WordPress “Official Comment” Plugin

I thought it’d be cool and be even more egomaniac to make my own comments become stand out a little more from everyone else’s with this plugin.

1. Download Official Comments plugin in.
2. Place and unzip the file in /wp-contents/plugins/ directory
3. Edited /wp-contents/themes/_theme_of_choice/comments.php and added the following to line 29 (adds a nice css style to the comment box):

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< li class="comment <?php echo (is_wpuser_comment() ? ' commentOfficialUser' : ''); ?>" id="comment-&lt?php comment_ID() ?>">

4. On the same file, also added the following to line 30:

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<?php if(is_wpuser_comment() != 0) {echo "Official comment from ";} ?>

5. Complete the set up by adding the following css code to /wp-contents/themes/_theme_of_choice/style.css

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.commentOfficialUser {
        border: 1px solid #bbb;
        background-color: #ddd;  
        }

WordPress “Comment Preview” Plugin

Added a preview window in the “comments” section:

1. Download Comment Live Preview plugin.
2. Place and unzip the file in /wp-contents/plugins/
3. Edited /wp-contents/themes/_theme_of_choice/comments.php and added the following to line 98:

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<?php live_preview() ?>

Not that you guys don’t already know what you are typing, it’s just nice to see everything pre-formatted right in front of your eyes before it’s submitted.

Online Registries

When Grace and I were getting married, we wanted to have the option for our Asian friends to give us cash instead of a registry of gifts. Besides, we’d already got almost everything we need. A registry would be redundant. After some research, I was surprised that Felicite is the only place online that offers cash as well as product registry.

I am sure there are other services available nowadays. But Felicite was the only option at the time.

On this, Murdza mentioned an idea to help finance a new house for a couple: An interactive illustration of the house with clickable items available for donation. In other words, if I wanted to donate an entire door, I can click on the door and add that to my donation cart. Once it’s done, my name would appear on the door as the donor (just on the illustration, of course). Pretty cool idea.

Flying Crap

This entry is a little disgusting. So consider yourself warned before reading on.

After my last post about Bryan’s crazy pees, there’s been a new experience since. A couple of days ago, Bryan complained about a diaper change while he was half way through with the bottle (he kicked while sucking on the bottle).

If it were me, I’d want to enjoy my bottle of milk with a clean diaper too. So I decided to change his diaper. That’s when the shit hit the fan…

A medium size poop already made its way in the diaper when I opened it. So I proceeded with my routine butt-wiping diaper change. But as soon as I wiped his butt clean, Bryan started to make this funny face…

It takes a short moment to properly interpret the expression… And then OH SHIT!!

Before I open the soiled diaper to catch it, a yellow tube of poop (about 3 cm in diameter and 8 cm long) flew right out of his butt in an arch, passing over my hand and landed on the changing pad. OH MY GOD. I have never seen flying poops before… not to mention having one landed right in front of my face. Thank god it didn’t stink.

To make matters worse, before I could figure out exactly what to do with his warm and soft poop, he started peeing all over the place.

Bryan smiled with a sign of relief. I laughed.

And then just yesterday after we brought Bryan home from the doctor’s, he started another episode of his crazy pees, except this time, it was literally all over the room, even in Grace’s hair (right after she’d showed and dried it, hah hah).

We both laughed so hard till our stomaches ached. I wonder if we’ll still laugh the 5th time it happens…

Over There

NPR aired an interview with Steven Bochco, the executive producer of a new show on FX, “Over There“. The interview got me interested enough to want to at least check out the show.

Days later, I’d completely forgotten about the interview, but somehow I stumbled upon the show anyway one night. It was the rerun of the premiere. The show follows the lives of a small combat unit in Iraq. Though none of actors in the series are well known, their acting is fantastic. The show focuses on the human aspects of the war from the perspectives of the soldiers as well as their family members. Al though the show takes no political stance on the war, the intense story telling and “Saving Private Ryan” type filming of combats take the audience on a roller coaster ride they grow more and more attached to the soldiers.

All I have to say is, it sucks to be in a war, combat or anything that involves killing or to be killed. I wonder had George W. Bush been in Vietnam instead of hiding in Texas behind his daddy’s political might, would he have waged the wars as he did?

What a jackass.

Switcher’s Friend

Outlook2Mac image If you or know anyone who’s considered switching to the Mac but was held back because they couldn’t figure out what to do with their gazillion emails and attachments, Outlook2Mac is the answer.

A while ago at my last job, I had to look for a solution to easily transfer everything from the CEO’s dying Sony Viao laptop to her spanking new 12″ PowerBook. It took me a while to exhaust all solutions on the Outlook (and the attachments) issue. Finally I broke down and bought Outlook2Mac. It’s one of those life-saving specialty softwares you think you’d never use.

All that work, though, went to waste. She soon switched back to an IBM Thinkpad and just didn’t see the usefulness in her PowerBook. She claimed that it was an unreliable piece of metal. But I think its unreliability may have something to do with her knocking it against walls/tables/grounds a few times.

Pirates Are Here

Pirates of Silicon Valley DVD set And we thought this day would never come. It’s on DVD!! What were the distributors thinking to even put out a VHS version?

Murdza, our wait is over… The Gospel is spreading…

It was worth the wait, damn it!

Friends and family, you know what to do when the next great American tradition of gift-giving season is around…

A Car Fit for a God

There are a few things I can’t stop wondering about Steve Jobs…
1. What kind of car he drives…
2. What kind of cell phone he uses…
3. What kind of PDA he plays with…
4. What kind of mouse he used (before the “Mighty Mouse” )…

Well, today I finally found a site that gave me an insight to SJ Obsession #1. According to an ex-employee, he drives a Mercedes MB SL65, BMW Z8 and some sort of Volvo wagon. And none of his cars has license plates; posts on the site claims that since his license plates kept getting stolen, local law enforcement agencies struck a deal with him…. Nuts.

I am also happy to report that I also got my SJ Obsession #4 resolved. Just driving by his house would be like taking a peek at God’s house… Murdza, I will send you a picture of it if I don’t die snapping a shot of it first… Steve has rights too… So I don’t think I’d be publishing a picture of his house on the Internet for all to see.

Recent rumors of him jumping into the CA governor race is just silly. But I wouldn’t mind helping with his political campaigns if he did run. Seeing how he revived, reinvented Apple and made it relevant again, California sure could use a governor that can pull its current state of financial and educational slump out of the gutter.

via [The Unofficial Apple Weblog]

Original Unix Lab Dismantled

The original lab that invented Unix at AT&T has officially been shut down. This very team started it all: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, HP HP-UX, Compaq Tru64, Linux (RedHat, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo… etc), SCO Unix, IBM AIX, Sun Microsystems Solaris, SGI IRIX and then of course, Mac OSX, all of which derived from the original Unix conceived at the Bell Labs.

And then there is Microsoft, DOS and then Windows (3.1 through XP), the legacy Mac OS, and let’s not forget OS/2. There are others that never made it to the mainstream, but who cares.

After looking at this large list of Unix operating systems v.s. the rest, it’s a no brainer that Apple decided to go with a Unix-based strategy to capitalize on its maturity and stability.

Cry Babies

Before there was science and logic, “old school” parents have this deeply rooted belief that babies, even the newborns, are the masters of mind manipulations. Those are the parents who are self-proclaimed life-experience childrearing experts, such as my mother (and countless others).

They swear by the ingeniousness and cunningness of babies and how they are all conspired to manipulate us adults. Well, there may be some truth in what they believe in as it turns out. They think they babies cry to manipulate adults to hold them so that the babies don’t have to be alone. To remedy this and to teach them to be more independent (read: lazy parenting), the solution, they argue, is to let them cry themselves to sleep. This way, they don’t get spoiled at a very young age.

What a load of crap. (No offense, moms of the old tradition.)

Every single one of early childhood development and education books I have owned and read (published after my birthday) states this simple fact: infants and young toddlers don’t have the cognitive means to comprehend the meaning of “manipulation”, let alone actually doing it. The only way to explain why babies cry (and why they stop crying as soon as you react to their cries) is just asking for help. Birgit puts it best:

If you didn’t speak any language and you wanted someone to help you, what would you do? If you were really hungry, you’d cry too!

Yeah, no shit. There are only three reasons as to why pre-lingual babies cry:
1. Hunger.
2. Discomfort (wet/soiled diaper, fever, stomach ache… etc).
3. Companionship and love.

Many modern studies show that babies who’s needs are attended to will grow up with more self-esteem, self-confidence and a more positive view of the environment around them (even NPR says so). But having their needs met immediately, they grow up believing that the world is a safe place. This probably has to do with why most of my American and European friends (whose parents most likely subscribe to the more infant-friendly philosophy) have way more self-esteem and confidence over most of my Asian friends (whose parents subscribe to the don’t-spoil-them philosophy). This is not to say that culture and traditions have nothing to do with it though.

Unfortunately, to much of my dismay, the “let-them-cry” practice is still widely accepted among much of the Asian community. I wonder why they aren’t more educated about the latter method. Even some immediate friends around me still believe in the practice.

Wrap your mind around some new ideas, people. Attend to your babies and don’t just let them cry for hours and on. They can’t talk; they cry for a reason!

UPDATE: Ironically, my mom thinks the infant-friendly practices are just theories; they are not practical. When I brought up the logics behind the infant-friendly practices, backed by countless research and experiments by researchers/authors who are also parents, she brushed them off and said my arguing with her is what happens when one becomes too academic and book smart. Coming from someone who’s whole life has been trying to put more education under our belts is a little confusing and alarming. I have also tried to use similar points and strategies arguing about my sister’s behavioral problems and how the family should deal with them (long story). Her sentiments are the same. Sometimes I do think experience can be a burden to one’s attitude towards learning.

Here’s a list of sites that support the theory:
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/human/pubs/infant.html
http://www.humsci.auburn.edu/abell/beeprogram/links/resourceupdates/infants/crying/crying.htm
http://www.vtaide.com/png/ERIK1.htm
http://babiestoday.com/resources/articles/cry.htm
http://www.brandnewdad.com/monthbymonth/three-months-old/teachyourbabytotrust.asp
http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/parenting/crying_baby.shtml
http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/articles/parenting/cfspoil.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/your_kids/babies_crying.shtml
http://www.drgreene.com/21_5.html
http://www.bchealthguide.org/healthfiles/hfile92b.stm
http://target.com/target_baby/ii_article_07_e.jhtml
http://www.maternitymall.com/homeMInfo.asp?SelectCase=Article&CategoryId=1&PageLp=1&ArticleId=353&SubCategoryId=1

In fact, I challenge anyone to produce a credible study that shows attending to crying infants can indeed spoil them and that they are just manipulative bastards.