a third world country. If you learn economics, you will know this.

Complaints, complaints, complaints! What we need is a creative and proactive solution to our problems, starting with gas and rice. With gas, we can actually switch to natural liquefied gas (NLG), hybrid cars or even palm oil (really, did you hear any hooplah about NLG increasing in price together with its petroleum conterpart? NO.). With rice, we should be investing in educating the paddy farmers to yield at least 3 to 4 times a year — we have the technology and Thailand’s doing it. Or better yet, look at our economic efficiencies, by increasing export of what we’re good at (currently electronics), and then importing the rice from our neighboring countries Thailand and Indonesia. Why not? We prosper together. Singapore don’t have paddy fields, and yet they have food to eat. Or, people can change their mindsets — eat noodles!

And stop humiliating our politicians and our country by calling them names (Bod-awi… hey, see if you like your father’s name being called like that!) or flying our flags upside down (how idiotic is that? Don’t live in Malaysia lah like that!). This just adds to the proof that Malaysians are a bunch of whiners!

OK, Malaysians? It’s Merdeka month, so let’s free our old mindset and change starting now. Instead of whining, let’s actively and productively discuss and TAKE ACTION on how our lifestyles can fit the conditions we are now in. We are somewhat like how we were during World War II, when everyone had to change their lifestyle, eat tapioca, strapped up their expenses, etc. Granted, we’re not in a war, but nevertheless our economic conditions warrants something serious to be done. Changing politicians may not solve our crisis. Except if our politician is like Lim Guan Eng. Lucky Penangites! He’s the only one making a difference by running its state government lean and mean like a well-oiled business, so if you ever want a Prime Minister, get him to be one!

I so want to vent my anger and rant about this for a long time, but I didn’t want my site ranks to go down in the SERPs for non-IT posts!

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I was staring at LornaTimbah.com a few moments ago thinking about which post I wanted to blog first, when I noticed something quite shocking on my Google toolbar — LornaTimbah.com is already ranked 4!

Thinking that there might be a problem with my toolbar, I double-checked with other PR engines as well as Firefox’s SEO plugin. My eyes did not deceive me.

After a while, I figured I know why it gained PR so fast. I hazard a guess that since I parked the domain to point to WebGrrrl.net for awhile, LornaTimbah.com somehow inherited this blog’s PR.

I know, I know, you’re saying that WebGrrrl.net is only PR2. In fact, WebGrrrl.net should rightfully be, and had been, PR4 at some point, but Google penalized my rank for something that I may or may have not been aware of (I’m still waiting on their answer to my reconsideration).

I may never know the real reason for this spike of PR, maybe some of you SEO experts out there could shed some light on this matter. I suspect that this rank may change back to 0 soon, but that’s OK.

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That is what I have planned for my namesake domain. I decided to not repeat the same mistake I have made with WebGrrrl.net. Yes, I did a big mistake on WebGrrrl.net, by not sticking to a particular focus earlier on, and instead putting a little too much discussion on general matters.

Initially, I did intend to make WebGrrrl.net a place for my personal rants, but after a while I felt that it didn’t seem productive enough. After discovering and reading many of the problogging sites out there, I finally felt sure that I should put a focus on this blog, and therefore decided to share on matters of blogging, IT, and WordPress. Even then, I tend to stray off from time to time.

I hope LornaTimbah.com is a step up in terms of quality posts. The topics I covered there are also as dear to my heart as technology and blogging is. In any case, I thank all who’ve given your views concerning how I should use LornaTimbah.com.

Edit: I forgot to add that the theme I used in LornaTimbah.com is one that I built from scratch. Not too shabby, do you think?

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This domain name is mine finally. Right now, it’s just a parked domain pointing to this blog, since I’m not sure what to do with it. I’m almost sure I’ll turn it into another blog (original, I know), and I’m definitely sure it won’t be filled with personal rants by yours truly.

What should I do with it? Does anyone has any recommendation?

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Update: SOLVED! Dagnabit! Apparently, disabling ONLY my Robots Meta plugin did the trick! Db0 is my lifesaver!

A warning by Google Webmasters alerted me to a problem I didn’t realize until quite recently. I have tried for the past three days to figure out why my monthly Archives link stopped working the way it suppose to. Have a look at my sidebar, scroll down until you see my Archives section, and click on, let’s say, my March 2008 posts archive. You’ll notice that it does a redirect to my main index page, instead of listing out the posts for March 2008. Strangely, my Categories and Tags permalinks are working as normal.

I’ve tried the following fixes that I found when scouring the Web to solve this:

I’m at a loss. I’d like to downgrade to WordPress 2.3.3, but I didn’t have my version 2.3.3 database backup, and I dread what happens if I do downgrade. I expect it will break everything in my blog.

Sheesh. I made it clear here and here how much I disliked these recent “improvements” that were done since WordPress 2.5, and I should have stuck to my guts on staying with WP 2.3.3 if I were not so worried about missing out on all those security patches.

What frustrates me the most is that I tried to recreate the problem in my local sandbox to no avail! Don’t tell me that after all these while I thought I was expert enough in WordPress, my brain has now regressed to a WP level n00b!

HELP!

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