My new website!

This took me 6 full months of hard work, from one who only knows how to read a few lines of html to designing an entire website from scratch. So here, I am proud to announce my new website: Urban Forest: An Identification Guide to the Flora of Singapore and Southeast Asia @ uforest.org.

Join its FACEBOOK page to keep yourself updated about the latest species featured in this website!

A gratitude for the Botany Lab in NUS where I worked for the past 3 years. Almost everything in this website is from what I have absorbed and learnt from through the guidance and patience of my colleagues and boss.

Thanks also to Long and Ron for their advice on web design and pushing me to set a higher standard for myself. Some will probably squirm in terror if they see version 1 of my website. Haha~

Google Maps changed BTNR to CCNR

I am pleasantly surprised that after reporting to Google Maps about the erroneous labelling of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve as Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (see my previous post), they have acted fast and verify and correct the label slightly after one week!

It is comforting to know that we have a responsive team in Google Maps that value our feedback seriously. Looking forward to more things to come from this great company!

How to report a Google Map error?

From my previous blog entry, I indicated that Google Maps gave an inaccurate description of our Central Catchment Nature Reserve. What exactly is it?

If you see the embedded map below, the Central Catchment Nature Reserve is labelled as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. An outright blatant error.

I decided to report this error. This can be done through the following:

Left click on the marker, and click “More” > “Report a problem”.

Then, you will be led to this page, whereby more details about the problem can be elaborated before submitting the report to Google.

You may sign in Google at this stage (so that they have your email) and check the box to request them to update you when the fix is done. For now, lets see how fast they will take to verify and correct the error.

Google have since fixed the issue after slightly more than a week. See my latest post.

New theme for Urban Forest

This must be the 4th time that I changed my blogger template. I can’t remember how long the former one had stayed till I removed it an hour ago (below). It must have been several years! While I am excited to have a nice new layout, I am also starting to miss my former one already .

I have stayed in Blogspot faithfully despite the emergence of the newer and more popular Wordpress because of the limitations of the latter. While it is aesthetically superior with more templates, one will have to foot a sum to customise the html. Advertisements also appear after my posts when I am viewing the Total Vascular Flora Blog – another blog which I am contributing to – on my IPad.

In comparison, Blogspot has always allowed users who are more tech-savvy to play with its html. Unfortunately, with my fragmented knowledge, my former layout was probably the most that I could have managed.

With the new Blogspot design, it allows more customisation of the theme by using WYSIWYG. That being said, it cannot tweak every single item in the theme, and that is where some little bit of html editing will make a big difference. And with that, I have been working hard last night to get my new layout ready for today.

I set the width of the posting much longer to allow larger photos to be uploaded. Hopefully this will appeal to people more since ‘’a picture says a thousand words'”! If you think the picture above of the Yellow Flame flowers looks familiar; it is, because that is used for my new blog banner. :)

So, please look forward to more nature postings as I strive to deliver them in higher quality. Also anticipate better resources from here as I will expand my navigation bar pages to include more things.

Thanks for the support!