This site is now powered by Wordpress.

It took a while but I have finally managed to convert my blog from Textpattern to Wordpress. The conversion process was made easier by the import utility provided by Wordpress, but a considerable amount of time and energy had to be expended  to tidy up and reformat the content.
Then there’s the usual search for a [...]

Testing out Windows Live Writer with Textpattern

I recently downloaded Windows Live Writer, which is still currently in beta. I was curious to know how Microsoft’s free desktop blogging application compares to w.bloggar, the popular free weblog client by

Testing out Google Video with a short clip of baby Daniel

The video clip is hosted by Google Video and can be accessed via the Acrobat Flash applet embedded below:

Just click on the “play” button to run the clip. It is only a short video (one minute length), showing Daniel throwing his tantrum.

Custom meta tags in Textpattern

Out of the box Textpattern does not provide the meta “description” tag for each article. Although there’s a keywords field available for each article under the “Advanced Options” link on the “write” page, the keywords tag is not included in the default template.
I wanted to implement custom meta tags such as description and keywords on [...]

Warren’s Playpen on Google Search

Warren’s Playpen is a website which I set up a few months ago for my son. Warren loves to scribble, so I thought I would encourage him by setting up a personal website to showcase his doodles.
Recently I tried to do a search on Google using the term “Warren Tam” and I was presently surprised [...]

XML-RPC support on Textual Thoughts

I have been using Textpattern to power this site for a few months now. While Textpattern is a really great piece of blogging software, in fact it is more like a light CMS, one of its more glaring shortcoming is the lack of support for XML-RPC.
XML-RPC allows remote procedure calls to be made over the [...]

The Weblog Name Generator

In my “last post”:http://www.dannytam.com/blog/101/the-other-textual-thoughts-blog I mentioned briefly about the “blog name generator”:http://weblogs.about.com/library/blblognamegenerator.htm. It is such a cool tool that I decided to describe more about it.
Briefly, the tool is a free service provided by about.com to help bloggers choose a name for their site. It is basically a random name generator. You can choose between [...]

The other Textual Thoughts blog

I came across “another blog”:http://textualthoughts.com/ with the name Textual Thoughts. Coincidentally the domain textualthoughts.com was also set up in January 2006, approximately the same time that I set up my blog here.
For the record my first post here is dated 2nd January and textualthoughts.com domain was created on 16 Jan 2006.
As explained by the [...]

Colour Wheel

This “colour wheel”:http://www.platywebs.com.au/colourwheel.php is a very helpful aid in choosing colours for web design. Courtesy of “Platywebs”:http://www.platywebs.com/.

Flickr is offensive?


Textpattern and Wordpress

“TXP magazine”:http://txpmagazine.kbbu.de/ recently published “an article”:http://txpmagazine.kbbu.de/article/textpattern-versus-wordpress which compares the relative strengths of Textpattern and Wordpress. Apparently the article was triggered by the release of Wordpress 2.0 late last year and also by “defections”:http://peterflaschner.com/archives/248 of a few high profile Textpattern sites to the Wordpress camp. After reading the article I thought that now would be a good idea to share my own 2 cents pertaining to the issue.

Added Flickr plugin for Textpattern

I have been looking for ways to integrate Flickr into Textpattern and came across this cool plugin by Ralph von der Heyden (Thanks Ralph). It takes advantage of Flickr’s API to allow integration of Flickr photosets directly into a Textpattern powered blog. I would not hesitate to recommend this plugin to any Flickr member who [...]

Social web services integration - Del.icio.us, Furl.net, Blogrolling.com and Flickr

It has been said that the world wide web will eventually evolve into the Social Web. And we can see it materialising with the increasing popularity of social software web services such as Del.icio.us, Furl and Blogrolling.
Del.icio.us has been described as social bookmarking service. It is a web service for storing and sharing internet links.
Furl [...]

Firdamatic: the Design Tool for the Uninspired Webloggers

If you are an aspiring blogger but is at a lost when it comes to template design then hop over here for some automagic.

Why some corporations practice blogging?

Ever wondered why some corporations have eagerly embraced blogging? This article lists some potential benefits of corporate blogging.
You can also see some testimonials from the bloggers themselves: Corporate Bloggers on blogging.

Corporate blog definition?

Came across this definition of corporate blog. I am intrigued by the idea of using internal blogs as tools for collaboration and knowledge management.

IBM’s blogging policy and guidelines

To be truthful I was a bit nervous about setting up this blog because it is not anonymous and it is hosted on my personal domain. I guess I was bothered by the potential implications of my blog as there is no official blogging guideline issued by my employer and I am not going to [...]

Interllectual.com: Creating an A-Z index with Textpattern

Andrea Schwandt-Arbogast has posted an interesting article describing how to create an A-Z index using Textpattern. See here for an example of the index. To me this is real esoteric stuff.

threshold state: managing static pages

(via www.google.com)
Link to a site which has an informative write up on managing static pages in Textpattern. Check it out.