I Am Blogie

In an effort to bring attention to a serious social problem in the Philippines, Kraft Foods Phils. has undertaken a worthy corporate social responsibility project called Cheez Whiz Palamantasan ng Sarap, Sustansya at Saya. In coordination with the Department of Education, this nationwide campaign was launched in Davao City last 17 July 2010 to help address the problem of under- and malnutrition among Filipino children.

“Palamantasan ng Sarap” — a witty play of words, don’t you think? The idea, according to Cheez Whiz senior brand manager, Paolo Serrano, is to make an educational campaign more fun so that kids will take to it and, thus, learn from it. If you take a look at the Palamantasan website, you’ll know what they mean by engaging kids in a way that’ll get their attention.

At the launching of Palamantasan in Davao, which was held at the Buhangin Central Elementary School, several local grade schools participated in competitions that were designed to create awareness of nutrition issues. There were the usual contests, such as the Sabayang Pagbigkas (group speech contest), cheering, and essay-writing. There was also a unique event called “Jarchitecture“, where participating pupils unleashed their creativity in crafting buildings or robots made of empty Cheez Whiz bottles and caps.

The contest that I liked, though, was the Mom & Child Sandwich-Making Contest. There were three teams that competed at Buhangin Central, and it was fun to watch the pairs (two mom-and-daughter and one mom-and-son teams) concoct fancy- and yummy-looking healthy snacks.

“These schoolchildren are at the stage of developing a sense of responsibility,” explains Serrano. “This is why we want them to realize the significance of proper nutrition themselves — through a series of fun, creative and learning activities.”

Studies by the Philippine government have shown that millions of Filipino children are malnourished. That’s why, among the poorer sectors of society, it’s not uncommon to see ten-year-old kids looking like they were barely six. This could stem from the lack of education about proper nutrition in many Filipino families. What Kraft Foods has started, therefore, is worthy of praise.

I hope that many more big corporations, especially those involved in the food industry, will take it upon themselves to help eradicate the country’s nutrition problems. Better yet, it would be great for other companies to get on board and make a pledge to theh Palamantasan initiative. It will ultimately benefit them, too, because they would be ensuring a healthy workforce for the future.

As for schools that aren’t yet part of the program, they would do well to urge their students to join Palamantasan. I remember when I was in Grade School, it was always fun to take part in those fun-filled activities that involved food. Little did we know that we were in fact learning from the experience already! As Palamantasan has reminded me, the best way to get kids interested is to get their attention through exciting and challenging activities — and with a full stomach in the mix, the Cheez Whiz Palamantasan program certainly concocted the best formula!

I got an inquiry from one of my blog’s readers about post pagination, which I used in my previous post. Well, it’s very simple. To split your post into separate sub-pages, simply use the WordPress Quicktag, <!--nextpage-->.

Remember the <!--more--> tag? It cuts the post where it’s placed when the post appears in the blog’s front page. The <!--nextpage--> tag, on the other hand, works as a ‘paginator’ for single posts, and divides them into sub-pages where they’re placed. You can have as many pages as you like (but don’t over do it).

For example (use the HTML view when inserting the quicktag):

[html toolbar="false" highlight_lines="5"]

Step #5

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Please see the next page for the last 3 steps.
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Step #6

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As you might have seen in my last post:

And we can even do it right now! (Make sure to click on Page 2)

I’ve recently purchased a premium plugin for creating the mobile edition of my WordPress sites: WPtouch™ 2.0 Pro. I’d been using the free version of WPtouch (up to v1.9.16) and had been quite happy with it, so I decided to give the paid version a go. The premium version promised better features, you see. And, so far, I’m really satisfied with this plugin by Brave New Code (BNC). The $29 (Canadian) price tag seems really worth it, considering the broad functionality the plugin offers.

WPtouch doesn’t only give you added reach — by making your WordPress-powered sites available to the increasing number of mobile Internet users out there — but it also presents new opportunities for exploring the mobile platform for your online presence.

When you install and activate WPtouch 2.0 Pro, you will have access to its dashboard (“WPtouchboard“), where you will be able to tinker with tons of tweakable settings. There are visual controls over the design and back-end aspects of your mobile site, such as input boxes for ad placements (currently supported: AdSense & Admob) and statistics tracking (you can embed your Google Analytics code). On the other hand, you have complete control over the plugin’s code — it is GPL, after all — so you can dive in and swim around the plugin’s internal workings all you like.

One huge difference between the free and paid versions of WPtouch is in theme management. In the free version, you only get one theme, and if you modify it, you’ll lose the mods when the plugin is upgraded. In WPtouch Pro, you can create your own themes and get to keep the mods & customizations across plugin upgrades. What’s more, BNC promises to ship more themes in the near future. But if you’re a theme designer, you can actually make use of the built-in skeleton template and create your own unique theme!

By the way, BNC is looking for theme designers who’re willing to contribute to the pool. If they ship your theme with the plugin, that’s going to be a good advertising opportunity for your services! I don’t know what other benefits you might receive — why don’t you go ahead and find out for yourself?

What’s an iPhone app without cool, shiny icons? Another WPtouch feature is its skinning capability. You can choose from the 200+ icons that come with the plugin for use on your mobile site, or you can upload your own. You can also create an iPhone home-screen icon for use when you create a home-screen bookmark (BNC calls it “WebApp”), as well as a splash page that appears when you launch the WebApp. When you create a WebApp, your mobile site will be displayed in full-screen mode. No navigation, no address bar. Excellent for keeping your visitors glued to your site, no? (Now, all you’ll need is to make sure you got great content!)

One more thing I appreciate in the way BNC designed this plugin is that, WPtouch is made to be aware of other plugins in your WordPress installation. If there are conflicting plugins, WPtouch will let you know about it. Plus, there’s an option to disable plugins that are not compatible with WPtouch when your site is loaded on a mobile platform. On the flip side, it will also tell you with which other plugins it works best.

Since WordPress 3.0 was launched, I’m sure you’ve noticed the Get Shortlink button below the post title input field in the Add New / Edit Post screen, beside the post’s permalink. (See image below.) It’s a nifty feature made available to us by good old WordPress.org for shortening our posts’ URLs. Clicking on it will give you a wp.me URL which will redirect to your blog post. (This post’s shortlink, for example, is http://wp.me/pqxl6-Y.)

If you promote your blog posts via Twitter or Plurk, you probably use a plugin for auto-posting to those online services. However, if you’re the type who wants to personalize your shout-outs that go with your blog post link — maybe so you can insert hashtags — you’d have to manually add the post URL yourself, don’t you? And if the URL’s too long, you’d have to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.com (or any of the scores of similar services), right?

Not anymore. With wp.me shortlinks, your WordPress blog now has a built-in URL shortener! Don’t you just love WordPress!?!

But wait, there’s more!! (Am I sounding like a TV salesman already? )

What if you wanted to make the shortlink visible on the blog for everyone to see? That’s exactly what I did with my food blog. See, sometimes I go back to old posts and promote them on Twitter and Facebook. Instead of having to go inside the dashboard and get the shortlink from the Edit Post screen, I can now just go to the blog post (or even the search results page) and copy the shortlink from under the title. Take a look at this screen shot of a couple of front-page posts from Davao Delicious:

Notice the “[shortlink]” text below the titles? By using a WP template tag, I was able to output the shortlink of each post onto various locations of the blog: the main page, single posts, archives, and the search results page. (And my other blogs are sure to follow suit.)

Here’s how to do it. There is just one new template tag involved: the_shortlink(). This tag must be placed inside The Loop, otherwise it won’t work. And, according to the Codex, it will only work on WordPress sites that implement pretty permalinks.

[php toolbar="false" gutter="false"]

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Here’s how my code looks like:

[php toolbar="false" highlight_lines="5"]

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The first parameter, $text, can be any string that you’d like to be seen by your site’s visitors. The next parameter, $title, is for the tooltip text that will appear on mouse-over. If you leave it blank, the default is the post’s title. The last two, $before and $after are for HTML codes and/or more text that you’d like to appear before and after the shortlink.

All of the parameters are optional. However, leaving the first one blank will result in this text link: “This is the short link.” Kinda fugly if you ask me, so it might be best to supply your own expression.

That’s it! Have fun with the WordPress URL shortener!

N.B.: Each post (and page, including the front page) actually has an assigned wp.me URL. If you view the page source, you’ll see the shortlink in the header. That is, if you’ve activated the WordPress.com Stats plugin and specified that the shortlink be published as meta data.

Izakaya 【居酒屋】 /n/ tavern, pub; traditional Japanese bar.
Nonki 【呑ん気】 /adj/ carefree, optimistic; happy-go-lucky.

I don’t know exactly why the owners decided on the “Nonki” name, but one of the Japanese characters for it does carry the meaning for drinking, so… At any rate, I’m glad that we now have a branch of Nonki Japanese Restaurant in Davao, because their offerings are pretty good. The main restaurant is in Mandaue City, and two more branches are in the cities of Cebu and Lapu-Lapu.

I’ve only been there once (today, in fact, with a couple of high school friends), so I won’t say anything final yet. I’ll have to go back and try their other dishes. Some friends who’ve been there a lot, though, have told me that they do enjoy the food (and the ample parking) at Nonki. Plus, I saw quite a few Japanese diners, which is always a good sign.

The Gyoza (₱120) left something to be desired, but it wasn’t bad at all. I guess maybe it was the sauce that was lacking in taste. On the other hand, the other appetizer we had, the Nonki Maki Special (₱215), was a delight. It’s a dish of shrimp and asparagus rolls, sprinkled with black sesame seeds. I wonder, maybe it would’ve been a much better dish if the shrimp were fresh (I mean, not cooked)…?

Izakaya Nonki offers the full range of Japanese cuisine — dishes that you’re familiar with, and some that might surprise you. And they have a good selection of spirits, too, as well as sake. (They sell Asahi Beer in cans for ₱120.) They actually have a huge selection of Japanese food, so what I suggest is to order one of their lunch specials. I had the Nabeyaki Udon and Spicy Tuna Tekka Maki Set (₱310), which I couldn’t finish because the portions were so big! The udon was just the way I like it: supple, firm and tasty.

Another set, which Kit ordered, the Sashimi and Beef Teppan Set (₱290) looks interesting too. I think maybe I’ll try that next time. The sashimi platter has squid, octopus, salmon and gindara (I think, but I’m not totally sure if it was gindara). These lunch specials come with dessert: ice cream or fresh fruits.

They also have bento boxes. Silvia’s lunch was the Beef Teriyaki Bento (₱270), which was a good mix of beef teriyaki (good, but tasted too much of onion), a few pieces of shrimp and vegetable tempura, a couple of California maki, and heavenly rice.

Nonki looks and feels like an honest-to-goodness izakaya — complete with hollering waitstaff (“Irasshaimase!!!”) — and the service is prompt and efficient. The restaurant is in its own building, in that strip-mall type of place on F. Torres street in downtown Davao, right beside the Davao Trade & Convention Center.

They’re open daily, from 11:30am to 2:00pm, and then from 5:30pm to 11:00pm. For inquiries and reservations, call 226-3058 or text (922)894-8254.

Nonki Japanese Restaurant
Autobille Bldg., F. Torres St., Davao City
Tel. +63(82)226-3058

[Media Release]

From a host in local TV variety show to a lead starrer in a top-rating television series, Dabawenya actress Bangs Garcia is definitely making a significant leap in Philippine showbiz. In the latest edition of M (Life and Living in Mindanao) Magazine, Bangs bares her hits and misses, her triumphs and ordeals as she continues to pursue her dreams.

Joining Bangs in the pages of M Magazine’s ninth issue are esteemed Mindanawon civic leaders, Atty. Leoncio “Nonoy” Villa Abrille and Irene “Inday” Morada Santiago; together with Sulu’s top visual artist, Rameer Amilasan Tawasil; and Indonesian Consul General Lalu Malik Partanawa, who shares his country’s longtime friendship with Mindanao.

Thrilled to travel around Mindanao? Get some tips on where and what’s new to explore on the island, such as wakeboarding in Mindanao’s first wakeboard park; nature-tripping in Lake Sebu; conquering the peak of Bukidnon’s Mt. Kitanglad; braving the wild waters of Cagayan de Oro; making a stopover at Tandag City; or joining the epic voyage of the Balangays.

Flip through the fashion section and be mesmerized by award-winning photographer Rhonson Ng’s underwater glam shots of Davao’s top mannequins; and Niko Villegas’ dazzling images, featuring the gem-inspired designs of Egay Ayag, Joao Tarepe, Patahian, and Argento de Salvador, as modeled by Mutya ng Dabaw 2010 Janelle Tee. What’s more, Davao’s premier houses of style, Rue Chephri and Martish, unveil their latest chic and elegant collections of designer brands in this issue.

Also in this issue are fascinating pieces on Zamboanga’s sardine canning industry, Davao del Sur’s healthy coconut products, Butuan’s AQEM theater in education, plus a spotlight on Mindanao’s entertainment and wellness enclaves, parties and festive events, contemporary lifestyle, and many more.

M Magazine, Mindanao’s first and only travel and lifestyle quarterly publication, is available in all National Bookstore, Fully Booked, Power Books, Forewords, and Christian Ventures outlets; and in more than 200 bookstores and magazine stands nationwide. In Davao City, get your copies of M Magazine at Babasahin (Victoria Plaza, SM City, NCCC Mall, Gaisano Mall), MetroLifestyle Complex (Bo’s Coffee, Krua Thai, Metro Gym), National Bookstore (Gaisano Mall, SM City), Farfalla Pasta Bar, Gaisano Mall Supermarket, Lachi’s, Basti’s Coffee, Agencia Nina Jewelry (Victoria Plaza, JP Laurel, Bankerohan, Gaisano South, Gaisano Mall), ProMark and Davao Periodicals outlets.

Oyako (親子) is a Japanese term that means “parent-child”. In Japanese cuisine there’s a tasty dish I like that’s called oyako-don, which is a bowl of rice toppings of chicken and egg. And why am I talking about this? WordPress’ child themes!

Ever got tired of copying over the changes you’ve made to your templates each time your theme is upgraded? Ever lost template changes after upgrading your WordPress theme? Well don’ fret, because here’s something that I’m sure you’ll find heaven-sent.

Child themes have existed since WordPress 2.7 (but I’ve only now gotten around to tinkering with it), and it’s the best way to go about modifying — and keeping the changes to — your themes’ templates.

I’ve started using child themes in some of my blogs. Take a look at the screenshot of Blogie Blog’s dashboard, showing the child theme:

Basically, when you use child themes, you can create a separate theme (based on the parent theme) that will hold all your template modifications. So, when your theme provider publishes an update, you can update the parent theme and keep the changes you’ve made in the child theme.

Child themes inherit all the templates (index.php, single.php, etc.) from its parent — that is, those templates that you don’t override. One template that must be unique to the child theme, however, is style.css. That’s right: when you create a child theme, it must have its own stylesheet file.

If you’ve read the Codex, you’ll know that you’ll need to create a style.css file and that’s where you’ll place your own style declarations for your site. And, to include all the style declarations from the parent theme, you’ll need to import it into your new stylesheet file (using @import). This is all that’s required for you to have a child theme.

If you create a new single.php template for your child theme, it will override the parent theme’s template. This is useful for those templates that you want to modify to suit your needs. The templates that you don’t override will simply be inherited by the child theme. In fact, you’ll notice that the parent theme’s templates will appear in your child theme’s list of templates (Appearance > Editor).

Some things to watch out for when using child themes–

When overriding templates (e.g., header.php), check to see if hyperlink calls are properly formatted. Some theme designers use the WordPress function <?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?> to call theme images or CSS files. For example:

[php toolbar="false"]

On this blog, the above code will resolve to the following:

[html toolbar="false"]

Please take very careful note of this: Even if the above sample code is placed in a child theme template, the <?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?> function will still return the URL of the parent theme. On the other hand, the WordPress function <?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?> will always return the URL of the style.css template of the active theme. So, if you have a piece of code like below placed in a child theme’s template, the latter function will most certainly return the URL of the child theme’s style.css file.

[php toolbar="false"]

Child themes don’t seem to see below its parent theme’s directory. I use WooThemes’ excellent themes, and their theme files (PHP templates, CSS files, images, JS files) are organized in sub-folders. All the main PHP templates (index.php, page.php, archive.php, etc.) are in the root directory of the theme, but most of the support files are placed in sub-folders. It seems that the files in those sub-folders are not accessible to child themes… You see, I tried to override some of the templates existing in the parent theme’s sub-folder by recreating those templates and sub-folders under the child theme’s own directory. No go.

Solution: change the hyperlinks calling those templates (or images, etc.) to reflect the actual locations.

So far, I’ve only been experimenting with the fundamentals of WordPress child themes. I know there’s a lot more to it, especially in the functions.php arena. To get you started on that, do read this article.

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of earlier blog posts, I absolutely love spicy food. That’s why I was very happy when a friend told me about Taste of Malaysia. They serve hot, spicy dishes that taste really yummy! When I first went there, it was just for drinks, although I did sample their Beef Satay (₱175). That made me decide to come back for more. Which I did yesterday with two friends in tow.

The best and tastiest dish we ordered was their Beef Curry (₱199), which is good for two people. I loved that distinctly Malaysian flavor of curry, which is quite different from the Japanese or Thai varieties. And the rich sauce went very well with the Papadam (₱50), a type of flatbread or cracker that you’ll also find in Indian cuisine. (An order comes in 6 pieces.) For me, though, the curry wasn’t spicy enough — because my friends don’t like tongue-biting spicy food — but they gave me a hot sauce that they call Blatian. Now that’s what I call spicy!

Of course I had to have the beef satay again, but we also got the Chicken Satay (₱110), which was not bad, but I liked the beef better. Each order comes with this lovely peanut dip that made me crave for more rice… (Shucks!)

We also had an order of Taste of Malaysia’s Kangkong with Shrimp Paste (₱85), which was also a bit spicy. I assume the vegetables are steamed, then marinated in soy sauce and bagoong, with a few pieces of steamed shrimp. One serving is good for three and is a perfect match for their meat dishes.

The place looks nice, too. It has two airconditioned sections, one being used as a coffee shop, and there’s an al fresco area as well. For small meetings, they also have a function room equipped with an LCD projector. I will definitely go back to Taste of Malaysia soon! (I need to see what kinds of food to order for when I go to Kuala Lumpur this month…)

Taste of Malaysia is located at the back of the Jetti gas station on J.P. Laurel Ave., Lanang, Davao City. It’s right by the entrance of the Bloomfields village. Telephone: 234-0004.

Taste of Malaysia
Jetti Bloomfields
Lanang, Davao City