Caught the flu and have been laying low. Looking forward to downloading some pictures from our trip to Hunter Valley over the long weekend; in the mean time I have plenty of work to catch up on..

This is my new work space. In this picture I was just setting up the printer – am pretty happy with the set up! Printer comes out when I need to use it and sits on the stool. Wireless keyboard and mouse means when my iMac is hooked up to my flatscreen, I can play games and catch up on my TV dramas from the comfort of my couch!

However – I have a million and one things hooked up to TWO power sockets in the wall next to the phone jack/TV antenna. Not sure what the electricians were thinking when they put this together. So far I have the TV, DVD player, iMac, modem, speakers, floor lamp, external HDD and printer on.. actually a little worried about overloading but I think an extension with individual switches will take care of that.

This is what the back of my desk looks like – any ideas?

I was reading Huai Bin’s recent post on “old school blogging” and he described it perfectly as being ‘pure streams of consciousness’. That sort of got me thinking how much things have changed in the ten years since I started a blog.

When the blog phenomenon first hit Malaysia, many of us had personal blogs which were not ‘commercial’ in any way. Blogs were mostly used as intended – as web logs – a simple vessel of communicating to an online audience where before no one really had the means to. They were mainly online diaries by early adopters of the internet culture – much were ramblings about daily on-goings – like mine, there were webcams, and it was often a popularity contest amongst same-sex bloggers (pre-blog advertising, mind!). Things were very different back then, people had wishlists, and ‘fans’ would buy things off these lists in appreciation.

Through the years the phenomenon outlived the fascination and patience of many, and only a handful of people I know from the early days of blogging remain. However blogs have evolved into these things where people could make a living off, and thus many old and new blogs became topic-centric and (in my opinion anyway) has lost a lot of the original charm of the old school style of blogging. Even blogging platforms have evolved so much! There was a time I used to hand-code my updates via NotePad (yes I was a PC user yonks ago) and this was before there was any sort of commenting system in place.

I love that these changes have allowed us to focus more on (as HB aptly put it) generating verbal diarrhea. Which is probably exactly what this is!

Have a good weekend! I hope to see some sun at least, these past few days thick fluffy blankets of light grey have been hovering low over Sydney and it has been rather depressing/hard to not think of burrowing under the duvet while at work.

[Post title: Old school lovin'; Chante Moore]

First of all, I have finally upgraded my WP. Hello widgets! Have been procrastinating for ages and ages, since version 2.5, mainly because I’m plain lazy. Not having to edit and resize images and upload them for the front page makes blogging a little more enticing during my free time. Like now, on a Tuesday, like on all Tuesday evenings from way back then, when I usually have free time.

Currently reading Jeffrey Steingarten – The Man Who Ate Everything. He is a very entertaining food journalist, and I love how his obsessive-compulsiveness comes through his work, and how even more than a decade from when this book was written, a lot of it still has me chasing Wiki up for more.

I guess you might have noticed the new blog theme. The last one was just too high maintenance. It’s a new year, so new theme… and while it’s still valid (through January I’m told) I’ll be using that as an excuse for procurement of all other new things. I like new things. New ideas, new places, new shoes. NEW SHOES. I really shouldn’t. Am riddled with guilt that I’ve managed to survive most of the year unscathed from the evil that are shoe sales, and caved in the last month. Still guilty. I’m hoping to amass a whole lot of shoe-guilt to hopefully avoid CNY sales.

Anyway, the new blog. It will probably take me another six months to upload a header image. I know, I’m a designer and I really shouldn’t be using themes wholesale, but I quite happen to like this one. Of course I do. And I fully intend to, ETA TBC, personalise it in some way. I have way more time to do all the things I wanted to do before, and that takes me a long way away from my computer, since I’m on it all day at work. Here I go procrastinating again :) Anyway am blaming it on blog fatigue, since this year is the ninth year I’ve been typing random stuff online.

Meanwhile, here’s a picture. Ironically now that I’m not required to upload pictures with my posts, I do it.

Newtown one Sunday afternoon

Also, I need to figure out how to resize the ratio of some of these fonts.

When you deal with fonts all day at work, it really is the last thing you feel like doing at midnight. The first time I ever used QuarkXpress in college, I remember thinking.. wouldn’t it be great if I could create websites with such detailed font control. I’m a type nazi (at work) and thankfully for my blood pressure I’ve learnt to ignore blog type. But it still doesn’t stop me from getting annoyed at orphans and the like, and when I see them I automatically enlarge or reduce the browser type display size to get rid of the ones within set paragraph widths.. I will quit while I’m ahead.

Have you got your iPhone yet?

Seems like iPhone fever has hit the world. I was in Brisbane when it launched, by the time we were at the Optus store, we were greeted by vast amounts of confetti all over the place. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone cracked open a bottle of bubbly, too.

Am quite tempted to pick one up. On a 24-month postpaid plan, the phone is practically free: it only costs A$2/month on top of usage charges. But it actually all comes down to the fact that I don’t need one. I just really want one. Which means I probably won’t get one. :/

In other news, things have been rather engaging. Had lots of fun at the Aroma Fest, spent an immersive week in Brisbane with Roy, Phoung and the cast of Boston Legal, (was sad for a minute when Roy told me people like Alan Shore don’t exist – they are solely created for telly), did absolutely NO SHOPPING (almost), dodged A LOT of human traffic around the city (WYD08), spent an obsessive amount of time looking at paintings, got my flights delayed because of crazy airport traffic, had a home-cooked meal for the first time in a long while (thanks, mom!), and got my first rejection letter and my first freelance job in the same day. While probably breaking all grammar rules with that long sentence!

Hope you’ve been well :)

Have decided to restructure/spring clean my blog. Mostly because I found a really nice theme that I like – one that highlights pictures – which isn’t too hard to use. Just doing some basic editing to the theme I realised that things have really come a long way since I first started blogging! WP makes it a lot easier with widgets and plugins etc; I really cannot believe I used to hand code on Notepad a decade ago. And this new AJAX interface is too awesome. I’m feeling old >.<

Took off a lot of old posts; apart from some travel stories, I’ve only kept the last 2 years’ worth of posts online. The monthly archive listing scrolls down too far.. and I’m not sure if WP has a function to archive into bimonthly or quarterly pages. I’ll have to figure that one out later. And I really need to familiarise myself with web codes again.. asdfg.

Sounds Greek at the moment, I haven’t lived it yet. Just got back from a lovely R&R 3-day trip to Penang. Will be at Bijou Bazaar tomorrow.. come say hello!