Sil-Mon Li

The small number of you that read this blog may be wondering why many more people are not visiting my site. Although I doubt many people do read this, I feel the urge to keep my blog going. Again, there has been a massive stint where I not put one update in the last 4 months. Why don’t you just pack it in Sil? It’s just not worth it. I’m going to put more discipline in and aim for a target of at least 5 posts per month. That’s just over one a week. I don’t see it as much of a problem for the first few months but let see what happens… See you after the next post

OK, so you’ve seen over the past year I’ve made little or no effort to keep my blog up to date. There are a number of reasons for this…

1. I can’t be bothered
2. “Social Networking” sites
3. I do have a real life to persue and I just don’t have the time to replicate it all in the virtual world

I want to talk more about item 2 as I think this is the key item which is having most impact on my blogging days…

With the introduction of “Social Networking” sites (I hate that word…) it makes communicating with people easy and seamless. The main things I use my blog for are to put some of my random thoughts and to share photos friends and family. Generally, people/readers are lazy. Unless you consistently have interesting topics/photos they won’t make an effort to visit your Blog. Also from a Blogger’s perspective, it does take a large amount of time and effort to provide new content and maintain a fresh Blog.

Facebook and MySpace allows you to replicate similar Blogging site functionality but with additional features allowing you to connect and communicate with groups of people. Ingenious, as it removes the onus on the reader to make the effort to recieve the latest information. It will be delivered to them automatically but the readers also have the choice to disable these updates if they wish. As a technology paradox, it’s a very similar concept between “Traditional Email” and “Push Email” while your are travelling. As a social paradox, it’s the equivalent of your friends/family in Celebrity News Magazine like OK! or Hello. The majoritiy of people like gossip, especially on people who you know…
When Push Email was introduced, it was RIM that changed the face of email on the go. Over the next few months, Facebook will do the same for personal blogging by allow people to share:

• Photos
• Events/Invites
• Groups
• Messages/Comments

So I think within the next year, my blog may come to a steady halt and I’ll have to think some other sneaky scheme to use my personal url…

So what better way to do a review of a new product than to use it as you review it! I’m now writing this blog on the using Microsoft’s latest Live product, Windows Live Writer. It’s a cross between WordPad and Frontpage. It lets you compose your blogs in a WYSIWYG format so for the less techie or people that would prefer to see how their writings look before they post will see this as welcome this new application.

Common features include:

Insert Link: Insert a link in less than 5 seconds

Formatting Text: includes bold, italic, underline, strike-through, colours

1. bullet numbering#

• bullet points

alignment (centre)

block quotes

Save Draft: Automatic save funtionality and easily retreive posts

Some enhanced features which are really cool include:

Insert Picture: insert a picture from your PC directly onto the page and format at a click of a button.

Insert Map: it allows you to add road maps or aerial maps from almost anywhere in the world!

View Layout: provides you with a previews layouts of your blog before posting including normal (word format), web layout (as seen on the web), web preview (as seen on your blog), html layout (code)

Undo: Like as if your were in MS Word, you can press Ctr-Z and undo your actions

Check Spelling: Again as if you were in MS Word, this will check your spelling for you before you post

Post Properties: Edit date entry, allow comments and trackbacks, insert keywords

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Overall impressions: This is my first time using it and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed with all the features that are included with Windows Live Writer. I am definately going to start using this to post my blogs and it will make me post more often due to easy to use interface. Microsoft have outdone themselves with this free piece of software and probably their first killer Live App they have released. One thing that keeps niggling me is that it’s a local application and therefore you will have to download it on to other computers (e.g. at Work) if you want to use it elsewhere. With Google leading the way with Web Applications (e.g. Google Spreadsheet), Microsoft may have taken a wrong path in not making this available via the web and easily avialable. Barring this one small negative point which personally I have now qualms about, I think it’s a great product and fingers cross for more applications like this!

This is a tribute to the possy in Bognor! Thanks for reading the blog and hopefully you’ll find out more randon things about me that nobody else knows about! I’ll be doing a full write up on the weekend in Bognor in the next few days so look out for that! Cheers

Apologise for the lack of posting on my blog for the past few weeks. I have been keeping pretty busy now that I have been using my new mountain bike over past few weekends. Anyway, here are some brief highlights I’d like to mention that were in my head at the time of typing:

1. The new iPod is released, the iPod Nano, to replace the iPod Mini. It looks very cool and I’m very tempted to get it. One thing that is worrying me is that it look and feels so thin and fragile that it would be very easy break if I accidently sit on it. Can’t say much for the iTunes phone which was release at the same time. It’s called the Motorola ROKR. Rubbish as it only holds 100 songs! My phones better than that and I’ve had it for about 6 months now!

2. England win the Ashes! What a nail biting 7 weeks of cricket! I can’t believe how the England team managed to hold it together! They would set themselves up in a good position and then decide to crumble so that the Aussies have a tiny chance to steal it back! Anyway, the final test was a draw which meant England won 2-1 in the overall series. Well Done England and let’s hope you can do it again in 18 months time!

3. The other England lose! What a game… England vs N. Ireland in the World Cup Qualifier stages. How could they lose 1-0? There was a silver lining to the story though… I decided to make a bet on England losing (chances were 30-1) very early in the week. I know what you’re all going to say, “TRAITOR!”, but with those odds it was very hard to resist. I won’t tell you how much I put down but I do have to Thank Oz, my lucky charm for helping win! Cheers mate!

4. Just over 2 weeks till I go on holiday to New Zealand with Alex! It’s getting close now and I’ve arranged the car hire and now looking into accomodation for the first few days. We’re going to do a round trip of the South Island and visit my cousin in Wellington a couple of days too. I’m just counting the days!

Sil and Alex

Originally uploaded by silmonli.
I took the day off from work on Friday and went to see Ally in Leeds to get her 5th year exam results! It was very nerve racking for her but I knew that she was going to pass. It was a bit crazy for all the medical students though because the admin staff put up the results and then realised that they were wrong and had to take them down again. They had to wait another half hour before the proper results were put up. After that we travelled up to Newcastle to Ally’s parent home for the weekend before she goes to Sri Lanka and Singapore for 2 months. We didn’t do that much while we were up there which was quite good because all I seemed to do was sleep! I showed her the the Blog I set up for her so that she can start using it for her elective and seem to like it alot. Hopefully she’ll use it if they have some sort of internet connection over there! Fingers Cross! Love you lots Ally and have a safe trip!

At the dogs…

Originally uploaded by silmonli.
Three things to report on…

1. I’m trying out this online photo storage system from Flickr and I have uploaded this photo to see how it looks on my blog. Not bad hey?

2. It was Charlie’s Birthday night out and she decided that we would all go to the Wimbledon Stadium to get involved with some greyhound racing action! Unfortuantely there was no winning on my part! I lot about £15. We all then went to a Young’s Bar called Finches which reminded me of being back at Uni. It was one of the first times I felt like I was a bit out of place…

3. I’ve found out what’s wrong with me when I eat fruit like Apple, Pear and Apricot! Jim brough his girlfriend, Elle, who it is a dietrician and we were just talking about her job and came on to the subjust of how I get an itchy throat when I eat certain types of fruit. She instantly knew what it was! It’s called Oral Allergy Syndrome. I’m allergic to the Birch Pollen coated on the outside of the fruit. She recommends that I either wash the fruit thoroughly or peel the skin and then weah it before i eat it!

I’ve now added the links and photos to the site. Please have a look at some of pics!

After looking at various blogging sites, I’ve decided to go for Wordpress… for two reasons: 1. it’s free and 2. it’s relatively easy to use. I’ve been tinkering about with it for about 2 hours but it’s not how I initially thought it would look. Hopefully with a bit more work on it I’ll get it right…