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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Gift Food in My Mouth

School’s out this week due so my dependency to the virtual world hangs on RM$2.50 an hour at the littlest cyber cafĂ©. I got me a couple of really nice books for Thesis Project homework but I’m going to need most of my time doing online researches.

So it’s only a picture-filled quickie post today. Plus, I’m getting a little suspicious about my mother these days. She’s a good cook but she only cooks well during the weekends. On other days, she just buys lauk from the street market and take-outs from nearby restaurants.

Starting with what’s she’s been cooking in the kitchen.


Breakfast 2 days ago: Pepper Mix.


Mak doesn’t usually cook breakfast. Seeing that we kids are old enough to fix meals ourselves. But she made a Pepper Mix. I called it that for lack of a better name. It’s a fried jumble of all sorts of pretty good stuff. Buttered bread, potato slices, burger meat chunks, sausage pieces, carrots and other marinated vegetables fried with strong pepper seasoning.


Dinner 2 days ago: Shepard’s Pie.


It was me who taught Mak how to make the best mashed potatoes from original potatoes. It made her Shepard’s Pie even better. Baked layer of mashed potatoes with a thin centre of freshly shredded carrots and a thick base of spicy taco meat. We never made any gravy with the Pie by compensating with creamier mashed potatoes.


Lunch yesterday: Carrot rice with Roast Chicken.


This is when I was beginning to suspect a hidden plot. Mak makes nasi minyak lobak merah very, veeeeeeeery rarely. It’s not hard to do but it’s one of her best cooking, especially delicious when made with her signature roast chicken with soy-sauce gravy.

She’s up to something and then I’m beginning to suspect what it is.


Dinner tonight?: Bread base, pasta sauce, white mushrooms, etc


And now she’s planning a pizza. But... Mak has never made pizza with these mushrooms before. They’re not our usual canned mushrooms.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that I knew something was up with my mother. It was while my father was watching the Al-Jazeera news on TV. Usually he’ll want to discuss current events with Mak, like US elections or Middle East conflict or the bad ice storm China is having for Chinese New Year.

As usual, Mak was sitting next to him but she’s not paying attention to the news or to Ayah this time - and Ayah, despite all the extra good cooking, was a bit sour that his wife wasn’t paying attention to him. Mak, oblivious, was reading a new book.



Mak has a crush on a new guy.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Better Valentine Gifts Than A Waffle Maker

Last Saturday I was browsing around in the newspapers, catching up on a few things such as the upcoming elections. I’m in my mid-twenties now and so I’m eligible to vote. It’ll be my first time voting too, so I better keep up to date.

Of course, no newspaper-reading time would be complete without a browse through the comics. Yups, can’t finish a newspaper without comics. One of favourites, The Zits, caught my eye and fixed my mind.



Okay, so the father thinks that a waffle maker is a sexy romantic appliance.

*cue broken record player*

Oh, we can soooooooooo see how this is going to end. Classic small-minded male. It is an ‘oops’ waiting to happen. If he’s thinking of Valentine’s Day romance, what the hell is he looking at kitchen appliances?

Got to give the guy some credit though. At least he remembers Valentine’s Day.

Concerning men, I won’t claim I’m an expert. I only had a few dates here and there, maybe. It’s not that I’m pathetic (: “Hah! Debatable.”), it’s because I’m extremely fussy. I’m an acute observer of human nature and psychological influence, especially about the opposite gender.

One thing I notice a lot about men is that practicality influences them. Everything in a matter of straight-forwardness and strategic planning goes best with their mental workings. Your woman spends time in the kitchen. She’s a great cook. Which makes a waffle maker the most practical gift for Valentine’s Day.

NOT!

I know what you men are probably thinking. Ooo, should you get a microwave instead? Maybe she prefers cleaning appliances. How about a washing machine? Or a vacuum cleaner?



Every year there is one genius who thinks this way. It’s not that your woman won’t appreciate it. If she really likes to cook, she’ll welcome it but...

It’s not the most romantic of gifts. Actually, it’s hardly any kind of romantic gift at all.

Guys, open your small minds for as long as you still got the time before February 14. Yes, she spends time cooking in the kitchen. Yes, you love her and she loves you. Yes, you should get her a gift of appreciation of all the things she’s done. She’s probably preparing one for you. And if she hadn’t prepared a gift, she can use the waffle maker to cook you nice, hot waffles. Mm-mmm, would that be great?

Woman’s reaction =

That is how probably a woman would react. And I don’t blame her. Cooking, cleaning, that’s all part of the wifely job. Your woman knew it before she married you and knew she’s going to have to do all that for you because otherwise you will be eating fast-food junk and wearing plastic underpants.

Like the Disney Snow White had sung with her 1001 forest animals and a broom, your better half whistles while she works and find joy in the working. But home appliances as gifts for Valentine’s Day?! Those things just reinforces the reminder of her marital repetition.

Of yeah, Saint Valentine would be so proud of you, you jerk.

Valentine’s Day is not just to appreciate of having each other but also to appreciate the soulmate himself or herself. What a wife really likes, her personality, what catches her eye, what makes her whimsical. What really makes her think that she’s the luckiest woman to have you.

Hardly a waffle maker would do that.

Women don’t think like men because we aren’t men. Our role in natural order is growth and preservation. That’s why we cook and clean. It’s instinctive. But on Valentine’s Day, It’s about observing the other facets of our identity, our personalities.

Men love their expensive fast cars? It’s practical because it takes them places. But it’s drinking petrol like fish drinks water.

Woman love expensive rich chocolate? It’s emotionally stimulating and tasteful. But it’s gone with every bite so the woman just ate RM$50.

So men! What can you get her that isn’t too expensive, emotionally conscious and still practical and without bruising your partner’s self-image?

Sounds like a miracle? Actually, it is possible. Here’s some examples.



Ornate picture frames goes well. Emphasis on ornate. Valentine’s Day is a good day to look back on the memories of the year; photos are footprints of such memories. Epitomes of such frames can be brought at Lovely Lace, or if you got some extra cash, maybe Royal Selangor’s pewter>. Pick a really nice photo for it, something you both shared as a couple.

You can even take a simple picture on that day (say, an intimate lunch), print it out from your PC and you two can frame that picture together. It won’t even take more than 20 minutes but she’ll definitely remember that she had your undivided attention on a little project on a special day, every time she looks at the picture frame.



Why, jewellery of course. Not real jewellery, so don’t zip your wallets yet! Costume jewellery works as well as the real one on, say, a family gathering, non-formal girls’ day out or a touch of elegance just for going to work. It’s inexpensive and easier to maintain than the super-carat pieces. Brooches and earrings are the costume jewellery that last longer than necklaces or bracelets because they don’t touch the skin so often.

They also come in a variety of colours but if you don’t know which colour would suit her (and her favourite dress), get the classic silver or gold pieces. You can find pretty ones in various shops in Ikano Power Centre and in the weekend bazaar at The Curve.



Towels are good. Large, soft, fluffy ones, big enough for her to wrap herself in, something from Parkson’s or Mark and Spencer. Too small or too thin, it’ll turn into kain buruk (dirt cloth) by year’s end. Towels are great, better than cheap shampoo, because they don’t directly say Clean Me, but rather I’m Wearing Only This.

But if you really had to get her a kitchen appliance... Get a dishwasher. No more manual soap and scrub over the sink. Mm-mmm, more time to give a proper thank you. Now that’s sexy.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Images: The Magic of Sketching

It’s Saturday! I would cheer like a schooldgirl if I hadn’t had to have class (groan!).

I had been working on something really good for the blog in these past few days. But the damn hosting server is so freaking BUGGY!! One minute it works, next minute it doesn’t, then it disappears completely.

They may give free service with no-ads but that’s still no excuse for being below standard. Heh, I guess I got what I paid for and all-that-clichĂ©.

But at least I got the job done. A small tutorial for newbies section will be included in the Helpful Stuff tab from now on. I’ll get working on Part Two of the tutorial once I get some VR homework done and the server’s not pulling a prank again and then there’s the report for Dr. Visor that waaaay overdue and then...

Aww crap, it’ll be ready when it’s ready.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a Deviant Art browsing for some new favourites I could really get a liking to. I hope you guys don’t mind something little different this week.

This is the artwork from Deviant Artist Ecthelian. He did it for his art class at school and the detailing is amazing! It’s pretty big but you really need to click for the bigger picture to enjoy it.




When I first saw this picture, I immediately thought of Anita the Faerie, a character of mine I’m working on in Unlocking Pandora. She’s a faerie of the woods, on an enchanted island but her home had been turned to chaos some 500 years ago. She woke up to find that she’s the only wood faerie left on the island and she’s been alone ever since... until the humans arrived.

I have also found another sketch artwork picture to show because I really couldn’t pass this one up.




I’ve been visiting Saimain’s Deviant Art website for quite a while now. She’s does the artwork for her original fantasy series called The Wars of Avenan (still looking for them books). This artwork, however, is an entry for a contest by her fellow artist-writer, based on a haunting story called The Cradle of Whispers.

I really recommend that you check out her website because there’s a secret in this picture. I finally figured out what it is but I won’t tell (oooo, suspense...).

Chinese New Year is coming up soon, and with it, the holidays. I don’t celebrate it but I do celebrate the holidays (who doesn’t?). But...

I still don’t have Internet connection sadly. What’s worse is that MySis is finally cutting me my cellphone line off and transferring it to my father. He doesn’t care a whiff about internet so I won’t have Celcom phone internet as well.

Awww, crap, what am I going to do? Cyber cafes then! Blog updates then will be fewer but I hope my older posts will sufficient.

Happy Chinese New Year to all you bloggers! Now get your butts off from the PC or your relative won’t find you and accidentally forget to give you ang pow!

Tutorial for Newbies: How to Build a phpBB3 Forum Community (Part One)

Come on, we all love forums. There’s not a reader somewhere in here that isn’t a member of at least one forum community dedicated to some esoteric hobby, be it about writing stories or making music bands. I got myself a membership to 5 forum groups and some I won’t mention.

Not that the ones I won’t mention is illegal or anything... wait yes, it’s illegal. Note to self, delete YouTube account as soon as-, whoops, not yet.

What if you can build yourself a forum community?

I mean other than a joined blog group or opening an account with a free forum service. I was talking about from the server up. The hard way. The folder-and-files way.

There are various open source systems built in ASP or PHP that are free to download so that you can customize right down to the coding, like vBulletin, InvisionBoards and phpBB3.

The advantage of installing your own forum instead of signing up for a free one is that you can control the inner resources, like board style, graphical, extra features (once you get the hang of it), having your own server name and most of all, NO ADS!

If you’re a high-tech programmer person, with your own web server and your large database and your $$$-a-month service, all this would probably bore you to death because this tutorial is aimed mostly for baby Netizens. But do read on and tell me which part I might have missed because I ain’t no a getting-high tech *burp* prongs-grammer.


Step 01: Get a hosting server.

Aaaah, but not just any hosting servers. You’ll need the ones that have support like ASP, PHP, MSSQL or MySQL, so to speak.

There are hundreds and hundreds of freebies out there, like Yahoo or x10hosting or Wordpress or just click this damn link and you’ll get what I mean.

For this tutorial, let’s go with an old favourite of mine, Zymic Webmaster Resources and team it with a forum system that’s easy to get used to, phpBB3.

*Note: For me, Zymic’s biggest drawback is that its browser upload is painfully tedious (see their tutorial).


Sign in an account.



Step 02: Make an SQL database.

You got to have a place to store all your forum messages and this is where SQL databases come into play. It’s not that hard really. Zymic here offers MySQL so let’s refer the steps to that.

*Note: It helps if your hosting server’s MySQL has phpMYAdmin support though, as in the future when you gain experience and if you ever need to extend your database manually.


You have to create a database name and a database admin’s username.



Match the pair of them together. Commit both names and the password to memory as you’ll need them during forum installation.



Step 03: Upload all them files.

AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Heh. Patience is virtue.

It’s advisable to make a folder named ‘forums’ in your File Manager and upload all the phpBB3 files in there. That way, you can use your direct web address for other things. Like a home page or a web content site.


Download the latest phpBB3 forum zip file from the main site.



Unzip it and place the files and folders into your forums folder.



Aiyo, Zymic, so very little uploads-lah... Luckily they have an FTP tutorial.



Step 04: Open the Install.php page.

Okay! Upload everything? Even the kitchen_sink.exe? No? Well, that’s okay because there is no kitchen_sink.exe anyway.

When all files have been uploaded, this is the easier part but you have to pay attention. Open a new browser window and go to the install folder of your forum system. That’s where you’ll find the install page.

Here’s an example of my forum’s install page.

http://www.*this_is_your_direc_web_address*/forums/install

If you’ve uploaded everything, this is the page you would see.


Oooooo... Check out that new forum smell.


Click the ‘INSTALL’ tab on the top left corner. Most of the features that might be available for the forum you won’t need to consider since the system will check it for you.

So all you need is just follow the steps and fill in the blanks. Start install then.


There might be some red stuff, noting unavailability, depending on your hosting server. As long as the requirement is only optional, you’ll be fine.



Remember that MySQL database you made in Step 02?



Add them in the install’s Database settings.


Between their next steps, the install system will tell if you got a successful connect or you haven’t. The other steps will follow like any usual sign-in mode. There are most places you can leave blank unless you’re sure you know what it means.


Yay, you got a forum!


This is the confirmation page. You can tell because it’s got the big freaking ‘Congratulations’ sign, like you’ve won the lottery or something. But it’s not over yet. Click the LOGIN button.


Hey, what’s that red bar doing in my Administrator Control Panel?


Your final step is to go back to your Zymic File Manager. Don’t worry; you won’t need to upload anything more (hahaha!). Just go to your ‘install’ folder and delete/rename it, whichever way.

Personally, I’d just rename it. It may take up quite a space in my hosting server but if I should ever need to reset and re-install my forum system, I really don’t want to have to upload them files again.


Looky! It’s my forum up and running!


Next:
Now that you’re a budding administrator, I’ll show you how to operate your forum. An administrator is as different as a moderator and as different as an ordinary member. How different? For starters, an administrator has all the 3 kinds of control panels.

phpBB3
phpBB3 official reference guide
Zymic Webmaster Resources

Friday, February 1, 2008

I Got Tagged but I Need a Fourth Wheel!

My Thursdays, as some of you might remember, is always my Spend-Night-At-School. Not that I actually sleep at school but it’s a great opportunity to get some work done in a very quiet time. Gives me an opportunity to visit blogs of blogger’s friends.


So I had my dinner of Ayamas’s Pepper Chicken Rice.


And I suddenly remember that the toosuperheroes had just got an influx of Sarawak pepper. I don’t know if Ayamas is using the same Sarawak pepper or some Western species because I say RM$5.80 for one box of quarter chicken with rice is ridiculously expensive.

Anyway, since I don’t want to go home yet (late pm as it was) so instead I waited long enough so the surrounding mamak stalls would be too full of late night TV people for snatch thieves to risk striking lone walkers. Yeah, my headscarf just screams female.


Dessert. It’s something Mak packed for me from the fridge. It’s got a sponge cake base, clear grape jelly centre and a thick condensed milk on top. It’s delicious; one of few of Mak’s cooking experiments that are more than just edible.


So as I was chomping on my dessert and surfing to their site and gosh, what did I find?

I’ve been tagged.

What? Did you expect one of them had puked (again) or something?

This is great because I’ve never been tagged before, considering my baby is barely 2 months old. Now whom the heck do I tag for the next 4 people? I immediately thought of 3 fellows that might appreciate getting tagged but who will be my fourth wheel?

Hmmm...

Looks like a trip through PetalingStreet.org then!


All this eating and blogging and I damn hell forgot to do my homework! Gimme a day or two to find my fourth tag, guys!

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Old Posts, Knick-knack, Bits and Pieces and Whatever Things

Inspiration for this Blog

The Scarlet Pimpernel.

This heroic romance story was my inspiration for the creation of this blog. At its heart, it chronicles the plight of a young English girl and the rescue of the broken French nobility during the country's bloody Revolution.

I named this blog Shadow Pimpernel because I rescue my innermost thoughts and feelings to protect them from the harsh, jaded reality. This way, when times and people change, places shifted, the core part of who I am is still preserved.

Here.
Read me.



Tutorial for Newbies

How to Build a phpBB3 Forum Community (Part One)



Games Reviews

Games Review: Cate West - The Vanishing Files by Gamenaut
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/MagicMatchAdventures.html

Games Review: Cate West - The Vanishing Files by Gamenaut
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/CateWestTheVanishingFiles.html

Games Review: Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze
Download for Trial Version : Reflexive... not yet!

Games Review: Fatal Hearts by Hanako Games
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/FatalHearts.html
Download for Fatal Hearts’ Walkthrough can be found here, or better yet, you can visit the designer’s website at http://hanako.informe.com/

Games Review: Spirit of Wandering - The Legend
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/SpiritofWandering-TheLegend.html

Games Review: KingMania by 300AD.com
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/KingMania.html

Flash Game: Hapland Series Walkthrough
Link(s) to Play...
Hapland 1: http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/hapland/
Hapland 2: http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/hapland2
Hapland 3: http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/hapland3

Games Review: Ara Fell, The Legend of Dirisetsu Hollow
Download for Full Version: http://www.arafell.com

Games Review: The Great Tree
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/TheGreatTree.html

Games Review: Dream Chronicles
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/DreamChronicles.html

Games Review: Fairy Godmother Tycoon
Download for Trial Version: http://www.reflexive.com/FairyGodmotherTycoon.html

Flash Game: Other Age by Zeiva
Link to Play: http://zeiva.deviantart.com/art/Other-Age-39931316

Flash Game: Grow Island
Link to Play: http://www.gamegecko.com/growisland.php



Recipes

Taco Bake with Corn Chips

Click here


Southern Chicken with Onions

Click here


Breakfast Pepper Mix

Click here


Chicken Tartlets

Click here


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