What Simply Works!

This early I’m already working on my Christmas gifts’ list for my loved ones. As much as I want to splurge a bit on my gifts shopping, I am now limiting myself to a budget.

I am dreaming of getting my nephew and niece a Nintendo DS each. But they will eat up a big chunk of my shopping budget so I searched on the internet today and came across cute kids’ MP3 players that maybe they will like, too. The prices are within budget and they look really cute. What do you think?

(This yummy ice cream flavor is called Chocnut. Originating from the very popular chocolate candy in the Philippines bearing the same name. Its creamy, peanut-buttery taste just makes you come back for another serving and another and another.

The original chocnut flavored ice cream can be found at Uva restaurant in Makati (not sure if they have other brances in Manila). Selecta, a commercial ice cream brand, joined the bandwagon and is now selling their own version of this yummy treat. But I tell you, nothing compares to the original.)

Ang ice cream na ito ay Chocnut flavor. Galing ito sa isang sikat ng tsokolate na gamit ang tinurang pangalan. Ang ma-krema at peanut butter nitong lasa ay makaka-kumbinsi sa iyong balikan ito ng paulit-ulit.

Ang orihinal na Chocnut ice cream ay mabibili sa Uva restaurant. Ang Selecta ay tumulad sa kanila at gumawa rin ng sariling bersyon ng ice cream na ito. Pero sa totoo lang, walang makakatulad sa Uva chocnut ice cream.

May isa pa akong lahok dito. At marami pa dito!

I personally don’t like to use watermarks on my photos. I find that it sorts of ruins the whole image as it steals the viewer’s focus away from the subject/s. But lately, I’ve been uploading tons of photos on my blogs and now I’m concerned about other people possibly downloading them for personal or worse, commercial use without my permission.  I have no choice but to use watermarks.

I once shared my photos to a magazine contributor and was sad that the copies went out without proper credit. I don’t want to encourage people to do that to me again. I am not a professional photographer or a hobbyist thinking that my photos are ‘worth stealing’. But stealing is stealing and it is wrong, no matter how you look at it.

As I surfed the net last night, I eventually landed to this Wordpress plugin page by Marekki. I immediately downloaded it and used it on my two blogs. I still have a lot of re-uploading to do because the auto-watermarking (sorry, I couldn’t think of a better term) will only kick-in once you upload the photo. Imagine not editing your photos to add your watermark or logo? Cool, huh.

Marekki did a great job in putting up a site solely for his Wordpress plugin complete with detailed instructions and a screenshot. Here is his site.

http://www.wp-watermark.com/

My sample photo using the watermark plugin:

You can change the font, its position, opacity and you can even upload your own logo through the Wordpress Admin panel.

I have another wordless here and more wordless(ness) here!

The new series Lipstick Jungle kicked-off last Monday in Australia replacing Desperate Housewives’ time slot. The show stars Brooke Shields, Kim Raver and Lindsay Price. What can I say? It is very much like Sex and the City with minor twists.

The makers of the show didn’t waste time; one of the leads was already seen wearing lingerie on the initial episodes. With not much choice for my late night telly time, I think I’m going to follow this series and see where it’s going to head. I don’t know how popular it is in the US though.

I haven’t been updating my blogs lately save for the weekly photo memes because of my Dell laptop. Just yesterday, my daughter pulled out four more keys, which now totals six broken keys on my keyboard.

I have started checking my external hard disk to make sure that all my files are complete so that I can start using my ibook. The problem is that my ibook has very limited memory thus leaving me to use my Dell more.

It is so hard to use a keyboard with missing keys especially a broken spacebar key.

I am dreading the day that my daughter would ask us to get her a pet. No offense to animal lovers but I don’t like having animals around the house. I am not looking forward to cleaning up their mess, training them or making pet supplies a part of our budget.

I am for animal rights and I respect those people who have pets but thinking of the added responsibility in caring for a cat or dog, isn’t just my idea of fun. Sure I would take my daughter to a zoo or let her be exposed to pets but not to the extent of bringing them home.

Come to think of it, I can let her pet a fish. No matter how many little gold fish she wants. It would be nice to have a freshwater aquarium with colorful fish and plants.

Appetizer

What is the weather like today where you live?

It’s winter now on our side of the world yet we’ve had sunny and clear skies the past few days. Just lovely!

Soup

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how career-minded are you?

I left the workforce in October last year and nearly a year of being a stay at home mom, I’m looking at getting a job again but only part time. So on a scale of 1-10, I’d be a 6. I love being a stay at home mom and being able to earn my own keep. My work will be my me-time I suppose.

Salad

What type of window coverings do you have in your home? Blinds, curtains, shutters, etc.?

We have blinds.

Main Course

Name something that instantly cheers you up.

My daughter’s smile.

Dessert

How many times do you hit the snooze button on a typical morning?

Since I stopped working I never had to use the alarm.

More friday’s feast here!

I see a puppy with one arm raised upwards. How about you?

I have another wordless here and more wordless(ness) here!

Fees for repair services here in Australia are expensive. That is why my husband invested on a set of handy tools (not as complicated looking as air tools) for emergency use.

When we bought a simple dining set from Ikea six months ago, we were surprised to know that delivery and installation would add at least 100aud alone. It is good that we were able to put the items on the boot of the car and with the handy tools, we were able to install it without problems.

My father’s weakness is his tennis gear. He has three rackets, sets of Nike outfits, bottles upon bottles of tennis balls and his really cool tennis bags.

Each time a special occasion calls for giving gifts, my siblings and I already know what to get for him. That would be anything that has to with his hobby. Now in his retirement, he still frequents sporting goods store in Manila, especially when his rackets need some string replacement or his shoes needs new lace locks.

We are glad that he keeps this hobby, which helps him to keep fit and allows him to socialize with his tennis buddies.

One of my favorite partners in household cleaning is Easy Off Bam. It is a powerful cleaning agent that helps remove grime and scum on tiles, sink, tubs and shower faucets, too.

I use cleaning gels and creams of different brands before but ever since I tried Bam, I never had to look for another cleaning agent again. It is priced around 5plus AUD per bottle but it sure is worth the price.

Whether it is used in tandem with a brush or sponge, it cleans perfectly. I highly recommend this product.

I love wearing shawls. When I was still working, I would use one if I don’t feel like wearing a jacket or coat. It makes a woman look more sophisticated when it is wrapped around the neck or just simply hanging on the shoulders.

Shawls make nice Christmas and bridesmaid gifts, too. The 100% Pashmina wrap though expensive elsewhere is pretty cheap in India. But whether it is pashmina, silk or cashmere material, to me, they just look as lovely.

I have a cousin who got a job in North Carolina. He is in the hotel management industry and he said that his work very much dictates where he and his family will live. Because of the very good package, he and his wife decided to leave Florida and start a new life in NC.

As soon as they settled he sent an email to all of us his cousins that he got a 7-bedroom house for his family. I can imagine a beautiful beach side house similar to the ones in the Outer Banks rentals website. He said his kids love the house and he is inviting us to visit them.

Look at this oceanfront house that I snatched from the website, what a beauty.

Not the kind of spam I want for breakfast. (This is a screen cap of my sql database when Akismet was deactivated.)

If my memory serves me right, it was just a year ago when my former blog hostees raised an issue about Akismet “eating up” many of their valid comments. They had to fish each of them out, which of course is time consuming to do.

So, the solution we came up with is to replace it with a different anti-spam plugin. A plugin that allows the commenter to fill-in a key word in the hopes of driving away the spam robots that automatically inserts nasty comments and trackbacks.

Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the new plugin is not completely eradicating the spam from our blogs. When I moved web hosts, I was surprised to see my sql file with tons of spam comments! I was in the middle of migrating the last of the 6 blogs I am hosting when I opened up the file and saw a lot of spam keywords that refer to gambling or drugs! I had to change the DNS midway and clean the sql file from my old host before importing them to the new host.

It was then that I decided to put back Akismet on my plugin list and let it do its work and that is to protect my database from further mess caused by these spammers!

Appetizer

If you could live on another continent for 1 year, which one would you choose?

We just moved to Australia this year coming from Singapore, I guess if given a chance, I would like to try living in Europe, If only for the sights and food!

Soup

Which browser do you use to surf the Internet?

I love Firefox and Safari!

Salad

On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being highest), how much do you know about the history of your country?

Eeek! I’d give myself a 7.

Main Course

Finish this sentence: Love is…

Love is seeing my daughter’s beautiful smile each morning.

Dessert

Have you ever been in or near a tornado?

No and I hope I will never experience that.

Law like medicine is multi-faceted. It has so many areas of specialization that you will be surprised to know that there exists truck accident lawyers. Yes, they are not something I made up, they do exist.

Come to think of it, when major truck accidents happen, who will represent the victim during legal proceedings? There are criminal, civil and corporate lawyers but they will not know first hand about truck accident lawsuits.

I’m glad I stumbled upon truckinjuries.com and learned about this interesting piece of information.

It is disheartening to hear this news about a mother and her daughter who connived in shoplifting. This happened in a retail shop in Sydney a few months’ back. The shop’s owner happens to have a hidden spy camera that captured the actual moment when the mother slipped a piece of summer dress into her daughter’s shopping bag.

I got goose bumps while watching the actual footage. I mean, aren’t we supposed to be teaching our kids about honesty and not stealing? Unless of course both mother and daughter are kleptomaniacs, then they need psychiatric help.

I tried to look for news articles about this on the internet but didn’t manage to find one. I wonder what happened to them now.

We have been blessed with good weather these past few days. It is sunny but cool and at night, it is so nice to cozy up under the thick sheets to warm up. What I don’t miss though during the summer season is our dependence to ceiling fans or any fan for that matter.

I remember during the hottest day in January, my daughter and I stayed in front of our box fan because we were just sweating all over! And we were only watching TV then. Ha ha.

I’m sure that modern ceiling fans or craftmade fans companies are in their off-peak season now, at least for the next four more months or so. It still gets a bit chilly during Spring.

Maintaining three active blogs is no joke. Aside from filling them up with new ideas for contents, I need to be conscious of SEO and readership. It doesn’t help that a simple thing such as ‘dressing’ up a blog can be a tedious thing to do (this blog is a good example in itself– i still haven’t found the ‘right’ template!). There are hundreds upon hundreds of wordpress templates that are both free and premium but the question is often, which design fits my overall theme?

In my attempt to help fellow bloggers in this long and winding search for free wordpress themes, I have listed some links that I have come across in my own hunt for a suitable theme.

Compilations:

1. 21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant Wordpress Themes
2. 100 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes
3. WP Theme Spot
4. BG Themes
5. Best WP Themes
6. CSS Juice
7. WP Theme Viewer (of course!)
8. New Wordpress Themes

Straight from the Author

1. Fahlstad Design
2. Poxline
3. Shattered Pixie
4. Ericulous
5. Brian Gardner
6. Solo Stream - mostly premium
7. Magnus Jepson

If you have other links in mind and would like to share them here, please leave me a note and I will add them on the list. Thanks!