Not content with pestering my web site, it seems that these annoying bugs decided to move house: to my Windows Live Mail program. Before I say anything else, I want to state that Live Mail has been a very reliable program for me in the past. I’ve never encountered anything like this until last night, when I tried to send emails and it responded with something along the lines of “The following messages could not be sent. Server error 451.” Naturally I went to their Help site, but as logic dictates (LOL) no luck.

A quick check with my ISP revealed nothing wrong in their servers, and I checked and rechecked my settings; everything was correct. Ran antivirus and antispyware scans-nothing.

GRRR….I was on the verge of deleting or repairing Windows Live Mail today when I decided to give it one last chance. Wrote a test email to myself, clicked on Send, and….it went through!

Guess I’ll always have to show those pesky gremlins who’s the Boss around here.

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Dear readers, it gives me great pleasure to make this announcement: (drum roll, please) my website, www.philipyeoh.com is now launched! And ahead of schedule too. I’d originally planned to do this in early August, but since I’ve managed to iron out most of the kinks (and swat those persistent gremlins) I thought I’d go for an early start.

Basically I’m using this website to sell and promote my first ebook, titled Learn to Play the Piano in 12 Lessons. If you’re 15 years and older, have a hankering for learning the piano (but never got around to it), now’s your chance! With my ebook as your guide, you can be up and running in as little as 12 lessons. And since you’re doing it on your own, you can take as much time as you want on each lesson. You’re the boss!

More info can be obtained at my new website. I’ve purposely kept the site simple, because since this is targeted towards the whole globe, I realize that some of you might still be on dial-up, and it ain’t fun waiting ages for a site to load, is it?

Anyway, please go to my site and click around. Feel free to sign the guestbook, add a comment, and more importantly, buy my ebook if you wish (and I wish you would!)

See you there!

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I’ve been working out the kinks in my web site these past few days (which explains my absence from posting). I’d like to say a big thank you to my group of unofficial beta-testers: Doris, Ian, Alan, Jeff, Lisa, and Leisa. I appreciate all the helpful comments and suggestions these guys and gals have given me, and have implemented most of them into my site.

Of course, the gremlins (aka setbacks) never give up their relentless attack on me. The latest was the Paypal button affair, but as we all know, it is best when one tackles one’s fears head-on. And so it was I had another encounter with the wonderful world of HTML (don’t know whether I meant that to be sarcastic or not). By deleting some lines of code, the problem vanished instantly.

I’m sure these cursed gremlins will never give up. However, I’ve found each setback a valuable experience to be learnt. I won’t give up until all is well with my site and it’s up and running!

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It appears that the gremlins have been stealthily creeping up on my website work these past few days. For one thing, my FTP (File Transfer Protocol for you non-geeks) program decided to give up the ghost yesterday. It just stopped working, period. And silly me, I was tearing my hair out, messing around with the program’s configuration settings, and getting more frustrated and annoyed by the minute. I’d spent about 90 minutes doing this !@#$? and enlightening as it seems, my friend Doris suggested (we were on IM) downloading another  free FTP program. HELLO!! Why didn’t I think of that? Duh!

So I followed Doris’ suggestion, downloaded this new FTP program, configured it, and it worked! So logic (at least for me) dictates that it was that #@!$ program’s fault. What a revelation! Still not satisfied, I downloaded yet another FTP program, configured it, and it worked too. By now, I wasn’t freaking out, as I thought there was something wrong with my Internet connection when that !@#$ program died on me.

Now how’s this for another shot at logic: I was going through my website files and folders in my local hard drive. There was a folder called Images and I don’t know why, I thought I’d saved up my graphics files in another folder, so I deleted the Images folder. Several hours later, I was starting work on my web pages again when I noticed that some graphical elements were missing from all my web pages.

Checked this, tweaked that, no luck. Oh man, I was about to hyper-ventilate again. Fortunately I had made a backup of all my website files on a thumb drive. Took that out, stuck it into my computer, and eureka! I noticed there was an Images folder present in the thumb drive. Quickly copied that folder back into my hard disk, started up Kompozer, and Hallelujah! all the graphical elements magically presented themselves.

With a wry smile on my face, I couldn’t help but think about Mr. Spock all of a sudden, and some of his quotes about being logical (I was and still am a Trekkie) I felt compelled to share some of Mr. Spock’s famous quotes here, they apply to me and I hope you will enjoy them too.

 “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end”

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.” (my personal favorite)

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it”

“The miracle is this: the more we share the more we have”

Live long and prosper, readers!

Thanks to thinkexist.com for the quotes.

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I’m still working furiously on my website, www.philipyeoh.com. Just about all of the pages have been done, except for one or two. And it’s also a matter of tweak and test, tweak and test. Don’t want to disappoint all you guys out there, lol. I’ve learnt a lot in the process, but probably the most surprising thing I’ve learnt is that it’s not that easy to set up your own website. True, if you go the Geocities or Tripod way. But I’ve been there, done that. Now I have my own domain, so everything is solely my own work.

I’ve mentioned this before, but Kompozer really saved my butt. I just can’t sing the praises of this wonderful WYSIWYG program enough. You can use it as a WYSIWYG or edit the HTML source code within the program itself. And for Pete’s sake, it’s free. Beat that!

I still plan to launch my website on schedule, meaning August 2008. But before doing that, there’s a lot of testing and tweaking to be done. So you will understand if I don’t blog too often this month.

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Old news for some, I suppose, but the challenge for me was upgrading my WP2.5.1 to 2.6. Would I do it? Could I do it? The answer is an emphatic YES! I managed to do it last night, although I sustained some nerve-wrecking moments, especially after deleting old files, uploading new ones, then waiting to see whether it would be successful. I’m happy to say that the upgrade went without a hitch (my mentor Doris would be proud of me). I’d just like to share some personal tips if you’re new to this stuff (there’s a newbie born every minute).

1. Read and watch the video about the new WordPress 2.6 and its features here.
2. You can read the Three Step Upgrade here but honestly, I would advice reading the detailed upgrade instructions. I must have read through this at least 3 to 4 times, and it paid off for me because my upgrade went by without any problems at all. Follow the instructions very carefully.
3. This is perhaps the most important, especially if this is your first time upgrading WordPress. Give yourself plenty of time. I did this after the family went to bed, and so I could focus and concentrate on the task at hand. Took me about 30-40 minutes, but it paid off!

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Alright, since I’m about to publish my website, I figured that I’d better test out my pages on the other popular browsers, namely Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 (I’m using IE7 as my primary browser). So off I went into the web to download them, and boy, I must say I’m impressed!

Firefox 3 is superb and fast. Downloading it was easy, what with just a 7.8MB installer, and in minutes I was up and running. Pages, especially graphics, render extremely fast, at least two times faster than IE7. Tabbed browsing was a breeze, and importing favorites from IE was a no-brainer. With so many add-ons and widgets available, this browser is truly versatile and amazing. As of now, my website pages render pretty well with Firefox, except for one broken table.

Opera 9.5 is another stunner. Look at the homepage (see below). Geez, wish I could nick that minimalist design for my website, it’s classy and gorgeous! The same can be said of the browser (just a 8.5MB download). Installation was smooth and Opera automatically imports all the IE favorites without a hitch. Page rendering of text and graphics is just as fast as Firefox 3, and of course tabbed browsing is standard. Widgets are plentiful. And my website pages all display beautifully in this browser-yay!

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