2007 January

Writing Styles for Formal and Informal Communications

When the average person is in an instant message conversation, he won’t exactly use proper grammar and spelling (“lol” is a very common phrase). When writing a letter of recommendation to a university, one will spell check over and over again. People will talk differently under different conditions, and this surely shows it.

In an informal setting, such as instant messaging as I mentioned above, one needs to communicate quickly. Shortcuts for various words and phrases commonly overcome the need for correct spelling and grammar.

For formal communications, like when writing a letter, the quality of the writing will be very important to the recipient of the letter. One will generally take care to use correct spelling and grammar in his writing.

I often find myself following these “rules”. If you decide to pick them up, you will find that you can be both social and intelligent when communicating with others. if everyone follows my advice, we might have a better Internet (another piece of random advice).

Everyone’s Blogging About Blogging!

There happens to be this trend today with some so-called “probloggers” who write about little more than blogging itself on their blogs. While every person has their own opinion of what a blog is, there has to be some kind of standard defenition for the term ‘blog’. Now in my humble opinion, if someone is going to start a blog, they should actually write about something other than blogging. Write about things in the niche that you would locate yourself under (or to use Web 2.0 terminology, tag yourself with).

Some blogs, like Weblog Tools Collection, actually do something useful by posting links to plugins, themes and the like. In particular, Lorelle on WordPress is like a WordPress manual in a blog format. Some other blogs, like BloggingPro (as well as others whose names I don’t remeber off hand), seem to write about just blogging, how to make money from blogging, and stuff that doesn’t really cover a wide range of interests (or to use general words, a niche). At least expand your ‘market’ by writitng about other things.

Even though I don’t really expect to rant about this again, it’s worth mentioning even once. Please probloggers, open up your minds to things other than blogging, like many people say to me, “Get a life!”

WordPress Secrets: The Real Ultimate Static Front Page

Quick Note: If you are looking for the source, find it here.

With WordPress, there have been so many attempts to make the best static front page. Most variations have included plugins that change the default behavior of the home page to display a pre-selected WordPress page. However, the Turbocharged blog showcases a new technique that uses a theme’s home.php template, and even allows you to add pure PHP code to it. Rudd-O’s solution Continue reading »

Invision Power Board

Perhaps one of the best bulletin board (aka forum) packages available is Invision Power Service’s Invision Power Board (now officially called IP.Board). It has many powerful features and a growing community of users and developers.

IPB’s newly updated administration panel provides about half of the board’s power. The interface is somewhat logically laid out, with big top navbar buttons for managing the categories, users and other content related features; the look and feel of the forum; settings; and third party extensions. There is somewhat useful help within the interface for quick reference, and the latest version’s color scheme looks pretty. I have two main complaints about the Admin CP, however. Within the Components section, the list all of the modifications installed and their respective management pages are in a rather long sidebar on the left, slowing down access to options located further down when many components are installed. Also, the permissions system isn’t very fine grained, giving you very few permissions to work with for each user group and forum category (in comparison, Simple Machines Forum has about two dozen permissions just for a category).

When it comes to front-end options, IPB has it all. The Personal Message system works pretty well, the topic controls are unparalleled, and post authoring is very intuitive. My favorite feature in IPB is the announcements, which will place a topic-styled post in a separate area above topic listings (screenshots below). The post notification system leaves something to be desired, however, since every email sent by it has the same title. This causes every single post’s notification to be grouped into one thread when viewed in Gmail. After a while of just archiving the messages, you will have many messages stacked up in the conversation, and you’ll soon discover the usefulness of Gmail’s relatively new Delete button.

Overall, I would highly recommend IPB as an excellent commercial product (the price tag at press time is $149.99 for the standard edition, $299.99 for the Business license), but for the beginner to online communities, Simple Machines Forum is a more cost-effective alternative.

WordPress Music Video: It’s Called WordPress

While including one slightly family-unfriendly line in his lyrics, Devin made up a pretty corny music video themed around WordPress. Talking in a southern accent, he highlights the main advantages of WordPress, and adds a spin of comedy.

Overlapping Words For Strong Passwords

Ilya Lichtenstein writes about his new method for generating hard-to-crack passwords. The method consists of inserting letters of one word between the letters of another word. Pretty novel algorithm if you ask me.

WordPress: Market Full, Competition Unrivaled

We all know that WordPress is pretty much the best (or at least best open-source) blogging platform today. It costs you practically nothing to use it (on WordPress.com, it’s absolutely free), and all you need to start blogging, not counting the techy stuff, is a few interesting thoughts and a passion for sharing your mind. However, for those who want to take the path less taken, and write their own blogging tool, it’s almost impossible to do so, as Computer Guru points out. I suppose that only the most inventive and creative programmer/designer can rival WordPress.

The Family Moving Cycle

People, based on my very limited observations, move three or four times in their adult lives. I can say this because my family has moved. Here’s the deal:

1. After getting married
   Generally you will not want to live in your parents’ house after you get married. You have your own life, and most of the time, being under their rules and lifestyle isn’t such a great thing either past age eighteen.
2. After having a child
   I would think that after getting married you’ll settle in a small apartment, with not a ton of room for new family.
3. After having several more children
   Time to get out of that slightly bigger hole in the wall. A few more bedrooms would be nice.
4. After the kids are married, or retirement
   Now you don’t really need all that space, and less house means less money to spend on it.

This cycle will occur with most people today, so expect to be a part of it. This is really meant to be more of a heads-up type of post, not one with really useful info in it. However, there are some times when I just start talking about random but real things in life, and this is definitely random.