A while ago, I have been searching for Desktop Sidebar. I have since found a few types of desktop sidebar but I am reluctant to try out each one. In addition, some of the sidebar might not have a wide range of widgets selection.

Here’s the list.

1. Windows Vista Sidebar
2. Google Desktop
3. Yahoo! Widgets
4. Dashboard Widgets
5. Opera Widgets
6. DesktopX Widgets
7. Klipfolio Widgets
8. AveDesk Widgets
9. Adobe Air Widgets
10. Samurize Widgets

Windows Vista Sidebar was the first one I used because it comes pre-installed. The choices of widgets that can be used as well as the customizations are quite limited. Memory usage is high and increasing over the time. Eventually, I have to prevent it from startup.

Yahoo! Widgets, called Konfabulator previously, is the one that I have on my system now. It started running on the startup but I decided to remove it from there so that my system could start up faster. One thing I notice that unlike Windows Vista Sidebar, each widgets has its own memory usage where Windows Vista Sidebar has only one no matter how many widgets you have with it. Overall, Yahoo! Widgets is stable and offers a wide range of widgets to choose from. However, memory is still a problem.

Today, I have downloaded a portable version of Desktop Sidebar. I like the way it can be customized and the widgets can be docked and undocked as well. I will try it out at home later to see whether it will slow down my system. The best thing is that I don’t have to install the program. If I don’t like it, I can just delete the folder.

Widgipedia – A site which offers a wide range of widgets for desktop sidebar as well as web widgets.

It’s always kind of lazy to wake up on Monday and start the new week after resting for the weekend. As I mentioned, my workplace was switched and here I am now, facing a different direction. This morning, I had a race and relations training which lasted one and a half hour.

Metro newspaper reported that a sausage a day, raises cancer risk by 20 percent. In fact, it’s not only about sausage, but most processed food. Believe it or not?

As usual, I watch movie and play games on Saturday and on Sunday, we do whatever we like; HKdrama, online, blog, games, cooking and things like that.

I have started looking at the codes for implementing a simple image gallery. It’s not as nice as I thought it would be and even though I have inserted the coding into my blog, there still seems to lack of stuffs. I am still trying to figure it out but at the moment, I have to do my work first. On the other hand, I can’t really perform some of my tasks because my profile was reset the other day and I couldn’t use additional Excel add-on functions which were installed earlier.

The time was forwarded at 0100 on 30 March 2008.

Today is the 516^th day Mee and I in UK. Well, it’s almost a year and a half. We might have only come to UK this year if my sister did not help us. Two or three years back, Mee and I had been planning to try our luck in UK since my sister is already here. However, money had always been the problem. As you know, or might not know, the currency exchange rate is about £1 to RM6 ++.

Luckily, my sister offered to help us financially as well as accommodation, which is why our plan, sort of, could go
smoothly. We thought it might be easy to survive but things were not as easy as imagined. Everything seems to start from the beginning.

Hmm… initially, we had come to study IT courses and thinking that we might be able to get a job through the internship included in our course. When we arrived in UK, we had Nandos for our dinner. As we ate, the lighting seemed to get dimmer and we felt sleepier. And the amount of chips made us felt nauseous. I need to clarify here. It’s not the
chips that made us nauseous. It’s just the lighting and our condition at that time that made us felt that way. Maybe it’s the jet-lag too. After all, it was the first time I had a long-flight.

During the first week or so, my sis brought us to the college and showed us around London. We went to Big Ben, London Eye, Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Chinatown. Then, we had our meals at a Malaysian Cuisine restaurant. It’s kind of weird because that was only our first week in UK and we shouldn’t be missing Malaysia food, isn’t it? But sometime later, Mee and I often went there after our classes.

Soon, Mee and I went looking for part-time jobs. We first thought that it would be easy to get one but we hadn’t gotten any news after few days later. However, we did manage to work in Burger King. Everything looked good at first but as time goes, it was nightmare. The staffs were good except the manager. Well, it’s got to be a long long story. I shan’t explain it here.

I think we settled in quite fast and thought that life in UK was more or less the same in Malaysia except we didn’t have our own car and neither of us was working full-time at that time. It’s either train or wait for my sis to drive us around. During weekend, we would go to the college 3 times a week for classes and practical. Our schedule was quite tight because we were either at college or working part-time.

On and off, my sis would treat us Chinese takeaways and Nandos. We often went to Wing Yip, a Chinese supermarket, to stock up our food.

This is our Aromatherapy Holder. It looks like mushroom but it’s actually a Christmas tree shape because Mee took off the cover yesterday. The tealights we bought at Poundland are useless because the fire is either too small or it just burns half-way. So, normally, I will throw in the matchstick so that the fire will get bigger.

Yesterday was a bit out of control because the fire was burning the whole tealight as you can see from the picture. Anyway, good things don’t come cheap.

This morning, I have completed the job evaluation questionnaire and waiting to discuss it with my line manager after lunch. Well, sort of completed. A lot more still need to be filled in.

I browse through flatpress and the latest Vivace Alpha 2 is out last Tuesday. I have since downloaded it and extracted it to my design site. Well, I have some troubles uploading and downloading files to my site using FileZilla and 110mb file manager is limited to 3 files at a time which is kind of difficult for me to upload so many files and create so many folders to get it up and running.

However, I just make a simple search for ‘online ftp’ and I found net2ftp. Creating ftp connection to my site is very easy and fast. Navigation is also easy compares to 110mb file manager. If you are going to transfer tons of files and folders, just zip them together and upload the zip file. Net2ftp will then decompress all the files into your site. Easy.

Also, one thing which I find difficult with the file manager is the ‘move’ function. I mean why can’t they make another ‘copy’ function? Well, I find the solution with net2ftp.

Vivace looks and feels the same like its previous version. Some noticeable changes is the design in the admin panel and most significant changes are the themes, plugins and widgets.

It’s only yesterday that I had a sudden thought that my contact form might not be working. And indeed, I need to purchase SendMail php function from 110mb at $5.00. Since I have just received my payment from my previous job, I have used part of the payment to buy the SendMail function through PayPal. Hopefully, it does what it says. And I need to wait about 24 hours before I can test it out.

It’s raining heavily now.

I have updated my Flatpress blog with the latest theme. Personally, I like it very much except the fonts and colors which I think I could improve it in future. For the time being, I will leave it as it is. If you are still looking at my old theme now, I suggest that you should clear your browser cache.

Well, after this theme creation, I don’t have any projects in mind. I have just transferred My Task Lists 2008 from Vox and I think that I should start working on the task lists again. I feel that the list was created a long long long time ago but in fact, it’s only about 3 months. Anyway, another 9 months to accomplish and I don’t think it’s impossible.

What’s next then? I really need to format Nokia E61 because it has been giving me problems lately. Not lately, but quite some time already. I guess it’s time to list out the software that I need to install and also the settings before formatting it. Also, I need to check whether there is any latest firmware available.

The IT support staffs here are having some problems trying to install SQL Enterprise Manager 2005 on my machine. 3 days, 3 attempts, no result. I remembered that I installed SQL Enterprise Manager in my previous job and I didn’t face any problems. I guess that there is some problem with my machine, or maybe they should try to install from CD rather than the server.

Weather is hot and right now, I am still doing the Job Evaluation Questionnaire. I will discuss with my line manager as soon as I find that I have nothing to fill in.