Go Beyond Words

I just found out on my blog dashboard that the blog of the Wisdom Publications is the top fastest growing blog. Congratulations. The blog is full of good stuffs for Buddhists, one of which is a post about the most outstanding women in Buddhism award, which was given out last March here in Bangkok. Krisadawan also got the award as is perhaps well known to many of us.

If you are interested, go to http://gobeyondwords.wordpress.com/

Filed under: Vajrayana , blog, fastest growing blog, go beyond words, publisher, religion, Wisdom Publications, women

Twitter

Finally I am a member of the Twitter community. For those who don’t know this, Twitter is like WordPress, only that it is much shorter. You are allowed only 140 characters of posting in your “blog.” No more. This is like sending short messages from the cell phone. In fact Twitter and the cell phone fit each other like hand and glove.

WordPress has receognized the power of Twitter by putting a new widget so that blog readers can have access to the Twitter microblog right inside the WordPress blog. But Twitter has charms of its own. I have been thinking how the limits posed by the 140 characters has some significance. I am reminded of short aphorisms that some philosophers like Nietzsche or perhaps Schopenhauer were doing. Nietzsche has a book consisting of short messages which are not entirely connected. You can read one aphorism and then skip many others and come back and forth.

The purpose of Twitter is originally to let your friends know what you are “up to.” But then one can think up many other applications. One can put up interesting thoughts, short texts which fit with the way of life of people who do not have time to read anything longer than a sentence. See, this post is now more than 200 words long, but Twitter would limit that to 140 characters! No doubt it can hold much more members since it severely limits the length of the post.

So if you would like to know what I am up to, then take a look at the Twitter widget on your right. Or click this link. So there are both ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ blogs. The internet is really amazing.

Filed under: Not exactly about Buddhism , 140 characters, aphorism, blog, cell phone, instant communication, microblog, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, short messages, Twitter, wordpress

New Blog

I have moved the blog of the Center for Ethics of Science and Technology, Chulalongkorn University to its new home here at WordPress. Please go and have a look at http://cestchula.wordpress.com/

Thanks.

Filed under: philosophy , blog, ethics, science, technology, wordpress

Fellow Bloggers

I just had a look at the dashboard of my blog and found that it is linked to by another blog. This blog (Enlightenment Ward) put my blog here under the category of a Buddhist blog by a male practitioner. Some classification indeed. There are also categories of blogs by women practitioners, blogs by monks, nuns and others I didn’t remember.

It is indeed an honor to be linked to by a fellow blogger. And somehow I found it rather odd that this blog is put under the category of a ‘Buddhist blog by a practitioner.’ For one thing, this blog is “mostly” about Buddhism, but not “exclusively.” So I talk about other things, such as tennis, Thai politics, the internet, and right now in this blog I’m talking about other blogs. But thanks any way for linking to me. I am sure to link back.

Another thing is that this blog is even not always in English. So Thai readers find it rather difficult to follow it because about 80% of the time this blog is in English, but perhaps English readers might wonder what is going on in some of the posts in Thai. So you can pick and choose.

Maybe I’ll wait until somebody else picks this blog up for other things than Buddhism. Perhaps blogs about “all sorts of topics”. Sometimes there is a classification like this, you know. No, but seriously, this blog is for the most part about Buddhism, and I intend it to be that way.

Enlightenment Ward put me under the category of a “practitioner.” This kind of gave me goose bumps, because the word seems to conjure an image of someone who’s serious, with shaven head, sits cross-legged all the time, etc. But I think I am everything else but that. I do meditate from time to time, but perhaps that is not enough to dampen any surprise that will happen once someone sees me who has heard about me being listed as a practitioner.

But in any case, I am certain that I take at least this part of my Bodhisattva vow seriously — I would like this blog to contribute to sentient beings’s eventual realization of Buddhahood. But there are so many ways to Buddhahood….

Filed under: Uncategorized , blog, blogging, Language, meta-blog, musings, not about Buddhism, nothing, wordpress

Visitors’ Location

I have found a nifty website where you can download a code that shows you the location of the visitor’s location on this website. It’s IPligence. If you have a website you might want to give this a look. The map generated looks better than the other visitor’s map site that I have encountered.

Filed under: Uncategorized , blog, internet, visitor's map, website, wordpress

Back to the Old Theme

I have tried the new Albeo theme for a while, and as I said in the previous post, I kind of feel a bit uneasy with all the fish swimming in there. So I decided to change it back to Chaos Theory, which is now the current theme of this blog. Another thing is that Albeo missed a lot of my links.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Albeo, blog, Chaos Theory, theme, wordpress

New Theme

WordPress has launched this new theme, called ‘Albeo’, which is what you are seeing right now on this blog. It looks quite good, but perhaps I would prefer less ‘fish’ swimming around on the site. Nonetheless it gives a change from the dark and serious theme that I have been using on this blog for quite some time.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Albeo, blog, theme, wordpress

Word Image

I found out this website Wordle where you can input text and watch the Java program generate an image consisting of words in the text. Very nifty. Here is a portion of the image generated by the text in this very blog:

What is surprising is that the word ‘time’ gets a very large share. I did not know I wrote the word so many times. But perhaps the logic of the program works differently. Now here is the big picture (I have to compress it for this blog, but you can click on it to look at it in full size):

Filed under: Uncategorized , blog, images, text images, wordle, wordpress

การปรับขนาดตัวหนังสือ

ผมเขียนภาษาไทยในบล๊อกนี้ไม่บ่อยนัก เพราะคิดว่าคนที่อ่านบล๊อกนี้ก็อ่านภาษาอังกฤษกันได้หมดอยู่แล้ว อย่างไรก็ตาม หากตัวหนังสือภาษาไทย (หรือภาษาอังกฤษ) ในบล๊อกนี้เล็กเกินไป คุณก็สามารถปรับขนาดได้เอง โดยถ้าใช้โปรแกรม Internet Explorer ก็ไปที่เมนู View แล้วไปที่ Text size แล้วก็เลือกขนาดให้ใหญ่ขึ้นตามต้องการได้ครับ

 

Filed under: Language, computer , blog, text size issue, Thai fonts, Thai language, wordpress

New Template

I love fiddling around with the various templates that WordPress offers us. This present template looks like a suitable one at least for a time being. I don’t like white backgrounds because the screen sends out strong glaring light which sometimes makes the letters rather hard to read, especially at night. So black background appears the way to go. This kind of reminds me of the “good old days” when there was little graphic on the computer and we were all happily sailing along with the 8088 chip, CGA graphic and WordStar … Oh how time flies.

Filed under: computer , 8088, blog, old time computers, templates, wordpress, WordStar