disalarming

If I were to offer readers of this blog a prize, what would you want that prize to be? Jewelry, online gift vouchers, books, handicrafts, etc. Those are just some ideas; sky’s the limit for your suggestions.

This is a Very Important Question, as I may or may not be planning a series of giveaways on this blog in the near future and the prizes are yet to be determined… and there’s no point in having a giveaway if no one wants any of the prizes!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I have a little less than a week left of vacation before my spring semester starts and I’m quite enjoying all this free time on my hands. I’ve gotten very accustomed to sleeping in and moving at a nice, leisurely pace – all of which I am savoring because I will not be able to enjoy these luxuries when I return to Beijing!

I’ve been reading a ton, most of which I can attribute to my Kindle and free time. I’ve also debated taking up writing again, although I don’t have any of my working drafts (“working” is used loosely here; I haven’t written anything creatively since the summer of 2009) on hand. One of my friends gave me an idea about a book I could write, though. (Rather, he looked at me point-blank and said, “You should write a book and this is what it will be about. Then, when it’s complete, I get the first copy to read.” While I was taken aback by this as we hadn’t been talking about books or writing, such directness was refreshing.) I’ve been toying with starting that up with some kind of short story or prologue that I could use in the future to expand upon, but I’m hesitant to start writing anything because I won’t have time to even think about writing once the semester starts. Reading and writing tie in quite nicely with the resolutions I’ve made for 2011, though, so I’m pleased with that.

Speaking of resolutions, I’ve added on two more. One is to keep an account of my finances, because it’s about time I keep track of my cash flow (particularly as in China, everything is handled in cash, not plastic). It doesn’t matter how cheap things are in China or Hong Kong; I still need to know what I’m spending my money on! Like the pair of knockoff Uggs I got for $99HKD yesterday. Not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things (particularly when you compare that price to a pair of real Uggs), but it’s still money nonetheless.

The other is to maintain a daily happiness journal, inspired by Krissy. I’ve set up a Tumblr for this project, which can be found here: 每天开心 (Mei Tian Kai Xin). The name translates to “every day happy,” which I think is very fitting. Everyone needs a little bit of happiness each day.

My new Tumblr project hasn’t been the only thing I’ve been busy with online. I’ve been trying to figure out why my WP to Twitter plugin doesn’t work as it should. Every time I publish a post, it only tweets the title of my entry, not the title and URL. Anyone have a plugin to recommend that actually works? Or one that won’t start working and then randomly stop including the URL in tweets, as this plugin did?

Oh, and in celebration of this blog’s 2nd birthday, I’ve put up a new layout.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Just like I did last year, I’ve put together a list of my blog’s “best of” entries from the year 2010. I have listed them in chronological order and have linked entries that I felt were either thought-provoking, interesting to write, or shared something useful with the rest of the world. It’s been an awesome 2010, and here’s to 2011! :D

Read the rest of this entry »

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve had my current theme up since January 1. It’s a very nice theme and has everything that I want. Lately, though, I’m getting tired of looking at this theme and have been searching for a new theme in which to dress up my blog. The search has been rather difficult though, as I’m not a designer and my skills are pretty much limited to very minimal WordPress theme editing. I keep finding themes that have designs that I like but are limited in theme functions.

Recently, I found the most amazing theme ever. It’s perfect and I know that it is the absolute greatest theme I could use for my blog. However, functions-wise, it’s lacking the following:

Threaded comments
Links to “Previous” and “Next” entries at the bottom of the page
There are also ad links embedded in the footer with some weird coded thing… I don’t know what the technical term is but hopefully this can be solved by viewing the source of the footer

I don’t think adding these functions in the theme is hard; it’s just that I am completely lacking in any sort of HTML/PHP/WordPress theme skills. So… any kind souls out there willing to take a look at the theme and help me out with adding the above functions? If so, please comment or send me an email at disalarming@gmail.com. I will lavish you with my eternal undying love and gratitude, with the promise of buying dinner if you happen to visit my city!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I have always toyed with the idea of making this blog known among my offline friends and acquaintances. While I’ve never kept this blog a secret from my offline counterparts, I’ve never come right out and talked about it, either. I mean, I wouldn’t lie and say I didn’t have a blog and/or I am not the person behind this blog if they somehow discovered it, but blogging has never been part of any of our conversations and I’ve always just left it at that. My strategy was always unless I got outright asked about whether or not I had a blog, there was no need to discuss it.

Recently, this internal debate about whether or not to “reveal” (for lack of better term) this blog to my offline life has become a more timely issue, since I will be going abroad all of next year. Lots of kids have travel blogs they use as a way of keeping friends and family updated about their travels; I’ve been asked whether or not I’ll have a travel blog of my own. The idea of creating a travel blog as well as maintaining this one is more than I’d like to have on my plate when abroad. Since it’s never been an option for me to abandon this blog, abroad or not, I’ve been thinking whether or not I just share this blog with the offline world.

I have always written this blog with the mindset that if someone offline discovered my blog and/or I decided to open up about it by linking to it on my Facebook profile, there’d be nothing for me to hide. I don’t slag off specific people, air dirty laundry or reveal secrets that I wouldn’t reveal offline. When I talk about work, family and friends, I’ve always been guarded. (Hey, I don’t want to get dooced.) With all that in mind, what, really, is keeping me from publicly acknowledging that I have a blog that I regularly update and (I hope) is at least semi-interesting?

I guess it’s the fact that this blog, for all purposes offline, is a relatively private outlet. If I tell people about this blog and they read it when I’m abroad, chances are they aren’t going to stop reading it when I return. I guess that’s where the area of contention is for me. There’s no guarantee that anyone in my offline life will follow my blog at all but once they know about it, they aren’t going to forget my blog exists.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I finally got around to downloading the WordPress app for iPhone and now I can blog on the go. Hooray!

Too bad I currently don’t have anything of importance to blog about.

…

*crickets chirp*

Somehow, I assumed simply blogging from my phone would make my entries seem much more epic. I guess not.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

There are so many factors people use to statistically define what makes a blog successful: average number of comments per entry, amount of visitors per day, number of feed subscribers, Google PageRank rating… the list can get quite lengthy. And while those are all important factors when it comes to measuring a blog’s popularity and success, just how much weight should these factors be given?

I’ll admit that sometimes I get disheartened when I check my blog’s stats and see that my number of feed subscribers has fallen or that the amount of visitors for a particular day drastically decreased compared to my average amount. Most of the time I write it off as a slow day in the blogosphere or that no one was interested in my latest blog entry. However, there are also days when my stats spike dramatically, leading me to believe that that day was either super active in the blogosphere or I wrote an incredibly captivating entry. A lot of the reasoning behind high/low numbers depend on what visitors are attracted to in a blog, too.

This all leads me to this question: how does one judge whether or not a blog is a “success”? Is it a quality over quantity type of thing or do numbers weigh more heavily in the bigger picture? I don’t necessarily mean how does one judge one’s own blog and if it’s a success or not, but blogs in general. There’s going to be some sort of correlation between lots of traffic and quality entries to read of course, but that creates another question: do bloggers write interesting entries to attract visitors both new and old or are visitors attracted to a blog because of (sometimes already existing) good quality entries?

(Which came first, the chicken or the egg?)

Obviously, I pay way too much attention and over think things when it comes to blogs, but it’s tough to figure out these kinds of things when the criteria are so subjective.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Now that my Twitter contest to celebrate my blog relaunch is over (congratulations to the winners!), I can highlight what’s been tossed from my old blog system/structure and what’s been added as a result of the revamp.

No more weekly blogging schedule
Honestly, it just wasn’t working for me anymore. It worked like a charm when I first launched my blog in January 2009, and without it, I probably would’ve given up on blogging a long time ago. But in the last year I think I’ve started to find my blogging “voice” and the schedule was just starting to be more of a hassle than anything else. I’ve developed quite a strong opinion about blogging schedules, having followed one for a year, but that’s an entry for another day.
New set of blog categories
Since all of my blogging categories were focused on the now defunct blogging schedule, there is now a new set of blog categories. Some of the old categories, like Reviews and Question of the Week, remain, but the majority of them are new. The old categories that are no longer in use have been converted to tags. I went back and recategorized/retagged all of my posts according to the new ones, and I aim for them to reflect the more personal approach to blogging I am striving for.
New Q&A, rewritten About page
Rather than invite questions from readers once a year, I added a Q&A section so that anyone can ask me a question anytime. Also, I’ve rewritten my About page and added a picture of myself for an added personal touch.
New Archives and Subscribe pages
Previously, I had set up my archives as a sidebar widget and left it at that. Now, however, I have an Archives page. It can be sorted by month (default setting), category or tag. There are also a multitude of ways to subscribe to my blog, all of which I have outlined on my Subscribe page. Stalking has never been made easier!

Overall, the changes are on the minor side, but I think each change has been exactly what I, as a blogger, needed. Now I can post what I want when I want however I want, which I wasn’t able to do before thanks to the constraints of the blogging schedule. I’m really excited about all of this and I think all of these changes will be awesome in the long run, and I am more enthusiastic about blogging than I’ve been for a long, long time.

For the tl;dr crowd: No more blogging schedule, couple new pages/features, and a more personal approach to blogging which starts… tomorrow!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

As promised, I’m back! It’s finally January 1, 2010, which means that it’s time to show off a newly revamped breakthesky.net! But before I get into the nitty gritty details of what’s new around here, I want to delve into the exciting stuff: I’m holding a Twitter contest to celebrate my blog’s relaunch!

Longtime readers of my blog know I like to dabble in crafting whenever I have the time to do so. In the last month or so that I’ve been away, I’ve whipped up three knitted cupcakes with removable cake cases to give away to three lucky participants of my Twitter contest! Please hover over the images to read the cupcake description.

Each cupcake has its own Twitter #hashtag, depending on the color of the cupcake case:

RT @eternitycrash: Blog Relaunch Event! http://breakthesky.net #breaktheskypink

RT @eternitycrash: Blog Relaunch Event! http://breakthesky.net #breaktheskyyellow

RT @eternitycrash: Blog Relaunch Event! http://breakthesky.net #breaktheskyblue

Participants will pick one of the above #hashtags to retweet, depending on which cupcake they like best. This ensures that there will be three different winners for each cupcake, as it wouldn’t be fair if one person won them all! Each message only needs to be tweeted once, as multiple retweets will not increase chances of winning.

A Twitter account is required to participate in this relaunch giveaway. The contest starts now and will end on January 3, 2010, at 12pm CST. Once the 48 hours are up, I will be randomly selecting the winning tweets and will announce them on my Twitter account. I will then be in touch with the winners (either through email or Twitter DMs) to arrange how I can send them the cupcakes so they can receive their prize.

Good luck, and get tweeting!

(Many thanks to Melissa and her article 5 Helpful Tips for a Rockin’ Twitter Contest.)

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Just a quick note to say that I am taking my blog offline until January 1, 2010, in preparation for its relaunch. I will be holding a Twitter contest to celebrate its reopening with a handmade gift as the prize, so be sure to follow me on Twitter! I will also announce the reopening and the launch of my Twitter contest on this blog on January 1, 12pm CST, so subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure you get all the updates!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Here is a list of my blog’s “best of” entries from the year 2009. I have divided them up by post category and have linked entries that I felt were either thought-provoking, interesting to write, or shared something useful with the rest of the world. It’s been an interesting 2009, and here’s to 2010!

Read the rest of this entry »

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

As I alluded to in my last post, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about revamping this blog to suit my changing blogging habits. I have come to a lot of conclusions, and I have a general outline of a) what will occur on this blog between now and the new year and b) what changes I need to make to this blog, both internally and externally.

Within the next few days, I will be posting a “Best of 2009″ list of my favorite blog entries from this year, similar to the list that Amanda does with her blog at the end of every year. Not only will it serve a handy purpose of keeping all the links to what I consider to be my best or favorite blog entries in one place, it’ll be a nice way to say goodbye to the ol’ blogging schedule, as that will become a thing of the past.

Once I have finished my end of semester finals and returned home for winter break in mid-December, I will be putting this blog on Maintenance Mode and work on making all the necessary changes. There’s going to be a new structure, a new system, a new layout… new everything, essentially. I’ve already started to outline all the changes and I’m really excited to see how it all turns out.

I will be relaunching my blog on January 1, 2010 at 12pm CST. To celebrate, I will be holding a Twitter contest! It will run throughout the first week of January. The prize will be of the handmade variety (think back to my Crafting posts from last summer). I will announce the start of the contest both on this blog and on Twitter, so be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already!

That, in a nutshell, is what my plans are for this blog between now and the new year. I’ll see you all on the other side!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this blog, and what direction I want its future to be in. On November 4, I put my blog on its third hiatus as of August. Considering I went from January – August with only a one-week hiatus in May, this says a lot about how my blogging habits aren’t working out with the demands of my personal life, and that some changes are necessary if I want to successfully continue blogging.

I have been doing lots of brainstorming/researching in the last couple of days, and I plan on doing loads more before I make any final decisions. I’m not totally sure where all of this planning will lead me, but I am excited to see what changes I decide upon and how they will help shape my blog. However, it is pretty safe to say that my blog will be experiencing a total and complete overhaul and will be newly relaunched in time for the new year. Relaunched with the possibility of a Twitter contest, perhaps…

I do know that I want to wrap up a year’s worth of blog entries somehow before I start my overhaul project, and all the changes I will need to make will probably result in a Maintenance Mode look until all the adjustments are completed. But I have plenty of time to figure this all out, and once I do, those that read this blog will be the first to know

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I hate that this is becoming a semi-regular thing, but here goes:

I’m putting this blog on another hiatus.

It’s not something I particularly enjoy doing, especially since I just came back from a previous hiatus a month ago, but it’s what I feel is necessary to do right now. Something I thought I had under control has never been further from my control in my life, and something that made me happier than I’ve ever been in a long time has left me with a lot of questions that need answering and some soul-searching I need to do.

Real life takes priority over anything online, of course. I need time to focus on real life and all of the issues I am encountering, and I can’t afford to take time away from that to spend on this blog. So, once again I am going to be semi-MIA while I sort out my mess of a life. I’ll be around on Twitter and LiveJournal so I won’t be totally missing, but until I’ve managed to figure out a few things I’ll be laying (lying?) low in the blogosphere.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Seeing as this blog has had the same layout ever since it opened in January 2009, I decided it was high time to give this blog a new look. It took me a while to find a theme I liked, and then it took me even longer to find one I liked that I could also tweak to my personal tastes with my limited HTML and CSS skills. But I finally got something together that I really enjoy even if I didn’t design it myself, so I’m happy with the outcome!

There are some very small changes, such as the addition of a tags page rather than having a huge tag cloud on the sidebar. There’s also a link to my RSS feed in the navigation. That’s pretty much it for structural changes; 99% of the “facelift” was purely aesthetic!

I’m working on coding in Gravatars in the comments section, although this might take me a while to figure out because of my limited coding abilities. I think that’s the only major thing I have left to get done – the rest are little minor tweaks that I’ll be fixing up in the next couple of days. If you spot any major errors, please let me know!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been pretty much MIA for the last month or so, despite posting a “BRB” blog entry. Last time I posted here I said I had a cut finger and would be back as soon as possible. The first part was true (my finger has healed just fine) but the second part was not true. I did not return to the blogging scene as soon as possible.

There are a lot of reasons why, none of which I really want to get into. Those who read my LiveJournal and/or Twitter know that things have not been good for me in the last few weeks. There has been lots of drama, bad news, and just all-around crappy, disheartening things that have happened to me, one right after another. It just sucks, and I’m doing the best that I can to handle it and get through it, although sometimes it feels like my best isn’t good enough.

Needless to say, blogging has not been one of my top priorities in the last few weeks. Not only have I been busy and distracted, but I haven’t been in the happiest of moods and I didn’t want the tone of my blog entries to start becoming depressing and moody. I’m not giving up on this blog entirely, but I felt like I owed an explanation to all those who read this blog as to why I have been gone for a couple weeks.

Hopefully things will start looking up and I’ll be back soon

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I know I only just came back from a small hiatus, but I cut my finger really badly last night and now it really, really hurts to type. My finger is bandaged up very tightly to prevent further bleeding and it’s almost impossible for me to bend my finger now so I unfortunately I have to put this blog on hold again. But hopefully I’ll be back soon – it all depends on how this cut heals, really.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Tomorrow I will be leaving to go on a short vacation to visit family. After that, I’ll be moving into my dorm at college, and it won’t be until I am settled in my dorm room will I have steady internet access. I’ll be doing a lot of shuffling back and forth between various cities and in the midst of all these moves and changes, the last thing I want to deal with is blogging regularly so I’m putting this blog on a one-week hiatus starting today.

I should return to blogging on August 20, if everything goes according to plan. I’ll see you all in a week!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Well, “better than ever” is probably a little too ambitious, but I can always hope, right?

I’m back from my short hiatus! I did a lot of thinking about the formatting of this blog and I’ve decided on a few things:

I’m changing the format of my reviews. The current format of summary, initial reaction, final reaction, and overall rating isn’t doing it for me anymore. Frankly, there are far better and comprehensive reviews of popular movies and TV shows out there, and they weren’t fun to write anymore. Instead, I’m going to have a short summary, five adjectives I would use to describe my reaction, most and least impressive (no more than a sentence or two), and then overall rating. It’ll be shorter, far more concise, and most likely spoiler-free.
Interviews will be put on an indefinite hiatus. I have loved conducting all of the interviews that have been posted, but lately, my heart just hasn’t been into coming up with questions for each interviewee. I figure that for now, I’ll put interviews on hold. In the future, if I am interested in doing interviews again, I will contact the remaining people who have expressed interest in being interviewed but have yet to receive questions. If there is still interest in the interviews then, I will start them up again. For now, though, there aren’t going to be any interviews anytime soon.
Wednesdays will now be used to talk about all things related to my personal ventures into arts and crafts. Since the opening of my Etsy shop, I’ve been spending most of my free time either making crafts or looking into new crafting ideas I can try my hand at. I’ll essentially be using Wednesdays to promote my Etsy shop and getting the word out about its existence, as well as showcasing individual crafting projects I’m working on, both personal projects and those related to the shop.

Things will go back to normal around here with these new changes starting tomorrow!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Since moving back home for the summer, I’ve found myself wanting to spend less and less time online. That, combined with some new developments in a few real life/personal situations, has led me to decide to take a break from blogging. I’m not giving it up permanently or anything, but I don’t see the point in continuing to blog when my heart isn’t in it, as that only results in dry, uninteresting posts.

So, with all that in mind, I’m taking a break from blogging. It should only be a few weeks or so, but I think it’ll be good.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

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Giveaway Ideas Needed

Tidbits

Best of 2010

Calling All My WordPress Theme Savvy Friends; Help Needed!

To Tell or Not to Tell, That Is the Question

Blogging on the Go

Some Blog Success Related Musings

What’s New Around Here

Blog Relaunch Event: Twitter Contest

Back on January 1, 2010

Best of 2009

Between Now and the New Year

The Future of This Blog

BRB Again

Blog Facelift

In a Bad Place

Be Right Back

Away for a Week

Back, and Better than Ever

Taking a Break

Profile

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