my web-browsing pet peeves

before i retire for the day let me share what i've accomplished... and not HAHAHA

1. two backlogs slashed off! whew.
2. still no progress with the story board. cos every time i start to research, the internet slows down. hello peak hour and my ever so reliable Internet Service POORvider! grrrrr!!! rarrrghghghghg #SmartDoesn'tCare
3. uhm, 10 desperate attempts to speed rope gracefully. terai bought this uber expensive speed rope and i'm so fascinated about it, even though i keep on tripping and hitting myself. hihi

may ishe-share ako. i've been wanting to share this but i don't know how to put it hahaha

My web-browsing pet peeves, aka web elements that make me cringe

uhm. please don't hate me. i'm usually very OC with my layout so i notice a lot of things whenever i hop around the web. i'm going to be really honest though hehe

1. desperate ad placements

ads that block your reading view, and ads that you need to close in order to get some peace. they annoy me to the bones. oh, and also ads pretending to be text links such that when you accidentally hover on it, an invasive box appears. hayyy.

i understand how some people are just plain making a living out of it, but shouldn't you care about how those ads mess with user experience? >XS

2. pesky modals (or onload popups)

whether they be ads, or facebook widgets, or something else, it gives me the impression that you are suggesting i do something FIRST before we enter your page. ma-pride ako, i hate being told what to do first. for the record, i already wanted to see your page. but now i don't. chos.

plus daaangyou points for modals that frkn hide the close button, or obscure it in some condescending text like "NO THANKS, I DON'T WANT TO BE UPDATED WITH TIPS AND TRICKS THAT WILL IMPROVE MY HEALTH" ---- really? i'm being judged by closing a frkn modal!

3. non-responsive layout

i got to be honest. whenever i see a very handsome layout, i always resize the screen to see if it's responsive. for your own good, let me suggest you invest time or even money to turn your layout into a responsive one, because apparently google favors responsive layouts so it might have an effect on your ranking :)

4. baseline JPEGs aka pictures that take eons to load

- baseline/simple (non-progressive) JPEGs are pictures that load from top to bottom. you'll notice that when you have slow internet (like i do, argh).
- progressive JPEGs are pictures that start loading from a blurred/pixelized scan and progresses to a clear scan.

apparently, the latter loads faster. so word of advice for photo bloggers or those who put a lot of photos in their pages. save your images as progressive JPEGs. :)

in photoshop, before finishing the saving process, you are prompted to select a jpeg type, just tick on 'progressive' and leave the scans count to 3. :)

5. overflowing content

nope, not websites that have so much content. i'm talking about pictures too large they spill out of their containers and cover part of the sidebar or something. i have the same issue so i always resize my pictures. hehe

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that's it so far. what about you? what annoys you a lot when you're browsing over the web?

Welcome to www.yanbirog.com!

new domain!

i finally bought my own domain! i always thought it was too expensive to get one but then it's actually very cheap naman pala! GoDaddy has an existing promo when i bought mine this week and i only paid php 824.something for 2 years subscription!

dati kasi, i thought .com websites are hosted where they bought the domain. true. and back then i wanted my blog on a .com. kaso, i was afraid i'll have to move to an entirely different blogging platform, then it'll take too much space that i had to buy the most expensive web hosting plan with unlimited storage because what if i post too much pictures and it eats up my bandwidth? SO WRONG HAHA. apparently, my posts and everything stays at blogspot naman pala! it's just being redirected to a different domain. >XD yey. haha

ang exciting. grabe. amazeballs. i've always wanted my own domain but i never really had enough reasons and resources back then. but now! thank you Lord! hahaha

this week i learned a lot of things about setting up your own domain. i see a lot of online businesses offering this type of service, and i thought it couldn't be too hard to do it myself since all i had to do was pay for the domain and set everything up, by that i mean looking into google for tutorials on how to! #easyPeasy >XD

anyway, i encountered a couple of bummers too...

1. apparently, there's a different setup when it comes to using naked domains (http://yanbirog.com without the www). somehow it feels like using the naked domain is SLOWER. that's kindof sad for me cos that's the address i want to promote. >X(

2. naturally, a new domain means new blog stats as well. no backlinks, PR, DA, PA, and all those SEO metrics i just recently learned about. AS IF naman i was ranking before no? haha echos lang yan.

i'm hopeful i'll get ranked someday! haha

a change on design perspective:

since i decided i wanted to somehow earn from this site, i had to overhaul my entire blog design to maximize ad placements without being too cluttered. i see a lot of well earning sites that aren't visually appealing and while it hurts to know that apparently, good design hardly counts where blog monetizing is involved, i still wanted my blog to reflect my OCD self at least. HAHA

content and design now hold equal weights in my scale of 'what makes a good blog'. i usually don't care about what i write cos i wanted to keep things 'personal', but it matters a lot if my site looked pretty or not. haha! or at least organized! >XD

looking back, i was all about putting my art at the front. i adored big headers displaying my drawings, graphics, and old school javascript sliders of my latest artworks and all. but now i realized they're taking too much space and page loading time that i decided to just hide them in a category and trim the header to accommodate ads. now i just have a small header, but at least i was able to affix 2 leader boards there! haha come on CTR. haha

i settled for a responsive template for one thing: MOBILE.

and look, i finally have a logo!

it's a simple monogram made from some script font i got over at dafont.com. i was supposed to draw it by hand but i thought, why bother when there are awesome fonts out there anyway! >XD haha

i'm excited to turn it into mock-up items like business cards, RESUMES, and other paraphernalia. hahaha eneveh.

hmmm...

i'm still pretty stoked about the whole thing. i couldn't even focus on work because i was so excited to setup my domain! haha thank you so much Lord for this gift! >XD hihi

how to download streaming videos

:) yey! finally!!! to start this off, i'll define what streaming video is. you watch it on youtube, google video, ifilm, metacafe... blah blah. ok. gets? so those are streaming videos, videos that you can readily watch as it is being delivered to you. the difference of streaming media to non-streaming media is that with non-streaming media, you first have to download the file completely before you can view it. an example of this would be mp3s we download from the net and zipped files. clear?

so yeah, to download streaming videos, or simply put... for you to save your favorite youtube videos on your hard-disk.... do this

1. first and foremost: secure an FLV (flash video) player because the video you're going to translate into downloadable format and download will be saved with a file extension of .flv

>>> you can download a free FLV Player HERE

2. open youtube (or any streaming video site you know) and load your preferred video

3. open http://www.keepvid.com and there you'll see a field where you must type the URL of the page where the video plays. actually, all the other necessary directions can be found on that site. JUST make sure that the video you're planning to download has loaded COMPLETELY on youtube (or any other) before you type in its URL

4. and voila! keepvid will take care of the rest. which means that once you've submitted the URL on the text field, keepvid will generate a DOWNLOAD LINK where you can finally download the video as an .flv file and save it on your harddisk.

waaah. it's very easy... for those who have highspeed internet connection. :\ naaah. i don't have that... for now... but we'll see... hehehe

anyhow. as of late, keepvid is the only site i know who offers such services but i'm sure there are lots of them already, i'm just not well-aware of them. :)

NOTE: sadly, you can only download streaming videos as FLV files. if you want to convert it to mp3 or any other type of media, you have to secure a separate converter for that...

yey! alright. that's it.

questions? clarifications? anything you find incomprehensible or vague? you can ask me on this one if you don't understand it. ^_^;;

THANKS A BUNCH TO KEEPVID and to my dormmate who shared this info to me. :)

stalking your crush on the net

to tell you honestly, i've been in this nasty business for about some time now especially when i heard of some google search options you could do to narrow down your research.

you probably know this already. heh.

if you want to get more information about your crush, aside from asking people (and asking him personally as well)... it's also nice to know what the world wide web says about him. if your crush doesn't have a public blog (like mine), has his friendster account set to private (like mine), and doesn't usually go around the net (like mine. lol), you have to rely on other sources. like his friends. BUT if you don't want to talk his friends into giving you infos about him because... hello? it's too obvious, you can stalk them as well. and because you're too shy to hide behind the lampost and secretly take notes about them while they eat... well, you've got the ever reliable internet to depend on.

bwahahaha. i'm so pathetic for even sharing this to you!
so first of all you have to know your crush's name. what a loser if you only know his first name. you should now his 2nd name (if there's any) and most importantly his surname. hahaha. so, like me, if you want to stay safe and learn more about him in a discreet manner that only you and the 'history' of your internet explorer browser knows... here's how.

pagsisisihan ko ba 'to?

ah basta eto lang yon: in Google, enclose your search string with quotations to get more specific search feeds. for example, "ryan agoncillo" ♥ google will only show you links that mention those words. yeah. cool, huh. try vanity searching to see how many websites actually contain your name on it.

problema na nga lang kung
a) maraming kapangalan ang crush nyo eg. Juan Dela Cruz, mga Santos, Dizon... blah
-if this happens, try his nick+surname.
b) or... super walang alam ang web tungkol sa kanya. whaaaat?

hahaha. the point is, even though your crush doesn't own anything publicly displayed on the web for you to marvel on, there're always websites that will somehow (one way or another) mention him. LIKE HIS FRIEND'S BLOG. CLASS SITES. FORUMS. (i found them all. hooraaah.)

believe me. actually, right now i'm looking at some of his highschool-mates blogs.

mehn. would you believe meeeeee???? i'm this desperate to know hiiimmmm? but all we share are stolen stares and innocent glances that only I acknowledge as signs of something 'good' brewing. girls are normally like that - a casual glance is a largely ambiguous term. he knows i exist because he thinks i have a crush on him. which is true, everybody (almost) does anyway. and it makes me jealous thinking that he's only interested (not even) in me because i'm one of those junk of bitches who fell for him.

lol. i'm so interested with him.

ps: i'm just lucky that he has a unique nickname. made my research easier. lol