Let’s see… it’s been close to three weeks I’ve migrated this blog from Wordpress to Hyde. And ever since then I have been constantly fixing bugs in my template.

Let’s run down the commit history and show you some of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way :).

[Note: I’ll be referencing my own template]

Multiple Layouts with Template Inheritance

For my site, I needed two different layouts that shares the same base design: a two-column layout for my blog and full page layout for other static pages.

This is easily achieved by using template inheritance using the extends feature. In my current template, you can refer to the following three files:

• layout/base.j2 — The overall site design, acts as base template
• layout/blog.j2 — (child template) The …

It’s the fourth day of Chinese New Year: while the working classes are reporting back into their offices and started work, I’m still back with my parents. My laptop flipped open with the backlit display shining at me, my stationeries and notebook spread across the dining table among the containers of Chinese New Year snacks. I’ve made the dining table back home my remote office.

After a series of hackathons, I’m starting to experiment with how to work in remote locations — outside the comforts of office cubicles where everything is within reach and I never need to worry out running out of office supplies. It’s always about learning to deal with small desk spaces, less than optimal furniture in terms of ergonomics and tuning out ambient noises and distractions from …

Continuing the tradition of reviewing the year that had past and setting resolutions and a new tone for the new year, this year would probably be my busiest, most exciting and yet the least documented year. And yes, my blog is almost totally neglected last year. For this post, I dug through my memory bank and recount the details of the past – well, it’s alway better having that than not writing about some of the issues at all.

The TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) Highlights of 2011 As I Experienced It

Just to set up the context of the whole blog post, here’s the list of things that I believe to be my defining moments of the year 2011 (grouped by similarity and not in chronological order):

• Becoming one of the …

The whole ordeal started a month ago when my server decided to have temper tantrums and PHP and Nginx just mysteriously decided not to talk to each other again. And with that my Wordpress blogs are taken down with it.

Ouch.

Stress levels rising at an inopportune time when my workload was at an all time high. And it was additional salt rubbed on the injury as I was still scrambling to salvage deleted data from the only backup drive that I have. I totally don’t want to get into specifics, it’d probably stress you out as well.

Then again, I’ve had enough dealing with PHP so that makes the perfect time to migrate my blog away from Wordpress to Hyde - a static site generator. Yes, you read me correctly, it generates …

Quitting – even after my fourth job, I still feel the nervous and uncomfortable twitching sensation within myself. Every time as the thought darts its way through my brain, the calculating part of the brain keeps on churning the numbers: the risk and rewards, the financial projections and whether will there be a serious impact towards my bank and retirement accounts, is the discomforts, frustrations and agony justifies the departure… what if things turn for the better after that?

Most of the time, I always decided to do nothing about it: delaying the decision. After all, I’m still getting paid well and I don’t really have any immediate plans and safety nets that would make the departure a no-brainer.

And so I procrastinate for a while… or so I thought a few days back …

You probably wouldn’t know this as I’m not able to bring myself to say it: that you mean everything to me since I felt the rush upon knowing you. In due course of time, I still find myself fixated over you despite the fact that I know I need you more than you’ll ever need me.

Maybe it’s just me seeing you as perfect the way you are, even with all the flaws and quirks. In a way that Bruno Mars struck an emotional chord in me when he sings his songs.

You have such honesty shining through in your words, your eyes and your expressions – so beautiful that I’ll try to capture them with my own eyes when I get every silver of a chance. Noticing even the slightest …

Here’s one unimportant fact that I never really divulged to anyone yet: I do tarot readings.

It’s not one of those skills that I practice daily. I do tarot readings exclusively for my benefit, mainly for one of the two possible reasons: either to seek guidance from the unknown or the subconscious; or as a means of having a lens to reflect upon.

To the skeptics, it may very well be an irrational act - one that appeals to my own primitive instincts to seek out patterns and retrofit whatever I perceive what the cards are showing, so to make sense something that’s totally random to begin with. In my experience, however, it doesn’t feel to me that way. Having done readings for more than eight years, there’s something that really …