Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Writing On Air: Jim Paredes is migrating to australia and would return to fight another day. Sad, but he really had very valid reasons there. Not to mention we are all given freedom to make our own decisions.

The topic of leaving the Philippines is very timely tho. Not a week would go by that me and my lovey would also discuss going abroad to work and eventually migrate to another country. To finally stop living in a world of ideals and get a grip on reality.

What's next? Is there really no hope? We continue to ponder...

u*blog testing

testing u*blog...

Revision 2

Feeling inspired, I decided to resurrect the bicolano.org website. It has been dormant for almost a year now after we replaced both hdisk and OS on the colo server. The database has gone with the Dodos along with the erratic hdisk.

Last time we had a community driven bulletin board format. It has an ambitious goal of being a one stop shop on the net for everything Bicol. It was quite ok, with around a hundred registered users with half of them active, but didn't gather enough steam as I hoped it would be. We failed in reaching out/tapping the academe,NGO, and other communities. It was a bit technology centric, as most of the main contributors were developers. It was a good learning experience tho, so it wasn't a wasted effort.

So now we try a different approach, less ambitious goals, broader in scope, but the same noble idea: empowering the bicolano community!

If youre a bicolano, do visit http://bicolano.org, post an article, or leave a comment, get involved! Payt sana!

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Summary log

Spent a good chunk of time fixing an open-relayed mail server today. A ton of spammers had a field day with that server. mailq revealed why the poor thing is having an asthma attack.

The ventolin-like cure is good old rejecting of all mails not destined for that domain. Add some FQDN checking and amavis-clamav-spamassasin loving.

Tonight would be some Joomla CMS PHP-powered template wrestling. Good thing was able to download that G4 optimized firefox version, the stock one had a tendency to be a CPU hog. Couldn't use Safari as it lacks the nifty web dev plugin exclusive to firefox.

Tommorow, will take a stab with a little SOAP derby. Crossing my fingers the given API doc would be a bit nearer to reality. The last encounter didn't mention that the hash keys should be converted to uppercase. Javadabadoo...

That's all folks.

This post brought to you by u*blog (hope it works TM).

p.s.
it didn't work. using tried and tested email method via versamail instead.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Dylan Wilk


Yesterdays MS NGO DayKeynote Speaker was Mr. Dylan Wilk, Englishman of Gawad Kalinga fame. The man who sold his BMW to fund making a village for poor Filipino folks. Inspirational talk there. He emphasized that what our country need is heroism not charityand giving should be the next trend in fashion. He mentioned how England was similar to the Philipines, a generation ago. Then the wealthy people started to get involved and it became a trend to give out lands and help the poor. He also mentioned their government was the last to react. But nevertheless, these changes has a great impact in rebuilding that nation.

What strikes me the most (ashamed even), is this generous man is not a Filipino, and yet he says that his only regret in life is spending 30 years just watching everything from TV, and not getting involved.

Fake modesty aside, after that keynote, I feel like an enlightened moron with a renewed love for this nation.

TIME: Life in the Googleplex Photo Essay

Checkout the employee desktop! Really a cool place to work/have fun.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Workshop


Workshop
Originally uploaded by nocs.
Currently attending an NGO Day workshop in Ortigas. This is seeing the other side of the coin. Its nice to see what current MS projects are there for the Filipino community as part of their CSR program.



On another note, I learned a new term in this workshop: Social Entrepreneur. This closely resembles my idea on what I want to be. The idea of helping people, and at the same time earn a little in the process. Win-win situations, finding sustainable business models where both sides would benefit.



I want to be a Social Technopreneur!