So… I apologise to anyone who commented in the last year… and finds their comment gone. It was just a moment of stupidity.

I really should be studying right now – considering I’m sitting the supp exam for Tax on Monday. But somehow, you always find the most distracting things to do when you should be studying. So here I am like 6 months after my last post, playing around with my blog. I really actually should try to blog properly – but as if that’s going to happen any time soon. Here’s hoping anyways.

Hrm. What’s with these ‘tags’ in wp now? (Am I showing how behind the times I am?)

I’ve noticed that if I blog on a regular basis (say once every 2-3 days) my posts tend to come out with more in-depth ramblings on general crap that people probably don’t care too much about. But, if I blog once a week I end up with like this “so I did this, and this, and this” type of entry which is fine but doesn’t really say too much beyond “that was fun”. I’m wary of writing too much on politics or religion or economics. My views on some things are fairly rigid and I don’t bend too easily when discussing those subjects. Then when it comes to say, things like the drought and the current water shortage in Australia well, I daresay there’s not a jot I can do about it. I know that’s a defeatist attitude, but I’m just geared that way.

I have realised though, that I haven’t really been doing much to expand my horizons lately. With uni at least, I was ‘learning’ stuff every week and doing things to keep me busy. Now, I go to work, I go to the gym, I go online occasionally, I watch a few TV shows and that’s kind of it. I try to meet up with friends when I can and keep up with all that they’ve been up to. I think maybe after years (literally) of always having to do something when I got home that I’m just not used to not having anything of substance to do. However, it doesn’t meant that I’m doing things I should be doing like practising violin, practising my driving or doing something constructive like building a website. I’m not really sure why that is. Even worse, I’m not getting to bed any earlier than when I was at uni. So I go to bed at 1am, get up at 7am and I go to work half-dead everyday. I’m fairly sure that if I keep it I’m just not going to make it through next year.

Then there’s things I’ve been thinking that I maybe should look into. Like, improving my cantonese or learning a new language or teaching myself php. I am very lazy and in some ways becoming used to having ‘little’ to worry about. A lot of people say that November is when the year feels slow. I certainly feel that way right now. I’ve got a few things planned during the end of November, but once December starts we’ll be into the silly season and that means next year will be right around the corner. Maybe it’s good to have some calm and less stress before the new year brings new adventures.

You can find his new site here: http://palchan.tylandrian.net 

It should be up and running very soon. I think that completes the major changes to both my blog and tylandrian.

That’s right. WordPress. Those of you that frequent my blog (yep, all three of you) will certainly appreciate this I think as it should cut down the spam comment problem and thus leave me without posts that have 89 gibberish comments selling x-rated whatever.

It should also make it easier for me to incorporate photos and links and possibly a photo gallery into my site. So yeap, give it about a week and everything should be running smoothly. Till then (=

So, the choices? Well, I’m not sure really. I found this rather useful breakdown of the different blogging software available. I know WordPress and drupal are some of the more popular ones. And drupal isn’t even covered by this thing.

Also currently looking at BLOG:CMS and Movable Type (but that costs money and is owned by Six Apart and that’s scary) and Nucleus CMS. I like that BLOG:CMS comes with an integrated photo gallery, because that saves me trying to find a photo gallery CMS thingy myself. Too much choice dammit ):

Have also found Serendipity which also uses Smarty Tags for formatting. This seems like a good thing, as bBlog also uses Smarty tags, and could prove easier for me to migrate. Hum.

So, I’ve disallowed comments on all previous posts except hte last 4 or so. And I’ll be using the bBlog feature that lets me set how long until comments are disabled. For now, I’ll probably make allow comments for 2 weeks and then it’ll auto-disable. Hopefully that’ll keep the number down for now.

I’ll blog properly later I think, right now, I want to keep watching One Tree Hill :D :D

Thanks to the code found here:
Added simple comment spam protection

If bBlog ever gets updated, hopefully they’ll add this to their features.

Yeah, take that stupid idiots. I just feel sorry for the people that say, don’t know about computers or databases and they would’ve been all upset that their thing borked.

In other news, I got my PL/pgSQL function WORKING today. YEAY!!!! It’s only a SMALL SMALL part of my thesis, but it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something and that’s heaps good :D Hopefully this weekend will be filled with lots of writing of technical jargon and showing off cool pictures. I LOVE pgAdmin III‘s “Explain” function. I mean, I know other programs have it, but I just like the way it visualises the query and makes this cool picture out of it. Very useful for seeing what’s going on, although the ‘subquery’ icon isn’t useful – would be good if the subquery would also be explained and expanded to show the little graphics thing.