Mt. Taranaki hike

December 13, 2010

Before going off on my summer holiday trip to Sydney this year, I decided to join several of my friends on a multiple-day hike up one of the mountains in New Zealand. It was a rather quick decision since I already have most of my hiking equipment ready (they were ready most of the time).

Starting off our hike at the North Egmont Visitor Centre

We planned to do the Around the Mountain Circuit hike, a 4-5 days hike that we planned to do in just 3 days. We intended to start at the North Egmont visitor centre up to the Syme Hut on Fanthams Peak on the first day, where we will be staying for the night. At about 2000m above sea level, Fanthams Peak is the lower secondary cone of the stratovolcanic mountain that is Mt. Taranaki, about 550m lower than the summit of Mt. Taranaki.

When we started from the North Egmont visitor centre at about 8.30am on Tuesday Nov 23rd 2010, we intended to take the High Track on our way to Dawson Falls, but instead took a wrong turn into the Maketawa Track. Realising this fact only after we reached the Maketawa Hut, we had no choice but to continue along the Curtis Falls track. Turning back to follow our original planned route was simply not an option, as that would waste both energy and precious time. Continue Reading

 

Migrate, and don’t go back

October 30, 2010

It is truly saddening to see just how easily some people forget their roots.

To be able to suggest to their fellow countrymen to migrate and don’t go back, just because they watch a video of a certain politician saying certain things that they don’t agree with, reflects a total absence of patriotism and a lack of a sense of gratitude.

They forget that when their parents and grandparents are poor, it is this nation that sheltered them and allowed them the opportunity to build up wealth. And now that they are wealthy enough to be able to travel to other countries and start a life elsewhere should they want to, they so easily entertain the idea of migrating. And promoting it.

These people should be ashamed of themselves. Continue Reading

 

Money and happiness

October 6, 2010

I was born and raised into an average family, and 10 years ago when other kids were playing those Digimons that cost RM30 each I could only watch in envy. No way my parents would buy me one of those. Those are for rich people.

When money doesn’t come easily into your pockets, and when you have to work hours upon hours just to have a taste of a little bit of leisure that money can bring, you learn to appreciate it better.

And now that I have quite a fair amount of income from my freelancing work (and donations from all you wonderful Graphene theme users), the question of money and happiness began to creep into my daily ponderings in the shower and elsewhere. I began to see how easy it is for people to fall into the trap of continuously striving to make more and more money, once they have a little sip from the cup.

Money is certainly not the root of all evil as the King James Bible would have it, but it certainly is a root to a lot of evils. And I think the major error that many people did (and still do) is that they strive to continuously increase the amount of money they have, without any specific goals or objectives about what to do with that money. When you fall into that trap, boy are you in trouble, for then money would never ever bring you happiness. It will bring you lots of evils instead. Continue Reading

 

WordPress themes’ rating and user-friendliness

September 22, 2010

When it comes to the free WordPress themes, the best-rated themes are often the least user-friendly of the bunch.

Atahualpa theme's rating in WordPress.org

I had to work with the Atahualpa theme last year, for a project that didn’t last very long. And the first time I saw the code and tried to make modifications to it, my immediate reaction was “What a mess. What a total mess.”

The theme’s code structure is way different from the usual WordPress theme’s code structure, the structure that the default theme that comes with standard WordPress installation uses. Because I am familiar with that structure, seeing a theme with a code structure such as Atahualpa’s is out-of-the-wordly experience.

And yet this theme is one of the highest-rated theme in the official WordPress.org theme repository, rated by 446 users at the time of writing. How could a theme like this be so user-unfriendly? Continue Reading

 

Reclaim your inbox with Mozilla Thunderbird

August 10, 2010

Many of us would have not one, but two or three or even more separate email accounts. Is there an easier way to manage them all without logging in to each one of them and checking for new mails one by one?

There is! The magic software is called an email client. And in this post, I’m gonna show you how to use one free, open-source email client: Mozilla Thunderbird.

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PS: This is my first ever video tutorial :)