eric.setiawan.weblog

It’s been 4 months since the first time I blog. It was May 2005 and I was a fool. I think I still is.

There was Friendster. It supposed to be connecting friends and it did. I find my long lost friends here. Great. If my mind don’t fail me, this is where I made my first blog. It was nice and weird at the same time and I decided to delete that blog. It’s true.

There was Yahoo! 360. I was invited and for the first time I really do some writings here. At first I still use Bahasa Indonesia. It’s fun and I mostly wrote jokes. I enjoy it too. Everytime I read these posts I can’t stop smiling :) How can I wrote such things?

There was Blogger and not a single clue. At that time, I feel Blogger is a big step for me into the big big blogosphere. And for the first time I have to get face to face with HTML and CSS codes. Otherwise I can’t change any of my blog’s layout. No problem. In the end of this era, I can do some re-coding, get familiar with web standards, how to blog, etc. But still have no clue.

There was Blogsome. It was good. And it use Wordpress. Nice. I learn what I believe to be an intermediate class of blogging service. I can customize some of the parts but no more. This time I can get to design my own layout. Do you like it? I do. But the more I knew the more I need. I want more which Blogsome cannot give. This blog may live shortly but undoubtly memorable. Goodbye Blogsome.

There is Wordpress.com. Full of dynamics. It uses WordpressMU under Wordpress 1.6 alpha. In term of customizability, this one is certainly the worst. I can’t change virtually anything. I just post and post and post all those entries with default theme. But I don’t whine since it gave me something more. Progress and development. I can get to see firsthand of what the WP dev team doing. I do send some feedbacks to them. And I can get a chance to be listed on number 6 on Top Wordpress.com blogs today. Great. There’s some achievements I made here, some new friends and of course recognition from other bloggers. This is still going on with some deep thoughts in my mind.

There is ericsetiawan.com. The supposed to be my last home. My weblog. It still uses Wordpress, version 1.5.2 this time, and no plan to switch to other blog engine. You do yours and I’ll do mine. I get everything I dreamed of and more here. In fact, I was caught unprepared. I don’t understand PHP and now I have to face it. So now I’m using a K2 basic template, unchanged. I remembered Budi once said that now I’m turning into more of a blogger than a web designer or developer. For your information, I’m an architect. I want to learn more coding. HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, XML and all the stuffs. But living a life one step at a time, those stuffs are a couple of steps ahead. This is where I am now.

You know where this is going. I’m closing this weblog down. Again I use the same date, 17th. I know today is September 22nd. But I want to use 17 anyway. And by editing the time stamp, I can do so. It’ like I can travel back in time. I still keep the archives here though. I just don’t post here anymore. So I really really hope that all of you my friends and readers to start visiting my new weblog. Preferablly the ericsetiawan.com one. And you might want to change my RSS feed on your agregator too. I’ve been changing blog so often but I hope you don’t get bored of me. So please stay with me. Change the course, Mr. Zulu. We’re heading for a new destination.

So finally I get THE wordpress.com account. Not from Matt though LOL. I got it from someone else. My first impression of wordpress.com and its WPMU/WP 1.6 alpha version is that it still need lots of improvement but I see the potential. There are some changes. The CMS seems more user-friendly (so WP is for everybody not just for the tech guy). And I see that Donncha already implement some of what Matt said as the AJAXy thing. That is AJAX the asynchronous javascript and XML, not the AJAX Amsterdam. Overall, I can’t wait to try it firsthand. You all can visit my wordpress.com blog through the top navbar or simply put http://eric.wordpress.com on your browser. Don’t expect much since I can’t tweak the HTML and CSS code. Oh, and don’t you worry, I won’t leave this blog here. I will still post here. There’s some dilemma of course. But let me handle that. Just stay with me and I’ll keep writing. Promise?

So, can I self-proclaiming that I’m the first Eric ever to use wordpress.com? LOL.

Budi gave me this link which apparently is some kind of baton/tag. But I didn’t think of it as an analysis. How can they analysis my past life? My guess is that they combine astrological sign with Chinese or other. Whatever, let’s enjoy this.

I don’t know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Iran around the year 850. Your profession was that of a map maker, astrologer, astronomer.

Your brief psychological profile in your past life: Artistic personality, always transforming the ugly into the beautiful, gray into bright colors. You would find an opportunity of creative self-expression in any situation.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation: Your main lesson is to develop magnanimity and a feeling of brotherhood. Try to become less adhered to material property and learn to take only as much, as you can give back.

Do you remember now?

Okay, I admit that I love the sky, so that somehow has something to do with the “astologer, astronomer” thing. And I’m an architect who love comics, movie, design and many other art form. That should fit with the artistic personality, ugly-beautiful, gray to bright and so on. The lesson itself is nice. So I have to take only as much as I can give back. I should keep that in my mind. But one thing cross my mind, in a funny way, am I that old? Born in the year 850, my soul must be 1155 years old. Wow, with that age, shouldn’t I get wiser by now? Btw, I never been to Iran before and don’t plan to. Oh, and I was a female. What else could beat that? And no, I don’t remember.

Life doesn’t always have to be about running or reaching your goal. Sometimes you just need to stand there for a while, take a few step back and use that moment to really, and I mean really, re-thinking your journey in life. After all, like Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards”. So this is about me, trying to connecting my dots in life, somehow. Not that I live a depressed life or desperate or else. In fact, the way all things around me evolve lately are just fine but they were so fast it makes me a bit confused. You live your life just once and you can’t take two roads with one step at one time. You have to choose. Not an easy task but I, like everybody else, should do so. That’s what our journey is about, making choices with our conscience to reach the end. Our end and His end. It seems some of my dots are starting to show up but still need lots of adjustment work, time, and oh.. I could always use some extra time to sleep. May be the real problem is that I have (and want) to do so many things but with limited time to do it. So it’s all back to personal time management. I guess Just Relax is not so relaxed anymore LOL. See, this introspection works out just fine, even on a blog post. Now I will stop my rants and ramblings. Enjoy your life. Meanwhile I have a life to maintain here.

Oh, Matt a.k.a Photomatt is giving away invitation to WordPress.com. If you want it, you have to write a good comment or post about what will you do if you have it. Well? Should I do it? Why not? What will I do? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m just thinking that since this wp.com thing is still new, maybe I can get myself a first-name domain. That is eric.wordpress.com. With so many Erics in this world, to have a domain like that would be cool, isn’t it? That’s one very unimportant and unnecessary reasons LOL. Anyway, this is a great way to distribute an invitation. And in some ways, this is also a way to promote WordPress further. Besides, for a blog engine, what better way to advertise than to use the blogger-buzz. Keep on blogging, guys. Me too. I’ll just wait for the invitation to shows up on my e-mail box. Whenever it may be.

• Wearing Firefox

Read Joi Ito’s story when he was wearing Firefox shirt. What’s the reaction of the people he meet on Detroit. A fun story to read :)

• Google Talk

So, after seeing the success of Yahoo!Messenger, I guess the Google guys were eager to get their feet on the side of the field. The look and design are good with minimalist touch of Google. They have the call feature which I thought will be a cool addition. And for Gmail users, you’ll love it since it was using Gmail account and embeded with Gmail notifiew. But in the chatting-area, they seems not to offer much. Unlike YM, GTalk doesn’t offer conference chat which is quite useful for me. And for the fun lover, you won’t see cute emoticons here :) Correct me if I’m wrong, or maybe I should do some more exploring here since I just only install it a couple of hours ago.

• Game-inspired cookies

For cookies lovers who also just happen to be a game lovers. Follow the links above and you’ll get to see some inspiring photos. Maybe you want to make some yourself? Don’t forget to share some with me.

Hey, that’s one big change you got there, guys. I’ve been scouring for its content on the oldALA for some time, which I just found out it was version 3.0 and also meaning that they have had 2 other version before that. With the big names in Web Standards teaming up (Meyer and Zeldman), I am expecting to see something extraordinary. Am I asking too much? Well, the designing job went to Jason Santa Maria and I think it’s quite good. It got its clean and minimalist look. But forgive me, I can’t stop but comparing this new ALA with Stylegala. Frankly speaking, I like Stylegala better. Maybe that’s because I got used to 3.0 version and think of it as THE ALA style. Or maybe because of their new concept as Zeldman said “the design has a classic, almost scholarly feeling, although there is a hint of teasing play behind elements like the laurel wreath”. So, I guess it was only my subjective opinion. CSSing went to Eric Meyer (who else?) who I still see as (one of) the CSS master. I, as some of the commenters on Meyer’s article, was asking about the flexibility of the design. Try using 800x600 resolution and you’ll get yourself a nice sideway scroll. I’m assuming that there still no 360 degree scrolling mouse on sale except the Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The good thing is I don’t have to mentioned that they’re HTML and CSS valid, do I? Oh, and have I mentioned that this new ALA using Ruby on Rails for their publishing system? Cool. And I can’t wait to see these

Each issue will have its own color scheme. Imagine: Red and green for Christmas; blue underlined links for when Jakob Nielsen finally writes for us.

So can I start expecting those whites to turn into reds and greens or else?

There are only a few blog theme designer that I admire and one of them is Michael Heilemann. Some of you might have noticed that my blog here once use the Kubrick theme. And I have to admit it, the reconstruction of the layout were based on Kubrick. So far I’ve been hearing about K2 theme. I’ve seen it on alpha testing on Michael’s and Barry’s blog and finally K2 beta one is released. Great. Another theme for WordPress are available. If you like it, download it. If you don’t I don’t think you’re going to read my post this far LOL. Good job, Michael.

I tried to leave a comment on my friend’s blog. Nothing extraordinary except that I got this message afterward and I guess this mean my comment didn’t get through at all.

Sorry, you’ve been prevented from commenting on this blog.

Either your comment content was found to contain spam, or
your IP address (or a subnet of your IP address) has spammed this blog before.

If you think you got this page in error, your entered name might be too short.

You can also complain to wp.spaminator@gmail.com. View source to see why you got blocked.

Strike count: 5

To my friend, if you read this, it’s okay. Really. I find it quite amusing instead. Although I am a bit worried if my IP address somehow has “spammed this blog” before. I ruled out the posibility of entering my name too short since I always use that name on every comment I wrote before. Or is it possible that I wrote something spammy? I never thought of myself as a spammer before. I just don’t want to end up on Priyadi’s list of spammer on his Disinfo Busting category. I am curious though. Do I even have the look to be one?

You might have guessed it right and you find it silly. Yes, this has connection with my previous entry. As silly as this might be, I am sure this will be helpful for the beginner bloggers like me. Have you ever wonder what type of font should we use on our blog? I’ve tried some of on-the-list fonts such as Trebuchet, Arial, Georgia. But now I’m settle with the Lucida Grande. If you don’t have this font on your computer I guess you’re working on a non-Mac. And if you do have, then you’re a Mac-lover or you install it on your PC. Then the PC-users (that including me, the authors himself who still use a PC) should have another good font to look at. My choice went to either Tahoma or Verdana. And I chose not to blow its size on the monitor. Instead I use 11px size and the magic is within the next clue. Use 15-17px line-height. That should do it. At least for me, I now see my blog’s entry easy and nice to read. Combine with my previous hint, you get yourself a good look for your blog. Enough talking (that’s me) and reading (that’s you), now you can try it yourself. If you have other hints and tips, you can just share it here.