The Clone!

You guessed it right, I am still online at this time of the night! I finally got to publish my two posts that remained in draft for almost two weeks now. I am about to call it a night but I decided to browse some funny videos and found this funny baby video which is the third from a series of "n". I thought this is the same laughing baby but after watching, it made me uncertain now. I guess the popular laughing baby is a boy, the baby on this video is a girl and her dad did this and the other videos.

Definitely, there were effects implemented in this video but I just love it I wanted to share here. I'll show it to Jade tomorrow.

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anticipation or instinct?

During our 2006 summer vacation back home, we dropped by Tam-awan Village after the family's Asin swimming. I was a no-first timer to this place however it was my first time to see the artists stationed there and offering sketch services to the place's visitors. We took a quick look at the displayed images but decided to head to the coffee shop first as we were all famished. Then my sisters went back to the artists' post and asked my niece to pose. At first, we thought only one artist will work on the subject but it turned out that two guys actually got their papers and pens and started to chalk out my niece who was behaved well during the entire course.

Thinking that our daughter may be not be willing to be seated for a long time, we didn't follow suit. But after my niece's sketches were completed, we eventually decided to have Jade take the subject's seat. For few minutes, she kept still and behaved well but realizing the absence of entertainments around her made her start to get bored and attempted to get free from mommy's arms. The other artists then started to make different sounds and actions to make her calm. Everyone noticed a cat around so they called feline near the artists sketching her such that they could still take a look at her face. Finally, the wait was over.

At that time, Jade had very short hair and may have even looked more like a boy so we were grinning to see how the sketched looked like. Expecting us to question it, the two artists explained to us right away that they lengthened her hair so that she'll appear girlish. We were pleased for the consideration they regarded. Somehow, it made sense to us. We brought her sketches with us here in Taiwan and having no space to display it in our small apartment, they were kept in our document storage bin.

The younger artist displaying Jade's sketch

Jade: Who is that? She doesn't look like me at all!

The senior artist finishing touches!
Jade: Mommy, bring me down! I want to go play with Manang.

We didn't think of it until several weeks ago, hubby asked me to look at Jade as he exclaimed “she looks like the painting now!” I asked him what painting he was talking about and he told me “the one from Baguio”. It took me a while to pick up what he was saying until I realized “ah, the sketches from Tam-awan.” I stared at our daughter and seconded Dennis statement about her now looking like the way she was sketched six months ago. I opened my online album after that and realized that she looked more like the sketch done by the younger artist compared to that of the other guy. (I forgot their names, they have etched it in the papers but I'm too lazy to dig them now.)

Closer look at the 1st artist's piece.

Jade looks closely to this.

Jade's latest studio picture

Doesn't her hairdo resemble the sketch?

Nah, she was too serious she didn't even smile.

Now, did the artists anticipate that she'll eventually sport that kind of hairdo or was it a father's instinct they exhibited there? Hmmnn, I'm not even sure if they are family men. But no matter what, we appreciate it.

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The works!

I’ve been aiming to publish at least one post from my drafts last weekend but I wasn’t able to do that. My thoughts were simply disorganized that completing one seemed a very long time. Instead of pursuing it, I decided to work on my page customization in a semiempirical way. I made use of the trial and error method and that meant numerous clicks on the “preview” and “clear unsaved edits” buttons. Nah, it wasn’t all in a day’s work as it took me three non-consecutive nights to get it done. I’d say I am happy with the outcome.

Working on the template’s code using “edit html” and “add page elements” (javasript/html) were mostly what I did. And why is that? It’s because I simple don’t know how to work directly on the html codes and I don’t have the luxury of time to study it. I used google search and luckily, I bumped into Vin’s Dummies Guide to Google Blogger (Beta) blog where I found almost all I needed to come up with the layout I wanted. It was a matter of understanding the articles published and following the simply instructions provided. I didn’t even have to type codes because it was as simple as doing “copy and paste” and editing the variables to incorporate my actual blog’s name. (But I maybe asked why it took me 3 nights to do it if it’s a matter of copy and paste only – that’s another story :).

Anyhow, here are changes recently implemented in my blog’s layout …

1. Three column width – this is one thing I wanted to do since I saw several WP themes displaying such format. It even made me think of migrating to WP but eventually, the idea was shrugged off. Vin provided the codes and explained in detail what it implied. I had to make few tweaks on the width figures and alignment of the sidebar as the code provided is for right sidebar but what I wanted was a left sidebar since the opposite already existed.

2. Post expandable summaries – I may not have long posts all the time but it helps having a post summary and having it expanded independently to read the whole thing. Installing the codes made all posts have the “read more” line at the end by default so I had to edit the latest 7 posts which are displayed in the main page such that the “read more” option exist in the midst of the post body. I also tweaked the codes such that the “read more” line is shown in bold and caps lock fonts. From it, I learned several tag codes and tag termination.

3. New window view for my blogroll – a friend has already informed me how to do this before but I was not able to incorporate it at that time. I thought I can simply paste the code in the page element but no, I had to insert it in the expanded widgets code. That meant I had to scroll down the html scripts to find the blogroll widget. Anyhow, this will now enable my blog friends to open the links without leaving my blog.

4. Option to subsribe to my blog – at first, I only got the chicklet from feedburner then I figured out, there’s also an option to offer email subscription. The codes were provided separately but I thought of merging them in a single page element.

5. Recent comments display – Vin showed two options and I chose the simpler one – that is to display 5 recent comments. Clicking them will bring you to the commented post page.

Earlier than the above implementation, I also added three pictures at the right sidebar showing my daughter and hubby. I also organized all my posts categories but may still need to narrow them down. And yes, I enrolled my blog back to PPP several weeks ago but I only got to post the tools the other night. I got the codes from PPP’s customer support because I cannot view them in my explorer window but figured out later that codes show up well in firefox (that’s another story too).

So there! I still have some items left in my to-do list and that includes changing the header image because I only borrowed the image from a multiply template.

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Ninety Five

Wow, who would have thought of blogging at the age of 95?

I bumped into this site while surfing the net and I thought I'd have it shared in my blog. I am actually surprised to learn that a "lola" is blogging HERE. It made me ask myself - "will I reach that age?" and "would I be blogging if I were her?"

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When it rains

it pours… so don’t forget your umbrella! – quotable quote from my friend, Sheng.

I am taking a few minutes break from work and that break to me means scribbling down this post – I’ll take another break later to get a cup of hot drink from the cafeteria. Hay, I’ve been very busy since last week and my “system” is doing a total adjustment. It has been six months since the last time I was really busy at work. Wow, that’s two quarters! So what did I do all this time? Hmmnnn, two months was the official vacation leave while four months was spent at work but not really doing much. I even had to talk to my boss several times to ask for tasks to do. He did gave me some but weren’t that much to eat up the whole office hours so I still had chances to surf the net and update my blog/s.

Now that I am starting with a new project, I find it quite strange to see myself busy. But this is not even comparable to how busy I was for the past two years when even at the peak of my pregnancy, I got to work until 1am. Yes, I worked on more than 5 major projects by myself – that meant staying late at work almost everyday as I needed to collate and edit reports, update emails, generate my own reports, attend night telecons and do other things I shouldn’t really be responsible of. Good thing my Jade didn’t decide to come out while I was on a meeting.

If somebody gets back to me like this - I'm might not be able to control my temper and give him/her a punch (not the drinks, ok :) ).

I should be able to shrug off this kind of “new” working scheme yet I have to welcome the delight of not having to worry about overcoming a day-long or even worse, a week-long boredom that results from being idled. Gotta get that cup of drink now and finish my “to do’s” else I’ll end up dumped with more of it.

PS. I got several posts kept in my draft and I’m not sure when they’ll get published. Anyhow, I’ll get back on my regular blogging activities in no time.

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a pet's wakeup call

I saw this video when I opened my explorer window last night and I found it very cute. Good thing we don't keep a pet at home. If ever, I'd make sure it doesn't get the chance to enter the bedroom :)

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igorotblogger.com in the making

Bill from the boondocks won the contest here. More to that, his rival Rachel was also announced as a winner. How very generous the host is for deciding to give these two bloggers their own domains. I liked how Tina wrote about her lessons-learned in one of her posts prior to announcing the winner/s.

Kudos to all participants.

PS. I just checked the soon to be domain and noted that it's already alive

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