From the beginning, I honestly complain about my current theme and tell the world that I need a new theme. After that I decide to really look at the new year themes and made a list of 5 Free New Year WordPress Themes 2008.

Brian, the owner of PlainBeta is very interesting young man. He immediately visit my blog after receiving a ping back and straightaway gave me some advices on lacking of professional information on the blog. Thanks to Brian I revised my About page to concentrate on explaining about Binh dot Name. So now you should go and look at that About page again to learn why you should stick to this great blog.

Brian kept on visiting my blog often for a few days till his contest close. I really like Brian for having very similar attitudes and interests. Brian's very good at understanding my requirements. The best thing about him is that he is young and knowledgeable.

The requirements I set, I myself feel scared if I need to do all of it by myself. As expected from a potential designer, Brian is not hesitated to take the challenge. He spent his valuable time to learn about the blogs that participate, unlike in other contests. I really don't like the idea of randomly pick the winner for a contest, because each person's effort is totally different.

Finally on 2nd Jan 2008 he personally emailed me to notify me that I won his contest. Here is part of the email:

Binh!

Congratulations!

You've won the custom blog contest!

Now, before I can start designing, I need to get some specifics. Yes, I have the information from your post, but I have a few questions

Yes, I already gave a lot of information on my post New Look for My WordPress Blog for 2008. However that's not enough for a complete design. The "but I have a few questions" resulted in few more email back and forth between me and Brian. Brian's questions made me feel I will need to write a post later on, about the future of Binh dot Name. So stay tune for my announcements.

Later on, Simon announced the Custom WordPress Theme Winner on his blog. I hope he won't take back the offer because he estimate that the theme worth more than US $1000. Well, I would say if he really complete

The fact is that, if Brian can design my blog he will be getting hell lot of freelance work because you will expect the new theme to be somewhat comparable to ProBlogger.com. Well said, it should beat the crap out of JohnChow.com's design.

Enough for the bragging, I'm eagerly looking toward to acquire the new theme. I hope it can be done by the end of this month. It will give me wings to fly high in the blogosphere sky. At this time I'm holding back a lot because my theme look too ugly and I don't dare to promote my blog.

1. Yeepage's comment contest, and
2. PlainBeta's free theme contest.

Well, I don't like the idea of combining few different things into a post, so this one is about the Yeepage's Comment Contest.I was only participating in commenting on Yeepage's blog naturally. I admit that I only skimmed over Simon's My dreaded 1st Contest… and had some quick thought about some strategy to win the game. I had the idea of checking out the latest comment on the side bar and take note of the comment number in the URL. For example from this URL:

http://www.yeepage.com/increase-rss-subscribers-2#comment-842

I can clearly see that the last comment is #842. Since Yeepage had giveaway for every 100th comment so I would watch over the x99 and jump in to put a x00 comment, which can make me win the contest.

Things never work exactly as it's planned to be. Time passed, tension passed, passion passed. I commented on Yeepage.com with only one intention: participate in the discussion. I totally forgot about the contest and posting my comments just for the sake of saying my opinion.

Good luck come to good purpose. Suddenly on 21st Dec he emailed me to notify that I won his commenting contest for $40 and invited me to leave a "thank you" comment on Dreaded Comment Contest Closes. Yeepage was indeed very fast at responding to people. He immediately sent me the $40 as soon as I notify him my PayPal address.

The funny thing about what happen is that:

1. I did not comment for money
2. I did not use the strategy I planned.
3. The strategy I planned didn't work.

"What?", say you. As stated by Yeepage on his post Dreaded Comment Contest Closes, the way he counted the comments is via the Comments admin page, which greatly differs from the number located in the comment URL.

Well, the world is round and unfair. Some people might have taken the comment contest as the motive to participate in discussion. I on the other hand just do what I do for my own passion and got a reward.

Here is another thing to brag about. Thanks to Simon, the owner of Yeepage.com personally invited me to participate in that Definitive List Of StumbleUpon Articles post. At that time I was lacking in visiting Yeepage.com. At the right time, Simon was the main cause that made my comment the 400th and became the contest winner.

Thanks to that contest my relationship with Yeepage.com has increased 1 level. Thanks Simon for giving me the money, enough for few months hosting with this cheapest best hosting I ever used: FastDomain.com.