Public Speaking Singapore Toastmasters

Finally it’s up for the year 2008 – A theme I could really called it my own.

I took 2 weeks to design ToaPayoh 2.o – a 3 column layout for the blog and when it was done, it just didn’t looked right.

I took another few days to build another … this time I want it to be identical to the main site. It’s not completely done. I just want it up by 1st Jan 2008.

Now it looks the same as the main site though not quite right for a blog. But at least I could claim – tis my creation.

I’ve signed up a new blog at Wordpress. It’s available at http://tpctmc.wordpress.com/

Not that I need another blog. Signing up with wordpress is the only way to obtain the API key to activate the plugin – Akismet.

Akismet it the plugin for Wordpress to stop comment spam which I am getting more this days.

Members who are interested to administer or blog at tpctmc.wordpress.com, let me know.

Wow, at last this theme’s done.

While some parts still need tweaking, the layout should be final.

The most difficult decision was perhaps the right bar:Â Should it be float right or absolute?

Let me put this down so that other members serving as webmasters would know why I made this decision.

If I position it float right, the navigation would have to come before the posting. That’s not very wise SEO. The search engines might even miss the content, though it’s unlikely.

I’ve set it to position absolute. Being absolute, I am able to place the navigation right at bottom. That guarantee fresh contest at each crawl.

The only setback is, if posting is too short, or as I continue to expand the sidebar, it will be longer than the posting. thereby creating an ugly sight: The sidebar overlapping the footer.

Way to get around:

1. Increase the height of the comment box.
2. Add another sidebar.

When the time comes, I shall change width to 1024px and add another sidebar.
That settles it.

The transfer of data is almost done.

This domain was down when the nation celebrates its National Day.

2pm to 4pm – totally down. I was caught offguard.

4pm to 6 pm the main domain was up.

7.30 pm this subdomain – TPCTMC was finally up.

There could be some missing links. Some images may fail to appear.

They will be fixed gradually.

There’s only one concern.

Those who had registered before. I do not know if the system will reject your login. If that happens, write to me and let me know.

Several default settings were beyond my control. I could turn it back, but I need to be notified.

Thanks to Gerald Kong of Pixeldot and Benny Huang of W3Hub. They were there answering my queries, providing the support despite the holiday.

We are in the process of switching host.

I do not know what to expect. there might be an interruption.

If you are unable surf our site, kindly send me a mail to: eskayng@singnet.com.sg

I’ll write to you once things are in order.

If you have noticed, I’ve added a book cover to the navigation bar. It’s a timeless classis “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen.

This classic needs no introduction.

This book now belongs to the Public Domain, so you may download freely.

It’s compiled in PDF format, so Acrobat Reader is required to read this file.

It’s compressed with Winzip so you’ll need to download one to unzip.

For plain text version , visit Project Gutenberg to download.

VPPR

I was just told that visitors are unable to register. I was beginning to suspect something was wrong as there have been no posting since I made the switch.

The fix may take some time.

Meanwhile you may want to read thers 2 great articles that were posted recently:

tpctmc.starising.com/speechcraft.html
http://www.tpctmc.org/speechcraft.html

tpctmc.starising.com/typ-ruwithme.html
http://tpctmc.org/are-you-with-me.html
They have yet to be added to the navigational bar as I am giving the contributors time to proof read. So they are not official. Since you’re here, you’re the first to know.

vppr

I wrote about the rss feeder some time back.

If you do not like the idea of installing another software in your pc or find learning another program too time consuming, here is the alternative:

There’s new browser known as FireFox 1.0.

Its an open source from the Mozilla project taken from Netscape.

Here’s the attractive part. This browser has a feature of saving blogs into bookmarks. (That’s favourite in IE).

When you see the blog ( orange air wave) symbol at the bottom right corner of the status bar above the time, you know its a blog.

Just click that symbol to save as favorite. By looking at the bookmark pulldown, you see the updated titles of each posting.

It has other special features, like multipe pages viewing, searches, popup blocking,etc. Go visit that site and read up for yourself.

As a webmaster, I depend on this browser to check my codes. It’s more unforgiving than IE6. When I made a mistake in my HTML codes, the page shows up in IE6, but in Firefox, it displays my mistakes … an ugly and messy page …..

In my last posting I refer you to a site known as Project Gutenberg. Try visiting with this browser.

You ain’t know what you’re missing.

Good News
I am in the process of bringing in another blogging software. More powerful. How does it looks like: Its looks in any way we want it to be. See :
http://www.starising.com/wordpress/
http://www.starising.com/blog/

Why I had 2 blogs. Long story. It was supposed to be a transfer and I lost the data along the way. But why the need for transfer.

Bad News
There’s a slight problem with this program – b2
It’s an abandon project. Thus no further revision. Some features are not funtioning.

I still love b2. It’s so simple. Really much easier. I setup b2 within 20 minutes. The other program took days and I am still struggling.

Both have bugs. One permanent, and the other still making improvement.

The Ugly.
Its going to be messy. These few things will occur:
1 change of domain from
1a tpctmc.starising.com/b2
1b to tpctmc.starising.com/blog
1c or tpctmc.starising.com/wordpress
2 lost or corruption of login database
3 operation failure – all data lost or stuck in the mysql but not extractable and other unpredictable consequences.

How long will that take?
I won’t know. It takes longer to feed than to kill.

There’ll be no interuption to any posting. I don’t believe in “under construction ” sign. IT IS ALWAYS under construction.

Dear Eskay ,Thank you for weloming me to the “Blog” since it’s launching 27/1/105 as welll as introducing me to the “Poet’s Corner” on the Net.
“The Tip of the day’ is very up-lifting! Keep up the good work.I can see
your great efforts taking shape and will eventually spread it’s wings far and wide.
Though the RSS reader/track back etc are very “chim”,I’ll try to learn one step at a time, not losing sight of the good opportunity.
Congratulations once more!