So it’s been more than 48 hours since the Blog Parteeh happened. Kudos to all the members of the Steering Committee (which includes me, ehem). About 48 bloggers were given the chance to win the iPod, the major prize that was given away last Saturday. But as the saying goes, there can be only one. Congratulations to AJ for winning the top prize everyone was hoping for. There were other prizes given away, like Google Shirts, Yehey! Shirts and Pens, Mugs for the coffee that keeps bloggers awake, Krispy Kreme Glazed Doughnuts, magazines, and other stuff.

The preparation for the said event almost brought us, or me at least, to my knees, as moving beverages and speakers can really take its toll on someone who is not physically fit (read: me). But all of those hardships, the worrying, and the dreams, or should I say, nightmares about moving to and from the venue the said speakers and drinks were all worth it because I had the chance of seeing the people behind the blogs that I frequent, meeting and talking to them even. No exceptions.

We had a blast preparing and organizing the event, and based on the feedback from the Parteeh’s website, a lot of the bloggers who attended felt the same way too. With that in mind, the least I can do is to put a link to all of you here in my post. Share the link love.

• Chris G. Haravata
• Darwin Sotto
• Richmond Ruiz
• Maria Theresa R. Termulo
• Joseph Angelo B. Racoma
• Janette Toral
• Benjamin Espina
• Lauren Dado
• Jonas Diego
• Luis Bernardo E. Cruz
• JC Cuneta
• Paul Irvin Rivera
• Aaron Roselo
• Elymar Apao
• Pierre Tito Galla
• Joel Yuvienco
• Marhgil Macuha
• Mike Abundo
• Rens Gener P. Sese
• Joseph Gonzales
• Arvin Jay Jorge
• Shari Cruz
• Dominique Baniqued
• Mark Joseph N. Baun
• Jeffrey Villafranca
• January Ison
• Gerardo Barcelona
• Zaldy Dalisay
• Karla Redor
• Marcelle T. Fabie
• James Michael Deen
• Andrea Leonor Haravata
• Hermie Unite
• Aldrin Cantos
• Liz Buenaflor
• Eugene Alvin Villar
• Randy Lorenzano
• Arnold C. Zafra
• Mae Paulino
• Sharmaine Miguel
• Nestle Poell Lagaya
• Julius Rocas
• Marc Macalua
• Allan Ray Penilla
• Joni Ang
• Lord Art Florenz Lomarda
• Bo Sanchez
• Abe Olandres
• Carlo Roxas
• Ernesto Sonido
• Gail dela Cruz-Villanueva
• Jayvee Fernandez
• Jomar Hilario
• Jun Asis
• Kevin Codamon
• Migs Paraz
• Noel Bautista
• Noemi Dado
• Rico Mossesgeld

Too bad I wasn’t able to get some pictures. I was too worried of all the equipment at our table of getting food splattered all over, especially Yuga’s Compaq V3000. But anyway. you can see pics all over flickr. Just search for blogparteeh07 and I’m sure you’ll get a ton of relevant hits.

So, is there a next Blog Parteeh? But of course, there will be another Blog Parteeh. I’ll leave it to Yuga to answer that question as to when it will be. Hope to see you all again on the next Blog Parteeh!

Automattic, Inc. – the people behind WordPress.com and WordPress.org – has just released WordPress 2.1, codenamed “Ella.” The new version of WordPress, a backend for blogs, boasts a lot of new features that makes blogging and managing content easier.

A quote from their site states:

There are little easter eggs hidden everywhere, so the best way to find everything new is to just try it out.

So, is it time to upgrade?

Not for me. At least, not until I’m sure all the plugins I use are compatible with Ella. But with the rate the plugin authors code, it’ll be soon.

Happy Hunting!

Taken from blogparteeh.com:

The Blog Parteeh! 2007 is the largest blogger meet-up ever organized by bloggers for bloggers. The Steering Committee has worked so hard to organize this event and find sponsors. So, to make the process of joining the event more interesting and spicy with a bit of a buzz, scroll down and read how you can be part of this parteeh!

This event, however, is by invitation only. To know how to get invited, go here.

Time to practice some SEO moves and make sure you get tagged by Technorati in the top 50 search results.

Happy Hunting!

See you at the blogparteeh07!

In my previous post entitled “Back to the Stone Age,” I mentioned that

I, however, can’t do anything but applaud PLDT because my service at home is still up.

I spoke too soon. As days went by, PLDT’s MyDSL became competition for Globe’s crappy broadband service. And I thought PLDT was different.

How bad was it?

Well, remember when you were glad you were getting a 40kbps speed on your dialup modem? Yeah, that bad. Or worse, even. Because Google, TEH INTARWEB GIANT ITSELF, times out from time to time. Download speeds were a measly 2.3KB/s and that is if you’re lucky. Most of the time, I get a download speed of 1.2KB/s. I’m not lucky.

I even had problems accessing my GMail account.

But of course, you just can’t take my word for it. So I decided to do some speed tests from 2wire.com, broadbandreports.com, toast.net, and PLDT’s mypad website, among others.

The tests were conducted around 9 AM, Manila Time.
2wire.com showed 503 kbps. After an hour, it dropped to 386 kbps.
broadbandreports.com showed 511 kbps using the speakeasy server. Using another server, it showed 311 kbps. I didn’t bother to check after an hour since 2wire is showing the same trend.
toast.net reported 483 kbps using a server from the UK. There’s a variation of about 100 kbps using other servers. After an hour, it showed 38 kbps.
PLDT’s mypad website showed 480 kbps.

I checked my speed again at around 12 PM, Manila time.
2wire.com showed 36 kbps.
toast.net was inaccessible.
I didn’t bother to check other speed test websites because Firefox was timing out from trying to connect to other sites.

The service really sucks. What made it worse was that the DNS servers can’t even update itself and find most of the domains I frequent. I had to use another DNS server from another ISP. And I’m paying for a 1.2Mbps service to get a 38kbps connection.

This post, however, is one-sided as I still have yet to talk to their reps, technical and otherwise, about the situation, but I’m afraid of being another one of those customers their reps curse at when the phone is on mute, in which case, this rep forgot to press the mute button.

So is the post title conclusive? No.

Not yet. I’ll be posting more about this after getting some feedback from PLDT. But until then, I’ll keep saying PLDT’s MyDSL sucks.

So I’ve been keeping busy with MyJournal Philippines recently launching Beta 1.0 and one of the most mind-boggling issues we encountered was not being able to edit widget properties in Firefox. We initially assumed that it’s a browser issue, so we tested it on IE. It works in IE. Well, not a hundred percent, but the widget is still editable.

In Firefox, upon clicking on the edit button of a widget, you get a popup and, normally, only the background will be grayed out, with the popup sitting in front of the page. But this time, the popup was included in the grayed out page. Meaning, everything inside the Sidebar Widgets page was grayed out, including the popup.

In IE, the Sidebar Widgets page was all screwed up.

BUT when you edit a widget, you can.

But if you didn’t put anything there, you won’t be able to drag and drop widgets, to begin with.

So we geeks had to do what we felt we needed to do: have a go at resolving this issue.

First thing we needed to do was find out what’s causing this. So we needed to duplicate this issue. There have been two or more incidents of this issue occurring. So we checked what was common in those reports and in the user’s accounts. Upon further investigation, we found out that the PhotoPress plugin was the cause of the issue and is wreaking havoc with the layout and functionality of the Sidebar Widgets page when it is activated.

Further Google research showed that there are NO fixes for this issue. The PhotoPress plugin author is not responding to comments about this issue and we do not expect to hear from him again. We just hope someone will have the time and resources to take over maintaining the plugin.

Personally, I am suspecting that there is an issue with one of the scripts in the scriptaculous folder of Sidebar Widgets, because as stated above, I was able to edit widgets in IE, but not in Firefox. Further investigation showed that even on basic WordPress installs (we were using WordPress MU to power the member blogs), this issue also occurs (I tried it here in my blog).

Well, sad to say, we have no choice but to let go of a brilliant plugin. BUT we decided not to because there’s a workaround for this…issue. Two, even.

1. Press the TAB key on the keyboard until the cursor appears on the line in the widget that needs editing
OR
2. Deactivate the PhotoPress plugin, edit the widget, and then reactivate the said conflicting plugin.

Either way, both methods are annoying.

Am I letting it go and leave it alone? Hell, NO! I’ll make it work. It’ll take time. But they both will play nicely with each other.

Ok, that’s it. I’m telling Time magazine that they have to hire me. As a proofreader. Why?

I’m glad you asked.

I found this when I was blog-hopping through Shari’s blog that led me to this.

Just makes me wonder how males can become hate.

…in this blog is made in the office. Yes. It’s the first day of the friggin’ year and I am in the office.

To make things worse, it’s a Monday. And I believe, if the year starts out with a whimper, it’s gonna be a whimper-y year. And that everyday of the year will feel like a Monday. Even on holidays.

Yes. You’re gonna feel like you’re being rode VERYVERYVERY hard.

And after all those hardships, they’re gonna shaft you.

Happy Fuckin’ New Year!

P.S.
Sorry for the inconvenience. We are experiencing psychological difficulties. Regular programming will be back when it wants to get back. Thank you for bearing with us.