[Recap] August 2007

August 2007 Recap is here ^^ for those of you who may have missed one or two posts here at zlythern ;)

1. Blogger

Blogger: Add Video Feature is Here !, August 24
With the mark of Blogger's Eight Birthday, we all have a present. A nice one. Yes, as the title suggest, Blogger Add Video Feature is here ! Simply click the icon, and then upload your video ;)

Daily Blog Tips's Pro Blogger Test, August 7
Becoming a professional blogger is no easy task. You will need to have a basic knowledge on several fields; including web design, SEO, online marketing and more. Do you think you have what it takes? Test your skills with these 20 questions!

2. Comic

Wikipedia as Cartoons, August 17
Greg Williams a designer and illustrator for The Tampa Tribune in Tampa, Florida, made a brilliant collection of cartoon versions of Wikipedia entries ^^

3. Freeware

Print Your Own Free Software Sticker Book, August 7
This one is for those of you who wanted to paste a cool sticker on your laptop or pc ;) The .pdf Sticker Book includes a set of stickers related to free software projects.

4. Games

Remember GAME & WATCH ?, August 3
I used to own one of these ! I played every single time when it's possible, even at schools :P

5. Icons

E Plus X Smilies, August 27
Recently i've been doin some smilies for E Plus X ^^ So i thought i will share my work here too, you may use it anywhere else ;)

6. Knowledge

Create and Memorize A Secure Password, August 20
some good points of how to make a secure password yet it's easy enough for you to memorize it ;)

Death by Caffeine, August 15
It provides a rough gauge of reaction to caffeine - and typically corresponds to the amount of caffeine in your system over a 4 hour period. There is obviously enormous variation between individual response - and this should be construed as entertainment only ;)

7. Personal

Enjoy The New zlythern v.3.3, August 17
Enjoy a whole brand new zlythern v.3.3 :D A PHOENIX one ;) This design should work really well on both FF and IE ;)

Republic of Singapore, August 8
Singapore is a nice small island which is a country ;) Since the first time i moved in to Singapore to find a job, this city, this country is a pleasant place to live in :)

8. Tools

How to Measure Your Post's Readability, August 22
One of the most important aspect of blog posts (in my opinion) is the READABILITY. Try this nice tool! And add another chunk of a good information to feed your brain ;)

Loripscream - Generatively Delicious!, August 6
Lorem Ipscream offers a whole lotsa new flavor for this Lorem Ipsum text ;) Basically it was a neat text-generator :D

Button Boost - A Real Nice Button Generator, August 1
With ButtonBoost.com you can create quick and easy professional looking buttons for your website, application or whatever you want.

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That is all folks, this month recap ^^ Hope you do all enjoy the posts ;)

E Plus X Smilies

E Plus X is a local forum in Indonesia. I joined the forum back in 2006, i found the site through another forum :P The other forum is babaflash, and indonesia flash forum :)

One of E Plus X administrator submit a flash game to babaflash, and because of it's cute and unique style of the art, then i came by and drop over at their forum. Since then, it was one of my regular stop ;)

I mean look at the above picture ;) who would've resist the temptation to meet those creator right ;) They are just so adorable ^^

The boy and girl there is the creator of E Plus X, which stands for Ernitan and Xhen, the name of the creator ;)

And they have a lot of goodies too, they have a calendar, and wallpapers, with E Plus X theme of course ;) You can grab 'em too (click the picture) below.

Anyway, recently i've been doin some smilies for E Plus X ^^ So i thought i will share my work here too, you may use it anywhere else ;) a link back here will do just fine :) no need to ask my permission to use it :)

The first two smilies are originally designed by Xhen from E Plus X, the rest is by me, i use Xhen's as a template for the head and body ;) Meanwhile there's still only Erni's style smilies, the girl version :)

So .. here you go ^^

hmm ... droll ...

LOL ... XD ... doh ... :D ...

cool (nerd version) ... T_T cry ...

swt ... :P tongue ... shy ...

:| ... jee ... mad ...

:) smile version 1 ... :) smile version 2 ...

:) smile version 3 ... :) smile version 4 ...


That's all for now :) Enjoy, and have a fresh start of the week ^^

Oh, one final bonus for you all on Blogger, Aditya has a great script to display Blogger Smilies ;)

Blogger: Add Video Feature is Here !

With the mark of Blogger's Eight Birthday, we all have a present. A nice one. Yes, as the title suggest, Blogger Add Video Feature is here ! Thanks to the brilliant observation from Orli at go2web2, i would've missed that little icon though ;P


Simply click the icon, and then upload your video ;)



This a great addition to all the Blogger ;)

Have a nice weekend everybody ^^ and happy video-blogging ;)

[via: go2web2]

Update: Check out the Official Buzz from Blogger the Add Video Feature;)

How to Measure Your Post's Readability

Everybody who blog, have a different style in writing their own blog posts. One of the most important aspect of blog posts (in my opinion) is the READABILITY. But this of course, went back again to the readers. Either the readers are the geeky type, the social type, the adult type, or anythin', they share different point-of-view of readability on a blog posts.


justwebcontent.com have a nifty Readability Analysis Tool.

The test will measure 7 aspects of readability :

Gunning Fox Index

A test designed to measure the readability of a sample of English writing. The resulting number is an indication of how many years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text. For example, if a passage has a fog index of 12, it has the reading level of a high-schooler. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors.

Flesch Reading Ease

An indicator of how difficult a reading passage is to understand. The test rate the text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier the text is to understand.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

Translate the Flesch Reading Ease's 100-point scale to an approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text.

Automated Readability Index

Index of understandability of a text which relies on characters per word, instead of the usual syllables per word. Its output is an approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text.

Coleman-Liau

Like the ARI but unlike most of the other indices, Coleman-Liau relies on characters instead of syllables per word. Characters are more readily and accurately counted by computer programs than are syllables.

Linsear Write

Based on syllable density within English text and was developed for the US Air Force to help calculate the readability of technical manuals.

SMOG (Simple Measure Of Gobbledygook)

A readability formula that estimates the years of education needed to understand a piece of writing.

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Overall, this is a nice tool to use, and another chunk of a good information to feed our brain ;)

Head on to wikipedia for more Readability Test information ;)

Create and Memorize A Secure Password

Recently i read a nice article from Sabahan, about 5 Quick Tricks to Create Thousands of Memorable & SecurePasswords

There are some good points of how to make a secure password yet it's easy enough for you to memorize it ;)

The article wrote by Gaman discussed 5 tricks, today i decided to put up 3 diagrams for you to better understand the trick ;)

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Using a combination of consonant and vowels can generate a fairly secure password that is easy to memorize ;)

You can include all the consonant and vowels, or you can vary them, let's say using only the first 2 characters of each consonant and vowels ;)

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The second method which is quite handy, involved in words shifting, or i rather say it keyboard shifting ;)

If you're already adept at typing with all your ten-fingers, then this is definitely will become one of your favourite ;) All you have to do is shift your initial typing position to the left once ;) If it hits the limit on the left, you can always shift it to the right ;)

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The third method, involved the so popular default password :P your date of birth. The trick here is to replace some of the character with your birth date. See the above illustration. This is quite hard to type in though, but still fairly easy to memorize ;)

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But then again, quoting from Gaman's article

To create better and secure password, you should

• Include both uppercase and lowercase letters
• Include alphabetic characters (A-Z), numbers(0-9) and symbols (@#$%^&())
• Do not use a dictionary word or common name
• Create a password with at least 6-8 characters
• Change your password frequently

The rest of the 5 Quick Tricks to Create Thousands of Memorable & SecurePasswords article is worth your time to read ;)

I think i can regularly change my password now, since i found an easy method, yet i can be sure that my password is secure ;)

Enjoy The New zlythern v.3.3

Since a long time, i always wanted to switch my design to the new blogger layout. But then i reverted back, since i wanted to make my own design.

After a while, i get a grasp of the new layout thing, and launch an initial release of the so called zlythern v.3 :P

The next step was to choose a theme for the colors of the new zlythern v.3. Learn a lot from choosing color, seeing how colors are match each other, and so on :P

And now, it's the big time ! Enjoy a whole brand new zlythern v.3.3 :D A PHOENIX one ;)

This design should work really well on both FF and IE ;)

Here some comparison of the old zlythern v.2 and the zlythern v.3

I do really kinda missed the old dragon theme though :D i believe it's quite popular among you guyz :P

Bid adieu for the crappy zlythern v.3 :P


Credits goes to these people:

Arts and Images taken from

• forace - DeviantArt
• whitehaiku - DeviantArt
• dreamon72 - DeviantArt
• tifanie - DeviantArt
• quistwm - DeviantArt
• fancolas - DeviantArt
• wuz - DeviantArt
• sirladysketch - DeviantArt
• blacklillian - DeviantArt

Colours

• iam_starscream from ColourLovers

CSS and Layout is heavily based from Web Designer Wall by Nick La. I always been a fan of his work.

Thanks for all of you guyz.

And also to all of my readers :) who still came by to read ;)

Comments and critics are all welcomed ^^

Have a nice weekend (again) ;)

Wikipedia as Cartoons

Lately there's a lot of buzz going on wikipedia. Everybody knows that wikipedia is open for public to edit an article. So, yes you do can imagine there's some who used it for their own goods. This is earth. Nobody as pure as a dove ! Live with it !

Apart from wikipedia given much knowledge, if you are concerned by that 'editing' part. Then do your research ! Go to a library, lurked in those alley, grab the dusted books. Manual methods always work perfect.

Anyway, let's forget of all those things. This weekend we'll be spending a whole new view to wikipedia ;)

As, the title suggest, let's see Wikipedia as Cartoons ;)

Greg Williams a designer and illustrator for The Tampa Tribune in Tampa, Florida, made a brilliant collection of cartoon versions of Wikipedia entries ^^



Nice piece of work there Mr. Greg ^^ hm.. i wonder if someone will edit that page other than Mr. Greg himself :P

Have a nice weekend everybody :)



[via: Drawn!]

Death by Caffeine

Energy Fiend have created a tool to calculate how much caffeine intake will kill you :D



You can choose amongst 314 items in drinks that contain caffeine. The calculation only took your weight input and voila, go drink 75.23 cans of Starbucks Double Shot to kill yourself :P

Well, I (and maybe you) could say that 75.23 cans/cups is already passed my limit :P I should be dead already :P

So how is the tool calculate that intake number ? Is it per month ? Per week ? Daily ?

"It says that 10 bottles would kill me, but is that over a month, a day, a lifetime?!"

Well, the guys over there have an answer for this :

Let’s apply some common sense to this.

If you died after a lifetime consumpution of 200 cans of soda, most Americans wouldn’t make it past age 14. That’s clearly not the answer.

If you died after 200 cans of soda in a month, well, most of the loyal readers here might not have made it past age 30. It’s painfully easy to drink 6 cans daily, especially if you’re trying to stay awake to finish a project. Conversely, it’s about 142 cups of coffee for me. That’s under 5 per day. I can drink more than that with few side effects. It’s not monthly.

Weekly? That’s just a stupid measurement.

Daily? That’s actually believable. If you managed to ingest that much caffeine in one day, you won’t be feeling so hot. In fact you may be in serious trouble. Not everyone’s liver works at the same speed, and some people have reported feeling the effects of caffeine for a full 12 hours - for most people this is more like 4-5 hours.

Here’s the answer: IT’S HOW MUCH YOU HAVE TO HAVE IN YOUR SYSTEM AT ONE TIME.

Yes, it means that it’s practically impossible to kill yourself with caffeine. Practically. Don’t actually try it! After 1 gram, you’ll be a sad panda. If you manage to even challenge the number, you’ll be a schizophrenic, crazed panda, or a passed out panda. And if you’re passed out, you might get your wallet stolen.

They have provided The Caffeine Database. This database was built up using a decent details and observation, and they even did a research for it :)



So,

How accurate is pop-up caffeine calculator?

It provides a rough gauge of reaction to caffeine - and typically corresponds to the amount of caffeine in your system over a 4 hour period. There is obviously enormous variation between individual response - and this should be construed as entertainment only ;)

This tool is for entertainment purposes only. Nothing on here should be construed as medical advice or information. Don’t try this at home. If you actually try this and end up dying after only 140 energy drinks instead of 143, it’s not our fault.

Anyway, I think I will continue to have my cup of coffee this morning :P

Print Your Own Free Software Sticker Book

This one is for those of you who wanted to paste a cool sticker on your laptop or pc ;)

The .pdf Sticker Book includes a set of stickers related to free software projects. Now, you may remove Microsoft sticker from your computer ;) and choose some sticker of this book to replace it.


For around 6++MB, there are lotsa nice one :) this surely is a Sticker Book :D there are pages with one design of sticker, this were made to save your time on printing ;) well, maybe after you print these things, you can distribute and give 'em away for free to your friends too :D


Sure looks good on your laptop :) I'm gonna get one myself :D

Lastly, you can also participate in Sticker Book Project too, just send your sticker/s to stickers@pikao.org ^^

Republic of Singapore

Singapore in a nice small island which is a country ;) Since the first time i moved in to Singapore to find a job, this city, this country is a pleasant place to live in :)

Actually the name of Singapore is derived from the Malay word, which is Singapura. Which is formed by two words: singa (lion) and pura (city).

According to the Malay Annals, this name was given by a 14th century Sumatran Malay prince named Sang Nila Utama, who, on alighting the island after a thunderstorm, renamed it Singapura after spotting an auspicious beast identified as a lion.

Even the anthem song originally was in Malay ;) It's "Majulah Singapura" or "Onward Singapore" ;)

Many Singaporean people can sing the anthem, but only some that really understand it's Malay language :P Kinda funny i think :P But no worry, there's some translation for the "Majulah Singapura" :P

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Singapore is famous for it's Merlion statue. On the left is a picture of Merlion statue that I took using my S88 :) (with final editing in photoshop of course :P )

This is the Merlion statue on the Merlion Park, there's a larger an taller one at the Sentosa island, I must visit there when I have a time :)

Merlion is a statue with the head of a lion and the body of a fish (mermaid). Thus came the name Merlion ^^

It is so popular for Singapore, the first thing in my mind when hearing Singapore is this Merlion :P Because everytime someone, a friends or families, who got back from Singapore and bring some gifts, it was always a key-chain with the Merlion picture on it :P

There are other interesting places in Singapore. Lots of interesting places. From sports & recreational, to Arts, Museum, Park, so many of them. Still haven't got the chance to visits them all :P

Meanwhile, you can browse through my photo in flickr, some of the places i have been on Singapore :P I'll try post more photo when i visit another interesting place ;)

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As for the language here, mostly people in Singapore can speak English, since it was one of the primary language here. But i must say their English is quite awful ! Here we called it Singlish, a Singapore-English. The accent are mixed with Mandarin/Chinese language, and often the grammar too :P Kinda translate directly from Mandarin to English :P

I mean, I once saw a campaign on every Library in Singapore, about speaking a proper and good English. It was called the Speak Good English Movement, which is a nationwide movement to encourage Singaporeans to speak grammatically correct English that is universally understood. It is to get Singaporeans to speak English with confidence at work, at home and at play.

Some funny poster is saying that people in Singapore often speak "You want what?" which wrong in proper English :P
Those are only a few of a Singlish version :P

At first, it's very difficult to hear the English words that come out from Singaporean people :P not to mention from an Indian people here also :P

Singapore have a wide range of race and culture :) With Chinese as a majority, there are also Indian, Malay, Eurasian, Peranakan, Westerner and so on :)

Luckily they all (mostly) can speak English ;)

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Another thing I like from Singapore is it's Transports Services. I mean the domestic transports of course ;)

The domestic transport infrastructure is well-planned and well-built ! I must say you can go anywhere using this transports with minimum walking distance from the dropping point ;) The domestic transport has a well-connected island-wide road transport system which includes a network of expressways. The public road system is served by the nation's bus service and a number of licensed taxi-operating companies.

One of the well-connected are the SMRT trains. You can go almost anywhere in Singapore riding SMRT :)

We know that time is of the essence in today's busy world. That is why we have gone the extra mile to make your MRT journeys as fast, convenient, comfortable and affordable as possible.

With 51 stations covering all four corners of Singapore and trains arriving every few minutes, you can be assured of a speedy and enjoyable journey.

And yes, it's very fast to travel with SMRT :) you only need to wait a few minutes, for the next train to arrive. The longest is around 7-9 minutes, with the shortest wait time is around 3 minutes on peak time.

A little bit of un-comforting on SMRT is, the usual public transport problem. If you pick up on a peak time, and on area which is around work area / city area, you'll have to fight yourself trough the crowd :P Is was so crowded ! The chance you will get a seat is below 10% i guess :P

SBS Transit aims to provide world-class public transport which is safe, comfortable, affordable, reliable and friendly. Today, SBS Transit operates 217 route services with a scheduled fleet of more than 2,700 buses. The buses serve 16 interchanges and more than 3,000 bus stops.

Another options for domestic transports is the bus-services, the SBS Transit. It's a little cheaper on the fare. But sometimes it goes round, so you will travel a little bit longer compared to SMRT ;)

So, combine these two, then you're ready to travel across Singapore ;)

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Anyway, tomorrow, August 9th, is the National Day for Singapore ^^

Singapore became a self-governing state in 1959 with Yusof bin Ishak its first Yang di-Pertuan Negara and Lee Kuan Yew its first Prime Minister. Singapore officially gained sovereignty on 9 August 1965. Yusof bin Ishak was sworn in as the first President of Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew remained prime minister.

NDP is short for National Day Parade. It is a celebration held once a year in Singapore on the 9th of August to commemorate Singapore's independence. This year's NDP will be held at Marina Bay ^^

Unfortunately the tickets for the show is only for Singaporean or Permanent Residents. So if foreigners want to see the show, they'll have to catch up on the live broadcast :|


But then again, tomorrow is a holiday :) so I gonna to take a break from blogging :P

Happy holiday, and happy independence day to all who celebrate in Singapore ^^