My first website was created wayyyy back in 1999 with hit counter started from 1. Second, third, and fourth designs soon followed during my NTU days. Version 5 was born when I started to join the blogging world back in April 2004. Version 5 started with hit counter around 9000. So, if you calculate it, it took me five years from 1999 to 2004 for that 9000 hits.

Starting with version 5, as blog's nature, contents is more important than website designs. And your responses were very good. 900 hits over the first month of my blog, back at Blogdrive. Now at Tabulas, still thinking whether this should be called version 6, we are closing in to my 20,000th hit. Now, if you read this post, take a quick look at lower right corner, check if you are the 20,000 visitors here. If you are, post in the comment, and I'll think what I can reward you with

Comparatively, four versions of websites took five years for 9000 hits, and one version of blog only needed two years for 11,000 hits. Thanks everyone for the support over the years. You are the reason I kept going.

Lastly, at this milestone, I would like to take this opportunity to ask you, my readers, for feedbacks, comments, encouragements, critics, and anything that you may want to say about my blog.

Apparently Google Groups has its limit. I don't know how many messages were posted when the 'warning' from Google came, but I remember few months back, we posted around 2,200 emails per day , and haven't got this message from Google yet. Oh yes, the group is very very very super highly active with emails  And no, I don't read all of the emails. 2,200 emails (assuming I can read each email within 5 seconds) will last me more than 6 hours to finish them all. Here is the email from Google that we received  I wonder if any of you have ever joined such active group before, hehehe....  

---

Hello xxxxx@gmail.com, Your message could not be posted to the indonesian gmail group because there
have been too many messages posted to the group recently.

In order to protect the Google Groups service, and the mailboxes of the
members of the indonesian gmail group, we limit the number of messages that
can be posted per hour to the group.

Please try posting your message later.

If you have questions related to this or any other Google group, please visit
the Help Center at http://groups-beta.google.com/support .

Thanks,
The Google Groups Team
================================================= From Google Groups Help Center
Is there a limit on how often I can post? Yes, there are two ways in which posting frequency is limited. The first limits the number of messages posted to a single group within a short period of time. If that limit is reached, posting to that group will be frozen temporarily and you'll be instructed to post again later.

The second limits the number of messages a single user can post in a short period of time. If that limit is reached, your posting account will be disabled. If your account has been disabled, you can click the "contact us" link below and request that your account be reactivated. We'll review your request, and let you know what we decide.

Please note, we are unable to provide the exact numbers that trigger
these posting limits.

Yesterday was a half-day for our team, and so we went to Orchard Mandarin Triple 3 for $45+++ lunch. It was sumptuous, better than Amara's or Fullerton's buffet lunch, though the selection there was not as many as those in Amara. see this photo, and this one. Another round of lunch, this time in form of sashimi, oysters, scallops, prawns, salads, lobster, chicken, black forest, chocolates, etc. Hahaha... do you feel hungry now?  After lunch, we headed straight to SuperBowl at Jurong for two rounds of bowling. My first round was so bad, I only managed to score, don't laugh, 49 . Second round was better at 89 after that first round warm up.

    

Next up was Go-Kart at Jurong. It was my second time go-karting, but it was the first time I played such a speedy go-karting. The first time in Genting last year was a joke. This is a high-speed, potentially dangerous, 50 kph at its top-speed with numbers of turns go-kart. 50 kph doesn't sound that fast until you sit on an open piece of metal with two engine down your back. It was fun, tiring, and adrenaline-stimulating.

Reaching home, I still managed to hit one hour tennis session with my flatmate, although last night, I couldn't really play well due to my right hand a bit crammed, numbed, whatever, from that bowling session.

And my night was summed up close to midnight, when I called my friend just to say Happy Birthday. It ended a 4.5-hours phone call.  Yeah, and I down to my bed 4 AM in the morning. And no, she's only a friend, really.

I realized that there are too many features in Opera 8 browser for me to review, so I will better let you read reviews by professional reviewers. Try Google for Opera 8 reviews or CNET reviews. I have been using Opera for the past few days, and I am truly happy with it. The interface can be so minimal to provide maximum viewing space in your screen (see below). If you are really interested to try it, follow 30 days to become Opera 8 lover where Tim will discuss each and every feature found in Opera. However, I realized that Opera 8 is not for everyone. There are still a lot who prefers Internet Explorer, for the simple reason that they don't know that other browser exists and they are not willing to try new things. Then there are those who prefers Firefox for its compatibility with most sites and mainly because it's free. Opera, however, I think suits advanced web surfers since it can be complicated, highly customizable, and full of features that neither IE nor Firefox provides. I have seen enough people who said Opera was not good only after 10 minutes of using it. Given time and chances, I believe those people will find Opera features very addicting. In conclusion, which browser you use depends very much on your daily usage of Internet, and how sophisticated you want your browser to be. For me, it will be Opera, because I can browse, I can read my Gmail via POP3, I can read websites by RSS all in one place. Firefox can't do all those, never mind IE.

Opera is not without its flaw, it doesn't support rich text formatting in Gmail or Blogger, Starhub doesn't work well in Opera (this one is Starhub's fault), Opera Ad filter not as easy to use as compared to Firefox's Adblock, etc. Mainly because of websites which does not support Opera instead of Opera's fault, so I hope with this advances, websites will start to provide support for Opera. However, these instances are very rare, and there's always IE to fall back to when websites starts to play nasty with Opera. Overall, to me Opera features far outweigh its drawback, and to me, Opera is way better than Firefox and Internet Explorer.