miltownkid.com

Before I get to my technical showdown here the update since I last posted. The last post was from a Thursday. I’m pretty sure nothing too noteworthy happened on Friday (just work I’m sure). Saturday was fun though.

Saturday morning should have been spent cleaning my room, but I just bopped around on the Net, watched some TV, watched a movie (Training Day) and chilled. I did go out to the stationary store to get a business card holder and a new notebook (I filled my old Doreaman one up). I tried a spiral less notebook this time ’round. Saturday was to be the first day of the “Weekly Brainstorming Sessions” (name change coming) and I had 1 person turn up (oh yeah!) We drank some beer and brainstormed a bit.

Then later on in the Evening, Ax (his blog is here) showed up (visiting for a week from Japan) and we got a pizza and… talked some more I think. We talked at the Pizza Hut and talked at home. Probably mostly about language stuff since Ax was with us. Then later on me wife got back and Ax went to pick up his girlfriend from the MRT station (they were on separate planes) and when they got back I threw in a Miyazaki movie and passed out (I think everyone else finished it though).

Sunday we did Game Club up on Maokong. I learned how to play Up and Down the River (that’s a nice game), then we played on of the longest games of Settlers ever. It was a pretty good game with lots of surprises and changes of “power” near the end (a lot of them brought on by me ). The highlight of my day was cutting Bu Lai En’s road in half with a knight right when he was set to win (MWA AH AH!) That probably makes no sense to most of you. I posted one picture of the view up (clicky). Now on to the CMS (Content Management System) battle.

So I’ve been contemplating how I want to do my new miltownkid site and going through the CMSes that may or may not do the things I want to do. I’d also like everything to integrate nicely for the end user, make things real smooth.

The things I want to have on the new site are:
Make static pages

• my blog
• a moblog
• a photoblog
• a gallery
• possibly a forum (maybe later, yeah one all about me baby me )
• I also want everything to be really organized and searchable

The software I was looking at to get the job done was:

• Textpattern – To organize the site (static pages and blog)
• Gallery – For the gallery
• Pixelpost – For the photoblog, running it [now].
• This photoblog/mms script – for the moblog.

Anyway, I had this “big” project on my hands of installing all this software, making it work nice together and then trying to make it pleasant for the user coming to my site to go through it all (it’s all about you baby ). I also want it all to look good.

Well, now I stumbled upon this little piece of work right here (Expression Engine). It’s not Open Source (so not free), but it looks like it does everything I want to do and some. Plus it’s all built into one piece of software (so there’s only one thing to install and maintain).

I figure other bloggers and potential bloggers must read this sometimes, so I thought I’d give a quick breakdown of what’s going on in my head. I’m pretty much sold on it (EE) already, but I still have to play with the demo some more and do a test install.

OK, this post’s long enough.

miltown

今天我去過 FarEastone 看看他們3G月費是怎麼樣. 那邊的小姐有跟我說”外國人不行買3G的plan”. 這是我第一次有一點生氣聽到這種的話. 我跟他說”好,沒關係. 我還要知道你們的月費是怎麼樣”. 他講完的時候我就走了. 我今天發生我的中文不夠好. 如果我會講的好一點我就可以罵他一頓. 我最近是一個不好的五學生. 從今天開始我會認真得讀中文. 以前我想聽得董, 認識一些字, 講得OK就夠. 現在我知道我應該會念,講,聽和寫.

OK, enough of the Zhongwen (for you non Zhongweners, Zhongwen is pinyin for Chinese). If you can’t read it, tought banana’s. Maybe babble or google translation will sort it out. A summary is, I went to check on 3G plans today, was told I couldn’t buy one because I was a foreigner, it irked me a bit and now I want to start studying again (learn some cus words this time round).

My buddy robonutz picked up a 3G Windows mobile powered cellphone and was rockin Skype on it this morning. It was working really slicky (<-well) too. It inspired me to check on the 3G situation here. I’m going to get my laptop sorted out first, but I think I’ll be picking up a 3G phone quickly after and use it in combination with the laptop. I did find out (even though they pissed me off a tad) that you can get a data card for unlimited 3G browsing from Fetnet for 735/month (that’s under 30US). My prodiver doesn’t have their rates sorted out yet, but if I were to buy a phone now I’d get to surf unlimited style until the end of October.

Looking forward to the end of this month (I hate looking forward, I think it makes me edgy). I like the new job, but it’s too far away for my liking. I’ll be back over at Zhulin on the 30th (yay).

Okie Dokie

miltown

I’m too tired to think about anything. I did update the photoblog for today. I like that Turtle.

My ideas notebook filled up today. Time for a new one. I’ve been feeling artistic lately, so I think I’m going to start drawing more. I don’t know if I’ll want to take classes or anything, just drawing is pretty fun already.

There’s a little something something for today. Now, I’m going to sleep.

meeloTkid

I got the pictures of the Yangmingshan (yesterday’s game club) trip up on my newly installed gallery (you can see that by clicking here). I’ll be cleaning up this mess of websites I have soon, so there’s something else to look forward to.

Work was good today, nothing special to report about that. I’m kind of upset about not taking more pictures of the game club expedition yesterday. I got some of us going up, but almost none of the 5 (+?) hours we were up there. Ah… next time.

No work tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll get some of my own things done.

It’s about bed time so the brain aint functioning so good.

night

So got up this morn, had some breakfast (cereal and a baked potato) and went out to game club (a thing I do every Sunday, just playing games and stuff). This week we went up Yangmingshan mountain to a little place called Zhuzihu.

We were up there playing games all day. The food flowed, the beer flowed and the good times flowed. Too bad I haven’t gotten the gallery setup yet, cause I’d show you all the pictures I took (not many good ones ). Played a game of Go (Weiqi), Chinese Chess, a game where I bid on modern art, and this other game which I can’t even remotely remember the name of (the beer did indeed flow ).

A nice thing about this trip is some how I got out of paying my fair share. I kind of drank most of the beer but didn’t have to pay for it. The smart thing would have been for me to pay my share of the beer first and everyone else next, but it went the other way around (everyone paid, then me) which left no paying left to do. So, to make up for it, I bought more beer (I didn’t really drink that much, I’m just making it sound good for the story ).

I really really like Go. I’m going to have to find some more places to play. I’ll also try to get cracking on getting that gallery setup. That’ll be the next move for emkid.net.

peace out

miltown