Blog envy is my motivation

Forgive me dear bloggers for I have sinned.
This blog is evolving because of envy.

Bloghopping eats up most of my free time to catch up on my favorite topics, news and for mining fresh ideas. While browsing, I frequently came across blogs that can totally blow me away; blogs with great design, interesting contents, magnificent writing style and alive with intelligent comments - blogs I envy.

Envy is one of the deadly sins according to Catholicism crap. Conversely, I have always felt that envy is the first cousin of motivation. It lurks somewhere hidden in my thoughts. When I say I admire other blogs and its design, deep down, what I really feel is that I wish I have those design talent and writing genius. It may be a sin, but it gives me the motivation and clue to what I truly want in this blog – and to improve myself. You always inspire me fellow bloggers.

Accordingly, I devoted efforts on improving this blog. Whenever I came across blogs with great design or a cute widget, my first instinct is to look for its source code to test it on my blog. I also want to learn bits & pieces about XHTML & CSS.

Here are some cool improvements I made which I want to share:

• My Table of Contents page: It took me three hours before I make it work. I’m a real dumb when it comes to code syntax. Thanks to Aneesh for the tweaking.

• Template: My first template was a blogger harbor template, so boring. Thanks to Ourblogtemplates for this “Spain” template.

• Feed Your Mind Widgets: Courtesy of Thefreedictionary

• My customizable shout box from : myshoutbox

• Other tweaking tricks at : bloggerbuster and bloggerplugins

• My header graphics was originally a wallpaper which I find interesting because of some yin yang symbol on it. I did some photoshop editing and use it as header. It’s quite large but I like it.

• For SEO hacks and monetizing, maybe later when I’m really serious about posting well researched posts. I believe content really matters.

Well, I don’t know how long I can make this blog alive but surely it will continuously evolve into something better – hopefully not all because of envy.

I will really love reading your comments about my blog or if you have a cool code hack you want to share, I’ll definitely appreciate it.

Let’s inspire each other!

Schadenfreude : Behind Hayden's Camera

Ok ok ok, since everybody has something to say with this highly publicized Katrina Halili – Dr. Hayden Kho – Maricar Reyes scandal, here’s mine.

According to Psychology Today, Dec. 2008 issue – “We are eager to believe bad things about the people we envy.” – Yes, the people we envy.

“Ah what? I don’t fucking envy them!” you will say. But according to the book “Of Love and Lust - On the Psychoanalysis of Romantic and Sexual Emotions by Theodor Reik, there is a theory called “unconscious envy.”

When we watched the scandal, we can be enthusiastic about how good they do it or how sexy they are and in our daydreams passionately wish to experience it or to have some of their characteristics or their life status. Nevertheless, we would not wish to be like Hayden Kho or Katrina or Maricar because we believe that what they did was immoral or incorrect – which is usually subjective. We would not wish to exchange our reputation for their tragic case. That is I guess, is called unconscious envy.

Aside from the presence of the angry moralists like the honorable Actor-Senator Bong Revilla, this is the other reason why Dr. Hayden, Katrina et. al., are the most ill judged personalities in the Philippines today, aside of course, from Pres. Gloria Arroyo.

But of course the real reason why they are the talk of the town now is because their tragedy is our entertainment.

And also because we sometimes have Schadenfreude (the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others).

Is Dr. Hayden wrong and Katrina the real victim? I don’t fucking care! It’s their life.

But here is my confession: I unconsciously fantasized Maricar Reyes. I didn’t see her video as a scandal but an art. A real Kama-Sutra artist. Hmmm… cold water please!

Arrivederci!