If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to my youtube channel.

I’m still debating how and what I want to show on here – perhaps just the tutorials. You shall find out soon!

I’d been sleeping late all week long as it is trying to do as much studying as possible. A “good night” for sleep would be 5am-11am. Enter Sunday, right before the triple exam combo hit me. I had a group of friends, and we were all studying stats together. I gotta admit – they are probably the best group of study buddies I’ve ever had, and we really helped each other pass the exams (I hope). On sunday night, I stayed up studying till around 7am, went back to my room and slept from 8am to 11am, woke up, studied some more then headed for my exam. I felt the exam went pretty well since it was based on the problem sets our prof had given us – it was pretty much the problem set questions, except we had to solve for “3″ instead of “2″.

Hours of sleep: 3 | Days passed: 2 | Exams left: 2

After my stats exam, I figured I should probably study for my stats exam till around 11pm, then sleep for a few hours, wake up around 4am and study some more for my exam. This plan failed horribly. I ended up staying awake and studying till 2:30am, headed back to my room and slept from 3:30am to 5:30am, woke up and kept on studying. I had my exam at 9, and would like to think it went pretty well. It was open book, so I wanted to make sure I had a lot of sample codes that I could refer to, and this turned out to be a HUGE bonus for me since one of the questions pretty much asked me to code something that I had open, in my notes, in front of me. #Win.

Hours of sleep: 3 + 2 = 5 | Days passed: 3 | Exams left: 1

At this point, I was starving as I hadn’t eaten anything yet. I went and had lunch, then decided to study till around 6pm, hard back to residence and have dinner (our res has strange dinner times). Then I would sleep till around midnight, wake up and keep studying for this exam. This plan didn’t go too well either. While trying to study after lunch, my eyes kept closing, and I could read let alone understand anything on the screen. It was too hard for me to concentrate. I realized it would be better if I took a nap now, woke up then continue studying, which is what I did. I slept from 3pm to 5:30pm (waking up at 4am, pretty much convinced I’d slept through the exam, freaking out, and needing my friend to explain to me what day and time it was). I then studied, thinking I’d study for 6 hours until midnight, take another nap till about 3, then wake up and keep on studying. Nope – I just kept on studying. It reached around 3am where I felt tired and really wanted to take a nap, but the fear of me falling asleep and not waking up in time for my exam kept me going. Luckily, adrenaline kicked me into high gear during my exam, so I didn’t fall asleep.

Hours of sleep: 5 + 2.5 = 7.5 | Days passed: 4 | Exams left: 0

I really wanted to just comatose myself after the last exam, and not wake up until it was 2013. I was EXHAUSTED. Unfortunately, I knew if I slept too many hours then, I would totally ruin my sleeping schedule (haha, coz it’s not already ruined, right?), and figured it would be better for me to sleep enough to keep me alive for the rest of the night. I took a nap from 2:30pm to 5pm, woke up, had dinner, watched a movie with some friends, and had a nice relaxing evening.

Hours of sleep: 7.5 + 2.5 = 10 | Days passed: 4 | Exams left: 0

Boy, I feel disturbed and proud of myself. I can’t believe I survived the exam period like this with so little sleep, but I seemed to pull it off. This is definitely not something I would ever like to repeat, and really don’t recommend it to anyone else either! Now I’m just waiting for my final results… I guess that’s the good thing about the end of the world – if it really happens, I won’t have to know if I failed any of them!

How it Works

You need to download Affies Me Not from www.aashni.me/scripts/amn, and set it up on your site. If you’re having problems with the set up or installation process, you can always ask questions at the support forum, or message me. Also, if you find any bugs or problems, please do tell me so that I can sort them out for the next release!

Everyone who has Affies Me Not set up on their site will be entered into a raffle, and one name will be randomly picked out, and that name will be the winner.

Timeline

Start: November 11th 2012
End: November 25th 2012
Domain Awarded: November 26th 2012
IMPORTANT: You can sign up for the contest now, and then make sure you have it set up by 25th November.

How To Sign Up

Just comment on this post and make sure you include a link to the website where you will install Affies Me Not

Extra Entries

Since it will be a random raffle, you can earn more points into the “raffle” And here’s how:
– if you have more than one site, then for every site you set up AMN, you get a raffle
– if you have a twitter account or a facebook account, and you tweet or post about either AMN or this contest, then you get an extra point. Just make sure you post a link to the contest here.
– when tweeting, it would be good to use #amnscript in your tweet

My mom had come to visit last week, so between spending time with her, keeping up with all my assignments and studying, I literally had no sleep. I’m trying to do better, and be stricter where I manage to get at least 6 hours of sleep every night (compared to 3 hours, it’s a LOT MORE).

My favorite class at the moment is definitely my database course. Which is kinda funny, considering it’s a 3rd year course, and I’m taking it at the beginning of my second year The course is extremely interesting! We learnt the basics of tables and SQL, and how to make calls and queries that will optimize your search times, and how to set up tables to minimize costs based on the types of queries that you work on. The last assignment we had to do, I feel pretty good about. It was a two part assignment. In the first part, there were a bunch of complicated queries, which we had to write in SQL form – we were given an english statement like “get all students who have taken a class without taking the necessary prerequisites for that class”, and had to figure out how to get the information from a table. The second part used some slihgtly simpler queries (basic Inserts and Selects), but we were coding our own “programme” that we could use to interact with the database, without having to type in the command line.

For the second part, we used Java. It was actually really interesting to see how a coding language, like Java, would let us code queries similar to the way I would do it in PHP for a website. I had some troubles in the beginning, where I couldn’t get any of the java commands to work. It turns out that they happened because of my need to over-check results. I ended up putting if(rs==NULL) in a bunch of places that I really shouldn’t have, which caused it to always be false. Fortunately I managed to fix it, and I’m happy to say that my codes all work

Aside from Java, I’ve also learnt how to code using Shell Programming, which is actually fun. I’m currently learning how to code with C (which I strongly dislike…) and to code with R. R is a coding language designed for statistics. That’s right – instead of learning statistics, I am busy learning how to code in a programming language I am likely never going to use again. Alas, what can this young lass do about it?

I have a huge round of assignments due soon – next week Friday to be more precise. I’m hoping the day after, I can pretty much take the entire day off and not have to do anything. Actually, strike that. Not have to do anything too intellectual. I really want to spend that time working on my portfolio (aashni.me). I have a new layout pretty much coded, so it’s adding in the content. I’d also like to try and quickly code a new layout for my photoblog – Picture Me Not. I finally managed to add some of the pictures that I took over summer onto my photoblog Without the risk of sounding like an egomanic – the pictures are pretty damn nice. Some of you may know that I found myself walking amongst zombies during the Toronto Zombie Walk – I hope to add these pictures up soon – they’re gruesome, and bloody, and awesome.

In some exciting news, I’m holding a .COM Domain Contest! Yay! Click here to get all the information. The contest is being held in celebration of the release of my Affies Me Not Script

Anyway, work and assignments call my name and I must return back to the “nightmare” known as University life. Hope you’re all having a happy November

So I think I’m going to try and take this blog into a different direction. Rather than blogging about my life (which I may occasionally do, though if you’re really interested in that, then I suggest you follow my twitter account. I feel like as I grow as a coder/developer/programmer/software engineer, I would like to share some of my discoveries, thoughts and ideas about that in my blogs, rather than the fact that I got an awesome gift for my birthday (which I did, btw). So todays blog will be a mix of the two, and then we’ll see how it goes from there.

I guess the reason I decided to write my blog now (as opposed to any other time of the day) was that I went on a mass uploading spree on my photoblog, and finally added some of the pictures that I really love from my summer holiday. There are plenty more pictures to come that I will eventually add up, but I just thought I would share some of these with you for now. You can visit my photoblog at www.picturemenot.com. I’m also still working on updating Just Smile, and have some ideas in the works for that project.

Over the summer, I talked about working on a new project – Affies Me Not, an Affiliate (or blogroll list) Management script. Well, I finished it a while ago, and have it available in Beta mode for anyone interested in testing it out. If you’re an interested developer, there is also an opportunity for you to get involved in the project and try your hand at fixing a bug, or even adding a new feature. For more information about Affies Me Not, check it out at my (desperately needs a facelift) portfolio: www.aashni.me/scripts. I am currently waiting for inspiration to set in for another possible project I want to work on.

Finally, I am in University, and that means I have classes and clubs that I’m involved in. I’m taking part in the Game Design club this year, and have really enjoyed it so far. I learnt how to make a game using a software called Game Maker, and will consider playing around with the program more, and making more of a game soon. The one I’ve made so far is literally a two person game where you shoot at globs, and play for a total of 60 seconds. We shall see how this game development goes…

In other news, the classes I’m taking this year seem to be pretty interesting so far. In my “coding” class, we’re learning how to use C to program, however our first assignment was using Shell Programming (programming in the terminal) to create a student database system. It was interesting, and intense. My other class is about Databases, and we’re learning how to use SQL and make certain SQL queries based on the information that I want. The first assignment was pretty interesting, though its one of those assignments where I could have easily done really well, or really badly in it. Two of my other classes are Linear Algebra and Statistics. They’re required classes for my course unfortunately I’m also taking an Economics class, as I do plan on getting a Major in Economics as well – we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, it’s late (again) and I’m exhausted! Midterms are upon me, with my first midterm being this Monday on Stats. Yay?

My cousins wedding was amazing! Probably one of the most insane “events” I’ve ever been a part of! For those of you who don’t know anything about Indian Weddings, know that they are long. Ours lasted about 5 days – 5 days of partying, celebrating, and lots of indian clothes wearing! But it was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it! Each evening we had a different function with a different theme – one of my favourites was definitely the African Night, where we dressed up in “African” themed clothing. I wore this floor length dress which had a leopard styled design on it, and a black jacket as well. I probably wore a total of 18 different outfits for this entire wedding ceremony! The happy couple are currently enjoying some alone time together in South America for their honeymoon

As part of the wedding, some of my cousins and I had to perform a dance in front of nearly 1200 people. I made a mashup of the Indian song Ainvayi Ainvayi and the really popular Latin song Danza Kuduro. We literally only had two days to learn and practice the song since most of us didn’t get back to Kenya until the day before the wedding, but we somehow managed to pull it off, and the dance was pretty amazing!

After the wedding week, my family and another family who we’ve grown up with decided to do a “tour” to all the common areas around Kenya. This was just incredible! We went to the Masai Mara and saw Lions, Cheetahs, Buffalos, Warthogs, Zebras… So many amazing animals. After that, we went to a few other places similar to the Masai Mara called Sweetwaters, Mountain Lodge, Elementaita and Naivasha. We got to feed a rhino in Sweetwaters, see a leopard with two baby cubs (probably the hardest animal to find – we were so happy we saw it since we hadn’t seen it before) in Naivasha, and walked within a meter of wild elephants in Sweetwaters! I’m planning on going on a mass rampage, and putting a bunch of these pictures (as well as hopefully redesigning) onto Picture Me Not, my photoblog. It’ll take time, but I’ll get there!

After all these trips, we then went to South Coast, Mombasa. We stayed in such an amazing hotel that had an infinity pool with 7 different levels! Aside from lounging around and swimming all day, I also managed to go quad biking out into the city. Unfortunately one of the people who came with us didn’t know how to quad bike/was scared, so we ended up going pretty slow for most of the journey. I decided to stay at the back, and would stop, let the others get ahead, then speed to catch up. It wasn’t the best, but it was better than nothing! I also got to go horse riding on the beach! For any horse riding fans, we managed to go cantering on flat sand for ages! It was amazing and beautiful!

One of the best things I got to do in Mombasa was go scuba diving! I went for two different dives and saw so many amazing sea creatures! My favourite was definitely the turtles! Whilst moving between the two dive sites, we came across some dolphins that were swimming around, and that was amazing! It’s the first time I’ve ever seen dolphins out in the wild like this, so it made me super happy!

As you can see, I’ve added a few illustrations to this. They suck, I know, but I’m working on them. My dad surprised me with a Wacom Intuos5 Tablet, and I only managed to try it out yesterday (when I drew this “illustrations”). I hope I get a lot better soon! If you have any tutorials or tips, or your own tablet sketches, please share them!

Like I said earlier, I only have about 3 weeks left of my summer before I have to get back to University. Here’s a “short” to-do list I’ve made for myself, and if I can get any of these things done before I leave, I’ll be super happy!

1. Learn how to code using the C language and Shell Programming
2. Try study up on some Linear Algebra stuff – need this for my class this coming semester
3. Restyle and update my portfolio so that it includes my job and experiences, skills, updated contact information, and more examples of my portfolio work
4. Make a new layout for my photoblog, Picture Me Not
5. Finish setting up Just Smile
6. Finish working on the Affies Me Not Affiliate Organization project

Let’s see how far I get with this list!

Sure, this blog might seem a little haphazard, but then again which of my blogs aren’t? I figured I’d try write a brief (haha, I’m sure it’ll be short) overview of my trip, and some of the amazing things that I managed to do. I also intend (as in if I get off my lazy butt, then one dayI might) to put photos from this trip onto my photoblog, we’ll just have to wait and see for now.

The trip started off as me applying to, and getting accepted for an internship position at a start up web site company in Jakarta. I knew that my cousin was getting married in July (his wedding is this week, I can’t believe how soon it is!), and so I had to be back home in time for that. This meant that I would be able to work at the job for about 2 months, and fit some travelling in this time as well. And travel I did!

I first flew to Jakarta, and started working there pretty quickly. After two weeks of work, the country had a public holiday which meant a long weekend – perfect for a quick weekend getaway. I decided to travel to Bali, on the Island of Denpasar. If you read my last blog post, you’d know about the little detour I took to Balikpapan. I don’t feel like humiliating myself again by describing those events again here, but it does make for an interesting story Once I finally made it to Bali, I had a wonderful time! I signed up for a tour of the whole Island, where I got to see some temples, have lunch overlooking the beautiful volcano, and learn more about the traditions of Bali. I was honestly shocked at how much influence the Indian religions (particularly Hinduism) had effected religion and traditions in Bali, and it was a pleasant surprise.

The next day, I had a White Water Rafting adventure! I was so excited! I’ve tried rafting on smaller rapids in Kenya, and was hoping to have a bigger challenge. Plus I was doing it all by myself (as in not going with anyone I knew). I had such a blast! The only downside was the 1500 stairs we had to climb up and down to get to the river. Needless to say, I could hardly walk the next day. On my last day in Bali, I walked around the area I lived in, bought a few souvenirs, and made my way to the beach. It truly was something to look at. I then returned back to Jakarta, and back to my job, haha.

I worked for two more weeks, enjoying everything that Jakarta had to offer! I finally knew enough Indonesian to easily get around the city, and had a blast. One of the visa rules in Indonesia is that you can only get a visitor visa (the type I was using) for 30 days. In order to extend the visa, you had to leave the country and come back. So this, naturally, meant that I could go on another little mini-adventure. I decided to head north to Singapore, since I have a friend living there. We had a great time going shopping on Great Ormond Street, visiting China Town (and buying a lot of souvenirs) and so many more things! It was also really nice to hang out with my friend and her family, and their two adorable little dogs! I was in Singapore for about 4 days, and then headed back to Jakarta again for more work.

This time I stayed in Jakarta until the end of my job. So that was about a month of working, which I really didn’t mind. There were a lot of places to go to in Jakarta, and things to explore, so I was really looking forward to exploring the city a bit more. I tried more of the local cuisine, learnt some more Indonesian, and had a great time! There was even the Jakarta Computer Festival where the convention centre was filled with 100 different computer stores, and all the great things that they had to offer! (As a tech geek, this naturally made me ecstatic!)

Finally, Friday June 29th came around, and my last day of work was finished. I had to get back to the place I stayed at, and pack quickly so that I could check out at 2:00 am, in time to get to the airport for my 5:00am flight. I was off to Bangkok baby! Unfortunately the direct flight to Bangkok wasn’t at a good time, so I went via Malaysia. I was literally in Malaysia for all of 20 minutes – the amount of time it took for me to get off the plane, walk the 2 metres to the next gate, go through the security check again, and walk onto the next flight. I wish I had had more time, as I would have loved to visit Malaysia.

I finally reached Bangkok around 10:30am, and had to get to the bus terminal, since I was taking a bus to Pattaya. Pattaya, incase you haven’t been there (or know what it is) is a beach city. It’s become a huge tourist attraction, so many of the souvenirs were now “european prices” or really expensive! Haha. I spent my first afternoon walking around and getting to know the city. It was pretty cool! The next day I went for an Elephant ride through the jungle in the morning, and an even more amazing ATV ride through the jungle in the afternoon. This was definitely one of my favourite activities, since I got to drive my own ATV (or quadbike) around the jungles of Pattaya. In my group there was me, a french couple, and the guide. The man from the french couple was a professional Jet Ski racer, and had driven ATV’s before. I felt a huge sense of pride when he got stuck in one of the cracks on our path, but I managed to manoeuvre through it

That night, I went for a traditional show in Pattaya – it’s known as the transvestite show, and I must say my mind was blown! The entire production was done by males, but the eloquence of the dresses and makeup easily fooled you into thinking they were girls. I definitely recommend it if you’re ever going out and about for something in Pattaya.

Then I was headed back to Bangkok. I only had a few hours after I checked into my hotel, so I went to one of the famous malls they have to look around and get my bearings of the city. The next day I had booked a pretty intense all day tour. We went to the floating market first, which is a market system set up on canals – you could hire out a boat to take you around, and bargain with shop owners to buy souvenirs and other things. It was a lot of fun! In the afternoon was probably my second favourite touristy activity. We went to the Tiger Temple, where they keep about 130 tigers. We got to pose with about 8 different tigers while the staff took pictures. After that, I found the 6 month old tiger – it was so adorable and I’ll definitely try add some pictures of it soon! After I played with that tiger, they put on a little show where they feed some of the other tigers, and you could get a picture taken next to it as well if you wanted. I have this amazing shot of me with this huge tiger standing over me!

My last real day in Bangkok, I went on a temple tour to visit three of the more famous temples in Bangkok. We visited the golden buddha temple – which houses a buddha made of 5.5 tonnes of gold. We then went to the lying down buddha – 15m high and 25 or 30m long. It was beautiful! And finally we went to the marble temple, made entirely of imported marble from Italy. In the afternoon I did one of the most popular things in Bangkok. I shopped! I didn’t have a lot of space in my bag at this point, (and ironically I still had a lot of my trips budget left… hmm…) but I did buy some jewelry, and a beautiful handbag for myself, as well as some other gifts.

Finally, I had my flight back home – from Bangkok to Nairobi (Kenya) via Dubai. The flights were relatively uneventful. I pretty much just slept and read my book (The Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin). Then I got home, and was greeted by about 30 wonderful faces saying hello Made me feel awesome and loved!

A tradition in my family, whenever anyone comes home from a long trip, is to open the bags and look at what they’ve bought recently (give gifts to my sister). I spent a good hour going through everything in my bag, and giving my sister all of her gifts. I probably spent double the amount of money on her, than I did on myself. I bought her a locket necklace, which she’s wanted for years, as well as about 10 other necklaces and some really nice bracelets as well. The biggest gift I got for her was a Classic Chanel bag – she’s wanted it for three years, and I thought it’s about time someone got one for her. She’s just turned 18, and graduated from high school, so it all seemed right!

I could go on talking about how much I love her, but I doubt many of you would be interested in that… So I’ll end this “brief” blog post now. I had such an amazing time over the last two months, and expect the next few weeks to be just as crazy, what with my cousins wedding at the end of the week, and more travelling to follow that.

Don’t forget about Enchant Me Not’s second birthday contest! You need to make a birthday card that features Stan, and then can earn a few extra entries using the RaffleCopter. Read this post for more information – the contest will now end a week later, on the 16th of July.

Enchant Me Not is turning 2 years old, and as a result, I’ve decided to hold a contest to celebrate, and as a way to say thank you to all of Enchant Me Not’s supporters!

How The Contest Will Work

To Enter This Contest, you must create a birthday card for Enchant Me Not. I don’t mind what sort of format you choose for this card – it can be an animation, it could be a card made in real life, or it could be made in Paint. Whatever method you pick, however, the card must include Stan somewhere with in it. You don’t have to use the provided .png, you can draw your own version of him if you’d like.

Rules

• The birthday card that you enter must be made by you. You are welcome to use any resources you’d like to (i.e. brushes, fonts etc.) but you must provide credit to them.
• Stan must be included somewhere in the card
• Read the rest of the rules as described in the RaffleCopter Widget Below, particularly those on how points might be removed or a person might be disqualified from entering.

Timeline

Start Date: 24th June 2012
End Date: 9th July 2012 16th July 2012

Prizes

There are two winners for this contest. Each winner shall receive a .COM Domain registered for 1 year as well as Hosting provided by Enchant Me Not Hosting and Advertising on Enchant Me Not for 3 months. The first winner will be chosen by me, based on whichever birthday card I like the most. The second will be randomly chosen – which means even though you might not be one of the best designers, you can still get a domain! Domain winners must email me their domain name choses within 36 hours of the contest ending, otherwise a new winner will be selected to replace them. For more information on this process, read the detailed terms and conditions I have outlined on the RaffleCopter.

How To Enter

Here, off course! You must use the RaffleCopter below to enter the contest. If you made a physical card, either scan it or take a picture of it and upload it onto a picture sharing site such as photobucket.com. For all animations/gifs etc. either host it yourself, or use an image sharing site such as photobucket.com. You must post the link in the correct RaffleCopter section – without this, your entry shall be considered void.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

An added bonus of this nifty code – if you only want to show 2 links in one place, but all the links in another, you can.

The first part of the code is where you need to edit your affies/ads. Create a new file and call it ads.php. Then copy the following codes into the file, and edit the links and images to match the ones you want. Feel free to edit the style of the links (make it a text link, use a class or span, etc.) just make sure that you escape any necessary characters.

This file will need to be saved in the root directory as ads.php.

<?php

/**********************************************************
* This code generates a randomized list of                *
* affies/ads that you can then place in multiple          *
* sections of your site.                                  *
* Code written by Aashni from http://www.enchantmenot.org *
***********************************************************/

function showAds($num){
// array with ads - edit between the single quotes
$array = array(
'<a href="http://www.enchantmenot.org" target="_blank"><img src="http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/enchantmenot/buttonContest1/88x31s.png" alt=""></a>',
'<a href="http://www.icecaves.net" target="_blank"><img src="http://icecaves.net/linkus/1.gif" alt=""></a>',
'<a href="http://www.emnhosting.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/enchantmenot/emnhosting%20ads/emnhosting88x31.png" alt=""></a>',
'<a href="http://www.just-smile.org" target="_blank"><img src="http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/enchantmenot/Just%20Smile/linkbackbig02.jpg" alt=""></a>',
);

if(empty($num)) { $num = count($array); }
shuffle($array);
$returnAds = "";
$i = 0;

while($i <= $num){
$returnAds .= $array[$i];
$i = $i + 1;
}

return $returnAds;
}

?>

The next code you can put wherever you want the list of affiliates or advertisers to show up. If you edit the number 4, you can control how many ads to show at a time. For example, putting “2″ means only 2 of the 4 ads will be randomly displayed. If you’d like to display all the posts, then leave the number area blank.

<?php
include('testing.php');
echo showAds(4);
?>

That’s some pretty neat code eh? Below is an example of this code, where I have asked for three randomly displayed banners to be shown (i.e. the second code has showAds(3); in it).

[affie_ad_randomizer]

How did I end up booking the wrong tickets? Well, basically, while planning my trip, I started typing in Bali into the flight search engine, and Balikpapan came up as the suggestion. Since it was also in Jakarta, I just assumed that it was the same place, and booked my tickets. Boy, could I have been more wrong?

I fell sick on Tuesday, and had a pretty bad cough and cold by Wednesday morning. And this was only the start of the day. I got to work around 9:15am, which is a normal time for me. I then proceeded working like a good little worker (with the occasional breaks on Facebook/Twitter/IceCaves), until around 10:45am. At that point, the internet just stopped working. I don’t mean it slowed down, I mean it just stopped. Not even Google would load… The phone lines were down too, and to top it off, it was just me and one other guy in the office – everyone else (including my boss) had eerily disappeared.

What to do when you have no internet and nothing else to do? You play old school games like Minesweeper and Solitaire. But seriously, how many hours can one person spend playing those games? Naturally, I was bored as hell after two hours. It was lunch time at this point, but I’d only had time to grab an apple – I was leaving for the weekend and hadn’t had time to do any actual groceries or anything like that. So that meant I didn’t really have anything to eat for lunch, except my handy dandy apple.

My flight was at 7:45pm, and I needed to be at the airport around 6:00pm latest to check in. The traffic in Jakarta is really bad, so I was going to leave the office at around 5:00pm since the traffic is really bad, and head straight to the airport. At 3:00pm, I was so overcome by sleepiness (due to my cold) and boredom, that I gave up trying to wait, and left the office. The other guy working in the office with me recommended a mall on the way to the airport, so I decided to stop there and grab some food to eat. At least it would shut my stomach up!

I finally got to the airport, checked into my flight for Balikpapan at 7:45pm, and had to wait there for about 4 hours for the flight to take off. Luckily, I had my laptop and managed to watch three episodes of Chuck. It’s the last season, and I was finally catching up with it. Around the time my battery started dying, they announced that we needed to board the flight. Finally, things were looking up. I got onto the flight, stowed my bags away in the appropriate places, and settled in for the short 1.5 hour flight. I managed to get an aisle seat, which I prefer, and didn’t have any crying children next to me. As far as I was concerned, #win flight moments.

Things were really looking up at the airport – I managed to get off the plane pretty quickly, and my bag was one of the first on the conveyor belt. I got out, and got a cab. Pretty good, since it was nearly midnight at this point. And then I realized that things always seem to be going great, right before that moment when something awful is about to happen. And something awful happened. The cab driver, in an extremely terrible accent and incomprehensible english, told me he couldn’t take me to my hotel, because my hotel was on a different island. Ummm, what?

How could I be on the wrong island?

The wonderful skeezeball of a cab driver (and no, this isn’t anger towards him because I was on the wrong island, rather that he had the balls to laugh at me for it) started laughing and called over his friends to tell them how stupid I was for ending up on the wrong island. I got seriously irritated and even more confused. I went to talk to the flight airline desk, and finally understood what had happened. Bali was on a different island, and the airport I was meant to go to was Denpasar, not Balikpapan. Note to self: Don’t book flights in the middle of exam season, ever again. D’oh! The only way to get to Denpasar was to fly back to Jakarta the next day since there were no more flights that night, and then take another flight from Jakarta to Bali the day after that.

So poor ol’ me had to find a hotel at midnight, while sick, confused and annoyed out of my mind, that wouldn’t be too insanely expensive and was close to the airport. I managed to find a nice one next to the airport – seriously, it was actually partially ontop of the airport – the airport hotel I checked in, and the guy felt bad for me, so he gave me a huge discount

I got into the room, then had to start checking online for flight information and how to get back to Jakarta and onwards to Bali. After midnight. While I was sick, and hadn’t eaten anything since about 3:30pm. I ordered some room service after a bit, and around 3am I finally went to sleep (after drinking half a bottle of cough syrup.. ok, I didn’t drink half ). I was in a completely comatose state until 11:30pm the next day, when I realized I had to wake up and get all my stuff together, since hotel checkout was at 12, and I sure as hell wasn’t paying for another night!

I left the hotel, went back to the airport, and sorted out my tickets. Fortunately there was no fee cancellation for my return ticket to Jakarta – they just changed the dates for me I then had to get tickets from Jakarta to Bali, which I could only get for the following day. Frustrating.

I did, however, finally manage to get to Bali. And Boy, was that an amazing trip! The beach, a tour, lunch by an active volcano, white water rafting, elephant feeding and riding… Eesh!

Some other interesting news:

• My .COM Domain Giveaway – ENTER NOW!
• The IceCaves Challenge – ENTER ROUND 3 and VOTE for Round 2
• The Design – Submit Your Auditions!

These are contests I’m currently involved in – you should seriously consider entering all of them! The prizes are amazing, and the contests are pretty fun! Also, don’t forget about the upcoming contest that I’m having in conjunction with Just Smile, my other site, as well as two other friends.. But more about that later

To change the message, edit the message within quotes (” “). Make sure to escape any characters such as $, &, ” or \ if you’re using them, so that the browser knows they are part of the message and not the code. With this system, you can set simple text messages, linked images or even calls to javascript functions if you know how to.

This is the first part of the code. You need to make sure that the first set of codes is in the same file as the second set of codes. You can use this with PHP Includes, if you know how to. If you’re gathering a bunch of PHP functions in one part of your code, I recommend adding this there.

<?php

function holidayMessage(){

$month = date("n");
switch($month){
case 1: $msg = "Happy New Year"; break;
case 2: $msg = "Share the love"; break;
case 3: $msg = "Easter Time"; break;
case 4: $msg = "Summer is coming"; break;
case 5: $msg = "May Day Yay!"; break;
case 6: $msg = "June Bug"; break;
case 7: $msg = "Summer Time"; break;
case 8: $msg = "Summer is Ending"; break;
case 9: $msg = "School time   "; break;
case 10: $msg = "Happy Halloween"; break;
case 11: $msg = "Turkey Time"; break;
case 12: $msg = "Happy Holidays"; break;
default: $msg = "Celebrate an Imaginary Month?"; break;
}

return $msg;

}

?>

This part of the code you will need to put where you want the message to show up.

<?php
echo holidayMessage();
?>

Here’s an example of what the output would look like:

[holiday_alert_system]

Please note that these codes should be put at the top of the page, and/or that there are no codes that output something to the browser before the following code.

<?php

/**************************************************
* This code will randomly pick one of the links,  *
* then redirect the user to that link             *
* More tutorials can be found at Enchant Me Not:  *
* http://www.enchantmenot.org                     *
***************************************************/

// array of links
$array = array(
      "http://www.enchantmenot.org",
      "http://www.i-turtle.net",
      "http://www.inkedbyerin.info",
      "http://www.just-smile.org"
);

$arraySize = count($array);
$randLinkNum = rand(0, $arraySize - 1);
$randLink = $array[$randLinkNum];

header('Location: '.$randLink);

?>

One of the best things about getting this job is that I get to travel, and visit a few other areas that are relatively close by. I was in Bali last weekend, which has a pretty funny story tied to it. Namely, I ended up on the wrong island… I will be going to Singapore next weekend, and in about 6 weeks, I’ll be heading to Bangkok. Needless to say, I’m extremely excited! You can expect some pictures up soon, as well as blogs that concentrate more about my experiences, rather than general updates like this blog.

Before I go into the general updates, let me tell you a little bit about my job. I’ve been tasked to get Facebook integrated well into the site – this means that the site will let people register and login using Facebook, along with other features. It hasn’t been an easy task because it was my first time really using JavaScript, PHP and MySQL, since I’ve never really worked with them before. What makes the job even harder is that the registration and login systems already exist, so I have to work with code that’s already written – which isn’t too much of a problem until the variable names and comments are written in a language that I don’t know (as in, not English). Yup – this has made my job a little harder, but I’m really enjoying it, and have learnt so much in the process!

It’s made me feel a lot more confident with my general coding abilities, and I plan on using the “new things” that I’ve learnt as part of the way I plan on setting up Just Smile. Speaking of Just Smile.. Some of you may remember me talking about a contest I plan on setting up for Just Smile. After nearly a year of me mentioning this, I have started working on the contest again, and hope to have it up in a few days. In relation to this contest, I would really appreciate any and all prizes that you would be willing to donate/sponsor. In return, I’ll advertise you on my sites, as well as a few other things – if you’re interested, comment below, email me, tweet me – basically get in touch with me somehow.

I have exciting news! For those of you who were around last summer, you may remember The IceCaves Challenge!.

Well, it’s back again this Summer, and we’ve just started the first round. I definitely think that you should enter if you’re interested in winning domains, advertising, hosting, domain renewals.. and lots more! The beauty of this contest is that you don’t even have to enter every round – each individual round has a winner, and for every round you enter you get points, which get tallied up at the end of the contest to award some final Grand Prizes. Sounds bloody interesting now, doesn’t it?

Wow, this post seems to be more about contests than anything else… Which isn’t a completely bad thing I recently won a domain credit, however I have no desire to get a new domain, since I already have quite a few of them to look after, so I thought I would give this credit away. The official post on the contest can be found here, however since it’s run by RaffleCopter, I’ve put the entry stuff below for now as well. If you have any problems with the contest system, just send me a message.

The only catch with this domain name is that I have to register it in the next 25 days in order for the coupon to be valid. So whoever wins will need the domain to give me a name to register by that point. The contest is set for 18 days, and a little bit, so that shouldn’t be too big a problem.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you can’t see anything above, then please check your JavaScript settings – it’s possible you have them turned off.

Savannah – .Com Domain
Gelay, Mandee, Olivia – 3 Months Advertising
Malik, Kimberly, Fai – 1 Month Advertising

I shall be emailing all of you shortly, as well as announcing this all over twitter and facebook!

A huge thank you to everyone who took part in my contest! I look forward to doing more

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This, obviously, isn’t a problem if you have that awesome #win moment on a flight. Can you guess which #win moment I’m talking about? I’m talking about the #win moment where you have an empty seat beside you. This means you have the wonderful joy of being able to spread out, use the other table to store overflow from your own table (or your leftover meal, since they take ages to collect it up). You can use their leg area to stretch out your own legs.

As an extension to this, you could have the #doubleWin moment of getting the entire row to yourself (which I’ve had the luck of doing before). If this happens, then you can really spread out. Lift up the armrests, pray that the plane ride doesn’t get too bumpy, and lay down across the seats. While it’s not the most comfortable “bed” you’ve ever slept in, it’s definitely better than sitting in a small little cramped section.

Speaking of space, another #win moment is when you manage to nab a seat in the Exit row. Automatic extra leg room! And the obvious #win moment when you get upgraded to business or first class. Hey – it does happen from time to time!

Definitely one of my favorite #win moments on a flight is when you aren’t stuck sitting in the row behind a family with young children. Unless the children understand the meaning of “shut the hell up and go to sleep”, you’re screwed. I once sat on a flight where the kid in the row behind me screamed, the whole flight, for no reason at all. He then proceeded to hit himself. Why? I still do not know. So when I get on a flight and find out that I’m not sitting next to any children, instant #win moment right there.

A relatively small #win moment is when you’re one of the first people let onto the plane (or at least to your section of the plane), and manage to get enough space for your hand luggage in the overhead storage close to you. It’s so insanely annoying if you’re amongst the last people on the plane, and end up scouring the plane looking for a place to store your bag. And if you end up finding space further back in the plane, then you’re really stuck at the end of the flight, when you have to spend time trying to backtrace through the plane and get your bag, while everyone is fighting to get off the plane.

This #win moment only applies to people, like me, who enjoy watching movies on the plane. I love when they have a great selection of movies, especially movies that I either haven’t watched yet, or haven’t watched in a really long time. I used to spend the first ten minutes of my flight leafing through the magazine looking for the movie listings, and the times they were playing. I would make myself a schedule that let me watch all the movies I wanted to. I no longer need to worry about this, since most flights let you start and stop movies whenever you want

I guess a good #win moment to end with is the moment when you touch down, safe and sound, and arrive at your destination. Hey – you were just 30,000 feet in the air, travelling at 300+km/hour. The fact that you arrived safely at your destination is a huge #win moment, let alone all the awesome fun that you’ll hopefully have upon arrivale

What other #win moments do you have whilst flying on a plane?

I learnt a lot over the past year, in terms of friends, time management, and (most importantly?) keeping up with my school work. It’s been intense. Even though this was only my first year at University, I decided to be “smart”, and take second year courses to the point that I have 1 first year course (my Math/Calculus class), and 4 second year courses. Our University prefers if you stick to only having 5. I really enjoyed taking these courses, don’t get me wrong, it was just an extra hard challenge considering I was only a freshman, still getting used to the idea of Winter and getting used to balancing out social and work time in Uni.

As a brief reminder, I’m doing a Specialist in Computer Science, and hope to do a Major in Economics as well. The courses I took were absolutely phenomenal, and totally opened my eyes to what it really means to be a Computer Scientist, and the type and amount of work that they have to do on a regular basis. There’s a lot more math involved in the program than I realized, and a lot of Proofs. If you haven’t heard me say it before, I have grown to hate proofs! I’ll give you a break down of all the classes I’m taking this semester.

The first year course I talked about is Math. We cover basic and not-so-basic concepts in Calculus. The material is ok, and the course load is pretty nice too, with weakly assignments so that they make sure you’re keeping up with the course. The annoying thing is that I keep not doing too well in the tests.. Don’t get me wrong, I’m passing them, but not as well as I would have hoped to be passing them.

My Social and Economic Networks course is probably one of the easier courses I’m taking this semester. Its a full year course, which means I had it in the first semester as well. In this course, we go over so many different concepts related to how social and economic networks form and mutate over time. We’ve studied how social networks like Facebook and twitter became popular, how search engines like Google work, how different types of Page Rankings work, as well as different strategies when it comes to running an Auction, or how to set up a voting system where you can get the outcome you want. Other fun topics include Game Theory, and Marriage Matching! Haha. I liked this course because, aside from the fact that we had so many quizzes, a lot of the subjects were pretty common-sense, and didn’t require too much thinking. The assignments were also pretty easy, and aside from formatting my solutions, didn’t require more than 3 or 4 hours worth of work.

My Coding class comes next – here we learnt the purpose of Object-Oriented Programming using Java as our base language. I truly enjoyed this course, and it helped that our prof was totally into teaching us! He was, honestly, one of the sweetest profs I’ve ever had! The coursework was generally ok, aside from two of the assignments we had. It was a group project where we had to code and design a Shell (you know the place where you put in different commands?) and there were four people in the group. Two of the “group members” didn’t do shit, and as a result me and the other guy were stuck doing everything for them. I’m not gonna lie, he did way more work than I did, and I’m so unbelievably grateful that I got him in our group, otherwise I have no idea what I would have done! I’ve got a pretty good grade in this class, I just hope I manage to pull off getting an A in the final exam, coz I got a B+ in the midterm. Meh.

My Engineering class. Wow, do I have mixed feelings about this class or what? The course itself was amazing and interesting! The prof who taught it was really nice and enthusiastic as well, which always helps. The reason I hated this course was because we had labs every week, and before we could do the lab, we had to do the prelab. The prelabs were crazy and annoying, and took nearly 8 hours to do! We had to code different programs which we then loaded onto boards and had to get working on the boards. This was all fine and ok, but the code we had to use was just bizarre, and made no sense, and there was little support online since it’s not a commonly used language. What made it worse was that my TA seemed to think that rather than explaining how a piece of code works, she should stare at us as if we were idiots, then spend five minutes asking us if we had gone to the lectures, or paid any attention at what we’ve been doing over the past few weeks. O_O The nice thing is that we got to make our own, interesting, final project. It could be based on anything we wanted, as long as it had enough of the stuff we have learnt in class to get it to work. My partner and I made a mood setting light, pictured below. It had a light sensor connected to it, and was controlled by a set of switches. The first three switches you could lift up or down, and depending on which ones were on, it would show different coloured lights. The fourth switch would make the lights cycle through all the different colors. Awesome.

My last class was the Logic Class. Wow, I loved to hate this class! The assignments were so ridiculously hard, I don’t even think I finished the last one that I had to hand in.. Oh well. The course was basically three different courses put into one, so we pretty much whizzed through all the information. This course we spent time doing many different things like proving if a program was correct, how long a program would take to run, writing proofs for both of those, as well as writing proofs for general functions, knowing if a program can halt, or if we could write a set that includes all possible programs, and if not why not. This course was just… insane. I loved our prof though, and found out that she might actually be teaching one of my courses next year, which makes me really happy.

Overall, I enjoyed all my classes. I didn’t like that I had work every single week. I literally did not have a single week where I didn’t have at least 2 quizzes, or an assignment and tests. I think the worst week was the week right after midterm where I had three assignments, three midterms, a test and two quizzes, all in the same week. It was pure evil.

I was going to blog about some other stuff I learnt about University, such as living in dorm life, general university tips, etc. But I think this blog is long enough for now.. So stay tuned for that! Oh, and an exciting blog about what I’ll be doing this summer!

I’ve subconsciously always walked on the left-hand side of the sidewalk my whole life, it’s just the way I’m used to walking. However, in Toronto, people tend to walk on the right-side of the sidewalk. I noticed this when, after absent-mindedly walking around for a few minutes, I would nearly bump into someone who was walking on the same side of the sidewalk as me. I would then (politely) move to the other side of the sidewalk, and continue on my merry way, since there’s a trail of a few people behind the person I nearly bumped into.

I eventually realized that it wasn’t my mindless walking that made me almost bump into people, but more because they were used to walking on the right-hand side of the road (which would be the left-hand side of the sidewalk if they’re walking towards me), while I was used to walking on the left-hand side. This, clearly, was a problem.

When I first realized this happening, I started purposefully walking on either the left or right side, to see which people would move out of my way (not many people did…), as well as carefully (and not at all creepily) keep an eye out on how other people walked, and whether they walked on the right or left-hand side of the sidewalk.

This long experiment led me to the conclusion that people actually tend to walk on the same side of the road that they drive on. And as a person who comes from a country where we drive on the left side, thus walk on the left side, it has been an interesting experience to come to Toronto, where they drive and walk on the right side instead.

Now I ask you – what side of the road do you walk on?

The two main reasons for this: Security Checks and Little Children. Don’t get me wrong, I wholly understand the importance of the security checks, and am extremely grateful for them! Also, I love little children! I’m constantly helping babysit my cousins, and have such a great time doing it! But these two things have made travelling an insanely infuriating experience. You can take my recent trip home as an example of why. As you (hopefully) know, I recently started studying at a University in Toronto, Canada. This is a very long distance from where I live – Nairobi, Kenya. In order to travel between the two Countries, I usually have to take an 8 hour flight from Nairobi to either London or Amsterdam (depending on which airline I travel with), then from there take another 7 hour flight to Toronto. Total travel time, including the stop over and getting to the airport on time etc. is usually at least 25 hours.

Anyway, on Tuesday I flew from Toronto to Nairobi. I had to get to the airport by 4pm for my flight at 6:30 pm. I got onto the flight, and everything was going as normal. We took a little long to taxi, which is where the plane leaves the boarding gate, and drives towards the take-off strip. I didn’t think too much of it, and figured we would be flying on time. But nope – I was wrong. We waited at the strip for a good 25 minutes, when the Pilot announced that there was a problem with a missing passenger, and that we couldn’t take off until the issue was resolved. We then had to get back to the Boarding gate, and wait for the issue to be sorted out.

This confused me severely, because I had no idea who could be so important that the pilot would actually turn the plane around just to get them. Eventually, after waiting another 45 minutes at the gate, the pilot then announced that the issue had been resolved, and that it was a human error where the passenger was supposed to be far away from the airport (as in they had missed their flight), while he had somehow been checked in on the flight. Yup – major security issue. The pilot then announced that we were just waiting to refuel, and then we would be off. This whole debacle took over 2 hours. 2 hours without any form of snacks or drinks, 2 hours without the television working (they can’t switch it on since we’re not flying yet), 2 hours with the seat in front of me less than 15 cm from my face since these seats were designed without consideration of foot space, or the need for people to be able to move their heads.. and worst of all, 2 hours sitting next to these extremely large woman who practically had her right elbow pointing onto my chest the entire flight. Basically, I couldn’t move at all for the entire 7 hour flight, which somehow got extended into over 9 hours, due to a “missing passenger”. To make matters worse, the large woman next to me spent the entire flight talking to herself, and complaining about the delay.

The thing that worried me about the flight was that instead of landing at 7pm local Amsterdam time, we instead landed at 9:15pm, and took another 15 minutes to get to the gates and get off the flight. This was a major problem for me, since the boarding time for my second flight was at 9:15pm. Panic. Worry. Freak OUT! I pretty much ran off the first plane until I found out which Gate my second flight was at – quite literally opposite the gate of my first flight. This let me have a huge sigh of relief, since it meant I wouldn’t miss my flight. I got onto my second flight, got comfy, and ready for another 8 hours of TV watching (incase you haven’t guessed – I don’t usually sleep on planes…) when out of nowhere, this little kid in the row behind me lets out this ridiculous scream, and starts hitting himself. I don’t know why, where it came from, or what he hoped to achieve by screaming like an insane lunatic, but he did. And it continued for the entire flight! The Air Hostesses tried to talk to him and calm him down, and the pilot even passed by at one point to see what was going on, but no luck. The kid with lungs kept on screaming.

Needless to say, I had a very long journey home, but I made it! And I am finally back in my own comfortable, cozy bed, enjoying home made food after a really long time! I still concept of flying, the idea that we’re flying 30,000 feet in the air and trust our entire lives onto the “capable” hands of the pilot flying the plane. I just wish security checks and little children weren’t an integral part of flying! What about you – good or bad experiences?

I had my 19th birthday a while back, which is a big deal in Toronto, since it means you’re allowed to drink “legally” hahaha! My friends were the sweetest things! They got me a cake and sang happy birthday for me at midnight Then they planned this amazing birthday celebration – we went for sushi, which I was really craving, and then found a karaoke bar where we all sang till 2am We then went to my friends room and hung out there for a few more hours It was a wonderful birthday!

Other than that, I’ve been extremely busy with school work, and keeping up with other necessities of being a college student! The past weekend is an excellent example!

The computer science student union held a game night from 7pm to 7am, and I managed to convince my friends to come for it We played games for a few hours then around 10:30 headed to one of my friends places. We played playstation in his room for a bit, then started some drinking games I, being the non-alcoholic in the group, thought the games were so much fun! Especially since I drank water and was sober, while all my friends got tipsy at some point in the night We then went for a walk for a few hours around our campus. In 3 degrees weather might I add… Then around 4am, we went back to see how many people were still playing at the game night. We played there for a little bit, then finally headed back to our residences, where I finally managed to get some sleep

The next night, we tried to keep it “mellow”, and have an “early” night. Fat Chance We went out for a lovely dinner at this restaurant about a 20-minute walk away. The food was great We then came back to our residence, and decided to chill and catch up on some work. At 11:30pm we realized we were all bored of working, and so we decided to have a movie night We made popcorn and some delicious hot chocolate, then snuggled together to watch Friends With Benefits. I must say the movie was amazing! Suffice it to say, I had a pretty awesome weekend

Until I got to Sunday, where I had to catch up with all my homework meh.

Overall, I can’t complain I’m excited for the snow. I’m so surprised that it hasn’t snowed yet in Toronto. In fact, I’m more surprised that the weather is still pretty warm here! It’s 15 degrees as I type this (centigrade, not fahrenheit..) I’m just waiting for the “cold” to finally hit!

I am 100% loving University life! A close friend from Kenya came to the same university as me, which I am ecstatic about for the simple reason that I at least know someone. Other than that, I’ve made lots of new friends which is always a good thing

Honestly speaking, one of the things I was most worried about when coming to University is that I wouldn’t make a decent group of friends, or find people who liked the same things as me, namely because I’m not really the “drunk party animal”, or particularly outgoing in any manner when it comes to clubbing. But I’ve found a group of friends who, although they may fit the stereotypical “drunk party animal college kid” description, are actually really awesome people to hang out with! YAY ME! haha.

One of the things that we love doing is hanging around talking, doing absolutely nothing in particular. We spend a lot of time just room bouncing, where we all go and chill in one friends room, and then bounce around and keep going into other friends rooms. We also find that we go down to Tim Hortons, or McDonalds, and end up staying there for three or four hours just talking… (even though the sign at McDonalds says a maximum seating time of 20 minutes…).

But what would University life be without the “educational” part of it? I’m taking four classes this semester – two first year courses and two second year courses. I really enjoy all the courses because I feel that they’re actually pretty balanced in my schedule. The one crappy thing is that my classes are either at 9am in the morning, or they end at 9pm at night. I don’t know what crack I was smoking when I chose this schedule, but that’s how it’s turned out! It’s been ok for the last three weeks, but I have a feeling that once the “Canadian Winter” finally hits, I’m really going to regret taking these classes so late.

I’ll give a quick breakdown of all the different classes that I’m taking. The first is a math class, more precisely a calculus class, which is a “first-year” course. The professor is pretty young, and reminds me a lot of Charlie Eppes played by David Krumholtz in Numb3rs. He seems to know his stuff, which I guess is a good thing He just tends to find the most complicated way of explaining something as possible!

My other three classes are all computer science classes, which is awesome! I’ll talk about the first-year comp sic class first. It’s a Logical Expression Class, which is pretty much learning how to express different things using logic statements. The funny thing is that some of the stuff I learnt in this class (which is a night class), I then learnt the next day in my Maths class. I’m hoping it will be helpful in the long run, because it means that I have some sort of overlap, which ultimately means that I won’t have to learn too much The professor is really cool, and he knows my name I’m really happy with this class coz it’s pretty interesting, and a good friend who lives in the same building as me is also in this class.

Of the two second year computer science classes I’m taking, the easier one (so far) is called Social and Economic Networking, which is essentially understanding how social and economic networks form, why it’s useful to study them as both a computer scientist and an economist. It’s a really interesting class coz you learn about how friendships are likely to evolve over time. For this class, we have two different professors who change talking depending on the topics (I guess..) One of them is really old, and tries to make jokes which usually end up really racist, sexist or worse! The other professor is pretty cool though I got 9/10 on our first quiz, which I was ecstatic about mainly because the average was 7/10 (or something like that..)

The last class I’m taking is a Computer Software course where we’re learning how to code in Java. I am, quite honestly, struggling in this course because I’ve missed a lot of the basic, fundamental things that I should know, which my asshole teacher in High School never bothered teaching me. But I’m still enjoying the class! It just means that I’m going to have to work that much harder, and hopefully I’ll be able to pass and make a good impression on our professor The professor is amazing! One of my friends has a different class with him, and he told me that the professor literally jumped onto the table and did a start jump as a way to introduce himself! Hahahaha! He’s a really nice and approachable guy

Anyway, I think I’ve made this blog post long enough, kudos to anyone who’s still reading! Haha. It’s nearly 1am, and I still need to shower and study for a quiz I have tomorrow, so this is sayonara for now!

Anyway… Long story short, I’m in CANADA! More precisely, I’m in University! It still hasn’t hit me that I am in University, taking University classes, and doing University-esque things! Ok the guy running in the hallway outside my room, who nearly knocked me over, I could live without… but other than that I really am loving it here! I have such an amazing group of friends, and we all hang out, go room hopping in each others rooms just to sit and talk, and off course I have my lectures.

Now before any of you start thinking I’m some crazy geek or something, let me stop you and tell you something… I AM A GEEK! haha. I love my classes (so far), and like most of my professors. They make the class entertaining (except for this one “old” guy, making really bad jokes…) and I’m really looking forward to getting to know more about my courses. I’ve found some cool people to sit and talk with during class as well, which is a huge bonus!

Since my last blog post, the one I posted before I went to Dubai, I have been up to a lot. So I’ll give a brief overview of things, and then hopefully I’ll be able to post once I week(ish) from now ons with more detailed blogs!

My trip to Dubai was amazing! I did a lot of shopping, and hung out with my mom and sister a lot. We went during Ramadan time, which meant we weren’t allowed to eat or drink during the daytime in public. Yes, this includes water! It wasn’t easy to do, however it was a different experience, and certainly made us appreciate our food more.

Once I got back, I had about two weeks to finish cleaning my room (properly), and start packing. I had also started working on www.just-smile.org‘s new layout and the major contest that I have been planning for it. I’m still planning on getting the contest up soon, I just haven’t had time to update it.

I had made a list of 20 restaurants I wanted to go and eat at before I left, and I shockingly managed to make all of them! It was almost surreal though. I’m not really used to calling a friend, making a plan to “get coffee at 4″, then getting into my car and driving to the coffee shop. I’m just not. But that’s what I started doing, and that’s how I managed to cross of a lot of restaurants on my list Other meals I went with my extended family, and they were all a lot of fun!

I met up with my friends a few times, pulling all-nighters, and a really awesome movie night that started at 10pm, and went on till about 10am the next morning! It was pretty crazy! We watched Inception, and at one point the movie was on the ceiling – can you imagine the fight scene in the elevator/hotel being displayed on the ceiling? It was trippy to say the least!

I finally left for Canada, on a journey that took 26 hours with a 4 hour transit time in Amsterdam. I stayed at my aunts house for five days, and she helped me shop for all my generic college stuff that I needed, and also met some of the other family that I have out here. And I have a lot of family! Then, I moved in to University!

The first week was a lot of fun! We had FROSH week, which is a form of Orientation, but 1039820957102598236 times cooler! We played games, had parties, went on a boat cruise and so much more! That all ended on Friday, and on Monday I had my first class at 9am.

I’d love to go into more details about my classes, and the stuff my friends and I have been unto recently, but for now I will leave you with this. A huge hunkadory if you actually read the whole blog! haha. And I promise to try and get back into a steady blogging scheme. It’s not really just for you, but it’s a great way for me to reflect over my past few months, and I would really like to continue doing it regularly.

So how is your “BACK TO SCHOOL” going?

I took a trip a while ago, and this is one of the pictures I took on that trip (click on it to enlarge it). In the picture are some of the trinkets that you can buy around Kenya as souvenirs – they’re made primarily by Masai, but others have started making and selling them as well. Since I’m leaving Kenya in a few days as I’m off to college, I thought my last contest (while I’m in Kenya) could be about Kenya, and so when I saw this picture, I thought it would be perfect

You must submit your own work. Plagiarism and theft is not tolerated.
You will create 1 icon using the above picture.
You may enter as many times as you like!
You may use any textures etc. that you’d like to, however please Email me the credits if you do use someone else’s stuff
You may not identify your icon in any way, either by putting your name on the icon, sharing it with friends, or putting it up on your site.
You must put a banner on your site so that others know to join and/or vote in the contest. You can use one of the ones below (direct linking is allowed), or you can make your own.

Timeline

Start Accepting Entries: 9th August 2011
Stop Accepting Entries: 27th September 2011
Start Voting: 27th September 2011
Stop Voting: 5th September 2011
These dates may change as I will be leaving for college, and don’t know what things will be like at the beginning of September. I will notify all contestants of any changes.

Prizes

1st Place – Advertising on Enchant Me Not for one month, a twitter shout out, a custom made wordpress theme and free hosting for one year at EMN Hosting with 2GB Disc Space and 30GB Bandwidth
2nd Place – Advertising on Enchant Me Not for one month, a twitter shout out and free hosting for one year at EMN Hosting with 2GB Disc Space and 30GB Bandwidth
3rd Place – Advertising on Enchant Me Not for one month and a twitter shout out

Entry Form

Link Back Buttons

I’m traveling, and didn’t realize that I would have time to blog again before I left. I will be back on 8th of August… I’ll try to blog once while I’m in Dubai, but i don’t think I’ll get too much time. I will check my emails everyday, so if you need me for something, just email me. Voting for the Eureka Squared contest is still going on, and will do so until I get back. Finally, I’ll also return all comments when I get back as well

As I continue to clean my room – yes, this has taken me over a month to do, more because I will move three things around my room every five days than because my room is that messy – I found some of my old planners/diaries for school. Our school used to provide some for us, however I preferred to use my own.

This is the first planner I bought in 2008. That was back in my girly phase, where I tried to buy things that would make me seem girly. Fact: I am not a girlies girl. I still like this planner though – it had such a big spiral bind, and had really nice colors I used to try and write in it for every class, but tended to forget. I did, however write all my friends birthdays in it One of my closest guy friends took the planner, and wrote his name with flowers and hearts all around it. He took the entire page. Actually, now that I think about it, he did that in all my planners. I guess he didn’t want me to forget his birthday eh?

I can’t find the 2009 planner, but here is the 2010 planner. I tried to go for a more professional look, as I had joined a bunch of clubs, and was really thinking about my future at this point in life. It’s a hardback one, so it kept itself safe in my overstuffed bag. I was a lot better at writing in it for every class, and managed to get all my assignments in on time (i think…).

This is my senior year planner. It’s a little smaller than the one above, and not made of the same sturdy material. Instead, I think this was an eco-friendly planner, which fit well with my “save the world” phase (which is still going on…).

If you click on the pictures, you’ll see some of the awesome (junk) that I wrote in there referring to my classes. I actually remember most of the assignments or trips that I referred to in the planner.

I found planners to be pretty helpful because they let me keep track of all the work that I needed to get done. I often stuck sticky notes into them so that I had extra space to write more details etc. Now, I prefer using a myriad of different things. I sometimes use scrap paper that’s lying around my room, because I love the feel of crossing something of my to-do list. I mean, who doesn’t?

So what do the ghosts of planners past have to do with my life right now? Not much, aside from the overly daunting and ridiculously hard planning I need to do for University. Tomorrow, or today (timezones) I start applying for the classes I want to take at the University of Toronto (where I’m going in September). The good thing is, I managed to get a lot of Transfer Credits thanks to taking I.B. The bad thing is I got too many transfer credits, thanks to I.B. I’ve actually got a really open schedule so far, as I no longer need to take most of the classes that I was supposed to in my first year, since I got credits from I.B.

I’m planning on doing either a Double Major or a Specialist and a Major in Computer Science and Economics, with Computer Science being my main area of study (a.k.a the “Specialist”). The way I have things planned so far though, I’m taking a math course, 1.5 Computer Science courses (it’s actually 3 half-year courses). I can’t take the economics course thanks to the transfer credits, but I’m not eligible to take any of the higher level economics classes. I wouldn’t mind it too much, but it means I’m only really taking 3.5 classes this year, which is theoretically my easiest year – the only chance I’ll have to take fun classes.

So now I have to find fun classes to fill in the space. Have any recommendations for me? How about you – what classes are you taking?

Things To do

1. Vote, Vote, Vote for your top two icons
2. Join my forums? They’re a great way for me to help more people with coding/graphics etc.
3. Join the Enchant The World Contest – We’re still accepting entries
4. Check out the new, and pretty awesome, icon texture sets that I added. There are 6 sets, with 70 different icon textures.
5. Check out the new tutorials I added up (p.s. it’s alphabetized now, hopefully easier to find stuff)

You will need to include the following snippet of code onto the top part of your WordPress loop.

<?php query_posts('&orderby=title&order=asc'); ?>

This code tells WordPress to order the posts according to the title, in ascending order. You can chance asc to des to get the posts to list in descending order.

If you would look all the posts in a certain category to appear in ascending order, then you can use the cat=## and showposts=-1 options inside the WordPress query. For example, the following code snippet will get all the posts in category 4 to output in alphabetical order:

<?php query_posts('cat=4&showposts=-1&orderby=title&order=asc'); ?>

If you would like to know more about different ways to include or exclude singular or multiple categories, then read this tutorial explaining how to use it.

If you have any questions on how this works, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll answer it as soon as possible.

<?php query_posts('cat=4'); ?>

As the loop runs, it will only look at posts that belong to category 4 in your WordPress. There are, however, many other extensions you can use with this code.

Excluding Categories

One helpful feature is to exclude certain categories from being outputted onto your site. You can use a - sign infront of the number, and this will tell WordPress to exclude it from the loop.

<?php query_posts('cat=-5'); ?>

In the above case, WordPress ignores any posts in the 5th category.

Multiple Categories

You can also use this feature to add multiple categories into your WordPress loop, as well as include a list of categories to exclude. Simply add a , between the category numbers.

<?php query_posts('cat=4,-5,7,9,-10'); ?>

The above code will output all posts in categories 4, 7 and 9, while excluding all posts in category 5 and 10.

If you have any questions on how this works, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll answer it as soon as possible.

Proof That Directory Has Changed

Here is some “proof” that I have changed the location/name of my testing directory from www.enchantmenot.org/testing to www.enchantmenot.org/layout-testing. A small change, yes, but still deadly. (Please note, I have changed it back to enchantmenot.org/testing). As you can see in the screenshot below, the testing directory loads my WordPress theme:

As you can see, I changed the testing directory to layout_testing

After this change, enchantmenot.org/testing no longer showed my layout, however enchantmenot.org/layout_testing did – this is what I wanted.

However, this is where the problems start. When I go to enchantmenot.org/layout_testing/wp-admin to log in to my WordPress dashboard, it redirects me to the wp-login.php

Step 1: Get into phpMyAdmin

In order to solve this problem, you will need to log in to your cPanel account, and locate the phpMyAdmin option, found in the Dashboard tab.

Step 2: Locate WordPress Database

Hopefully you only have one WordPress database in your phpMyAdmin, however I know many people have more than one. Figure out which database is linked to the WordPress directory you need, in this case it's the _wpTesting database. Click on it, and it loads a new page with a list of Tables in the Database.

Step 3: Locate Site URL Field

Here, locate the wp_options table, and click on the browse icon - the first icon beside the name of the table.

This will load a new page with a list of fields from the table.

Locate the siteurl field - it should be the first one.

Step 4: Edit The Site URL

Click on the pencil or edit tool, and it will bring you to an editable form.

Change the URL in the large field from the old directory location to the new location - in my case I'm changing it from http://enchantmenot.org/testing to http://enchantmenot.org/layout_testing.

Then hit Go at the bottom of the page. The wp_options table will reload now, with a few changes. At the top, you should see a message stating that the change was successful. You will get this message: "1 row(s) affected".

Step 4: Login To Your Dashboard

Test out the change to make sure it works. If we go back to www.enchantmenot.org/layout_testing/wp-admin, the page should load the WordPress's Admin login page, as shown below.

Assuming everything went well, you can login using your normal login details, and voila! You will be inside your WordPress Dashboard.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below! I hope this tutorial helped you sort out any problems you had with your site.

This review was done by Diane at Art Maestro

Owner: Aashni
Website: Enchant Me Not
Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768
Date completed: July 11, 2011
Browser: Opera 11.50

Appearance

The website name sounds very interesting, and it’s easy to remember. The colors of the layout are put together nicely, and it looks very organized. The only problem is that there’s a space between the content and the footer:

Validation

Your HTML has 40 errors. It’s mostly because you forgot to put an alt=”” in all of your img tags. I noticed that you’ve set your site up in HTML, but you’re using WordPress. WordPress is coded in XHTML, so if you want fully valid coding, you might want to convert your site to XHTML.

Your CSS valid.

Content

Header, footer, and sidebar

The header looks cute, and the navigation is visibly large enough to be a good thing. The sidebar looks crowded because of all the links and buttons, but it still looks organized. The sections for the latest articles and newest resources could be combined as a section for recent site updates. There’s also a broken image link in the section for affiliates and advertising. As for the footer, I already mentioned the problem in the Appearance section.

Blog

I think I’ve only read your blog once, and there is no link in your blog that would show me your previous posts, so I can’t say much.

Sitely

• On the “About Me” page, you’ve switched between using first person to third person. You should also put the section about the site itself under the section about you, since the page is called “About Me,” and you are the focus of the page, not the website.
• The link to “Apply for Advertising” should be removed since applications are closed and it’ll prevent people who don’t read clearly from applying.
• I also like how you’ve explained what an affiliate is and the benefits of being one in “Apply for Affies.”
• I like the “Past Layouts” page because I get to see the improvements you’ve made with your web-design skills. I also like how there’s a description of each layout.
• You have a lot of buttons to link back to your site. Most of them are nice, but you didn’t link the people who made some of the buttons (I also checked the credits).

Goodies

The types of resources that you offer are really common. The graphics are decent, but you have room for improvement. I like the icons and some of the premade layouts, but you haven’t provided credit for where you got the pictures for your layouts, PNGs, and icons.

Tutorials

This section should go under Goodies since tutorials are also resources.

I’m kind of impressed with the huge amount of tutorials and articles you have. Most of them are very helpful, but it would be nice if you arranged each section in alphabetical order rather than recently added, so people can find a specific tutorial/article they’re looking for in a quicker manner.

Contests

There are mostly only entries on the pages for previous contests, so I’ll just look at the current one.

The introduction is appealing, and the rules are fair. The prizes are also nice.

Network

I absolutely love this page. You’ve described the history and purpose of each website you own. My personal favorites are Just Smile and Scuttlebutt.

Other

The current pages that you have in this section don’t necessary not belong anywhere else on the site–they can go under Sitely, since “The Affiliate Graveyard” and “Reviews of Enchant Me Not” are related to the site.

Organization

There are some grammar and usage errors that you can fix around the site. You’ve also switched between writing in first person and third person on some pages. Other than that, Enchant Me Not is very organized and easy to navigate.

Overall

You’re doing very well so far. You have room for improvement when it comes to writing articles and graphic design, but everyone always has something that they can improve on. I enjoyed browsing through your website, and I hope you continue to succeed.

Rating

4 out of 5

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/reviews/diane-art-maestro/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/blog/bertie-botts-every-flavor-beans/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/blog/bertie-botts-every-flavor-beans/#comments Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:07:53 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1752 Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans

Yesterday, I watched the newest, and sadly the last Harry Potter movie – Harry Potter 7 part 2 – The Deathly Hallows. But this blog isn’t going to talk about what I thought about the movie, or the sadness I feel, knowing that the Harry Potter story is over (not including the soon-to-be-released pottermore…) You have no idea how tempting it was to talk about the last movie, and the idea that with the last movie, a generation of Harry Potter madness is over.

No, instead, I shall talk about Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. One thing I know everyone will remember from the Harry Potter movies is the banquet halls filled with food. Hopefully a lot of people also remember the Trolley on the Hogwarts Express – the one with all the candy! If not, then what the hell have you been doing with your life fool? Anyway, Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans are one of the goodies on the trolly – a box of beans with pretty much any possible flavor in the world. I mean, “Fred swore he got a bogey flavored one once”!

A long time ago – when the first movie came out (I think…) someone gave my sister and I a bag full of Harry Potter type sweets, some of which were Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. What relevance has this to do with my “reminiscent blogs” that I’m writing this summer? Well, read on to find out!

Normally, after about 8 years, you would *assume* that all the candy in that bag my sister and I got would have been eaten. You would have assumed wrong. As I was helping my mom clean certain parts of our house, I found a box of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. After 8 years. Seriously.

I shook the box a little, but didn’t hear the normal rattling sound one hears when there are “beans” inside a box. I was tempted to open the box straight away, but then thought “hmm.. the last movie comes out in two weeks, why don’t I keep it for the day I watch it, then blog about opening the box?” And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Since I didn’t hear the beans moving inside, I figured they’d somehow melted and possibly merged into one giant blob of gummy bean goop. As you can see in the following three pictures, I took the plastic wrapping off the box. In the last picture, you can see the expiry date for these beans. Incase it isn’t obvious to you, the date reads 20th November 2004.

        

I then proceeded to trying to open up the box. Now, I’m not some mega-muscled muscle woman or anything close to that, (actually I have no upper body strength at all), and was having difficulty getting the box to open. I finally managed to pry out one end of it, and realized that some of the goop from the beans had actually gotten between the side of the box and the flap that needed to be removed (fourth picture), which explains why it wasn’t easy to open the box.

            

I ripped a bit of the top off accidently, and finally saw what had happened to the beans inside. Take a look.. if you dare!

        

The beans had, to a certain extent, lost their shape. They’d start moulding together into one giant big blob of goop.. I wish I had had two boxes – I would have attempted to keep the second box for a few years, and then opened it to see what had happened to it after that!

So ya, that was what I spent part of my time doing yesterday… Opening a box of (at least) seven year old Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. What did you spend your time doing? Huh?

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/blog/bertie-botts-every-flavor-beans/feed/ 31 http://www.enchantmenot.org/blog/moving-pictures-of-a-lion-king/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/blog/moving-pictures-of-a-lion-king/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:59:00 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1742 Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. That’s mainly because I’ve been sick But I’m more or less all better now, so yay! Namecheap had the $1.99 giveaway a few days ago, and I figured I would take part in it, and got myself a new domain! www.picturemenot.com – my new photoblog!

I decided to expand the “random things around my room” to incorporate random things I find around my house as well, and thought that my VHS (Video) collection would be a great thing to blog about. I chose to talk about the videos because I watched The Lion King in 3D a few days ago, and thought it would be a perfect blog post topic.

As you can see in the above picture, my family and I have a relatively large video (VHS) collection. While most of these are movies that one would watch as a child, such as Diseny movies like The Lion King, The Little Mermaid or Pochahantas, or Warner Brothers movies like Free Willy. Growing up, my sister and I would spend hours just watching all these movies. They really were one of our favorite past times. We used to collect movies from our older cousins, who would pass them down to us, and we’d get them as gifts from our parents as well.

Over the years, we’ve developed quite a large collection! The photography only shows one cupboard of videos – which, I should add, actually have a row of videos in the back as well. They’re special to us, a true reminder of our childhood. While I highly doubt that I would show these videos to my children (on account of the small probability of us actually using video players in the future), there are still very few circumstances I can imagine where any of us would give up these videos.

Can you see it? Sticking out in the above photograph. That’s right! It’s our The Lion King video. Ahh, The Lion King. What an amazing movie! I don’t remember the first time I watched it or anything like that, but I do remember watching it countless times. We used to have a Lion King game as well, alas I don’t know where that is.

We have all three of the Lion King movies, however I think we’d lent the third one to my cousin which is why I couldn’t find it. But pictured above are Lion King 1 and 2.

Now let’s talk about the Lion King. It’s such a great movie. It teaches children about responsibility, family and fighting for what’s right. Did you know that a lot of the names used in the movie are actually swahili words? For example, Simba means lion, Mufasa means old man, Rafiki (the monkey) means friend, Pumba (one of my favorite, might I add) actually means Warthog.

The music in the movie is amazing as well. I know most of the words to the songs Which is an accomplishment! My friend and I sang all the songs when we’d gone to watch The Lion King in 3D (much to the dismay of the people sitting around us). Hakuna Matata really means “no worries”. Hakuna means “no”, while Matata means nonsense things that people worry about.

Anyway, the Lion King in 3D. I was scared that it would suck. They were making a 2D flat animation movie into a 3D movie. Without changing anything. Ya, this caused me to wonder if they’d ruin the movie or not… Fortunately, they didn’t! I must say, they did a truly amazing job with the movie, literally making it come to life with the lions jumping out at the screen, the birds flying straight into your face… It was almost magical. Ok, not really, but still.

Things for you to do

1. Check out my photoblog – www.picturemenot.com
2. Join my totally awesome Eureka Squared icon contest
3. Join the Enchant The World contest that Chynna are running
4. Join the awesome The Design contest
5. Check out The IceCaves – they’re completely starting afresh, and always welcoming new members!

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/blog/moving-pictures-of-a-lion-king/feed/ 16 http://www.enchantmenot.org/reviews/nancy-satis-romance/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/reviews/nancy-satis-romance/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 08:42:58 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1737

This review was done by Nancy at Satis Romance

Enchant Me Not

Owned by Aashni

1. Layout: The layout contains a nice corresponding colored feature with a header, navigation, sidebar, body text, and footer. The layout is nicely compatible with Firefox and Chrome {Safari is excluded}. But on Internet Explorer, it shows that the links under “Latest Article” and “Newest Resources” is centered while on other browsers, it’s left aligned- It’s a minor issue. The css used in this layout is fully validated. Good job! As for the markup validation, there are 40 errors. Half of the errors can be cleared if you specify an attribute to your images. Even if you don’t have attributes, at least have them blank. For example, here’s a following image code in your source.

<img src="enchantmenot.org/wp-content/themes/colorfulStripes/images/follow/twitter.png">

To make it markup-validated, insert an attribute like the following:

<img src="enchantmenot.org/wp-content/themes/colorfulStripes/images/follow/twitter.png" alt="">

2. Pages/Content: So far, all of the links directing the visitors throughout the pages are functional. There are 0 pages that is broken, under construction, or is misleading.

2a. Sitely: So far, everything in the sitely site is organized and well put together. No errors or anything has been found so far. The only thing I can suggest is to remove the “By Aashni on June 15th, 2011. Filed under . Comments Off.” portion below the body text. It is unnecessary as we already know the author and the information given is not needed.

2b. Goodies: This is the content section for the visitor’s use. Everything here is organized in an orderly manner, no errors have been found, and everything necessary is provided.

2c. Tutorials: This is the tutorials page. A lot of these articles and tutorials are interesting! The only thing that can be an issue- The page, “GoDaddy – 99 Cents for .com Domain!” is not valid anymore {GoDaddy does not have the 99 cents/domain offer}. It is not necessary to post an article in more than one section- stick to one even though there’s “3 Ways to Redirect a Page”, just make one category called Misc & list it from there. Otherwise, good job on the articles and tutorials. Capitalization usage in the titles is well done.

2d. Contests: The contest page is well organized by current and past events. In the page, “Eureka Squared”- “plaigerism” should be “plagiarism”. Everything else is fine.

2e. Network: The network page is where the information of sites belongs at. It is organized well by chronological order by time of event. Under “Enchant Me Not Hosting”, “acounts” should be “accounts”. Otherwise, good job on being descriptive to the point on the sites!

2f. Other: This is where the miscellaneous sitely things belong. Everything here is organized into their own pages and it is well written with details. Good job!

3. Writings: So far, the texts on the site is legible and easy to read. The font-size is well sized and the line-height is also well spaced. Only really minor typos are found and the grammar on the site is well used.

4. Advice: The only advice I can give for Enchant Me Not is just look over the markup validation and try to lessen the errors as much as possible. A site with less errors have a less chance of having incompatible browsers. Otherwise, just look over the minor things on the site such as typos and existing offers.

5. Rating: With everything said, Enchant Me Not gets a rating of 9.5/10. Good job!

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/reviews/nancy-satis-romance/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-install-wordpress-using-softaculous/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-install-wordpress-using-softaculous/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:26:44 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1732 If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-install-wordpress-using-softaculous/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/record-just-your-voice-for-a-youtube-or-other-video/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/record-just-your-voice-for-a-youtube-or-other-video/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:00:42 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1722 If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/record-just-your-voice-for-a-youtube-or-other-video/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/add-text-in-curves-using-photoshop-video-tutorial/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/add-text-in-curves-using-photoshop-video-tutorial/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:58:43 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1720 If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/add-text-in-curves-using-photoshop-video-tutorial/feed/ 2 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-borders-around-an-image-in-photoshop-video-tutorial/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-borders-around-an-image-in-photoshop-video-tutorial/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:56:40 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1718 If you would like to read this tutorial, instead of watching it, you can do so by reading this tutorial instead.

If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-borders-around-an-image-in-photoshop-video-tutorial/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-an-animated-circle-using-photoshop-video-tutorial/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-an-animated-circle-using-photoshop-video-tutorial/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:54:13 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1715 If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-an-animated-circle-using-photoshop-video-tutorial/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-an-animated-loading-bar-in-photoshop-video-tutorial/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-an-animated-loading-bar-in-photoshop-video-tutorial/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:51:58 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1713 If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/create-an-animated-loading-bar-in-photoshop-video-tutorial/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-outline-text-on-photoshop-video-tutorial/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-outline-text-on-photoshop-video-tutorial/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:49:56 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1710 If you would like to read this tutorial, instead of watching it, you can do so by reading this tutorial instead.

If you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to leave them either here, or on the video. Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-outline-text-on-photoshop-video-tutorial/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/contest/eureka-squared/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/contest/eureka-squared/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:27:34 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1689

This contest is no longer accepting entries, as it is in voting mode.

Results

A huge well done to everyone who took part, and a special congratulations to the winners!
1st Place: Alannah
2nd Place: Hayley
3rd Place: Jake

Vote!

I have decided to do this voting slightly differently. You will need to pick two of your favorite icon sets – i.e. 9 and 7, and then comment below with the icons you like best. I won’t display comments, so no one except me will know who you voted for. This is just to try and make sure the voting is more fair.

Emmie	Natalie
Mitch	Hayley
Isi	Emma
Jake	Alannah
Savannah	Sam
Aashni

Introduction

It’s SUMMER (for most of us.. if it isn’t summer for you, then just pretend it is )! And that means that many summer-time TV Shows start coming up on T.V.

One of my favorite TV Shows is called Eureka, a science-fiction show shown on the SyFy channel. Eureka is about a little town, called Eureka, filled with (mad) scientists, crazy experiments, and lots and lots of accidents. The main character, Sheriff Jack Carter (played by the lovely Colin Ferguson), has to try and solve all the mysterious problems that go on in the town (like how to stop a pissed off robot that can think for itself…), as well as looking after his daughter, getting the woman he loves, and so much more!

One of the best things about this show is the relationships, and the way the relationships have been developed, and so that’s what I want you to try and recreate in an icon. Hard you say? Difficult even? GOOD. Just cause it’s summer doesn’t mean I’m going to make this icon contests easier for you! Ok, fine, I’ll make it a little easier, since I realize that to know the type of relationships the characters have on the show is a little tricky if you haven’t watched the show before…

Rules

You must submit your own work. Plagiarism and theft is not tolerated.
You will create 2 icons, 1 featuring Colin Ferguson (Sheriff Jack Carter), the other featuring any other character on the show. To get a list of characters on the show, you can check out IMDB.com
In the entry form, you will tell me the relationship between the Sheriff and the character you chose. Yes, that means you have to do a little research.
You may enter as many times as you like!
You may use any textures etc. that you’d like to, however please Email me the credits if you do use someone else’s stuff
You must put a banner on your site so that others know to join and/or vote in the contest. You can use one of the ones below (direct linking is allowed), or you can make your own.

Timeline

Start Accepting Entries: 5th July 2011
Stop Accepting Entries: 24th July 2011
Start Voting: 24th July 2011
Stop Voting: 30th July 2011
These dates may change depending on whether or not I have to travel, or if I’m just lazy and don’t want to start the contest yet. I will notify all contestants if the dates change.

Prizes

1st Place – Advertising on Enchant Me Not for one month, a twitter shout, a custom made WORDPRESS THEME out and free hosting for one year at EMN Hosting with 2GB Disc Space and 30GB Bandwidth
2nd Place – Advertising on Enchant Me Not for one month, a twitter shout out and free hosting for one year at EMN Hosting with 2GB Disc Space and 30GB Bandwidth
3rd Place – Advertising on Enchant Me Not for one month and a twitter shout out

Entry Form

Link Back Buttons

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/contest/eureka-squared/feed/ 2 http://www.enchantmenot.org/premade-layouts/purple-circles-layout/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/premade-layouts/purple-circles-layout/#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:22:48 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1630

View WordPress Demo Download WordPress theme View PHP Page Demo Download PHP Layout

This is a simple, one column layout with a colorful, purple themed background.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/premade-layouts/purple-circles-layout/feed/ 0 http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-install-wordpress-in-less-than-five-minutes-video/ http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-install-wordpress-in-less-than-five-minutes-video/#comments Mon, 04 Jul 2011 19:41:15 +0000 Aashni http://www.enchantmenot.org/?p=1625 This video tutorial is based off the how to install wordpress tutorial in less than 5 minutes tutorial that I had written a few months ago.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to either leave them here, or on the video which is located on my youtube channel.

]]> http://www.enchantmenot.org/web-help/how-to-install-wordpress-in-less-than-five-minutes-video/feed/ 0