About

Disclaimer: Before you go through this Q&A, do tune in to this song first. And if you came to agree with it, hop on with no hesitation aight as that clarifies your whole intention of why you are here!

The Author

How old & what is his astrological traits?
The author is 28, born in the year of the earth horse & bears the zodiac of a Leo. His character is a hideous amalgamation of both creatures. He thought of rebranding his zodiac sign calling it Horleo or Leorse. Which sounds better? You suggest.

So where this hails from?
He hails from the ‘nombor satu’ state in Malaysia that is Perak of course. They got a smart ass Sultan, lotsa mountains & reservoirs, fruit orchard & smelly beans. But now he is thousand miles away from home in a south west England county.

What the hell he is doin’ there?
Pimpin this blog & your asses of course.

So what is his creed & the lingua that he speaks?
Author is a proud-ass Malaysian born Chinese, he was fluent in English & Malay accompanied with reasonably proficient Cantonese, Hokkien & Mandarin. He is learning how to swear in Hakka, Swahilli, Urdu, Nihon-Go & Spanish. So don’t cha!

What is this Astrosurge thing?
The author was known with many pseudonyms in the past. Astrosurge was his current pseudo after being resurrected a year ago. In the past, he used to be known as KG, Ghostface, Shaolin Knight, Subterfuge, & Cryotec. The reasons behind the nick shifting is all because of identity-searching. Note that the author’s nom-de-plume evolves around Cybertronian & Wu-Tang characters. Those are the areas of interest of the author.

Astrosurge does mean something. Astro as known by many is a short from astrology or astronomy which involves the study of stars, planets & masses that orbits around the solar system. As you can see those are a shitload of things i.e. a miscellany of loads of things. This miscellaneous trait actually represents the interest of the author in many things, shitloads of things. On the other hand, a surge is a sudden forceful flow. So when the two combine, it means ‘a (sudden) forceful flow of all things that interests the author’, thus Astrosurge was born. It merely means ‘a presentation of miscellaneous things based on the author’s interest being delivered in a spontaneous way’, thus that is what this blog is all about – a miscellany of things that the author love!

Can I know how tall & how much he weigh?
Those are too personal to disclose. Holler at him & ask him yourself. He is shy by nature you cheeky ass.

The Site

cywong.com – was acquired & registered in 2001 via 1&1.co.uk. The domain name was owned by someone else before 2001, but I managed to ‘snatch’ it away when the contract for that account holder expired during the time I was in dire need to own this name. The site was then launched not long after that using a forwarding offered by 1&1 to a free webhost. At that time, the site was a simple site set up using plain HTML & the site is merely a representation of my interest in IT & web-technology.

I moved from host to host for 3 years & finally halted in 2004 when I am really occupied of my daily commitments. Blogging was hugely a cliché & trend at that time, so I observed the trend quite closely with full enthusiasm but still haven’t actually venture around because writing is so not my thing. I sucked big time in writing so I bet I might fail to make it huge even though if I go for it.

It was not until 2005, when I registered with Live Journal & Blogspot/Blogger, I tried blogging first hand after being inspired by top Asian bloggers such as Kenny Sia, XiaXue etc. I blogged throughout the summer until winter 2005 keeping good records of trips, travels, gatherings & outings that I have attended. At one point, I reckoned that Live Journal & Blogspot doesn’t really cater much on my needs as there is a lot of limitations as such it restrict the freedom of ‘expression’ that I wanted. I love photos & those blog services don’t offer them. I wanted a forum too; but they have no such thing as BBS’s in their service.

At the same time I was experimenting with new CMS (Content Management System) software called ‘Joomla’. I was playing around with Joomla a lot & decided to migrate my existing TransMY (Transfans Malaysia) portal that initially run on phpNuke to Joomla. What sparked my interest is the user friendliness offered by Joomla & the good thing about it, they do offer a component add-on called ‘Joomblog’ for blogging purposes just like Blogspot & LJ! Joomblog offer viewers to leave comments & blog entries can be edited on the spot using their built-in JCE WYSIWYG text editor where entries can be edited in a jiffy!

TransMY was then successfully migrated in March 2006, & that is where I start setting up cywong.com after successfully acquiring a cheap webhost from eBay with unlimited space & bandwidth.

My progress doesn’t stop there as I am not easily satisfied with what I got. Right before my birthday, I have upgraded Apothecarus (my PC) hard disk & have the whole machine reformatted. Then I reorganised my file system & start playing around with JD-Wordpress, a standalone third party add-on that bridges Joomla & WordPress.

WordPress was alright but I soon found out the bridge wasn’t reliable as the add-on was unstable as it only comes with one initial release & no further upgrades. It’s an utter stalemate in that case. I was quite divided at the beginning because if I opt to have WordPress as standalone, I might have to get rid of Joomla.

Just right after my birthday, I had my whole webserver reformatted to install WordPress standalone & here I am with the 12th version of the website. The decision was made because I feel that Joomla is only suitable if I am running a community portal. In my case, I don’t feel it’s necessary as my site will be focused only on blogging & gallery archiving.

Mainstream bloggers utilise blog as a tool, at times for subversive purposes, disses & intimidation. As for me, a blog was setup merely to function as a diary, organiser & also a rant-platform to express my views in certain issues. I keep the content balanced where you can find a blend of everything unequivocal. I am straight, so I don’t keep my thoughts encapsulated. I keep it raw & real, crude at times & humorous at times.

It also serves as a place where friends & acquaintances ‘meet’ up & share views by commenting & sharing the stuffs that I have contributed. It works as a ‘netmoir’ (internet memoir) where it portrays part of my colourful & vibrant journey in life with family & friends.