My Life With IT

While I admit that I had visions of reading several books using an electronic device such as Kindle, I had no idea that such devices would be big. Perhaps, I had envisioned more of a hologram device that can be activated with the press of a button on a wrist watch or a small PDA like device to read books.

Although there is a price fight currently for Kindle and iPad, I see myself not using them as I realise that I would be carrying around too many devices that may be portable but add them up together, I am torturing my shoulders. What I see for the future is more in software and handheld gadgets.

A seamless integration with the end users understanding how to use the applications easily. There are so many models with different mobile OS these days and each with different browsers of viewing the web. Mobile applications are more popular with those who have the need to be able to surf the Internet on the go.

Applications for connecting to social media sites will be more seamless and there will be ease of installing in any OS without any hassle. As such, mobile phones designs will be consisting of screens as more people use the web for various reasons; travelling routes, book air tickets, buying daily necessities, checking bus arrival times, booking taxis and much more.

In addition, netbooks are also gaining popularity with the tech-savvy. Its lightweight feature adds to its appeal and more cafes will allow such electronic devices to use the power sockets as it drives more customers to them as a win-win situation.

In future, watching movies on the go may just involve a pair of ear piece and holograms being projected from a small device, thus, saving the shoulders and the movies with more 3D feel. Designs may probably have the same feel as the movie, Iron Man did with his armour.

Wordpress has fast become a popular blogging platform since it was launched. I have been rather impressed with its simple dashboard and ease of navigation. Hence, it is fast becoming a hot ground for hacking too. Hence, its constant versioning has kept the developers busy. This reminds me of Windows being a hot ground for hacking too.

This time round, old Wordpress versions are being attacked with strange categories being created. Usually, the default Admin ID is being abused and it is always a good idea to remove the default ID and use another ID as an administrator. The ID shouldn’t be the same as the screen name since the attacking time will be shortened. Telling the world that your user name and screen name are one and the same is inviting thieves into your house to just take all your valuables away.

For those with old versions of Wordpress, upgrade fast. You never know when it’s your turn to be hacked and you won’t want to waste a day trying to get your blog back up again. As more people upgrade, the attackers will soon target your blog just because you are an easy target.

Being a long time user of the computer, I have been exposed to quite a number of highs and lows. The highs would be getting the information faster and somehow, my typing has improved by leaps and bounds as the coding needs fast typers in order to be completed fast.

The lows are:

1. Chronic neck pain sitting in front of the screen just after 2 hours.
2. Left ring finger and little finger and half the hand is often numb after a night’s sleep.
3. Shoulders aching unless not facing the screen.

So, what are your pains while working long hours in your industry?

There are times I wished to be able to modify plugins. Unfortunately, my knowledge of PHP is as much as that grain of rice. Somehow, I have never managed to pick up learning PHP despite my time spent on modifying the comments section for the WP 2.7 threaded comments in two of my blogs.

I wonder if it’s even possible for me to start learning again. There are so many opportunities to learn a new skill and I keep passing up the chances. How many more chances am I going to pass before I realise something? However, the time spent for myself all these months haven’t been totally wasted.

I have way too much junk at home that are no longer in use or simply taking up space and need new owners who will be able to utilise them better than I do. Find anything that you might fancy?

I’m digressing too much. And so, there I was upgrading my Dashbar plugin and ufter it has been upgraded, I have an error. It states something about call_time being deprecated. Great. I don’t know how to solve it.

Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated; If you would like to pass it by reference, modify the declaration of [runtime function name](). If you would like to enable call-time pass-by-reference, you can set allow_call_time_pass_reference to true in your INI file in /home/.something/username/sitename/wp-content/plugins/dashbar/DashBar.php on line 188

I thought plugins have been tested on WP 2.7 before being rolled out?

Amazon is well-known for its books. However, it went on to other products besides books such as apparel, jewellery, music and many more. I love the recommended sections when I browse through the products besides it’s one click technology. It’s a breeze to make my selections.

I like its Amazon Associates function as I can setup my own online shop without worrying about the payments. I don’t even have to spend most of my time trying to setup the online store’s look.

Another way to setup your own store online is using Zlio. You select the markets that you want to choose from and you will be shown the products that are available. The products selected may be out of stock, this isn’t made known until you have completed the adding process; something that Zlio will have to make note of. If the product is no longer available, it should not be included in the adding process.

The difference that I noticed between Zlio and Amazon Associates is that Zlio allows you to choose your own sub domain and even allows linking to your own domain so that you can increase your sales. Amazon Associates allows a tracking ID behind the fixed sub domain. This is Amazon’s way of tracking and isn’t controllable by us.

Zlio allows you to add analytic codes when you have added the module so you can check your site’s traffic in your familiar Google Analytics or other metric systems.

I like both as I don’t have to worry about stocks and shipping on my side.

Having won a premium theme, I have decided to implement it here. My initial panic was that none of the thumbnails appeared automatically. I have photos in almost every post and they couldn’t have just disappeared. That’s when I saw the link to the forum for Arras Gaming theme.

What I Like

• Neat placement of the posts with excerpts.
• Widget enabled.
• Theme options available.
• Different colours available for the site.

What I Found Wrong

• The links to the forums are outdated although the theme has been updated to the latest version.
• When accessing the theme’s option page, the section for entering codes for banners had display problems. The textareas were overlapping each other. I had to add 2 divs for that section so they won’t overlap.
• Whenever I updated the theme options, I have to check to make sure that my category options for Top Navigation and Gaming sections are set again.

What I Found Tedious

• Apparently, with the special thumbnail functions, I had to edit every post to include the new custom field and the images’ URL.
• I had to create a new logo for the site.

After implementing this theme, I’m glad to have won it because it helps me to display the information in a much neater format than before.

Having used Vista for some time with the current Asus Laptop, I have always hated it when it prompts me to enter a password for the admin to install a programme or even run Woopra. I am the admin for heaven’s sake! I have logged in as the admin!

While the Aero theme will eat up more resources and memory, I am quite fine with the rest of the functions even when I don’t use them much. It’s been a long while since I have burned any DVDs or CDs since the transferring of files via file sharing websites have been widespread.

The other problem is that despite the years spent in improving Windows, a restart is always needed after updating the system’s OS. This is a total waste of time. Why must the updates require restarting?

Why must there always be updates and even sneaky background updates to Vista? People have workarounds. They end up not updating the OS because the updates are seriously irritatingly too often.
I don’t use most of the functions provided and yet these are the functions that are required to be updated often. They waste my connection time and even Asus has its own update that I don’t know until my attempts to shutdown for the day prompts that it is running.

Perhaps I should seriously consider looking into using some other OS that doesn’t make the updates so painful.

I’m not sure if being a female will make you lose out in the IT industry. Perhaps when you are in the server administration role or helpdesk support. This, I agree with Kriscell. I have a friend who is in this role and has to move the servers. However, once she is pregnant, she will need help.

It isn’t easy to stay long in this role as there isn’t much prospects to go on if you are the type who is aiming for the position of the CIO. For a female to stay on in the IT industry, one has to continue learning new things like programming languages that are upcoming, getting certified for new software, and more.

Females tend to be thought of as the soft types, programming has better prospects due to the pay. With the knowledge of BW, BI, Oracle, SAP, PHP, AJAX, and many more languages, it helps to stay on in this game. The technology changes almost every 3 months and the new ones are trying to be better than the old ones.

However, in truth, how long do we stay updated? How fast can we upgrade ourselves? The question about females being suitable of IT is a relevant one but there is something that is missed out. The person who was asking it has a diploma. Despite her experience, she is losing out in terms of pay. Unfortunately, the scope that she has, doesn’t pay that well in the long run. She could be comparing herself to her male counterparts.

It is true that gender plays a part when it comes to any jobs, not just IT. When accounting comes to mind, females tend to come into mind. When it comes to moving the heavy servers around, males are needed when there is no way to move that server rack.

As females continue working in the IT industry, they aren’t really losing out but when it comes to pay, one is no longer sure.