He is “the struggling blogger“, a prolific one though. If you judge a blogger who could merely publish posts once every blue moon as a “struggling blogger”, then Roy dela Cruz is light years far from that description.

Roy has more than a dozen of blogs up his sleeve. And is able to regularly update these blogs. His main blog, The Struggling Blogger is a testament to his dedication to blogging. Blogging started as an “escape from sadness and loneliness” over his wife’s passing away in early 2007.

For Roy, blogging keeps him sane, a therapy over loneliness, a way of life. Take it away from him and he’s a zombie -walking dead. His blogs and posts range from inspirations and reflections, poetry, short stories, single fatherhood and topics that livens up his sugar coated world.

A Kapampangan, he also writes about food and places in Pampanga, particularly Angeles. Blogging has been instrumental for this father of 3 to come out of his shell, met lots of friends local and foreign, and recently has been featured in the United Nations World For Food Programme website.

He has also ventured into making money online with some of his blogs, from serving adsense ads and occasional sponsored posts.

So with all these blogging feats and achievements, why does Roy prefers to be identified as “the struggling blogger”? Read on to know more about Roy through a series of simple featured blogger questions.

QUESTION (Q): So how’d you like us to call you?

Roy

Q: Age?

41 going 25. Through age, comes wisdom.

Q: Can you share us some information about you, like your birthplace, your childhood, your favorite food, music, gadgets, etc.?

Born, live, work and most probably will die in Angeles City. Accounting is my profession, but writing is my obsession. Food? Since I’m from Pampanga, tocino tops my list, followed by kare-kare. And a banana cake never fails to make me smile.

I dig all kind of music – rock, ballad, jazz, and even heavy metal, as long as I can understand the song. My music icons are Tears For Fears, Kenny Loggins, The Dawn, APO Hiking Society, Gary V… and many more.

I play the guitar, although not that well. My son Edgar plays a whole lot better than me. I write songs and hope to hear them played on the music mainstream someday.

Needless to say, I write poems. I often called myself a self-proclaim poet. And just like any wannabe, I hope to publish my book of poetry someday.

I’m not much into gadgets. I’m quite happy with my lowly digicam.

Q: Your profession/work/career?

I am an accountant, and I work in one company in Clark, Angeles City.

Q: When did you start blogging?

Unofficially, in 2004. Officially in 2008.

Q: How it started?

I heard about blogger.com from a techie show on TV and the next day, I created my first blog – REFLECTIONS. And then in 2008, I took to blogging to keep me company. Of course, you know the story.

Q: What is/are your blog topic/niche?

Personal, poetry, short story, mix bag, regional (Kapampangan Blog & Angeles City blog), business, and of course, an attempt on online money making.

Q: How it grew or “boomed’?

Did it? Lol, honestly, I don’t think I have already bloomed as a blogger. I still have a long way to go. But I am just lucky to have friends like Bloggista, Jan, Jena and many more great bloggers. When you’re in the company of great bloggers, chances are, their greatness will rub on you too

Q: How many blogs do you have?

hmm… more than 10 (I lost count). Although not all of them are really active at this time. Right now, I’m trying to develop The Struggling Blogger dot Com as my mother ship, and there all blogs would follow.

Q: Any blogging plans?

I plan to continue on blogging until I am the only blogger left in this world. Tough luck, hehe…

What I mean is that, I really have no big plans. I just want to continue to write… and continue blogging as long as I can.

Heck! I might even blog from the afterlife! If I attempted to write to heaven from earth through my blog, why can’t I try to write back earth when I’m there? (Wherever that “there” may be)

Q: Any advice or message to other bloggers, pro and newbies alike?

Additional info… let’s see… do you know that I used to do a smooth moonwalk? But then, after some years and several pounds later, there’s no more glide even on the smoothest floor.

Seriously, I have a lot to be thankful about blogging. It has help me keep my sanity by letting my vent out my insanity.

And finally, an advice? Words are powerful. Be careful when you use them. Do not abuse them or they might come back to haunt you.

Bloggista Featured Blogger is a regular post special “showcasing” bloggers of different niches. If you want to suggest a blogger to be featured here, send me some details (see this post for info). We would be very glad to write a short article and publish it here.

~

“Disappointment”, I believe is not appropriate for now – unless you have an “attitude of indifference” towards the government, a behavior others love to show in the streets and in media interviews.

In his SONA last July 26 at the Batasan, there has been no mention though of how will PNOY utilize the power of technology to combat graft and corruption. Billions of pesos are lost to graft and corruption every year – that’s a fact. It is a “fact” that someone or some groups could earn a minimum of 20-30% or more in “commission” and “gratuities” in many government projects.

The Government Procurement Reform Act (R.A. 9184), enacted in 2002 did not help much, and is in need of some serious revisions, and nobody’s looking into it. In this article, I talk about the Procurement activities of the Government. Aside from taxes collections in BIR and Bureau of Customs, government purchases of goods and services are rich sources of graft and corruption.

R.A. 9184 was enacted to regulate procurement in the government. It is supposed to implement a system of transparency and competitiveness, streamline procurement process, institute a system of accountability and provide monitoring of contracts and purchases publicly but when you dig deeper, R.A. 9184 is nothing more than a wordy document which bears no teeth at all, and cannot be effectively implemented by itself.

Here are some of the reasons why I am saying it’s ineffective:

1. It talks about implementing an electronic procurement system, called G-EPS. But implementing a software system like G-EPS requires more than just asking people to use it. Process changes have to be made by standardizing all government procurement processes. Unfortunately, if you go to any government offices, you will find different processes in procuring say, a ballpen.
2. The Commission on Audit (COA), the agency tasked of making sure all purchases in the government are compliant to laws, rules and regulations, and void of any “wrongdoings” is as ineffective. I may be wrong, but COA is still requiring tons of paper works in almost all processes including procurement. This audit body is in need of serious “overhaul”. People always object to ideas and suggestions of doing things the better way because those were not “compliant” to COA policies. Thus it is not a surprise that it takes ages for COA to uncover questionable contracts and deals because they are stuck and buried with those useless papers and complicated manual processes.
3. Closed bidding is still enforced in many government procurement processes. This is still prone to graft and corrupt activities.
4. In many government offices, requesting to purchase say, office supplies takes about 3 months before a contract is awarded – this is mainly because the request has to go through a lot of channels/people before it can be approved. This is in contradiction to what R.A. 9184 espouses, which is to streamline procurement processes in all government offices.
5. Provisions to “alternative modes of procurement” are giving some government officials, especially those at the top the way override the implementing rules of R.A. 9184. The smaller contracts usually go to the stringent requirements of R.A. 9184, but the bigger contracts can be easily negotiated with Suppliers or Contractors by just simply certifying the requirement as “urgent” or “critical”. So these types of contracts normally skip the sourcing, qualification and bidding processes.
6. R.A. 9184 also aims to implement a system of accountability to both the buyer of goods/services and the Supplier/Contractor. However, there is no specific agency tasked to review if purchases are in order, or that the service rendered is compliant to technical specifications, and penalize substandard deliveries. Is there an agency responsible for this?

I can spend the whole day ranting about these things but its about time Noynoy and this administration seriously take a look into improving the procurement process, system and people. These are, in my most humble opinion are some of the things to be considered:

1. Streamline and standardize Procurement activities across all government offices by implementing a simpler yet globally accepted processes of procurement which focus on speedy, less paper work but more controlled purchasing activities.
2. With the implementation of the changes and standardization of Procurement processes, next step is to look at the people’s readiness and acceptance to these changes. If the people are not ready to embrace these changes, implementations of systems and new processes always fails. They need to be informed and involved in the change process. This requires a very effective Change Management team in the government.
3. Third is to implement a simple, easy to use procurement software system that follows globally accepted procurement processes and practices yet cheap to acquire and maintain. PNOY, in my humble opinion should seriously consider adoption of Open Source systems in all government offices – as it is cheaper to acquire, and we have enough talents and resources to tap. Did you know that a recent report showed that many Philippine government offices are using “fake” or “pirated” software? This can be easily resolved by taking a look at the potential use of Open Source systems and implement it in phases. The Singapore government has already announced that they too will be utilizing Open Source system – so why can’t we?
4. Improve the procurement lead time from currently 3 months to a few weeks and this can be achieved only by streamlining the processes, as well as for COA to be able to adopt to these changes. Rather than spending lots of hours auditing endless paper documents, COA auditors can easily “audit” and control software transactions instead.
5. The government should look into the merits of making all bids transparent to everyone involved, even with competing Contractors and Suppliers to lessen the incidence of “under the table” negotiations and deals. Thus, an Open Bidding system is a better way to go than Closed Bidding system.
6. The “alternative modes of Procurement” like shopping or negotiated contract should no longer be allowed except for specific circumstances. But in order to speed up the deliveries of items such as office supplies and consumables, the government should instead “pre-qualify” Suppliers and award the supply of these type of items for a term, say, yearly basis. This way, the bidding process is done only once, to a single or multiple supplier, and the government can even save a significant amount due to bulk purchase discounts.

Improvements to systems and processes can only be effectively done when you implement a technology solution along with it. President Noynoy can start with implementing a true National Procurement System – a system where all processes, people and government agencies like the COA are in-synched, and the system does not cost an arm and a leg and can be easily implemented.

Open Source is a potential tool the government can consider. It is way cheaper, but still reliable. Just for comparison, a certain government agency is currently implementing a national procurement system using a leading software solution which costs millions of pesos and more millions of pesos of annual maintenance.

Now, a good Open source-based procurement system can be implemented at just 30% of the cost, but can cover 100 to 1000% more in terms of requirements, sites and users. How’s that?

Okay, I don’t have to “bore” you with my occasional political rants and ramblings but as a Filipino citizen, I can’t help but voice out my thoughts on certain issues which affect me in some ways.

There are a lot of things the government have to do to make every Filipino live a decent life, and while we may not agree to everything the government do and say, it is our duty as good citizens to support good government programs and let the government know in our own little way what we like and what we don’t like.

I just got back from Cebu for what seemed to be one of the best weekend of my life – when over 200 of my high school batchmates gathered at one of the most organized event I attended.

It was a two-day affair, culminated with a whole day and a whole night of food and fun, of drinks and dance, of flurry of chit chats and flashings of cams by the beach at a resort north of Cebu.

The high school reunion – “10 years after” (LOL) kept me away from the online world for a while. Away from Twitter, away from Mafia Wars on Facebook, and away from blogging. And as always, it is refreshing to be away from the internet once in a while.

Got to admit, it was hard to go back home knowing the parties aren’t over yet. Talking about post reunion activities. But projects and clients are hard to ignore.

As I began to attune myself back to reality, and started lifting my heavy toes to go back to my usual routine, including blogging, typhoon Basyang came and stole the momentum which was already slowly building up inside of me.

Last night I watched the Germany vs Uruguay third placer game replay which I missed because of the reunion. And as Muller was about to hit the ball with a header from Ozil’s corner kick at around 18th or 19th minute of the match, power went out.

All of a sudden I missed the sound of the vuvuzuelas for the first time. It was weird since those were making annoying sound at every World Cup 2010 match. All I could hear was the wind which sounded like a 16-wheeler truck trying to ram my SUV outside.

It was around 12 midnight and electricity is still not restored as of writing this post – about 18 hours already. Then I learned that the whole of Metro Manila suffered total system blackout and power is restored to only a few areas.

Most school classes were suspended, many offices went on a holiday. Some offices have work but they don’t have electricity. I was lucky to have access to a place with electricity and internet the whole day.

But many of my Pinoy online and blogging friends were not as lucky. My inbox is surprisingly “silent”. I am used to getting a couple of hundreds of messages in my inbox – from social media status updates (Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz) and blog posts. But today is different – so few blog updates, very few Twitter and Facebook activities.

I learned that some were a bit “creative” just to be able to go online. Some friends went on a coffee shop hopping so they can charge their laptops and access the internet. Some simply went to the mall where they can surf the net.

Can you imagine a society with no electricity, and no access to the world wide web. Today is a testament to the fact that in this age of social media – many people have become so dependent with internet it is almost certain many cannot live without it.

And to think Typhoon Basyang is just the second typhoon that hit the Philippines this year – at an average of 22 typhoons a year, there are still 19 typhoons coming.

Brace for more “power-less” and “internet-less” days ahead – unless our government is going to do something about it. It is worth noting that Pinoy Bloggers cannot be silenced with threats and ridicules from traditional media, the purists, the elitists and critics. But typhoons do.

On the average we spend 30 minutes to an hour of travel time to the office. Now double that time just to get there, another double to go home because of traffic. So roughly, we are wasting 1 to 2 hours on the average of our time each day in traffic. That’s a lot of quality time lost which could have been spent wisely at the office or at home.

Although we complain, but we never really protested about this despicable problem. We learned to embrace it, adjusted to it, made it a part of our lives.

Our government have spent large amount of money to solve this problem but were unsuccessful. The Metro Manila Development Authority or MMDA have concocted several “brilliant” ideas, from providing traffic policemen with big bikes and jackets (rumored to have been the plan of then MMDA Chairman Binay), to the pink fences of the previous MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando.

Well the pink fences are probably a much useful solution than traffic policemen on motorbikes with dashing leather jackets, but like most other solutions (elevated pathways, number coding, etc.), its simply a patch-up, short-sighted approach in solving the problem.

So how to solve Metro Manila’s traffic problem? It is both common sense and the appreciation of the chaos theory – needless to say the solutions can be simple to complex. The approach is both immediate/short term and long term. Traffic problem cannot be solved overnight, nor it can be “fully” solved, but, it can be improved significantly when managed right.

Immediate to short term:

• Don’t mess with the traffic lights. Have you seen this common practice by traffic enforcers of standing right in the middle of a busy major intersection directing traffic manually? They switch off traffic lights and just love to do it manually – the result? Chaos here and there. And to make it even worse, it takes like forever before they let go of the other lanes.

1. 1. Traffic lights are supposed to be properly configured to work in a synchronized and timed manner.
   2. Stopping a lane for more than 40 seconds especially on a busy intersection will lead to chaos as vehicles file up, drivers become more agitated and frustrated.

• PUV/PUJ number coding. No it’s not the number coding that MMDA men love to enforce meaning, they are actually not assisting to ease flow of traffic, but on the look out which car has a plate number’s last digit banned for the day.

1. 1. I have seen number coding effectively implemented in Cebu before. First, implement a systematic Route assignments and numbers, for example Pasay Rotonda to Blumentritt is Route 01. Route numbers are painted in all public utility jeepneys (PUJ) corresponding to their respective routes. Loading and unloading bays have specific Route Numbers. This is to avoid all PUJs loading and unloading anywhere they like, or fill up a single designated loading/unloading bay. If you’re Route Number is say, 01, then you are only allowed to stop at say, Stop 01-03.
   2. If you have been to Singapore and other countries, you can also see this effectively implemented.

• Lessen the volume of vehicles passing a major road like EDSA. This can be done by implementing the following:

1. 1. Improve mass transport system services like the LRT and MRT. Put new routes to and from designated MRT/LRT stations.
   2. Take out old, dilapidated PUJs and buses off the streets – by not allowing registration of public utility vehicles older than say, 10 years. With this solution alone, we can see a significant improvement but have you ever wondered why this cannot be implemented? There must be “millions” of reasons why.
   3. Taking PUJs out from EDSA and major thoroughfares should also be considered. Government can deploy its own buses instead. This way, better mode of transport is provided, jobs are generated.

• Improve road conditions. Metro Manila roads have the most potholes next to the moon. We have also the darkest roads next to the dark side of the moon. Responsibility and accountability should be strictly implemented. Punish government officials and contractors implementing sub-standard projects. How can this be done?

1. 1. I believe national road projects are a national government concern. Streamline bidding of national road projects by implementing a good bidding and procurement system, and deal only with qualified contractors.
   2. Details of the Road Project should be displayed in the project site, with the information on the Fine to Contractor when the project is not delivered on time, or if the road found to be defective and sub-standard.

• Streets are not parking spaces nor a shopping area. Keep the roads clear of parked vehicles and vendors. Require all mayors to implement this – political will is the key. Hold city and municipal mayor accountable for any violations. There’s freedom in democracy, but there’s chaos when abused. Bayani Fernando effectively implemented this in Marikina, there’s no reason why it cannot be implemented in other cities.

Long term solutions:

• Implement a Metro Manila-wide, integrated Computerized Traffic System. This might cost a lot, but its better than motorbikes and jackets and pink fences.
• Government to take-over bus/transport operations on major streets. This is quiet radical, but look at Singapore, Hongkong, Malaysia and other countries. Traffic and expensive fares are an obstacle to business and progress.
• Construct government-run bus terminals for both Southern and Northern Luzon provincial buses and keep these buses from passing by EDSA. This means that the government has to improve access to these bus terminals for commuters’ easy transfer.

These are my humble thoughts, care to comment or make your own suggestions.

The email invite has these message – “Here are three things you can do to kick-start your Digg v4 alpha experience.”

• Find and follow your friends, influencers, and news sources you trust! Once you follow these Digg users, we’ll build a custom news homepage for you called “My News.” My News will display news stories to you as dugg by your friends.
• Get more followers! Aside from digging great content, one of the best ways to attract new followers is to update your profile. Add a photo and link to your blog, Twitter account, or Facebook profile.
• Explore the “My News” and “Top News” pages. My News is the custom news page we build for you based on the people you follow, Top News is the global zeitgeist showing you the most popular stories on Digg.

I was able to login using my old Digg credentials however initially, I got an error about the login and it said “82.7% chance that it’s Steve’s fault”. Funny but I got lost track who the hell is Steve. LOL.

The interface is much better, in my opinion, with bigger fonts, and cleaner overall layout. The main page, My News has a link submission conveniently placed on top.

You are also given a list of influential and popular Digg members that you can follow, and you can check who among your Google Connect, Facebook and Twitter friends are on Digg.

I was able to connect with Google and Twitter easily, however, Facebook connect failed. I have two google accounts, one personal, one for social media, unfortunately, I connected to Google using my personal account and I could not find a link or a utility to logout and login again using another Google account.

But one feature that really looks very promising is the Import Feeds functionality.  You can bring in your own contents to Digg automatically by setting up the RSS feed of your blogs. It will go through a simple process of verification, by just “including” a verification key into your next post.

So this means that with the new Digg, you are allowed to Digg your own contents automatically – that saves a lot of time but may also flood Digg with so many stories.

Another feature is the ability to put all your links and have them displayed at the right sidebar when someone views your Digg profile.

What is Digg.com?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog.

Digg can be a good source of quality traffic if you write really great content. A single Digg can bring you a few to a hundred thousand visits, and in many cases, may bring down a site if you’re on a shared hosting or cheaper VPS hosting service.

Okay, I tried so hard not to blog about World Cup 2010 but now I give in to the urge, thanks to Ceblogger who always reminds me to share my thoughts on one of the biggest and spectacular (and boring for some) sports event on the planet.

Let’s start by digging some more reasons why I need to blog about it here on Bloggista.com. First, soccer or football in some lingo is my favorite sport. In the mountains where I came from, soccer was one of our favorite sports, aside from baseball. Well, we played basketball but I always believe we Filipinos are much better off playing soccer or baseball.

Obviously, we don’t really produce lots of children that are as tall as Shaq or Lebron James. But we have a chance to compete internationally with soccer. Look at Japan and the two Korea nations. Height isn’t an advantage or even a requirement for soccer. It’s about quickness, agility, speed…

Now comes the most important reason why a post about soccer is published on a blogging resources and make money online blog. It’s about traffic. A traffic experiment. When there’s traffic, there’s money, more or less. That’s the truth about making money online.

Okay if you came here through the search engines looking for World Cup 2010 predictions, games update and results, I will not disappoint you. Keep on reading.

The World Cup 2010 knock out stage has just been completed with the final knock out match between Spain and Portugal. Ronaldo may have disappointed a lot of his Portuguese countrymen when his team was eliminated by Spain, where he is currently playing in one of the Spanish Football clubs.

One fan posted a comment on Facebook saying Ronaldo may have played with all his heart for his Spanish club Real Madrid team but not for his country. Well that’s exactly the story for every loss and win at any FIFA World Cup event. This year, popular teams like France and Italy were eliminated very early. England lost to USA in Group C ranking, however Ghana eliminated the US team in the knock out match.

My personal prediction is that we will probably see a World Cup 2010 Finals match with either Brazil vs. Spain or the winner in the Argentina vs. Germany match. But the other teams are also potential contenders like Netherlands, Paraguay, Uruguay and Ghana.

The quarterfinals is set to kick off on July 2, Saturday, or Sunday dawn Manila Time. The “must watch match” this weekend is  Argentina vs Germany. This will gonna be a good match to watch assuming the World Cup 2010 referees will not give erroneous calls just like what happened between the Germany vs England and Brazil vs. Mexico knockout matches. Argentina is seeking revenge against the Germans who eliminated them in the last World Cup.

I plan to watch it at National Sports Grill in Makati – it’s great to watch soccer with friends and beer, so who’s going with me? LOL. By the way, if you want to play World Cup 2010 Predictor game, here it is:

World Cup 2010 Match Results:

Last 16

Quarter-finals

Semi-finals

Finals

Jun 26 – Port Elizabeth

Uruguay

2

Jul 2 – Johannesburg

Korea Republic

1

Uruguay (pen.)

1 (4)

Jun 26 – Rustenburg

Ghana

1 (2)

USA

1

Jul 6 – Cape Town

Ghana (a.e.t.)

2

Uruguay

2

Jun 28 – Durban

Netherlands

3

Netherlands

2

Jul 2 – Port Elizabeth

Slovakia

1

Netherlands

2

Jun 28 – Johannesburg

Brazil

1

Brazil

3

Jul 11 – Johannesburg

Chile

0

Netherlands

0

Jun 27 – Johannesburg

Spain (a.e.t.)

1

Argentina

3

Jul 3 – Cape Town

Mexico

1

Argentina

0

Jun 27 – Bloemfontein

Germany

4

Germany

4

Jul 7 – Durban

England

1

Spain

1

Jun 29 – Pretoria

Germany

0

Runner Up

Paraguay (pen.)

0 (5)

Jul 3 – Johannesburg

Jul 10 – Port Elizabeth

Japan

0 (3)

Paraguay

0

Uruguay

2

Jun 29 – Cape Town

Spain

1

Germany

3

Spain

1

Portugal

0

I have prepared some polls where you can choose which team will win the World Cup 2010 Title, as well as separate polls for each quarterfinal game. Go ahead tell us what you think and don’t forget to share us your thoughts in the comments section.

FIFA World Cup 2010 Quarterfinal Matches Predictions:

The internet is a free world, however in order to survive, you need online friends to guide you, give you useful ideas and tools to help your blogging beginnings less painful

And so I met Archon Digital, the blogger behind that Banana Man avatar. At first, I thought he was not a Filipino, because most of the bloggers in his network are not Filipinos. I met him through Entrecard, being one of the then “die hard fans of entrecard” until the service sort of sucks people started leaving, including him.

Jon, as I have known him personally (yeah, we have had several coffee meetings way back then before he left the country – but now he’s back for good), is known to be a man of few words (but not in his blog posts though). He is reserved when it comes to giving opinions and criticisms, but once he does, it’s gonna be like “all hells’ broke loose.”

So it’s an honor to feature Jon in my Featured Bloggista project. Here are some of the “snippets” of an interview with Jonathan Cuevas, the blogger with an evil intent to dominate the world, and the creative designer behind the blog, Archon Digital.

QUESTION (Q): So how’d you like us to call you?

Jon (in the real world) Archon Digital (online)

Q: Age?

I’m only 19. Nineteen-dihan nyo na yun. Seriously, I’m 30 and happy about it.

Q: Can you share us some information about you, like your birthplace, your childhood, your favorite food, music, gadgets, etc.?

I was born and raised in Manila, moved to Baguio during my high school and early college years, moved back to Manila, studied for a while, worked, got married in 2001 and moved back to Baguio, worked there for a few years and then moved back to Manila in 2004.

Since childhood, I have always been a book lover and an avid reader. I’d stay up all night reading encyclopedias, the Almanac, maps, cold war novels and old stacks of National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Newsweek, Time, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, James Clavell, Calvin and Hobbes and Pugad Baboy.

Part of that childhood was spent growing up in a printing press. Watching the stripper do his artworks and layouts manually with cutting tools and tape, working on film and type gave me the inspiration to become a graphic designer.  Me and my older brother, he is more known as Demiurge, would play newspaper during our childhood years and come up with spreads from printing press scraps and draw caricatures of what was happening around us.

Stuff we’d write or draw about were about my grandfather gardening, our little G.I. Joe’s catching fire (true story) and maybe some rants or hints to adults about getting higher allowances (aktibista / pakikibaka in the making).

During that time there were some really old PCs, an old IBM and an XT I think and they were my first encounter with PC hardware and PC-DOS or MS-DOS. I blew up and fixed those several times as part of the steep learning curve in tinkering with things related to hardware and software. I was also in a special journalism class during my elementary years so call me a nerd if you want to.

At some point, I remember having a former dark room as my own room. So I was like 9 or 10 years old with an all-black room that had my own sink and with stacks of full size sheets of paper, four to six stacks of C2S 180 lbs if I remember right, under a soft mattress as my bed.

Some fun facts about my life include taking the UPCAT while heavily drunk. I ended up taking Mass Communications Major in Journalism, minor in Advertising in UP Baguio but as soon as it came, I left and went on to do design work and play music. Took up a few more courses in Systems Design, Programming and Computer tech and the rest is history.

I am a techie and my idea of a work computer is having a KVM connected to three powerful PCs clustered together running virtual operating systems and applications so I can try everything from Linux to OSX and Windows. If I could take all that power to a tiny laptop I’d gladly do so and just be myself while having coffee in Harbour Square in Malate.

I am a musician, a bass player and that was how I met my wife. She sang in church, we are Christian, and I was sort of the case of the lost church musician that needed some rescuing. So she rescued me and we lived happily ever after.

Q: Your profession/work/career?

I started out working with graphics quite early and started earning on the side during my high school years doing business cards, certificates, IDs, streamers, posters and whatever stuff that printers can print on. I’d just about print on whatever machine I can get my hands on or even silkscreen posters and streamers by hand if I had to. Computers only had Windows 3.11 with either Print Master or Aldus Draw or Aldus Pagemaker. Back then, I didn’t have my own computer but somehow I managed to get jobs and get them printed.

During my college years I was almost if not totally self sufficient, taking jobs in design and playing small gigs and creating old school websites, those really ugly 90’s type of web design I had hosted on freespeech.org, angel fire and geocities.

Getting steady jobs in print and I.T. during and after college years, I always knew this would be my line of work. Freelance work in Manila-based printing presses and small agencies and after a few years working steady in a printshop in Baguio, I was hired by an international luxury hotel-chain and worked there for five wonderful years doing what I do best before moving to Dubai.

I am now working for the same company I worked for in Dubai but on an arrangement to work from home in Manila (or Dubai on some cases) as I missed my family very much and would prefer to stay with them and be here in our country.

Q: When did you start blogging?

I started blogging in early 2003 when I discovered Blogger. Blogger was not yet acquired by Google back then and for me it was the better alternative to Live Journal in terms of interface.

Q: How it started?

I kept a personal journal in Blogspot called “A day in a Pixel’s Life” where I blogged about personal things, music and my artwork. My work was purely designing for print back then.

Another blog was made as a work log so me and my boss would be able to know the status of each job and so blogged daily as a means to track our work.

After a few more blogs and website experiments, Archon Digital was born in 2007 as my means to express myself after a stressful workday.

Q: What is/are your blog topic/niche?

Personal Rants (as my evil overlord alter-ego, Archon Digital), Graphic Design, Social Networks, WordPress and the occasional political satire.

Q: How it grew or “boomed’?

Boomed? I’m not sure if my blogging boomed just yet. But blogging earns me enough to allow me to pay for several servers I use on multiple sites, experiments and applications. Some spare change after that allows me to pay for a few bills every now and then.

I regularly get direct job offers and offshore contracts through my site and so with this I can say blogging has helped me get more opportunities.

Q: How many blogs do you have?

I have a few blogs and communities I maintain using my identity as Archon Digital.

My main site is divided into the two major sections: Archon Digital’s Room 101 (My Blog) at http://archondigital.com/articles/ and the Studio at http://archondigital.com/studio/ (a blogazine and outdated portfolio).

There’s also Pinapaitan, Microblogging is Bitter Sweet (http://pinapaitan.archondigital.com/), an attempt at lifestreaming and where I’d normally write in Filipino.

Yaw Yan ArDigma (http://www.yaw-yan.com), a Filipino martial arts community which I am maintaining as a volunteer.

Kabayan Exchange (http://kabayanxchng.com/), a small Filipino blog network I started with some friends. Also open to Pinoys who’d want to have their own free blog.

The others, I can’t really reveal how many as they are experimental and mostly “automated” not really the type I’d brag about.

I also help out a few friends and organizations who are aspiring bloggers and try to provide them with the resources they need to get them started.

Q: Any blogging plans?

World Domination. To be able to come close to that goal I would have to quickly run through and have a few “minor” things out of the way.

One goal for this year is to let my blogging and other passive online revenue reach 3,000 USD monthly. It would be a steep climb from what I am earning online now but it is achievable. I know myself well enough to believe that if I put myself to something, it will surely happen.

“Pero, kahit maabot ko lang ang inaabot ni macho-guapito, videoke-master, Maestro Roel Bloggista na income sa blogging eh masaya na din ako.” (bloggista’s note: LOL!)

Updating my grossly outdated online portfolio is another goal. I am in the process of moving my portfolio to another personal site I am working on where they will be properly showcased and where I will advertise myself more as a web professional.

Archon Digital will evolve into a blogazine and you will be seeing more custom designed posts in the next few months.

Another goal is to be able to publicly release my WordPress themes. I’ve made a lot of custom theme work and custom sites for clients running WordPress, but being my own number one critic, I’d still wait for the right timing, which I base on when I feel my theme is 110% usable and acceptable for public consumption.

WordPress 3.0 is something I am looking forward to this 2010 and Thematic (http://themeshaper.com/thematic/) is one of the best platforms I have been using for theming.

Q: Any advice or message to other bloggers, pro and newbies alike?

Be responsible in what you write about and be careful about grammar as everything you write about would reflect on you as an individual and a professional online or offline.

Always take in mind that blogging is a very powerful tool and requires a lot of responsibility and anything you write about can backfire legally if not used properly.

To me blogging is a form of indie journalism and if you are really serious about blogging then take a few lessons on polishing your writing skills, understand the basics and the etiquette of professional journalism and news writing or have a true journalist mentor you.

Always be ready to adapt and learn. Make it a habit to always learn something new.

Have as much fun as you can. Get a life, walk outside, go to the park and learn to appreciate life around you no matter what your situation is.

Bloggista Featured Blogger is a regular post special “showcasing” bloggers of different niches. If you want to suggest a blogger to be featured here, send me some details (see this post for info). We would be very glad to write a short article and publish it here.

~

3. Post at least twice a week

The most common problem with most bloggers (yes, even seasoned bloggers are faced with this dilemma) is that they fail to continually and consistently feed their readers with interesting and quality contents.

When you blog, you must put yourself in the shoes of the people who will be reading your post if you want them to regularly visit your blog. The more you update your blog, the more chances of getting your posts noticed by visitors, readers and Google spiders.

It should be noted though that you should not post contents that are copied and never ever post just for the sake of posting.

Should you have a hard time thinking of ideas to post, bank from your regular personal experiences (as long as they’re relevant to your niche), and read from blogs that are relevant to yours (this usually works for me because I would almost always, trust me it works almost 99% of the time, when I visit my favorite blogs and from their posts, I could extract some ideas, then another idea from another blog until I blast with bazillion of ideas to the point wherein my fingers needed to race with them).

In case you’re wondering why at least twice a day, well, they say two is better than one. Also, it would give your readers a hint that they would find at least a couple of fresh contents every week.

Thus, they will be thrilled, excited and motivated to keep on coming back to your blog on a regular basis. Regular updates begets regular visits.

4. Post original, interactive and fresh contents

Penelope Trunk said that information is a commodity but your perspective is not. Nobody wants to read a re-post. Google doesn’t like it either. People wants to read a fresh and original content. Well, who doesn’t?

Steve Pavlina has given an emphasis in the importance of original and really compelling contents. He said that his valuable thoughts turned into written posts are what sustained him during the recession. He made money while the rest of the world are looking for it.

Perhaps what made my celebrity blog earn a PageRank 4 in the shortest period of time is the fact that I’ve been posting quality, informative and catchy contents regularly (though not necessarily daily).

Unlike most celebrity blogs, I didn’t just copy what happened to Miley Cyrus, I actually posted random things about her and that’s probably the reason why one day, a father added me on Facebook and told me he was able to answer his daughter’s question about Miley through the aid of my blog without sweating.

You see, if your contents are valuable, interesting and you consistently write, people will start listening to you.

Then they will keep listening to you.

Scraping contents will never do you any good, nor will it earn you respect of both your readers and co-bloggers over time. Splogs or spam blogs will be punished by Google especially if you’re on a Blogger platform as these types of blogs would easily get deleted.

You see, there’s just so much to lose than to gain when you don’t post original and quality contents.

5. Socialize both online and offline

Your quality contents would all be wasted if people won’t find it.

Success in blogging requires more than just writing. You can’t just simply click on the “Publish” button and expect tons of people visiting your blog afterwards.

Once you have published a great deal of quality and interesting contents, don’t be afraid to promote it. It requires reaching out to other people who may be interested in what you write about and inviting them to stop by your blog without necessarily spamming.

Utilize social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Plurk and attend blogging meetups so you can network with other people who are passionate in blogging and in your niche because success in blogging requires more than just writing.

Pete Cashmore, the 24-year-old CEO of Mashable, who was dubbed as the Brad Pitt of the web world is very good in this approach. He utilizes both Twitter and Facebook to his advantage and keeps on gaining more and more attention by utilizing these free and powerful social networking platforms by keeping his “friends” and followers posted about his recent posts.

So, are you ready? Will you commit yourself into doing those 5 ways on how you can succeed in blogging?

I tell you, if you would consistently publish original, fresh and interesting contents; post at least twice a week and utilize various social bookmarking and social networking platforms to promote your new blog, you will definitely won’t have a hard time climbing the ladder of success in blogging.

—————————-

Jonha Ducayag Revesencio, a Capricornian and a sweet lass from Jaro, Ilo-ilo City is the blogger behind the blog “Defying Changes | Filipino Tips on Immigration | Au Pair Issues and Scam | Blogging” as well as dozens of other blogs on different “lucrative” niches. She’s an envy to struggling bloggers like me and even to successful online moguls like Joliber (balato naman…) – she has a super brain with a gargantuan of ideas to write about.  A visit to her site gives you fruitful blogging trip. Go try it.

Every seasoned blogger started with being a newbie so if you’re currently looking to starting a blog then we want YOU to keep reading.

There had been been a lot of ideas and tips posted on how to be successful in blogging but little did those advisers realize that in order to be successful in blogging, those steps needs to be done from the very beginning just as investing should be done at an early age.

Once you start something right, you would most likely be continuing in that path and you will not have a hard time innovating, modifying, improving and optimizing. These processes would only become effective once you’ve established your blog in the proper way.

The steps which I will be discussing below has helped me develop my passion in writing and eventually monetize from it, increased both my confidence and number of friends both online and offline. There are myriad of other benefits from starting a blog but these would be discussed in a separate post.

Now, are you sure that you will have the dedication, passion and motivation to keep a blog?

I’m asking this because achieving an authority in your selected niche doesn’t happen overnight. World’s most successful bloggers like Darren Rowse, Penelope Trunk and Steve Pavlina have not established their names in the blogosphere with a single post.

Below are series of questions which I would expect you to commit into before you step into blogging, or all your toil will be in vain.

I repeat, if you’re serious about blogging and expect to get some ROI or something in return, then somethings are expected from you too. Here you go, will you?

1. Determine your reasons for blogging

You cannot fully commit into something unless you know why you want to do it. Just as babies have lesser attention span and commitment to what they do because they don’t know why they’re doing it, you will have lesser chances of succeeding in blogging if you are unsure as to why you want to start a blog.

Before fantasizing about your blog getting a lot of traffic, having millions of regular readers and paying the rent through the words you type, you need to know the purpose of your blog first.

Would you like to simply put your thoughts into words, network with other people with similar interest, earn passive income, or to use your blog to get a job, or a combination of all? Just know why you want to establish a blog, and you can proceed to the next step.

Don’t fool yourself into stepping to the next level or starting a blog without identifying this single most important detail.

2.  Think of a specific niche

The word may be a little new to you or you may have a different perception of it but niche is simply something that you’re good into. I didn’t say something that you’re merely interested about. It should be something that you’re both knowledgeable and passionate about.

A couple of years ago, I was regularly visiting a celebrity gossip site which tells me interesting updates about the Hollywood stars. I have been so excessively interested with them that when my friend invited me to start I blog, I didn’t have a hard time thinking of a topic to write about.

Now, pause for a moment and think of the first thing that comes to mind whenever you don’t have to think. (I know that’s a little ambivalent, but what comes first to your mind effortlessly?)

Think of something you unconsciously talk about in between casual talks with friends. Most likely it’s something that you’re of great interest about.

If you often talk about sports, then create a sports news blog. If you often like to read and comment about tech updates then establish a a tech blog. But not all of these topics altogether.

You can’t be a jack of all trades as you will then be tagged a master of none. You will have higher probability of succeeding in blogging if you focus on just one niche (at least for now), increase your knowledge about it and stick to it.

People who tend to write about anything under the sun will not easily get an authority than someone who focuses on a specific topic because a housewife who multi-tasks often finishes last than those who focus on just a single task at a
time.

If you think you have many other passions and they don’t adhere to your current niche, then you should establish another blog about it. Now, think about a specific niche that you want to blog about and write it down in a piece of paper.

Stop reading.

Write it down!

(This article is continued here…)

——————————-

Jonha Ducayag Revesencio is a social media addict, call center agent by day and virtual assistant by night. She has a passion for writing about celebrity, issues that Filipino are facing with immigration, au pair scams and blogging. If you liked the article and wants to know more about her, you can join her in her tambayan: http://jonhappiness.blogspot.com

But before that, I’d like to make some justifications why I have to make a post on this one. First, my previous post on How to Resolve WordPress Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size of 3355444432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) is getting a decent amount of traffic especially when there’s a new WordPress upgrade.

Second, my dashboard tells me a handful of people came to this blog looking for the solution on the WordPress error “cannot modify header information – headers already sent by [file]…” So this post should help you if you came here specifically for that.

Okay, before you lose interest, here’s the solution I got from WordPress.org, but before that, you need to understand why this error occurs “just like a thief in the night.”

According to WordPress, which is not really a very convincing explanation, is that this is caused by “careless” people messing up some codes. Here’s the snippet from WordPress.org:

It is usually because there are spaces, new lines, or other garbage before an opening <?php tag or after a closing ?> tag, typically in wp-config.php. This could be true about some other file too, so please check the error message, as it will list the specific file name where the error occurred…

So a good way to start is to check your wp-config.php file. In most cases you should be able to resolve this problem. Open your WP-CONFIG.PHP file using a php editor (I suggest you use Notepad++ if all you got now is Notepad or Wordpad – avoid using these as it may mess up your codes even more. Notepadd++ is open source and just search it in Google).

Your WP-CONFIG.PHP typically looks like this:

<?php
/**
 * The base configurations of the WordPress.
 *
 * This file has the following configurations: MySQL settings, Table Prefix,
 * Secret Keys, WordPress Language, and ABSPATH. You can find more information
 * by visiting {@link http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php Editing
 * wp-config.php} Codex page. You can get the MySQL settings from your web host.
 *
 * This file is used by the wp-config.php creation script during the
 * installation. You don't have to use the web site, you can just copy this file
 * to "wp-config.php" and fill in the values.
 *
 * @package WordPress
 */

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

.... some more wp-config blah blahs... the below is the last section of wp-config.php

/**
 * For developers: WordPress debugging mode.
 *
 * Change this to true to enable the display of notices during development.
 * It is strongly recommended that plugin and theme developers use WP_DEBUG
 * in their development environments.
 */
define('WP_DEBUG', false);

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

/** Absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( !defined('ABSPATH') )
	define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/');

/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

You need to check if there is a space before the opening tag ‘<?php‘ – in many instances this is okay. Then go down until the last line of the wp-config.php file. You should see either a '?>'tag or 'require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

Panic Button: Can’t see a ‘?>’ tag at the end? Don’t panic, I already did the “panicking” for you – LOL. Let’s ask WordPress why the hell there’s no ‘?>’ end tag here – but it’s working though so better leave it as it is.

Now place your cursor immediately after the last character – there’s either a ‘>‘ or a ‘;‘ that you’ll see, if something else, okay, your turn now to PANIC.

Placing the cursor immediately after the last character should not be that hard, and note that a space isn’t a character in this case. This means you have to make sure that there is no more space after the last character. To do that, try pressing the “delete” key for 30 hours.

Nahhh, 30 seconds should be enough time to waste here – as if you can do something more productive than doing this in 30 seconds (LOL – that should be another post: List of productive things you can do in 30 seconds flat).

Okay try it, it should work. If not, try to review the specific error message and find some mentions of files in there and fix it using the steps above. But in many cases, looking at the error message will just confuse yourself even more unless you’re a super duper WordPress and PHP geek.

If you ask me what’s the success rate of fixing the WP-CONFIG.PHP – well it’s 90%. 10% of the time I just close my eyes, get some sleep and hope that when I wake up, the plugin developer released another quick update.

Feel free to leave your comments, funny, corny, violent or otherwise.