Tweeet, tweeeet! :D

Created by The Oatmeal

Aha! So that's why I haven't been blogging. How predictable of me. But then I actually expected a higher score. Haha. :D On to 100% addiction! :D Care to join me? :P

Now who can suggest my next blog topic? :)

The City of Wonder (AND Disturbia)

In the Facebook world, there is a city that transforms grown women (and even men!) to ingredient-obsessed, will-befriend-anybody, gourmet points-greedy, account-hacking, rehab-needing kids (okay fine, girls and boys would be a better term). You might have heard about it, been coerced to join (your friends just want their bonus ingredient from you... but give in, so they finally shut up and leave you alone, LOL), or can relate to my very words. This city goes by a simple name, and it is a simple game (simple, but not easy, aha!) but it has the power to get you hooked in a heartbeat. Of course I'm talking about Restaurant City.

Looking back, I can't believe it's only been a day short of a week since I fell into RC's tremendously addictive trap (not complaining, for now at least, I'm willing to be entrapped, haha). I've added the app sometime prior, but never really appreciated the tastiness of RC until boredom, Google and more knowledgeable friends made me piece together a comprehensive enough refresher. Within days, I found myself trading ingredients like crazy, thinking of energy-optimizing layouts, staring blankly at my screen for minutes straight (that toilet feature sure is a bitch), and yes, opening myself up to friends of friends and even virtual strangers all for the love of RC (and ingredients, ingredients, ingredients).

I really should have seen this one coming. I loved playing Sims to bits before, and RC is quite similar to it especially on the decorating aspect, only with cuter and plumper avatars, and that restaurateur business twist to it. It is quite a good way to unwind or burn time (if you can eventually ignore that throbbing pain in your head, the ache in your back, the stiff fingers and maybe CTS in the morning, hehe).

Delving further, it is also an incredibly utopian business model. Because where else can you let your employees sleep all day, close shop whenever, and still be able to rise up to profitability when able? And while there is competition in terms of level rankings between friends, it is not the kind of competition that drives others out of business (which is so common in the real world). In fact, in RC, your progress is commensurate to the number of friends you have (or allies, if you may) both in the nominal sense and the qualitative sense. Meaning, without reliable trading outlets to tap on, RC will be... errr... more difficult and less fun (good luck levelling up those dishes). Besides, can you even afford $2000 minimum for one ingredient in that highway robbery of an ingredient market stall? The cliche no man is an island rings true in RC as it does in real life.

So if you ever find yourself in need of a new RC neighbor (or new ingredient, I don't mind), why not visit Vanilla. Starter: Pumpkin Soup. Main Course: Yakibuta Ramen. Dessert: Exotic Fruit Skewers. A perfect 10-10-10 (4 days baby, 4 days! ;P You don't wanna know what I had to resort to, LOL). You may also drop by Vanilla's sister restaurants, Sparkle and Lily. :) Under the same management.

Now who to visit next? :D

Dear Twitter

Dear Twitter,

You sneaky, sneaky bird. You with your seemingly harmless, too simplistic, probably boring platform. You that I scoffed at for Facebook, dismissed as an unworthy competitor. You that I have now fallen for.

I was wrong about you. All I had to do was give you a real shot, not the kind where I set you up and do nothing. Sure, it can be lonely at times in the Twitterverse when your friends are at the double digits only, and a mere handful are actively tweeting. But the loneliness is a fair trade off for peace and quiet, and through you I can tweet to my heart's delight without feeling TMI to a universe of 500 people. Yes, I know that my updates are visible to the entire planet. Because really, protecting updates is missing the tweeting point. But it still feels like my own little private space, and I have yet to find the optimal number of followers where loneliness and quietness hit that sweet equilibrium point.

In the meantime, I have my inner circle of lovely tweeters (that I fondly prefer to call tweetiepies) to keep me company in Twitterville: @CoNVERSExADDiCt, @fatziibebeh, @liaalu and the newest addition, @renmaldita. I've been following some brilliant and fabulous people too, most noteworthy of which are: Allison Winn Scotch, Alyssa Milano, Paulo Coelho and Neil Gaiman. Also, Mr. and Mrs. Kutcher, but who doesn't follow them? And while I make it a point not to follow celebrities who don't provide substantial tweets, I've made the exception for Wolverine and Gambit. Obviously, I'm a big fan.

And I have to say that you aren't as simple as I thought. What with all the new things I learned from you such as retweeting, URL shorteners, Seesmic Desktop and a whole lot more. I'd like to think I'm no longer a plain vanilla tweeter, who even made a risky change in username (bye-bye, @ytsirhc).

While I ever get tired of you? I don't want to make promises I cannot keep but for now it seems, I am officially a tweeting kinda girl. :D

XOXO,

Ymae the Trinket

A Passion for Fashion (Wars)

I'm a self-confessed Facebook junkie, who has probably tried one too many applications out there. Add the fact that it doesn't take a lot to hook me when it comes to virtual stuff (all it takes is a lot of color, relatable interest, and the promise of sheer and utter brainlessness, really), and my latest FB app obsession comes as no surprise at all. Called Fashion Wars, it's all about showdowns with other divas in the "fashion world." There are various ways to purchase goodies and properties, which in turn helps you generate more cash and climb up the fashion superstar ladder. It's such a girly app, I know, but then, my geek taste has always been extremely, shamefully so.

In the two to three weeks I've been playing FW, I can truly say it's been a great time-wasting boredom buster, and beyond it's seemingly superficial facade (okay, it really is superficial, I'm just trying to deepen things down a bit, haha!), it can remind you of quite a few things about people and life in general. Such as:

• Sometimes, you're really just doing your best with what you've been dealt with, and people still smack you down or bitchslap you. From out of nowhere.
• Or sometimes, you've been nothing but nice, compassionate, supportive, a great pal, etc., etc., and surprise, surprise, you're the one who ends up being collateral damage.
  
• And when people are nothing but unfair and/or downright mean, your first instinct is to fight back and give them a dose of their own medicine. But is it really worth the energy and other wasted resources? Maybe not. Honey, you got style. ;)
  
• On the brighter side, sometimes, former peeves end up turning into allies or pals. All it takes are two open-minded individuals and someone with enough humilty to reach out. Ah, the wonders of reaching out. :D
  
• Sometimes you prepare yourself for something better to come, and it never does. Or maybe, it just hasn't yet. Patience, patience, patience. :)
• One day, you'll be so far up and basking in brightness that all the inconveniences and unfairness you have had to deal with totally becomes insignificant and irrelevant. And all the negativity thrown your way will barely make a dent. Just make sure you are set to get there.

See, FW can be enlightening too! So give it a shot, girlies (dudes too, if you want, but then...)! And make sure to add me to your posse while you're at it. ;)

Read More! Read More!

I've always wanted to learn how to do expandable summaries for my posts, since (1) I've always had the tendency to be a lengthy writer and (2) my reviews usually have a lot of spoilers. At first, I thought the feature was something readily available at Blogger (like something you just tick in the menu of options in Settings).

Unfortunately, it's much more complicated than that. There is a need to actually do some HTML tweaks. And seeing the entire raw code of my Blogger template really reminded me of how much I sucked at my programming courses in school. But for the love of my blog (LOL), I attempted to figure the whole thing out anyway (and by that I mean follow instructions and doing some copying-pasting). I tried following the instructions on Blogger Help but to no avail. Sorry to say, the whole section wasn't so helpful, Blogger Help. There were some missing steps or tips, and it seemed like it was written under the assumption that everyone is a natural programmer or coder.

Luckily, when the main resource fails, there's always Google. After perusing a couple of sites, I found the one that seemed user-friendly enough in this blog called Coder's Talk (and it is!). I followed the very clearly illustrated instructions (complete with screenshots and highlights) and eventually hacked it! Yey!

To anyone who might be interested in creating their own expandable post summaries, I highly recommend following Coder's Talk. I have three final notes:

1. Never attempt to tweak your HTML code without saving a back up of your original template. You can do so by automatically saving a back up (this facility is readily available in the Edit HTML page of Blogger). Or copy-paste the entire code to a Word file for easier access because the HTML back-up file needs to be run via a HEX editor or some other non-standard program. Or just do both to be sure. :D
   
2. After following Coder's Talk's instructions to the letter (well, sort of), I was still unsuccessful initially. What I did was type in the p tags missing from my original HTML template (and mentioned in the instructions) and viola! It works! Yipee! :D
3. The final step in the process requires you to edit your post template. Should you wish to post something without the read more link (or whatever it is you wanna call it instead of 'read more'), you would have to delete the code from your post template otherwise your post might have some missing text once published.
   

Happy expanding and collapsing, bloggers! :D

DQ Tendencies

Soooo... I changed URL. Which is a pretty straightforward thing to do (Blogger to Blogger at least) except:

1. You have to create a new blog with your old URL to inform people that you changed URL. Do this ASAP because if someone else takes hold of your old URL, how else can you do that without brute force? Unless it's your plan all along to disappear off the face of the earth. :)

2. Your links to other blogs disappear when you change so you have to re-link those again. This one took me by surprise.

So there's a little more work to do than simply changing your URL, but it's not exactly brain surgery. Or maybe my blog is too simple (i. e. not much gadgets or tools or widgets or whatever). So please don't blame me if you change your URL and lose more than your blog links. :)

I changed because I have to admit I didn't think too much about what URL to use when I started this blog (and how bothersome the multiple dashes are). Besides, 3 out of 5 people will agree this new URL suits me and my blog better. :P The other two people who disagree either don't know me too well, or have not been reading the junk I've been posting here. :)

But other than the URL change, it's business as usual. :D