saw this on Monologue... hilarious =))


pacman, what do you think?

curious so i installed F-Spot last nite... two words -> "totally sweet!"



i have been meaning to blog on the value of a search oriented desktop interface feature... more on this later...

reading thru Migs
post on smart's SIP contest...

there's also another ongoing VOIP contest at http://www.callforconvergence.com. more oriented to the Voice XML... so i guess its official: VOIP is going mainstream locally...

anyway it would be nice to monitor these developments and see what kind of apps the contestants would submit... ideas? dunno if x10 devices are available locally or are still in production... but you can create a VOIP app to manage those devices... text to speech app would also be great for newsfeeds, blogfeeds, traffic, weather etc (on asterisk this can be done via festival)... on the crappy side you can have it preview your favorite moan/mp3 tone before downloading... the list of cool apps goes on...

wonder what the smart sip contest platform would be?

Strike disrupts RP transport - INQ7.net...

WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE A CLOSED DOOR MEETING??? here's a dirty finger to everyone inside that room...

GADMEI TV BOX of VGA series - will turn your idle/old pc monitor into a tv... price is 250hkd... baka may magregalong taga hongkong... hehehehe... i have a spare 17" pc monitor and would be nice to have this device to turn it into a tv box.... saw also a similar device advertised on tipidpc.com

Simon Phipps's Blog: Brazil - the Global Java Leader?... a step in the right direction... not really because of the java component alone, but the embracement of an open source platform by a nation...

Mayon spring resort...

Bumming around the beach.

Beautiful Mt. Mayon

Nice to be back home!

3rd floor view

only in the philippines...

Actually, just testing flickr a bit more...

Flickr works! and integrates nicely with blogger... photoblogging is as simple as sending an email or mms to your flickr email addy and it will automatically add to your blog!

Janro

Janro
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Testing flickr 1 2 tres...

Janro

Blogshots via flickr test!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

been googling around if there exists a yahoo messenger client for the SE T630 (which until now can only send mms messages by the way, its a problem on Globe's end and its almost a month now since i started bugging 730-1000... but still no solution in sight)...i stumbled upon this -> Yamigo - It's a Wireless Village... a single registration page is all you need to use this service... then you configure your my friends app on the t630 and viola! you can now chat with your yahoo, msn, icq, jabber? mates... i initially had trouble logging on since the yamigo howto seems to imply i have to use an internet gprs account... i experimented using the gprs wap account and was able to login just fine... however, this service/app relies on a polling mechanism so messages are not recieved in realtime like in agile messenger... you can set it on either 2 minute, 4 minute and 10 minute intervals... it works so am happy! its better than the plain yahoo messenger wap (more after this) because i get alerted when a new message comes in, just like a regular sms message does...

anyway, if need to chat in realtime i still have several options: if its local, simply text the person ;-) if its not and i have the clie with me, then i can go the wifi or do the pda+phone+gprs combo...

am just curious on the costs... if this thing rides on gprs wap then am charged at .15 centavos per kb... way cheaper than the 1 peso per text rate... or 15 pesos for international texting... i hope yahoo become widespread on the mobile front as it allows us to circumvent the madly overpriced rate of text messages...

if all phones are equiped with at least a decent useable wap browser it can also use this Yahoo Messenger via WAP... THESE COULD GREATLY EXTEND the number of messages you can send (assuming your reciever also has a wap capable phone)... MORE POWER TO THE CENTAVO! i dont know if its futile to spread this idea to the masa... the learning curve is a bit steeper than that of plain sms...

so there you have it... VOIP for cheap voice calls and IM for cheaper text messeges... of course, the infrastructure is controlled/owned by the telcos... relatively trivial for them to block wap access for example (walled garden approach)... so these might only be possible now... and later on just become a distant dream... wonder if i should also write about nonsense dreams... ala ka edong's dream... *sigh*... its almost 3am again...

from melvin's blog... yeah, its an old game... but interesting nonetheless... the solution is deceptively simple... ;-)

so far, as of last wednesday... the degatto managed to resurrect itself by inflicting massive pain (a.k.a. P9,000.00) to my already anguished pockets... slap another P1,000.00 for diagnostics and labor... on the bright side, i have a new motherboard that i wont worry if it breaks down in the next 12 months...

(when lappy was away...)

downtime means more fun time with these guys...







abundant supply of youthful ebullience...

also spent time chasing a woman in iron thongs... going back in forth between the present and the past... learned a few sword tricks and kickass combo moves... grapple and swing at nearby trees... life is action packed when you are the prince of persia discovering the warrior within...

wifey and i also had a great time kicking and punching each other on dragonball z... a nice way to bond... had a great time... as we are both motivated by the fact that the loser will be the one to clean the dishes... i often won, but women had an inborn talent of using charm to coerce you to do their bidding ;-)

Palm Gems... nice list of freeware palm apps in contrast with commercial ones...

How to Start a Startup by paul graham... very informative...

Linux creator Torvalds switches to an Apple Mac... interesting... but honestly, mac hardware is really damn sexy... not too friendly on the pocket tho...

shoul have bought one of these - > SurgeStop...

still crying over spilled milk...

life has a really really weird sense of humor...

Asus Degatto Woes

Degatto broke down yesterday... No power, wouldnt turn on... Hopefully its just a power problem...

Update:

no, according to the technician it wasn't the power adaptor.. So am afraid ist something internal... syet! the entire board needs replacement! i can already hear my malnourished pockets screaming in agonizing pain... ironic since i just sold my old desktop a few weeks back so am literally naked... i'll try to buy a lotto ticket today because me thinks i direly need it.... *hikbi*

i like this quote from nat friedman from Planet GNOME...

"users should like us for our software, not for our working habbits..."

somewhat related to the issue of code quality... code quality fades into the background once the binary is shipped... users will never know how elegantly the code was designed or how much sleepless nights it has incurred on us codaholics... at the end of the day, all that matters is how good the user experience is...

but code quality can undeniably lead to a better binary product... so its not an excuse to at least learn the basics of producing high quality code... there must always be a balance of things... i have read somewhere that linus torvalds strives to have code that can be easily understood by many, while alan cox cares more about stability or code that reliably works (at the expense of code quality)...

been rather busy (who isn't anyways?)... we moved to the 3rd floor, previously a first floor dweller on this hole in a wall type apartments... a bit cramped since this one has two rooms and a real kitchen but almost same sized as old one... a bit safer here since i could go out the patio even at 3am in the morning... new computer table, more conducive to coding...

been also very busy refactoring the message filters at work.... i like these new setup better... most things can be configured via spring's applicationcontext.xml... still cant make wap work, so its frustratingly annoying... cant find a decent debugger that runs directly on the mobile phone...

pareng edwin, sensya na, i still owe you that PICS M-congress cd... will advice you next week if we can meet in makati...the entire cd contents can still be downloaded here... but will still try to give you the cd next week...

oh well, just too weak and too busy... frantically remembering how to smile and how to be happy.... hopefully i get to go home to bicol on the 18th... the sight of mayon in legaspi can definitely be refreshing... better get ready to pack the clie with a good amount of ebooks... still halfway thru lessig's "free culture"... interesting arguments on intellectual property rights and it's relative history...

grrrr... cant seem to make wap work... apache settings already include provisions for .wml... i can access it thru tagtag.com emulator but no dice on the actual cellphone... i could see the get request on the log so connection is not the problem... wml is not the problem either as i downloaded a working wml file that the phone can access... i think it needs more apache tweaking... everything is on port 80... hmmnn... hhmmmmnnnn....

muine... arguably the best/sweetest/simplest/cleanest/sexiest/slickiest desktop music player on the planet...



and no, am not describing kitchie... wifey my labidabs, youre still the most beautiful woman i ever met... post valentine musings...

i think i need to gobble up some caffeine...

browsing thru warrenm's initial commit on patriot... interesting... doofus nox! you have to finish reading the JSR-212 spec first for this stuff to somehow sink into the left? side of your brain...

on another context, its really ironic that sms application developers locally seems to be more geared towards providing content (artistaaa, ring tones etc etc etc)... only a small percentage gets to deploy other types of sms applications... not surprising really as getting a short access code will require that the telco likes you... or else your ideas would end up down the drain... only that a few months later you say fuck! isnt that the same thing that they say "its not possible, due to this and this... or, we will just get back to you as we need to discuss these more internally... but really, that might not go well with legal..." what the hell is wrong with this people? why cant short access codes be a simple process as getting a landline or registering your domain... if its like that (sans the ability to broadcast , since everybody then can do sms spam) we could be seeing more innovative applications than those that we have today... with the current revenue share, it would be favorable to the telcos... its not far eftched that in the future, CSP's would die and all applications will be developed internally or by a telco owned spin off company... as the sassy laywer mentioned -> greed

*sigh*... its really futile to restrain your fingers (frenetic at 100wpm) to type fcuk when you meant to type "suck! or the generally milder oh my gulay!"... from patriot to arm chair activist... that was disorienting...

in a futile effort to have a body of decent quality, my goal is to get enough sleep and stop fanboying the slogan "sleeping is a waste of time..." so i hereby will make it a point to sleep no later than 2am...

message to self -> sleep 4h; mpg123 wakeup.mp3;

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager... check this out... really cool!

so the name "Rogelio" started in the 1910's and by 2003 there are about 489 per million babies with that name (?)... i also tried my children's name "rojan" and "janro" and it came out zero... originality at work here... =)

of course whats worth noticing here is the increasing slickness of javascript geeks... from maps to google suggest... the new era of webapps? really curious how this is implemented... data pushed from the servers and javascript lovin to adumbrate the rest!

Bomb blasts rock Davao, General Santos, Makati - INQ7.net what i dont really get is why innocent people has to die so that other people can get their point across... how i wish i could just telecommute from bicol... things like this makes me wary as i commute daily...

blogging via gnome-blog

testing this nifty gnome blogging tool...

this boy, (apparently my son) relentlessly trying to inculcate me his naturally impish smile and youthful ebullience...




a few years back, Kodak Moments (TM) like this would mean making sure you have a bulky film camera loaded with ample battery power for a hit and miss affair with overexposed and underexposed picture kung-fu...

kids today are soooo lucky...

old habbits die hard... been using java for the past few years and am still using System.out.println for debugging (turning it off on production by runing a script that puts "//" on all System.out statements)... lately however due to an increasing addiction to junit i took the plunge and now as heavily addicted as well to log4j... the commons-logging was a welcome addition to the toolset as this somewhat allows you to choose other logging frameworks...

log.debug() is now a focker...

fckeditor... awesome! javascript is increasingly being more and more powerful these days...

Rant City ? Eclipse Java-GNOME Demo... slick!

ubuntu users using the ndiswrapper module with an MSI CB54G wifi card, you need to set RadioState on your /etc/ndiswrapper//*.conf equal to 0 as the default behavior of ndiswrapper -i ms68bm.inf is to set it to 1 which turns off the power this wifi card...

hmmnn... am not yet free from manually editing config files even on uber-user-friendly ubuntu... :(

i seriously think that bayanihan linux should shift its efforts on making a filipino centric version of Ubuntu... slap a java sdk on this thing and you have one really complete windows replacement that can cover a wide range of users...

IMHO... KDE sucks...

after a crazy attempt to do semi-fine grained layering of persistence, business logic, front-end friendly wrappers with spring i was puzzled on how to proceed creating unit tests that would work on all layers... each layer has its own applicationcontext.xml file aptly named applicationcontext-orm.xml, applicationcontext-manager.xml and applicationcontext-wrapper.xml... my utility class for loading the application context file could only accept a single string... calling it twice would result in spring only remembering the last applicationcontext invoked...

RTFM as always... and true enough (obviously) there is support for loading those context files contained in a string array... my crappy spring application context utility class ended looking like this:

/*
 * Created on Aug 1, 2004
 *
 * Author Rogelio M. Nocom Jr.
 *
 */
package com.mobileindie.spring;


import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;



/**
 * @author nox
 * 
 * based on Richard Hightowers article "orm without the container" 
 *  
 */
public class ApplicationContextFactory {

    // logger
    private static Log log = LogFactory.getLog(ApplicationContextFactory.class);
    
    // path and filename of application context
    private static Object contextObject = null;
    
    // make sure we are not loading twice...
    private static int count = 0;

    public static void init(String _contextObject) {
        if (count >0) {
            log.error("Can't initialize the application context twice: THIS SHOULD ONLY HAPPEN DURING TESTING");
        }
        contextObject = _contextObject;
        count++;
    }
    
    public static void init(String[] _contextObject) {
        if (count >0) {
            log.error("Can't initialize the application context twice: THIS SHOULD ONLY HAPPEN DURING TESTING");
        }
        contextObject = _contextObject;
        count++;
    }
    
    public static ApplicationContext getApplicationContext() {
        if (contextObject == null) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Application context not initialized");
        }
        else if (contextObject instanceof String) {
            String contextPath = (String) contextObject;
            return new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(contextPath);
        }
        else if (contextObject instanceof String[]) {
            String[] contextPath = (String[]) contextObject;
            return new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(contextPath);
        }
        else {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Context must be initialized via String or String[]");
        }
    }
}

in another ubuntu related news...

maybe if the philippine government would be wise enough to promote the use of open source on all government owned schools there *might* be a pretty good chance that we could have something similar to these:



here's the link to the original blog entry...

probably dont need to say this... but ubuntu just rocks! hoary is rather slick!

a few tips on upgrading...

make sure you update warty to the latest first before changing all the warty to hoary definitions on your sources.list... this is my current sources.list:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
## The following lines pertain to supported packages:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

## The following lines pertain to security updates:
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted

## Uncomment after release to continue getting updates:
# deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

## IMPORTANT:
## Software from the following repositories are ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by
## the Ubuntu team, and may not be under a free licence. This means that
## software in these repositories WILL NOT receive any review or updates
## from the Ubuntu security team either. These packages are provided as a
## service to our users and nothing more.

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe' and
## 'multiverse' repositories:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe multiverse

## Uncomment the following line to add Java software:
deb http://jrfonseca.dyndns.org/debian/ ./

## deb http://ubuntu.tower.net.de/ubuntu/ hoary java
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

works quite well with the degatto, although i havent tested the internal modem yet... to use the ndiswrapper i have to apt-get the latest 2.6.10 kernel as the stock 2.6.8 kernel doesnt have the module with it... after that added ndiswrapper-utils and do the usual ndiswrapper -i to load the binary drivers of my el cheapo CB54G MSI wireless lan card...

obligatory screenshot below:

my lappy is now so hoary...

go figure! ;-)

my 1 year 2 months 17 days old degatto is already suffering from short term memory loss :( ... ntp seems to be a alleviate the problem but annoying nevertheless..

am also *this* close in wiping out this gentoo on the degatto and replacing it with ubuntu... compiling on your main workstation seems to get in me after almost a year of of compiling and updating everything every weekend... should be absolutely fine on servers but on a workstation, its really a very different story...

since using ubuntu on the machine at work daily for a few months, it certainly seems less bloated than other distros... yes, gentoo lets you optimize and customize to the max but at a certain point seems unnecessary/overkill for a moderately modern machine... hmmnn... must be getting old, modifying build parameters doesnt excite me as they used to...

The Broadband Blog ? SIP: Fun and Frolics in Communications... will pluck you later...

Meralco: Appliance Calculator (a.k.a. M.A.C.) seems pretty handy...it doesnt seem to include transmision charge, system loss charge, distribution charge, supply charge, metering charge, CERA etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...

Managed to compile Muine Music Player... rather sweet! clean and uncluttered... anti-skins kick-ass music player!



has panel notification support... great for screen-size-challenged individuals like me...

due to the relatively new found joy in having a working distcc setup again. i decided to upgrade my current Evolution 2.0.2 to evolution 2.0.3... which, based on the changelogs would offer better imap handling... true enough imap handling was improved (a tad faster than the former version)... the downside, i can no longer load my calendar, contacts and todo's since evolution-data-server would crash at every attempt... *sigh* the perils of being an open-source upgrade-happy junkie...

luckily, i remembered doing this before the upgrade -> tar cvjf ~/backup/evolution.012105.tbz ~/.evolution

as brutally candid this jaredean java guro may seem... he can sure put code where his mouth is... however, that is not the point... what is to be applauded is his unselfish effort of doing example driven articles like this -> Jared's Tech Blogs: Additional Info for ActiveMQ...

SwingingThePendulum - GNOME Live! presentation from nat friedman... insightful... a more recent one by seth nickel here -> experimental culture...

manong's tv enabled tricyle!



pardon my poor clie's camera... that glowing white rectangle is the mini tv showing channel 7's evening news program... and since am nothing but an indigent-pda-toting consultant, all i could give manong was an extra 2 pesos (added to the usual 18 peso fare) and a compliment "galeng ng tricyle mo manong! merong tv on board! mamaya ipo-post ko ito sa aking blog. malay mo balang araw may maka discover po sainyo at mapanood kayo sa tv!"...

P.S. manong is available for an interview from monday to saturday... just look for him at the tricycle loading spot at the corner of Cyberzone at the back of SM North Edsa...

Common Dreams... fascinating views... hope we could come up with a local version of this...

Componentizing Spring and Hibernate Development - Confluence... will read this later...

the new JDO seems really neat too... will tackle that one little by little...

finally managed to have a bit of time to properly setup distcc on the degatto... now all the software packages compiling on this gentoo based machine is off-loaded to a freebsd based workstation... this makes the degatto fans a bit happy since the less load on the cpu means less heat... its probably doing its paean of thanks to distcc by now...

from sachachua: Digital Pinay 2005: A great leap _backward_ in promoting women in IT... wtf! PCS has caused quite a stir in the local IT community... major blunder!

stumbled upon this story Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?... what troubles me more is the reality that there are a lot of misinformed people (parents mind you) that needs a lot of enlightenment... i dont know if this article is a joke... but any level headed parent should think twice before even considering these things... anyway, it was filed under the "Internet Idiocy" category... you be the judge... ;)

should be in the amusement category if you ask me... :)

the joy's of parenthood... currently, this girl is the only homo sapien that can push the limits of my patience and max out the happiness meter in me...



all else considered... being a dad rocks!

another truly awesome webapp ->map.search.ch

wow! our very own Jan Alonzo is now the official maintainer of straw (stand alone rss aggregator app) according to Juri Pakaste's latest blog... nice to see a FIlipino getting recognition (and doing some action!) in the open-source arena....

my gulay! according to this fake pala yung last post ko... it wasn't related at al to the recent tsunami... but those creatures are real ones tho...

pictures of strange/scary looking sea creatures found by russian divers near? the tsunami sites... with all these mars explorations the earth's ocean still packs a lot of mystery to modern science...

speaking of nostalgia... i once wrote this pseudo poem at Elmo's old guestbook (kangkong series circa 98-99)...

ewan
(electric fan 1998)

ewan ko ewan mo,
pero pu!@#$!#$ ang galing mo...
mundong ibabaw,
kaligayahang malabnaw....

lol ang sabe nila,
he he he naman sa iba...
pero bakit nga ba,
kailangan pang tumawa...

wala akong masabe,
itanong mo man sa ale...
kase kahit liwanag ng buwan,
parang nde ko na rin masakyan...

saludo ako sayo tol,
ipagpatuloy parang ulol...
malupit man ang mundo,
patuloy pa rin tayong mga gago....

haha... the angst of youth... indirect results of coding in C/C++ and living amidst the virtual world of IRC's...

Peyups : Where Bright Minds Meet -> Mga Alaalang Sinusundo ng Eraserheads... no, am not from UP, tho i really wish to study there... i agree whenever i hear this band's music, auto-nostalgic mode kicks in... college days... *sigh* life goes by so fast...

Palm Infrare Wireless keyboard

Testing the borrowed palm infrared keyboard. Pretty awesome but takes a bit of getting used to. Needs more practice.

Hopefully this will inspire me to blog more often. ;-)

another blog via email test

test 1 2 3...

--
cheers!

nox

for the past three (3) days the bayantel dsl is awfully slow! feels slower than using dialup... their own Bandwidth Meter sites reports an average of 30 to 70 kbps... and this should be 256 or at least somewhere near that range... anyway a trouble ticket was filed and tech support promised they would come by tomorrow to check things out...

Avantgo Mini-review

Avantgo recently released a new version so last nite i decided to give it a spin. I had used avantgo in the past but find it rather slow specially if you configure it to use the memory stick as well as updating wirelessly also takes too much time since there's no option to select just the channels you would like to update. Anyway the new version has a revamped UI and added the option of selecting just the channels you want to update.

Ok, it seems the new version is a bit faster than the old one but still nowhere near the speed of good ol' plucker (still the best free mobile offline reader so far!). Also the option to selectively update your channel seems to work pretty well. One of the big difference of avantgo against plucker is its ability to render html tables exactly the way they appear on the original content. That means HBO's pda version is displayed in table format and do not become a flat list like they do in plucker.

Here's a list of channels that i subscribe to:

- CNN International
- Reuters (This is how mobile news should be presented. With pictures!)
- Inq7 (One major gripe with this channel is its rather lack of consistency. Not all the links point to a mobile version of the news. A good example is the Business section with links that point to the full page version on the main site. Gedemet! Kaya nga tinawag na mobile version eh!)
- Wired News (Full length technology related articles in )
- Quezon City Weather (Five day weather forecast courtesy of Yahoo mobile)
- Forbes
- Manila Bulletin (Kudo's to the webmasters of the mobile site. It truly contains all the news in mobile format)

All in all, it seems good enough for daily use again. Let's see...

a good friend whom i met circa 98 at then inquirer's #forum at irc.webmaster.com? is no back online! am a fan of this guys poetry and Humorous/sarcastic/sometimes f*** ladden articles and short stories... check this one out Too Young: The Perils of Raising a Child Wonder in the Age of Google and Rogue Asteroids...

Palm Wireless Keyboard Mini Review

Having a palm wireless keyboard seems to inspire me to write (more like literary nonsense). I do have to set the keyboard driver to turn off after 1 minute of inactivity as it drains the battery even if the keyboard is not in use. Its powered by two triple A batteries which according to the palm site could last for about three to six months depending on usage. The layout of the keys is something that you would feel right at home if your a touch typist. The model that I have lacks the dedicated number keys on the top. The placement of the arrow keys are a bit out of place and requires a bit of practice.

With an accessory like this, a pda could really act as a laptop replacement suitable for word processing and doing emails and taking down notes. If your pda is equipped with wireless connectivity to wifi or if bundled with a phone via IR or bluetooth it becomes a highly mobile communication tool. I could also take advantage of the keyboard during those emergency ssh sessions as it makes typing at the command line an experience very similar to using a regular computer keyboard.

All in all the keyboard brings a breath of fresh air to this almost a year old clie. I have read somewhere that this keyboard is also compatible with the nokia series 60 phones and various pocket pc pda's out there, so definitely a very good gadget investment.

cheers!

nox

email test

blogging via email test...

--
cheers!

nox

weird... where did all my post via email go?

ARCHOS PMA 400... sharp zaurus competitor... has wifi! rumors say the latest version on display from this years CES has built in tv tuner? man, you can watch videos and store lots of music with its 30gig hdisk... can be used as a PDA... and oh, its linux based!

mobile tech is definitely something to look forward in 2005!

hmmnn... mobile indie! independently mobile!

Finally, something than can put an end to the Java vs. C# debate!

its raining and its cold and dark outside...

cellular telcos loves to eat us,
as if we don't have any feelings...

lesson learned...

never discuss your ideas with them...
behind the pretty smiles and seemingly nodding faces...

hides the reliable xerox droids...

life is never meant to be fair...

i find this Sharp Zaurus SL-6000 really sexy... hopefully, prices will drop as these became outdated by newer devices...

The Rainmaker (1997): great movie! wasnt able to closely capture the excitement of the original novel... but entertaining nonetheless... seriously, all the lawyers should pray to God...

hehe... just noticed the weather applet says manila is smokin' :)



Happy New Year Everyone!

before and after tsunami Satellite images... hope the new year brings new hope to those affected by this disaster...

And of course to Google for unselfishly making Gmail free and by far revolutionizing the way we search the web... i thank thee!

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Asia: Tsunami death toll rises to 76,700... a stark contrast to a happy new year... may all their souls rest in peace... a prayer is needed for those who were able to survive the tsunami but are in dire need of food and medical supplies... *can* somebody DIVERT all those war funds to these people affected by the disaster...

a smile to remind us all that however bleak the future may seem, one can still find the courage to smile and realize that there is hope everytime the sun shines...


this is "Raquel" from the missionaries of charity where we held our christmas party. it's pretty amazing how events like these could change your outlook in life...

Merry Christmas Everybody!!!
Happy New Year Too!!!

Smoothjazz.Com - Where Smooth Meets Jazz... i must be getting old, as am really beginning to like jazz music... especially in the mornings and late nite happy coding sessions... i still dig kurt cobain's music and other distortion induced hymns during the afternoons... so i guess that means i still belong to the "too old to be a rockstar, too young to give up being a rockstar" category...

back to basics...


public synchronized int get() {
while (available == false) {
try {
// wait for Producer to put value
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
available = false;
// notify Producer that value has been retrieved
notifyAll();
return contents;
}
public synchronized void put(int value) {
while (available == true) {
try {
// wait for Consumer to get value
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
contents = value;
available = true;
// notify Consumer that value has been set
notifyAll();
}


hmmnn... some noticeable changes on the mrt north station today... the pinkish mmda fence extended for a good distance from the base of the stairs facing sm north... the ongoing renovation of these are should in theory ease the traffic on this side of town... lets wait and see... anyway since the i already walked for a good few meters and the all the bus on the way seems to really crammed with people, i plodded on and decide to just walk all the way to the tricycle area beside the cyberzone... the footbridge (as usual painted with pinkish delight, for some reason somebody thinks the world looks good in pink) is now passable and was tempted to take a picture of the area but decided to be on the safe side and just enjoy the scenery and nevermind taking a souvenir photo home with me... anyway it seems to be a good late late afternoon exercise... of course i had to pay 18 pesos for the tricycle fare instead of the usual 6 pesos if i rode via the bus, but all in all it feels good to do this once in a while... also, by doing this i get to stroll inside the mall and maybe finally decide what gift to get my lovely wife as the two kids had theirs already (its a tad easier find a gift a kid would like)... ahhh, Christmas with the whole family really is the jolliest time of the year...

Map24 slickest online map i have seen! smooth zooming rocks! this is an applet... would very much like to do something similar for the philippine map... namria's online services should have something like this... i always had a penchant for location based services/apps, the posibilities are endless...

Mathematics and Sex... some hilarious comments there from the slashdot crowd...

Copernic Desktop Search - The Search Engine for Your PC... its free... will try this out... beagle is still far away from becoming as polished as this...

cool blogs: bizdrivenlife.net by wilson ng and ten thousand things by jim paredes... totoy na totoy ang blog ko compared to this guys...

PalmSource to build Palm OS on Linux... hope this becomes a reality...

hmmnn... until now why doesn't INQ7.net add an RSS feed feature? would be great for both their breaking news and mobile section...

currently watching Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)... how are we going to sleep peacefully at night? btw, we have a ton of problems on our own country.. *sigh*... nevertheless, highly recommended documentary...

looking forward to watching that imelda film too...

from PAGASA... typhoon "yoyong" expected to hit bicol tomorrow... geez i worry about my relatives there... especially until now we still have no electricity in our area (according to the local electric coop, it would take 2 to 3 months to fully restore the service)... hopefully the damage this time would be minimal...

most generous comment i've had so far:

"Hi man!

Contact me at ____@___ and you'll get one for free!

I'm in good mood... new girlfriend... ;-)

Best regards,
Michael Bartl"

this is in response to a blog entry where i mentioned my dire need for the viplugin for eclipse. i have no idea that one day the author of the plugin would eventually be reading that entry.

and all i could reply was:

man,

you ROCK!

MANY THANKS!

Slashdot | An Update on Patrick Volkerding... hope he gets well soon... without slackware, i might not have the chance to learn unix thru linux... those slackware floppies that we would copy from the kind folks of ateneo de naga... since none is available yet in legaspi, and we need to prepare prior to infocom? or was it sequel? installing our schools connection... we were the first in legaspi ;-), just a few months behind ateneo de naga (they were the first in bicol, our school being second)... those were the days (line printer madness on continous paper, printing those early howto's... could still remember my brain hurting trying to digest that dreaded net howto)...

for what its worth, get well soon PAT!

wtf is causing a person to do this -> Man kills eight students in dormitory - (United Press International)... this is becoming more and more often... interesting enough the ad banner points to this (Going to iraq and need insurance?)... oh my gulay...

java applet config on ubuntu firefox. sun jdk...

in .bashrc or /etc/profile:

export JAVA_HOME="/opt/j2sdk1.4.2_06/"
export JDK_HOME="${JAVA_HOME}"
export PATH="${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}"

as root:

ln -sf /opt/j2sdk1.4.2_06/jre/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so

if you havent installed java on ubuntu yet... check this out... and this one too for eclipse... afterwards... rock!

added search functionality to this blog... that way i can easily search all this crap with a few keystrokes and a click of a button... nice!

it would be nicer still if blogger incorporates tomboy (wiki-wiki like) functionality to blogs... that way, all blogs become cutting edge auto-linking mayhem...

my gulay! here comes Google SMS...

playboy interviews the google guys... had a chance to read this article on a borrowed september copy of playboy... the "dont be evil" mantra... the way they managed growth (in a very short span of time)... billionaires, 4 billion dollars each as of their recent IPO... modern day geek heroes... with the recent move to enable pop access to gmail, and making the service FREE until now... they also recently acquired keyhole (location based services?!), and leaves us wondering what their next move will be...

since more than one person is complaining of the web based email (jwma webmail), this Usermin seems to be a better alternative...

sweeet chair o' mine...



on the right corner, the all around chair... able to withstand 3 years of regular usage... showing signs of wear and tear... but still usable nonetheless... but all good things must come to an end...

on left corner, the all new super improved, cheapest gas lift computer chair from pricemart... the box seem to imply "superb" quality... and the kind lady said "return within 30 days if found defective"... with that in mind, my wetpu (ass) and my aching back is looking forward to many years of comfort and companionship...

Skype simply rocks... been using it to talk with friends around the globe for the past few days, (courtesy of the new broadband line)... linux client works like a charm after tweaking some settings... you can voipelababad 24x7... it hardly makes a dent in bandwidth usage... AFAIK codec is proprietary... but cool nevertheless... and before i forget... skype rocks! skype rocks! skype rocks!