Prudence and Madness

(Warning: Lengthy post ahead. Keep reading at your own risk!)

There are such events that are worth getting tired feet and strained back muscles for. And an event which has Fully Booked and Neil Gaiman in it is an example of such.

I’ve known about this event weeks ago because I frequent Fully Booked SM the Block but I wasn’t able to make up my mind about it until almost the last minute (okay, that’s an exaggeration. I must have weighed this on my mind until the day itself when I’ve finally made a decision). The indecisiveness must be because I’ve been so drained of energy these past few weeks by work and study and since it’s another Sunday of being not on duty (actually, the first of a series of Sundays of being not on duty), I thought of just spending it resting and relaxing at home.

But it isn’t everyday that Neil Gaiman is in the Philippines. And I haven’t been to Fully Booked in the Fort. And I didn’t want to go to church. So, obviously, I’ll go see Neil Gaiman in Fully Booked (or to be more accurate, outside Fully Booked).

The Book of Dreams Event is the special launching of Expeditions, a compilation of the works, prose and comics, of the winners of the first year of Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards. It was held today, around 3 p.m., at the Bonifacio High Street Courtyard, in front of Fully Booked. Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards was started by Fully Booked with Neil Gaiman, if I remember correctly, in late 2005, with the first batch of awards given last year. The categories in PGFA include stories in prose and in comics.

Neil Gaiman said he started the PGFA, with Fully Booked, because he wanted to encourage Filipino unrealism stories. He noticed that we have too much of the traditional realism stories but unrealism stories (stories of fantasy and sci-fi) that are essentially Filipino are still untapped, considering that we have the richest and coolest (yep, he said that) folklore. But seeing the potential in Filipinos, he wanted to encourage more writings (and drawings) and he found PGFA as being a good way to do so.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s more to this event than just Neil Gaiman praising Filipino prose and comics.
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I think Comment Email Responder is the best WP plugin out there for busy bloghoppers like me.

As for the description of the plugin, here’s one from the plugin author’s website:

The Comment Email Responder v2 is based on the work of Andrew Flusche who can up with the original concept and wrote the first iteration of this plugin. It’s purpose is to provide an easy mechanism for a blog administrator to email a response to one of the comments placed on the website. The response becomes a comment in the normal way, but also fires off an email to the commentor with the content of the response and his original comment.

Tell me that I’m starting to have memory gap, but I do need a way to remind myself which blogs I’ve left comments to.  I’m a busy person and I don’t get the chance to bloghop all the time.  So sometimes, even if I just surf into 5 or more blogs, I tend to forget what comments I’ve left and where I left them because it will be a long time before I get back to those blogs.  By the time I get around to visiting those blogs again, I would have forgotten which post I’ve left a comment to.

Also, it would be nice to get an email back to know if the blog author already responded to the comments I’ve left.

And if you’re the blog author, it will also do good to your blog’s traffic if you’d have a better way of reminding other bloghoppers (and bloggers) that you have replied to their comments.  It’s a good way of showing your readers that you read the comments they leave on your blog.  It also pushes you to make comments 1:1 rather than to write a general comment, applicable to everybody.

The good thing about this plugin is that it works well with the Subscribe-to-comments plugin that most bloggers are using.  I also use this plugin, though sometimes I really don’t want to be swamped with comments that I’m not interested to read, especially if I’m already tired of the topic or if the blogger has already responded to my comment.  But what I do is just subscribe to the comments of a particular blog and just unsubscribe when I don’t want to read other comments anymore.  I think this is the advantage of Comment Email Responder over Subscribe-to-comments: you don’t get swamped with other people’s comments.  All you’ve got to receive is the response from the blog author himself.

So, if you think you need a little personal reminder that the blog where you’ve left comments to has already responded to what you’ve said, then go try out this plugin. 

I know you’ve already heard about the new Lisa Sabin-Wilson book, Wordpress for Dummies, which has been launched recently.  While the title seems to  give the impression that this book is only for beginners, the content certainly is useful not only for beginners but those who’ve already been long-time users of WP as blogging platform.

The book contains information on:

• Signing up for a free WordPress account
• Setting up and using a hosted blog with WordPress.com
• Installing and setting up the WordPress.Org and WordPress.MU software for single- and multi-user versions
• Finding great themes, plugins, and consultants that will help you achieve JUST the kind of blog you want
• Using tags to work with WordPress templates
• Dealing challenges with comments, trackback spam, and “splogs”
• Adding special technologies to your blog, such as RSS feed, podcasting, vlogging, and photoblogging
• Finding online support, tips, and resources for WordPress software

And while most of you will say that most of these information are available online, I’d say that it’s still an advantage to have all these information in just one book which could be easily carried around.  It’s certainly better to have all of those a browse away instead of searching for it online whenever you need to check or verify something.  Also, you’d know that the information is credible because it came from a trusted source.

So, you want to have this book?  Or better, a signed copy of Wordpress for Dummies book?

Casual Keystrokes has one waiting to be given away!  All you’ve got to do to have a chance at that signed copy of the book is to go to Casual Keystrokes blog (by clicking here), read the post and the guidelines for joining the contest.

Nope, I’m not receiving any commissions for referrals.  In fact, I also joined in the contest.  Though it’s highly unlikely that I’d win with just an entry, but I think it’d still be fun.  So you might want to try your luck too.