Aja Lapus

Category: Thoughts

  • Transformers

    Transformers
    Electrical Engineering. Devices used to transfer electric energy from one circuit to another, especially a pair of multiply-wound, inductively-coupled wire coils that effect such a transfer with a change in voltage, current, phase, or other electric characteristic.
    film. A 2007 live action film directed by Michael Bay starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox.

    Ok, ok … I won’t be talking about my past EE lessons here. I’ve just watched Transformers with my uncle and cousins yesterday. I must say it was great! The action scenes, camera angles, and effects are just astounding—thanks to Michael Bay. The realism put into the mecha CG animation was amazing as well!

    I really cannot comment about its deviations from the original animation storyline,[1] though, for I was just a little kid when I’ve watched it. Nevertheless, it really caught me with my mouth open for the mixed comedy and action it brought on the table. I really liked the scenes where Sam Witwicky was trying to catch Mikaela Banes’ attention that Bumblebee started playing on its radio songs super fit for the scene. It was a laugh trip! 😆

    BTW, Sir Abe announced about 10 hours ago that he is giving away free Transformers T-shirts! And this post serves as my entry. (email address: ajalapus at ajalapus.com)

    Aside from Bumblebee,[2] I really like Starscream. Since the F-22 Raptor is also my favorite, there isn’t really any competition. I think he was the one who got me interested in watching Transformers in the first place. Add to that Starscream’s agility being capable of transforming mid-air—being disguised as one of the allies, he then transforms jumping from one Raptor to another. Oh, the deceit! 😉

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ If there is any.
    2. ^ Who is probably the majority’s favorite.

  • Hindering Standards Advancement

    IMO, there are two ways to hinder the advancement of Web standards:

    1. To continue legacy practices, holding back on new, better ones; and
    2. To keep inconsistencies between Web developers and designers, and user agent, tool and software developers.

    Legacy Practices

    I still haven’t studied much about the endianness of character encodings, but it sure is one thing I’ve seen that exhibits a legacy practice recommended by W3C. I’ve been placing a Unicode Byte-Order Mark before the output of my WordPress themes since my text editor featured its control on UTF-8 encoded files. After subjecting it to the W3C Markup Validation Service, I encountered a warning that says:

    The Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM) in UTF-8 encoded files is known to cause problems for some text editors and older browsers. You may want to consider avoiding its use until it is better supported.

    I’ve actually tried placing the BOM because Google Webmaster Tools report my site to have been encoded in ASCII even though I have set the HTTP Headers to respond, and <meta/> elements to indicate otherwise. After doing so, Google Webmaster Tools reported about 50% of my site is on UTF-8 that I concluded it reads pages’ encodings using the BOM.

    The first time I’ve read that warning, an insight immediately struck me regarding legacy systems and practices. So, I just want to ask: Why are they enforcing legacy practices to be continued by Web designers and developers instead of enforcing new and current standards to be implemented by user agent, tool and software developers?

    Incomplete Implementation

    I’ve written much of the above article about a week ago, but it just came short of publication. I thought my so-called insight is very limited with regards to the current issues between Web and software development that I decided to postpone publication. It still would be on draft status if not for Molly Holzschlag saying just recently, HTML5 and XHTML 1.1+ MUST Stop for Now. I was puzzled why one of the most famous standardistas I look up to said that. The title would seem to mean she has just begun to dislike the improvements to Web standards. But after reading the whole article, I totally agreed. BTW, she meant:

    1. COMPLETE HTML 4.1 [sic], XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 in specs and browsers where applicable
    2. CALL for consistent implementation of these most basic specifications in all current browsers and devices to this point
    3. WAIT for future HTML, XHTML and CSS implementations until these implementations are complete
    4. FOCUS on JavaScript and DOM fixes and implementations as we come up to par with markup and style

    The only way new Web standards would be supported is to implement completely the current and existing ones. This would also make legacy practices be needed no more. Molly didn’t say that the progression of Web standards should be stopped forever, but the terms for now should be emphasized as long as incomplete implementations exist—and she’s talking about no specific user agent as even Mozilla, Opera and Safari have no perfect support, just better ones. So … I question no more.

  • Not Only WP 2.2 will be Delayed

    You’ve probably read that Matt Mullenweg announced a delay to the WP 2.2 release, which was previously due in 4 days, on your Dashboard already, but it still is worth blogging. As I am creating my new theme—now at a rough estimate of 75% completion after five [half] days of work—I think it would be better to delay the release of AjaLapus.com 4.0 as well.

    New features from WP 2.2, including core Widgets support, integrated tagging system[1] and Atom 1.0 standard syndication feeds, would most probably make me revise my theme a lot more since I am planning to use them anyway. And since I still haven’t tried using nightlies, nor do I have time and patience to install AMP again on either my Linux or Windows installations to test and develop on a nightly, it’d probably be best if I would wait the couple of weeks out for the new WordPress to be released.

    So far, I have the following completion percentages for the templates of the upcoming theme before I delay working on it:

    • Header, Footer, and Single post templates and styles at 100%
    • Homepage, Quasi-static Pages, and Sidebar templates and styles at about 90%
    • Archives [including Tag, Date, Category and Search pages], 404 page, and Page-specific templates at 0%

    And, btw, I’ve already consulted Shari and Lexie about the theme and they seem to like it so far. That was a relief since Shari immediately turned down the first one I’ve made. Well, not that it all depends on them—I really just like positive feedback.

    For those who were browsing yesterday late at night and have been [403] Forbidden from viewing any page, that was most probably be me doing some tests. Ugh. I really need a local LAMP/WAMP installation.

    And, about the issue of ad serving using Google AdSense, I decided to stick to HTML-compatible XHTML Strict since I’ve encountered a FAQ from Google stating that AdSense code within an <iframe> would lead to PSAs or less targeted ads [probably the same case an <object> tag would produce] even though that method was approved by Google.

    So, there you have it—just lame updates. I’m getting busy at school since I’m taking up my Math 321 this summer vacation.[2] I still do hope I’d have more fun before the vacation ends.

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ As Dougal Campbell pointed out, it was pushed to 2.3 milestone—I wasn’t reading the wp-hackers list as well.
    2. ^ If you can’t remember, it’s because of this little problem.

  • Those Little Interconnected Things

    Ok. Now I’ve had my six days of fame.[1] Better get back to the regular blogging programming and routine. 😛 But, let me ask you first: How does a Web event, an impending increase in domain name prices, browser incompatibilities, and advertising limitations result to me having to think of making a new WordPress theme for my site?

    During the time before the 2nd CSS Naked Day, I decided to make a plugin for WordPress that would strip every piece of stylesheet information from a Web page. It was somehow successful given that I was only receiving 50–100 unique visitors a day prior to the creation of that plugin, which in turn made my statistics plugin jump to receiving 200–300 unique visitors a day. In addition to the plugin, Dustin‘s pun resulted to a lot more SERP referrals. More visitors equal higher rankings; my Alexa rank turned from above 3 Million to just above 700 thousand in 10 days.

    Since Text Link Ads consider Alexa as one basis for accepting ad publishers, I thought it would be better for me. And with the impending increase in .com domain name prices, I’m starting to think I really need the money. But, still, I haven’t had ad placements since I’ve reinstalled TLA on my theme,[2] so I think it would be better to go back to [or at least serve it at the same time with] Google AdSense which I have used even before TLA. I was just frustrated that AdSense won’t serve XML-compatible scripts or at least a <noscript> fallback for those who don’t want to or cannot display scripts of document.write nature.

    Since it’s equally hard to modify a theme to contain ad spaces than to make one from scratch, I thought it was better to move to a Version 4 for the site. And because WordPress have deprecated some functions since 2.1, and WordPress 2.2 is just around the corner, I think I’m better off making a new one.

    I then thought of the need to create a theme served only with Content-Type: text/html, since Windows Internet Explorer 7 also has no intention of accepting true XHTML. But, I’m having doubts of doing so since I’ve been a fan of XML rules[3] imposed on HTML since the time I’ve learned them. I’ve also read articles on how to use AdSense with true XHTML pages.[4] So, I would most probably stick to my current content negotiation scheme.

    I’ve actually started making a template with a Web 2.0-ish theme a week ago based on some tutorials I found on the Web. Although, upon showing it to Shari, she told me it was a bit too bright. So, I guess it would have to be redesigned since I don’t want my handful of regular readers straining their eyes, and to be looking at [or rather getting distracted by] the design more than they do at the content of my articles.

    So, I guess you just have to wait for the next version of this site. I am finally going to a pool to swim tomorrow, so don’t expect it to be that soon. *excited* 😛

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ April 1–6 recorded ~2500 hits from human visitors only—more than half of what each previous month’s worth of page views even without Bad Behavior blocking robots.
    2. ^ Maybe because of the irrelevant keywords? IDK. I just hope not.
    3. ^ Must be well-formed, lowercase, etc. Therefore, cleaner and more readable.
    4. ^ One from Keystone Websites, and another from CSSplay thanks to Sir Regnard.

  • Now Showing: Naked <body>

    As you may notice, this site has been stripped off of its stylesheets. Don’t worry, nothing is broken—and it will last only until the end of the 5th of April 2007 in the whole world.[1] I’m just participating in this year’s CSS Naked Day like what I did last year. Cheers to Dustin Diaz—More than 1200 sites are currently signed up! I never actually thought it’d pass the 763 sites signed up last year as it was only 500+ or so when I last checked the list before my site got naked.

    Now, onto the topic …

    I’m somehow surprised to have been getting a lot more visitors this April compared to any other month since this site has started tracking hits. The first and obvious reason is that my CSS Naked Day WordPress plugin has been featured on the Official event page—that I’m not surprised about. The second, more surprising reason? Keywords. Dustin sure has a knack for naming something—in his case, the event he founded—as he’s also famous for the Topless Cameron Diaz photo. 😛

    SERPs referring to this site indicate more searches with the keywords naked and some about stripping getting to my site lately. No wonder Shari‘s been getting thousands of unique visitors a month![2] All she talks about is sex, and even more of it—oh, and sex toys [she dubs them acsexsories], as well—even if the blog awards[3] was the topic.

    Another thing more surprising is that, according to Pinoy Money Talk, Filipinos are more interested in sex than money.[4] Now I really think poverty and overpopulation are not because of lack of good governance—but that would be better for another entry.

    Oh—just so you guys know—I will never, and I mean never, be turning this blog to be about sex just as Shari did to hers. 😆

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ 6 April 2007, 00:00 GMT-12 or 20:00 PhT
    2. ^ As disclosed in her recent article.
    3. ^ Or anything else unrelated.
    4. ^ As reported by Google Trends.