HTNet - A Notepad of Tech, Business, Science and Self Improvement

I’ve been actively using Google Reader as my sole feed reader consistently for more than a month. Mind you, I have been playing with it since its inception but now I’ve pretty much familiarised myself with the interface.

Overall, I’m pleased with my Google Reader experience, except for one critical aspect which I found extremely strange for a Google product; the complete absence of a search interface.

I mean if there’s one thing that you’d expect from Google, it’ll be robust search capabilities. Check out Google Labs, every single project developed there, bar Google Reader of course, has some form of search function.

After writing this post, it seems that I’m not the only person who wants this feature.

Hopefully searching will be integrated in Google Reader soon

I installed the Related Entries plugin to see what the plugin deems as “related posts” for any particular entry. Honestly, my initial thoughts are it merely looks up some random posts which has similarities in terms of keywords in the title and categories they’re in.

What I appreciate the most about the plugin is that it lists links posts I had forgotten about. Did you know that this blog started in March 2005? Meaning my WordPress installation is now two years old. During this time, I noticed that there are a few noticable differences in how I write now compared to when I first started HTNet.

I used to do freewheeling writing, simply voicing what I feel about the topic of discussion. Now I tend to be more guarded, trying to make myself understandable to a significant majority of my readership. I never spellcheck two years ago… now, the Dictionary.com search engine is my second most used after Google.

I almost never preview my posts before posting in my early days of blogging, now even the simplest post goes through at least three rounds of proofreading. Even then, I still miss the occasional misspelling or erroneous grammar. Sometimes I think I should just follow Papa Joneh’s advice; just post it!

If you’re a regular visitor of HTNet, you’ll see that I’m now using a different theme. This is a theme I’ve started a few weeks ago, but I’ve only managed to properly develop it over the weekend. Please tell me what you think about it, and if you find anything broken or out of place do let me know as well. I primarily tested the layout using Firefox, and took a quick browse every now and then using IE. No other browsers were harmed in the process

Anyway, the theme is only one part of the changes I’m making with HTNet. Another thing I’m changing about it is the way I categorise my posts. Right now I try to keep my posts related to categories I had created beforehand. The good thing about this is that I’m forcing myself to stick to a few key topics. The bad thing about it is that I’m forcing myself to stick to a few key topics.

There were more than a few occassions where I badly wanted to write about something but found that I never posted about similar topics before and thus, don’t have the proper category to post it under. Yeah, I can create categories on the fly with WordPress, but the issue is that I didn’t think I’d write more posts that can be categorised there.

Now, I’m putting my foot down and decided to hell with a fixed set of post categories. I’ve changed the URL for my categories to be prefixed by /tag/, I think it’s about time I started taking them as tags more seriously. Being tags, I should be able to use them more liberally instead of still thinking of them as categorised boundaries to my writing. Since listing potentially hundreds of tags in the sidebar might grow from an minor aesthetic issue to a major irritant, I’m taking out the Categories sidebar item and list all my tags in a dedicated page.

Due to this change, I’m also taking putting into retirement a plugin I’ve used since a long time ago; Bunny’s Technorati Tags. The reasons for this are as follows:

• I will be managing my own tags anyway, so it makes more sense to link them internally
• Technorati will index links with the rel='tag' attribute anyway, regardless of where the link points to… at least I think it does
• I don’t get much traffic from Technorati in the first place

Hopefully the changes are part of a package that will make HTNet more semantic, navigable and interactive… at least that’s the plan

My morning at work was pretty much uneventful until about 11:50am today. That was when the building I was in shook. It wasn’t that bad, more like having a minor headache. However, the building management advised us to evacuate the offices. Mine was on the 14th floor.

It turned out to be a minor tremor resulting from an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale which hit Padang, Sumatra.

What were my prized possessions that I brought out with me? My notebook computer and my car… of course I brought along two of my colleagues who I bumped in along the way and we had an early lunch

I do a lot of driving. One thing that never cease to amaze me is that whenever I take the occasional journey along the North-South Highway, there’s bound to be bouts of rain and sunshine.

Never in my life do I recall driving along the highway and the weather is consistent all the way. In case you’re wondering, most of my highway travels are from JB to KL and vice versa. Occasionally, there are trips a little further to the north. Let me tell you that nothing scares the heck out of me than driving in heavy rain.

One thing I discovered by accident is that when driving in heavy rain and wearing sunglasses at the same time, I have a much clearer view compared to driving without them. Perhaps it’s the refraction effect of UV rays being bounced off the lenses (Correction: Dabido has kindly pointed out that the process is actually called Polarisation).

I’m sure it’s not due to some specially treated glass used in the lenses. Reason being, the effect is similar regardless if I’m wearing expensive Ray Bans or cheap RM10 Petaling Street “Oakleys”.

Try it the next time you’re driving in heavy rain and by chance have a pair of sunglasses nearby.