I feel the same thing again. Last time, it was during this period of time too. How should I act now? I started to believe that this is not real. It is just some stupid emotions and unnecessary feelings; trying to distract me from what I really have to focus on. Like I don’t have enough distraction already.

Unnecessary. Yeah right. Well, if it was necessary, I don’t have any options anyway.

Anyhow, 3 papers down. 3 more to go.

I was mentally tired just now, I went out for a quick drive outside. No destination. Just speed up and enjoy the view and the sound. It was good.

Lame. Haha

I mean, among me and my close friends here in UTP, it seems that I’m the only guy who are into web+graphic design and stuff. Oh yeah luckily my roommate is also into this art stuff. But it is not enough. I need to find new friends. haha

I always have this kind of dream of having some kind of team/group, creative team or something like that. Just look at some local art group out there. ( Just because you think Facebook is the ‘one step ahead‘, don’t be too arrogant to browse through MySpace. There are a lot potential there.) Bunch of kids doing the things the love. Of course there are a lot of posers too. Selling crappy t-shirts just to be famous among the community. I know, I used to plan of having this clothing thing works with some of friends early this year. Not actually working though. The excuse? We are too far apart from each other. I’m here in UTP, the other guy in KL and the other one in..er JB? Failed. Those kids are cool though.

My local idol for now is art:tech from the famous 84cube. Just look at his Fotopages. I actually browsed all the way to his first post, just to see how fun his life is. And I love his artworks+doodles. Oh I’m so jealous. 84cube is a big name now. Been stalking them from the beginning. One of them, Nvrmndo, is (was?) a UTP student too. There is one team in UTP though, at least from what I know. Paperme.  Cool guys with potential. Been watching one of the designer too - Melongray. And oh, the vocalist of the band is also one of the member.

See, this is kind of thing that I want. How fun is that to design a poster for a gig, a cover album for local indie band and stuff like that. Contribution to the creative community.

Recently there was Colourama. Organized by Bangkit and Weareenvy. A very brilliant event I must say. Go on, read more about the event. Looking at the photo in the Organiser post makes me envy so much. It must be so much fun to organize this kind of event - together with your friends - without the unnecessary pressure of birocracy or whatsoever (well, maybe there were some?)

Next is RANtAi Revelation. I’m going with Nazir later. Want to join? Girls only. Haha. Kidding. ok, not.

Now, we need something like this in UTP. Possible? There was one event last few weeks. Art fest or something like that. I went to take a look, but.. sorry to say, not that interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be an ass here. But we need something more lively - not only on the name. It wasn’t that ‘fest’ at all.

We need to gather, independent of any formal club in UTP, and do something cool.

*tiba-tiba rasa semangat nak tulis benda camni. haha

Academically speaking, I believe this semester is the worst. With all the tests and stuff, my coursework mark is really not as good as before. I was distracted, by many things. I was demotivated. I was lost actually. Or maybe the courses are really tough this semester. Nothing can be done now, except to strive harder for my upcoming final exam. Maybe I can fix that with my final exam marks. We’ll see.

I haven’t been updating - not because there’s nothing to write about. I was lazy. There was E3 Day - lots of pictures - lazy to write. There was Dean’s Award - no picture - lagi la lazy to write. There was this and that - lazy to write. What to do?

Anyhow, the the last event was the EE Grand Dinner. Haha not so grand anyway. I was quite excited at first. But well, maybe because there were no enough people participating. The only thing a I like was the live performance by a band from UTP. Don’t really remember the name though.

Good looking guys with musical talents. Nothing more to be envious about.

Although the sound system is kinda suck, I always enjoy live stuff - the guitarist, the bassist, the drummer. They are pretty good. They were covering songs by Arctic Monkey if I’m not mistaken. Good stuff.

Then some of us decided to catch a late night movie. Since this was not planned earlier, we arrived at JJ to realize that there was nothing interesting to watch and everything was full. So, we headed to McD instead. Met some other people there.

That was candid. Wen Sher tricked me.

****

Now here I am. Wasting time. I really have to plan for my study week. My exam will start on 10 Nov until 27 Nov.

Wish me luck.

Credit: All photos are from Enol’s camera.

To be honest, I don’t know if there is name given to this type of apps, but I’ll proceed anyway. I just want to share some little Mac apps in my Preferences Pane, that I think is going to be useful for Mac users out there especially the new ones like me.

iStat menus

iStat menu is a very useful app for you to display the status of you system directly on your menubar. CPU usage, Memory usage, temperature and more. You can also have a custom date & time display. Look at mine. I’m using the basic version to display few stuff, but if you need more than that, check out other versions on their site.

Afloat

Before this, in Windows, I used to play video on top of other apps so I can simultaneously working on other things. However, Quicktime doesn’t have that option. I searched around, and found Afloat. Afloat is a little app that will add extra options into certain softwares so you can put it on top of the others. Plus, you can also apply some transparencies on those windows. Download Afloat

Secrets

Secrets is a collection of Mac tricks, compiled into one application. So you can find some ways to tweaks you Mac, to suit your need. Some of them are not available in the setting, so Secrets will reveal it to you. No more searching for Terminal command line and so on, most of them are compiled and updated in Secrets. Learn more about Secrets.

Warp

When my roomate set up his Desktops in Ubuntu to be exchangeable with just using the scroll wheel of his mouse, I was very jealous. I want to be able to switch between my Spaces using my mouse too, not keystrokes (and my screen ‘hot’ corners are full already haha). I searched for similar solution until I found Warp. Not really what I want though, but it is good enough. Check out Warp.

..etc

Then you’ll ask, where the hell is Quiksilver? Well, yeah, I used it before. Now I think the built-in Spotlight is more than enough for me. I hate redundancy There are a lot of other useful little apps to be discovered. I will definitely share more later on. Do you have any suggestion for me?

Yes, I’m still alive. Just too lazy to write anything. I have been thinking of writing some tutorials on WordPress and such, but still haven’t got the right time to do so. Wait for that

Basically it is not a new design after all. I’m still loving the previous theme - the concept and the arrangement - but I thought it is time to clean some things up. I decided to remove unncessary parts. As you can see, there is no more ‘Short notes’ and ‘Current Tunes’ section on the main page. I also added the Twitter updates on the home page - has been thinking of adding this for a very long time though.

Although the design is almost similar to the previous one, I decided to code the theme from the ground up, again. The old code, especially the CSS, is a total mess oh. I wrote a new one, all together. I am very particular about this kind of thing. I know, it is stupid, as nobody is looking at the code anyway. But I just have to do it. You know, with CSS, you learn new tricks and techniques all the time. This is where I need to apply it onto my own website. So, it is a new theme, with almost similar design. Kind of

Well, I did some major changes in the single view as well. It has a wider area for text and images now, and no more Advertlets ads! Well, at least for now. haha. And don’t you love the author comment? haha (It is kinda embarrassing though). Other than that, the archive page is also styled differently now - a cleaner look with no excerpt. For the search result view, I still have to put the excerpt so you can find things easily.

What I love the most in this new theme updates is the Pages. Check out all my pages, especially the About page. It looks cooler than the old boring one. View the Full Archive and Contact page as well. For the WP Themes page, I still need to change few things. And yeah, I removed the Works page. Not gonna update it anyway.

For the first time, I’m using CSS conditional to cater for the IE6 users. Since I’m using some PNG transparency, I need to do something else for IE users (yes guys, IE6 doesn’t support transparency, naturally). So if you are using that freaking Internet Explorer, mind you that you are seeing things differently - in a not so cool way. Trust me.

Help me

I need some help from all of you. I only tested this theme on Mac (Firefox 3.0.3 and Safari 3.1.2) and Windows XP (Firefox 3, IE6 and Chrome). If you are using other browsers on other platforms, and found any problem with the sites, let me know. Thanks!

Anyway, I would like to wish everyone Happy Eid or Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Sorry for any wrong doing in the past, either from my written words in this blog, or even my acts in real life. Sometimes people are too arrogant to realize their mistakes and how annoying they are towards other people. So yeah, sorry.

Thanks for those who sms-ed me and stuff. Really appreciate that. Have a wonderful Hari Raya everyone.

On an extra note..

If you haven’t noticed (or reading through RSS reader), I’ve changed my theme. The base is basically similar to the old one, though. There are a lot of stuff to be told, so I’ll create a post on that, later.

Just want to inform you guys that there is a problem with some images/photos uploaded after July 2008, because I screwed up when I upgraded my WP just now, and I don’t have the latest backups. Will solve that one later with my hosting company ASAP. Thanks to Xero for the helps.

Last few days, Nazir came to UTP for a visit. He’s a friend of mine from MRSM Langkawi who will be flying off to Melbourne next year. Since there are a bunch of our batch here in UTP, we decided to gather and break fast together. A lot of gossips and stories were exchanged. haha. Nazir is a good and a crazy friend.

Talking about flying abroad, lots of my friends has been leaving Malaysia for the last few weeks. Lyla and Wan Zahidi are already in UK;  and upcoming : Milo, Yazira, Wanali etc etc. Those were my classmates only - just to mention a few. Anyhow, good luck and take care

**** ****

On the other ocassion, we went to Ipoh to renew my driving license few days back. Yeah, I am no longer a P holder. :)) *throwing the red P stickers away*

On our way back, we spotted this place with some small graffiti paintings on the wall. Despite of the very high heat out there, we decided to stop, to.. snap some photos! Enol and his D40. I need to make good use of both of them

That was coincident, the heart thing I mean. seriously.

A lot photos were taken oh. Gonna love this one. Got the idea from an old blog I read a while back (cannot find the link).

Levitasi Gaddafi dan Aliff

It was very hot. If not, we would have stayed much longer. haha

**** ****

I will be driving back to Kelantan on Saturday. Apparently most of my friends are already at home now. I am alone here in this house. Dammit. Can’t wait to be home.

Yesterday after our last class around 3pm, we decided to go out. I really need to buy some new shirts and stuff. I haven’t bought anything for the upcoming Raya too (although that doesn’t matter that much). New shirts. That’s all I needed. And another friend of mine invited us to break fast at his house in Ipoh.

Went to several places, and got myself some shirts. Happy I have been thinking of wearing skinny jeans though. Yes, I don’t have any, yet. I’ve tried the red one. haha. I need to be ready before I can wear that.

Lately I’ve been very busy. I have been missing 2 weekends straight. And next weekend will be the same since I have another 3 tests coming before going back for Hari Raya on the 27th. Urgh, can’t wait.

Last few days, during my CommSys class, I was sitting at the back of the class, well, in the middle actually, because I was not in the mood. There was the lecturer, teaching in front, and I can’t really listen to his small voice, and my blurry eyes can’t really catch what’s on the screen either. I started to think - what the hell am I doing here.  Oh I wish I can just step up and drop out. Haha it’s not as easy as it sounds huh. I’ve read a blog post by a UTP students who is also a member of a famous design team in Malaysia - and he is also regretting his decision of being here.

Anyhow, maybe this blog is becoming a bit like a personal blog again. Welcome back.

What the hell happened to this blog? It’s 6th day of September. I didn’t even wished you guys Merdeka on 31st August. Now it is already 5 days since we started the fasting month. Hmm I guess 2008 is moving really quick huh?

There is nothing else to say, other than “I’m busy with stuff, test, and bla bla”. That has been the same excuse in this blog for the whole freaking year.

So, what’s up? Other than college stuff, I’m also busy working on some freelance projects, also some outsourced projects from some people I’m working with. I think I started to get bored to work on WordPress theme. Haha XHTML+CSS layouts is so much easier to work on. No way, I still love WordPress.

I have been trying to spend some time to put some update on the current theme for this blog and Kreativuse. Not much progress so far, though. Need to get some free time. I decided to use some PNG images in there, and trying not to worry that much on IE6. But I can’t. I don’t have any other problems with IE6 -”if you are using the correct way to code your website, you are not supposed to have any huge problem in all browsers” - except for PNG transparency. So, what’s the best solution? PNG fix? Nope, I never got that working as intended. I’ll go with conditional CSS.

Hey, have you tried Google Chrome? The brand new browser from Google. I haven’t, because there is no version for Mac. Yeah yeah Google rocks. Just hope Chrome will not make it tougher for web designers/developers in terms of browser compatibility.

Rant ended. Out!