Archive for » 2008 «

A reunion, a family outing, a wedding and a funeral
Posted on Wednesday, December 03rd, 2008 by pelf and filed in Life as I see it

So, I thought I could get back to my so-called normal blogging schedule after Pink for October, but no, I realized I haven’t had the luxury to write any decent blog posts in November. Blogging used to come so naturally to me during those days when I did not have to work on the computer for 8-straight-hours.

Anyway, a lot of things have happened in past month, and for the same reason, November seemed to pass me by so quickly.

First of all, we organized a Turtle Research and Rehabilitation Group Annual Reunion at Aquaria KLCC on Nov 5th. Some 60 ex-volunteers turned up at the reunion, and we had some light dinner, a live auction and we managed to raise about RM 1.5K (gross) on that day :D The next day, I attended a National Sea Turtle Symposium held at Legend Hotel by the Department of Fisheries, and after the symposium, I took an evening bus back to Melaka.

I then spent the following weekend in Genting Highlands, catching up with Mum and my cutie pie sister who wanted to watch Hacken Lee’s concert, paid some “tuition fees” at the casino and donated a lot of money to the machines at the arcade, playing basketball, LOL. Oh, and we also went Karaoke-ing.

I went to Penang to attend a friend’s wedding dinner on Nov 22nd, and upon arriving in Penang, Mum called to inform me about my maternal grandmother’s passing. She was 86. The wake — my second ever since I know what death was — lasted for 3 nights, and after a combination of Buddhist-and-Taoist rites, we buried my grandmother on Nov 24th.

The rest of the month was spent creating a database using Microsoft Access and of course, data entry. We have been accumulating a lot of research data since 2004, and I am determined to have them all entered into the database before the next season begins in January 2009 (otherwise there will be more work next year).

So how did your November go? :)

10 Comments
The first flood in more than 20 years
Posted on Monday, December 01st, 2008 by pelf and filed in Life as I see it

The recent 4-day-non-stop rain has resulted in a flood in the university but I would think that the extra-heavy-rain last night was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as they say.

UMT flood 1

UMT flood 2

The water level at the entrance to (top) and exit at (above) the university this morning wasn’t very high but I wasn’t too confident that my small car could pass it.

UMT flood 3

Not only was the entrance to the university flooded, apparently, we heard that water was knee-high in some places on campus! An emergency holiday has also been declared this morning. I wonder if the condition will improve tomorrow..?

A Professor who has been teaching at the university since 1979 said that there had never been a day she could not go to work due to the rain or flood. So if this isn’t the worst monsoon in 20 years, what is?

8 Comments
9 Twitter apps that you might not have heard of
Posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 by pelf and filed in Blogging Challenges & Tips

I was at Liz Strauss’ Open Comment Night this morning and we were talking about Twitter apps.

An Open Comment Night @ Liz Strauss’ is like an open mic. You just show up, say “Hi” and then say jump into any conversation. You don’t have to read all the comments as you are typing yours — though you really should read all the comments at the end of the Open Comment Night to pick up whatever information and links that you’ve missed earlier.

OK, so, we were all talking about Twitter and our favourite Twitter apps and the million-dollar-question “What happens if Twitter starts charging?” A total of 232 comments were posted in 3 hours (isn’t this crazy?!) and after the dust has settled, as they say, I have gone back and picked up 9 interesting Twitter-related links that Liz herself suggested. I think we were all supposed to share some links but I guess we were all too hyped up we forgot about the sharing part :blush:

Twitterfeed
As the name suggests, Twitterfeed feeds your blog to your Twitter. All you need to do is sign up for an account for free, provide your blog’s RSS feed URL and Twitterfeed will do the job for you! Alternatively, if your blog is self-hosted, you may also install Alex King’s Twitter Tools plugin (which is what I am using). Twitter Tools places a check box on your WRITE POST page and you can uncheck it if you do not want a particular post to be announced on Twitter.

Twitturly
Twitturly is a service for tracking the links/URLs that people are talking on Twitter. It doesn’t matter whether you use the entire long URL or if you have shortened a link using TinyURL, or Snipurl (snurl) or any other URL shortening services, as each “mention” or “vote” will be verified and counted. And to keep things fresh, Twitturly only shows the 100 most popular URLs over the last 24 hours. If you want to know what people are tweeting, Twitturly is the place to go.

My Tweeple
Not sure if you should follow your new followers on Twitter? My Tweeple is designed to help you decide whether or not to follow certain people on Twitter when they follow you. You sign up for a free account, sync your My Tweeple account with your Twitter account, and maintain your list of Twitter followers and friends either by following them, unfollowing them, or blocking them.

TweetBeep
TweetBeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter! Put in a keyword or website, and get emails when others tweet it! You can easily keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, your favourite subjects, or anything at all! You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL. Just sign up for a free account and you’re ready to go!

TweetScan
TweetScan is like TweetBeep with a search function. Once you sign up for a free account, you can receive updates via email, RSS, or you could use the Click button. TweetScan can also be used to find lost or multi-user replies. TweetScan scan up to five phrases for daily or weekly delivery and best of all, you can turn it off anytime. If you’re like me, trying not to sign up for accounts that you don’t use, you can just type your keyword and hit the SEARCH button, and it will return a list of tweets that mention your keyword.

TwitterLocal
TwitterLocal lets you generate an RSS or XML Feed to filter out tweets around a certain area. Just enter a city, state, postal code (if you live in the United States), choose the range of miles you want to include, and hit the GO button. You’ll instantly get URLs to add to your RSS reader. I have tried searching for “Malaysia” within a range of 20 miles and the search returned a list of tweets from Twitter users in Malaysia. It really isn’t too bad :D

Monitter
Monitter is a Twitter monitor that allows you to “monitter” the Twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying. All you need to do is just type any 3 keywords (maximum) into the search boxes and within seconds you’ll start seeing relevant tweets streaming LIVE.

Twitter 100
Twitter 100 shows you your 100 followers’ last tweets. If you have too many followers, you may not be able to follow your of them but with Twitter 100, you can see up to 100 of your followers on one screen!

Tweet Clouds
Tweet Clouds generates a keyword cloud for you so that you can tell, at one glance, what you have been tweeting about. Check out my Tweet Cloud.

There you have it — 9 Twitter apps that you might not have heard of. If you know of any other Twitter apps that you think some readers aren’t aware of, please do share them in the comments! :biggrin:

Also, my Twitter account is http://twitter.com/pelf81/ and I tweet mostly about turtles and conservation (what else?) whenever I can :D And I use Twitter occasionally to network (make new friends) and touch base (keep the old ones).

Follow me on Twitter!

4 Comments

Pages (39)« First...«23456»...Last »