To The Moon And Back

I keep learning something new everyday. And today is all about medical alerts IDs. For those who have hidden medical conditions such as diabetes, heart problems, allergies; getting a medical id should be considered. During an emergency, it can help people identify what was wrong with you especially if you’re having trouble speaking. Also, if you lose consciousness, the hospital staff admitting you will immediately find the right treatment without any problems or medical errors. This is similar to a kid who wears a name tag that says “I’m allergic to peanuts” so his teachers and other people will double check if the food that they’re about to offer has peanuts. This tool has been saving lives by preventing misdiagnosis and through quick medication treatment because you already know what’s wrong.

A client wanted to move his WordPress blog to a new directory. It was currently located at the root directory and now wants to move it to a new folder called blog. I was ready to charge him two hours worth of design knowing I’d have to reinstall wordpress, back up database, import and export posts. However, after searching online just to make sure that I’m not missing any steps, I learned that I can do this in about 30 minutes.

1. Backup all the wordpress core files, images folder, .htaccess, database, themes. You can download your existing WP files using any FTP software like FTPZilla or WS FTP. You can get freewares from Downloads.com.

For backing up the database, if you’re using Cpanel, just click on MySQL® Databases and scroll down until you see the phpMyAdmin link. Select the database that you used for your wordpress blog by clicking on it. Click Export from the top menus, select all tables, scroll down and check on Save as file checkbox. Hit the Go button to download a backup copy of your wordpress database. You need to do this just in case something goes wrong with the installation.

2. Now, before you do anything. Login to your current blog’s admin panel. Go to Options > General and update the following fields: WordPress address (URL) and Blog address (URL). If you’re moving to a new directory called blog, just change it from http://domain.com to http://domain.com/blog. Save the changes and proceed with the steps below.

3. Using FTP, create the new directory where you want to move your blog.

4. Upload all the core files including .htaccess to the new directory (/blog).

5. Go back to your phpMyAdmin and update the table wp_options by clicking on it. On the siteurl option_name, you should update the value to http://domain.com/blog

6. You might have to change all the paths to the images per post or if you want a shortcut version, do this. Remember the images folder that I told you to back up before? You just need to upload the whole folder to the directory /blog and it should work fine.

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I remember promising my unborn daughter that we’ll visit Disneyland if she will just come out that week. She decided to come out that exact night so I guess I owe her. It has been almost three years now and we’re still not close to seeing any Disney characters soon. I’ve been reading mixed reviews on Hongkong Disney so I want to wait another year when my little girl is easier to manage. By that time, I’m sure she’ll appreciate the attractions and rides much better. By the way, I saw this image from this Orlando vacations site and just had to ask. Is the kid on the far right girl or what? Looks like an entry for Photoshop Disasters to me.

I’m trying to find a local shop that sells the same equipments being used in Gymboree and Little Gym. I heard it’s being sold in Ikea but since there’s no way I can get Ikea items here, I’ve decided to just search the malls. I’m particularly interested with the colorful tunnel like where the toddlers and babies can crawl in. I was able to find one but was confused about the size so I asked the saleslady about it. Turned out it’s not for toddlers but for cats. I think something similar is being sold from this site who’s famous for pet beds too. It’s called cat crackle tunnel but so much smaller than the one that I saw at the mall.

I guess I have to find an Ikea reseller online so they can just ship the thing International.

I recently purchased a portable hardisk just to accommodate my overflowing files. It’s cheap and small, with a capacity of 160GB. However, I’ve been taking 100 photos daily and scrapping all the time so I’d probably run out of space in a couple of months. What I really need is a 300-400GB hard disk that I can use for my desktop. I saw some cheap drives at Discountechnology.com worth $119.95. They have a capacity of 400GB so it’s a great deal. I’m a firm believer of keeping multiple copies of our photos, videos and projects in multiple hard drives. One can never be too safe when it comes to years of personal and work files.

For those looking to upgrade their laptop hard drives, the best deal that I can see is the Fujitsu 5.4K SATA Hard Drive. For only $69.00, you can get a disk space of 120GB, with speed of 5400RPM. Its size of 2.5″x9mm can fit in all laptop. If you want something bigger, then the Fujitsu 250GB is perfect for only $105.

Discountechnology does not only sell discount drives but also cables and adapters, networking, laptops and notebooks, computers and servers, audio and video equipments, and LCD / CRT monitors. They focus on enterprise-class hardware and best-of-breed products. Even if the items are not the cheapest in the market, they guarantee that it has the best value.

Here’s a fun and exciting way to train your eyes in spotting mistakes - Photoshop Disasters. This blog was brought to my attention by my husband, who loves finding these little mistakes online and offline. Consider this the Internet version of The Tonight Show’s “Headline” segment where writers and viewers send in any articles or photos that were mistyped or edited badly.

Photoshop Disasters, according to their blog, are all about posting clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching.

Just take a look at these photos.
Now some of them will definitely go unnoticed but if you’re being paid huge bucks, which I’m sure you are if you’re designing for Apple or some high end luxury car, then you need to be extra careful when inverting, cropping and what-not.

Hey, where did that other hand come from?

Weird, short arms

Who has three hands?

Her eye was enlarged I know she’s weird, but not this weird LOL

A colleague received two Santa Fe dehumidifiers as wedding gifts. Since he doesn’t really need two, and the fact that it was his wide who really wanted one, he decided to sell it in eBay. He made a quick $600 because a brand new unit can go as high as $995. This made me think that you can really earn a lot through eBay. I suddenly remembered Jay Leno asking his viewers to guess how much a couple of weird looking items were sold in eBay. Some of them were sold at $7500 and it doesn’t even do anything except make your house look creepy. I’m planning to sell tons of baby items and old books myself. I doubt if I’ll earn that much because none of them were really expensive nor a collectible.

The battery of my Compaq Presario V3000 stopped charging since March this year. I should’ve had it replaced as soon as possible but being a procrastinator that I am; I kept on re-scheduling every week. I think if I don’t have the option to use power, I’d probably be running to the service center as if my ass was on fire.

So after almost three months, I’ve now decided to call the International service center and talked to a certain agent named Raj. He asked a lot of info like serial, product number, etc to check if my laptop is still under warranty. After checking the data, I found out that my warranty expired last April 14, 2008. Nice. But I wasn’t concerned. I figured I can just buy a new battery. I mean, how expensive could it get, right? Since I don’t have my battery with me, the agent gave me a few numbers that I can call so I can order a new laptop battery from them. Before I called the numbers, they were all toll free, I decided to research for a local HP service center. I saw one post ranting about how the HP service center sucks. The poster had the same problem as mine, a dead battery with lapsed warranty. I was shocked when I found out that the HP guys quoted $212 for a battery replacement. Holy cow! And I could’ve gotten one for free if only I reported it earlier. Crap.

I absolutely don’t want to spend $200++ on a laptop battery. Someone better stop me before I kill myself.

I feel great today. Why? I just finished three design templates under two hours. This is a rare occurrence lately as I struggle each day to come up with new designs. My husband asked me last week if I feel like I’m getting tired of my job and I automatically said yes. For the past couple of months, I’ve done nothing but design websites. I was so swamped that I can’t even update my own portfolio site. Plus the clients that I’ve been dealing with somehow fall on the clients from hell category. It’s hard and the work that I fell in love with became just another dead end job.

Thankfully, a week of no design tasks pulled me out of my rut. I just needed a break. Now my creative juices are flowing nonstop that I accepted another two sideline projects. My long time client has also proposed if I want to be a part of his new company. He has been checking out the Nevada LLC Corporation because even though he’s based in Detroit, he plans on putting up a small business in Nevada. He asked if I’m willing to design one hundred websites for him as he begins the first phase of his business planning. I said I’ll have to think about it. My creative juices might be filled at the brim right now, but 100 websites will be the quickest way for it to run dry.