Pinoy Big Brother

Just call it “Kuya”.

Saw the premiere of Pinoy Big Brother. All I know of the concept is that 12 people live in a house and have their every move filmed 24/7 for 100 days. Each week a person will be evicted based on team votes while the audience gets to text in who will stay.

I just wonder though how the contestants will survive without contact from their loved ones – no tv, no telephones, NO CELLPHONES (wonder how many will be going through text withdrawals?).

The contestants are all different – different personalities: the struggling family man, the reformed bad boy, the bitch with a heart, the teacher, all seeking financial stability, perhaps the opportunity to be noticed.

But one thing this clear, in this “real” world, people are all beautiful.

Testing MovableType 3.2

I’ve installed MovableType 3.2 Beta5 which we’ll be using for some upcoming projects and so far it’s been interesting.

Installation and upgrading is a breeze. You can literally just upload the zip file, extract the contents, enter your configuration and run the installation.


MT3.2 automatically detects whether there is a new installation or an upgrade and there’s a progress window for you to see how the installation/upgrade is going.

From the organization point of view, MT3.2 has grown in leaps and bounds from MT3.17.

SYSTEM OVERVIEW
The system overview lets you keep track of all posts in all your blogs. It’s much easier to set up author accounts and create new weblogs.

Like Pia was saying, “it feels better”. And I agree with her.

Configuring archives are much more easier. A sample archiving link options are given for each archiving type. Also no more having to use plugins if you want to have archive links use “-” instead of “_”.

I also like how assigning categories to entries have been simplified. Before you had to set the primary category and after saving your entry go back and assign additional categories and then save the entry again.

Now you just check off which categories you want to assign your entry to and then save!

Even better is that sub-category names can be duplicated under different parent categories.

I still haven’t finished taking a look at all the additional changes and new features but I like what I’m seeing so far.

I’ve just found out via Problogger that SixApart will be allowing free users to have unlimited blogs.

I guess licensing will focus more on the number of users vs the number of blogs.

Currently Hearing Plugin Problems

After upgrading my Winamp 5 installation, the Currently Hearing plugin just stopped working.

I checked the plugin folder and found that the song.txt was not being ftp’d to my server.

The reason for this is path to the remote directory was giving an error. I fixed it by supplying a Full path e.g. /home/username/public_html/folder/ instead of /public_html/folder/

WordPress as a CMS

Could you run a website using WordPress?

I’ve been thinking about that and a few weeks ago I got a chance to put that thought into practice when Pia launched the beta of FanAdmin Plus

With a bit of organization, customization and add-ons it’s easy to turn a blog tool into a content management system.

Organizing Content
This was the first thing I had to consider: what will I need the site to do? what type of content will I have? Basically I want the FanAdmin Plus site to :

  • document the script with explainations and how-tos;
  • provide screenshots;
  • track problems and feature requests;
  • let people keep in touch with Pia and me;
  • allow people to download the script (eventually)

Main MenuA great thing about WordPress is the ability to organize content by entries and pages. This way I can mix up my content – general information, bug tracking, feature requests while using the entries for the actual documentation and site updates. So now, each link in the main menu is a link to a WordPress page.

Add-Ons
A powerful feature of WordPress is that you can easily set up plugins to extend the functionality of your blog.

We wanted to have a gallery of screenshots of the script so visitors can get a feel for what to expect. I’m using Hivework’s Gallery Manager plugin to organize screen shots.

In Series Plugin Even though posts are organized by categories I wanted link together a particular set of tutorials. For that I used In Series which bills itself as “easy, future-proof way to connect a series of posts”. As the figure shows, I can group together posts under different headings even if they are in the same category.

By default, WordPress displays the most recent entries from all categories on the main page. I only want to show posts from the “Site Updates” category so I used Front Page Categories

And for a contact form I used In Touch plugin. What I like about this plugin is that I can put a contact form anywhere I want, on a page or in a post!

Later on I’m going to put in download monitor plugin to keep track of the number of times the script is being downloaded. But that’s for the future, once we work out all the kinks and bugs in the script.

Customizing Layouts
This is another thing I love about WordPress, the themes! Setting up a theme simply involves uploading the necessary files and activating the theme.

But since we didn’t want a canned look for the site, I customized the Kubrick theme to match the look of the FanAdmin Plus script.

I Felt The Earth Move

I felt tremors this morning before 7. Am not sure where the earthquake was but it was strong enough to move the bed.

At first I thought I was dreaming it because when I woke up the tremors had passed but Mum was going “Did you feel the earthquake?”

Update: It turns out the epicenter was near Iloilo and the quake measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. No news yet of any casualties.