blog technicale (English)

Latest Update: 01/10/2006

* I have inserted a cool text-picture for the header bar. How it was done is explained here.
* I have added the rounders back on for the header bar.

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This post explains the techincal side of this blog. Expect continual updates.

Disclaimer: I am not a CS major. On a scale of 1 to 10 of CSS/HTML/javascript knowledge, I stand at 2.5. I am in no way the author of any of the ideas discussed in this post. When such is the case, I have provided links to the appropriate sites so that you can do more in-depth studies.

I'm using the beta version of blogger. Although it is not yet fully customizable I am inclined to give blogger many many second chances. Consequentially, I am not planning to move to wordpress anytime soon, even though everybody should, because it is much more versatile.

Before moving to BETA, I had to peruse hundreds of pages of blog hacks googled randomly off the internet to turn my blog into something cool. It was a nightmare! I used Lilia Ahner's Beckett's template. Some of the hacks I dug my head into were: removal of navbar, Google API Search, Veerle's calendar, freshtags, blogfresh's del.icio.us categories tweaks, from which I finally opted for Johan's tagging script, I got some of these to work, but then there's always the browser compability problem. By then end, my blog was in shambles.


Then BETA came out and saved the day! It is much simpler. My blog is now based roughly on Douglas Bowmans's Rounders 2 template, with some minor changes: 1) I've opted for a more sinister color combination; 2) I've taken the "rounders" off because they piss me off (which really defeats the whole purpose of the template in the first place!). So really, I could have just written a template from scratch, but remember this happened when I had zero knowledge of CSS, XHMTL or javascript. History, albeit clumsy, has always been a good reminder for the present.


This blog is written with Unicode UFT-8 for Mozilla Firefox as the ideal viewer. Adjust your local settings correspondingly. Some of the features I have made use of are:

1) Labels: This really eliminates the need for categories hacks. No offense, del.icio.us is still a cool concept.
2) Quick Navigation on sidebar: This is, for me, the biggest improvement in BETA. Instead of crambling through lines and lines of html codes, I can now add links in a more user-friendly interface.

Some ideas I'm working on, or hope to get worked on:

1) A Calendar on Sidebar. I have yet to test Veerle's calendar on BETA.
2) I have a vague feeling that blogger has disabled the ability to "disable" the NavBar. I would like that fucker taken off. It is really goddam annoying.
3) Google API Search
4) Turning labels into navigation elements. Hands down to góc học trò. I have never doubted a Vietnamese's superiority to his/her foreign counterparts in pretty much all scientific fields.
5) Creating a cool headerbar. Creating a cool footerbar.
6) Any other hacks that surface the net in the future. I'm always on the lookout.