But it wasn’t all rosy. Mostly the reason why I didn’t update this blog is because Streamyx was down. More on this later.

I typed out some of these on the plane to London. That was over a week ago and I still haven’t posted what happened in December. So without further ado, here’s what happened a lifetime ago, in December 2009:

• Streamyx went down.
• Raina <3
• Other Stuff

But… I’m changing my blog! For a really long time I’ve been using Blogger, because it’s just so easy and simple to use. Plus I think I was 12/13 (?) when I started my first blog a long  time ago. I don;t even remember what that was about.

A little history about the blog. The major blog I’ve been updating for the past year (or two? Three? I don’t remember) was hosted on Blogger. I think everyone knows Blogger. Most people opened their first blogs there. It’s simple, it’s free, and it was something like “OMGWTF I get to have jiannmeng.blogspot.com which has my name in it! So cool!” So that’s what I used, and that’s what I liked for a really long time.

As time passed though, a few things really become annoying to me. I nitpicked about certain small details. For example, Blogger only gives you 1GB of space for pictures. Seems like quite a lot, but that’s only if you automatically resize the photos you  upload. Doing so you could hold lots and lots of pictures, but I’m always thinking, “What if I ran out of space? Do I have to delete old photos?” Probably the answer is yes, and I cannot bear deleting historical stuff. If you look at my harddrive, I try to save every photo I take, no matter how irrelevant. I don’t know why, it’s just one of my idiosyncrasies.

Even worse, I really like uploading high-resolution stuff. Even when resized reasonably, that’s about 1MB per picture, in total about 1000 pictures only. I can’t really live with that.

So I decided to use Photobucket. I think everyone knows that too. Unlimited storage! But that leads to different problems. Stuff like having to copy the link of every picture and manually setting a fixed size so that it wouldn’t overstretch the layout, stuff like that. It’s really, really annoying for some reason.

So, what to do? I wasn’t sure, but then Raina told me about Tumblr, which looked pretty awesome. But a short while later I realised it wasn’t for blogging, it’s more like Twitter. The layouts were nice, but you really couldn’t customise your post too well. Stuff like adding pictures to posts and editing the HTML of the post was just plain annoying. So, what next?

I was looking at WordPress. Probably the best of all, but if I took their free service I’d again be limited by storage space and all that stuff. But you can download WordPress (it’s open source) and use it on your own website, making it truely your own blog. I liked that.

Which means, how would I host my own website? What hosting company should I use? Above everything, it needs to be cheap. I’d be spending my dad’s money if I wanted to host my own website. Shopping around, the cheapest I could find was something like USD4.99 a month. RM200 a year.

*gasp*

It’s actually not a lot if you think about it, for a whole year. But still, I’m quite reluctant to dish out TWO HUNDRED BUCKS a year, especially if it’s not my own money. Find something cheaper…

Nearlyfreespeech.net. Interesting. It’s pay as you use, so the more you use, the more you pay, but also the less you use the less you pay. I like it :O

So how much would it cost? Looking at the pricing structure, I think it’s about 30-40 US a year. That’s on average RM100 a year. I think I can convince my dad to approve of that. After all, this is more like a hobby to me. We all spend some money on our hobbies… I think mine is pretty cheap for a hobby.

Last night, I signed up, deposited some money and promptly spent close to two hours trying to make sense of what a MsSQL database is. This morning, I uploaded all the WordPress files into the server, and a few minutes later, voila, it works!

Of course, I think the definite coolest part about the whole thing is this:

http://www.jiannmeng.com

(Yes, it’s centered because it’s awesome)

I have a website! A fully functioning website I can call my own. That is made of plain awesome.

So, what does this mean now? A few things. My Blogger and Tumblr accounts will now be updated anymore. Almost more than likely if you’re seeing this on my old blogs, it’s the second-to-last post I’ll be putting up. Update your links accordingly, please :)

If you’re reading this from the new link, this is a pretty detailed first post, isn’t it?

I also imported all the old posts into WordPress. I’m not starting anew, I’m just making a New Old Blog.

Another thing. The new blog will be under construction for a long, long time. I really want to customise the blog, but it’s SPM season now. That means I’ve wasted close to 4 hours on something relatively useless. If I have free time (and I’m not playing a game, (TF2 is really fun)), I’ll be tinkering around with themes, plugins and stuff. The site might go down without warning since it’s based on a prepaid system and I didn’t credit it with that much money yet. The layout might change everytime you visit, or not at all. I don’t know what will happen.

It’s an interesting new journey from here on.

Step 1 : Find a RSS reader/startpage. The one I use is called Netvibes.

Step 2 : Sign up for an account.

Step 3 : Search for a button which says “Add feeds”, or something similar to that.

Step 4 : Here’s the iffy part. Search the blog you want to read for an RSS feed or an XML feed. As a shortcut : for Blogger blogs the url you should enter into the box is

http://&lt;blogtitle&gt;.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Like mine : http://jiannmeng.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Step 5 : Press save, then close edit.

Now, just by checking Netvibes, you can see all posts made on the blogs you are tracking. Also, when a new blog post comes up, it is very noticeable. Now there’s no need to look through blogs with horrible backgrounds and music anymore.

*think*

What makes for a good first post?

*think*

1. Comments about the day – No. I’m much too lazy to stick to a daily schedule. And anyways, it’s 2.28 am and the last 2-and-a-half hours were as exciting as… staying up late.

2. Long-winded article about my thoughts – That can be summarized easily.

“What the hell I wanna go sleep but I’m not sleepy dammit”

3. Emo poem -

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Life is so sad,
And I hate you

Not my forte, that’s for sure.

That is all.