The quickest way to build your own self-hosted WordPress blog site
Posted by Joemar | Filed under Technology
Blogging using hosted platforms like blogspot.com, livejournal.com or friendster.com is free and it offers a lot of convenience but has many limitations. It is always advisable for those who want to make blogging a lifetime endeavor to have a self-hosted blog with a domain name of choice.
Nowadays, building your own blog site with your own domain and hosting is very easy to do. You don’t have to know even the basics of HTML or PHP programming… All you need is passion to have your own blog and basic internet/computer skills (e.g. knowing how to type and click). If you are looking for the quickest way to build your blog with domains like www.your-name.com or www.whatever-name.com, here it is…in just three easy steps:
1. Buy a domain and hosting with Cpanel control panel
Register a domain name for your blog (e.g. www.your-name.com) and avail of a web hosting package with CPanel™ as the control panel software. Other companies use Plesk™ or some customized control panels. If you have the means to pay through credit card or Paypal, you should go for US-based registrars and web hosting companies. Many local companies are just resellers of these and are usually more expensive in the long run. The advantage of local registrars and webhosts is that you can pay them through bank deposit. Webhosts also offer domain registration services, or vice versa. I recommend Hostgator.com for a webhost…they have a guaranteed 99% uptime and an excellent customer service.
Beware of Philhosting.net, it’s a local webhost company…their service really sucks (servers are down most of the time) and they have the most lousy and anger-provoking customer service in the whole wide universe. (Sorry…I got carried away, but it’s true.)
2. Install WordPress through Cpanel Fantastico De Luxe
Once you have your domain and hosting already running, log-in to your control panel, which should be www.your-domain.com/cpanel. You will be asked for your user name and password given by the host. In the control panel home page, look for Fantastico De Luxe (please refer to icon pointed by the yellow arrow in the snapshot below).
CPanel Home
Click on WordPress from the menu in the left panel, then click New Installation. What follows is an installation wizard which should be as easy as filling up a form, then just click Install WordPress, confirm installation, then you’re done.
Wordpress in Fantastico De Luxe
3. Log in to your blog admin and start customizing your blog
You blog’s admin section is at www.your-domain.com/wp-admin. Visit that page, log in, then familiarize yourself with WordPress. It may take some time to completely grasp how the blogging platform is used but once you get to master it, it really pays off. Good thing that the latest version of WordPress has become much more user-friendly than earlier versions and also compared to other current blogging platforms or CMS to date.
Wordpress Admin Log-in
You may contact me if you need some assistance in using WordPress or you can simply drop your questions here as comments to this article.
Enjoy and happy blogging. 
Tags: blogging, cpanel, hostgator, wordpress
The best site to find graduate scholarships online
Posted by Joemar | Filed under Studies
When I was browsing the net for sites that contain info about scholarships abroad, I stumbled upon one site that became very valuable for my search for PhD scholarships. This site is Scholarship-Positions.com. The site is easy to navigate and the scholarships are sorted in so many ways (e.g. by country, by subject, by academic year, etc.).
Scholarship-Positions.com
The site helped me to find scholarships in Europe where TOEFL and GRE are not absolute requirements as long as the applicant can show proficiency in English when writing for the application essays and during the actual oral interview.
So for those who are fishing for MS or PhD scholarships abroad, you have to check out this site and see what it can offer.
Tags: MS, PhD, scholarships
Sync your WordPress blog with your Facebook profile
Posted by Joemar | Filed under Technology
Facebook is the most blogger-friendly social networking site I have ever known, specially if your blogging platform is WordPress. For a hosted WordPress blog, like mine, there are many ways to let your blog and your Facebook profile synchronize and interact.
Synchronized Facebook and WordPress blog.
First, your posts can be automatically fetched by Facebook and an announcement with a summary is displayed in your profile wall. Second, excerpts of your blog posts can be automatically posted as notes in your profile. So all you have to do is write and publish your posts and Facebook will just fetch these for you – no need to copy and paste into Facebook notes or to manually announce in your wall. And of course, the third, you can create a profile badge in Facebook that you can display in your blog’s sidebar as a widget. I’m sure you want to ask how…so here it is:
1. Download the latest version of WordBook – it’s the wordpress plugin you will use to automate the announcement of new posts in your wall – add, install, and activate it. (I’m assuming here that you have the latest version of WordPress, version 2.7). After activation, don’t forget to fix its settings, where you have to enter a code you can get from Facebook. Just go to the settings page for this plugin and I’m sure it will be easy for you to follow on how to make this work.
2. Log in to your Facebook account, proceed to Notes, click on a link to import feeds from a blog, enter the URL of your RSS feed and submit.
3. Create a profile badge by going to your Profile, click on Create a Profile Badge link located in the bottom left portion of your profile page. Customize your badge, copy the HTML code and paste to a text widget in your WordPress blog.
Profile badge in Facebook
Facebook is great!
Tags: blogging, facebook, wordpress
Unzip compressed file formats with 7-Zip
Posted by Joemar | Filed under Technology
When you download huge files from the internet, specially those from file sharing sites, these usually are in compressed file formats with .zip, .rar, .tar.gz, .gzip, .bzip, .7z and other file extensions. These are also called archive files. Windows XP and higher versions of Windows can easily pack and unpack .zip files but not the other formats. WinRAR can unpack many of these compressed file formats but this software is commercial, though a trial version of this can be downloaded and used. I am using a software that can decompress most, if not all, of known compressed file formats and it is absolutely FREE.
A right click on the archive file reveals 7-Zip functions.
7-Zip is a free and open source file archiver designed originally for Windows. It operates primarily with the .7z archive format, as well as being able to read and write to several other archive formats. One thing I like with 7-Zip is its ability to set passwords for archived files in .7z format.
You can download 7-Zip from their site or thru SourceForge.net.
Tags: 7-zip, compressed files
Reflections on truth, knowledge, the philosophy of science, God and religion
Posted by Joemar | Filed under Philosophy
A few days ago, a close friend asked me several very abstract questions. I thought of these myself even before that very interesting conversation. In fact, I have been in a lifetime struggle to answer these great questions and to find meaning in this existence, if there’s any. Brace yourself…because this is going to be heavily nerdy. I am speaking to myself here. This is more of a self reflection on how I tackle the greatest and age-old philosophical questions.
What is truth?
Truth is the real nature and essence of things.
How do we know it?
We cannot reach a perfect knowledge of truth. We can only try to know it through rational analysis of what we can perceive through our senses.
Is it possible that our senses can deceive us or our rational analysis can be wrong?
Yes. That’s why we can never arrive at absolute certainty that what we know about any thing are what they really are.
How about those things that we cannot perceive through our senses (i.e. the concept of God), how do we arrive at these concepts?
Our knowledge about abstract things also come from our experiences. Based on causal relationships of things that we can sense (e.g. force causes motion), we may arrive at concepts that are not directly attained by direct sense experience through reasoning. Our concept of God is of such nature.
So, which is the safest way to arrive at a more truthful knowledge about things?
We can only rely on experience as the most certain approximation of truth. If reasoning does not conform to sense experience, it should be considered speculative and less worthy of belief.
What is the basis of science? Reasoning or sense experience?
Science is empiricist by nature, which means that it holds sense experience as the ultimate rule. Any rational interpretation should conform to what can be perceived by experience. Any intuitive concepts that cannot be tested by experience are considered invalid or meaningless.
Since our knowledge is limited to what we can perceive, are you saying that science is not capable of knowing absolute truth?
Yes. Science does not aim to determine absolute truth. The goal of science is to come up with useful models to understand all things with the best of what our senses and objective reasoning can attain. These models may not necessarily be the true nature or essence of things. So, even the laws of science can only be considered, at best, as most probably true but nevertheless useful as coherent models to understand the universe.
Do you believe in God?
Based on the reasonable concept that anything that has a beginning has a cause, I believe that the universe (having been established to have a beginning), must have a cause or series of causes outside of itself. This series of causes cannot go on infinitely backwards or else we cannot explain our existence. There must have been a cause of existence at the end of the series that did not borrow existence from another. This First Cause, the Uncaused Cause, the Ultimate Source of Existence, for me, is the meaning of the word “God”.
What can you say about the claims of certain religions that they have knowledge of absolute truth?
This is not possible, unless God himself gave that knowledge. But to believe that God gave knowledge of absolute truth to a chosen few and only gave reason and senses to the the rest of mankind is not very reasonable. Also, common sense cannot give credence to the claim that God uses miracles (i.e. suspension of natural laws) to authenticate his revelations to certain people because these miracles cannot be validated by reasoning or by sense experience of those who did not witness it first hand. Any claim of a binding revelation from God is therefore like saying that God wants you to surrender your natural reasoning capabilities and accept something that you can never confirm.
If you reject divine revelation, how can you know God and how do you determine good from evil?
God gave us reason to deduce his existence by observing nature, which is his work and his unambiguous revelation to all of mankind. He also gave us our senses and intellect to know what is right and to determine the actions that will give us greater happiness and harmony with nature and fellow human beings.
If you said that any intuitive idea derived or deduced through reasoning must be proven by sense experience (i.e. empirical demonstration), then how can you prove God’s existence empirically?
I maintain that God’s existence can be inferred rationally from the causal relationships of things that exist. From this point of view, God (the Uncaused Cause) is a necessary conclusion in order to explain our existence. In the current state of science though, we have no way to demonstrate this empirically. Although the concept of God is reasonable, it can only be taken as a hypothesis that awaits empirical proof through innovative experimentation.
If you are not absolutely certain about the existence of God, then what does it mean to be religious?
For me, to be religious does not necessarily involve absolute certainty that a Divine Being exists. It is more of the feeling that there must be a Super Intellectual power that sustain the beauty and complexity of the universe. To be religious is to be amazed at the magnificence of nature and to come to a humble realization that there is a greater intelligence and power behind all these. As with Albert Einstein, I say “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe….”
Tags: empiricism, knowledge, rationalism, science, truth