This image has been floating around Facebook and Twitter for a while now and I really got a kick out of it. I think this is the source of the image: Jay Mug – Stormtrooper Happiness

Related posts:

1. Finally! I’ve killed all the Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies on Facebook

I used to oppose IKEA. I didn’t want my house to look like an IKEA showroom, and to avoid falling for the “IKEA nesting instinct” explained in this scene of The Fight Club, one of my fave movies of all time.

I’ve since gotten over that. I’m not buying IKEA products to define myself after all, I’m buying them because of their great value and business practices. And to make sure my house doesn’t end up looking like an IKEA showroom, I hack my IKEA stuff! (For example, see my DIY IKEA Standing Desk Hack).

Here’s another hack we recently did for our home.

The super affordable SOLSTA PÄLLBO footstool is only RM8.90, but only comes in white and gray. Not really matching with our living room’s color scheme.

SOLSTA PÄLLBO footstool

It just happens that IKEA has a great selection of fabrics and textiles which you can use in your home. And so that’s what we did – we bought a great looking fabric and sewed a new cover for the footstool and pillows too.

Our KARLSTAD armchairs and SOLSTA PÄLLBO footstool

With just a little bit of effort, we’ve personalized the items we bought (and made our living room look a little less like an IKEA showroom). You don’t have to know how to sew to hack your IKEA furniture. You can always get a seamstress to do your sewing, or you can do hacks that don’t involve sewing at all.

For inspiration, check out the awesome IKEA Hackers website, which showcases all sorts of DIY and creative projects you can undertake with IKEA products. Enjoy personalizing your IKEA stuff!

I am an IKEA Malaysia brand ambassador. See all other posts in my Project IKEA series and my disclosure policy.

Related posts:

1. Hacking Together A DIY IKEA Standing Desk
2. IKEA return policy = Lifesaver!
3. Why I love IKEA

You know when you’re asked by an app for permission to do something with your Facebook profile? Maybe it wants to get your Facebook profile picture, or it’s going to automatically Like a page for you — you’re agreeing to these actions, but you probably don’t want to receive emails from the company behind the app right?

Well just do this and you’ll get less spam from Facebook apps. Click the Change link in the popup dialog and change the option to An anonymous email address.

You’re welcome.

Related posts:

1. Reduce spam from Facebook contests
2. How to Hide Tagged Photos on Top of New Facebook Profile
3. Hide status updates from Facebook apps, not your friends

Laptop + hard drive + internet = everything I need to run my business.

Also enjoying my holiday very much

Related posts:

1. @blogjunkie talks Twitter for Business on BFM Radio
2. ABI names top mobile operators
3. Weekend Geek Project: Installing a SSD in my MacBook

It’s time for another review of the past year! So many awesome things happened, and I want to record them so I can look back to see how far I’ve come.

First, some perspective. 2010 was a great year. Can you believe that 2011 was even greater? God has blessed me so richly. Here are the details.

Family

My family is the most important thing in my life. Everything I do is for little Zack and Pei Chyi.

Pei Chyi and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary in March. This was followed a few weeks later with Zack’s 1st birthday. Zack’s birthday also marks a successful 1st year as parents. This is a Big Deal for me because there is no definitive manual on being a parent. I’m super glad that I didn’t screw this up.

I’m also settling into my role as Dad very comfortably. I love watching Zack grow, playing with him and teaching him new skills. Working from home has definitely helped me settle into this role, and choosing to have a home-based business is definitely one of the best decisions I’ve made.

Another highlight for our family is moving into our new home. We’ve lived here for 6 weeks and I can’t imagine being anywhere else. I’m looking forward to making many more happy memories here.

Business

I made the image above more than 2 years ago. It represents my transition from my full time job on the left to self-employment on the right.

During my 2010 review, I was still climbing out of the Dip (the low point). Today, I’m happy to say that I’ve climbed out of the Dip and am making my way up higher the right.

I realized that I really enjoy working with WordPress, more so than the marketing consulting and training I provided through Buzzmedia. So in 2011 I re-aligned my business and created ClickWP, a concierge service for small businesses and bloggers for everything WordPress.

ClickWP aims to make WordPress problems just ‘go away’ for small businesses and bloggers anywhere in the world. I’ll be focusing on providing technical support, but ClickWP also offers theme customizations and development. Please refer your friends if they’re looking for WordPress help!

I launched it in November but I’m very excited about it. I’ve already had good response to it and if I can pull it off, it will be a business that can free me from the constraints of a traditional job and enable me to be location independent.

Other Highlights

Here are some of the many other highlights this year.

Climbed Mount Kinabalu. Pei Chyi and I made it! It was a tough challenge but it was also a fun adventure. I’m really proud of myself and Pei Chyi for conquering South East Asia’s highest peak!

Turning 30. All my life I had wanted to be happy. In my 30th year, I’m happy and there’s nothing else that I could ask for.

Presented at WordConf 2011. My friend Colin put on 2 conferences this year which I spoke at. At WordConf I spoke about making WordPress bulletproof for clients.

Becoming an IKEA Brand Ambassador. In November I was invited to be part of IKEA Malaysia’s eFluencers and I happily accepted. WordPress, Apple and IKEA are my 3 favourite brands.

Getting published on ProBlogger. I submitted a guest post to ProBlogger and it was accepted – Take 5 Minutes to Make WordPress 10 Times More Secure. I should put up a badge on my blog that says “As seen on Problogger!”

Media appearances in The Star and BFM radio. In June the government mandated the blocking of several websites for internet users in Malaysia. I wrote a blog post and got quoted in The Star for my trouble. Biggest traffic day ever. Through a twist of fate I was also interviewed on BFM radio, twice!

Getting Started with WordPress course. This was one of my projects from 2010. It’s a 5-day online course to teach beginners the basics of WordPress. Unfortunately it promptly got outdated with the release of WordPress 3.3 but the experience was priceless.

Won an iPad 2. Thank you @MyMaybank for putting on that Twitter contest and selecting me (at random) as the winner. I had decided not to upgrade my iPad this year but I really enjoy the iPad 2 anyway.

Upgraded to the iPhone 4S. I’ve been saving up for the 4S and it’s a worthwile upgrade. Next year–a new Mac!

Great friends who supported and inspired me. I won’t name names because I’m sure I’ll leave people out but I’ve been so lucky to have friends near and far who have been cheerleaders, inspiration and given me encouragement throughout the year. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

Looking Forward to 2012

After reading Benny Hsu’s post about yearly reviews, I realize that one thing missing from mine are goals for next year. They’re important to understand what worked, what didn’t and more importantly, why.

I think these require a little more serious thought so I’ll probably share them in another post. Call them my new year’s resolutions

I’ll end with a 1-sentence summary of 2011:

A year that marks the beginning of a new chapter, new decade, and more exciting things for me.

Happy new year everyone, see you in 2012!

Related posts:

1. PETRONAS Chinese New Year TVC 2011
2. 2010: Year In Review
3. 2009: Year In Review

Here’s wishing you a very
Merry Christmas
and a new year that’s bursting with joy,
beautiful memories and good fortune.

Related posts:

1. Did you *really* expect a Christmas card from David?
2. Merry Christmas!
3. The Digital Story of Christmas a.k.a. Christmas 2.0

Recently I’ve started using Hover as my main domain registrar, an excellent alternative to the popular GoDaddy which is where many people buy their domain names from. Like many others, I have got tired of GoDaddy’s site and service. Their CEO’s elephant-killing antics didn’t help with their public image too.

Today, we have another reason to ditch GoDaddy – they are a supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act. While stopping online piracy is a noble cause, this bill being put forward by US lawmakers is really dumb. So dumb that Google, Yahoo!, Twitter, Craigslist and many other internet giants are opposed against the bill. Ars Technica has a great explanation on why SOPA is so bad.

Anyway, back to Hover. Go check out their website and compare them against GoDaddy. They currently have a promotion where transferring domains to Hover only costs USD10.

P.S. Use my affiliate link and get 10% off  http://hover.com/clickstarter

Related posts:

1. 5 mistakes
2. The Star: Online users bypass block
3. Say NO to Malaysia’s three strikes law (ISP Liability Act)

My master bathroom

The master bathroom in our new house comes with a double sink, so we wanted to have a large mirror that is wide enough for both me and Pei Chyi to use at the same time. After looking at countless bathroom accessory shops, getting quotes for custom mirrors we decided that we would settle for the IKEA HOVET mirror.

The HOVET mirror is a beautiful thing with a sleek aluminum frame, and is suitable for use in high-humidity areas like a bathroom. Perfect! At RM349 it was still cheaper than a custom mirror too. So we purchased the mirror and had it delivered.

When it arrived we admired it and were so excited that we were going to have such a big mirror in our bathroom. Because you know, it’s huge!. So big in fact, that it was too wide for our bathroom. Facepalm!

Major fail with the measurements. We’re not sure what quite happened because we were so organized about what we needed to buy and all of the measurements, but we managed to get the measurements for our bathroom mixed up anyway.

And so now we were stuck with this huge mirror that was also too wide and tall to be used elsewhere in the house. We really felt like this page in the IKEA catalogue.

Doesn’t the caption just say it all?

Thankfully, IKEA has got a great returns policy. You can return items up to 100 days after purchase for a full refund or exchange. I think if they are unwrapped but still new, you may still qualify for a partial refund or exchange. It’s a no-questions return policy too, so they don’t make you jump through hoops for the refund. Just bring your item to the refund counter, present the credit card you used to purchase the item and if it passes inspection you’ll receive a refund immediately. No “checking with management” or “submitting a request” necessary. If they can refund you, they’ll do it there and then.

Over the years of being an IKEA customer, I’ve used this service more than once so it’s a real lifesaver. Or to be more accurate, a wallet saver!

Back to the mirror. We managed to get a refund for it. Next we triple-checked our bathroom measurements and purchased the IKEA STAVE mirror. It was a much better fit and that’s the mirror you see in the picture above. Thanks IKEA for helping make our bathroom look fab

I am an IKEA Malaysia brand ambassador. See all other posts in my Project IKEA series and my disclosure policy.

Related posts:

1. Why I love IKEA
2. Page 23 (of the IKEA catalog)
3. Hacking Together A DIY IKEA Standing Desk

I’m very pleased to announce a giveaway for my friends and followers this Christmas season. The good folks at FlexiRoam have given me some credit vouchers to give away as prizes, and I’m contributing a prize from my own pocket too. Read on to find out more about the prize and how to enter.

Call home from overseas at local rates with Flexiroam

FlexiRoam allows you to make and receive phone calls when overseas at super affordable rates. You forward your Malaysian number to FlexiRoam before going overseas. Once you’re overseas, you buy a SIM card and FlexiRoam forward calls to your Malaysian number to the overseas number. You only pay RM10 per day for receiving calls on your overseas number (plus any telco charges for receiving a local call).

I checked the savings calculator on their site and I would save over RM500 if I spend about an hour calling out and receiving calls from Australia. That’s awesome! Check out their site to learn how it works.

ClickWP solves your WordPress questions when Google can’t

ClickWP is my new WordPress support services business. We help small business and serious bloggers find answers to their WordPress-related questions. We can tweak and customize themes, migrate your site from Blogger to WordPress, keep your blog safe from accidents and hackers, and much more. Learn more about ClickWP.

The Prizes

FlexiRoam is giving away RM500 worth of credit to 10 lucky winners. Each will receive a roaming pass of RM50, good for 5 days of roaming overseas. Please note that you will need to sign up for a free FlexiRoam account to receive the prize.

ClickWP (aka myself) will be giving away 1 copy of Darren “Problogger” Rowse’s book 31 Days to Build a Better Blog as a bonus prize to 1 of the 10 winners above. The book was recently revised for 2012 and is worth USD30.

Are you looking forward to winning a prize? Here’s how to enter.

How to Enter

First share this post on your blog, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Note: If you’re sharing this post on Facebook be sure to set your post privacy to public so I can view your post.

Next, leave a comment below with a link to your tweet / blog post / status update. Here’s how to find the link to your tweet. That’s it!

I’ll announce the winners on 31 December or, if I’m busy partying, by 7 Jan 2012. Be sure to comment with a valid email address so I can contact you to let you know you’ve won. If you have questions, post a comment below and I’ll clarify.

Thanks for taking part, and have a Merry Christmas!

In return for this giveaway, I am also receiving roaming passes from FlexiRoam. See my disclosure policy.

Related posts:

1. Green Ideas
2. SitePoint ROR book giveaway

There’s a guy in Oregon, USA called Casey Hopkins. He runs a small industrial design and mechanical engineering firm who has always wanted to create and sell their own product but were unable to because of the high upfront cost and risk.

But now, because of me and 2,500 other people, we’ve made it possible for him to make the Elevation Dock for iPhone a reality.

The thing that made it possible is called Kickstarter, and is a website that provides entrepreneurs a platform to seek funding for their projects. There are all sorts of cool stuff on Kickstarter, and it’s been getting lots of press lately.

I’m glad that I managed to help someone make his idea a reality. Malaysia needs something like this.