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September, 2009


Finally can drive, legally!

Well the day is here, which was actually yesterday. I finally got my Ps (Provisional License (Red)) which allows me to drive by myself on the road.. in my car.  I must say it’s a huge relief. Those 2 hour bus rides to get home, yes, 2 freaking hours of sitting down waiting on a bus everyday for the past semester and a half at uni to get home was not fun. Now those trips are cut down by 1.25 hours depending on how bad Queensland drivers want to be.

I find it baffling when at least 80% of people driving with me have been on these roads before yet still don’t jump in the right lane to let people on the highway or get up to 100km/h BEFORE coming on the highway. I find that is usually the cause of most traffic issues. The downside of course is, I pay for my own petrol which isn’t too bad but now I understand why people were so pedantic with petrol money and now I am. :)

The upside is I can get to work now. Before I couldn’t which was a bit annoying since buses, for me, were rarely precisely on time which I needed for connecting buses and therefore I couldn’t make it to work for a 6pm start, after 6 hours or more of Uni.

For those interested I study Civil Engineering. Compressing that into 3 days per week was the worst idea ever. At least with monstrous gaps I was forced to study now I am literally burnt out every Wednesday. I usually go to sleep at 9pm wake up at 12am, then go back to sleep because of just how tired I get. Getting home at 7pm from those bus rides wasn’t much help either especially the somewhat cols nights waiting for buses.

Why WordPress “hacks” are better than plugins

I read a few days ago that someone has been using the plugin called “Easy Adsenser” and apparently 1 in 20 ads shown are the developers (to gain revenue). The plugin basically places ads in sidebar(s) via widgets and throughout posts. The problem I saw was he doesn’t explicitly tell people. Making money via Adsense is no easy task (unless you’re a Youtube partner, then it is incredibly easy). Earning $3 per day is good, even making money is a good result. So this user was quite annoyed when he saw his ads weren’t shown (even though you can change it). I personally never click ads simply because none ever appeal to me. I don’t use Ad Blocking scripts either since I don’t find them annoying or even notice them.

If this user had actually gone to the (little) trouble of making a few modifications to their theme they could have setup an awesome new feature. It’s not terribly hard either. Also plugins are good at slowing down WordPress. For example, this plugin called Wordtube loads it’s javascript on every page via the header. Many other plugins do the same sine the developer has no idea where the user will put stuff. With a hack you can only add the javascript on pages you know you will place it on (no one puts a contact form on the home page, do they?).