..:: ZOMBiE Destinee ::..

Friday, May 26, 2006
Singapore Blogger Survival Guide
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 12:50 AM --- Post#114857582500017828

Being a blogger for one year plus, i realised that blogging is actually an art. An art of this 21 century. Blogging goes right from the technical web making techniques, blog skinning skills to writing skills, like how to make your blog more hip and interesting and stuff. Not only that, it serves as an emotion dumpster. Not happy ah? Write to your blog lah! Unlike writing to your diary, some ppl somewhere will read them and you noe there will be someone out there to share your woes. In fact your character and personality actually shows up in your blog, its smthing like a "backup" of your memory.

But then not everyone has pleasant blogging experience, some dunno how to skin template, some got viewship problem, some kena flagged for obscene contents...blah blah blah...

# Use Singlish
Singaporean rite? Use singlish to blog lah! Why singlish neh? Becos Singlish tends to reduce tension! If you blog in your GP-Essay formal style, its hard for ppl to guess if you just being casual, joking or wat. So they take it as you being serious (even if you are not), and so tension and "hard feelings" tend to arise. Like:

"That teacher of mine is really not doing her job well, not only she does not come on time, she always reprimand students unreasonably" and compare to:

"That teacher ah, wahhh, always late neh! Then how, oso whole day anihow scold ppl de!"

We criticize ppl more or less without knowing. And i had seen a lot of cases of my classmates flaming each other on their blogs, and each entry gets more and more serious and "lawyer-letter-like". It seemed to both of them to be writing "complain letters" to each other. Thus, use Singlish lah, liddat easier settle poblem!

For those who think and tok in Singlish, im sure using it in your blog can bring more pride and comfort. Learn to code switch, of course, dun use Singlish in your school work or office work lah!

# Be Subjective, joke around and sound fun
Here are some tips to avoid troubles or conflicts arising from sensitive issues.

Dun be too objective on what you write, being too objective can disgust your readers at times. Things like "iPod sucks lah" or "XJC everything oso damn jialat!" can stir feelings. What u may end up with is a bunch of flames in your Comment section lor! Even worse, someone sue you for SLANDERING! Thats why try to give the other side of the argument. Like "XJC the building damn old, canteen got rats nia, but hor there are still some nice peeps like Ah Di from my class lah!"

Another way is to add "hahaha" or "LOL" after what you write. Meaning that you are only joking about it.

Quantify. Try to use "most", "a lot of", "as far as i know" instead of sweeping statements like "all", "everyone".

Also, use words like "IMHO" ("In My Humble Opinion") or "Just my 2 cents worth" to show that this is solely your OWN opinion, what you feel and not trying to distort truth or accuse or defame or watever.

Sarcasm works well sometimes. Instead of writing "That bloody idiot dint come on time", maybe u can choose to write "that handsome was sooo punctual hor!", especially that person is your boss or superior or teacher, where being you need to be more tactful.

Replace names by 'Person A', or 'X'. Its not a good idea to censor out characters or use abbreviation, just like who dunno what LKY or "L*e K*an Y*w" stands for. "Certain important politician" would be a better replacement.

But despite having so many tips on avoiding conflicts and trouble, its up to you to decide how sensitive its going to be and when you should be cheeky and when you should be careful of what you write.

# Hide yourself!
Hide your entries if necessary. Live Journal and some other blog engines provide ways to restrict the type of ppl that can view your blog. What if your blog dun have such a feature? Another way is to use the zB BlogLock by me to encrypt your blog. Example Site.

When it comes to email, never leave your email in text form! What happen is that bots of advertising companies may crawl in to kope emails and add your email to their spamming list. Bots cannot really read graphics, even if they can, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) works well only if the text is neat. Thats why you may like to use fanciful fonts.

If, you really have to leave your email in text form, use "AT" instead of "@" and "DOT" instead of the period character. Bots normally search for text in format of "xx@yy.com" and recongise them as email addresses. Example of use: "myName AT domain DOT com" instead of "myName@domain.com"

Try GIFText to generate picture from text. Otherwise, use other software like Photoshop.

Another point to note: pictures, especially of yourself, are one of the best laughing stock others can make out of. So think twice before posting pictures of yourself. I had seen cases of profile pics being sent to sggirls.com without permission. Common sense tells us not to leave personal particulars on your blog.

# You have SOME rights!
Yes, u can license your blog! Free summore! Creative Commons (CC) provides that service. It is a free service that let you share your stuff online while stating what the others can or cannot do (modifying, taking w/o permission...).

By licensing your blog under CC, there will be a Legal Code, which can be enforced in Court. How effective it is, i dunno, but it does serve as a deterrence for others, esp organisation before they kope your contents and publish or boardcast them.

In fact CC also license graphics, text, music...blah blah a lot a lot of things.

To use, there is no need for any tedious procedure, simply copy and paste a chunk of codes and dumb into one of the table or layer in your blog template. You can see on the left bar on my blog the "Some Rights Reserve" icon.

# Terms and Conditions
Its also quite important to add a "Terms and Condition" or Disclaimer to your blog. Its sort of a contract with your viewer. Not happy, dun see my blog lor!

The following shld be included:
- All the entries are solely opinions base on the blogger
- No intention of slander/defaming
- No hard feelings, talk things out
- No quoting or using of blog elements (blog skin, images...) without permission as stated by Creative Commons (if you had licensed your blog)
- Vulgarities are present
- Product/service criticism should be treated as reviews
- No responsibility to external links or comments by the public
- Else, please leave the blog immediately

If you want to go the extra mile:
- Everything in this blog is a fiction and nothing is real, any resemblances to reality is purely coincidental
- Everyone is this blog are fiction characters as well

You can devote a blog entry for it. (maybe post it as 1 Jan 1900 to keep it to the last page or 31rd Dec 2100 to keep it always as the 1st post). Then put a link to your side bar in bold font and inform your readers to read them. Most probably they wun bother to read. But thats their fault since they were pre-informed.

Feel free to use my blog's Terms and Conditions as a template!

#1 Entertainment No. One!
Need music for blog? But all of us know uploading of mp3s from artistes is illegal. But there are some home studio artistes who release their songs free for distribution. If you dun mind the unpopularity, try the following:
- OpSound
- SoundClick
The music there are licensed under Creative Commons, they are free to distribute. Meaning feel free to include them in your blog.

For more details on embedding a sound in your blog, see here.
To host the mp3 files, i recommend Files.bz. Its not only decent in speed, it gives u 100mb of space and 10GB of monthly trasnfer. Several common files types (mp3, jpeg, swf, doc, xls...) are supported.

For pictures, there are several image host available. Im using ImageShack. Use the thumbnails provided. It speeds up the loading time of your blog, rather than to resize from a full 3 mp photo.

# Share It
If you feel that you want people to discus on something you posted on your blog. Simply link it up with forums or bulletines (Tomorrow.sg, SPUG, VR-Zone, HWZ, Sg Forum...). Expose your ideas and thoughts and see the views of others.

If you come across an interesting blog entry, copy and paste as an entry to your blog, remember to state the origin.

View/Post Comments (0)