Shortening the main page

Since the time when I revived the blog, I always have had the feeling that the main page is a bit too long.

At first, I tried to shorten it by displaying less number of posts (from showing all posts within the past 7 days, down to just 5 most recent posts). This improves things quite a bit, but I still feel guilty of bombarding my readers with a really long page. Because, from my view, the 5 recent posts still make me tire of scrolling sometimes.

So, if even I feel annoyed by its length, some (if not all) of you will probably feel the same way too. And that's not a good sign.

The solution I use here is to create post summary. This way, the blog won't tire readers' eyes, and not too much scrolling will be done when they want to read older posts down the page.

At the moment, if you access this blog via the main page (i.e., http://b0nyb0y.blogspot.com), you will see that 5 most recent posts don't make you scroll too much anymore. Now you can just read the first paragraph of each post, and click “more...” to read the rest of it.

From how it appears, it's all fine and dandy. But if you take a look at the HTML source, you'll see that this is a half-baked solution at best. Though the page looks short, in reality your browser still loaded 5 entire posts; the CSS rule just hides most of the text away from you. So, though this change might improve readibility to us people, it doesn't make the page load any faster than before. In fact, the bandwidth of yours (and mine) is just wasted whenever this first page is loaded. :-(

Unfortunately, it appears that there is no other way, since this is the limitation on the Blogger part. Unless they decide to integrate the real “post summary” feature in the next version, I guess I'll have to stick with this approach.

คนตาบอดกับตะเกียง

เนื้อเรื่องมีคนพิมพ์ให้แล้ว ฉะนั้นจะไม่พิมพ์ซ้ำอีกที
แต่จะเข้าเรื่องเข้าประเด็นเลย ว่าได้ฟังนิทานนี้แล้วรู้สึกยังไง

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ก่อนจะนึกไปไกลถึงเรื่องข้อคิดของนิทาน
ขอตีความ (symbolic meanings) ให้กับสิ่งต่างๆ ในเรื่องก่อน
เพื่อจะได้เข้าใจตรงกัน ไม่มีข้อสงสัย หรือผิดพลาดไป
โดยเฉพาะคนอ่านที่อาจจะไม่สันทัดเรื่องธรรมะ

คนทั้งสามคน ก็เปรียบได้เหมือนกับคนนั่นแหละ
ส่วนตัวตะเกียง ก็เปรียบได้ดั่ง ประทีปส่องธรรม

ประทีปคือดวงไฟ.. โดยนัยคือ ไฟแห่งปัญญา

ส่วนธรรมนั้น ก็คือธรรมชาติ คือความเป็นธรรมดาของสิ่งรอบตัว
คือสภาวธรรมที่ปรากฏขึ้น ต่อหน้าต่อตาทุกคนอยู่ตลอดเวลา

ฉะนั้น โดยย่อแล้ว ประทีปส่องธรรม
ก็คือ ปัญญาส่องโลก
หรือ ปัญญารู้แจ้งโลก นั่นเอง

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ความรู้สึกแรกของผม จะเป็นอย่างที่แทบทุกคนที่ได้ฟังเนื้อเรื่องเป็นกัน
คือ มุ่ง focus ไปที่ตัวคนตาบอด เพราะตัวละครนี้เป็นตัวเดินเรื่อง
ความเห็นที่ได้ ก็จะคล้ายๆ กับพ่อและแม่
คือการให้ตะเกียงกับคนตาบอด ที่ไม่มีความสามารถจะรักษาไฟในตะเกียงได้ นั้น
เปรียบเสมือนการให้ธรรมะ กับผู้ที่ไม่มีความสามารถที่จะรักษาธรรมไว้ได้

แต่พอนึกได้อย่างนี้ ความรู้สึกที่ตามมาคือ
“ไม่สิ มันต้องมีมากกว่านี้”... ที่รู้สึกอย่างนี้ ก็เพราะว่า
ถ้าเปรียบเปรยคนตาบอดเป็นคนพาล หรือคนปัญญาทราม
แล้วเปรียบเปรยคนตาดีคนแรก ว่าเป็นคนมีปัญญา
แล้วคนตาดีคนที่สามล่ะ จะอยู่ในข่ายไหน?
คือถ้าเขาไม่ใช่หนึ่งในคนพาล (ซึ่งก็ไม่น่าใช่ เพราะเขายังมีตาดีอยู่)
แล้วเขาจะเป็นหนึ่งในกลุ่มไหน..

พอไล่เรียงมาถึงจุดนี้ ก็ทำให้กระหวัดนึกไปถึงดอกบัวสี่เหล่า
คือ บัวในโคลนตม บัวใต้น้ำ บัวปริ่มน้ำ และบัวพ้นน้ำ

พอมองจากมุมของดอกบัว ๔ เหล่านี้ ก็เลยเห็นว่า
คนตาดีคนแรก คือ บัวพ้นน้ำ(อาจจะเป็นบัวบานแล้วก็ได้)
คนตาบอด คือ บัวในโคลนตม
คนตาดีคนหลัง คือ บัวปริ่มน้ำ

จากที่เห็นตรงนี้ จึงสรุปต่อไปได้ว่า

• ถ้ามุ่งประเด็นไปที่คนตาบอด ข้อคิดที่ได้ก็จะเป็น
  “คนพาล (แม้ได้รับธรรมมา)ย่อมไม่สามารถรักษาธรรมไว้ได้”
• แต่ถ้ามุ่งประเด็นไปที่คนตาดีคนแรก ข้อคิดที่ได้ก็จะเป็น
  “การสอนธรรมควร ดูความพร้อมของผู้รับธรรม/เลือกผู้ที่พร้อมรับธรรม”
• แต่ถ้ามุ่งประเด็นไปที่คนตาดีคนสุดท้าย ข้อคิดที่ได้ก็จะเป็น
  “บุคคลที่อยู่ในวิสัยที่จะบรรลุธรรม
  หากยังไม่มีแสงประทีป(แห่งปัญญา)มาส่องตา(ให้เห็นธรรม)
  บุคคลนั้นก็จะอยู่ในความมืดมิด ไม่ต่างจากบุคคลปัญญาทรามเลย”

พอสรุปมาได้อย่างนี้ จึงได้รู้สึก “complete” กับเนื้อเรื่องมากขึ้น
คือรู้สึกว่า เนื้อเรื่องไม่น่าจะมีอะไรแฝงมามากกว่านี้อีกแล้ว

พอคิดตก ถึงได้เห็นว่า นิทานเรื่องนี้ เป็นนิทานประเภท “open-end”
คือคิดได้หลายแง่มุม เป็นนิทานที่ออกแบบมาโดยเฉพาะ
ให้เป็นเรื่องเล่าที่อาจารย์ผู้สอน ไม่สามารถสรุปออกมาเป็นข้อคิดอันเดียวเดี่ยวๆ ได้

ต้องบอกตรงๆ ว่า
ตอนแรกก็ไม่ได้มานึกว่าทำไมถึงรู้สึก “ไม่ complete” อยู่อย่างนั้น
แต่มาตอนนี้ ที่มานั่งนึกดูจริงๆ จึงได้เข้าใจว่า
โดยปกติทั่วไป เนื้อเรื่องของนิทาน จะมีลักษณะเป็น linear มีที่มาที่ไปชัดเจน
และพอเล่าเรื่องจบ ก็สามารถหา theme หลักออกมาได้เพียงหนึ่งเดียว
แต่ด้วยเพราะเนื้อเรื่องของนิทานอันนี้ มันขาดความ clear cut ที่มีในนิทานเรื่องอื่นๆ
จึงทำให้เกิดความรู้สึก อยากหาคติธรรมเพิ่มเติมเข้าไปเรื่อยๆ

วันนี้ พ่อกับแม่ไปหาท่านมา ก็ได้รับคำอธิบายมาคล้ายๆ กัน
คือนิทานเรื่องนี้ เป็นนิทานที่เปิดโอกาสให้เด็กได้คิด
และคำตอบที่ได้ออกมาก็ไม่มีคำตอบไหนผิดหรือถูก

พอรู้อย่างนี้แล้ว จึงนับถือคนแต่งมาก
เพราะมันเป็นนิทานที่สะกิดต่อมความคิดให้คันตะหงิดๆ ได้ทั้งในเด็กและผู้ใหญ่จริงๆ :-P

Speeding up Adobe Acrobat

This is probably old news to many people, but since it will benefit those who've missed it quite greatly, I must share this one with you all.

Those who have used several versions of Adobe Acrobat on their PCs will find that recent versions of it is quite bloated and slow, even if you tweaked your system to its best. And, oftentimes, when you use Acrobat plug-in on your browser, you have to click “Checking for updates” dialog box before you can proceed to see the PDF file you just download.

If you're like me, who usually open up a bunch of PDFs several times a day, this could be a major annoyance.

And even with these issues aside, scrolling in Acrobat is way too sloooow. Reading several APIs and programming manuals in PDF format can numb your eyes and right hand pretty quickly. Imagine what would happen if you have to sit and read those PDFs all day. (-.+"

Fortunately, the version 7 of Adobe Acrobat improves greatly from its successors. It loads faster, and by default it doesn't show its distracting logo when it starts. The scrolling seems snappier than before, too.

But you can crank the performance up even more, if you know how to disable Acrobat plugins.

Open up Adobe Acrobat reader, and go to Help → About Adobe Plug-Ins, you will see a big list of plugins that Acrobat needs to load whenever it starts. These plugins can be found at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\plug_ins.

If you know which plugins you usually use, then this is a piece of cake. You can just start moving those plugin that you don't need from \plug_ins to \Optional. (This actually is what Adobe recommended ..ermm.. silently through the file \plug_ins\README.TXT.) And by doing that, Acrobat will open up faster, since it doesn't have to load those extra plug-ins into memory.

For me, I don't purchase any eBooks, so I basically put away all plugins related to digital signatures, and encryption. I also don't use PDF with any web service, so SOAP is useless to me. I don't usually fill in Acrobat form, nor I like to see those check-for-update dialog boxes every time I open Acrobat up, so I also put them away too.

So, what I have left after the cleanup, is ECMAScript, External Window Handler, Internet Access Plug-in, Search, Sendmail, and Weblink.

And by just doing that, on my computer, Acrobat loads up instantly, alomost like when I open up Notepad. :-D


PS. For those who have used the previous version, and want to upgrade to version 7, I advise you to download the smallest version of it (i.e., excluding Yahoo! Toolbar, Photoshop Album, and those extra plugins that will slow Acrobat down). If you choose the right one, the total download size should be 12.6MB.

Got a new toy

I just finished installing a new toy for this blog. It's a Trackback system by HaloScan.

Some people might be tempted to ask “What the heck is it?” And the easiest way out for me, is to show you this FAQ from HaloScan.

But then, some of you might ask further, “Why do you even need to have it?”

The easy answer that I usually get, is that by having Trackback, the blog author can check the popularity of his/her own post. Indeed, this is correct, but I feel it's more than that. And the following's my take on this.

Often, when one blog has a really cool post that excites readers, that post is very likely to be quoted on in some other blogs. This is expected, and there's nothing strange about it.

But consider the following scenario: suppose a person B writes on his blog about a post of a person A. Then, the implication of this is that the readers of B's blog will come to know both B's blog and A's blog.

Still following me? Then, let's suppose further that there is another person C, who also writes about either A's post or B's post. By doing so, the blog network expands, and the readers of C's blog will come to know all A's blog, B's blog, and C's blog... You get the idea.

So, from the above scenario, you can see that the further away you are from the original post, the bigger blog network you can perceive. And that's good for all of us bloggers, since this means that you're more likely to meet new friends, who are very likely to have similar interests as you (after all, they're interested in the same post as you).

But looking back at the original blog author, it looks pretty bad. His/her “Blogosphere” is still as tiny as before, and there's no way for him/her to expand his/her blog network. Talking in data structure term, this is like a singly-linked list, where each node has a pointer back to its parent node.

Visualizing it this way, you should start feeling sorry for the root node by now, since it doesn't have a pointer that points to any of its children (or grandchildren, or great grandchildren, etc.). The root node is all lonely and sad. :~

But, by having a trackback, it's more like each child (or grandchild, etc.) is pinging back to the root node. So now the root node has pointers to other nodes, and its perceived blog network is increasing every time one more blog refers to it.

As such, the root node isn't lonely anymore, and they lived happily ever after.


And thus, the moral of this story is, “Get your own Trackback now, before your blog becomes a lonely, old-gramp, root node in a singly-linked list!” :-P

Unbelievable...

That was the first impression I got when I saw P' bVis MSN online name.

If this happened around two weeks ago, I'm so sure I will call it a flop, an April's fool joke. But it happened this week, and there is no sign of it being a joke.

It will be sometime before things are settled, but now it's sure that Adobe is about to acquire our good friend Macromedia. The official statement can be found on Adobe web site. In case you haven't noticed, the front page of Macromedia has changed quite a bit, as well.

At the moment, I didn't see much movements in blogs of those who reside in the US. Out of those that I've known, I've seen only one. That's probably because it's still quite early in the morning over there. Anyway, without a doubt, I'm sure that by tonight it will be a talk of the town. This is something huge.

Adobe Flash 2006, anyone? ;-P


PS. Found a blog of Macromedia employee. From this, you can see the press release from Macromedia, as well as his personal voice about this.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 released

Might be a bit late, but the new version of Mozilla Firefox has arrived.. The autoupdate thingy reached my computer just a little while ago..

Also, for those who have the “Thai WBR” version of Firefox, you can find the new version here. That way, you will continue to have a Firefox that display Thai text properly.

Making blog searchable

So far, it bugs me that my blog cannot be searched by search engines.

By default, every blog you create will be shown on your Blogger profile page. If you decide to disable this feature, then, besides removing the blog from the profile page, Blogger will also automagically make it unsearchable. It achieves that by adding the following <meta> tag to your blog:

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" />

FYI, the above tag is generated by <$BlogMetaData$> tag in your template code.

This is usually the intended effect: if you don't want the public to know about the blog, then you shouldn't want it to be found accidentally through search engines, either. Indeed, this is a fair rationale to make.

But sometimes, you will find a case where you still WANT your blog to be searchable. For example, consider this scenario: you want to post comments on some blogs here on blogspot, but these blogs require you to log-in in order to post. Quite often, commenting on those blogs is a one-time deal: you post comments on them every once in a while, and that's it. You don't want to know much about them, and you just don't want too many strangers reading your blog. So, the obvious solution is to disable the blog listing. But going with this choice, you basically prevent yourself from searching on your own blog.

So, what would you do?

The trick I use here is to get rid of the <$BlogMetaData$> tag altogether, and from there I can create my own set of <meta> tags.

Before the change, I viewed my blog XHTML source, and I saw that the <$BlogMetaData$> tag generates the following:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; 
  charset=UTF-8" />
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />
<meta name="generator" content="Blogger" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml"
  title="b0nybl0g"
  href="http://b0nyb0y.blogspot.com/atom.xml" />
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml"
  title="b0nybl0g"
  href="http://www.blogger.com/atom/12015033" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" 
  href="http://www.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=12015033" />
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" />
<style type="text/css">
@import url("http://www.blogger.com/css/blog_controls.css");
@import url("http://www.blogger.com/dyn-css/authorization.css?
  blogID=12015033");
</style>

So, from the above bits, I simply change "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" to "INDEX,FOLLOW" for ROBOTS meta tag and paste this modified text in place of the <$BlogMetaData$> tag inside my template code.

After getting the change republished, the blog becomes less private, but now I can search my own blog. :-)

Wristband Hive in Thailand

It's getting out of hand... (also pun intended ;-P )

Now many teens in Thailand are crazy over wristbands..apparently for no particular reason than that it's a new “fashion” that they have to follow.

Yes, it's a common thing to happen in a collective society as Thailand (or is it just Bangkok). Some might even say that it's bound to happen; and it's just a matter of time before people start getting crazy about some new things again. But, still, I couldn't get used to it yet.

Originally, these wristbands were made as part of one fund-raising campaign. But later on other charity organizations see that it's a Good Thing(tm), so they followed suit. Now there are tons of them out there, coming with different sizes and colors.

Truth be told, I've heard about it for a while on TV. I believed the first campaign that came up with this colorful plastic wristband was Lance Armstrong Foundation, which dedicates its effort on cancer research. The original price of each wristband was $1. I first heard about the price when I glanced over the Oprah TV show a while back. But now, when I checked the price again, the minimum price currently starts at $10.

Some other notable campaigns are Nike's “STAND UP SPEAK UP”, and the one from The Breast Cancer Site.

Nothing against them, really: It's a smart move. It easily created (brand) awareness among comsumers (after all, people's wrists usually are visible to the public). It also effectively conveys the message through its unique color and brief text.

The only thing I'm against is the attitude of those who wear them just for fashion, and those who sells them just for the sake of getting profit.

Many teens see them as must-have fashion accessories, so there're people who will take advantage of this. At the moment many stores at Siam Square are selling these bands at ridiculously high prices. Some goes as high as 1,000 baht for Nike one. And, as anyone can guess, additional profit made on these bands probably won't be donated toward their respective foundations. In fact, I'm not even sure if any of those I saw in stores are fake or not. But the point is, it's kind of disappointing to see this kind of thing.

Searching through a bit more, though, I realized that Thailand is not alone in this issue. Even in the US, these bands were resold on eBay. It's just that, in the US, the situation happened late last year. Thailand just happen to caught up in the very same problem this year.

Obviously, many people over there saw it disturbing as well.

Can I change anything? Probably not. The only thing that I can do is watching the hive dies down. Eventually, teenagers will pick up new things to go crazy about.

I wanna change it, but it's just getting out of hand...


PS. More info over here.

“All rights reserved” vs. “Some rights reserved”

Surfing around the net for a while, I accidentally came to this page, where at the bottom of the image I found one nice little logo under it.

On the logo it says, “Some rights reserved.”

Though at first you will think it's a joke, it actually isn't. In fact, I've seen several web sites with Creative Commons logo for quite some time. But in the past, I didn't own any blog (or more precisely, I just owned a dead blog), so I didn't pay much attention to it.

But now, things have changed, since the blog is revived, and I already am planning to keep blogging. So, I just had a feeling that, if I want to do it, I wanna do it right. I should be more careful about this licensing stuff.

For the moment, I'm in favor of this type of license because I feel that this approach is more open than the normal copyright one. In a normal license, everything is restricted and tightly controlled. On the other hand, with Creative Commons license, people have more freedom to make use of the materials on my site — but not too much.

For this blog, I choose this license, but it's not the only type of license available at Creative Commons web site. From there, you can get the license that's right for you by completing a simple HTML form. For any Creative Commons license you use, you will have it both in human-readable, and full legal code format (for example, for this blog it will be this and this).

Once you're done, you can place their logo somewhere on your site. I was about to put one here too. But since it seems to make my footer too crowd, I decided to just use the text link.

So, from now on, content created by me here in this blog is “Some rights reserved.” Though it sounds a bit funny, but if you think about it, the description fits the nature of the license quite well. :-P


PS. I made some changes to the template again, BTW. Now the archive page should list only the headers instead of the whole posts. That way people can easily skim through the page, and the page is faster to load. Thanks my sis and blogger help for this. ;-)

Going for one, but coming back with two

Today I thought I would only work with Flickr and start uploading my photos for later use. But just right after I finished signing up for a Flickr account, I had a chat with my sister on MSN. That talk changed my plan quite a bit.

During the chat, I told her I was a bit surprised to see a b0nybl0g link on her blog. It feels kind of strange that she knew about this blog so quickly, since I haven't told anybody about it yet. And, more importantly, this blog can't be searched from search engine(s) either, since I had set my Blogger settings not to let them index my pages.

The answer I got from her was that she is using eXTReMe Tracking. With it, she can easily check referer URLs (I sometimes click on my own right panel to visit her blog). And, lo and behold, when I went back to her blog and looked more closely at the footer section, I saw a big image of eXTReMe.

Right after talking with her, I feel that I also need one of these services too. So the search for a free, good web stats service began. :-P

Googling around the web for a bit, and I hit the page of StatCounter and AddfreeStats. I tried AddfreeStats first, since it seems to provide a lot of information than the other one. But that didn't go so well, since the image file from AddfreeStats is way too annoying. Yes, the image file is small, and the logo inside it is well-designed. But the image blinks like there's tomorrow. And with just that, it ruined the whole party. I basically deleted my account right after I saw that image file.

So, I switched to StatCounter. Though its statistics package is a bit limited compared to AddfreeStats, I still have more choice over the image that I want to use, or whether or not I want the image to be displayed at all. And, in my opinion, this feature is a BIG BIG plus for StatCounter.

Now, the web stats module is up and running. Those who wants to know stats of this blog can now access them using the link at the footer.

In search for an image hosting service

At this point, I think what I need for my blog is the place to host images that will be posted on this blog.

What interests me at the moment are Flickr and Hello. Though Hello is part of the Google empire, and suppose to work very well with Blogger, Flickr isn't such a bad choice, either. And considering that even some person who works on Blogger uses Flickr himself, I think it's a very appealing choice.

One reason that I favor Flickr over Hello is that, with Flickr, I can have an online gallery. Hello, on the other hand, seems to be too limited on how you can share photos: besides posting pictures on your blog, if you want another way to share pictures, the only choice left is to use Hello chat to send them to your friends. And, obviously, for this to work, you have to make sure that every friend of yours has Hello installed on his/her system.

So, making it short, if I decide to use Hello, I will face with technology lock-in problem. But if I'm going for Flickr, my picture hosting system will be more open and user-friendly, since viewers only need their own browsers to view photos.

More cosmetic changes

Just bear with me for the week or two, and the blog will have "real content". But for now, since the look of the blog doesn't make me a happy man yet, all the entries will still be about CSS changes.

What I've done more to the blog this time is to choose the "right" font.

One the first day I revived this blog, the first impression I had on this template is that, "hey, there should be better font that suits all these headers than this." But that thought just drifted away really quickly.

After messing around with the code for a day or two, though, that thought came back to me again. Upon closer looks at the CSS, I finally realized that my system didn't have the font that the page designer intends to use...

Those who are familiar with CSS will know that, usually, when one wants to specify a font for a particular element of the page, one can achieve that by defining font-family for that element. For example:

code {
  font-family: "Courier New", Courier, mono;
  ...
}

In the above rule, we basically tells the browser that all the text inside every <code> tag should use one of these fonts. The key point here is that, when the browser sees this list, it will try its best to find and use the earlier font(s). For example, if your system has Courier New, the browser will use it for rendering the text, and disregard other fonts on the list; otherwise, it keeps going down the list, until it finds the one that it can use.

Looking closely at the CSS rules for all the headers, I found something similar to the following:

font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Trebuchet MS";

which means the page designer originally intends to use Lucida Grande for all the headers. Unfortunately, Lucida Grande didn't come with my computer, so my browser keeps using Trebuchet MS instead. And though Trebuchet doesn't make the page looks that ugly, I felt that the page could look better. Besides, Trebuchet is still a fallback font. So, later that day, I managed to get Lucida Grande installed on my system.

And, phew, what a difference! After getting the font installed, the page looked decent. But, then, I never like how the page header looks. And this afternoon, I just realized that what I need is a more round-looking kind of font. So I thought of Arial Rounded MT Bold. The font is already on my system, so this time I didn't have to waste time finding more font, and was able to start coding CSS right away.

Now, after a second round of changes to <h1>, <h2>, and <h4> tags to use Arial Rounded font, the page looks almost perfect. :-D

Moving things around...

After pondering about page design a bit more, I realized that my URL lists are getting longer than usual. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but they push "Recent Posts" and "Archives" sections a bit too far down the page.

So, I spent more time on the template, and moved those sections up so that they're easier to access. With that, I also moved the blog description to the page header, to make side panel less clutter.

To spice things up even more, I messed around with CSS rules so that the side panel is divided into two parts. The top part will have profile info and blog navigation sections, while the bottom one will have all the interesting links.

Now, the only thing left is to find the avatar image that suits the blog. But that's for later.

A bit more of beautification

Now the one with keen eyes will notice the changes to the navigation pane on the right. In addition to adding more links in several categories, I've also beautify the section headers to make it more nice-looking too.

More important changes were made on the blog entries themselves to make them comply with standards. Now the page should validates against XHMTL 1.0 strict, as well as RSS. Though it will stumble when it comes to CSS, since the original theme uses a bit of the hacks to make the page behaves as expected in IE, and also because of the fact that the CSS of blogger navigation bar is erroneous.

Those who are interested in checking the validity of the pages here can check out the links at the footer of this page. And from there, if you feel like it, you can start checking on yours too.

เกี่ยวกับเกม Half-Life 2

ลองเขียนบลอคเป็นภาษาไทยบ้างแล้วกันนะ เปลี่ยนบรรยากาศ..

ช่วงที่ผ่านมาไม่นานมานี้ (ประมาณหนึ่งอาทิตย์นี้เอง) เำพิ่งได้มีโอกาสเล่นเกม Half-Life 2 กับเค้าซักที สาเหตุที่ไม่มีโอกาสได้เล่นก่อนหน้านี้ ก็เพราะวิดีโอการ์ดไม่แรงพอ แต่ตอนนี้เครื่องใหม่ไฉไลมีการ์ดแรงๆ มาให้ใช้ ก็เลยสนองตัณหาด้วยการดาวน์โหลต demo ของเกมมาชิมลางดูก่อน

ช่วง demo ช่วงแรก ไม่ค่อยรู้สึกรู้สาอะไรเท่าไหร่ แต่พอมาถึงอีกด่านนึงนี่ บอกตามตรงว่า เล่นไปแล้ว รู้สึกจิตใจหดหู่ยังไงชอบกล

คือในด่านนั้น จะมี ซอมบี้ และสัตว์ประหลาดหลายรูปแบบที่จะต้องคอยไล่ตามฆ่าให้ครบ วิธีที่ใ้ช้ก็มีตั้งแต่การใช้ปืน 9 มม. ไปจนถึงการใช้ปืนกล และ ช็อตกัน ซึ่งอานุภาพก็จะสูงขึ้นตามลำดับ

อีกวิธีการฆ่าที่ใช้ได้บ่อย ก็คือการใ้ช้ปืนปรับสภาพแรงโน้มถ่วง ซึ่งสามารถใช้ยกหรือยิงสิ่งของออกจากตัวได้แม้จะมีขนาดใหญ่และหนักเกินกว่าที่คนธรรมดาจะแบกได้ ซึ่งของที่หาได้มาก (ในเวลาที่ต้องการประหยัดกระสุน) ก็คือใบจักร ซึ่งถึงแม้จะมีน้ำหนักเบา แต่พอยิงออกไปด้วยปืนนี้ ก็มีความรุนแรงพอที่จะหั่นศัตรูออกเป็นสองท่อนได้อย่างง่ายดาย

ทั้งหมดนี้ หากเป็น CG ในสมัยเก่า ก็อาจจะไม่ทำให้เกิดความรู้สึกแย่ซักเท่าไหร่ แต่ด้วยเทคโนโลยีที่ก้าวหน้าขึ้น และตัวโมเดลที่ทำได้สมจริงมากขึ้น ทำให้ภาพที่เห็นในเกมนั้นดูเหมือนจริง.. จริงจนทำให้เรารู้สึกว่า realism ชนิดนี้มันทำให้เรารู้สึกหดหู่ไปตามสภาพท้องเรื่องของเกม ได้มากกว่าเกมยุคเก่าๆ

เมื่อเจอ audio effects เช่นเสียงโหยหวนของสัตว์ประหลาดตอนตาย และ theme songs ของด่านนั้น บวกกับภาพศพของคนรอบๆ สถานที่ (ที่ทำให้ดูเหมือนว่าโดนสัตว์ประหลาดฆ่า) ก็คงไม่ต้องบอกแล้วว่า มันให้ความรู้สึกกระอักกระอ่วนขนาดไหน

ตามปกติแล้ว หากมองด้วยมุมมองของคนที่สนใจเรื่องคอมพิวเตอร์ ไม่ว่าจะเป็นด้าน modeling, AI, หรือ graphics ผมก็คงต้องขอแสดงความยินดีกับบริษัททำเกมด้วย ที่ทำเกมได้สมจริงขนาดนี้ สมแล้วกับการที่เกมนี้ ได้รับรางวัลต่างๆ จาก online reviews แืทบจะทุกเวบในอินเตอร์เน็ต

แต่หากย้อนมาดูกับความจริงที่ว่า จิตของคน เมื่อข้องแวะอยู่ในเรื่องใดมากๆ เมื่อถึงคราวตาย หากขาดสติรู้อยู่ จิตก็จะได้ไปอยู่ในภพภูมิ ที่เหมาะสมกับสภาพพื้นเพจิตอย่างนั้นๆ.. ซึ่งถ้าเป็นอย่างนั้นจริง หากใครที่มีจิตใจติดพันกับเกมนี้ได้ตายไปในขณะนั้น ก็เท่ากับเป็นการดึงให้จิตตนให้ร่วงลงไปสู่อบายเป็นแน่

แต่มองดูรอบๆ ตัว ก็นับเป็นเรื่องน่าแปลกที่พบว่ายังมีเกมประเภทนี้ออกมามากขึ้นเรื่อยๆ ซึ่งนับวันก็ยิ่งจะสมจริงขึ้นเรื่อยๆ..

เห็นอย่างนี้แล้ว ไม่อยากจะนึกเลย ว่ากลุ่มคนที่เรียกตัวเองว่าเป็น gamers นี้ เมื่อถึงคราวตายไป เค้าจะได้ไปอยู ณ ที่ใด...

More testing...

Now, onto testing language compatibility...

Thai: ภาษาไทย
Lao : ພາສາລາວ
Eng : English

The only problem I see at the moment is that Internet Explorer (or Microsoft Windows, for that matter) doesn't fully support Lao language yet. Normally, when IE sees Thai text, it would pick Tahoma font automatically. So, even if the CSS file specifies Verdana as a font to use for the blog, IE is smart enough to switch font family to display Thai text correctly. (This is the standard behavior on known languages.) But when I typed in Lao, since Windows doesn't fully recognize Lao language at the moment, I still have to manually wrap the Lao text with a <span> tag to change the font-family to Saysettha OT.

As you finished reading the previous paragraph, I guess you probably know by now that Firefox doesn't suffer from this issue.

More information about this can be found on Wikipedia:

Some web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, and Safari are able to display multilingual web pages by intelligently choosing a font to display each individual character on the page. They will correctly display any mix of Unicode blocks, as long as appropriate fonts are present in the operating system.

Internet Explorer is capable of displaying the full range of Unicode characters, but can't automatically make the necessary font choice. Web page authors must guess which appropriate fonts might be present on users' systems, and manually specify them for each block of text with a different language or Unicode range. A user may have another font installed which would display some characters, but if the web page author hasn't specified it, then Explorer will fail to display them, and show placeholder squares instead.

If you feel an urge to know the rest, you can read more here.

More changes to template CSS

After fiddling with No. 565 for a while, I realized that there are many good things about TicTac Blue that I want to keep. So, I switched back to the latter and start modifying CSS for it.

So far, the major changes that should be very noticable are
line-height:

body {
  ...
  line-height: 1.5em;
}

.post-body {
  line-height: 1.6em;
}

.post-body p {
  line-height: 1.6em;
}

color of the text in blog entry:

.post {
  color: #444444;
}

and margin of the blog entry header:

h3.post-title {
  ...
  margin-bottom: -0.3em;
}

With just these 3 changes, the blog looks much better (to me), and a bit easier to read (esp. in Mozilla Firefox).

Other noticable changes are font settings for <code> and <pre>:

code, pre {
  font-family: "Courier New", Courier, mono;
  font-size: 0.9em;
  color: #996666;
}

blockquote pre,
blockquote code {
  font-size: 105%;
}

And with these changes, the code shown in blog entries (such as these CSS rules) will be more readable on both IE and Firefox.

Choosing the "right" template

So far it has been hard for me to pick a template that I like the most. Out of all available, two of them really stands out: No. 565 (by Bowman) and TicTac Blue (by Cederholm). Though the font size used in the former is smaller, somehow it feels easier on the eyes than the latter. Not sure why either, but I suspect it must be something to do with the line height. If I really feel an urge to go for TicTac Blue, I will probably have to google for online resource on how I might go about modifying my CSS file for that.

How things will be done

Usually, I'm not a person who would express my personal life to the public, so the blog here will be devoted to something else. Probably something technical, in the area of my study (and work): programming. Some other stuff of interest will also be Dhamma, since it's a big part of my life already.

Languages used will mainly be English and Thai. Sometimes, though, when I'm in a mood, it'll also be Lao. With the help of UTF-8 encoding (which is the default encoding used here at Blogger, BTW), having multiple languages on the same blog is not really a problem.

The only thing to look out for (for user, specificallly) is that one must have a set of Unicode fonts that support these languages.

• For English, it would be Verdana (which can be found virtually on any PC on the planet).
  
• For Thai, it would be Tahoma (very common also).
• For Lao, it would probably be Saysettha OT (the OT stands for OpenType). This font is not so widely used as the other two, but can still be found quite easily via Google [http://www.laohub.com/static_html/lang/key_guide.php]
  

Minor glitch for a comeback

For this comeback, I logged in into my old account from my office. Unfortunately, the network settings over there is too restrictive. So, it was hell broke loose to me. Every time I tried to set new things for my blog, my trusty browser just give me blank page, or 404 page. I first thought that the cause might came from the fact that the account was several years old, since it came from the old blogging system. So I decided to rename the user, and switched to a new account. But things still didn't get any better. At the time, I just kept clicking refresh button like a mad man, cursing at my computer.

But when I was about to give up, with a little chat with P' bVis on MSN, I finally got an idea that maybe it's a network problem at my office. And, indeed, it surely is. Now I'm at home, and there is absolutely no problem at all!

A major revival of the blog!

The very first time I had come to know Blogger was when Zilent was the site where we, zilenters, would post thoughts and ideas directly on to the front page. During that time, the postings on our site was driven by Blogger. But that time had passed, and now Zilent is mainly operating as web board. As a consequence, the blog here was basically dead — since 2001.

But the new era has come. Now 'blogging' has become the 'hip' thing on the web (at least in Thailand anyway). That's why this blog is back, with a better look. With this new Blogger, things couldn't be better — flashy GUI for editing/managing the blog; more advanced features to connect multiple blogs together; moreover, standards on the themes has never been better (well-formed XHTML and CSS).

So, what's left to say? Enjoy the show... Enjoy the ride! :-)