Who am I?

I am a full-time software engineer with a strong passion for web technology.  I started OMNINOGGIN as a personal blog in 2007 in an effort to share my knowledge in the general field of software engineering.  I wasn’t getting many readers by 2008, so I finally decided to niche-ify this blog into a blog that mainly talks about WordPress and a few other web development topics.

I developed my first WordPress plugin and wrote my first WordPress article in March 2008.

Now I have have authored 8 WordPress plugins and have written quite a bit of articles about WordPress on OMNINOGGIN.  In addition to that, I make it a point to write on Weblog Tools Collection about once week.

What I learned in the past year?

• The good
  • WordPress is a wonderful platform and I enjoy developing plugins for it very much.
  • To have a popular blog, it’s 80% what you know and 20% who you know.  Focus on writing great posts/plugins and the rest will take care of itself.
  • Sugar, Spice, and Vitamin blogging strategy works quite well for me.
  • Writing more documentation and troubleshooting guides for your own plugin helps save you a lot of time spent on support.
• The bad
  • Developing WordPress plugins for free will never make you enough money to compensate for your time spent, but it does get you more traffic.
  • Supporting a popular WordPress plugin is exhausting!

Do you enjoy my plugins and content?

I didn’t want to do this, but I just had to ask since it’s my birthday.

I spend a lot of time writing plugins/articles and I make them available for free.  If they have helped you in anyway, or if you are using them for commercial purposes, then I would love it if you can support me by any of the followinig methods:

• Making a donation (small or large, everything helps!)
• Buy the WordPress Plug-in Development book through my affiliate link
• Get your friends to subscribe to the OMNINOGGIN RSS feed
• Link to and/or write about one of my articles or plugins.

Of course this is not mandatory, but it would make a really great birthday gift!

What’s next?

I will continue to support and make updates to my current plugins, but I don’t see myself releasing any more plugins unless I think they will be as revolutionary as WP Greet Box and WP Minify.  I will also be launching a support forum for my plugins to encourage community discussion/support rather than just 1-on-1 support in comment forms.  With plugin support taking less time, I hopefully can focus on more WordPress articles and tutorials for you all!

As you may know from my about page, I am a full-time software engineer working in a startup company. To my surprise, some of my close colleagues were laid off today. I shouldn’t have been that surprised given the current economic conditions, but it is still shocking to see some of my close friends leave without being able to shake their hands.

I am deeply sorry to see my colleagues laid off (we’ve had some great times), but I am not worried for them. They are among the best at what they do and I am confident that they would be able to find a new job in no time.

As for me, I am thankful that I wasn’t one of the ones chosen, but I can’t be relieved yet.

What did I learn from this?

1. I alone cannot make major impacts to the economy, so there is no use stressing over my job security. I am better off if I stop worrying/complaining and put my brain and two hands to good use.
2. Knowing a little about a lot of things is a lot better than knowing a lot about a few things. It keeps you versatile so you are ready for whatever life throws at you.
3. Passive income is the best kind of income.  Building stable residual income a few cents at a time adds up quicker than you think.  This can help offset any financial crisis.

Because of this, I will be focusing on web entrepreneurship even more than before.  This site will have a regular posting schedule.  My WordPress plugins will receive more updates and enhancements.  I am also planning on launching a few niche sites.

I truly hope that none of you are affected by this U.S. economic crisis, but if you are, please stay positive, persistent, and disciplined.  With every crisis comes an opportunity.  With every down there is an up.  Learn to utilize this crisis to your advantage.  In the end, I hope you will be there with me during the upward swing to reap the rewards.

Don’t you wish your work place was as cool as ours?

Prank #1: Balloons-filled Office

First let me share the video of our lead engineer, Aleksey, returning from a one week vacation. He is welcomed back with an office filled with extra-extra-large balloons.

Prank #2: Employees Versus Office Filled With Peanuts

Next, just recently my manager, Tatyana, also left for a one week vacation. Working on the ‘let’s fill thing up things’ theme, a few people at work decided to welcome her back by filling her office with packaging peanuts.

Being environmentally conscious we used heat-shrinking weather stripping film to create a wall of packaging peanuts at the window an the door frame. So [unfortunately] no, we did not fill up the entire office. Luckily the previous balloons incident really had her believing that the office was completely filled with packaging peanuts.

Here is a video of the ‘opening’ ceremony. Watch what happens when somebody (Xander) tries to run through the film.


It’s times like these that I really appreciate working with such great/entertaining people. I’ll being posting more prank recordings as soon as more people go on vacation so stay tuned to the RSS feed.

One of my friends down in LA likes to put on a “light show” every Halloween… of course light and sound synchronized. He’s a bit of an Oingo Boingo fan (so sound’s required, sorry).

Sound is played quietly for pedestrians (until 9pm), and he broadcasts the music on 99.1 … not sure the FCC likes that, but… oh well.

And yeah… as a day job, he’s a Disney Imagineer — and one of the loony folks that went to Japan with us a few years back (yes, primarily just to ride roller coasters).

I wish I had the technical expertise to do something this grand at my house. Oh well, at least there is Halloween 2009. Lots of time for me to study up until then. Happy programming!

P.S. If you are interested. I was The Joker for Halloween of 2008. Check it out!

1. File Server (mainly used for backups)
2. Torrents
3. PVR System
4. Personal FTP Server (mainly used for syncing settings with my work computer)
5. MyCast Orb Sharing

I immediately saw that I can give up MyCast Orb Sharing, since I haven’t used it for months.

Next, I notice that the only shows I record with my PVR are nighttime shows (TV Series) that starts after 8pm every day. I then went into my BIOS to have my computer automatically boot at 7:45pm every day to be ready for recording. I then changed all my backup scripts and syncing scripts on all my machines to run between 8pm and 9pm. Now I can manually shutdown my computer like normal people before they go to bed.

Lastly, I had torrents that needed to be running at all times. I decided to move these to my web server machine that only uses 40W of power. Since my web server is idle 99% of the time, this will give it something to do when it’s bored. The only problem I had was that my OS does not have a GUI installed which makes torrent management quite painful. I was ready to face the facts until I luckily found Torrentflux-b4rt. Torrentflux-b4rt is a web torrent management tool that uses Bittornado, Bittorrent Mainline, Azureus, or Transmission as the backend. The interface is skinnable and there are plenty of features (the two most important to me are: Bandwidth Caps and Data Encryption). It’s up and running now and I am loving it.

It takes a bit of originality and compromises to help save the planet. I’m proud to have done this task for mother nature.

*Update 4/8/08*
I just got my PG&E bill today and our energy bill dropped from $413.44 to $292.55 within a month. That’s $120.89 difference (a 1/4 of an average car payment)! To be fair, the weather has gotten less cold so we are using less central heating. Nevertheless I’m sure that my 150W savings has got to count for a substantial chunk of the savings.

1. On idle, my web server takes 40 Watts to power.
2. On idle, my personal desktop takes 150 Watts to power (not including the monitor or other peripherals).
3. In case of power outage, my computer will automatically shutdown if power is not restored within 1 minute.
4. In case of power outage, the battery be able to supply power to my web server for 100 minutes.
5. Good battery life is maintained by keeping the battery fully charged. In the case of power outages, your computers should be turned off as soon as possible to avoid deep discharge.

Have you ever seen one of these bottles selling in Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s? Do you ever wonder what it is and why the heck each bottle cost $4? A few months ago, I decided to find out what it is myself and forked out $4 for a raspberry flavored one. Once I opened the cap, the liquid started fizzing and foaming (naturally carbonated). I took a sip and it tasted nothing like what I was expecting. The drink was quite sour and had an odd after taste to it. I didn’t like it at all, but I figured that I should finish it and make it worth $4. About fifteen minutes later, I was in for a surprise.

I suddenly had a burst of energy, even more than the burst I get from Red Bull. At the same time, I became a tiny bit tipsy and started to sweat. The tipsy feeling wore off in about 10 minutes but the energy burst kept me going for a good few hours. After that incident, I was determined to find out WTF this drink is and what is it supposed to do to you. Visiting the trusty Wikipedia entry on Kombucha helped me find out that this drink promises vitality restoration and DOES NOT guarantee to cure anything. The odd thing was that even though the drink made no promises, many Kombucha Tea drinkers report illnesses vanishing. Some stories I’ve heard are: fat people becoming skinny, skinny people becoming healthy, cancers stopped growing, people sleeping better, people waking up more refreshed. I also have my own stories too, but I will go into that later. This all sounded interesting but $4 per bottle is too expensive to make this a daily drink.

I then found out that I could actually brew fresher Kombucha Tea myself at home at minimal cost (pennies to a gallon). I bought a starter mushroom (that will last forever) for $30 and then followed the tutorial from Wikihow. Within a week, my first batch finished and I had my own Kombucha Tea!

My parents and I have been drinking Kombucha Tea daily for the past 2 months. After drinking it a few times, it starts to taste good . Here is a list of our success stories to date:

1. Dad: My dad has a kidney problem so he usually gets out of bed 6-8 times per night to urinate. After drinking this tea for a month, he’s down to urinating once a night and sometimes none at all!
2. Mom: One day my mom was extremely exhausted and was too tired to cook dinner for the family. She drank a glass and became fully energetic and fully restored within 30 minutes. Also my mom is going through menopause and one of the side affects is frequent midnight insomnia. Her daily drinking has also kept her sound asleep for many nights now. Lastly, ever since she started drinking Kombucha Tea my mom has gone through her periods without any backaches.
3. Me: A month ago I had a sore throat. I drank a cup of a Kombucha Tea and 4 hours later, my sore throat was gone. Maybe it’s a bad correlation but what else could it be? I also feel that my junk food cravings are lessening and my fresh food cravings are increasing. Right now if I had to choose between a Twix bar and an apple, I would choose the apple. Other than that I don’t notice anything different except for the energy burst (maybe it’s because I’m still young and I don’t have an illness yet).

I’m curious what this drink will do to you too. If you decide to ever try this drink please let me know what happens! Leave a comment!

“Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players, written from scratch. It runs on a wide range of players…”
- rockbox.org

The Apple iPod line has always been the bottom of my sh*t list. Don’t get me wrong, the iPod is stylish and the music quality is great. The only beef I have against the iPod is its music management. Almost everybody I know (including my non-geeky-girlfriend) hates how you have to use iTunes to get music onto the iPod. Here is the beginning of an endless list of iTunes woes:

1. iTunes is DRM compliant
2. iTunes is a slow P.O.S. software.
3. iTunes thinks you don’t know how to organize your own music, so it sticks your music into your iPod the way it thinks it ought to be organized.
4. iTunes will automatically delete songs from your iPod if it cannot find them in your library (image if you’ve moved a few of your music folders and did not update your library)
5. …you may add your own woes in the comments…

Notice that I did not mention “iTunes cannot be bypassed” in the list because, I have finally found a way that lets you do exactly that, bypass iTunes! I’ve tried Anapod Explorer (not-free), EPHPod (free but doesn’t work on new generation iPods), and countless other iTunes substitutes with no luck. I gave up on my battles with iTunes for a good 10 months until I found Rockbox. Rockbox rocks because:

1. It is free.
2. It let’s you kill iTunes, making music management the way it’s supposed to be (drag-and-drop to your ipod device!)
3. It has more features than the iPod firmware (EQ, cross-fader, party mode, car adapter mode, etc.)
4. It has themes support.
5. It works.
6. …please add your own positive notes about rockbox in the comments…

I have killed iTunes on my computer and my girlfriend’s computer and we do not intend to look back. Check out what my iPod looks like now and Join the party. Take that CrApple! That’s for developing useless software!

I started my attempts at quitting after 1 year of smoking. I spent another year attempting to quit by repeatedly trying the popular quitting methods (counseling, nicotine substitution, cold turkey, shock therapy), but none of them worked. After 2 or 3 weeks, my cravings would take hold of me and I was forced to go back to square one.

After I thought all hope was lost, a friend of mine (Peter) recommended Allan Carr’s book, “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking“. He said that the book takes a whole different approach to quitting. The author gives simple instructions on how to quit AND one of the instructions is: continue to smoke until you finish reading the book! I was not ready to believe that a book can help me quit, but I bought the book anyway because $15 is chump change compared to how much the other methods (except for cold turkey) cost.

I stopped smoking just a little before I finished reading the book. To date, I have had no dire craving since my quit date. I even drank with a bunch of smokers a couple of times and did not feel the urge to light one up. Even after going through the quitting process and looking back, I still do not know how it works. It just does! I would recommend this book to anybody that is serious about quitting. It’s the best $15 I have ever spent in my life.

Here is some more information on Fox News.

Also, free quit smoking advice by Allan Carr.

1. Researched which state had the cheapest cell phone tax (found out that it was Nevada with 1.14% tax rate).
2. Opt for e-statement, so Sprint emails me statements instead of sending me a paper statements to my home address.
3. Change my address online to Caesar’s Palace Casino:
   3570 LAS VEGAS BLVD S
   LAS VEGAS, NV 89109
4. Start supporting the Nevada State government and watch my bill go down.

Here is the result of changing my billing address.

Before:

Government Taxes & Fees
       San Jose City Utility Users Surcharge 		1.17
       California 911 Tax 				0.11
       California Universal Lifeline Tele Service	0.25
       California Teleconnect Fund Surcharge 		0.03
       California Relay Service Device Fund 		0.08
       California High Cost Fund Surcharge 		0.28
       California State Excise Tax Surcharge 		0.05
       San Jose City 911 				1.75

Surcharges & Fees
       California P.U.C. Tax Surcharge 			0.04
       Federal Usf Non-ld Surcharge 			0.92
       Federal Wireless Number Pooling And Portability 	0.15
       Federal E911 					0.40

Total $5.23

After:

Government Taxes & Fees
       Nevada Relay Service Device Fund 		0.03

Surcharges & Fees
       Clark County Gross Receipts Surcharge 		0.75
       Federal Usf Non-ld Surcharge 			0.92
       Federal Wireless Number Pooling And Portability 	0.15
       Federal E911 					0.40

Total $2.25

Three cents in Nevada related taxes. Notice that there is a Clark County surcharge that offsets the savings a little bit, but my taxes were still reduced by more than 50% overall. With this number, I’m only saving a $30 a year, but that’s because my monthly plan is low. People with more expensive plans will save a lot more since the Clark County surcharge is a flat fee.

Conclusion

If you have a cell phone, join me in sticking it to the man by using this loop-hole.