Category: Status

From youtube shorts I saw this live concert in London of this song called The Box. It was amazing. It was inviting, at least for me. The amazing thing was the crowd. They sang the song so passionately. The lyric was perfect too. At first, the singer said, Sing this Shit, then the crowd go crazy started sing the song. I dont know what the song was. I looked for it, the official music video and the original clip of the youtube shorts. Apparently it was a song from 5 years ago. I wonder why I never heard of it before. 5 years ago man. I was late haha. Comparing the official music video and the live concert video, seems like the original music not that amazing (obviously studio records). The live concert was energetic.

In the shorts I read the comments. Some said good things. Some mentioned, if the crowd sing your song like that, it means you've made it. How amazing is that. Make me thinking what do the singer think during that time. What did he feels. Did he feel that he made it? If I'm the singer, my answer will be yes. Definitely. Since that day, I always play that song. Repeat and repeat. When I'm working, when I'm driving. I cannot stop. Maybe I will stop after I finished write this, since I already let it go.

The thing is, it make me want to cry.

The music. The live concert one. I'm not sure because I'm sad. Probably because I feel achieved. That comment, the crowd warms, people shouting your works. I dont know, it feel different. Even though it was not me, but the energy (the vibe?) transported to me, and it makes me feel to cry. That also maybe the reason I keep on repeat the video clip. Playing the official music video didnt give any feeling though. I tried to remember the lyrics and sing the song. I cannot make it. Make me thinking how amazing the crowd can remember the lyrics and sing the song perfectly. Normally here, in other occasions, I will wonder, why they waste their time and energy to remember this kind of things and all that. But this time I passed that.

It was always like that. I always discovered something amazing like that so late. This one 5 years later. Before this I learned about the Mars Volta also late. There's some movies also. Which sometimes, it makes me to asked people how they discover amazing things. It became habit in conversation. People might got annoyed actually. Because those kinds of information never same crossed to me. Either via email, online ads, social media timeline or from chat app. Hey how do you know about they started selling ticket for that concert? Hey how do you know about that viral restaurant? Hey how do you know all this things?

Well, the part that he said Sing this Shit really rent free in my head. Never heard anybody said that before. Normally they will say, Make Some Noise. Make Some Noise. Make Some Noise. Like nothing else they can say. In fact, I personally feel when they say like that it just kinda show they are not good enough. I think. Otherwise people will just make noise without being asked. Or maybe the time not quite right. Actually I also started say the same Sing this Shit sometimes. Say that shit again. Sing this shit.

I wonder when I will become that great. People shout my work. I had one before. I made this documentation about DR work and it was years back. It was like almost 10 years ago. I was in different department. My name was there as the author, reviewer and all over in that documentation (SoP). We already outsourced that work but they still continue what we were doing based on that documentation. I now in different department. More in process and governance now. Recently when they want to do DR, the governance team gathered all documentations that related to DR and found the one that I mentioned earlier. They asked the team, why they mistakenly put my name in their doc. They told me about that too and asked me whether that was really my name there or it was different person. I told them, yes, it was me. I'm the original author. I wrote them. To my surprise nothing much change. In fact I believe still 97% original. Even though its already 10 years and people still using my work. That's the same feeling I had. That time it did make me want to cry.

I Started Doing Programming With Batch Files and I'm Proud of It

The first programming language that I learned was C. It was a hell of experience. For some people maybe its not that hard. But for me, I cannot catch up. My brain just cannot understand. Or maybe just because I don't want to. On top of that my class was in Japanese, make it even harder. I'm from 3rd world country who barely can speak English, who received scholarship to pursue my degree in Japan back then. It was only until chapter Array. Its either Array or Table. It was Chapter 6 if I'm not mistaken. After that I cannot do it anymore. To be honest, the following homework I received after that I just copied what my seniors left for me. And in fact there's no place I'm using programming after I entered workforce even though I'm in "IT".

Later on my manager provided some solutions for problem in BAU for some different team. It was in just simple batch file. Powershell still early on that time. And it was eye opening actually. Not just because of the batch file, but also on the possibility that thing could do in my own work. He said batch file, or DOS commands, is just a text processor. Not really that programming. But it was easy and simple to put up. You can just double click to run it. Not like Powershell. You cannot double click Powershell file. From there, I kinda studied all the batch files he created and try to make my own. I dig around if other team also using this kind of solutions. I saw one team use more complicated batch files to process application forms, data cleanup and processing, structuring data. Some also use for our client's insurance application. I googled more about it and feels grateful I found out about this thing.

I was in Storage and Backup team. That time we still use Windows server to host share folders. Since every month we need to bring down the server for security patching activity, we need to send email to all users that was using the service. There were 4 servers that time with different different users. To do that I need to have all the user's email address. The solution that was passed down to me was really messy that time. I need to ask Messaging team to provide email address for all employee in the company. Then list out users that using the service. After that try to match it with the the email address received using Excel. As every month the numbers are not same, also there's 4 servers to entertain, I need to do this manually, the first time I did it, it took me 3 days to complete. And that was the only time I did it. After that I spend one weekend to develop a batch file that simply do this for me. The batch file will go to each server and list all user that using the service. Then it will grab the user's email address from Domain Controller. All the email address later on saved in a text file for me to copy and send email to. Thankfully I need to send 4 emails, 1 for each server. So the manual work I need to do every month now reduced to only double click the batch file and send 4 emails. Nobody knows about this. My manager just happy I didn't give him any trouble. That thing got buried when we migrated to host share folders to NAS storage by Netapp. Well that was one of the major batch file I created that I really proud of but never had a chance to talk about. Learned a lot in the process because I don't have much knowledge about it so need to always try and error to know how the things work.

Another one when after I became a manager. The team I manage suppose to do some monitoring for 24 hours on our system. The question that was asked to me was, how could I know my team really did their job. I said there's no issue reported. So now they asked what's the evidence I have that could proof my team did their job. I said I really don't have any. We no need to take it that far I said. They never asked that to the guy I replaced. To make it worse, issue occurred and my team took 4 hours to escalate. Some of my team was caught sleeping during work. This was used against me. They said it was for audit purpose too. My team also don't really have anything that we could use to defend ourself. As a prevention, they asked me to come up with something that could show and proof monitoring was done every 30 minutes to 1 hour. But I didn't receive any budget. At the same time I don't want to give a hard time to my team. So again I spend a weekend to create a batch files to try to satisfy them. I hated it, my team hated it. But it was a very thoughtful process and as a result produce a really good automation. This time a little bit combination with Powershell. Every time my team come to work, the batch file got activated, run a countdown to 30 minutes. Once it reached 30 minutes, it will minimize all active windows and open a popup as a reminder to do the monitoring and automatically open the place that they need to monitor. At here, during that time, we still need human eyes to monitor. So they will check if everything good and take some screenshots. The batch file then will automatically open an email with some words populated. Screenshots will get pasted here. Then send the email to ourself. This email then will become the evidence that my team did they job. Obviously, I really cannot control the batch file remotely. My team could always close the batch file because they hated it. They could also do something with the code too to make their life easier. But I trusted them. At least we could show something. And one more time, a batch file saved my life.

Why I Stayed Using WordPress When Everybody Said Its Time Move On, yet

The simple reason is, WordPress now is the only tool that I comfortable with and got some skill in using it. My twitter feed being flooded with kids and youngsters about vibe coding and how they make millions with it. My peers also been saying that coding and making app is zero cost now and should take less time and we should focus more on distribution. I don't argue with that. I agree with them. In fact I tested it with some learning curve and was really amazed with it. But, before I continue saying this, some disclaimer, I don't really know how to code. With experience I know how to read some codes in WordPress and the plugins. I know how to play along with it. With some search in Google and help from support forum I could understand what certain codes purpose and what they do. So with vibe coding, with the experience I had so far, it can achieve the initial purpose or solution on what we want. But then later on when we want to update with new features or functions, it or maybe I could say, me myself will get lost. Probably those who has programming and coding background don't have this kind of issue or concern. I sometimes still don't understand how app's files being structured. If then something happen to my app, it's hard for me to find the cause and fix it. Probably I cannot do it myself and need to spend money hire someone else to fix it.

So the thing is with WordPress, since I know something about it, which also doesn't require much knowledge about coding, and then with all those plugins, I would say that I can survive. The error and debug log files will give some idea what's wrong about my site. I still can turn my site into some kind of web app, which I'm proud of, still using it now and making money. Not just some simple website that people click links with fancy design.

It give me some sense of control.

I do vibe coding too for my WordPress site. I get AI to generate snippets to achieve certain or specific functions that I want which I cannot get other plugins to do it. If something happened to my site, or if the snippets broke my site I know where to find it and some sense I know how to go to fix it. Been doing a lot with this lately. Sometimes, I could get AI to make me code something similar with what the pro version of the plugins offer. Not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing. To be honest I do really think about security and all that. Whether the code that the AI provided me safe or not. But so far everything works fine. Maybe some hackers already in my site watching from far. I don't know. I just move on as long as the code do what I want to achieve. Now with blocks and block themes make it even better. I could design my site like an app, easily control the access and visibility using role, which is something I never could do before. Imagine if I vibe coding and want just to add another content block, or change some color for A/B testing, I need to go back to the AI and maybe it will break my app. It shows I do did vibe coding, but still on the WordPress platform. Sometimes in WordPress I no longer need to install the whole plugin, I could just get some snippets which, I assume, make my site perform better.

The esteem came with all the drama and conflicts that WordPress have now. Some call it legacy technology. I don't know. In fact I go with WordPress because, ehem, it was free. Well not really free "free" though. And then again it was one of the first tools that I was exposed, played and stick with. If it was Blogger, Drupal, Joomla, Square or maybe Wix, I maybe will talk about them now. I played with Ghost before, which looks promising, but still, really hard for me when I want to achieve something similar that I had in WordPress with it. And also the most important thing is, when I want to build something, something new, obviously I will go with something that I already familiar, reliable and have confident with, as a tool to build with, instead of with something that I need to spend some time with which I don't have a clue whether it will deliver the same result or not.

Played around with the template in this 2025 theme. Block theme kinda life saver for non-coders. If you managed to understand the block purpose and how it could play well with your theme and what it could do to achieve what you want it will do well.

What i could suggest is, dont touch the original template that comes with the theme. Make a duplicate or create new one and copy paste from the original them start from there. If anything happened, you have something to revert back into.

I updated the status template here, thinking of create separate template for articles. Simply achievable, just need to spend time to test to see if its fit with what you want. What bother me is this cache plugin, which make my changes dont really reflect in real time. Sometimes i need to purge all first then i could see the changes. Maybe i could just uninstall this cache plugin first the re-install back. Maybe i could just install this one plugin that bypass all this cache thing.

Been working on this for hours now, but it still not working didnt give the result that i was expecting, time to put a stop, break. Maybe gonna give. Technically got what i want but its good to have this thing that i’m crashing my head on.

Normally how many attempts it will take for you in working with chatgpt or grok to get your code working? the challenges with them in working with wordpress plugins is they tend to create their own function and not using the official/native function that comes with the plugin. They just assume the function by naming the function with the plugin’s name. The tricks sometimes we need to find the plugin documentation link and include in your prompt (to get them read/scan it and use the correct function). Or sometimes i just past the whole plugin’s code in the prompt to make it work.

I’m currently working on this site that primarily using LifterLMS plugin. I’m trying to turn most the event, trigger and activity in the plugin programmatically. For example, to complete a lesson, normally user need to click the “Mark Complete” button to make the system mark that particular lesson Completed. But I want user to do certain action within the lesson then once that action completed, the lesson also will automatically mark as Completed. ChatGPT being quite helpful. I got Grok to help as well.