iRant

Nobody's Home

2006-07-19T10:59:00.000+08:00

I've moved my blog to blog.jploh.com. Goodbye Blogger! Please update your bookmarks and feeds.

Jollibee Food Corporation and Worm Patties

2006-07-18T14:49:00.000+08:00

Okay, follow the instructions. Open this page. Hit "ctrl+a" or highlight everything. Unless they haven't changed it yet, you should see this: Wow. To be honest with you, I hate Jollibee's service. But I have to hand it to them, from a case study or thesis (whatever you want to call it), they became one of the largest corporations in the country. I think their webmaster hates them, is unethical or was forced to do this. The squares near the bottom are non-Unicode characters (letters that your browser is not set to understand). This is what they are:

jollibee food corporation, home based franchise, hot dog manila and hot dog philippines jollibee food corporation, kiddie party, palabok pancit recipe and palabok recipe jollibee food corporation, restaurant chain philippines, spaghetti and swirly bitz, Yahoo Web Sites, yahoo.com [snipped] earthworm hamburger patties, employment fast food and entrepreneur franchise opportunity, DMOZ.org jollibee food corporation [snipped] Lycos.com jollibee food corporation [snipped] earthworm hamburger issue and earthworm hamburger patties, Northern Light.com jollibee food corporation, fast food, fast food job and fast food job restaurant, Google.com jollibee food corporation, food delivery, food recipe manila and food recipe philippines, Search MSN, MSN.com jollibee food corporation [snipped] ebay.com jollibee food corporation, peach mango pie [snipped] food manila, franchise business opportunity and franchise buying opportunity, compuserve.com

Then if you view the source and check the meta tags, this is what it says:

<META NAME="object" CONTENT="jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, eating fast food">

What this does is it cheats search engine rankings like Google's. Everyday, pages all over the internet are scanned by computers that run spiders, programs or scripts that index information about the page it passes. What Jollibee is doing is completely unethical because it ruins the beauty of page ranking and returns irrelevant search results. So if your search includes "ebay.com", Jollibee might pop out as a result. Wouldn't that piss you off? Or as some might say, "WTF?!". Way to go. I guess they haven't heard of this. The earthworms are here to stay and they have an evil plot to conquer the world. Follow the thread over here.

Evolution: When Monkeys Became Human

2006-07-17T21:06:00.000+08:00

No, I'm not going to be in the Darwin Awards. I'm trying out Wordpress and I might move my blog there (as soon as I figure out how). I really wanted to be able to sort my entries by categories and put tagging too (in an automated, organized way). I also tried MediaWiki and it's great. I might try Joomla! for my site too. Wordpress seems to have too much that it becomes a bit too confusing. I just wanted categorized posts but what the hell, change always comes with getting used to something new. By the way, it's been raining everyday and I don't like it. Specially last week when we celebrated Bheng's birthday ...at Tagaytay.

Microsoft Varsity Program (MVP?)

2006-07-10T17:58:00.000+08:00

Personally, I don't like these publicity articles but what the hell. This year's Microsoft Varsity Program kicks off (hey, it sounds a lot better thang FSAP!!). I accidentally passed by that night because I attended a talk on XAML by MSDN Connection. XAML really looks promising or heartbreaking, depending on how you look at it. Anyway, DLS-C is not included anymore since we're really not part of NCR (or we messed up last time). But Rose said the program is expanding. This year's program is now organization-centric. Unlike last year, there are selected faculty and students, hence the Faculty and Student Ambassador Program. In other countries it's just for students, we're a special case. FSAP was not as bad as as I thought. I didn't have to endorse Microsoft products. In fact, we didn't even "cascade" the knowledge given to us in the trainings. The look on the teachers and students learning new and cool geeky stuff gives a different feeling way better than getting multiple orgasms (I can't tell, I'm a guy). That is, if they did learn from us.

Blasted Compiler!!

2006-07-09T21:32:00.000+08:00

I have experienced different results from two different compilers with basic operations so I think I know what the author[s] of IZArc is talking about.

I received many emails from people that have problems with archives containing files with non English filenames. Also some peoples ask me for x64 version of IZArc. Unfortunately I can’t help them because IZArc is created using Borland’s Delphi but it doesn’t support Unicode names and can compile only x86 (32-bit) applications. That’s why I decided to rewrite IZArc using Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 (Express Editions are not applicable!!!). To be able to do this I have to purchase a licensed copy of VS 2005 and probably some additional components. Anyone who wants to support IZArc can donate some amount of money and help me to create one better and more reliable version of IZArc. Just follow this link and donate as much as you want (change the quantity field for more than 25$).

IZArc is my favorite application for handling compressed files [for Windows] because it's not much of a resource hog and it can read/write TAR and ISOs. I want to donate but I can't. I'm also curious why the author[s] didn't choose to make it open source. It's not like they're going to lose anything. Should that explain the need for VS 2005, that's a pretty hefty price tag?

Tux Gets A Chance in the Philippine Government

2006-07-06T19:01:00.000+08:00

Got this from the PLUG technical mailing list.

I'm a legislative staff of a partylist congressman in the house of representatives. we are in the process of drafting a bill on open source, compelling the gov't to adopt open source software, among others. As a measure of goodwill, we will be migrating to a linux distro this month until august 2006. We're considering ubuntu, bayanihan and redhat, though I'm more familiar with redhat. I'm soliciting opinions, suggestions/recommendations on the proposed bill, on the Linux distros to use and anything that you want us to consider. Thanks and more power! Carlos Panlilio Garcia Legislative Staff Officer Office of Rep. Teddy Casiño +62922.815.0676 +632.931.5911

If this bill gets approved, the government could save a lot of money. I hope that the savings will not go to the nutrition of the pockets of our politicians.

PLDT's NGN

2006-07-05T10:11:00.000+08:00

I got this from PLDT's Annual Report 2005, "Broadbanding the Future". NGN, Next Generation Network as they call it, is some sort of bundled package of DSL-W or SMART WiFi/Bro.

Simply put, NGN is the coming together of voice, data and video in a single network.

I wonder how good the service is. Our ISP in school is Meridian Wireless (now SMART WiFi) and the service is so bad. Also, I haven't heard any good feedback from the wireless broadband services of SMART and PLDT. Anybody in Cavite who got to try this?

In late 2005, residents of several residential subdivisions in Cavite, where traditional phone facilities were sorely lacking, finally had PLDT phones connected to their homes. These subscribers were the first NGN subscribers in the country.

Is the video being provided IPTV? The voice, VoIP? The article says they're using non-proprietary equipment. Are they using Asterisk and/or ATAs? Maybe we'll find out if this surfaces more.

With the first NGN lines already installed, PLDT plans to increase the capacity to at least 300,000 lines by end-2006.

Due to PLDT and SMART's nasty reputation in wireless internet services, it could be doom for those who'll get tricked to switch.

NGN lines will first be rolled out in such areas as Cavite, Laguna and Bulacan where landlines are in short supply. Eventually, these facilities will be installed in area where existing customers will be migrated from traditional telephony to the bold new world of NGN communications.

My First Contribution to Wikipedia

2006-07-03T10:44:00.000+08:00

I don't know why I feel so accomplished about it even if the addition/modifications I made wasn't obvious. Anyway, I edited an article on Davao's international airport (first paragraph) and added a link. I got the information from a republished article on Manila Bulletin. I'm curious if the expansion of the runways included widening for the incoming A380 fleets. It's good to hear that most facilities, specially the control tower, are better or at par with NAIA's. I'm looking forward to more international flights to and from Davao. It could be cheaper if I flew to Davao through a cheaper domestic airline like Cebu Pacific or Asian Spirit then transfer to an international flight to Malaysia, Indonesia or Singapore.

Possible Phishing Scam/Fraud Sprouting in Pinoy Tech Communities

2006-06-28T22:19:00.000+08:00

Watch out for promogirl's, occasionally called pornogirl, "contests". Expect them to pop out on most online Filipino communities, the first three are tech-related. I have this gut feeling that it's just a scam. TipidPC Thread PC Tipid Thread PinoyPC Thread The "prices" are USB to IDE adapters and threads entitled "Sino may gustong manalo ng FREE tech stuffs taas ang kamay!". There have been various reasons for the "promo". Here's a quote from Cottonfields of PC Tipid

I have a hunch in the back of my head about this. Sometime ago, I have a friend, a hacker, that purchased computer peripherals on online store such as newegg.com using hacked accounts. Then guess what he did for it to be delivered to the philippines? Ingat lang. We don't know her/him in person. We are not certain about the legality of this game/promo.

And one from SIKYA of TipidPC who "won" and claims to have recieved his price.

this is no scam guys. this is inline with promogirl's upcoming computer store. be ready co'z as i've heared, there will be more contest to come in the following days. Be glad that there are still persons here who is giving out free items like this just to have some fun and at the same time promote themselves here in our communit, not just to be notice but to be respected.

But there really is no straight answer. The questions to the quiz-type contests are pictures of motherboards with the logos blurred out. Whoever gets to give the model of the board wins. After that, the "winner" will be asked for their home address. Looking at SIKYA's profile, it seems authentic since he does have comments and has been a member since May 7, 2005. So, scam or some generous attention whore?

Programme pour le Manille Fete de la Musique

2006-06-28T11:00:00.000+08:00

Stage 1

Main Music Hall: Pop, Blues, RnB, and Commercial 16.00 - Lazy Lorelei 16.20 - Mike's Apartment 16.40 - Twitch 17.00 - ~~Sando~~ The Automatics 17.20 - Uneven 17.40 - Purplechickens 18.00 - Free Beer 18.20 - Plug 18.40 - Soul Kitchen 19.00 - ~~Cover Me Quick~~ Hale 19.20 - ~~Phantasma~~ Sugarfree 19.40 - Sophia Bolo 20.00 - ~~Kjwan~~ Syalam 20.20 - Pumping Pluto 20.40 - Sino Si Kat? 21.00 - Snake Jones 21.20 - Snakecharmers 21.40 - Grass 22.00 - Jimmy Bondoc 22.20 - Irish Chavo 22.40 - ~~Pinup Girls~~ Kapatid 23.00 - Blue Rats 23.20 - Delta Slim 23.40 - Soul Benders 12.00 - Firebottle 12.20 - Cambio 12.40 - Mahasa 1.00 - ~~Kapatid~~ Naima 1.20 - ~~Sugarfree~~ Phantasma 1.40 - ~~Hale~~ Cover Me Quick 2.00 - Pepe Smith 2.20 - Pin Up Girls 2.40 - Sando

Stage 2

South Wing: Ska, Reggae, World, and Ethnic 16.00 - Lokal Grounation 16.20 - Good Leaf 16.40 - ~~Peace Pipe~~ 17.00 - Pink Cow 17.20 - Koolai Kahon 17.40 - Tether 18.00 - ~~Shalam~~ 18.20 - Sruvaleh 18.40 - Wanwurd 19.00 - Kalumad 19.20 - ~~Chakra~~ Zealots 20.00 - Chrome8 20.20 - Nutrib~~and~~un Experience 20.40 - Oppressed 21.00 - Oi Wag Dito 21.20 - ~~Sucketseven~~ Mofo 21.40 - Kampai 22.00 - Humble Sauce 22.20 - Triggerbliss 22.40 - Camote Chunks 23.00 - Juan Isip 23.20 - Kadangyan 23.40 - Salindiwa 12.00 - Porks & Bean 12.20 - Placid 12.40 - Rub-A-Dub 1.00 - Reggae Mistress 1.20 - Tropical Depression 1.40 - Cocojam 2.00 - Jeepney Joyride 2.20 - ~~Milagros Dancehall Collective~~ Coffeebreak Island 2.40 - ~~Coffeebreak Island~~ 3.00 - ~~Moyg~~ 3.40 - Peace Pipe

Stage 3

North Wing: Jazz, Fusion, Lite Rock, New Wave, and Pop Alternative 16.00 - ~~Dahon~~ 16.20 - ~~Milkteeth~~ 16.40 - Switch 17.00 - Milkteeth 17.20 - ~~The Out Of Body Special~~ 17.40 - Squeezers 18.00 - ~~Project Fusion~~ Reklamo 18.20 - Rain 18.40 - Taffy Trip 19.00 - Makopa 19.20 - ~~Johnny Alegre Affinity~~ Dahon 19.40 - ~~Rubber Inc.~~ 20.00 - Talahib 20.20 - Earth Fish Fish 20.40 - Astro Juan 21.00 - Elemento 21.20 - ~~Crayola~~ Dale Ibay 22.00 - ~~Law Of Thirds~~ Project Fusion 22.20 - Shades Of Ivory 22.40 - Moyg 23.00 - ~~Juan Pablo Dream~~ Pupil 23.20 - Wunjo 23.40 - Darryl Shy 12.00 - ~~Caliph8~~ Publico 12.20 - ~~Nyco Maca~~ Out of Body Special 12.40 - ~~Drip~~ Whateverittakes 1.00 - ~~Sheila & The Insects~~ Sleepy Heads 1.20 - ~~Sleepy Heads~~ Dream Kitchen 1.40 - ~~Dream Kitchen~~ Sheila & The Insects 2.00 - Late Isabel 2.20 - Atomflot 2.40 - Skies Of Ember 3.00 - Slavedrum 3.20 - Scarlet Tears 3.20 - Inflikt

Stage 4

Rock, Indie, Alternative, and Punk 16.00 - ~~Eternia~~ 16.20 - ~~Haneps~~ 16.40 - ~~Naima~~ Eternia 17.00 - ~~The Brew~~ Haneps 17.20 - Sand Pipe/Attic Sessions 17.40 - Potter Noster 18.00 - Kontraluz 18.20 - Childzplay 18.40 - ~~Nora Aunor Fans Club~~ Sacramento 19.00 - Aizo 19.20 - Blazing Bulalakaws 19.40 - 3 Day Silence 20.00 - Lazersquadron 20.20 - Chubibo 20.40 - Datu's Tribe 21.00 - Moomtaz 21.20 - ~~Selling Side Mirrors~~ E.R.F. 21.40 - ~~Hard Boiled Eggz~~ Sucket Seven 22.00 - ~~Mad Scientist~~ Hard Boiled Eggz 22.20 - ~~Publico~~ Too Late The Hero 22.40 - ~~Erf~~ Selling Side Mirrors 23.00 - Boy Elroy 23.20 - Tolonges Death Squad 23.40 - Live Tilapia 12.00 - The Betrayed 12.20 - The Wuds 1.00 - ~~Dong Abay~~ Deceased 1.20 - Marcus Highway 1.40 - Mano Mano 2.00 - Spoons 2.20 - ~~Slapshock~~ Dayuhan 2.40 - ~~Razorback~~ Publico 3.00 - ~~Monsterbot~~ Einstein Chakras 3.20 - Valley Of Chrome 3.40 - ~~Chrome8~~ Monkeyspank I havent decided yet if I'm going. The factors revolve around who I'm going with, the location and the crowd that will be there (flashback from last year). I'm also wondering why Sitti and The Brass Munkeys are not included in the Jazz stage. I hope they'll be included in the last minute changes. [Updated 2006.06.30 ~02.00] Last minute changes from this morning.

More Futbol Madness

2006-06-26T12:51:00.000+08:00

Germany is enjoying the tourism right now. This giant LED screen by Philips is, according to personal accounts on forums, three stories high. It is anchored at the River Main between the Alte Mainbrücke and Ignatz-Bubis-Brücke bridges in Frankfurt. I spent a lot of time researching on this because it was a bit fascinating. Fitting thousands, even possible to be a million, of people into a stadium is impossible, so they had this solution which they call the Main Arena where Fan Fests are held. Viewing is free but you have to be there two hours before the kickoff to compete for good spots. Philips is an official partner for this year's World Cup. They provided the RFID ticketing and the Plasma screens scattered in the city. That's a 16:9 screen, spanning 144 square meters. You could compare the size to the surrounding structures and objects to get my point. My sources: Football by the river in Frankfurt Fan Fest Frankfurt Fan Fest Frankfurt (2) Giant TV for World Cup 2006 I decided to revert back to single posts because the collective long posts took longer to complete

Deus Ex (2/X)

2006-06-22T10:44:00.000+08:00

I. The French's Contribution to Mankind: Art and Music II. POR-MEX 2:1 III. Leaving the Embryonic Phase IV. End of Part II I. The French's Contribution to Mankind: Art and Music Le Manile Feté dela Musique aura lieu Juin 30, 2006 au SM Mail de l'Asia. There were rumors that there will be no celebration this year. But there are messages flying around looking for bands to perform for this year's event. It looks like we're going to be celebrating after all. The event is, of course, sponsored by the Français Ambassade. There's also the art festival, not sure when and where though. II. POR-MEX 2:1 Futbol season is up and everyone's been busy staying at their homes watching the games. In fact, more restaurants in Singapore have started delivery services for the futbol season (Star News Asia). I happen to watch more TV now, just because of the games. I also found out that we don't have ESPN. The other day was the only time I got to go jogging. For that day, I couldn't move anything below my ankles. My stamina became faster now (did I say that right?). I couldn't run as long as I could. I'm trying to remove this growing belly I have right now. I'll start attending futbol practice on Monday. Maybe I could lose more weight there. III. Leaving the Embryonic Phase Last Friday was the acquaintance party at DLS-C. The event is themed Unhushed: Breaking the Silence. It was well planned (despite the fact that it took only a week or two). My band played but I was just too tired to do anything right. I wasn't hitting the right notes and I often lost my timing. Like last year, I got to bring home food. There were a lot of extra food. I got to bring home half a tray of baked macaroni (last year was tacos and pizza). The Digital Arts Club, which I'm no longer "leading", sold barbecue and C2. We also had shirts printed. The shirt kicks so much ass. It's nice to see the organization alive and active (..and filled with members). I knew I'm not a people-person. Bryle, Dwight and the rest of the team have this charm for attracting people I guess. This schoolyear seems bright (do I have to say this every year?). I also have my hopes of graduating this schoolyear, I have to undergo nine units of mathematical torture and one dance class. IV. End of Part II That's it for now. Yes, there's still more from last week.

Too Long, Too Late (1/X)

2006-06-15T13:44:00.000+08:00

I. Outsource me, damn it. II. Clutter III. Stop Following Me! IV. End of Part I I. Outsource me, damn it. I posted a link to an article with Autodesk claiming that the local 3D/CAD outsourcing business isn't stressed so much. Here's a follow-up article with Autodesk now making the move (better than just calling press cons and blabbing away). Hats off to them. I hope they could just give a special version (less features) to students for free. Thirty percent of x-hundred-thousand-peso software wouldn't make any difference. Academic versions are not affordable either. Blender (F/OSS rocks) is used for the school's 3D animation course. Too late I guess. II. Clutter I guess a lot of people know where/that I work now. It's also the reason why this post has taken days to complete. Here's a picture of my desk a few weeks back.

Consoles: "Work, werk, wurk!!"
Turns out I'm not really working, eh?
Octa Ramis (a 40GB 4G iPod --Jedi Edition)
My favorite working chair (although I still want the chair I had at HK)
The room doubles as a bodega! And the boxes serves as blinds too!!

And I though my desk is messy. On other news, the Clumsy Assasin has struck again. The accountants took our room but amazingly, the boxes kept haunting us. We really have to live with the bodega environment. You wouldn't want to meet Michelle. III. Stop Following Me! This is old news but this was in the span of the "no post" season. I didn't know I had excellent map reading powers! Both markers were placed when the shots were still blurry. I must be cursed. Clouds keep following me. IV. End of Part I This post is taking too long. I'll continue the rest on another post (it's already Monday the 19th).

Trash

2006-06-04T23:47:00.000+08:00

I. My First iPod Accident II. The Power of the Mouth (or the Pen/Keyboard) III. The Future of Mobile Phones I. My First iPod Accident iTunes really sucks. It sucked so bad I really went into more iPodLinux research. I turned on the automatic update option and it erased all the songs I moved to the other computer. This such a bummer. Now I have to retag all the songs and add album art again (the screen looked better with the album art on). I also hate the way that iTunes refreshes when you edit the tags, it suddenly focuses itself. It's also not that friendly to the Windows taskbar. Okay, I saw a lot of cool features for the iPodLinux and lots of games but the core and new UI is still in beta. I'll just wait later. I also found out that the iPod has two ARM processors. Cool! Also, the reason to making iPodLinux kicks ass (although used commonly, it still sells to me), "because we can". II. The Power of the Mouth (or the Pen/Keyboard) I got this from my mail in one of the Yahoo! Groups that I'm in.

Subject: BEWARE OF CUESHÉ!!! Mga kapatid kwento ko lang sa inyo itong nanyari sa akin nung last Saturday. Nag-back up ako for Ara Mina sa Ratsky Morato. Guest nya yung CUESHÉ. May 3-4 song number sila in the middle of our set. Para mabilis ang set up, iniwan ko na yung snare, hhats, ride at pedal ko. Eto na pasok na ang crew ng cueshe, kinalas lahat ang cymbal stands at naglagay ng sangkatutak na boom arms at multi-clamps. Ginamit pa din nya yung ride, hhats at snare ko nagdagdag lang sya ng cymbals nya. After nila tumogs, kinalas na nung crew nila yung gamit, eto yung badtrip, DI NILA BINALIK YUNG MGA KINALAS NILA BAGO SILA TUMUGTOG. Naiwan naka kalat yung mga stands nakinalas nila. Ginawa ko kinausap ko yung PA sabi ko, "Pre baka naman pwede nyo ibalik yung mga kinalas nyo". Ok naman yung PA binalik naman nya. Mga brad di ba pag may mga tinanggal ka na gamit sa drums ng venue ikaw na magkukusa isoli sa set-up kung paano mo inabutan bago mo ilagay ang mga gamit mo. Respeto lang sa drummer na susunod sa iyo at respeto na din sa gamit ng venue. Pagtingin ko sa snare ko puro DENTS yung head. Eh bagong palit pa naman. Nilapitan ko yung drummer sabi ko, tsong bakit mo naman nilagyan ng dents yung heads ko. Bagong lagay pa lang ito sinira mo na", sumagot sya na papalitan nya. Nagpalitan kami ng number ng road manager nila at sabi Sunday or Monday papadala nila yung replacement. Nakakainis dito di naman nya gamit yun hahatawin nya. At ako more than a year ako kung magpalit ng heads di ako nagkakadent ng heads. Again respeto lang sa gamit ng iba. Kung hindi sa iyo wag mong WARAKIN. EASY KA LANG DI BA? Galing din ako sa rock na tugtugan and I consider myself a heavy hitter din. Baka may mali sa pagpalo nya kaya nagkakadent ang heads sa kanya. I called the road manager Monday afternoon to ask when will I get my replacement head, sagot nya dadalhin daw niya sa Ratsky ng gabi. Sabi ko sa Off the Grill ako that night. So sabi nya dun na lang daw.matatapos na yung gig ko di pa din dumating, tinext ko pero di sumagot tinawagan ko di rin sinasagot. Hanggang ngayon wala pa rin akong nakukuhang reply sa kanila. DI KO NA HAHABULIN YUN. SA KANYA NA YUNG 600 PESOS NA PAMBILI NG HEADS, basta sa akin nakatatak na KUPAL sya at yung road manager nya. Head lang yun. Baka nga bigyan ko pa sya para magpraktis sya kung paano pumalo ng tama! Eto pa kwela, may nakausap ako na events organizer nung SMB Oktoberfest, may sinira din daw na drums yan nung Oktoberfest. Kaya ingat kayo kung makaka-alternate nyo yung drummer ng CUESHÉ, baka wasakin pa gamit nyo nyan. Kung may nakakakilala sa inyo dun sa drummer na yun paki-forward itong e-mail sa kanya. He he he he. Mga kapatid tandaan lang natin RESPETO lang sa kapwa nating drummers. -Vinci Rodriguez

I don't forward this kind of emails becuase I consider them junk (hey, sometimes there's good junk). So I just posted it to keep your mailboxes clean. III. The Future of Mobile Phones Apache now has a port to mobile phones and Python has been on them for quite a while too. You could server dynamic server-scripted pages with a mere mobile phone now! With microprocessors getting smaller and powerful at the same time with storage costs going lower by the Megabyte and physical size as well, what will be the future use of phones? There are many possibilities, mobile phones could soon be turned to an ultramobile computer. You could use cordless mice and keyboards via Bluetooth or RF, connect a monitor wirelessly or with a thin cable. Internet access is not a problem, most phones are GPRS/EDGE capable and newer models come out with WiFi capabilities. Don't forget that we have wireless speakers and earphones now! I could picture the future of mobile computing already. It will be beautiful.

Audiophilia and Geekness

2006-06-03T00:08:00.000+08:00

I. Treasure II. Your Friendly Neighborhood iUG III. I'm a geek. Are you? IV. Fun with Templates I. Treasure Some stuff that I got in the past days. My productivity is doomed. I loved this game so much, I bought it even if my laptop can't run it and I barely use the desktop that can. Sid Meier still kicks ass. Sitti's "Café Bossa" with a [fake] autograph, all the tracks are great! This is a must-buy for Jazz lovers. I kept on hearing this on the radio but I thought it was some concert or something until I saw her perform at the Ortigas park. I've heard great reviews from friends so I bought it without hesitation at a concert at Megamall for PhP290. Is it the same price from the record bars right now? I saved the best for last. Apple's iPod Photo 40GB Jedi Edition. Jedi Edition because it has a light sabre accross the screen! Bought it at TipidPC with a Belkin FM Transmitter. I originally wanted the transmitter because I could plug it to any device with a 3.5mm socket and I liked the brand (I bought a KVM switch of the same brand) but the guy was selling it for over two grand. I saw other sellers at eBay with cheaper offers but they weren't responding so I took the bargain. I'll be moving all my audio files to the iPod and keep a copy on another machine so I could regain the ~20GB hard disk space on my laptop. Here's a closer look: The 40GB iPod Photo Jedi Edition playing 'way 'cross Georgia by David Sanborn. II. Your Friendly Neighborhood iUG Since I now own an iPod, I have this curiosity. Is there such thing as an iPod user group? <searches Google> Oh there is. If nobody from the country has started one, I'd like to start one and call it Philippine Users' Group for iPodLinux (PUGI). Changed iPod to iPodLinux. I'm still thinking when I could reformat it. iTunes sucks. It doesn't seem to read tags correctly and the Library and synching is messy. III. I'm a geek. Are you? Only a geek will find this funny or corny. If you don't get it. You're not a geek. My laptop; with a quad-core setup: Intel Centrino, AMD Sempron and an Athlon64 X2!! Designed to run Windows XP and works fine with GNU/Linux. The second Athlon64 badge made it look fake. I want to remove it but it might leave a sticky mark (like the old ATI badge that is now occupied by the Sempron). I wonder where I could get a GNU/Linux badge. IV. Fun with Templates Tonight was the only time that I made noticable changes to my blog's template in ages. If you click on the comments link, it'll "draw" an inline frame with the comments page instead of moving to the comments page. I'm still looking for a better way of doing this because it looks crowded with that small frame and the page not fitting inside. I added a Yahoo! IM link for a few days but it wasn't that discreet. When I'm online, it says, "Send me a message". I just wanted the dead smiley when I'm offline and the big-ass smile smiley when I'm online. I removed the Stickam thing because it was large and completely useless since I never go on cam.

Freedom and J-Ska

2006-05-27T16:29:00.000+08:00

I. Senseless Post ...well, almost II. The world would be boring without YouTube I. Senseless Post...well, almost We found a stray love bird at school yesterday. This is one lazy bird. Or maybe it really is the DLS-C environment that makes everyone lazy. I think I'd rather have a bird as a pet. They make nice sounds (well most of domestic bird species) and not that messy. II. The world would be boring without YouTube I tried a search for Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra at YouTube. I found a couple of videos. I just love this band, I can't get enough. They're a must for Ska lovers (calling Ms. Dianne!!). Here's my favorite track: I want that upright electric bass. Maybe I should start learning Nihongo so I know what the lyrics mean. I searched for it but I can't find a translation (only for the title). At least I can somehow sing with it. "Utsukushiku moeru mori" means "a beautiful burning forest". It's so hard to search for stuff for this band even if they've been around for more than twenty years. I got lucky and got to download a complete collection. It sucks that it's so hard to get rare CDs here. I even had to buy Four Play's last record from the US and Marcus Miller's "Tales" from HK. Other clips that I liked:

Minute Men

2006-05-23T00:03:00.000+08:00

I. Prepaid PCs II. Official Opus Dei Reaction to the Da Vinci Code movie III. Too Late I. Prepaid PCs Microsoft and a couple of PC component manufacturers think that a prepaid system will remove the digital divide. Sounds great. But charge by the minute? What the hell? I use my laptop 24/7 if I paid by the minute it wouldn't be cheap. II. Official Opus Dei Reaction to the Da Vinci Code movie Read here. Still haven't seen the movie but just sharing the link for those hooked up to the book and the film. III. Too Late Moks beat me to impersonating a professor for the freshman's first day in DLS-C. Damn. ~~Oh well, there's always next year.~~ I hope this will become some culture that will happen every year. The video will be posted soon.

Hey Vista, Eat This!

2006-05-21T12:29:00.000+08:00

Okay, I posted before a technical session about Vista last March. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of users who are after fancy graphics and cute eye candy because in DevDays, many people's reactions were, "Ooohh... Aaaah... Wow! [applause]". Also considering that most of these people were [MS] developers. Well, if you're so hyped about Vista coming out next year or mid-next year if they postpone it again, you might want to check out Project Looking Glass and XGL. XGL Demo Project Looking Glass Notice the cool animated backgrounds both on XGL and LG3D? That idea was scrapped on Vista (the moving grass background). By the way, Project Looking Glass was started before Vista did so you can't claim that these are Vista clones. Old news but it was only last night when I saw the XGL demo clips. Personally, I like XGL better but it wouldn't hurt if both (Novell and Sun) worked together to combine their work.

An Itchy Ode

2006-05-19T09:36:00.000+08:00

The Da Vinci Code movie is now showing and there's been a lot of fuzz about it. Many people said, it was far from the way stuff were depicted from the book. Some said the book was badly written. Me? I don't know. I don't know what the fuzz is all about. I don't even want to watch it because I haven't read the book (my personal rule of thumb). I don't want to read the book because it's too mainstream. That's why I haven't seen Lord of Pranings, Horny Peter and The Miracles of Darna. I'd like to see more organized crime movies like The Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven, Twelve ~~and Fifteen~~. That reminds me of SSN by Tom Clancy. It was so boring! It was so repetitive. They encouter an enemy submarine, shoot a torpedo get shot back, panics, gets away and encounter another submarine a day or two later. It was bragging about American power and superiority over Russia and China. Anyway, my uncle had an interview at CNN the other day and on CNBC yesterday about how the Opus Dei was portrayed in the film. I also noticed how superior CNN's content is compared to CNBC.

Optics

2006-05-15T23:15:00.000+08:00

Inspired from (or copying the ideas from) Sir Nash's blog, it's all pictures today. Nothing exciting to blog about since everything's about E3, Wii and PS3 lately. The first and last gaming console that I had was the revolutionary Nintendo Family Computer which lasted for only one week (after I soaked it with water; I didn't want it to get dirty). First batch, shots from our client's space during Labor Day (no one was around so I took the chance). As you all can see, this is nothing compared to European architecture. Anyway, if I were to post pictures, it would either be modern architecture/engineering, computers or something really funny. Like when I went to HK last year, I only brought back pictures of the popular buildings. Oops, ran out of pictures. Here's a screenie. This was sometime before a group project gathering. It's amazing how the text culture is taking over the way people communicate even if it's not through SMS. I also found it funny that the way this person used chatting linggo with live verbal conversations like OMG (pretty fancy; compared to the original one, it has the same number of syllables if you say it). O-M-G! O-M-G! O-M-G! Waaaah! Before I end this post, I have to leave a small note to myself, "Don't forget your dad's birthday next year". I just remembered, a couple of minutes back when I went down to check what food is left. Bah, we already celebrated yesterday anyway.

Some things are cool, while some are not. Which are they?

2006-05-10T22:04:00.000+08:00

I. Spot the difference II. I eat babies for lunch III. Old School I. Spot the difference Exhibit A: My sister's reciept for enrollment for the term where she took her practicum. This was paid in full amount. Portions of the image tampered for privacy purposes only. Exhibit B: My assessment form for the coming term where I'll be taking my practicum. Same number of hours as my sister's and she took her practicum in a company with a facility in LTI. If you haven't noticed, we're going to pay almost three times the amount they charge in DLSU. The reason: nobody knows. I asked our acting dean and I didn't get a straight answer. I asked the registrar but I was told to ask the acting dean. I asked a couple of my professors, they didn't know either. I don't know what's so special in DLS-C that they could charge us that amount even if DLS-C is in a location where the cost of living is lower than that of DLSU and that the quality of the facilities are not as good as in DLSU. We have a corny comedian in school and I want the balls/tits of the person responsible to be stapled on his/her forehead. * Click on the images for higher resolution II. I eat babies for lunch Although I do not encourage hacking, defacing or vandalism, Some dude did a funny prank. Like the comment I made in this guy's "extensive" investigation, I want one of those scrolling LED sign boards in my room with a synonymous message, "I eat babies for lunch". They think, some guy named Joshua did it. III. Old School Eric found this while we were looking for something else. It's so funny when you find other interesting things while you dig through a pile of stuff. This is from my fourth grade. I could still recognize a lot of faces. Some of the names that I could still remember:

Carlo[?] Valerio, red shirt on the left (he always had a "Good Morning" towel on his shoulder)
Renee Bulgar[?], blue shirt on the left
Paolo Mabasa, black shirt, third person to the right of Renee (with glasses)
Suzanne Gardiola above Paolo M.
Christian Garcia above Suzanne
Ziggy Hagamman, to the right of Suzanne with both arms raised
If I'm not mistaken, it's Lim (forgot his first name) with the mask
Mark Gianan, second to the right (peeking)
Patrick Mayo below our adviser (the lady in black)
April Reyes is below Mayo

Half of the remaining faces are familiar but I can't pick up their names.

Outsource me!!

2006-05-07T20:47:00.000+08:00

Autodesk says that we're not addressing 3D outsourcing opportunities. I disagree. I've read a couple of job openings from 3D animation and design studios starting up here. The only thing difficult to start one is the huge capital you'd need. With Autodesk buying Alias, the guys behind Maya, you have fewer choices and the pricing is ridiculous, it's not Peso-pocket-friendly. We also have a lot of good 3D artists, most of them are abroad though (please come home!!). Or maybe our investors haven't seen the potential yet since the call center (or BPO if you want a nicer name) market is getting all the attention. Reading more on the business section of today's paper (we only get the newspaper every Sunday), office space rentals will go up, you probably know why.

Mushy Cheesy Touchy Feely Stuff

2006-05-07T16:37:00.000+08:00

I just saw the girl next door walking with some guy. She didn't change at all, still cute. She changed her number again, probably still running away from my stalking skills. Things that I didn't know about myself:

I love reading but limited only to 1-2 paragraphs or short articles
I'm an excellent stalker

Things would've been great if I courted her and if her father wasn't a ~~[bent]~~ cop. I could take her out somewhere nearby. We could do old school romantic stuff like calling each other with tin-cans and strings, throwing stones at her window to wake her up. In fact, all I needed to do was to yell to get her attention ...until I moved to the other room. Note: I remember reading somewhere, "If a geek was locked up in a room with Angelina Jolie and a computer (with an Internet connection), the geek will do nothing and blog about getting stuck in a room with Angelina Jolie". I still qualify.

Stuff I Forgot to Blog About Last Night

2006-05-03T19:39:00.000+08:00

I. vSocial: The Flickr for Video II. Pictures Speak Louder than Words III. The content of this section is more fancy than this title. I. vSocial: The Flickr for Video I found vSocial because I clicked on a link to a kickass condom ad. It's even Web 2.0 ready! II. Pictures Speak Louder than Words I'll let the pictures talk. This was part of the things we did when we ran out of stuff to do in our OJT scam. The empty stomach and effect of coffee got in at that time that my hands couldn't stop from shaking. We should have done a trace on who ratted out on our black propaganda in the IS lab. Notice: The persons and names in these pictures are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons is unintentional. Here's another set by JC. He did a great job with tweaking the camera. I saw him walking around chasing the butterflies and finally found proof of life from outer space (yes, they're watching us). Or maybe not. III. The content of this section is more fancy than this title. Action flicks depicting high end touch screens are about to become non-fiction. A holographic and 3D version should be next. See the clip below [URL]. I want one!!

Bad Day

2006-05-02T23:13:00.000+08:00

I. Another day, another rant II. Just when you thought you didn't have enough time I. Another day, another rant I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I usually wake up on this side and it doesn't turn out to be bad like the other days. Although if I did wake up on the other side, I would've crushed my laptop. Oh I'm such a geek I slept last night with my laptop beside me. I just found out that the school's provider is Meridian (now SMART WiFi) and we have been down for the second time (the whole day) in the past fourteen days. Adding more tension on this OJT scam. Then this morning, our phone line went dead (along with the data line). Mom asked for a technician to come over and fix the thing. The technician claimed that the router is causing the line to malfunction. Is he kidding me? I could bet my life for it. The line is connected to the motherfucking modem, not directly to the router. He even messed up my cables and turned off one of the PCs since he's too dumb to operate a KVM switch. Fucktard. Barely did anything too, since I was virtually disconnected and I was dead tired and stressed out. This sucks. II. Just when you thought you didn't have enough time I'm starting two new blogs. Wang-Wang Ko To, another rant blog but this time specifically targeted to the atrocities of the defunct Philippine government. The other one, Magic Gulong, a blog where I'll post ome of my crazy ideas. Please check them out [next week when there are more entries] and tell me if you find them interesting. Other candidates for Wang-Wang Ko To were "Wang-Wang" and "Masamang Damo". Then "Bumbilya" for Magic Gulong. I didn't know it was so hard to think of a good name without beating someone else to it. Maybe when I have a kid, I'll name it Hpurtylireuvhtal. Yes, sixteen letters.

First Day Funk

2006-04-24T23:34:00.000+08:00

Is it just me or Blogger has been slow lately (slower than usual)? Anyway, I want to blog about my sentiments for the first day of our practicum. I saw it coming. I'm in a point where I'm about to pop out and go mad from my observations. I feel like the preparation for the practicum was uh, messed up. First off, the Student Portal project wasn't in the plan in the first pass until I mentioned it. Miscommunication or lack in communication perhaps? Second, I was told that a computer and a desk with eight hours a day with dress code was required for working in a company outside of the school. We got that covered when it was questioned, I even relayed it and was given an answer without hesitation. But when we got there, it felt like there were no resources allocated. It was blurry to the advisors if equipment will be provided. I still felt at school (you know, that "slacker" feeling) because of the lab environment. I wanted a desk and a comfy chair (reminds me of my HK work days). I feel like we were given false hopes or a broken promise when the land of milk and honey was just a few corners back. Third, the school's so-called E1 connection sucks, period. The speeds are slower than dial-up and if not slow, it's down. It's your lucky day if you went over 1.5KB/s. I'm not covering the uber-powerful proxy. If I continued with my plan, I'd be on a DS3 line. Yes, I'm obsessed with the Internet. Just a few more years and I could say that I spent half my life connected to it. Last, where was she when all this happened? I still have one email unanswered (or indirectly answered at least, ~~I want it straight from the horse's mouth~~). Until now, I still have questions on how this thing will work. Sir Joel convinced me to take part of this. We'll be pioneering this. I know the benefits will come in later but from what we're getting now, I feel like it's too bad to be acceptable (I guess could manage but there's the "sama ng loob"). I wasn't even too interested to go to the school this morning, and I'm barely late for work. I was early most of the time. Besides us, the next party that will benefit from the project is the school. So I think we need just a little more ~~in return~~ for benefits. Just small things that I'm pretty sure that the school can provide, we'll be paying twelve units for it anyway. Small things like meal tickets for our wonderful canteen or unlimited coffee and biscuits (an office should have this to qualify to be called one in my opinion). I won't be ranting about all this if things felt like the situation is under control or not "bara-bara" style. I was able to relate this to Ms. J to relate it to her majesty, just so I wouldn't be complaining all the time, I should think of solutions too. Oh yeas, I am almost ticked off (>500 words).

For freeloaders like me

2006-04-22T15:41:00.000+08:00

I'm offering 10 free subdomains and pseudo-unlimited storage and bandwidth on my webserver and domain. This will be available only to my friends or those recommendable by my friends. The server is great for developers who want to test their projects. I want to put my development server into some load instead of just calculating for Folding@home which happens to just eat more power and raising the electrical bill. You can pick any subdomain as long as it's available or if you have already have one, it'll be pointed to the server. The server has about 8GB of free space, I could still add more and delete all the junk that's in there. The bandwidth is a bit tight, it's connected via PLDT's MyDSL with 512kb/s downstream and 384kb/s upstream (ADSL). The server runs Apache 2 with PHP and if succesful, Ruby. A MySQL database server is also running in the system. I was going to put some disclaimer stuff but that should be enough. For interested parties, feel free to email me, via .

Paradigm Shift

2006-04-20T00:28:00.000+08:00

My brain is on idea steroids. Wow. I have so much ideas running around from left to right, jumping from one possible project to another. I'm too tired to write one whole post though. Just got home. Passed by the office but no one was there so I went home. This is why I didn't want to have my practicum in school, because I was afraid of getting stuck in a traditional environment. It's a relief to hear from Sir Joel that he got my point. I'm seriously considering in taking my practicum in school if it was looked into. I'm a person of change, I'm never contented. That is why I wouldn't like a traditional office environment where everyone is expected to work like drones for eight hours straight. Geez, that is sooo industrial age. I liked the fact that I could work at home. I'm a developer, I think and analyze 24/7. I can come up with a solution at four in the morning, get up from bed and grab my laptop and start working. We're now living in the information age, eLearning, Cybersex, Web 2.0, and stuff like that. Everyone and everything's connected. Start-up/small companies are not prone to failure (that is, immediately or like it used to be), specifically in the IT industry. With the advent of RAD tools, fewer people are needed to produce large-scale applications and with open-source, you have an uber-large pool of developers located around the world. Boy, I sure would love to make change, the benefit of my inability to stay put and impatience. Oops, got drawn to this post it was supposed to be a short one. I'll post my ideas when I get the time later on.

News Flash

2006-04-19T02:00:00.000+08:00

I have a lot of stuff to blog about this week but I'm just too busy except for this one, I just have to blog this. If you look a couple of months back, I praised the cops for catching me for overtaking on the shoulder lane at the South Luzon Expressway. But now, there's this slob in the force that pissed me off. Apparently, the radiator's lid of the car got lost or something and on the way home, the car was stalling and overheated. So I had to stop and let it cool down and put water in it. A good samaritan that closely resembled Sir Ver Ramos (with the matching car make/model) stopped by to ask if I needed any help. I asked if he had some spare water, luckily he had some and went ahead to get it. Then the patrol car arrives. Then a cop with an old wrinkly-face stepped out of the patrol car that, the usual cop that you'd see with the big belly. I turned around and it seemed that the good samaritan suddenly disappeared when the patrol car arrived (could he have been a hold-upper/mugger?). I started pouring water to the radiator when the cop reached the front of the car. The bastard didn't even ask if everything was okay. He just stood there with a grumpy look, probably envying my juvenile face. I looked at him then he asked in a bossy tone, "Di tayo pwede magtagal dito (We can't stay here for long)". It was then that I noticed that the lid was missing so I asked him if he had a flashlight. "Meron, kunin ko (I do, I'll go get it)", he replied. I continued pouring water then he came back with a nifty lighter with an uber-powerful blue LED that sort of did the job. I tried looking for the lid, and checked if it was just there. By that time, Dad was calling and I had to hangup and run from the car seat (trucks were zooming by) to the hood and back so I kept the high tech lighter in my pocket. I ran out of water and most of it was spent on just cooling the radiator. I asked the near-useless piece of shit if he had water. He grumbled, "Tingnan mo dyan sa patrol (check the patrol)". So I checked the back of the pickup truck and saw a container (I wasn't even sure if it was water or gasoline). I brought it down and I was dead tired I had to try a million times to drag and lift it out while he just stood there and pretended to look young with his beer-belly. I finished refilling the radiator and returned the half-full water container. I started the car and everything was okay. At this point I was still smiling eventhough, in my mind, I was already telling myself how useless this guy is. I said thanks and was about to walk to the car (about to start skipping with glee) when he said, "Oh, lighter ko. Kukupit ka pa eh (Hey, my lighter. You swindler.)". I said sorry and said thanks again then left. From that point on, I was thinking, if I hadn't been travelling on this highway and paid a hundred and thirty four fucking Pesos, you wouldn't have your salary. For the number of years that I used the highway, I could give a rough estimate that the money I spent on the toll would equate to two months of his pay (my guess). I didn't want to write that, sounding like an elitist. But even if I wasn't a taxpayer, he swore to an oath for service to the people. I wish I'd see this guy again so I could tell him how much of an asshole he is. I've seen a bent cop and he's no different from one. From my anger, I composed a short rhyme while driving. Let me share it with you.

Tarantado ka mamang pulis! Ayaw ko na yata magbayad ng buwis!

I Will Never Understand How Women Think

2006-04-13T21:48:00.000+08:00

Okay so we went to Aei's birthday party last night. I really didn't feel like going but Ramel insisted on it and I owe them (gets me off the hook of treating them too). She was there. When we went upstairs to join them, she left. I heard that she was crying and there were people consoling her. All of a sudden I felt like I was a party crasher. What is it with girls breaking up, going back to being friends and not really being friends? Ugh. She was the one who ended it, I have no grudges or anything and I moved on. I can now assume that most of them know about it now and it'll only take a couple of hours before the rumors spread. I tried my best to have fun though. Got really wasted and had to puke on the way to Alabang to repaint the house this afternoon. I don't know how I feel right now. Bah.

...and the white flag is up

2006-04-12T12:29:00.000+08:00

I. Ceasefire II. Ruined III. iBlog2 I. Ceasefire School's finally over, now I have time to write again. I still have some stuff to do but they're manageable. My birthday was great. I think the cake given by my classmates was thoughtful, surprised me too. I'm not a big fan of birthday celebrations. I just like the gifts. Haha. We've been working on projects since last week and I think all that hard work paid off. Bad things did happen but I hope that puts a lesson in all of us. We had a couple of Jihad (pronounced as JAD) sessions at the house. We had so much foor and Coke, one bottle per head. We managed to do a little documentation too. Mokey and Oh-Tee Wet dream Food I had for the past six days, Spaghetti, noodles, baked macaroni with cheese and pizza. Not good. II. Ruined I just watched the first two episodes of CSI:NY's second season [Hi-Def]. I'm a bit disappointed. Aiden, played by Vanessa Ferlito, was fired at the second episode. I think she's the hottest of all the actresses on any of the CSI shows and laying her off was a bad idea. The effects are worse now, they're less believable and realistic. Ugh. I had to give you a spoiler, I'm that disappointed. III. iBlog2 Mark your calendars, the Second Philippine Blogging Summit is on April 18, 2006 at U.P. College of Law, U.P. Diliman, Quezon City from 09.00 to 17.00, admission is free. Sir Joel is one of the panelists on the personal blogging track. See you there!

Barely Legal

2006-04-10T01:07:00.000+08:00

I'm now twenty. Time has passed, I'm no longer a 'teen'-age ...mutant ninja turtle. I will still have a mental age of 13 though. Cheers to me! back to work...

Champ ..orado

2006-04-07T11:18:00.000+08:00

My brain's current state: lugaw. Time for a break.

Documentation 101

2006-04-07T09:15:00.000+08:00

I was assisting in the configuration of a Digium TE110P. I was skimming through the sample file and read the last sentences in one of the comments...

The PSTN will never be a slave to you. You must be a slave to it. -- Zaptel Configuration Manual

Pure ownage! Haha! *just taking a short break.

Joyrides on the Information Highway

2006-04-02T14:04:00.000+08:00

I. Extra Joss II. Attack of the Clones III. Shuriken Music IV. Gold Digger I. Extra Joss I'm now contributing to the Folding@home project. Currently, there are three processors under my username. I'm under Team 2291 (Philippines). I actually thought of doing this before but didn't gather enough human energy for a couple of clicks and typing. I checked out SETI@home too, but I thought that the project was stopped already. Too late to switch now, all that energy was consumed already. I'll be installing the clients to my dad's and sister's laptop. II. Attack of the Clones Dad bought an MP4 player for my sister and now I know what MP4 is and that the term "MP4" player is correct. I used to think that Asian manufacturers that immitated and improved portable compact MP3 players made it up, incrementing it by 1. Kinda fancy, it's just as small as a match box and plays video with built-in speakers too! This one kicked the iPod Video's ass pretty good, the only thing bad about it were the buttons and the UI. III. Shuriken Music Browsing around Wikipedia, I ended up reading more about Justin Frankel and checked out NINJAM, Frankel's post-Nullsoft projects.

NINJAM is a program to allow people to make real music together via the Internet. Every participant can hear every other participant. Each user can also tweak their personal mix to his or her liking. NINJAM is cross-platform, with clients available for Mac OS X[, GNU/Linux] and Windows.

One word, "panalo". IV. Gold Digger So yesterday was April Fool's Day and GMail's 2nd Year of operation. I was hoping that GDrive would've been launched yesterday. Didn't hear about anything but I did check if GDrive.com was alive. Returned nothing but decided to do a WHOIS on the domain. It turns out that it was registered to MarkMonitor. It looks like that Google hired these guys to "protect" the brand (while it's still in development or something ...hopefully).

Your corporate identity is fundamental to conducting business online. Your name, logos, trademarks, and brands are valuable assets that drive revenues, establish trust, and protect customer experience. MarkMonitor is the global leader in creating and protecting corporate identities on the Internet. We make the Internet safer for businesses and their customers with end-to-end solutions that address the growing threats of online fraud, brand abuse, and unauthorized channels.

Before I did the WHOIS, I actually had intentions of registering the domain before Google did. I guess they were already prepared. <disappointed>

Videos and Video Games

2006-03-31T22:52:00.000+08:00

I. "Thailand Decides 2006" II. Classic Geek Games I. "Thailand Decides 2006" My uncle had an interview at CNBC's Squawk Box earlier today regarding Thailand's political crisis. You may watch it at YouTube or download a copy with higher resolution from my box. This took me some time to prepare and upload since all my VirtualDub settings have been wiped out. Video and audio wasn't synched but I found a work around. There were no dropped frames though (but ate ~15GB for ~10 minutes). II. Classic Geek Games Ugh. Still lazy. Anyway, I was looking for some games for FC5 a few minutes ago. Bumped into some cool stuff. First off, DOSBox 0.65 was just released. I'm hoping for full functionality of Constructor. The previous released version allowed the game to run but crashed somewhere in the middle. Another one is OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe). I was expecting added vehicles but it looks like an improved version of the original one (by Chris Sawyer), specifically with the multiplayer mode. They did add a couple of gameplay features though, you could now build canals. I didn't get to use this before so this is new to me. Two new airport types have been added too. Also, there's a Multistop feature where two or more bus stations/truck depots have the same name, similar to Locomotion. I just wish that the features and flow of the UI in Locomotion, Transport Giant and OpenTTD be combined to one super kickass transport management simulation game. Yeah baby!

A Hot Podcasting How-To

2006-03-30T00:44:00.000+08:00

Pillow fights and podcasting. I know it's not that entertaining but this draws a lot of attention to Apple's line of products ...and it's soft porn. There's got to be a reason behind this. Are they linked to the French and American Red Cross? It would be great if it's for a good cause. I want a hi-res version!

Meltdown

2006-03-29T22:13:00.000+08:00

I. For Dan Michael II. Boss dito, mura lang oh! I. For Dan Michael Nothing beats play time at COMSYLA. I managed to fit myself in one of those too, considering that I have a large ass. II. Boss dito, mura lang oh! Good news from Ma'am Peachy Herrin (Re: Web 2.0 Summit):

due to interested parties' requests, we have special rates for educators, government employees and students - 5k. im sure you fall under one of those categories. ;) yep, you do.

Now I have two choices, have fun and learn or have fun and get wasted with my friends. Tough decision, both valuable and too good to pass on. Another point, practicum starts at the last week of April. Can someone please invent a time machine? Oh wait, maybe I can compress my schedule. I was going to blog this yesterday and kept telling myself, "this is too good to not blog". But I always ended up doing something else. Actually, I think my brain ran out of the juice to think straight. I'm working at a very slow pace since last week, nice timing.

Musical Scores

2006-03-27T09:49:00.000+08:00

My musical tastes are shifting again. I just downloaded two symphonic albums, a bunch from this string quartet that does tributes. I still managed to get some from Pink Floyd, Thelonius Monk, et. al and Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. I've got to hand it to these Japs, they rock! Most of the titles are written in English and the scores are usually instrumental. I'm annoyed at yesterday's results of work. I barely accomplished anything. The only notable thing that I accomplished yesterday is fixed the DNS for my domain. mirror.jploh.com now points to my dev server. If you're on PLDT myDSL, their DNS servers haven't updated yet (way to go!) so you'll get some kind of error page. I had a bunch of files open but barely touched them. I was browsing around doing non-related stuff. I actually have a DIFFCAL exam later and papers to submit for INFOSYS. More on the playlist thing, I did a tally of the MP3s that I have. This was based from yesterday, without the new records that I just acquired. By number of tracks

Victor Wooten (109)
Incubus (88)
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (71)
Lee Ritenour (67)
Jaco Pastorius (66)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (63)
Acoustic Alchemy (62)
Joe Satriani and Marcus Miller (58)
311 (52)
Reel Big Fish (49)
Dave Matthews Band (45)

* Yngwie J. Malmsteen (117) ** Sade (79) By number of albums

Lee Ritenour (7)
Incubus (6)
Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, Acoustic Alchemy, Victor Wooten, Joe Satriani and Jaco Pastorius (5)
Steve Vai, 311 and Red Hot Chili Peppers (4)
Dave Matthews Band, Rivermaya, Dream Theater, Marcus Miller, Carlos Santana, No Doubt, Reel Big Fish and Weather Report (3)

* Yngwie J. Malmsteen (10) ** Sade (8) * I had to rule out Malmsteen because I haven't listened to all his songs yet and I only got the albums from Jet, a ~~punk-ass poser and~~ die-hard fan of hard rock. ** Sade had to be ruled out to0. I downloaded all those eight records in one transfer session because I wanted a high-quality copy of "Smooth Operator". I don't listen to Malmsteen and Sade that much. Both are still good artists too. I included DMB in the top 10 because, I also got 311 from Fred (I don't listen to 311 as much as I listen to DMB either). This is also not a good way of measuring how much I like one artist. I should have used a 'Most Played' type but it's pretty hard to do that since I play MP3s on different computers also on different players (Ack! So unorganized). This was based (yesterday) from 3096 tracks, approximately 19.03GB in total size. I downloaded about one and a half Gigs of audio yesterday. Speaking of size, I have to get a new HD soon to move all my MP3s and documents in one safe spot. When we had our JAD session here at the house last Saturday, my laptop went to some sort of cardiac arrest. The screen blacked out and the optical drive kept checking if there was media in it (even if the tray was open). It scared the beheebee jibees out of me and right where I needed it most. Is it time to get a new laptop?

A Brief Peek at Predictive Playlists

2006-03-25T21:00:00.000+08:00

I took an extra 512MB stick from an unused laptop for temporary use with mine while I wait for mine and so, I had the chance to multitask again and played around with Winamp. I found this Predixis MusicMagic Mixer at the bottom of the Media Library. I tested how good it was with mixing songs of the same genre and mood. A little inspiration since my work involves intelligent systems (although I haven't contributed to that much to that part ...yet). First test was from the jazz oldies, Dizzy Gilespie's 'Dizzy the Duck'. The results were pretty impresive, similar artists that showed up were Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, Sergio Mendes, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Johny Hodges. My guess on the keywords are 'brass', 'trumpet', 'sax' and 'jazz'. Second test, easy/smooth jazz, Acoustic Alchemy's 'Say Yeah'. Wow, this is great. Very close, results included Fourplay, Marcus Miller, Sade, Lee Ritenour and D'Sound. Since Acoustic Alchemy was guitar instrumentals, Satch came out probably tagged with 'rock' and 'guitar' which caused Blink 182 and Finch to show up too. Predixis said it will work anywhere in the world in whatever language. I tried Razorback's 'Payaso'. Yngwie J. Malmsteen, Satch, Dream Theater, Guns N' Roses and Jimi Hendrix showed up. Very accurate, with all rock titles and considering that this is an OPM title except that no other OPM titles showed up. Here's the surprise, they support open source. Where they stand with the linked page's title, "Open Source, Open Data". Yes, the data used for analysis is submitted by the community that's why it'll work in any country. Amazing! Also, at the bottom of the generated playlist (back to Winamp), there are links to free tracks, most of them by indie artists if I'm not mistaken. Sweet!

Bored ...again

2006-03-24T21:23:00.000+08:00

I'm waiting for the upgrade of the FC5 installation of my laptop to complete. I think this will take 3-4 hours. Then yesterday, Windows managed to lock everyone out of the computer and somebody had to ruin my Knoppix Live CD. So I had to wipeout all the data on this computer that I'm using, including my NFS:MW and GTA:SA saved games where I'm at Blacklist #2 and running San Andreas like the Godfather. It sucks really. There are a couple of files there that are work related that I don't have on my laptop. I can't work because the files are on the laptop which is accessible at the moment and it doesn't stop there, I had to reinstall and configure everything again. I'm starting to think of getting another HD for all my data. Currently, there's not enough space on my file/test server. They changed the Fedora logo by the way. Wow, it's all bubbly and fancy but still blue. Do you use Firefox? Upgraded to 1.5? Get this annoying unresponsive script pop-up that caused the whole program to halt when uploading files? Your troubles are over, check this out. Ah, now I'm happy again. Oh wait, I still have sentiments on the lab computers and our amazing connection to the information highway. I want a) Firefox on the Windows installations, b) Mandriva Linux ditched for another distro and c) a faster connection. Come on, four computer labs, a couple of offices, and two public access points sharing a 2mbps E1 line will not suffice. Do the math. I know the school can afford it, we pay too much to get access slower than dial-up and where did the Science and Technology campus idea go? Another, the Dans Guardian filter is too strict, we need a longer leash. My blog is considered to be explicit content and I can't log in at LJ. I'd be happier if they blocked Friendster instead, most of today's generation of Pinoy Internet surfers do nothing but chat on Y! IM and collect stalkers at Friendster. One more, how could a ZIP (and TGZ) file be a banned extension? Can't the admin set a limit for a maximum transfer time or limit the size? I know that there's this registry key in Windows that would erase changes to a configuration after the user logs out. Right-clicks disabled in the desktop decreases our efficiency to work with the said OS and we even need a password to reboot. Accessing the Internet in school is like being in a maximum-security prison with a tiny window. Seriously, you only have port 80 and 443 to talk and listen to. Maybe the next Student Council can do something about this. On the other hand, students should be tamed if the leash is lengthened. I'd be willing to volunteer to smack the heads of those who abuse the privileges given. Let me leave you with pictures of Shorty's first day of driving (for documentation's sake) and his new car (inside). Images courtesy of JCV. You may ask him about royalties and copyright information about the photographs. Oops, the ranting hijacked the post.

Party!

2006-03-23T22:39:00.000+08:00

I. I'm Going to Believe in Birthdays This Year II. Pinoy Sapot Bersyon Dos I. I'm Going to Believe in Birthdays This Year Vance just posted his birthday wishlist. I know this is so uncreative, I'm posting mine too since I'm turning 20 in a couple of weeks. <panics, runs around in circles and pulls hair in frustration>

an iPod (or iPod clone) of any generation as long as it's 40GB, a 60GB would work too <grins>
a PDA, to organize myself [hint: Sharp Zarius or any of the last Palm handhelds](I just want it for fun actually)
three to four Go-Karts
a mansion on top of a hill filled with Playboy playmates
a jet plane
anti-aging potion

That's it. Nothing too much to ask <big puppy eyes> (except for the last three). Should I treat everyone on my birthday? Let's see whatever comes up. Summer vacation is on again. My biggest fear about it is that it would be off then on again two days before. Ack! II. Pinoy Sapot Bersyon Dos I ~~want to~~ should attend Pandora Squared's Web 2.0 Training and Innovation Summit. Unfortunately, registration fee is at PhP8,000 for groups of four and more. Topics range from Ruby on Rails to AJAX, just checkout training.pandorasquared.com for the complete details. There'll be a Pinoy Web 2.0 ~~BBQ Party~~ Chikahan after the last training session. I hope I won't be on vacation on that day. Check it out and join the club while you're at it. Updated: 2006.03.27 21.43

Blue Hat, Blueprints and Something Not Blue

2006-03-21T20:46:00.000+08:00

I. Not Enough Software Diplomacy? II. When Things Don't Go as Planned III. Guide to Easy Money, Guide #20938457 I. Not Enough Software Diplomacy? Since I graduated from Micorosoft Ambassadorship a few days ago, I want to know what's next. I just sent my CV to Rose for Phase III. Is there anything else besides waiting? I just found out about Fedora Ambassadors and there's only one guy in SE Asia. "Fedora Core Ambassador" sounds better though. I think this is better because the open-source community is somewhere I belong more than the MS developer community. I can't even develop for shit with any MS language. I had second thoughts on enrolling in .NET courses and sell my soul to the proprietary (this is such an overused word) world. In other FC news, Fedora Core 5, code-named "Bordeaux", has been released. On another note, Playboy.com shows support to the open-source community by mirroring FC5, check out http://mirrors.playboy.com/fedora/5 (SFW, I promise). II. When Things Don't Go as Planned They must be running out of money. I just got this in my mail.

Your Streamload account now has 25 GBs of free online storage. We upgraded your Streamload account, free of charge, to give you more storage and more freedom to manage your digital lifestyle. We encourage you to sign in and use your free 25 GBs. That's 2.5 times larger than the free 10 GB you received when you signed up! You can now share, send, organize, and backup your files like never before. We'd like to invite you back to Streamload.

Why? I already have unlimited storage and anybody can see my clips without any limit on my side or my viewers on YouTube and other similar sites. To the pricks behind this "service", I suggest that you think of a better business model. In this world filled with freeloaders like me (like in your "free" plan), I will never settle for something that I have to pay for when there's a free and better alternative. I won't be surprised if they close down in a few months. It's 25GB of space with a limited bandwidth of 100MB/month. Funny, I thought it was junkmail before I opened it. III. Guide to Easy Money, Guide #20938457 If I were an American, I'd visit Enchanted Kingdom then rush to the courts and sue them for damages, and I'd like a large lump of cash for that. Sir Pat writes an interestring entry about the "threats" on the fireworks display at the said theme park, read here.

Graduate Na Ko!!!

2006-03-17T14:11:00.000+08:00

I was at this banquet with the Microsoft people last night, FSAP graduation. There were more people than I expected and the press were there too. It sucks that I didn't get to appreciate the food or even tell if the wine was good because I had diarhea and it felt like World War III was stuffed into my stomach. There was a good jazz band that performed though, the Five-Piece Quartet. The venue was at the Nicotina Garden along Roxas Blvd. Got to take some shots. The host, Roma something something. She's one of the finalists of MTV's VJ Wannabe contest thing. Now I know why she didn't win. Mr. Lopez, President of the University of Makati. His speech was about the future of eductaion, distance learning and why drop off of college. Stanley Tan again. He gave a talk on the IT industry, industry myths, facts, blah-blah this and that IT. Lots of stuff I could agree with about the industry. JV and Rose, People Ignite people. Joyce, Mpoy and RJ (Ambassador Band?). Joyce should've been the host instead of Roma. That's all I took until I couldn't move my arms around because my disgruntled stomach goes to an explosive situation every ten seconds. We even had to leave when the fun part was about to start. Sir Xerxes got an Ambassador Icon award! Also, all the participating universities/colleges recieved plaques, where I dropped the one for our school. Luckily, it just split in two pieces (the base and the plaque itself). I could say that FSAP was one of the best things that happened to me. Lots of freebies and invites to MS events. Also, the priceless acquaintances with other universities/colleges (it was like the round table). It's cool that Stanley assures us of a job as a .NET developer too.

More Bang for the Buck with the iPod

2006-03-12T07:14:00.000+08:00

Wow, I just slept twelve hours straight. Good morning folks! I just found out that you could install a Linux-based OS on an iPod or iPod Nano. Now it makes me think of buying one. I'm looking for a high-capacity portable MP3 player and the ipod used to be the last candidate but now it looks like it went up a few notches.

iPodLinux is currently safe to install on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation iPods. Development is currently on-going on later generations of iPod, including the fourth generation click wheel, mini, U2, Photo/Color, Nano, and Video.

It's amazing, you can make your iPod Nano play videos. Heck, they even ported Doom! Don't forget FTP! I wonder if they also ported OpenSSH and Vi. Even if it's overpriced, I'm seriously considering it now. With Linux on it, it has more functionality. Does anybody know where I could get a fourth generation 40GB or 60GB iPod?

A Technical Session with Microsoft

2006-03-10T21:00:00.000+08:00

I. Introduction II. New Features for Vista III. Something New in IE Besides Tabbed Browsing IV. A Short Peek at Office 2007 V. XAML: Khuzamel VI. Surprised? I. Introduction I grew up to be a Windows baby. In fact, I've been into open source for at least a year and a half. Yesterday was the Vista Technical Session and I should say it was fun at a certain level. I didn't know that MS moved to a new office. They've been at 6750 since last month. Pretty roomy too. Too roomy actually. I was like a lost tourist taking shots of everything. Julie's back, Manong Guard and Tanya on the phone The facilitators: Stanley Tan, Software Development Lead, Microsoft Philippines Jojo Ayson, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Philippines Matthew Hardman, ISV Development Evangelist, Microsoft APAC This is the fourth time that Microsoft showed me Vista. I wanted to see it this time because of the Gadgets (more later). II. New Features for Vista The new login screen. The new cool switch (Alt+Tab). By the way, if you haven't noticed, they're using a different wallpaper from the swaying grass. Jojo said that the idea was scrapped. Gadgets, the counter-strike for Google Desktop and Konfabulator. They're HTML based and supports JavaScript, JScript and VBScript. Watch out for a Gadget Design/Making contest when Vista comes out. Gadgets are not directly supported by Avalon. Stanley said that they had to remove the line of dependencies otherwise Vista would come out by 2007. I think they missed a couple of milestones. The improved MMC. Vista now utilizes metadata and you could also search through them. They're beating Google to it. I forgot to ask them if this utilization of metadata is expandable (through updates or something; not just with files like JPEGs, MP3s and such). Live Icons in Vista. Puts real pictures in the folders. More icons in the Control Panel for more options [and to further confuse the user]. Icons now use scalable vector graphics (SVG) which allows the icon to occupy the whole screen!! Wow! The "Network Center" or Network Connections in XP. It now does a traceroute for you and creates a cute tree with bunnies (shows how you're connected to the Internet). Windows Collaboration, NetMeeting's predecessor. Windows Defender. According to Stanley, it will stay in beta phase until Vista comes out. Media Center. Where's the remote? Change the channel! III. Something New in IE Besides Tabbed Browsing "Quick Preview" of bookmarks for your morning routines (and yes, an RSS aggregator is built-in too). Phishing detection. New "Shrink to Fit" option when printing (before and after). IV. A Short Peek at Office 2007 Office 2007 [or Office 12 or Office Wave or Office Whatever], will be released the same time as Vista. If I'm not mistaken, I posted a link to a video with a preview demo of the new UI codenamed the Ribbon. Microsoft says [again], this will be a very big launch because Vista will be launched with Office 2007. A glance at PowerPoint 2007 while waiting for everything to load up. Word 2007. I hope this thing will load as fast as Word 2000. Office 2007 will now use document formats based on XML. The new filetypes are PPTX,DOCX and XLSX and you'll be able to open your files with Notepad and still have it [at least] readable. I asked about encryption and security but Matt didn't have a concrete answer for me. In fact, my question was also asked before and he's been looking for that option where you could set a password for the file. V. XAML: Khuzamel XAML looks like a cool thing. Specially that XML is the next new thing (or is it now?) and one of the hands of Web 2.0. Lots of fancy things that you could do. XAMLPad, it's free and it looks lightweight. They always showed this demo of XAML. There's a video clip over here. Matt demonstrated how to build a XAML-based media player from scratch. VI. Surprised? Another feature that I should mention is that you could add a USB thumb/flash drive to the RAM. IE7, according to Stanley, will not support CSS 2.1. There you go, good and bad news (or is it both good news?). I enjoyed it but saw nothing very special. I've seen those demos before except that I paid more attention to XAML this time because I didn't have that much knowledge on XML before. I also got goodies, Visual Studio Express, an MSDN Connection notebook and an MSDN magazine. The following are snapshots of slides to Matt's technical session. We didn't get to finish everything though.

Design with Discipline

2006-03-08T22:50:00.000+08:00

I was looking for a[n] RSS feed for the latest release/builds of Firefox, Gecko and Thunderbird. I remember subscribing on one feed but it had lots of other Firefox advocacy related stuff that I didn't want to recieve with the feed and I couldn't find it anymore. I ended up finding something else. Here's a short FAQ for frustrated web designers with problems on cross-browser compatibility for Firefox; link. Ang-Ang and Karlo, this is for you. Way back when I was coding HTML and JavaScript in high school, I disciplined myself to make every page readable and functional on IE5 and Netscape 4. I had to do this to the pixel. I guess I only had discipline for coding. Haha. I like the way Firefox emphasized on the standards and discouraging malpractice of the tags and their attributes. For example, the alt in <img> where proprietary browsers decided to use it for tooltips. Way back in the Lynx days, it really stood [and still stands] for alternative text for browsers that couldn't display images. No matter how you'd try to scramble the letters of alt, it wouldn't go anywhere near tooltip. It sucks that they had to tolerate the iframe tag but its elements are not accessible via Javascript. I didn't notice that Mozilla really runs a tight ship with development. The deer park versions are quite disappointing though. Here's the guideline to getting your code included.

Fast Forward

2006-03-06T21:45:00.000+08:00

I. Surprise Me II. Funky or Smashing III. Bad News? I. Surprise Me I'll be attending an exclusive Windows Vista Technical Preview Session with Mr. Stanley Tan, software development lead at Microsoft PH, this coming Thursday. This should be interesting. I'll see what I can share. I hope there'll be more stuff to be awed than laughed at. It's been four years [of R&D]. II. Funky or Smashing? Next Thursday night is the graduation at FSAP. Then on that night, Makopa, Radioactive Sago Project and Kapatid will be playing at Saguijo. On Friday, there'll be a Razorback tribute (plus Razorback jamming along later) at Chakiks' Music Bar at Ortigas. I wonder which gig to go to but the Jazz night at Saguijo sounds sooo tempting. Who wants to come with me? III. Bad News? Summer vacation is starting to look like it's cancelled. Practicum starts at May and this trimester ends at the last week of April. I'm a bit excited for practicum too. I don't know. I just feel like it'd be great to be free from school for awhile. I hope it won't be disappointing.

What Goes Up Must Go Down

2006-03-05T20:38:00.000+08:00

I. Thanks God It's Sunday II. Fun with Physics III. Another First, by Smart I. Thanks God It's Sunday painted in a wide-ass mudguard of an old truck on the way to Rising Sun. I asked Ramel to come with me to buy a DVD writer. I chose the Benq DW1640. I'm trying it out now and I'm wondering why I can't burn a couple of files because the software says I need a CD-R/W for that task. DVD manufacturers made burning life very complex. I'd have to choose if I were to get a DVD+R or a DVD-R. Why can't we all get along? Ugh. Oops, got it working now. I could blame Ahead (it was bundled with Nero 6) for poor UI design. I also can't understand why I'd have to choose between two recording devices which point to one drive (CD-R/W or DVD-/+R). Watched Final Destination 3 with Gian, Joy, Ramel and Kat yesterday. Man, the seats at Greenbelt 1 are annoyingly small. The movie was kinda bad too. The story sucked. I only liked the gory parts but Final Destination 1 and 2 had a better story. Only the chick and the dude knew about the escape-from-death's-revenge thing. II. Fun with Physics I was browsing around again and bumped unto this cool physics site. They have this Factbook and has lots of stuff to know about everyday life/things. They even researched some stuff from films like the speed of a car in Bad Boys II or the tension in Spiderman's webs. Good place to check out if you have spare time. III. Another First, by Smart In case you haven't heard and if you're a Smart WiFi subscriber, their's been a security issue that's been discovered (I think it was mentioned somewhere before though). Check out this post at Pinoy Tech Blog.

Venting Out

2006-02-28T10:53:00.000+08:00

I'm annoyed that I cannot check my email at GMail here at school via WiFi. Hurrah.

Current Affairs

2006-02-25T13:25:00.000+08:00

I. Let's just nuke the whole country and start all over. II. Benchmarked III. Starting to Ride the Web 2.0 Wave I. Let's just nuke the whole country and start all over. If you've been hiding under a rock, you probably haven't heard that there's been a "planned" coup here and that the country was declared in a state of "emergency" yesterday. Nothing really serious happened. I was hoping that there'd be shooting. I love the sight of chaos, that's all. Not all the time though (before you start thinking I'm some psychopath). Besides, I'm not a big fan of guns and blood. I'm just a sadist, haha. Other than that, I hope it's all over and we can all move on. My uncle had an interview at CNN Asia last night regarding the issue, I recorded it for him. You may download the clip at your will from here. II. Benchmarked The video capture session last night was some sort of performance benchmark on the new rig. Here's what I think. The hard disk took a beating. I was recording in uncompressed AVI at full NTSC resolution, 720x480. Chunks of the clip were being sent at 4MB each, nineteen times a second. The clip is about five minutes or less and the acutal recorded size was more or less, fourteen gigabytes. I tried to capture with video compression but the CPU couldn't catch up. Didn't have audio compression until the second pass where it was encoded to a single channel MP3 at 23kb/s. Video was resized to 75% NTSC with precise bicubic resizing plus de-interlacing before that and temporal smoother after then compressed to XviD. Shrinking the fat clip to approximately twenty gigabytes. I'd say it gave the best results from my last settings. III. Starting to Ride the Web 2.0 Wave I'd like to continue my ass-kissing to Google for giving me Google Desktop. I'm enjoying the Web Clips panel (RSS/ATOM/XML aggregator) so much. Makes things easier by saving me from clicks to visiting each blog that I read/check on. So I now want to share the "clips" that I subscribe to. Pretty interesting stuff to read, lots of information and quick bits from my friends and acquaintances.

I know there are other blogs and feeds that I subscribed to before but I can't remember them. If you write a blog that has a feed, please let me know. If I find it interesting enough (which most likely happens), I'll add it to my list. Feel free to add mine too.

Tales Of A Criminal

2006-02-23T22:58:00.000+08:00

I. Trespassing II. Ano kaso mo chip? Murder by design po... I. Trespassing Today's not a very bad day. Attended INFOSYS, did some studying on how to make a five by seven dot matrix display work while waiting for DIFFCAL. As it turned out, we didn't have DIFFCAL today. On the way home, Shorty and I spotted a cement mixer truck on the way out of a dirt road near the school. We decided to follow this road and checked where it would lead. It kept going and going, pretty smooth for a dirt road too. Until we saw some stuff. There's been some shaving at the hills and it looks like that they're hiding it because they left the trees that would make it visible from our area. I'd like to know if what they're doing is legal. The trucks can't be seen from the picture but I'm putting it there for reference. These are big trucks, I'm telling you. Here's another one. Signs of damage. It's too blurry in this picture. Okay, so we were in restricted area and considered trespassing. The guards in the first outpost were sleeping so it was too late to stop us and we didn't know that it was private property already. At the second outpost, we finally stopped for the waiting guard. We did a little interviewing and it turns out that the land is already owned by the Ayalas and we were already in Silang, Cavite. On the way down, we were stopped again by the first outpost that we passed. Did a little more interviewing. The area is shared by the Locsins and Ayalas. The Ayalas had their piece around thirteen years ago. Here's the last shot from the crappy camera of my phone, DLS-C from a different view. I guess I can't go there again. I just wish that I had a clearer camera with me at that time. II. Ano kaso mo chip? Murder by design po... When I got home, I sat infront of the computer immediately and did my routines (check mail, read some stuff, etc) then browsed around. I decided to checkout PhilWeavers. I found out about the 2nd Murder by Design Conference. I'm thinking of going but the ticket is at PhP400. Something too big to shelf out at the moment. It comes with a shirt, pin, set of stickers and three bottles of beer though.

The PhilWeavers Network, The premiere online community of Filipino Web Designers, announces the 2nd Murder by Design Conference, to be held at the 70's Bistro on February 25,2006. This unique symposium will bring together top figures in Filipino graphic design, web development, new media and motion graphics. In the same room for the first time, the people shaping today's Pinoy Design will spend an afternoon presenting their ideas, methods and inspirations before an estimated audience of 100 practicing Filipino designers. Murder by Design will consist of several individual presentations, all moderated by Newspaper cultural columnist Rome Jorge and PW events coordinator Bel Ragay. A large cross section of the Philippine creative community is expected to attend the conference which will be open to the public.

It's 15.00 to 21.00 at 70's Bistro, Anonas, Quezon City this coming Saturday (25th). If nothing comes up, I might attend, hoping to get at least a fancy shirt.

Three Points

2006-02-22T19:47:00.000+08:00

I. Something Not Technical ...Almost II. Google Strikes Again III. Another Double-Edged Knife I. Something Not Technical ...Almost Had Italian lunch yesterday with the RX deejays of that morning, Sans and Sara[h]. About two hours of catching up from two years or so of near-silence. I didn't know that Acoustic Alchemy released an album last summer until this morning. The album seems like a must-have. New good sound. The album is entitled "American English". I'm definitely getting this one. There's going to be an autosport show at school. I just came up with a crazy idea, I'm joining. Prepare for a surprise! Speaking of school, COMSYLA kicks ass. Probably one of the classes (labs) I can't miss. A partly functional 3-bit decoder. Going back to basics with zeroes and ones. Forgive the messy wiring. I couldn't resist writing without the geek stuff. II. Google Strikes Again I know this is not new to most techies out there but I always get to try out things later. I tried Google Desktop. It's great. Lightweight and expandable without losing functionality. I love the Scratch Pad, Web Clips (for RSS, XML and ATOM fanatics, I just got on the wave when I first used it) and the Calendar from the site. It integrates with GMail and Google Talk (Chat). It also indexed the computers I use. Cool! I know that that's what it was actually supposed to do but I was after the integration with the GMail services and applications. I just hope that someone could write a Yahoo! Instant Messenger panel and that the Google Talk was directly integrated (Google Talk is required to have the panel). III. Another Double-Edged Knife I guess I'm keeping my BPI Express Cash Card. I found it to be a bit convenient. I used it to pay for lunch yesterday because I couldn't withdraw. The ATM said, "Your branch is unreachable". Or something like that. Anyway, it's better than having to withdraw then store the cash in your wallet in case you get mugged or lost your wallet. I can only use it in stores that have the Mastercard Electronic logo though.

Thoughts That Have Been Bothering Me

2006-02-20T10:51:00.000+08:00

I. Planning Ahead II. What Now? III. Sorry, I wasn't listening IV. Getting on the eBay Wave V. Minor Changes I. Planning Ahead Dad asked me yesterday if I wanted to Hong Kong this year. My sisters are going to Thailand and my guess is mom's going to China with dad if not with my sisters. My brother will probably tag along with one of them. Or everyone else might go to Thailand. I told my dad I'm still thinking about it. Here's what's confusing me:

Why I should go...
1. gadget and tech toy shopping
2. time for myself to unwind
3. lots of time for reading and HK television
4. shop for hard-to-find jazz CDs
5. visit Tito Ben
6. dinner with my uncle's friends
7. HK Disneyland
Why I shouldn't go...
1. I'd probably go by myself which would make it really suck
2. I might go to Malaysia before that anyway
3. I think Chris already left for UK
4. I could be working

So I already mentioned to him that I'm planning on going to Boracay or somewhere just within the country. Dad said it's better to go there than HK because I haven't been there. I'm now assuming he's paying for my ticket plus an allowance. He also mentioned USD100 packages to HK but the problem is that some, if not all, of my friends that I want to bring along don't have passports. I'm thinking of going to both places but I'd probably run out of money and take a lot of time. But the thing is, in HK, I get new ideas and probably do some business-related stuff for the projects I'm involved in. Boracay, on the other hand, gives me time with my friends and get together. It's really been awhile since we all hung out. Everyone's so busy. I should end it here for now. There are kids in the rest of the world that are starving, time to save the world before somebody complains. II. What now? Dad and I went to Manila yesterday. The city didn't change much (changed a little). Not cleaner but looked neater. Islands on the road are now repainted. Posts are now painted with horizontal stripes of black and white. Manila could be progressing but the sad thing is, the shantis and residents are still there. When I said, "still there", I meant really there. Right at the same spot for the past ten years or so (as far as memory serves). Something has got to be done. Seriously. III. Sorry, I wasn't listening I have ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. I used to think I just have a very short attention span, now this really adds to it. I found this out from Lockergnome, to which I subscribe to. Explains the hundreds of unfinished projects and short bursts for the desire to finish something. Top 10 ADD Advantages in a High Tech Career.

The Ability to Hyperfocus. Hours of full engagement and concentration in a task, if you find it interesting. You can get into the zone and be totally immersed in what you're doing while the outside world disappears. When I went on the Net for the first time in 1993 at an Internet cafe I got on the machine at 8 pm and around 4 am decided it was time to go home.
Rapid Fire Mind. Your brain processes information at hyperspeed. You can do things in 30 minutes on a computer that might take other people hours. Downside: If you're stuck with an old machine and not enough RAM, you'll be frustrated 'cause it can't keep up with the speed of your brain.
Multitasking at Will. Able to run 14 apps at a time and effortlessly switch between each without breaking a sweat. Able to do several projects at a time with ease.
High Energy Level. You're able to keep going on a project (if it's interesting; ADDers are more into creative and entrepreneurial activities than clerical and repetitive ones). 14-hour days? No problem. Adrenaline is my fuel source:)
Highly Creative. Able to think beyond the idea of a box. This comes naturally for ADDers, while others pay thousands of dollars to try and learn this. Since you take in more information than the average person, and you're easily distractible, you're more likely to view a problem from many different angles than vanilla people (non ADDers), and therefore come up with more possible solutions to a problem. Need an idea generator? Find an ADDer.
Quick Learner. If it's something you're interested in. ADD is mainly a condition of boredom; you have no trouble paying attention to something if it's interesting. Most people find it difficult to do boring or repetitive things but these can often totally shut an ADDer down. Your rapid fire brain + highly creative mind + the ability to hyperfocus equals fast absorption of new information quickly. Dr. Ed Hallowell, who has ADD and has written extensively on the subject (Delivered from Distraction : Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder), said he stopped teaching Psychiatry at Harvard University because the non-ADDers' brains were just too slow and they took so long to get it. He got tired of being continually frustrated waiting for them to catch up to the ADD students.
Stimulus Seeking Brain. A perfect match for the wired world, an under-stimulated brain and an over-stimulated virtual environment. Being an info junkie can be a good thing. Well, not always!
Constantly Scanning your Environment. Allows you to notice more and find information and resources that others miss. Also allows you to see possible problems before they arise, and opportunities that others may not see because they have tunnel vision vs. multiplex vision. An ADDer invented the electronic ticket.
Great in a Crisis. High energy, intense situation? Lots of chaos and change? Sign me up; I thrive on stimulation, change, and chaos. We can create order from chaos effortlessly. We can also create such an environment if needed.
Risk Taker. Impulsivity means you're more willing to take risks and have a bias for action; act now while the opportunity is hot instead of getting into analysis paralysis. Many entrepreneurs have ADD (i.e. Paul Orfalea, who founded Kinko's, and JetBlue Founder and CEO David Neeleman, who attributes his creativity to ADD. Both are billionaires). Imagine how successful a high tech CEO would be if they didn't take many risks.

Quoted from Chris Pirillo, who quoted Pete Quily. IV. Getting on the eBay Wave I never thought I could sell succesfully online. But I guess I could ...somehow. I tried [re]selling 10 pieces of DSL filters from Singapore, which aren't really sold anywhere locally (from what I know). I sold them at PhP200, just a little above the original price (~SgD5) because I thought it was cheaper. I posted at TipidPC, PinoyPC and eBay Philippines. Majority of the filters (seven pieces) were sold through TipidPC, I've been a member there for a couple of years and tried some selling but didn't end up with deals, membership is free by the way. eBay's great except that they need more exposure. I got one order (two pieces) from there where the buyer is just my neighbor. Apparently, no one made bids to the "auction" but made "questions to the seller". eBay sent me a couple of messages that my auction wasn't succesful with accompanied tips on selling/auctioning. PinoyPC was my last priority, since it was actually a community/board on Tech and PCs but a Black Market section was added a few years back. The last order (two pieces) came from there. I was planning on using the extra filter here at home but turned out I didn't need it so I sold it. I guess the local online black market isn't that bad. Except that sometimes I fear that the one I'm dealing with might cheat on me or mug me, specially on personal deliveries/meets/pickups. There are two orders though were I shipped the filters through FedEx. I didn't know that it was that cheap. It was more convenient, faster and cheaper than going to places near the office/home to deliver the merchandise. Payment was made through a bank deposit, cool. Here's another thing, they have this rating system at eBay and TipidPC which could help you decide if you should have a deal with a member. I even bought/ordered a KVM switch but the thing is defective and it's pretty hard to get it replaced. Bad deal I guess, I hope I could get my money back instead. There were cooler offers before but I closed the deal too early thinking nobody would make an offer. Nothing more but adventures. I'm thinking of selling more filters if I do go to Malaysia this summer. In case you're wondering, TipidPC was already up way before eBay became popular. V. Minor Changes Changed my blog's URL and made a blank one with the old url to redirect to the new one. Just in case you linked to one of my posts, linked to my blog or bookmarked it (fat chance), it's changed to jploh.blogspot.com. Now it's not so hard to memorize or type, right?

Vibrations

2006-02-12T13:37:00.000+08:00

I. Expired Rights II. Microsoft Monorail III. Your Arm's on Fire IV. A New Look on Things ...Literally I. Expired Rights Wow! This year's Band Festival kicked ass! It rocked! Of all the events held in school, this is the most successful. Food booths were selling, good music and lots of people. Hats off to Raymond H. for that! For me and my bandmates, it was good competition. I knew we wouldn't win. Hah! Besides, the fraction of a point of getting to the finals didn't really matter. Just like Vin Diesel played in Fast and the Furious, "It doesn't matter if you win by a mile or an inch". We ranked fourth. It told my bandmates not to be too proud. Sort of. Anyhoo, congratulations to the winners! Band Fest sure was a great way to get good music for free. El Gitarista, the champion, was great. I was bowing at the stage (to knee level). It only sucks that they didn't do anything original. They did exact copies of tricks, gestures and facial expressions by Satch, Vai, Eric Johnson, Hamm and the other famous exhibitionists. But still, it's really hard to spot a band with showmanship and musicanship altogether. They were like rock gods! I'm glad it's over. Now I have more time again for the stuff I've been working on. On a side note, it was great to see my high school friends again, Bheng, Fred, Gian and the all-time favorite Ramel was there. Things certainly have changed. I forgot to ask for the picture from Bheng's camphone. Here's something from last Wednesday's practice. Listen to the whole track to hear the funny part. II. Microsoft Monorail Here's another overdue topic I wanted to write about. The Philippine .NET Users' Group (PHINUG), organized a .NET Fest last month. One of the topics mentioned was Microsoft Monorail if memory serves me right. I was curious to what it was and did a little research on it and led me to Microsoft's Monorail System at their headquarters (the topic wasn't about it by the way). Pretty cool. Fun things to do when you have lots of cash on hand. Here's the article I found. Fancy, eh? I want to see this in action someday and probably ride on it too. III. Your Arm's on Fire After last night's event, we went to 7-11 for a midnight snack instead of playing DotA. When we were about to leave, just chatting for a while outside, a car arrived with three guys. The driver was intentionally lifting his shirt to his gun. We were all looking until they all went in. I was surprised until the bastard said a bit loudly, "surrender all firearms". Oh, the sick sad reality. He thinks he's a god now just because he has gun. Maybe somebody should give him the taste of a fire arm. IV. A New Look on Things ...Literally Check out these video clips by HITLabNZ (Human Interface Technology, New Zealand). I was watching Discovery Channel the other day and saw this cool segment about augmented reality. Close to virtual reality, this one kicks ass. If I do get kids in the future, I'd get them toys like these. Just to make things clearer courtesy of Wikipedia:

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real world and computer generated data. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and "augmented" by the addition of computer generated graphics.

Science fiction movies are starting to become reality.

My Side of the Line

2006-02-05T23:01:00.000+08:00

I. Creativity Drain II. F/OSS and the Government III. Wow! Ow! Wee! I. Creativity Drain This year's Band Festival is in a few days and my band (me) is only half-way in preparation. I have to admit, I haven't been that motivated with this music thing. I feel like what we're doing is going nowhere. It's been a year and we're still doing covers and no demos. Specially that this covering thing doesn't show our creativity and originality. Plus, we have one cheesy song. Ugh. Anyway, here's a spoiler from yesterday's practice. Please do come on the 11th, 18.00 onwards. II. F/OSS and the Government There's been a very long thread in PLUG's mailing list about Ubuntu's founder visiting Manila. The heat on this topic is if the government [officials] will move to FOSS if the cost is near-zero. This is an issue in the Philippine LGUs and practically any office because the officials will have a hard time to "pad" the cost for their "personal" consumption. There have been optimistic comments and pessimistic ones. Heck, it even reached one-liner semi-dissing. But here's one that would be really nice to quote.

I am pointing out an exception... I work for a local government unit. My boss (a mayor) believes in open source and that's why we are migrating our desktops to Ubuntu Linux and giving away computers to schools with Ubuntu Linux installed on it. I must admit that my boss is not one who can be called an "honest politician" if ever there is one. But heck, he believes in open source. It all started when I was able to save his precious data on his laptop when the Windows registration key got messed up and sort of "locked" his laptop. I was able to save it using Ubuntu Live and from then he asked me install Linux and asked so many questions about Linux and Open Source. To my surprise, he asked me to migrate our desktops to Ubuntu Linux and all new PCs must be a Linux box. He also started to advocate the same even in the recent LeGov - EU Conference where he was one of the presentors. And when other LGUs visit us, he will almost always discuss about open source and would relate that with open source... it would be a better world cause it teaches us to share. As a result, other LGUs are asking us how to migrate to desktops to open source. I know this is not much, but still is an exception to the general perception that all government offices and units will never embrace open source. Generalization really sucks. And yes, he is already asking how to get that $100 laptop.

Our government officials really need this IT literacy training. I remember FSAP being a part of training executives in the private sector on IT. How about an IT seminar for our government officials so they could catch up? I've been watching this OS war and both sides are just as good. Windows has been the best option for desktop computers and those who aren't that computer literate. GNU/Linux, on the other hand is the best solution for anything that's server related. That's why there's the saying, "Linux is not Windows". Linux isn't meant for desktop use but you could use it on a desktop but Windows is somehow more efficient at it. Windows isn't meant to be a server OS. Servers don't need fancy UIs, something prone to viruses or worms and doesn't need frequent restarting. III. Wow! Ow! Wee! This is old news by the way. It was lunch time and Ramel came over and told me about this stampede. A friend from the States mentioned it too but I wasn't aware of it. Man, the Lopez has so much money. I think if we put the money of the Lopez, Yuchengcos, Ayalas, Lucio Tan and Henry Sy all together, it would equal to the country's value. But then again, who could buy a country? Anyway, people flocked to go to this event for the show 'Wowowee'. I just found out that this show replaced the network's less annoying noon-time variety show. I don't find people singing out of tune entertainment so this really isn't my kind of show. Now, the objective of this show was to help the less priveleged. I don't think this is right. In fact, they're making it worse by condoning the people's attempt in getting the easy way out of poverty. I'll just give you an old saying so you'd get my point, "Give a man a fish and he will learn to eat. Teach a man to fish and he will learn to eat the rest of his life". Or it goes that way. This shows are a waste of time and I could blame them for people getting dumber everyday. It's totally pointless. Way to go Wowowee.

Chrono Talk

2006-01-27T20:33:00.000+08:00

I. Move Over Locomotion II. Intel Indies III. Time Travel via Sculpting IV. Difficult Calculus I. Move Over Locomotion Everybody knows my odd taste for video games, specifically to the simulation (or tycoon-ish) genre. And if you look for a post somewhere around last summer or earlier, I mentioned Sid Meier's Locomotion. Last week, Jay-jay was here at the house to work on some assignment from school. While taking on of our many breaks, we came accross Transport Giant while looking for Half Life 2 at Datablitz's website. This game has waaaay better graphics than Locomotion (because the latter uses RCT II's graphics engine, more like a modification of it actually). It also has more expandability, more vehicles and a larger timeline (1850-2050). In addition to those, it also has endless maps and a more realistic experience with management of money (pricing, costs, income, etc). The only thing I hate is the interface. I can't pick up with the flow. I still have to figure out how I can rotate buildings that I have to build. II. Intel Indies Many people know that Intel didn't accomplish much technically so they're beefing up reputation by building brands and propagandas. I don't understand how this Intel Viiv (pronounced as vive) works. It just looks like some ordinary PC with high-end components for gaming, multimedia and bundled software. Anyway, the winners for Intel's Indie Film Contest are announced and you can watch the top three winners (I think that nobody really lost) on this page. They're all great. Simple clips but great stories and plots.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER The Wand Director: Nick Worthey Worthey won $25,000 in cash and $20,000 towards a home theater for his clever, animated story on the universal nature of power and greed (with a few laughs along the way). FIRST PRIZE WINNERS Lord of the Mop Director: Alan Poon Poon won $10,000 for this comedic tale of a music-loving janitor who practices a little magic in the school auditorium. Edit>Love Director: Kiyong Kim Kim took home $10,000 for this modern love story with a technical (and magical) twist.

Check them out. I really love these shorts. A good way to get some time off of things without taking too much time. III. Time Travel via Sculpting I used to draw a lot when I was younger until I got drawn into computers. I really loved new technology way back but I still have this thing for art. So last Wednesday was our COMSYLA we were tasked to work on some basic circuits. While waiting for my groupmates to finalize the paperwork, I was busy playing with the wires. Here's the result of the time I wasted. A product of boredom and idle time. Nothing to be proud of though. Pretty tough, eh? Here's our first attempt for a simple circuit (we failed here). It was so messed up we forgot which was which and we couldn't trace it anymore. IV. Difficult Calculus I was looking for a spot where I could include this but can't find any and I don't want to dedicate one small part about my studies. I wanted to write this before so I'll just make a small new segment for it. This is my second time to take Differential Calculus (DIFFCAL) and this time, my instructor is Ms. Yesa. Most of my classmates are also Juniors who haven't passed the course yet. There's something in this class that gives me that learning environment and vibe. I think I'm going to pass this time. I should. Anyway, here's more stuff about the things I do at school. I just realized my lack in ability to control people. I can't manage my members in the organization and it's like we're almost non-existent (just attending RSO meetings). It's really hard to find someone who's more determined than I am. I looking for a candidate to replace me because I can't take care of things anymore. I don't have the time to attend futbol practice anymore. The film project has been moved to the next trimester too. Things have become to something like part-time work, part-time school and part-time videogames. Whoops, time to grow up. I'm also thinking of dropping out for work but I can sense that now is not the right time. This is not good news for my dad.

Wake Up Call

2006-01-26T11:46:00.000+08:00

I. For the n^th Time II. Anti-Chainletter Movement III. Yahoo! Enters VoIP I. For the n^th Time It's been a week since my last post. Time hasn't been managed effectively lately and all my first (and sometimes the second) class in school have been missed. I got the processor and motherboard last Thursday and had everything up and running by Saturday after overcoming some barriers. Didn't get to attend PLUG's technical seminar or go to the jazz festival. Here's one more interesting thing. I got caught on the highway last Thursday. It's nice to see that the cops are doing their job (only when the sun is out, they're supposed to be doing this 24/7). Anyway, I think that the highway should really be widened. Travelling all the way from the south to the metro takes so long. I should really ease up on the gas pedal as Sir Joel said. I didn't bribe the cop and now I'm starting to think I should have. It has always been, "either you contribute to the bribing or be the good guy". I was thinking that it could be an adventure or something to go the LTO and teach myself my lesson. So last Monday I went there to get it but my license isn't there yet. I was also planning NOT to get a fixer. But these assholes just don't give up. I also found out that the computerized system just made things take longer. What happened? This indeed taught me a lesson. I'm never going to overtake on the shoulder (but I will still avoid bribing cops, I only did it once by the way) again. On the way to the LTO office, some punk-ass jeepney driver squeezed to my lane and damaged the right fender and a part of the door. I just let him get away because I didn't want to waste my time arguing with this guy and I thought that it was just a small dent. I only got to check it out when I got to LTO's main office (redundant?). It turns out I had to get it fixed. On the way back (after spending a couple of minutes in QC and lots of gasoline), I passed by Ramel's shop to get it fixed. It took longer than I expected. I liked the job though. All the scratches were removed. Now, I have to go back to LTO. I'll probably go there next Monday, then bring the stuff for Sans and have lunch and scramble to school. Adventure anyone? II. Anti-Chainletter Movement GMail now has the delete button. Finally, a built-in tool to delete those pesky chainletters. I wrote about a Firefox extension that adds this. I guess it's not needed now. Also, I heard that GMail Mobile works here in the Philippines. When was the last time you heard something new from Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail? Google sure is kicking their ass. Healthy competition is really really good for the consumers. III. Yahoo! Enters VoIP Just a week or two ago, I noticed a beta for Yahoo! Messenger 7.5 which featured Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to several countries for a fee. They were also offering numbers but I didn't get to check out which countries. I'm curious if they're using Asterisk. By the way, 7.5 was released just a few days ago (3-5).

Riddles, Answers and Questions

2006-01-18T20:06:00.000+08:00

I. Surprise! II. Crystal Ball III. Fact or Fiction? I. Surprise! Well not quite. Hey Sans, does this look familiar? We ran out of batteries or they all need recharging so I had to use the one that comes with my phone. I don't know what the one on the left is but it sure is funny. II. Crystal Ball Twenty Years Ago My parents were making love in Italy and I was formed Ten Years Ago The family's first time in the US Five Years Ago Was hoping that our computer exploded (Y2K) One Year Ago Got kicked out of my own house with a friend who was supposed to sleepover becausehe got kicked out of his house (the irony); Realized how much I've been wasting my time and other's too About Six Months Ago Got back from HK and changed how I look at this country Two Months Ago Got a job One Day Ago Ramel's birthday; Dad and my sister got back from Malaysia/Singapore; Gian's dad passed away Today Nothing special; Meeting with RSO, and went attended my classes, sleep and play video games (you know, all the geeky stuff) After One Day Pass by the office; Get my new processor and motherboard; Go to the wake of Gian's dad One Month Have a working model or POC for a coffee dispenser with the use of G Cash and/or Smart Money through Smart Cards then RFID. ~6 Months After Great summer vacation and at least two thousand miles of travel After One Year I graduate or drop out After Two Years Still working for ESI; Returns to school (in case I drop out or don't graduate on time) After Five Years Still working, probably for ESI but starting up a new business or something; Still strugling with math to get a college degree After Ten Years I die in a high-speed car accident (I can't think of anything else, I didn't know how hard this is) III. Fact or Fiction? I just saw Flightplan this morning. The plot wasn't that bad as I expected. Some of the actors really sucked though. Anyway, there's this one part that really intrigued me. I saw server cabinets at the tail of the plane in the cargo deck. Or was it at the nose? It looked like the explosion at the end of the movie was at the nose. It's closer to the cockpit too. There were like four or five of them in a circle. Do they really have those on planes? Autopilot, controls and other functions could need that amount of computing. In conjunction to my previous post, this movie is somehow related to feminism. It had a mom and a daughter being victimized. The captain and the marshall were the merciless men, the stewardess gave up so she still had that heroic image somehow.

Money, Music and Chicks

2006-01-13T08:20:00.000+08:00

I. BPI's So Called "Express" Service II. The First Philippine International Jazz & Arts Festival III. Extreme Feminism I. BPI's So Called "Express" Service Just got back from the airport, Dad and my sister's on the way to Malaysia. I decided to rant more. Today's target is BPI, Bank of the Philippine Islands. Why did am I bashing BPI at this time of the day? Well, I forgot to include it last night and I forgot a couple of more stuff. I opened an account or just paid for an "Express" Cash Card which is basically a debit card. I only liked it because there's no minimum balance required. One more thing that I really hate is going to the bank. Lining up and waiting for hours (exagerated) isn't really my thing. So I signed up for it and the lady at the accounts told me that my card will arrive in three banking days. Of course, there's always the Filipino "time" that has to be changed. I went four banking days later and the card wasn't there yet. I went back two days later and found out that it arrived the afternoon I went before that incident. Still slow for me and tell me to come back five banking days instead of three. You don't need to lie to me to impress me, just don't waste my time. Here's what really confuses me, I have to get the pin encoded in an "express" branch. Why can't I do it in the branch itself? Why do they have to complicate things better? Wouldn't simplicity equate to its "express" service? There goes another bad implementation. I also found out that they have very few ATMs. I think I better switch back to RCBC or look for another. I even heard that wire and electronic transfer is the most expensive at BPI. I'll just wait for the lock-in period and close it. II. The First Philippine International Jazz & Arts Festival Another event that I forgot to mention. Two stages, two days, tickets at two hundred Philippine Pesos and lots of good music. It's on January 21-22, 2006 at the Harbour Sqaure, CCP Complex, Manila. I think there's another one at Airport Casino Filipino, Parañaque where tickets are more expensive. The website is messed up so here's what you're probably looking for the schedule too, I had to dig it up.

January 21, 2006
Stage 1		Stage 2
Time	Artist/s	Time	Aritst/s
14.00	Sitti	14.15	Lester Demetillo & Susan Fernandez
14.30	Ledh	14.45	Sino Sikat
15.00	Passport	15.15	Rueben Laurente
15.30	B.Concept	15.45	Quail Quartet
16.00	Charmaine Clamor	16.15	Jerome & Euphoria
16.30	Charmaine Clamor	16.45	Pete & Jazz
17.00	UP Jazz Ensemble	17.15	H3O
17.30	Juan Isip	17.45	Jazz Visitors
18.00	Alvin Cornista	18.15	Jazzphil Ensemble
18.30	Jewelmer Jazz Band	18.45	Dave Berk
19.00	Isha & Look Band	19.15	Rica Arambulo
19.30	Ria V. Grp	19.45	Next Level
20.00	Lynn Sherman	20.15	Romy Jorolan
20.30	Anya Santos	20.45	Joey Valenciano
21.00	Aquarella	21.15	Skarlet/Joel Galang
9.30	Balooze	21.45	Garlic
22.00	Paolo & Power Train	22.15	Chakra
22.30	Wunjo	22.45	Noli Aurillo
23.00	Brass Munkeys	23.15	Norman Ferrer
23.30	Vernon Coleman Blues Band	23.45	Brownbeat
00.00	Nyko Maca Electrosamba
January 22, 2006
Stage 1		Stage 2
Time	Artist/s	Time	Aritst/s
13.00	Pinikpikan	13.15	Makopa
13.30	Subconcept	13.45	Jeannie Tiongco
14.00	Executives Band	14.15	Rene Herrera
14.30	Johnny Alegre Affinity	14.45	Lilac Cana
15.00	Wahijuara	15.15	Arthur Manuntag
15.30	Radioactive Sago Project	15.45	Akafellas
16.00	Pangkat Kalinangan	16.15	Cooky Chua
16.30	Sinika	16.45	Jacqui Magno/Toti Fuentes
17.00	Cynthia Alexander	17.15	Maritoni Falconi/Marcy Estrella
17.30	Guarana/Hairy Dawgs
18.00	Closing Ceremonies and Awarding

This is the schedule for the bands only taken from this page. If you haven't noticed, Makopa's playing. Drop me a line if you want to come with. III. Extreme Feminism I was browsing around, searching for stuff and bumped unto this blog. It's about wymonism or whatever. I was curious as this term was new to me. Quoted from a Google query:

Womyn is a term used by many radical feminists in order to degender the word women. Other spellings meant to perform the same function include "wimmin" (plural), wom!n, and "womban". A common singular form, to refer to one person, is womon. A similar usage is "femal" instead of "female". All are pronounced the same as the conventional terms. -Wikipedia

Something new I learned for today. I think this was mentioned at LITFORM class before.

Things That Make My Life Easier And Harder

2006-01-12T22:00:00.000+08:00

I. Mabuhay My Ass II. PC to Mobile Phone Interoperability III. I'm Nobody's Boss I. Mabuhay My Ass I'm annoyed at how Mabuhay Miles' website is ran. Mabuhay Miles is PAL's frequent flyer program. They have very lousy web administrators. I even heard that some Indonesians hacked their web site last year. Idiots. The implementation of the web site and the ticketing is so bad it still feels like it's all done manually. I was trying to figure out how to get my last flight, Cagayan de Oro to Manila, appear on the balance page. I clicked on a link that I thought that would lead me to a web form but it turns out that it was just a PDF file with the scanned copy of the form. They could've retyped the form for a clearer copy at least. The navigation and layout sucks, I was looking for the phone number since I, or anybody for that matter, would want to go to their office just to submit a form. I got to call them and the CSR told me to fax the boarding pass and an ID. Whatever happened to email? One more for the closing. The server is so slow. I tried to check on fares for Manila to Kalibo but it takes ages for the results to appear. PAL, Asia's sunniest? Pfft. II. PC to Mobile Phone Interoperability Here's some delayed news, Chikka now works with Sun Cellular. Or, you can send messages to Sun Cellular subscribers ,as commented by the readers in the original post. This is great! More functionality and interoperability. III. I'm Nobody's Boss Please stop calling me Boss, Po/Opo or Sir. This is the ~~third~~ ~~fourth~~ fifth time that somebody in a different geographic location called me that. You can only me that if you're paid to do so.

Mean The Now

2006-01-09T19:36:00.000+08:00

I. Insights and Outlooks at Cagayan de Oro II. Elpidio Paras I. Insights and Outlooks at Cagayan de Oro We're back in Manila, we arrived at around 08.50. PAL seems to be early most of the times now. Life at CdO is good. I'd like to add more facts about the crime level there. I forgot my phone in the restaurant/diner the other night and the people there were honest enough to return my phone. Actually, the security guards aren't really needed there. They're more of messengers/errand-boys. Another one about their cabs, they're decent and far better than the ones in Manila. Most of the cabs are new, Toyota Corolla Altis' to be exact, and they're all in good condition. Compared to the ones here at the capital that look like your gateway to hell. Also, with Sir Elpie's influence and innovations in CdO, the whole place is almost connected to the internet by public wifi hotspots (free, unlinke here where you have to pay 50 bucks an hour through Airborne Access) or by cable internet. So here are some pictures on the way home. Cable21 Broadband Internet, PhP999/month, faster and more reliable than Smart WiFi. More bang for the buck eh? P. Joe's Diner. The plane on the roof is a real plane. Sir Elpie cried when he bought it from the US because when he went there to claim it, the seller chopped it off to several parts. The Air Force is up to something. It turns out that they'll be transfering a dead body. Hats off to those one who die for their country. Sir Elpie's custom plane. Sweet! It flies by the way. Just felt like clicking around and took shots. Asia's Sunniest? United States Air Force. What are they still doing here? Terminal III. Too bad it's going to waste right now. Stupid politicians. II. Elpidio Paras Sir Elpie is the IT guy of Mindanao. I'm amused by how much he has accomplished. Parasat Cable Television provides cable TV to most parts of Mindanao at very affordable rates as low as PhP50 through prepaid cards. Cable21 is the broadband side of Mindanao, providing high-speed, and also cheap, broadband internet access. Sir Elpie's coffee shop, Coffee Works, first started to offer free internet access. Then other shops and restaurant started doing the same and it was a domino effect until signals have been bouncing everywhere. His P. Joe's Diner has two branches, the other one in the mall with a real plane inside too. He also has a resort. In addition to that, he also has BPO, Arriba Contact Center and Paramedics Medical Transcriptions. Our country needs more people like him who has visions and the courage to take risks. I won't be surprised when Mindanao will be the first to have WiMax coverage.

...and Two Thousand Six Kicks Off...

2006-01-06T15:22:00.000+08:00

I. Business Trip II. School Blues I. Business Trip? Greetings from Cagayan de Oro! We're still alive and no Abu Sayyaf in sight. And check this out, there's a bar nearby with HDTV and surround sound, clearly visible from outside. Put that in Manila and it'll get ransacked or something. The crime rate here is that low. Even the cabs are more decent here. Development here is booming. The airport looks like an airstrip but I think it'll be replaced soon. II. School Blues School started out okay. Good actually. A good line of professors. Yes, I am biased and I'm taking DIFFCAL again. My schedule is worse but not that bad. I still want a four-day schedule though. I'm planning on making some changes to how I take care of the organization at school that we founded since this is the last trimester that I'll be... err... leading it. I'm hoping that I could get the members' support.

Hello Two Thousand and Six

2006-01-04T21:50:00.000+08:00

I. Fully Booked II. Rethinking of XBOX 360 III. Video Hosting, Pt. II I. Fully Booked Happy new year everyone! If you want to know how I welcomed the new year, I didn't. But it sure kicked me in the balls for not doing so. It's back to normal now and I'm very busy again. We're off to Cagayan de Oro this weekend (and this time it's for sure). I was supposed to go to Malaysia with my dad and sister on the next weekend but my schedule doesn't permit me. Maybe this summer. I was thinking of getting Sans a big bag of chicken curry noodles. I was really looking forward to this trip, the miles and gadget shopping opportunity. I've been thinking of summer vacation already and it came to my mind of treating my friends to Boracay or HK or Baguio or something. I want to make it up for those who've been there and stood up for me through the years so yeah, be prepared and get a friggin passport. II. Rethinking of XBOX 360 Thinking of getting the coming XBOX 360? Read this article. I don't know which quarter it will arrive here but it'll arrive at Singapore by March. I could agree to most parts of the article, mentioning the murders that Microsoft did to it. I remember reading an article from Fortune about this and it seems like it most of the stuff that Bill was thinking of didn't realise. III. Video Hosting, Pt. II In addition to last year's post about video hosts, I found another. Vimeo is another video host that allows you to upload videos and share them to your friends. It's still in its beta stages. The guys behind this are the ones who are responsible for Colege Humor and its sister sites.

Return of the Jedi

2005-12-28T23:05:00.000+08:00

I. New York, New York II. World Pyro Olympics III. Uranus Actually has 27 Moons IV. Christmas Porn and Video Hosting I. New York, New York Hey everyone, Mayo is back from the States. Yes, Patrick, RJ, Jayman or whatever you call him is back. The reunion is on January 2. So please do come. He'll be leaving again on the 4th so don't miss it. He changed a bit. He has this new accent. He's even a friggin' stock trader now! We saw Mark last night. Some mofo hit his head with a bottle. Three stitches at the back of his ear and seven on his forehead. They play regularly at Mayrics every first and third Sunday of every month. II. World Pyro Olympics We'll be going to watch the World Pyro Olympics on Friday. You can buy tickets at selected Jollibee outlets or at their main office in Makati. The show has been on since the 26th and will end on the 30th. I bought the tickets earlier at Jollibee in Alabang Town Center and this guy Bobit, the manager, was so lousy. I snapped and told him how sloppy their service was in front of the other customers. I think Jollibee really sucks in general. I think the food is overpriced because of poor service. The branches are undermanned. I know it really takes a while to have food ready but I paid for "fast" food. Considering that Jollibee is one of the biggest companies here, and I wonder how they got their. People must have been putting up with their crappy "service". III. Uranus Actually has 27 Moons I have geeky news. Uranus has two more moons. It was spotted when astronomers were looking at its rings with Hubble. It's time to rewrite kids' textbooks again. IV. Christmas Porn and Video Hosting My blog has been getting a lot of hits lately from searches on Christmas porn. Here's something from IFILM. It's an episode of the Suicide Girls beating up a dressed up Santa. Nothing hardcore by the way. I was always curious what these Suicide Girls did everytime I saw an ad about them at MySpace. I found another site that lets you upload video clips like IFILM, Google Video and YouTube, MetaCafe. It doesn't let you upload clips yet but they will soon. It looks pretty much like YouTube. I like YouTube the most because they use flash, making the clips play on almost any browser on any platform/OS. IFILM uses Windows Media and Google's okay but it takes so long before your clip gets live but you could turn your clips into pay-per-views. Highly applicable to independent film makers.

Seasons Greetings

2005-12-25T11:49:00.000+08:00

I. Merry Christmas? II. Wanted, Pt II I. Merry Christmas? I though that I was going to be grouchy and scrooge-like this Christmas. I still think there's nothing special with Christmas. Ramel went here last night, we went to Bel-Air to play DotA. After that, it was Christmas eve so we passed by 7-11 to get something to eat before we go home. We saw this group of street children going to share on one cup of instant noodles. I decided to buy them one each. I was also thinking of giving money to the village guards but I gave the money to the kids. So Ramel bought them donuts and coffee instead. Like I said, nothing special. Not bad but nothing to be merry about. It has been a very good year for me but of course, there have been some setbacks and losses, people and things. Even for Ramel, he's earning a lot now from servicing speed boats, yachts and cars. Not to mention that there are a lot of benefits. This year has been definitely a good one. And yes, I know. I've had everything I ever wanted. An electric bass, amp, my own laptop and a bunch of other things. But there's still something missing and I don't know why and what it is. Greedy bastard. Here's more. I didn't get any failing grades this term but nothing to be happy about. May average is just a scrony decimal above 1. But still, thanks to my kind professors for not flunking me. I learned a lot but didn't put enough effort. I guess I prioritized work more. II. Wanted, Pt II Here's one more thing before I close this post. We are looking for LAMP developers. Knowledge in PERL would be a bonus. Fresh grads are welcome. Must be enthusiastic, hardworking and all those requirements for any person. This is urgent so please contact me via email, , as soon as possible. I had more stuff to write but I forgot them. I'll just put them on the next post if I remember them.

Bling Bling Blah Blah

2005-12-15T16:47:00.000+08:00

SimCity 5 Box Upgrade Future Plans Wall of Shame, Pt. II Yahoo! Music Engine SimCity 5 Rumor has it that SimCity 5 is on the way. On some screenshots that I found, it seemed great (but needed a lot of processing juice). It should be good because, in my opinion, SimCity 3000 and 4 wasn't that good. I'm planning the continuation of my upgrade phase to cope up with the new games being released (see next section). Box Upgrade I'm still having problems with playing Civilization IV and Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I'm getting a 200GB Seagate hard disk drive next week. Hopefully, it should fix some problems and improve performance. I need more storage space anyway. Also, I should expect a higher setting for video editing. It feels like the hard disk is starting to fail anyway. I'm not getting a SATA until I see significant improvement with the hard disks. Probably when 10,000 RPM hard disks become cheaper. Yes, the drives are the problems, not the interface. Next in line for the upgrade (next month) is the RAM. I'll be getting two sticks of 400MHz 512MB DDR-SDRAM. Then I'll get an AMD-64 processor and a compatible motherboard with SATA ports, this will be a three month saving (unless I get a raise or a bonus). I'll be opening a new bank account tomorrow with BPI to store the cash. When I finish the upgrade phase, I'll be salvaging the old parts for a new box which will serve as my development server. Its services will be backup web storage for my web site, backup storage for the local network and IP-PBX. It'll run on Linux and serve 24/7. It should be up and running by April, 2006 (wow, such long term plans). I have one problem though. I don't know where I'll be putting it. Future Plans I'm thinking of what I'll be saving for next, a new laptop or a PDA. It's 70/30 with my preferrence in favor of the laptop. I'm even thinking of saving for a digital SLR camera (and a tripod because I lost mine). Or my own car. But all I could do now is dream. My choice for the laptop currently is the Samsung M70. It's more of a desktop replacement. I liked the idea of a removable 19-inch LCD screen. It looks bulky though. Then for the PDA, I'm getting a Sharp Zarius. It runs on Linux so this way I don't have to bring my laptop to school and still get to work somehow. But only if I get to use an FTP and SSH client on it. Wall of Shame, Pt. II I was going to add another item to the Wall of Shame but the bastard got away. I was so pissed off I threw it all off at the guard. Yes, I'm sorry for that. Too bad I didn't get to jot down the license plate. Asshole. Yahoo! Music Engine I've heard about it being advertised on Yahoo! Messenger's LAUNCHcast radio but never tried it out since LAUNCHcast isn't that free. The only reason I tried it is because I saw it supported by FoxyTunes. So far, it works good. It really deserves the "engine" name because it'll keep playing unlike Yahoo! IM's native LAUNCHcast client and works better than the latter. But, it looks like a resource hog. I can't feel it with 768MB of RAM though (I'm still conscious about it because I have to remove the extra RAM soon). It also reads MP3 tags faster than Winamp does. I switch from Winamp and Y! ME every now and then. So yeah, check it out if you like streaming music and cute reflective fancy UIs. I read from Yahoo! News that Google (oh the irony) will be starting their music service too. Yahoobadoogle willy fashizzle prickle.

Snippets

2005-12-12T01:35:00.000+08:00

I. Wanted II. Arrovo Bills: Collectors' Item III. Hit Counter Test Broadcast IV. Ad Browsing I. Wanted I'm looking for this guy, Karlo Paolo Tagle Pagtalunan, at school. I wonder how he's related to Michael. I've seen some of his code at his blog and it was nicely done. He has to get in my organization. Please let me know as soon as possible when you spot this guy. Or if you know him. II. Arrovo Bills: Collectors' Item The Arrovo hundred bills are up for grabs at eBay Philippines. There are a couple ranging from floor prices of PhP210.00 to PhP3,500.00. Obviously, nobody has bid at the latter but the seller claims that it has this "cool" serial number. III. Hit Counter Test Broadcast I started working on my own hit counter. I've made some experiments with the GD library. A live sample below of how far I've gone is below. As of this post's publishing, the image below will show your public IP address. Your Public IP Address: Test Counter: Update: 2005.12.12 04.04 - copies images to produce the LED-like digits (was ordinary text) 2005.12.12 14.49 - not sure if it's working yet but it shows 0 everytime. IV. Ad Browsing Ads could be considered as the best short films (somehow) because they're supposed to send the most information, largest impression and instill the idea as long as possible. I even come to a point where I don't want to erase these clips that I download. I found this funny ad for Napster (I'm not sure if it's banned though). There's another one for XBOX 360, nobody knows why it's banned though. You could find more funny/banned commercials at YouTube.

Bad IT Admin. BAD!!

2005-12-10T18:41:00.000+08:00

The IT Admin at La Salle University, PA, USA has a copy of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i on their public server. If you'd like to test if I'm telling the truth, it's over here. If it's not there, they took it down already.

Change of Plans

2005-12-09T21:57:00.000+08:00

I'm not going to Cagayan anymore because the plane's leaving at 5.00 something. I can't go because I'm not available for the day. It's okay though, I'll have more time to focus on the dialer, for some school stuff and rest. It sucks though because I won't get to see the place and the people [and the ~~girls~~ agents]. Oh well. There's always next time.

Survival Notes

2005-12-07T15:09:00.000+08:00

I. Cops That Need Some Serious Ass-Fucking II. I Need Thomas Edison I. Cops That Need Some Serious Ass-Fucking Wow! I'm horrified by these two video clips that I saw last night (it was this morning actually, when I got back from work). The news is quite old but I don't really read the papers. This really showed me never to trust anyone but yourself (not your wits or instincts). Not even your best friend or even the cops. In this world surrounded by junk, you can't really tell what might happen next. The following links lead to two video clips where unmarked cops shot dead or injured carjackers as claimed by the cops. I may not know all the details but it's enough to really scare me. Clip #1 Clip #2 This blog, called Blogging For Justice, aims to inform people the real information about one of the said suspects which was shot. I guess the crime level is so high that even cops (not all) are criminals. Even if the people in the car were really carjackers, they still tampered with the crime scene and was overkill. I'd like to get the medal of the "honored" cop and use it to slit their throats. Adding the fact that it happened in Ortigas, it makes me rethink of how often or how long and at what time I should stay at work. II. I Need Thomas Edison While throwing some time off, I was looking for some stuff for our film project with Animo Teatro. I was looking for some parts that we could use to construct some equipment. Most of the hardware stores that I visited doesn't have the parts or don't even know what I'm talking about (somehow they lacked experience or didn't understand me). Seeing all these materials makes me want to build something else too. I was looking at some parts that I could use to build a customized Go Kart. I also saw some mounting stuff that I could use for my audio rig. Going back to the agenda, I ended up knowing that it's so hard to be an inventor (sort of), because it's so hard to look for the stuff that you need. Maybe that's why I should just be a software developer. Maybe programmers should be called inventors. They even have software patents (although I really don't like the idea).

Forgetting the Basics

2005-12-05T18:55:00.000+08:00

I. Bedspacer II. Wall of Shame, Episode 1 III. [One] More Road Shots IV. Befriending the Prince I. Bedspacer I'm looking for a room with a bed that I can rent. It has to be in Ortigas and if possible, one parking space. I'll be crashing just once, sometimes twice, a week. I seriously need to get a place to crash that is closer to work. It's hard to drive and think well without getting enough sleep. If you guys know a place or anyone, please drop me a line. Thanks! By the way, We'll be heading to Cagayan de Oro this coming Saturday night and be back at Manila by Monday noon for my NETCENT exam. That is, if we don't get kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf. II. Wall of Shame, Episode 1 I'm going to start a new series called "Wall of Shame". I remember reading a poem entitled "All I Needed to Learn was in Kindergarten" (if memory serves me right). Let's get back to some things that shouldn't be forgotten to be practiced at a learning institution. 1. I don't want to be the parking police but the driver of this car was considerate enough to eat up two spaces. I was going to blur the license plate but the smell of sweet revenge changed my mind. 2. One quote that you'll get when your civilization researches ecology in Civilization IV, "We don't inherit the land from our children, we borrow it from them". Need I say more (this is at an elevator)? I hope they can call themselves educated people when they graduate from college (they should know how to dispose their trash by now anyway). III. [One] More Road Shots I wonder what would happen if this guy (on the motorycle) gets crushed by a truck or gets involved in a high-speed collision. I swear I had another one. It got lost somehow. IV. Befriending the Prince I came up with more ideas on how to approach Prince Shuttle and other bus lines regarding the smoke belching buses issues. Another problem that I might encounter is that they may refuse to cooperate or won't listen. So I decided to divide the plan to three stages. Stage One, research. I, or if I get help, we will get all the information there is to find about how harmful the emmisions are. This will include statistics, surveys, proof of damage, measurement of CO levels along Laguna Blvd, recommended levels, recommendations by professionals and other stuff. Stage Two, proving it. I or a couple of people willing to help, will get pictures of the license plates of the buses and the bus operating with the visible smoke emmitted. Stage Three, contact. Before we start communicating with Prince Shuttle, it should be made sure that getting their buses in better shape shouldn't be too much for them (although it is a lot). This will involve getting discounts are rebates for replacement part suppliers, referral to a repair shop (but I'm sure they have mechanics, training for the mechanics if it's better) and more business related things. Then we reach the point where we send the letters or call the meetings. Yes, it's a big job that's why I'll be needing a lot of help. I can't do this right away though because I already have other priorities in the way that I have to finish first. I remember an organization that involves the environment and cleanliness around the area. I should conact them too.

Die Mofo Scammer

2005-12-04T02:16:00.000+08:00

Okay, I accidentally logged in at Yahoo! via an XSS (Cross Site Scripting/ed) page. I got the link through Y! IM from Boogs. It seems like a virus but I'm trying to trace its source. If you get the url , from me through Y! IM, don't open it. I hope that this is not a Y! IM security hole. Boogs says he got it from Lahaina but he's using his computer at school. But how did he get it (the virus)? Then this afternoon, there was a computer that kept writing a file named SharedDocs.exe (via the wireless network) to my Shared Documents. Luckily, it was intercepted by my antivirus. I'll try to investigate on this and see what happens. People, consider yourselves warned. Boogs lost his phonebook already and there was a breach already earlier. Lahaina can't login to her Yahoo! account anymore (probably). In case you do login through the scam site, change your password (and related accounts with the same password or usernames with that email address) as soon as possible. Please tell me if you find other sites so we can gather them (I don't know why, but it could help). I checked if I can report to Yahoo! on such cases but I guess they haven't thought of that. Please enlighten me if they did. Update: 12.55, Sunday, December 4, 2005 It all makes sense now. It's not a virus. The author of the scam login page logins with your Y! username and password, sends the URL to everyone then logs out. There's no virus or security threat related to Y! IM. If the author doesn't find anything useful, he/she will erase your phonebook or probably mess with your email. Boogs lost the contents of his phonebook.

Dinner With the Terrorists

2005-12-02T23:54:00.000+08:00

Just a short post again. Still, I'm too occupied with the stuff that I'm working on. I'll be having my first business trip to Cagayan de Oro. I will be providing a call center solution for the Abu Sayyaf and interested parties. Not. Actually, I still don't know who the client is (like it really matters). Then tomorrow, we'll be conducting the first session of our FSAP cascade. I hope all goes well. But of course, expect the worst. After that, I should have more time for things.

Not Ready to Rock

2005-11-28T21:52:00.000+08:00

Here's some pictures from my uncle's talk and our campus launch of Microsoft's new products. PC gaming has become too complicated that I have to do so much stuff to get one game to work. I don't who should I blame, the hardware manufacturer or the game developer. I'll put more crap later.

Resurrected

2005-11-26T17:10:00.000+08:00

I. Adagio II. Saving Mommy Earth I. Adagio Finally, some time to rest and be steady. Most of the important stuff to be done at work are finished, Thursday has passed (school org activity), our cascade at Microsoft has been moved to next week and there's no school on Monday. Cool. After putting myself to the test (failing it actually), I decided to give myself a reward and bought a new video card today. Hopefully, it works with Civilization IV. By the way, for those who don't know, we're not playing with Mayonnaise (that's tonight) anymore. Everyone was too busy. II. Saving Mommy Earth I think I picked the wrong title. Anyway, I'm fed up with this big bus line, Prince Shuttle, that services the employees of many factories here at Laguna Technopark. I'm not pointing only at them but almost all the buses and trucks that pass at Laguna Blvd (or any smoke belching vehicle for that matter). Out of 10 buses that I come across, 9.99999 are smoke belchers. I'm also starting this thing with my complaints and rants. With every complain I make, I should think of a solution. So here it goes. I originally thought of getting some government office to place a couple of cops or officials with a smoke emission tester or whatever you call it but I changed my mind. I don't want to make enemies. I want to help them. I'll write them (or possibly educate and warn them) about how much damage and waste [from their buses and to their profits] that they're producing. If they don't do anything, Plan B comes into place. I forgot what else to write. I swear I had more.

Time is More Precious than Gold

2005-11-17T21:55:00.000+08:00

Hi everyone just a quick update. I'll expound them later on, I'm hella busy right now (just taking a break). School, school organization, work and Microsoft has joined forces with deadlines due this week and next. Back to the updates, we'll be the front act for Mayonaise on the 26th. Hopefully we won't make fools out of ourselves. Then last Friday, she broke up with me. A part of me was prepared for it but there's a part that says that I hadn't had enough yet. Ugh. God I wish I could buy time right now. Drop me a line guys. <stress> Update Updates: 00.45 18.11.2005 - One down, three more to go. Just finished a requirement for work.

Vengeance for the Oppressed

2005-11-07T23:31:00.000+08:00

I. Your Online Journal: A Possible Lifesaver II. Shove VAT Up in GMA's Ass I. Your Online Journal: A Possible Lifesaver Check this out, I got this from one of my professor's blog. Read the comments to the posts then read this news article. A little bit more research on this thing led to a Wikipedia item and a crime blog. There are lots of other blog posts about Simon's blog but most of them says the same thing, the power of online journals and weblogs. I suggest that you really read all the links I provided (learn something new for a change). That way, you could get my point. The coincidence was that I was in HK when all this happened. I even had a post that day (when I got back from Macau). II. Shove VAT Up in GMA's Ass VAT has gone too far. I don't know what our president is doing and why she signed the whole thing at all. There are some things that I don't want to be taxed, highway toll, gas and CD-Rs. Yes, CD-Rs. They have VAT now. I asked my dad to buy some CD-Rs this evening. I was surprised when I saw 10% VAT written on the reciept. It's really time for our politicians to stop putting our money in their pockets and their spoiled kids' mouths.

Tech With A Little Touch of Emotional Conscience

2005-11-06T16:03:00.000+08:00

I. Two Months and Two Weeks II. Aging Hardware III. Espionageware IV. Online Laundry I. Two Months and Two Weeks I went to work last Friday. We started the deployment phase of one system for a call center in Ortigas. The requirement, an IP-PBX system with predictive dialing capabilities. We finished around 21.00 because we had to do it all over again since we screwed up right in the middle. I took the MRT and boy did it remind me of my days in HK, except that things were worse than what I was seeing (more like Filipino standards). Then just this morning, I had my braces taken off. And I thought I was going to have it on me forever! Good thing it didn't take a decade. My one week break is almost over. Monday's coming and I can't wait what our NETCENT professor will say. I'd like to see her release her anger in front of us. Next day morning update, she finally got her phone back. She went to Manila to get it. She also admitted and apologized to what happened. Now I'm the asshole. But at least I now have a clearer idea of our relationship. Yes, this post is backdated again, got carried away with doing other things. The original content are the first three paragraphs. II. Aging Hardware Civilization IV is slow on my laptop and on our desktop. This time I really have to get an upgrade. My first target on spendings will be a new hard disk, extra memory, and a new graphics card. I don't know what brands yet but the hard disk will most definitely be a Seagate. For graphics, it's either an ATI or an nVidia. Another hard fought war in computers. Since we're talking about computer games, here's something. Cool, ASUS will be manufacturing one of the PPUs. One more reason to patronize their products. III. Espionageware My sources tell me that there are popups with spyware in my blog. I'm in the process of fixing this. It's just that I'm having problems with my domain. I'm going to replace the chat thing on the right. Thank god for popup blockers. The only problem I have now are inline or inpage popups which don't get blocked by my popup blockers. Here's some more extensions for Firefox that I found to be useful, Flashblock and MediaPlayerConnectivity. The former stops Flash animations from loading automatically and the latter stops video from loading automatically (allows me to download the file too). This is what I like about Firefox extensions, most of them are both compatible with Windows and Linux. IV. Online Laundry Ever heard of AJAX? How about SOAP? No this is not about household cleaning and laundry. Have you tried Google Maps? If yes, they use AJAX, a combination of technologies to produce a higher level of technology. It's the same stuff used in GMail. Both of the services I mentioned are by Google, one of Microsoft's competitors. Microsoft is taking the move too. They're going to come up with a web version of Office or their products called Windows Live. The thing is, it doesn't look compatible with Firefox or standard compliant at all. I won't use it if they will use ActiveX. What if Google moves to the OS business? Or what if they are starting already? I've read of things about Google pirating Microsoft's pioneers. They also have a filesystem in research (I think it's primarily for their servers for now, but who knows what might come up?).

Software and Tech Updates ...almost

2005-11-02T11:06:00.000+08:00

I. Last Chance II. Civilization IV III. MySQL 5.0 IV. Microsoft Products for the Enterprise V. OpenOffice.org 2 VI. Imagine Cup 2006 I. Last Chance She finally sent me a couple of messages last night including a "good night". It looks like she's still pissed off though. It will be all up to her. If she doesn't want to contiue this, it's okay ...I think. I'm thinking of bringing her to Saguijo for a night out. I think Makopa, Johnny Allegre Affinity and Up Dharma Down will be playing. Last Saturday was the last day of Oktoberfest here. Well yeah, got a bit tipsy we drank the leftovers at Eric's place. That afternoon, we ended up playing you-know-what from 14.00-21.00. Then went to Jollibee for lunch. Saw some high school friends there too. No tables to mingle with them though. Enough of that. I don't want to talk about my boring personal life. Let's get back to my less interesting tech news before it gets stale. II. Civilization IV The ultimate time waster of all time is back and way better. Check out Sid Meier's Civilization IV. I haven't played it yet but the reviews all over are consistent say its great overall. Based from what I read, it's great for strategy enthusiasts, world history lovers and insomniacs altogether. The good stuff that I saw was the new open boundary system. And guess what, hotseat multiplayer gaming is back! As expected in any game development, graphics has improved drastically. This game is a must have. III. MySQL 5.0 Alas! The long-awaited MySQL 5.0 is finally out. I've read about competitive features it had when it was still in its beta stages. They have support for stored procedures now. This is a big bonus to PHP-based web application development, business purposes or not. IV. Microsoft for the Enterprise Level Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and .net Framework 2.0 will be launched in Manila on November 25, 2005. This is good news to rapid application developers ...sort of. I've seen some good improvements on SQL Server 2005 and ASP .net 2. I'm just hoping that IIS will be more secure. I will be conducting a technical session about ASP .net 2 on November 24, 2005 at my school. Let's wish that all goes well and that people won't walk away or fall asleep. Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 are now available for MSDN subscribers. V. OpenOffice.org 2 It's out too. Memory handling has been improved and load times shortened. Can somebody clarify if they're still using Java. I hate Java's Virtual Machine. It's such a memory hog. Anyway, if you don't have money to spend on MS Office (don't even think of piracy), this is your next best bet. Since Office 12 (wave) will be coming out in a few months, you might want to take a look at it too (the UI's great ...and changed). I hope that performance and loading times will be improved too. It sucks that Office 2000 was the last best office suite that came out from Microsoft. VI. Imagine Cup 2006 Imagine Cup 2006 is now open for registrations. There are six invitationals: Software Design, Algorithm, Short Film (oooh), Information Technology, Programming Battle, Interface Designer. You may register here.

The world's premiere student technology competition. Let's face it-the world needs help. The kind of help that happens when you take the top young technologists from around the globe and turn them loose on solving the world's toughest problems. That's what Imagine Cup is all about. Imagine Cup is your chance to innovate, show the world what you've got, and win some serious prizes. Simply put, it's your chance to use the power of technology to better the world-and have some fun while you're at it. You win. We all win. Imagine Cup contestants have the chance to give their ideas exposure, make critical contacts, and experience a true sense of friendship with peers worldwide. Want more? Well, if you make it to the worldwide finals, you'll also score an all-expense paid trip to Delhi, India, and a shot at some great cash prizes: $8,000 winning an invitational or even $25,000 for the software design invitational winner. Help the world and win money? It doesn't get any better than that. What does health mean to you? The theme of this year's Imagine Cup, "Imagine a world where technology enables us to live healthier lives," is a challenge to the world's top student technologists to actively contribute to the mission of improving health around the world. Health means different things to different people. You may think of health as a medical breakthrough. Or you may think of health simply as a clean glass of water. In the Imagine Cup, you define health and decide how to use technology to make a real difference in the lives of people everywhere.

I wonder what's with the emblem of an 'X' representing a person (standing up with hands all up). The head is what intrigues me the most, the head with the two horns. It could be something just to match the the body or follow the flow of the 'X' but it could have a side meaning. Hey, I just made these up, the devilish emblem that is.

Compaq X1010AL TuxMobil UniX Laptop Report

2005-10-31T11:11:00.000+08:00

I. Description II. Installation III. Post-Installation Tasks IV. Problems V. Screenshots I. Description The Compaq/HP Presario X1010AL is an excellent desktop replacement. It came with a hefty price tag but got it out of a last stock bargain. This box came into my hands July 18, 2004 with the following specs:

Intel Pentium M 1.3GHz (Centrino Chipset)
256MB DDR-SDRAM
ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 (32MB; VGA/SVideo Out)
15.4" WXGA Screen (1280x800)
Intel PRO Wireless 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (802.11b)
Realtek RTL-8139C+ (Ethernet Card)
56k Dial-Up Modem
30GB Western Digital Hard Disk Drive
Compaq CRN 8245B (Internal CD-ROM Drive)
Intel 82801DBM(ICH4-M) USB Host Controller (3x USB 2.0)
VIA IEEE 1394 Host Controller (Firewire)
Intel 82801DBM(ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller
Synaptics TouchPad with integrated scroll pad and switch
SD Media Card Reader/Writer
JBL Pro speakers
Pre-installed with useless crap (Norton AntiVirus 2005, MusicMatch Jukebox, etc)

And the upgrades:

Seagate 60GB 5400rpm Hard Disk Drive (~early May, 2005)

II. Installation Installation of Fedora Core 4 was a breeze with Anaconda. After installation, it correctly detected almost all hardware. Only the SD card drive, WiFi adapter and 56k dial-up modem were not detected. For the display just select a generic 1280x800 LCD display. III. Post-Installation Tasks Intel gave the Linux drivers to the community as a project. The drivers for the WiFi device could be found at SourceForge. Make sure that you have Wireless Extensions and Tools by HP. Compile from source the firmware then the driver. Everything should be working after that. IV. Problems The battery meter works on GNOME but I believe my kernel wasn't compiled with ACPI or it is unsupported so I can't bring it to suspend mode. APM doesn't work either. The SD card drive and dial-up modem are not functional but no efforts from me to fix those yet. As for the Firewire port, I don't have hardware to test it with. Dual Head doesn't seem to work well. In the login screen, it displays the login prompt at the external display with inappropriate resolution. After logging in at X Window System with GNOME, it replicates the screen of the internal display to the external display with distortion since it doesn't have the same resolution. V. Screenshots If you have any additions, suggestions or corrections, email them to . This post is a temporary location of a report for TuxMobil UniX Laptop Description.

95°, 140km/h and 1,000 words

2005-10-30T09:58:00.000+08:00

I'm pissed off. Just venting out. I don't know if it's my fault or if I was too harsh. I tried to keep it cool, so did Eric. But when you're mad, you won't listen to anything.

I can still feel the gaps

2005-10-28T21:54:00.000+08:00

I. Hollow Woman II. The Freeloader's Guide on How to Get an XBOX III. My boss backed up on my car. I. Hollow Woman Okay, let me summarize what happened or will happen this week. Last Tuesday, I attended DevDays 2005 at Edsa Shangri-La. I met up with my mentors when I got there. Then yesterday, I drove my dad to the airport, did some errands, went to a meeting then went to work at Ortigas. On the way home, my boss accidentally backed up on my car. Good thing nothing bad happened. Tomorrow will be our second month of our celebration of emotional fiasco. It feels like she's not there though. Oh well. On the less interesting notes, the war has begun last Wednesday. It was our midterm at NETCENT. Jobert was late and came in furious. She marched in and said, "No cheating, once caught, you will automatically fail this course". We scrambled to our seats as we discovered that this ain't good. I could really tell she was pissed off ...at me. Last Monday, somebody approached the acting dean about her teaching methods (refer to a previous post). I admit that it was me. I could've had an accomplice but who can tell? Mwahahaha! Anyway, I'm not afraid of her. If she fails me, she will have to give proof. I could fail but I have proof that it is a teacher factor not a student factor. I even have witnesses and [will have] evidence to back that up. II. The Freeloader's Guide on How to Get an XBOX So last Tuesday I drove to Edsa Shangri-La, Ramel hitched a ride to Bicutan on the way there but I had to take the Skyway since the traffic was getting heavy so I dropped him off at Sucat instead. Ian was supposed to accompany him but somebody beat him up the day before because I think he said something at another player over a game of DotA. It was unintentional (it's a special mental/emotional condition for Ian) but the pissed off fratmen didn't know that it was possible. So now, he's hiding and leaving tonight (or left tonight; he's so afraid he couldn't tell anyone when but he said Friday). Inuman's cancelled too. Going back to DevDays, I was with Ms. Jheng and Sir Alain. It was mostly bashing MS and stuff. They demonstrated Vista (I'm not a big fan of fancy GUI but it was well applauded) and introduced Visual Studio 2005 and the new server family. I could barely remember half of the stuff in the afternoon session. We couldn't tell how Vista was better to XP technically excluding IE and UI-wise. I think the UI should be the last thing demonstrated to developers. It looked like more of a show than a demo. Based from what I saw in Avalon, it looks like that there will be a big change in UI and presentation. Much like when XP went out, most stuff will not work. Or maybe not but I can predict a complete transition to Avalon maybe after two generations of Windows. The freebies were cool. Sort of. I got a bag, much like everyone else, but I like it because my laptop fits in it. I'm thinking of getting it "modded". I also got a lousy keychain which we lined up for two hours (standing up), it's free anyway. I was hoping that I could get a jacket. Here are the pictures (courtesy of Sir Alain and his camphone), just click on them to enlarge it. DevDays? DevDays! DevDays. Welcome remarks by Stanley Tan Vista stuff by Jojo Ayson Before lunch Lunch time, should I say more? Lunch time, so this is where everyone went. More of lunch, err, everyone lining up for lunch. This is THE line for the XBOX raffle. It takes about five minutes to move one person down the line. The bag. Conquering the World: Phase One, making everyone look alike. (R-L, foreground) Me, Ms. Jheng and some saleswoman. See that smile by Ms. Jheng? It's the "annoyed" smile. God, that saleswoman was annoying. She couldn't even sell. Everyone leans forward as the name for the XBOX winner is being picked out from the bowl of names. Vista, mid-2006; WinFS, later-2006. What's next? Why so long? III. My boss backed up on my car. So I went to work yesterday. Before that, I went to school to attend an RSO meeting. Only three of us were present. I felt like I wasted time, money and gas. On the way to the office, I passed by Caltex to buy a drink. Jhessel saw me (and I was on a rush already). I was surprised. I still don't know if I was really glad to see him. Apparently, he was there waiting for May-Ann for a gig or something and didn't even have credits on his mobile. I got to the office and got acquainted with Dennis, the new member of R&D. I stayed in the office until the demo. I learned some stuff from Mark Q and shared some of the stuff that I knew. I think I'm really going to enjoy this It was all work until past 21.00 then we went to this call center (that looked more like a condo) for a demo. On the way home, my boss accidentally backed up on my car's front bumper. Luckily there were no scratches or dents. I won't be able to handle additional stress because I was already tired. Past 23.00, I got lost a bit and ended up at EDSA, I was trying to get to C5. EDSA was still congested at this time and the heavy downpour slowed me down even further. 23.30, reached Magallanes (SLEX), slightly less congested than EDSA but with all the rain, I couldn't maneuver properly. I got home past midnight with the car trashed and coated with a thin layer of CO byproduct. Our politicians should really start to get their act together. Our roads are so bad, it's bringing the country down. I guess it's not just the politicians, it's our bad drivers too (that includes me but I can't help it when I get stuck in a jam, I get in to a road rage).

Inter-Brain Knowledge Transfer Express

2005-10-22T02:12:00.000+08:00

I. Tagaytay Experiments Concluded II. Molding The Clay III. Broke and Overthrown I. Tagaytay Experiments Concluded You might be wondering why this post is backdated. Or not, you can predict why. It's because I started it yesterday morning and stopped for a while and ended up finishing it tonight. I'm going to be busier besides what I've been complaining because I'm going to moonlight work with school. And finally, my site is now up after eight weeks of waiting. Ramel is now out of Toyota. There's a side of me that feels like he wasted time and money there. But I guess he could be right when he said that he learned a lot. Knowledge is one of the priceless things a person can have. Just like why I started working. Ian's leaving for Australia on Nov. 2. I don't know what are the plans. I think it'll be another inuman or something. After a series of experiments and searching on the best place to have lunch, I could say that we came up to a conclusion that Leslie's is the best place to eat in Tagaytay, good music, good view and most of all, good food. If it ever happens that the bill is pricey, it would be worth every bite. Yellow Cab is out of the list because the food was still expensive (even if it was cheaper than any pizza parlor (with accompanied comparison to taste). There was also one place that was so bad, it was worse than the canteen! And I thought no place could get worse than the school canteen. Remember, Sizzling King, don't go there. II. Molding The Clay The other day, I went to Ortigas for an interview. I applied as a PHP developer at VoIP Global. I'll start on Wednesday doing outsourcing for an American company. I'll be in another project, the maintenance on a system deployed in Globelines. I got to request that my work be reduced from 22.00-06.00 to 22.00-02.00. We're working on IP-PBX systems. I'm on R&D for the billing and integration to the system. This technology that we're working on is based from F/OSS and will be widely deployed in most industries that use telecommunications as their backbone, think call centers on IP phones. I'll have to lessen DotA sessions to one game only or better yet, quit playing it. III. Broke and Overthrown My site is now up thanks to Nestle Poell Ligaya, the new Gen. Manager of DragWeb Hosting. The previous Gen. Manager and asshat, John Carlo Roxas got into a financial crisis. Actually, he got lost from the world and came back broke. This guy is rude and cocky, he replies to my emails one week after my querries. He doesn't answer his phone and doesn't call back (what more with SMS?). Now that Poell is in control, everything is smooth sailing. Actually, Poell was the only one that I got to talk to and had the respect to reply to text messages when he was still Carlo's partner and did only the billing. I believe there are more things that Poell wanted to say but it's an internal issue. Carlo really did get on my nerves. I swear that if I knew this guy personally, I'd beat the living hell out his guts. Also, to make it easy to remember the address of this blog, I made a redirector. Now you can access this blog by pointing to http://www.jploh.com/journal/.

For And Country!

2005-10-16T15:11:00.000+08:00

I. Justice Be Served! II. Hero Wannabe III. PLUG's 4th Quarter Free Technical Seminar I. Justice Be Served! Damn. I started writing a couple of days back but I started doing something else so I lost it. I posted the Nestlé issue at a tech forum/community that I frequent. Several opinions reflected. Maybe we should push for it to be investigated with close monitoring considering how easy it is to bribe those with the power. It seems that there's been a massive campaign about Shorty's uncle. I managed to take some shots of the streamers along the road to the highway. Looking at pictures from my mobile's camera makes me dizzy. Read here for more information. I don't want to write about it any further. So yeah, we went to APC for the PLUG seminar yesterday and [they] ended up playing DotA after our Jap lunch. All of the CS boys were there except for Rain. I forgot to bring my keys to the house when I left so I spent dinner with Ramel, Eric and Ian when I got back. Then last Tuesday, we came back to Leslie's Tagaytay. This time with reinforcements. The food there is so good with reasonable prices [plus the nice view]. The band there is good too (completely acoustic and they play mostly latin jazz or samba). I forgot the rest of the things I wanted to write. The rest are the boring stuff. II. Hero Wannabe I've been asked a couple of times on what I'll do or where I want to go to work after college. One, my dad, next is Chris Chu, out of curiosity, Marc Sy of MMOG and even my cousin Michael. Most of the answers were blank and sometimes something close to getting out of the country. Lately, it has changed. I want to work here. Maybe work for a couple of years and have fun then start my own thing. I want to shape the future of IT here since it's quite new and I can tell that it will be the next thing that will be bringing a lot of money to this country. Maybe someday I could do something big ang make a difference. Or prove that this generation is the future. Sort of. III. PLUG's 4th Quarter Free Technical Seminar I learned a couple of stuff from this seminar (even if we only attended the first two parts). They were clustered systems and security on the enterprise level. The speaker on clustered systems was Oliver's cousin. I can't seem to see the resemblance though. This was the guy that thaught Oliver to use the magic square method at our AI class. Too bad he didn't get to apply it well.

Evil Nestlé/Peek-ture

2005-10-08T23:13:00.000+08:00

I forgot to mention about Shorty's uncle who got assasined. His uncle was a leader of the labor union of Nestlé Philippines. According to him, the union had a strike and won (probably for a salary increase). A couple of days later, the greedy bastards took his life. These people didn't even think that he's got a family which he feeds while these corporate mongrels spoil their kids with such luxury. I say boycott Nestlé products. Motherfuckers. Yesterday we ate at Leslie's Tagaytay for a change. We even came up to a decision of hiking a mountain. Makiling perhaps. We're still at the planning stage. If only I had a better camera with me that time. ^Ahh... ^{Always bring a camera. Damn.} Then earlier today, we had a friendly game against Aliens United (last year's futbol cup champions). Score? Fifteen to none. It would probably be even more if we didn't have Martin as our keeper. I just found out this morning that Jorge had a car accident. His neck is now straight due to trauma. He passes out every four hours too. And even in that state, he wanted to play today. Here's a little something from AC's IT:TOC. ^{I remember this involved pushing. (L-R) Carl, JC, Gian, Me, AC MS-MSA Jeli and the one who pushed (I don't know her name).} ^{Vista anyone?}

Hybrid Bird And Canine

2005-10-06T22:26:00.000+08:00

I. "Moi" Talk II. The Dog III. The Penguin IV. Ideas Not Yet Realised V. Rubber Mobility I. "Moi" Talk I've decided to organize my posts from now on, even Sans has been complaining about it. Since I haven't been updating my blog for a long time, this section's about what I've been up to. I'll be posting only the personal stuff in LJ to segregate the boring technical tech shit. I wonder if this works. For the past days, I've been spending my late nights playing DotA in Warcraft III: Frozen Throne with my classmates. Thanks to Hamachi and the internet we don't have to get into the hassle of waiting in line and spending at computer LAN rental shops. And recently, Ad Hoc which allowed us to play at school even without wires! I hope this is not addiction. My band went on a full-force crash to a red brick wall in our last performance. We haven't practiced since until recently. It's pretty hard to shuffle around on who's playing what. Meanwhile, I've been very busy in IT. I've been trying to particpate with the Microsoft and Linux community (I'll discuss more later). It's the best of both worlds or like being a half-blood prince. That leads to getting busy everytime even if my schedule at school is loose. II. The Dog (Polgas; Microsoft PH) I attended our Gathering Session at FSAP. I'm also joining MpoY on his pool of developpers. I'm thinking of plugging him in some of my projects too. MS will be conducting campus launches for MS Visual Studio .net 2005. So watch out for it. It's definitely way better than coding in PERL, sort of. Creating everything from GUI has its ups and downs. I haven't joined any MS community yet but I plan to when I have something to say and contribute. III. The Penguin (Tux; Linux) I also installed Linux Fedora Core 4 on my laptop the other day. I also managed to make my WiFi device work. I'll post screenies later. I helped distribute some distros (redundant?) too. Just drop me a line if you're interested in a copy. Unix is my default OS now. On a side note, it isn't for servers now becuase everything works on my laptop which has an unusual display. IV. Ideas Not Yet Realised This morning I had a meeting with Sir Joel and Sir Xerxes. At the last part, we got to discuss some of the things we could do. Some of them includes improving the Geo Bloggers community on the local to national level, a free SMS via Bluetooth then a program using libchix and a geocaching contest/activity. This is why enjoy conversations with Sir Joel, you can have tonnes of things to talk and envision about. Well, it's planning actually but the thing is I need people. You know that feeling when you really have the urge to do this and that, to have an accomplishment but you can't because you lack support, people and talent. So it's like thinking big for the small. I'll post my ideas later on. V. Rubber Mobility No this is not about safe sex on the road. I've been driving far recently. Based from my observation, I spend the same amount of money taking the Skyway and fuel (sometimes even less when I travel in a constant speed) compared to taking the ordaniry route on the South Luzon Expressway. The only difference is that it takes less time. I don't know, it only came to my senses just now. This afternoon, I picked up my dad from the airport. I was late so I took the Skyway then I reached point B in less time. Err, as planned but I got lost when I took a call on my mobile. So Dad's busier too. He just got back from China last Friday and left for Indonesia the next day.

Road Rage/AC IT Talk/Quality Education

2005-09-30T23:11:00.000+08:00

Mood: Annoyed (was; now surprised) Music: Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto

Hey cool, I didn't know that I have a Getz CD. I had a couple of rants I wanted to post days back but I didn't want to rant all the time. I'm starting to realize that there are no effects or it barely does anything. Before I get to my main agenda, I'd like to share our experience at Assumption College (AC) the yesterday. It's one of those bad days when I get on a road rage because of stupid drivers. When we got to San Lo, there was this dumbass truck driver who had three dumber guys assisting him. The truck was blocking the way as it attempted to back up into a driveway. We were waiting for fifteen minutes already and we were already late, even Joy had to walk. So I went down and told this idiots to hurry the fuck up. Then when we passed them, I saw this guard just sitting on his bike watching. I asked him why he didn't assist them. He said there were three guys already assisting the driver. I told him those three guys don't know a single thing about driving. Geez. The next problem was parking. We reached the end of a long stretch of cars parked outside the campus then parked there. We were told that we can't park there and directed to turn back until we reach the end of the street. And so we did. When we reached the end of the street, the guard there said we can't park there either. So we just parked at this street near the campus. Less than five minutes after getting a seat, I was told that I didn't park correctly. So this Karen helped me on this. It turns out we couldn't park there either (Joy's instruction was to park on areas with the gutter painted green). I was five minutes close to getting the car tire locked (did I write that right). It was a lot of waiting and a couple of small things then Joy came to the rescue and got us parked at the "canteen". Going back to AC, we attended their IT: Trends, Opportunities and Carreers (TOC) which is a series of talks. They hold this annually and they have their usual iAcademy guests (as they mentioned). In the raffle, we got trial cards for Blast prepaid dial-up internet cards out of pity. The most interesting topics were the preview of Vista and VS .net 2005, Back to Basics (by Mr. Doy), and "da best" Macromedia Flash animation introduction by Mr. RD from MS-NERDS. And now, for the main agenda (considering how much I've typed already), I we have a complain on our NETCENT professor. We will give her an alias of Jobert for privacy. NETCENT is the most interesting course (for us CS boys and specially for me) on our curriculum, I even dropped it in exchange for DIFFCAL. But what should turn out to be a class filled with lots of enthusiasm, fun and knowledge transfer, is we get something no different to a group study (only the group includes the girls and the half male). Here's how her teaching style goes, every student is assigned a seat number and a group. That's okay, I'd like that for the sake of organization. The first twenty-or-so minutes of the class is allocated for a game for groups. The next thirty for the report and the remaining time for Q&A. This looked like it added fun points to the class but that was before. The losing team of the game will be the one assigned to report for the next meeting. The reporting is done every other meeting. The following meeting with a report is assigned for a fifty point quiz that doesn't measure the student's understanding of the topic but a measure of one's skill at memorizing abbreviations and terms. Then after the quiz, she will write on the board then read it all then dismiss us except for the next group to report which she will breif. For us, this looks like easy money for her. She just sits there and watch, well, comment and correct a little, but she doesn't teach us anything at all. Besides, what would you expect from a group of students who don't have an extensive background on teaching like a professor/instructor like her? This is where the quality of education goes down. We've been discussing on how to resolve this. Just like [codenamed] Chuck Rambo said, "We need to think carefully on our next decision". The actions we thought of doing are telling the guidance counselor (instant brainfart/wining), mention this to the SC (was recommended) and talking to her first then file a complaint if it doesn't work (my small thought). The following are the possibilities that I thought of. On the first case, I don't really know what might happen but it doesn't sound appropriate. On the next one, it would be a public humiliation and put her on a massive hatred campaign to kick her out or replace her. On the last one, I think no one would have the guts to step up to her or at least disclose the issue to her correctly which would just lead to its Plan B. We are lost and we are running out of time. Something should be done before it's to late. This should be two posts instead but who cares, I'm tired too. I also noticed I gave out a clue on Jobert's gender. Uugh...too tired to change...must stop myself from click the submit button..... _{to be continued..}

Is There Such Thing As Software Communism?

2005-09-19T20:59:00.000+08:00

Last Friday was the start of massive nationwide raids on companies using pirated or illegally acquired software (I think initiated by BSA or Microsoft). Many computer cafés scramble for help on getting legit OEMs and boxed of Windows 98SE, Windows XP Home and if no other choice, Professional. There was a 30-day warning. Most of the shops didn't have ample time to go legit and even many vendors ran out of stock. This forced most of them to close down temporarily. This crackdown is working somehow but for many shops that couldn't afford to, per unit, shelf out PhP8000 for the latest Microsoft operating system then additional PhP6000 for the Office productivity suite instantly, opted to migrate to Linux. Articles of Software Revolution or Rise Against Software Imperialism also started to circulate around. I think this is the part where the plan backfires. This will be evangelized among shop owners to give up Microsoft products. I suggest that Microsoft should lower the price. I'm aware that there have been considerations for computer rental shops that special licenses or agreement were being offered but I believe it's not enough. I read in a news article that Microsoft cannot give a lower price for the Philippine market because everybody will go here to buy licenses/copies. With what I know about the license (I'm not quite sure so please correct me if I'm wrong) is that you could only use the software within the bounds of the country that you bought it. Or is this only for Microsoft server systems (SQL Server to be exact)? If it is, why won't Microsoft apply it to Windows XP? For frequent fliers (international level) that would use the software could get another kind of license which will allow users to jump from one country to another without braking the agreement. My prediction is that support and use of Linux will increase if Microsoft will not do something about their pricing schemes.

I Don't Like Your Toes

2005-09-16T19:57:00.000+08:00

Went out with Lawrence and Tina last night. Tina wanted to go to a strip club. We ended up at a cheapass one. Anyway, it's nice to meet new people. I have someone to accompany me when I go all the way to Lawrence's birthday thing. For those who know the annual inuman, it's next Saturday (24). I have a new list of to-buys. I think it's better to call them investments because just about half of their purpose are for my hobbies and the remainder for my freelance work.

A new hard disk (probably a 160GB)
A tripod
A videocam
An SLR camera

I have the sudden interest in film and digital video. Then I want to do some photography too. My 3D experiments came to a dead halt since I can't do freelance on that yet (software's too expensive).

I Can Only Count From Zero to One

2005-09-15T09:16:00.000+08:00

Mood: Geeky Music: Incubus - Fungus Amongus

Ate Tinay's blog has moved to Tripod. Tripod did a good job with revamping the site. Friendster had a massive revamp too. What I don't like about it? The ability to embed video, music and CSS stylesheets. Why? That's because tons of people will start putting in high-bandwidth annoying content and color combinations that will make the whole page unreadable (is that a word?). Just like how myspace turned out to be. I guess freedom shouldn't be given to the [stupid] people. We have a game against UP (LB, most probably) tomorrow. I haven't trained for a month or so. I decided to drop DIFFCAL in exchange for NETCENT. Why? I'm under the same prof in DIFFCAL then approximately 95% of my classmates are freshmen engineering students. In NETCENT, I'm with my block (the good ole CS boys), it's a hundred times less boring than math. One small agenda though, the instructor of NETCENT didn't get to differentiate a hub and a switch correctly. Yes, I'm a geek but no math genius.

Money Matters

2005-09-11T18:59:00.000+08:00

Went to this year's Software Freedom Day yesterday. I was their early so I ended up volunteering. Read the presscon details here. Nice people there. Didn't learn much though. Then last night, we didn't get to go to Maria's birthday bash. We didn't money. For that reason, it pisses me off. There are some people who are very irresponsible and insensible. Fred borrowed three grand from Ramel and that's so long ago. Ramel's been reminding him almost everyday. The ass that he was, had the guts to turn Ramel into a driver by asking Ramel to drive them home. That's almost every Saturday. The only thing Fred is good at is ...err, I don't know. Eric and I accompany him on his chauffer jobs. It's sick that Fred borrowed the money that Ramel worked so hard for. Now, he doesn't have money to pay for rent. I had to shelf out one grand and I told Ramel that it's strictly for his rent (no lending, not for food, just rent). I don't know what to do about it. Sometimes we end up picking on Ramel for lending that much. This is the second (or third ...maybe the fourth) time he's getting stood up with regards to money. On a final note, Carol Agagas is a whore and borrowed a large amount of money and never returned it. She used all the money for a date with this dude we don't even know. She can't be found anywhere anymore. I'm pissed off. Anyway, happy birthday Maria.

Shun From The Red Brick Wall

2005-09-09T17:02:00.000+08:00

I'm trying out Yahoo! 360. I liked the fact that they considered all those privacy settings. Let's face it, we want to categorize our friends. We don't want everybody snooping about everything you do, right? I didn't push through with my evil plot of throwing hand-egg-grenades. I'll just wait, just like how a civilized entity of humanity in this planet called Earth. Continuing with my uttered interest in 3D, I bumped onto Pixel Must Die dot com while surfing along in my endless journey on the information highway. I envy those renders. I wonder how long they took. Before I end this post, I'd like to leave you all with a quote from our clinic downstairs, "Take care what you say before a wall, for you cannot tell who may be behind it." quoted from Sadi. Gently, mildly ...keep it cool.

You Are A Blinn-Textured Bitch

2005-09-06T22:59:00.000+08:00

In 3D (3dsmax to be exact), you can assign a material type, texture maps and a bunch of other stuff to polygons and then you can manipulate settings. Plastic materials are refractive, not reflective. They'll give a difused image of you. Actually, it could be very reflective depending on how smooth it is but I'm generalizing on most plastic products. To achieve this, you assign it a material type such as Blinn with high refractive settings. My favorite part is adding textures. Textures will change the real color/s that a certain object will reflect or refract. Moving on, I was backreading some stuff. I can't believe how much anger, lies and deceit that I've read. Well, people have their opinions and it's pretty retarded that I got to read it (when it was supposed to be exclusive). Dates span from last year's last quarter to this year's first and all I can say is that it raised my blood pressure for a while there. It changed the way I look at some things/people. Some things change, some things don't. Live with your own faults and mistakes, don't blame others (that's a note to myself not to you). I could write more shit but it would be pointless. Fuck you.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2005-09-05T10:07:00.000+08:00

I'm serious with the title. Although I don't like that song that much by Green Day, it is very appropriate. It's Semptember too. If I had a hand-grenade, I'd throw it on the nearby construction of an ugly house. Yesterday, I woke up because of this racket from the said construction site. It's a policy for Ayala Land and LPHI to prohibit construction during Sundays and if a special permit allowed, it shouldn't generate a lot of noise. Just to let you know, this isn't just hammering and saws, they have friggin grinders. Two to be exact, the other has a higher pitch. They alternate making noise for spans of 30 to 40 seconds with a rest of five seconds. I thought to myself, I'll let them do this just get it done. But even on Sundays? I was so pissed off I drove to their guards, village admins and our village admin to stop it. I'm thinking of substituting hand-grenades with eggs. They crossed the line, my evil plot shall be executed by tonight. <sinister laugh> Die motherfuckers.

100Km/h Crash

2005-09-01T20:56:00.000+08:00

Mood: Weird Music: Sum 41 - Chuck

I went to the other side of the province to visit her last Monday and today again. It was supposed to be yesterday but you all know the great procrastinater, don't yah? I'm starting to have fun. Or is it just the influence? Anyway, I was with Eric and Ezzy (Amiel was also with us the other day). I guess I don't have to elaborate everything. Let the mystery prevail. A lot has happened lately but I'll sum it up. I got my second job offer last night. I like this one because it is more in line with my field. I don't know if I could take it yet. I registered a domain and got a host for my portfolio and testing site for my projects too. It will be up by September 4 ...hopefully. Uhh, that's all I guess. I'll post next term's schedule later on.

February Was Delayed

2005-08-29T01:48:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, the girl next door turned to legal age. No response from my greetings. Anyway, that's the past. Today might be the most memorable day of my life. Just giving out that three-word-phrase of emotion felt a little weird on both sides. The most said but undefined phrase by people. I almost threw my phone with shock knowing that I've sent that text message. Her name is for you to guess. Let's just hope for the best. Oh yeah, I've been free from hell since Thursday. I got my grades from HUCOINT, 3.5 baybeh! We got 94 on the project. You can download it here. Made with 3dsmax, Photoshop CS2, Macromedia Flash and post-production mux with Multiquence. I got a humiliating 2.0 on INTSYST but what's important is I didn't fail it. I failed DIFFCAL. I guess that's for me to accept and it's pretty obvious I didn't know anything anyway. It would be better to take it again but the thing is, it's already closed for next term.

You Have The Choice

2005-08-23T14:54:00.000+08:00

I finally got the Chikka plugin to run for GAIM Linux. You don't have to read this post and I don't care if Bill Gates won't fuckin' read this.

Trauma

2005-08-22T14:58:00.000+08:00

Mood: Busy Music: Everything But the Girl - Temperamental

Damn, I'm so busy but enjoying all the work except the papers and stuff. If your my classmate in HUCOINT and didn't join our group for the project, we're going to blow you away. I've been preparing a lot for this for the past three days. For those who've seen my previous work with Macromedia Flash (emphasis on RELSONE play I think), you better see this because the Z axis has been added to my line of work in graphics and design. I remember having one conversation with the Andrews (Shorty and Pugo) talking about why I didn't want to buy food even if I was starving to death already. I didn't want to spend that time (everyday at the canteen actually) because I was saving my money. Mark asked what I was saving for and I replied, "I don't know actually". He started to think (consider the lag times and latency) what I could be saving for, enumerating one by one of what I wanted to buy, "a bass guitar, a bass amp...". I continued on, "Yeah, I've got everything I wanted. I could die happy now. My life is already complete. [laughs] I have shallow materialistic goals". I've been mentioning "dying happy" a lot and I've been thinking, "That's right. I don't know what to do next". So at least I could die now with contentment but I still feel that something's still missing. Something that I need to achieve or do. I can't tell but I guess that's for destiny to tell. Haha! Last Friday night, my parents pulled out two of my teeth. Two mollars (I think), one on each side. Those dental tools are scary even if I've grown with those in my own house. I just noticed that one of my fears is needles. So after that, I was working late and the anesthesia's effects were still there so I was unaware that I was drooling already. Moving forward, with only five hours of sleep (and same goes to the previous night), I went to AUP to pick up my siblings. I had a long talk with one of my high school intern teachers. It was torture of a story retold about where he studied before, talk about our president and government (then more politics) and Catholic education. I saw Omar and Jot. That night, my dad and I bought his new laptop. This is some sort of quality time for us (bonding). The specifications that he was looking for was one with a graphics chip with extensible desktop display (dual-heads), built-in card reader and wireless ready. He saw me using two displays and wanted one too. After reducing the choices to two and bargaining, we got our choice. The Compaq Presario M2000 (M2223AP). Added a Lexmark printer to our collection of Canons (3) and HPs (3). Specifications:

Intel Centrino 1.6GHz/WLAN 802.11b/g
256 MB RAM
Intel Integrated Sound and Video (XGA 15")
DVD/CD-RW drive
Bluetooth
6-in-1 card reader

Not bad but the change for smaller Altec Lansing speakers compared to the JBL Pro of my X1010AL, reduces the appeal. It came with XP Home S/P2 and a bunch of memory hogging, useless, bundled software which was pre-installed and had to remove. As for my phone, it's not bad but I find the camera next to useless. Just sixteen minutes left when I checked before a rendering job is done. I better get ready to start working again. Ah, hell week.

Feel The Heat

2005-08-18T00:43:00.000+08:00

Mood: Scared Music: Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd - Jazz Samba

My dad and I swapped phones. I think I'm now using a Nokia 6220. Migration was easy with the help of Nokia's PC Suite. Comes with a camera, more than what I want and need anyway, I hope I get used to its keypad easily. It took a while with my previous phone and I hope this one isn't worse. I'll write more of what's been happening recently. I've been very busy lately. I haven't felt so much requirements being pressured. I'll have two dental extractions this coming Friday (19th) too. Hearing the word needles scared me. Interesting thread at Welo's post. More later.