As you can see, we now have a new theme for the site. Aside from the new look, I’m also organizing things so that I can push out posts much more frequently and cover a bit more than usual. Things have slowed down for me quite recently due to my day job taking quite a bit of my free time. That plus the new site that I’m currently working on (shameless plug alert), Project Alter. The new site is a work in progress and currently covers anime and toy, figure and nendo releases. It’s still in active development using a blogging software that I have built from scratch. You can learn more about Project Alter by visiting the About page.

Lastly, I would like to thank the readers for keeping tuned (and keeping the site going). Kudos!

• Merry Christmas from Atma Xplorer
• Happy New Year from Atma Xplorer
• Meri Kurisumasu from Atma Xplorer
• Top Stories on Atma Xplorer for 2008
• A blog revamp, banner advertising, and a forum on the loose

Crab mentality FTW! [someone pointed out that me stating "It's from a fellow pinoy" helped muddle the already murky situation, I assure everyone that there was no harm nor blame intended.  It's just that every blog that had the very same comment posted on them were Pinoy-owned blogs.  Turns out, most if not everyone at the receiving end of the message is using Topblogs to track their blogs.  >_> -1 for me for missing the painfully obvious.]

Update 4:

What started out as blackmail attempt to oust Ian Edson ended up blowing more embers than the culprit probably expected. Here’s the run down of the story so far.

Someone posted this around every pinoy-ran blog he could find (presumable targeting those tracked by topblogs) with the obvious intent of kicking Youtubemegavideo and Ian out of Adsense’s graces. Word of the attack reached Ian a few hours afterwards. Ian Edson posted his comment to clear out his name but the damage has clearly been done.

Actual screenshot of the comment in question:

We know for a fact that the culprit used two IPs: 209.107.217.19 and 209.107.204.13. While many have dismissed these as useless info, NilsC from the Adsense forums turned up some pretty useful information:

Some crap here – use it to build on.

Name : AliTTleBoY [ IP : 209.107.204.13 ]
Email used to sign up Msn: bboy_ddee hotmail.com

209.107.204.13 – The IP address was detected at 2009-09-14 04:59:53 (UTC) as source of Hacking activities / Script Kiddie due to its suspicious behavior while accessing a honeypot (Module: r57Shell).
————————–
Email: debra.stowe@yahoo.com
Date Caught: 8/17/2009
IP Address: 209.107.217.19
Host Information: 209.107.217.19
————————

Both IP’s belong here:
whois 209.107.217.19
BandCon BANDCON (NET-209-107-192-0-1)
209.107.192.0 – 209.107.223.255
RouteSense Corp ROUTESENSE-209-107-217-0-24 (NET-209-107-217-0-1)
209.107.217.0 – 209.107.217.255

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2009-09-17 20:00
BandCon
Tyler Hall
151 Kalmus Dr
Suite M2
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
US
+1.8882538353

As more and more people investigated the source of the comments, several of them including Ian himself pointed blame towards keybol. Investigator (a fellow caviteno.. dami pala bloggers from cavite) gave his statement to prove keybol’s innocence and soon afterwards, keybol himself (tama po ba?) also posted a comment to help clear his name from the issue.

What in the world is going on?

Same question that was going around in my head. Although as it stands, what’s clear is that the incident has sparked quite a few embers amongst our fellow pinoy bloggers which begs the questions. Who did this? Why did he do it? Etc, etc.

To the real culprit behind this.  I hope your happy with the problems you’ve been causing everyone.  I hope that you realize that the next time you pull something like this again, everyone will be hounding your heels.

Update 3:
Change accusatory seeming (I assure you it’s not) title to it’s current role now. (I didn’t realize it will help shift the blame towards keybol >_> sorry about that)
Let’s help Edson find this bastard and put him where he belongs.
Update 2:
Activity of Edson’s troublemaker [taken out since it's treading on a different issue, not this]
Update:
Seems that my initial hunch was right. Ian Edson of Youtubemegavideo has confirmed that the poster who commented around on everyone’s blog about a possible clickbomb is NOT him but rather someone who’s out to ruin his name (see how Edzone is NOT Edson?) and therefore his livelihood from the big G.

The initial discussion is still on going here at the support forum for Adsense.

Respondents and reactions so far:

• Jehzeel Laurente
• Azrael for helping spread the word
• edgarluvitug
• Jon Limjap
• Pastilan
• Manang and her blogpost
• ark
• ianemv
• Investigator (a blogger from cavite)
• Keybol
• Ron

• Blizzard Product Roadmap Leaked!

Nikkor 50mm + UV Filter

Yep.

Another one of those.  Atma Xplorer is doing good so far, having an Alexa rank of 89,064 isn’t so bad right?  But right now, I’m feeling the crunch of having to think under the banner of this blog rather than simply posting spreading out of it’s interests.  Hence, a minor change.

I’m migrating most of the regular gaming news to my new blog, Game Xao and shifting this blog’s focus onto another hobby that I’m slowly growing my sleeve into, digital photography.

Sure sure, I’m not that great nor am I really that active in pursuing it (financial barrier here) but I feel that adding a photography section to Atma Xplorer is the right thing to do right about now.  You’ll still get your dose of PSP-related stuff as well as other juicy tidbits from the game world so the shift is really a minor one.

To anyone interested, my gear is composed of a D40 Kit and a Nikkor 50mm Lens (shown in the inset).  I don’t have much of a portfolio at the moment but you can view SOME of the shots I’ve taken via my flickr account.   You can also watch my new Deviant Art account.

If you’re interested in Technology News, you can also visit my technology blog at Pinoy Tech Guy and if you’re simply looking for a place to crash with Japaholics (Anime fans, Cosplay fans, etc), head over to Ichiraku.

• PlayStation 3 4.00 Firmware update now available
• PSA: doing minor blog fixes
• PSP 6.37 firmware now available – don’t update
• Happy New Year from Atma Xplorer
• Handling multiple blogs; a Gaming AND a Technology blog comparison

Most Popular Game Guides

1. At the top of the list is the Crisis Core Materia Fusion Guide.
2. Coming up fast to 2nd is the Final Fantasy Dissidia Comprehensive Guide.  The guide proper is split into several relevant topics like a Dissidia Translation Guide for people who can’t read the game’s Japanese menu, etc.
3. My Star Wars The Force Unleashed Guide. The guide proper is also split into relevant topics like the Holocron Guide and Saber Hilt Guide.

Most Popular PSP Firmware Guides

1. How to Install 5.00 M33.
   • How to Install 5.00 M33-3
   • How to Install 5.00 M33-4
2. Convert your Official Fimware to 3.80 M33-5 Custom Firmware.
3. Pandora without extra battery or Memory Stick

• Merry Xmas from Atma Xplorer
• Merry Christmas from Atma Xplorer
• Happy New Year from Atma Xplorer
• Meri Kurisumasu from Atma Xplorer
• Just a minor site update – shifting paradigms

Sender Information:
Stephen Ian Advincula
www.atmaxplorer.com

Recipient Information:
www.pdada.com
via: Register

NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
Ladies and Gentlemen:
On behalf of www.atmaxplorer.com, owned and operated by Stephen Ian Advincula (the Owner)
As required under Sections 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3)), I was instructed to place you on notice that:

1. The owner (Stephen Ian Advincula) is the exclusive owner of the copyrights in and to the Atma Xplorer. This applies to all files and information related to atmaxplorer.com therein; and

2. Entering on the URL www.pdada.com, the website in question contains a fully copied version of Atma Xplorer (www.atmaxplorer), including all files and database.

3. All posts from pdada.com are exact copies of those found in www.atmaxplorer.com

Please immediately remove or disable all access to the Infringing Material.

I have a good faith belief that the use of the Infringing Material is not authorized by the Owner, its agents or the law. The information in this Notice of Copyright Infringement is accurate and under penalty of perjury, I am authorized to act on behalf of the Owner.

Should you require any further information regarding this matter, please contact me at the email address indicated below:
sylv3rblade(at)gmail(dot)com

Very truly yours,
Stephen Ian Advincula

A simple whois on the domain reveals the information of the culprit:
Richard Tidwell
998 Lancelot Drive
Norcross, GA 30071
This is a screen shot of the site infringing Atma Xplorer:

Please, remember it well.

Yep. My site has been copied, and just recently, hacked by some malicious individual. Who? Probably the same guy behind pdada.com. A quick trace of the last login in my Cpanel has been traced to China. Not really surprising since the PHP bomb (or something similar to it) that was planted on my site was in Chinese.
Luckily, my host Zanzhosting keeps daily backups (I do keep backups too but since they’re forwarded to my email and it’s been comprimised it basically was worthless). I’m currently reuploading the comments so it may take awhile but I’ve hardened my blog with double the security details I know.

What to do to prevent your site from getting hacked?

• Don’t ever login to your cPanel via a computer that you don’t trust.

While I didn’t actually do such a transaction, it’s possible that one or more of my browsing records were uploaded to the net and ended up with the bad guys.

• Keep track of what’s in your directory

A few hours before the hack, I noticed an /upload folder and ignored it. Guess you can say that was the key to this whole incident. When I browsed the contents of that folder, it contained the malicious script that opened the doors to the hackers.

• Always always keep backup in SECURE several places

My biggest mistake was that I had my back up in several places but they were not secure. I had them in my directory AND my email which turned out to be the worst combination. In any case, I’ve set up several copies on my online storage sites so I can grab them anywhere and whenever I need them.

• Choose a hosting that cares

Throughout the ordeal, Zanzhosting’s was helping me along the way. Although most of the incident was my fault, they helped me get through it. The best service they’ve provided was the daily backups since my most recent “good” backup was a week old.

If you see my site down again, that means I pissed off the hackers again AND they’ve managed to bypass my securities again. In any case, at the moment, my site’s back up and running although still missing a few items.

The sad part is that Register.com has still to respond to my DMCA email. In any case, I’m just glad that I’m back. Bring on the $$$

• PSA: doing minor blog fixes
• Handling multiple blogs; a Gaming AND a Technology blog comparison
• A blog revamp, banner advertising, and a forum on the loose
• Get paid to blog: Smorty Blog Advertising Network
• Goodbye to 2007 and my pre-blogger self

Sir Adii‘s BlockMagazine theme (which I won from Blogging Mix‘s contest a while back) was quite a treat for my site but lately I ran into some problems concerning comments. URLs with #comment got redirected to an empty page or at least one where the entire post and comments are blank. I’m certain that this was caused by one or more of my plugins but I couldn’t find the right one even every overwriting my theme with a clean version so I took some time off work (and while working.. bad sylv3rblade) to create a new one; SlipStream.

As you can see, I tried to carry over the color theme from Block Magazine because I’ve found it easy on the eyes and added some spice of my own. The huge banners above each post (they will still be present on older posts) and I’ve replaced them with 125 x 125 images on the right of each post.

Looks Dosh Dosh-y? Yep I loved his new theme it served as an inspiration. Err no. I’m not trying to be a Dosh Dosh wannabe. We’re sporting different niches anyway.

Another change is that Atma Xplorer is now open to advertisers (banners).

I have 6 available slots, 125 x 125 banners (the banners you see at the moment are sites I’m currently running and an affiliate one) priced at $5 a month.

Last months analytics yielded:

• 29,464 Pageviews
• 19,812 Unique Visitors.

Interested? Contact Me

Sorry if I hadn’t been pushing updates for the past weeks. I was having trouble juggling work and personal life because my anime community (not passing ownership), Ichiraku is having a lot of activities. As admin of the boards, I’m sort of required to be present in all of them. Now for the plug

If you’re interested in the latest events in the Philippine Anime Community, Cosplays or simply want a place to hang out only, join us and share the experience.

• PSA: doing minor blog fixes
• Handling multiple blogs; a Gaming AND a Technology blog comparison
• My experience with Blog Hackers
• Free WP-Theme: Black Bead
• My first WP-Theme: Another project of a Sleepless Night

Anyways, to anyone interested.. it’s a free theme!

Black Bead is a semi-magazine style WordPress theme created for wordy yet content-filled site (just like Pinoy Tech Guy). I used the term “semi-magazine” since the full magazine style is only seen on single posts while other pages use a thumbnail to save space and bandwidth.

Since I got the idea to implement the magazine style of Block Magazine, my current theme, it works very much the same. Black Bead uses two custom fields: Thumb and LargeThumb (note that they are case sensitive). The values of Thumb and ThumbLarge needs to be the http location of the images attached to each post. Thumb is for the small image (64×64 pixels) and ThumbLarge is for the featured, larger image (since the max width is 640 pixels I suggest to use a lower resolution for the picture).

Use this guide if you need to learn about WordPress’ image uploader and custom fields.

If you don’t like using adding thumbnails and image banners to your posts, don’t worry, I added some code to so that if you don’t add any of the custom fields, you don’t get the image not found error hanging around your post.

Screen of the index (click to enlarge)

Screen of the single page (click to enlarge)

Features:

• Semi Magazine-style Front page archive
• Magazine-style for single posts
• Domtab integrated into the sidebar to display either Recent Articles, Popular Articles or Most Commented Articles
• 300 x 250 Advertisement Spot below the dom tab (edit ad300×250.php)
• 468×60 Advertisement Spot above each post (edit ad468x60 .php)
• Separate Trackbacks and Pings
• Semi-Minimal theme
• Submit to Social Sites:
  • Stumble upon
  • Digg
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • Delicious

Required Plugins:

for the DOMTab

1. Most Commented not the widget
2. Popularity Contest or if you’re using WP-Pageviews just use the Most Viewed function

Usage:

• Just add your ad scripts to ad468x60.php and ad300×250.php
• Edit ad300×250.php to change the advertisement being displayed at the bottom of the sidebar
• Depending on which Popular post plugin you’re using, you may need to edit the sidebar.php (currently set at Popularity Contest)
• Please don’t remove the links located at the footer.php. Don’t worry, it’s just contains links to here and PTG.

Want a demo? Click here.

How can I get this theme?

Download: ZIP | RAR

Like it? Hit the donate button so I can buy more of those Coffee Buns and continue creating more free themes:

• Windows 7 Gets Official OS-tan Theme
• Read your favorite magazine online for free (and legit)
• A blog revamp, banner advertising, and a forum on the loose
• Need free file sharing? Look at ADrive
• Free PSP Games download

A disclaimer though, I’m a programmer so I’m not really very good at web aesthetics so forgive me if my work isn’t as polished as that of the other theme-makers. Can’t be everything right?

The concept is not purely original but I put the theme together to fit what I needed for Pinoy Tech Guy. A simple semi-magazine style theme with a Dom Tab (oh God I’m so in love with the Domtab right now). Since I’m already using the Block Magazine theme for Atma Xplorer, I can’t use it again so I set off to try and design my own.

It took quite a while but I finally got Canti, the character you’re seeing up there, to the point where I wanted to so I’m pretty much worn out. I hope to finish and upload the theme by tomorrow, after a good night’s rest. ^^

• Windows 7 Gets Official OS-tan Theme
• Handling multiple blogs; a Gaming AND a Technology blog comparison
• A blog revamp, banner advertising, and a forum on the loose
• Patapon Theme for your PSP
• Free WP-Theme: Black Bead

So now what of me and Atma Xplorer. Well let’s just say after all that has happened (good and bad), I’m proud to say I’m addicted to writing.

Why did I say that?

Soon after I’ve gotten a lot of free time I tried (yet utterly failed) to go back to things that I loved doing before:

1. Gaming – it’s at the top because I love gaming. Especially lengthy, time consuming RTS or Sid Meier games.
2. Reading Novels – I’ve got a mini library of Dungeons and Dragons, Dragon Lance, Forgotten Realm and some other Mega Epic (very long, as in spanning several books) Fiction books but I’ve read most of them 5 times over. I have a budget for buying new books but the bookstores doesn’t seem to want to cooperate, if anyone sees copies of the following please let me know:
   • Elven Exiles Book 3
   • Selswords Book 2
   • Legacy of Drizzt Book 3-8
3. Movies – I think I’ll drop the title “Movie Junkie” from my unofficial resume. Watching movies is an expensive past time which I enjoy but Hollywood’s movies seem to be slipping quite a lot in quality so I pick my movies now instead of watching everything (I averaged 4 movies a week before).
4. Gym - I used to be fit as a fiddle. Being part of the volleyball varsity team was a lot of work but since my college Alma Matter killed the team before I enrolled, I gave up on going to the gym. I know I’m out of shape but hey, it’s not the looks.
5. Anime – nothing really interesting as of the moment except for Gundam 00.

So what now?

Long story short, to sate my addiction I’ve launched this:

Yes it’s beta. You all know how hard it is to start up a new blog especially the link-exchange part but hey, I enjoy it.

Pinoy Tech Guy will hold all (well not all, but you get the idea) the technology related posts I will be writing. This will include Software Reviews, new Hardware, tips, tweaks and a lot of resources. It’s sort of like what I planned out (but as you see failed to do) for Atma Xplorer but on a more controlled level.

What will happen to Atma Xplorer?

Xploring Gaming, Life and Computing, that’s the tagline this blog will be carrying from this point on so I can focus on the incoming traffic. If you look at the Popular Entries at the bottom, you’ll notice that MOST of the list is about gaming or related. In short the lighter stuff.

Why? Cmon face it. Blogging on a single niche gets stuffy sometimes and blogging is supposed to be fun. Where’s the fun if you can’t post what you want right?

Anyway, I’ll cut this post now, I tend to get very wordy so I’ll stop myself while I’m ahead. To my readers, please Add Pinoy Tech Guy to your blogroll if you can. I’ll add you back when I see the notice from the Dashboard.

Happy Blogging Guys!

• Valve recieves a real life Sentry Gun
• Life-Size Gundam RX-78-2 Completed
• Extend your PSP’s battery life with the Hold+ plugin
• Life’s a pain; Life is good
• Online Etiquette 101 – Online Games

Enter Smorty, a service where you get paid to blog just by posting under subjects that your niche is already covering.

Is this just another Get paid to X scam?

Seriously no. Smorty serves as a middleman, connecting advertisers with bloggers, so the advertisers themselves pay bloggers to write opinionated posts with links back to the advertisers site and/or product. Think of it as a paid review or blog advertising

If want to retain the title of Super-Affiliate, Smorty also gives you that option. For every ad campaign that an advertiser you have referred, you earn commission.

If you want to do things the old fashioned way, you earn by taking up the Opportunities found either on your personal panel or your email. These are filtered to match your niche so you don’t have to worry about making it “fit”. Once registered, head go to your home panel, check what’s available and take what you want. Write an article (that fits the requirement), submit the link and you’re done. Payment is immediately delivered to your Paypal after the advertiser approves of your work.

How is Smorty different?

What I like about Smorty is that you get paid to review actual products or services instead of getting tasks that look like a High School student’s assignment with a X-word minimum. Now I’m not criticizing the people who wish to do so but the latter seems counter productive to me. You don’t get to learn anything and you begin to just blog for money.

To me, learning and experience is everything. Money earned while getting them is just a bonus. Besides, your favorite web startup MIGHT want to knock on your doors and ask your opinion about them. The middleman system allows for some exciting exchanges and opportunities that I did not see with other similar systems.

So why not try Smorty now and make money while blogging.

• Sony to offer free games to PlayStation Network subscribers
• PlayStation Network to resume operations this week
• PSA: doing minor blog fixes
• Handling multiple blogs; a Gaming AND a Technology blog comparison
• My experience with Blog Hackers

So how do you prevent things like this from happening?

Let’s break it down to 2 parts:

• Hotlinking
• RSS Scraping

Hotlinking is not only stealing content, it’s stealing bandwidth as well. It’s bad enough if your site has to deal with the Digg-effect on a regular basis but couple that with images on your server getting ripped then you’re on a one way ticket to exceeding your monthly bandwidth limit. This could mean as little as a few bucks added on your tab or getting your account suspended indefinitely.

To prevent the horrors of hotlinking, here’s what you can do:

Prevent hotlinks – Use .htaccess

If you’re afraid of using your .htaccess file because you might mess something up, don’t be. It’s there to protect yo, not limit you. Here’s one of the better tutorials on understanding how to use .htaccess to block hotlinking.

If you can’t be bothered to read the tutorial, basically what you need are:

• An anti-hotlink image (like the one on the right, click for the full version)
• Access to your server via ftp (you need to upload files)
• The .htaccess file from your server.

Basically, what you need to do is copy the following code to your existing .htaccess file. Note that the sites mentioned below are those blocked from using your files.

Simply edit, copy and paste the code below then upload the .htaccess file as well as the anti-hotlink image.

RewriteEngine on

# Attempt to stop hot linking from these specific sites
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^(.+\.)?multiply.com/ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^(.+\.)?blogspot.com/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/hotlink.gif
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png|avi)$ http://www.atmaxplorer.com/hotlink.gif

Note that you can do this automatically if you have CPanel on your server, just look for the Hotlink Protection Icon and input the proper options.

What will the code do?

It will replace every image scraped from your site with the anti-hotlink image. Now if you’re thinking that it’s a too harsh to use, think of the bandwidth you’ll be saving.

No related posts.

Features of Block MagazineWordpress Theme

• Magazine-style homepage layout, with various sub-page layouts for the single post, archives and static pages
• Domtab integrated into the sidebar to display either Recent Articles, Popular Articles or Most Commented Articles
• Seperate RSS 2.0 feeds for All Articles, Featured Articles and Comments
• Easy-to-edit “About” section at the top of the sidebar (edit about.php)
• 300 x 250 Advertisement Spot below the sidebar (edit ad300×250.php)

What I like about the theme:

• The DOM tab. It’s so clever because you can save a lot of valuable space instead of displaying all those items all at once.
• Color. It’s a blue-theme site that’s actually eye candy.
• Segregated content. It’s actually what I’m looking for in a theme for this blog in particular because of the set of Series posts I’m planning and have already started on.

I’ve noted that there seems to be an issue with the Dom Tab Firefox. Here’s a comparison:

On Firefox 2.0.0.11

On Internet Explorer 7

It’s a minor issue which I think is caused by the Gecko Engine of Mozilla (decreasing the font size fixes the problem) so no worries on the theme itself.

Want it too? Here’s what you do:

Make a post about this free magazine style worpress theme contest including a review of the Block Magazine WordPress Theme. Your post should include a link to this post and a link to Adii using this URL: http://www.adii.co.za/category/portfolio/designs-for-sale/. Once you’re done with your review, just post a comment on this blog post including the link to your review.

Winners (yes, aside from the Block Magazine Theme, BloggingMix is also giving away the Revolution Theme) will be announced on January 28, 2008.

• A blog revamp, banner advertising, and a forum on the loose
• Patapon Theme for your PSP
• Free WP-Theme: Black Bead
• My first WP-Theme: Another project of a Sleepless Night
• Blogroll Page for WordPress

Easier said than done, I tried looking for a widget for this purpose and found the Blogroll page widget but it wasn’t quite showing what I wanted:

Doesn’t look very appealing right?

1. Using the theme editor, open up your current theme look for your Page Template file

   

2. Copy paste the contents of the Page Template file to your text editor
3. Add this to the top of the file:
   /*
Template Name: Links
*/
?>
4. Look for a php tag with “the_content”. It may look like this:
   
   and replace it with this:
   
   note that you can use any argument you want. Read up on wp_list_bookmarks via the WordPress Codex
5. Save the file to any .php name and upload it to your current theme folder
6. Go to Write Page on your WordPress install and if you did everything right, you should find this:

   

7. Choose a page title, select the template and add any other content you want. If you’re curious as to how it looks, check out my page here.

There you have it

• A blog revamp, banner advertising, and a forum on the loose
• Patapon Theme for your PSP
• Free WP-Theme: Black Bead
• My first WP-Theme: Another project of a Sleepless Night
• Protecting your content

What now?

Throughout the few months that this blog existed, I’ve made so many experiments on SEO, that I actually think I screwed everything up. In the same thought that Mcbilly had in making his Top 10 Shameless Blogging Mistakes, I present to you my list of 7 blogging sins and what to do about them.

1. What niche am I?

What indeed. I’ve been trying to focus Atma Xplorer on a more general view of technology to encompass both software, hardware AND gadgets all around it but in the end, it’s too broad a spectrum that I’m almost always lost in a decision whether I can post about something or not. As of the moment, I have plans on preventing that dilemma from happening again so read up this list down to the end.

2. Too much of me

Although the very essence of what a blog is contains is your own writing style, I usually end up putting too much of my personality instead of my opinions into my posts. It’s not really a bad thing because it gives some sort of uniqueness to everything but if I couldn’t voice out what I really want, what’s the point of it?

I won’t go into details of personalizing your posts over opinionizing (is there such a word?) them since the idea is abstract but I feel that the latter is much better and more compelling than the former.

3. Irregular schedule

I’ve managed to use WordPress’s Edit Timestamp feature for quite awhile now but it’s not really very helpful when you don’t have anything lined up to be posted. It’s nice to setup a schedule of post subjects but it’s hard to stick to it unless you have a lot of resources at hand or at easy reach so you wouldn’t be rushing all the time. Keep this in mind when setting up a schedule of your own.

4. Inconsistent writing style

I’m guilty of this most of the time but it’s usually due to my poor time management as of late. On a good day, I allow myself one or two hours to write and review a post for typos and major editing but there are times when I don’t go back to re-read what I just made and just hit the Publish button.

If you don’t have the time to review your post, find time. You won’t be making a very good impression on your readers if all you come up with are one-pass write ups.

5. Why Atma Xplorer

I’ve been asked a number of times about it and I’ve confirmed that my cooked up explaining during short stay in Japan. The atma word Atma is usually associated with belief, mysticit, etc, but it’s meaning in Hindu (wow I speak hindu now?) means self so if you translate Atma Xplorer, it will mean “Exploring me.” Getting what this post will be leading to yet?

6. Being too serious

Hmm.. this one is objective but for the purpose of this write up I’ll include it anyway. I’ll admit I was brought into the blogsphere aiming to make money out of it but as time went by, that goal matured. It’s not about making money now but making a name out there and enjoying your time. Quoting Mcbilly,

Be professional but not too formal.

7. Blogging for Social Media

After reading several SEO sites early on, I gave up on making it to the top list of SERPs since my supposed niche (or niches as is the case now) has many top blogs to compete with, I choose the next best thing. Social Media sites. The traffic brought by digg, stumbleupon and shoutwire is really good but in the end, I noticed that I was posting topics that THEIR readers like. One thing you should note is that readers directed from said social media sites rarely click ads so if you’re aiming to make money online, stick to SERPs for traffic.

As I’ve stated earlier, I think I ruined this site’s potential and it’ll be too much work to try and recover it (if you haven’t figured it out by now I hate repairing stuff, this is especially true when programming) so I’ll be launching a new blog to minimize the damage I’ve made.

What? You’re dropping this site?

In a sense, yes and no. I won’t be abandoning the site so much as shifting niches. I’ve put too much effort to let this site rot in the corners of the intraweb so I’ll be using it for the less hardcore stuff like conventions, anime, rants (no it’s not going to be a personal blog, I’ve got my multiply account for that)

A new site?

Yep. I’ll launch it after the new year festivities (that’s because it’s when banks are open). The domain name is still under wraps since I’m afraid someone might steal it again buy it out from under my nose. I’m currently choosing from two probable domain names, I’ll post it up when I’ve bought it and when the site is online. The new site will contain most of the techy posts so I’m currently listing up all the probably categories that’ll fill up it’s intended niche. Till then it’s a happy new year to everyone.

Happy New Year (advanced) to everyone.

• Goodbye PSP Go
• Plants vs Zombies: Goodbye Dancing Zombie
• Goodbye One Manga
• Sony bids goodbye to DRM
• Five Technology Disappointments in 2007

• Creative 2.1 Subwoofer System
• Php2,000 Gift Certificate on any Nokia Stores*
• Shell-Ferrari Model Cars**
• Apacer USB 2.0 Drive
• 20 pcs. Auction.PH T-Shirts
• 2 accounts for 1-year Free 1GB Hosting and Domain*** (wow!)

To join:

For the Auction.PH T-Shirt, just leave a comment with your gender and shirt size. We’ll have 10 for males and 10 for females.

For all the rest of the prizes, just mention/trackback this contest/giveaway in your blog with a link to our sponsors (Auction.ph and plogHost).

Winners will be announced January 7, 2008.

• Happy New Year from Atma Xplorer
• The 4th Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Competition
• Will 2009 be the year of the PSP?
• EA celebrates Command & Conquer’s 13th year anniversary
• Yet another contest