I received an email from Exabytes regarding an awesome blogger’s gathering which they are hosting at Penang Paradise Sandy Beach Resort. The ticket is only RM10 and according to the promotional mail, there would be lunch, discount vouchers, free DiGi reloads and web hosting, games and many more activities organized.

I think that it’s awesome that they are providing an opportunity for webmasters to get to know each other and if I were in Penang, I would definitely participate. It is RM10 only, after all, and it’s well worth the money not only in terms of the luncheon and door gifts but also the networking. THAT’S priceless, for a blogger!

If you are interested, you should register at RoundEgg.com. I believe this event is open to everyone as long as they run a website or blog! Enjoy yourself!

Recently, we here in Malaysia have been riddled with a scandal involving a handful of local bloggers. While I think that it is none of our business, the problem with doing something with another blogger, whether it’s just drinking or something private, we risk having these activities exposed.

The nature of bloggers is such is that they feel compelled to kept everyone know about something and would publish photos and whatever to remind them of that incident, even if you have specifically told them NOT to!

A blog is a personal diary on public domain, that was what a friend once told me. I once learnt from another friend, a veteran blogger, that if you like to keep something secret, then DON’T do it with a blogger! How dumb could one get?

If they do, and such a code is set, which is said to be just a guideline and not legislation, would it be possible for bloggers to follow such a guideline diligently? Our dear Home Minister seems to think that Bloggers need it but who would be making sure that we will be following these guidelines?

As a blogger myself, I think that one of the things we bloggers enjoy is the nature of blogs where everything is no holds barred. Of course, we do our best to write within the law and our own social and moral obligation. Even if there would be bloggers who set out to be pot stirrers, I believe that blog readers are smart enough to determine the truths from lies.

I think it’s pretty dumb for certain government quarters to hire bloggers, or hire blog readers and commenters to create problems for the blogger. As long as the government of the day does right for the Rakyat, they will not be trashed by bloggers on their blogs. Well, we all know why blogs have become an avenue for us to air our grievances. That’s because mainstream media is off-limits to most of us.

So, yeah, let me just say that we don’t need no code of ethics. We just want truth and justice, don’t we all?

It’s funny that each time I meet a friend who is a non-blogger, he/she would ask me about my blog. Well, what could I say except that it’s coming along fine; it’s still surviving. If only they know of my twenty blogs!

I think that this question has already replaced the common opening greeting that Chinese use all the time, “Have you eaten?” Just like the British who like to open a conversation on the weather.

A non-blogger would not understand or be interested in PageRank or traffic levels. A non-blogger would also not be interested to know how much so-and-so has made in the previous month from blogging.

On the other hand, my blogger friends would not be bothered to ask about my blog. They know I have twenty blogs. So do they; some even more! When we get together, we just want to FORGET about blogs and blogging. LOL

I was brought to the attention of a blog called CheongSam Lover where a Kelantanese guy publishes spy shots of people in Kelantan, mostly in Kota Bahru, whom he deems are dressed scantily or sexily or in attire not conservative enough to his standards.

From the posts that I scanned though, most of these photos apparently were taken with his mobile phone. This is one case of misuse of mobile camera. Also, most of his subjects are Kelantanese people of other races, hence they should not be subjected to the conservative dressing of Muslims.

The most disturbing thing about the blog is that, even though he blurs the faces of his subjects so that they could not be easily identified, he exposes their workplaces, like the shopping complexes that they work in, the name of their store or stall number.

Under the guise of a moral police, he is actually putting these people, mostly young girls, in a dangerous situation but I wonder if he realizes that. His blog should be banned. What do you think?

A couple of days ago, I don’t know what happened but spam comments flooded my inbox, so much so that I went to my blogs to see if somehow my Akismet Spam plug-in was somehow deactivated. However, besides the fact that it has a new version that I have yet to update, Akismet was still active.

The thing I noticed is that while some of these spam comments appeared in my list of comments to be moderated, some of them did not even land on my blog, which means that they somehow bypassed my blogs and landed straight to my inbox.

And the weird thing is that even though I received over a hundred annoying spam comments on that particular day, the spam comments came from all my blogs except one. The blog that escaped being flooded by spam comments is hosted by another host. Maybe that’s why?

After a couple of days, spam has stopped flooding my inbox but I still am keeping an eye on my blogs, especially for links to pharmacy or porn sites. Am keeping my fingers crossed!

It seems like only yesterday when I wrote about Blog Action Day 2007 but it has been a year already! This year, just like previous years, Blog Action Day aims to bring together as many bloggers as possible to blog about a single theme on a single day on their blogs.

The theme last year was on the environment and this year, it will be on global poverty. Bloggers who would like to participate in Blog Action Day will have to register their blog with BlogActionDay.org but I think that even if we are not registered with them, we could still blog about this topic on 15th October, 2008, right? It is not necessary to join a movement.

Blog Action Day also encourages all participants to donate their blog earnings for the day to a charitable organization. There are a handful of organizations that Blog Action day supports but bloggers could donate to any organization that they desire. Send in the receipt for the amount to be tallied so that Blog Action Day could see how successful this outreach is.