Tag Archives: new layout

Updates

Basics

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Here we go, finally a new layout for RefineMe.org before 2008 ends. Now I can cross this off my to-do list. I feel quite fulfilled making this layout since I wanted something simple and easy (and probably something that would last until I feel like making a new layout again). Plus this theme will be carrying my theme for next year, just as the past one carried my 2008 theme. See a pattern? :)

Now if only I can code this fast for my other projects. *headdesk*

I still have a lot of tweaking to do for this layout, I’m sure. I’m waiting for Browsershots to give me the screenshots of my site in browsers, specifically in Windows, since I feel like the colors might turn out different when it’s viewed there. Do me a favor, please? If you’re viewing my site in Windows or any other OS other than Mac, will you please tell me if it looks fine? Thanks. :) Oh and if you find a bug or anything that doesn’t look okay, please let me know as well so I can do something about it.

Again, as I make another layout, I realize how much I suck with CSS. I mean, yeah, I know how to make layouts and manipulate it, but it’s not like I really know them, like in the way I should, seeing as I give myself a high rating with my CSS skills. I can’t remember the proper usage of a tag unless it’s the basic ones, and it takes me ages to figure out why one thing is wrong — like why my blockquotes aren’t showing in italics. Argh. This just means I have to practice more, yes? Gimme time, gimme time.

Well, at least that’s one thing off my to-do list. I still have a lot, and it’s only two days left in 2008. Gah. Must. Stop. Procrastinating! The discovery of putting ebooks in my iPod keeps me distracted a lot. Bah. T_T

Anyway, I still have to update the content of this site, so pardon the obsolete content on some pages. I can’t promise that they’ll be updated before Thursday, but I will update them soon! :)

Dear Diary, Updates

In 2008, I will chase daylight

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And…here we go. New year, new layout, new philosophy. Yeah. HAPPY 2008, EVERYONE!

The past layout has been six months old and although I love it, I thought it’s time for a change, especially for the new year. So from pink and black, I’ve got blue and white and gray…something similar to the first layout of the domain when I got it four years ago (which reminds me…this domain turned four the other day!). The layout is structured similarly with the past one, so it wasn’t that hard to make, but I did have difficulty with the colors on this one. This is the first layout I made on a Aslan, and the first time I experienced the PC-Mac color thing. I don’t know if it’s just my brother’s PC and the angle of his monitor, or the colors are just really screwed. Now the original look is not how it looks like now. Ah well. It looks fine now, but I will change it tomorrow when I am on Guilo (my office PC). I still have two things to accomplish today, so the layout tweaks wait tomorrow. But if you see any bugs, please let me know. :D

Chasing Daylight is from Erwin Raphael McManus’ book of the same title. I bought it during the last book fair, which I only got to start reading a few days ago. So far, it’s an exciting read, which got me thinking about what I plan to do for the new year. Here’s the blurb:

“There are a few things more powerful than a life lived with passionate clarity,” writes McManus.”Every moent is waiting to be seized by those who are chasing daylight.“

We all have dreams, hopes and aspirations. Why, then, do some of us realize our dreams and advance forward while others watch timidly from a distance and hope for a break? Author Erwin Raphael McManus reveals the direct relationship between passion and initiative.

When we are passionate about God, we can trust our passions.

Chasing Daylight is a call to live a life of blazing urgency. We have but one life. We are given one opportunity to pursue our dreams and fulfill our divine purpose. Every moment counts, and we must engage them with fierceness and zeal. Put an end to passive observation, paralyzed by the need for perfect opportunity, and start seizing the raw, untapped potential of your life with God.

Are you willing to risk failure? Are you ready to get in the game? You may stumble, but you will find yourself falling forward, propelled toward the God-inspired adventure He intends you to live.

So yes, 2008 is the year of chasing daylight. :) Bring it on!

Dear Diary, Entertaining Angels, Updates

A Moment I Was Made to Sing

It’s the first official Friday at my new work, since I didn’t spend my last one at work because of the break our boss gave us to fix our requirements. Can I just say? I love that we are allowed to wear jeans on Fridays. Wohoo. I missed being able to do that! Now it’s an excuse to get myself a new pair of jeans and wear my sneaks again! Wohoo!

So I haven’t been blogging as much because I wanted to blog again with a new layout (which is what you are seeing right now). So here. Oh, and I also love it that I can do some designing on the side at work especially when there are no pending work requests. I am now a web content developer by profession, but I still do designing on the side since we don’t get to design as much right now. And I love it that I have enough time to tap into this hobby because we only work for 8 hours. Yes, it’s only my second week, but I really love it there already. Thank You Lord.

Tonight was supposed to be a night of gimmicks, with Mito’s birthday party and the impromptu bonding session of our team together with our trainor, but I obviously have to miss both because my brother felt feverish this morning (which made him miss work), so I have to be around in case he needs help. Plus I need to do some grocery shopping since we’re running out of food. I feel kind of bad missing out on these parties, especially the one with my new teammates, but then again I am also broke since we won’t get paid until the 24th, so once we get paid, that’s when our team would have a “celebration.” Yes, I’ll be there, promise!

And speaking of more adventures in work…I suddenly found myself joining the bowling team of our account for the upcoming sportsfest. To those who know me in real life, I’m not the sporty type. Yeah, I could play decent table tennis, do some ice skating and probably run good enough for track and swim some laps but I’m not really the sports playing type. Like what our team leader said when he first asked us if we could play, I’d rather write about it than actually play. :P But for some weird reason, I got sucked into being a part of the bowling team. I know how to do the basic moves in bowling I think, much thanks to the one time I played with my YFC upper household…but play it competitively? No way.

So what made me sign up? Besides the lack of people around, and the persuasiveness of the girl who was asking us to sign up and I guess there’s this interest of doing something new. Maybe it’s also because I have more time on my hands, and I don’t mind making fun of myself as long as I meet new people and enjoy, too? Haha, I don’t know. But I’m pretty excited, and I hope I won’t get hit by laziness and want to back out. It’s just for fun, and it wouldn’t hurt to try something new. :)

Ah, I’ve never been so contented for the past year! I am truly, truly happy for this new job, and I could not thank Him enough for giving this to me after making me wait. :) The wait just made things sweeter, in my opinion.

Which brings us to this layout. One morning before my final interview at my current employer, I was at Starbucks, drinking (an expensive) morning coffee while praying. I had Triskal on shuffle with my prayer time playlist, and then this song played. I’ve had that song on my player since March 2006, so it’s not new to me but at that moment, the song spoke volumes into my heart, and I knew then that God was with me inside that coffee shop. And I knew, no matter how unsure I was of everything, that God has it in His hands and everything will be okay. :)

Thus the new layout, because every moment that I live and breathe is truly a moment made for worshipping. :) (Lyrics and streaming audio after the cut!)

So I present to you Refine Me’s 16th version, based on Steven Curtis Chapman‘s Moment Made for Worshipping from the All About Love album. :) I’m sure there are bugs (especially in IE), so if you see them, please do tell me about it by posting a comment to this entry or by emailing me so I can fix it ASAP. Pages are yet to be updated, so some of them are definitely old. :P

Off I go! Here is the song I based the layout on and the lyrics for your listening pleasure (streaming only, not for download!). Happy weekend everyone. :)

Continue reading A Moment I Was Made to Sing →

Updates

New version, new layout

Because I had nothing else better to do tonight, plus I spent the entire day working on this, I decided to upload the new layout and upgrade to WordPress 2.1. Yay. Unfortunately, there are still some things I have to upgrade in this layout and change for the new WP version, which will have to wait until tomorrow because it’s late and I have two birhday greetings to do and I have to sleep.

But in the meantime, enjoy this very…pink layout. This might stay a while, as long as I don’t get sick of it. :P Some things are still kind of confusing me (like where did my next and previous links go??? never mind, I found it), and I hope I could fix them all by tomorrow. If not, I’ll try to get them all done this week. :D

Anyway, it’s bed time. I have to say that WP 2.1 looks spiffy. :P But like I said, it’s bed time. Good night everyone!

P.S. I know! Go drop by Godchicks while I fix this! :) Go on, click!

Booked, Dear Diary, Say Cheese!, Updates

Of new layouts, meetings and books

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Okay, I finally got this layout up. It’s been sitting in my hard drive for too long, and it feels so good to be able to see something fresh in this domain. Now I can stop worrying about this. :D But if you find anything that looks out of whack, please do tell me. :D

Edit 011507, 6:06pm: The layout is centered on IE and the menu bar is quite spacey, plus there are some unaligned images within the content. On Opera it looks pretty much the same with Firefox…so I suggest you guys use Opera or Firefox! But don’t worry, I’ll fix this in IE. :D

MV Doulos, taken from my Camera phoneMy arms hurt. It feels the same way as when I lifted hollow blocks during this community service we had for FORMDEV back in college. And that was me lifting about fifty to seventy hollow blocks for the entire day. This was just because of lifting three bags of books from our MV Doulos trip yesterday.

Jomar, Chris, Happy and I were four happy bookworms who headed over to the MV Doulos book fair yesterday. When we got there, there was already a lot of people, and the bookshop was packed. It reminded me of some sort of an SM Megamall or Sta. Lucia East midnight madness sale. The place was hot, and you can barely move because you have to always adjust your book basket so as you won’t hit people as you walk. The words “Excuse me” will be a big requirement. ;)

BUT, even if it is hot and there are a lot of people…it was amazing. :) So many books, so many rare titles and really cheap prices! Books are priced by units, and the conversion is 1 unit = P1, so 100 units is P100. There were two “book areas”: the main book shop, where most of the titles are. Genres range from Christian Living and Inspiration (the biggest selection), Bibles, children’s books, atlas and references, cook books, art books and game books. There’s also a small section on CDs (mostly Contemporary Christian and some classics), tapes and little souvenirs such as pens and keychains which are available at the counter.

And then there’s this other area, which looks like a book sale since you have to look through the big carts to find a book you might like. There are also CDs and mugs available…but that’s not the best part. The books there are priced P50/novel! And they’re good condition novels too. The CDs are priced P50 for three CDs! Bargain, eh? The titles are quite old though, but if you’re a real book lover, you’d certainly get a couple or so of books there. I got seven. :P Haha.

Behold my MV Doulos stash:

MV Doulos CDsCDs (top to bottom in the picture):

  1. Rise (Building 429). B429‘s second album, which is one of my favorites. :) It costs P500, which is pretty normal, but because it’s not available in the country, I just have to buy this. :D There’s a slight damage on the CD case, but the contents are still in good condition.
  2. Warren Barfield (Warren Barfield). Mr. Barfield’s (swoon!) first album, which made us fall in love with him in the first place. :D One of my favorites, and this is a really rare gem. :)
  3. Say-So (Say-so). This is what I call “leap of faith”. Jomar showed me this CD and told me it was old alternative Christian music, and because I need three CDs to make it P50, I decided to get this since I’m an alternative kind of girl. I still have to listen to this. :D
  4. Sunny Day (John Cox). I know only of one John Cox song, Sanctuary, but because I know this artist, and this particular CD is cheap, I grabbed it. :D I’ve heard only the first few tracks but so far it sounds promising. :)
  5. Subscribe to the Vibe (Abundant). As most of you know, I’m not a party/club/bar person. I don’t really like dance/trance music because I can’t see its point. Happy urged me to buy this CD. I wondered how this CD would last with me, but when I played it last night, I actually liked it. :) That’s something new. :P I like what’s written inside the sleeve:

    Abundant is a collective of people committed to providing safe spaces and places of cultural expression. The inspiration for this project has been to combine the 90’s sound of the underground dancefloor with the inspirational gospel voice of praise to God, who makes all things possible for those who believe.

    Great stuff. :D

MV Doulos BooksAnd the books:

  1. Girl Time: A Celebration of Chick Flicks, Bad Hair Days & and Good Friends (Laura Jensen Walker). I wasn’t supposed to get this, but Happy pointed it, so I immediately dropped the other book and grabbed this. :D I love Laura Jensen Walker, and I’m halfway through the book already and I’m loving it. :) To my girl friends, we should do some stuff here soon!
  2. The Day I Was Crucified: As Told by Jesus Christ (Gene Edwards). I saw this once in a website, and I was curious, but I couldn’t find it here. I found it at Doulos, and for P150 only. :D I grabbed it, and I’m planning to read this by the Holy Week, since it’s about Christ’s passion. I think this is going to be a major tear-jerker.
  3. The Martyr’s Song (Ted Dekker). P100, hardcover and a free CD! I don’t usually buy hardcover, but this one is a thin one, and Happy told me this is a great book. :) Looking forward to reading this. :D
  4. Patience (Lori Copeland). A lighthearted romance, as said in the back of the book. This is one of my first Lori Copeland books, and it seems like a historical fiction too, and I hope it’s not boring. :)
  5. June (Lori Copeland). Same as above. :D
  6. Atonement Child (Francine Rivers). I’ve seen this for P400 at OMF, and it’s only P50 at Doulos! Haha. From the reviews it seems good. :D
  7. Last Sin Eater (Francine Rivers). Same as above. :)
  8. Scarlet Thread (Francine Rivers). And again, same as above. :)
  9. Leota’s Garden (Francine Rivers). Ditto.
  10. And the Shofar Blew (Francine Rivers). The summary of this book reminds me of The Visitation by Frank Peretti, sans the supernatural part. Tuesday already read this and she said it’s good, so there. :)

Now you see why my arms hurt. I had to lug that around, plus my SVP package (free Didache, Gabay, Companion and Sabbath — anyone want?)…although I’d have to thank the boys for carrying my packages half the time. ;) After eating lunch at Gary’s, Chris and I tagged along with Jomar for the Blogger Parteeh ’07 steering committee meeting (more details in another post about the parteeh next time. And yes, it’s spelled like that). I met some of the “famous” people in the blogosphere (haha, link baiting galore here): Migz, Juned, Rico, Sasha, Carlo and Mr. Abe himself (I have been lurking around his blog for so long already! haha). Fun discussions, and I look forward to seeing them again. Around 5:30, we parted ways and went home.

Now I have no idea where to place all these books. My bookshelves are full, and now all these new books are sitting on my sofa bed, waiting to be covered with plastic and placed somewhere. Again: I need a bookshelf. But I don’t have a place to put it here in my room. :-s

My arm still hurts, and the day is almost ending so tomorrow’s back to work. I hope these muscle pains subside tomorrow because it’s gym time in the morning tomorrow with my brother.

And this post is too long already. I should get out of my room and watch TV with my mom. She promised me a pedicure today, yahoo! :) Off I go. :D

Dear Diary, Updates

New layout among other things

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Hello, what do we have here? :) Finally a new layout. :) I wasn’t supposed to let this out until Wednesday but I decided to go ahead and have this up now before I lose interest in it. So here. Layout information will be updated here by tomorrow. This is the first dark layout I’ve done for my website! Like it? Comments are appreciated. :)

I missed RJ‘s celebration today because I fell asleep during the afternoon and missed the meeting time. Oh well. That’s why I went to finish this layout. And okay, fine, I was feeling a bit lazy to go out already. I swear, I have no social life. Well, little. I wish I have enough drive to go out and gimmick every weekend so at least I have enough activity. Haha. I feel like such a social loser. :P I need to get my act straight. Anyway, tomorrow is another Monday, and I am facing a lot of work for this week, I’m pretty sure of that. I’ll take it one day at a time, thank you very much. :) There’s a mid-week “vacation” for All Saint’s Day, and I kind of wish Thursday would be off too, but then, that’s work for you. Things to look forward to next week: payday and the possible lunch out with some officemates on Tuesday. :) Yeah yeah.

This weekend felt long. I need to fix some things here first before hitting the sack. Good night everyone! :)

Updates

Testing, testing, hello? Check, 1, 2…

Hello, hello? Is this new layout all ready and all?

I think? HAHA, YES! I finally made a new layout! :) Isn’t it spiffy? All colorful and cheerful and all? Because of my current unemployment status, I’ve decided to get on and make a new layout for my website because I was getting sick at looking at all the greens. Now it’s all rainbow-y and colorful and I love it! It’s been two years since I made a rainbow-y layout and I like this one better than the first one. :P

Anyway, this is my first time to really make a WordPress theme from scratch (the previous layout was based on Kubrick), and if you see some bugs, please don’t hesitate to tell me all about it. I still have to update some content to match the new layout, so if you see some traces of the past, wait a bit and I’ll have it renewed later. :) Hopefully I’ll be able to update everything tonight. :) I updated the content already and I think they all look spiffy. If I happen to miss anything, please tell me. :) And I’d have to note the update I did at the domain section, I added a longer and more detailed description of this layout. Go see. :D

So…tell me what you think! :) I’ll try to churn out some new layouts faster this time and OH YEAH! I have some more sites up my sleeve this time, so hold on tight and watch for changes and additions to refineme.org! :)

Have a rainbow-y day, everyone! :)

Updates

Hello world!

Testing, testing? Is this working already? All systems go?

Welcome to the brand new RefineMe.org! As you can see, I have put up a new layout (and my very first WordPress theme), and I started with a brand new (and empty) database. Why is that so? Besides the fact that I don’t think people read my archives (haha, bitter much?), I just want to start anew. :) Start fresh, start from scratch. I’m here to write more meaningful posts because I’m supposed to be mature like that. :P But one of the reasons lie along that line too.

Anyway, so this layout is obviously themed after my college graduation (YES, that’s me on the picture and not my nonexistent sister). The words on the header image are from Joy Williams‘ song entitled Say Goodbye from the album Genesis. I thought it was just appropriate for this current stage in my life, plus I really like the song, so there you go. The layout is mostly green because I’ll be graduating from this university and I thought it would be just proper to honor my alma mater by using the school colors. :)

Anyway, for now only the blog will be available since I am still in the process of re-writing the contents of the site. They will be available in the next few days so hang tight. :)

In the meantime, I’d really appreciate comments about the new layout and perhaps with the content as well, if you want say something about it too. If there are any weird things you see in the layout, then feel free to post a comment so I may fix it immediately.

There you go. Thank you for visiting the site and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you until I get tired of doing so. Haha. God bless everyone! :)