coriander in pho

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Expenses and subscriptions

4/28/2026 1:43 PM

I was blogwalking and found a post by swissmiss (Subscription Cost Visualizer) so I wanted to give it a try. While I couldn’t find subscriptions for website host and domain name renewal (Hostinger and WordPress.com) readily available, I was able to added them manually along with additional subscriptions such as Kinokuniya Bookstore membership. I also need to point out here that some subscriptions that I enjoy are taken care of by our subscription to cable TV and Ari (hahah!).

It was pretty interesting.

Those are the ones I could remember for now, though. Some of them are renewed on a 3-month/quarterly cycle (IQIYI) and 4-year cycle (Hostinger website hosting).

When I was still a Happiness Engineer in WordPress.com, there was a discussion on hosting pricing. Some US-based HEs shared their confusion about why there are users who asked for a monthly subscription. Apparently, it was not super common in the US. The monthly subscription method, however, is pretty popular elsewhere, especially in South American and Asian countries. The reason being: It has less “commitment”; as in, you are not being bound to a service/company for 12 months, and you can bail out anytime without losing too much money. That said, economies of scale do exist, and yes, the yearly subscription method tends to have lower prices than the monthly one. While now WordPress.com has been offering monthly subscription for quite some time, I can vouch that the fee of yearly subscription is way cheaper in total sum.

I chose 3-months cycle for my IQIYI subscription because I am not a big of drama viewer afterall, be it C-drama, K-drama, or any other series/drama out there. I did enjoy C-dramas, but I’m still unsure whether I can commit for yearly subscriptions or not, hahah. The difference between a quarterly subscription and a yearly subscription is RM 10, though, so I miiiight still thinking about it (also, in this economyyy??)

In case you want to check yours, you can visit this site: Subscription Cost Visualizer.

Anything Digital, Personal

2.0, online subscriptions, personal finance
Le wild multiple templates appear!

4/28/2026 10:46 AM

OK, so, yesterday I revamped this blog, right. I’m not sure what happened, and it might be due to me opening several tabs of the same thing (Site Editor) at the same time and saved stuffs on some tabs without, you know, saving the others which caused cache hijinks, but I noticed weird things yesterday.

First, this blog’s template — template Blog Home — got reset to its default mode on its own. I don’t know what happened. No recent update on WordPress, Gutenberg (last update was 4 days ago), nor the theme Twenty Twenty Four (last update was December 2025), so I chalked the issue on cache gremlins. Not only the template Blog Home, but nearly every single template was affected, too. I got so stressed out because it was almost dinner-time and I haven’t made dinner (priorities, priorities…) Luckily, things were under control as I made most of the changes on the Site Editor’s Style section, so a lot of the style setup was still intact/saved and less minuscule changes on the small things. People who said, “don’t sweat the small stuffs” clearly haven’t seen bloggers.

Second, this still confused me a hell lot, multiple templates/copies of templates. Like, multiples, with the same name, even. Eh, hello, system not confused meh? “Which template Pages issit she wants to use? We have like 2-3 templates with the name “Pages” here!”

And you can bet that it was not me who made it. I have enough dignity to give files proper names, okay. At least I can put additional S on my files so I can differentiate between “final_versionsss” and “final_versionssss_ver_final_for_realss”.

I did check the issues list on Gutenberg’s GitHub in case there were any recent reports about this, but I couldn’t find any, so it might be an isolated, rare case (again, cache.)

WordPress

block editor, gutenberg, WordPress
Bring it back to the 2000s

4/27/2026 12:23 PM
I have been busy redesigning this blog after several obsessive visits to Neocities. I thought Neocities was just another website hosting place, until I found out that it’s not just a website hosting place. It literally a place where 2000s blogs thrive. I even found most of the bloggers are using imood! (~~and yes, I’m so tempted to re-sign up!~~ I did)

I just love how unapologetic the Internet and the blogsphere were back in its heyday. True that folks with interests in blogs, anime, mangas (those three were usually intertwined), and 1st or 2nd-generation KPop stars were deemed as outliers back then, but that was when things were genuine. We read blogs of someone battling with mental health and sadness and cheered them on, we also followed someone’s classes and exams, and everything was mostly with pure intentions and friendship. Blogs were diaries and opinions, instead of “5 Ways for You to Have Summer-Ready Body!” or any SEO-related articles. Bloggers experimented a lot back then; colorful explosions of JavaScript, iframes, glitters, and <marquee> were the “it thing”. Suffice to say, I’m so so glad to see those online diaries and musings and writings are coming back. I know they never left, it’s just that… It’s beautiful to finally find them again, you know? It feels like meeting a long lost friend.

On my blog, I added some pixels/tiny pixels as I really love them, hahah. I also used Bitmap-style font (“rainyhearts“) in some areas, and I really need to find time to make myself a clique/pixel banner! I also found out that to give the “retro” vibe on your site (that overlay diagonal transparent lines), you can use 100% CSS. I mean, the last time I worked on such thing, I had to create a transparent image on Adobe Photoshop to be set as an overlay image, hahah. How the technology has advanced! This is what I use for this blog:
```
body::before {
content: "";
position: fixed;
inset: 0;
background: repeating-linear-gradient(45deg,
  rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.02),
  rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.05) 1px,
  rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03) 3px);
pointer-events: none;
z-index: 1000;
}
```
I took the code from itinerae‘s website with some adjustments (and refresher) from CSS Tricks.

I also added background image and worked on the layout. I really love itinerae’s and rem’s planet’s designs and layout! Their blogs are so pretty and I love the small details on it.

I’m so excited to blog again, thanks to the bloggers on Neocities.
Anything Digital, Personal

bloggers, blogging, blogs, blubs, neocities

The Blogger

Nindya. Kapkap. she/her. Indonesian in Malaysia. Millennial. Lo-fi. Post-Rock. Gregorian. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Murder mystery genre. “Love is Love“.