[FreeBSD-Announce] The FreeBSD Foundation Announces Java JDK and JRE 1.5 Binaries for FreeBSD

Yay! Its official. FreeBSD can now come with JDK binaries (1.5) binaries. Hooray! Beasties rejoice! rejoice!

BSD Guides :: Doing Stuff With FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, & Mac OS X

Jon of BSDGuides was pissed off that www.bsd.ph was ripping off the sites content. From the site:

Site Rip-off
Posted by Jon on March 13, 2006 at 11:57:29 am MST

The popularity of BSDGuides continues to grow so much that people just want to rip it off. It seems the owner of http://www.bsd.ph/howtos.html does not have any creativity because they didn't even bother changing the format and stylesheet. I am not posting this to promote their site, but merely to inform you that BSDGuides.org is original in its content and strives to stay that way. I have no plans on informing the owner of their stupidity at this time as public humility should be enough.

Wonder who the owner www.bsd.ph is? The domain was registered by Chroot Inc. Copyright? Copyleft? I think the intention is good. Even if I have read Lessig's Free Culture, the public nature of the web makes the issue a bit foggy. Hopefully this can be settled soon.

How I Work: Bill Gates - Apr. 4, 2006

Interesting peek at Bill's digital workstyle. Three LCD screens, each with designated roles. His Tablet PC usage and how Microsoft collaborates internally using sharepoint. Wonder what Steve Job's digital workstyle is? That might make another interesting comparison.

On the other side Cringley's latest post tells us why he likes Paul Allen than Bill Gates.

Canon EOS 350D

My dream digital camera. Should be a nice companion for the upcoming bicol trip. Or nice tool for starting in digital photography... Ahhhh... Daydreaming... Seems forever out of reach...

Skype - The whole world can talk for free.

Just upgraded to the latest version. Still no video available. I don't have a webcam or an iSight, so won't be needing that much.

It does bring a nice touch: When somebody calls you, or if you make a call with skype, it automatically lowers the volume of iTunes, mutes it on the duration of your call, then gradually brings the previous volume back after you hangup.

Shiny!

Howto OSS iFolder Server - iFolder

Oh goodie! iFolder is now open source! This enables you or your organization to have your very own box.net derivative. Cool!

Welcome to HBO Asia!

They now removed the avantgo/pda version. Sigh... And wasn't even kind enough to provide RSS feeds. Instead resorted to a mailling list subscribtion model. Bummer...

NETGEAR - 802.11b Cable/DSL Wireless Router

Currently testing the netgear that came free (promo) with a colleague's new laptop (an Asus lappy from Villman). It seems to nicely cover the apartment and has some decent config options. Looks sleek and surprisingly I get a full bar on the 1st floor even if it only has one antennae and the unit is located on the 2nd floor on my makeshift SOHO. Fortunately the original owner has no immediate need for one, and I might get lucky and get a good discount for this thingy.

Oh well, currently happy unthethered :D. Still crossing my fingers that the connection won't be so flaky as reported by some customers around the lazy web. So far so good.

Ethernet Oldies

Since I don't have a switch/hub, and I can't justify to my lovey buying a Linksys WRT54G, I ransacked one of the old boxes where I knew I had a spare realtek ethernet card. Found it and plugged (surprised it still works!), it into the home server so I can at least configure it as a gateway gleefully doing the NAT dance. This still means no couch surfing and tethered living, but its better than nothing.

Still pissed off Bayantel DSL doesn't provide static IP's as they used to. Buy hey, still fortunate I was able to back off on that Smart Wifi connection. Bayantel's promise of a rebate for downtimes sends a message that this guys will hopefully move heaven and earth to manage service interruptions. Will settle for dynamic DNS solutions for now.

Ahhh.. the additional ethernet card also allows me to offload JUnit tests to that machine and still be connected. I also now have an excuse to update the kernel to FreeBSD 6.0 Release. Also, maybe its just me, but I get a kick out of having semi transparent terminal screens logged on another machine. Too bad the default OSX terminal doesn't support tabs. What a shame...

NewsForge | Interview: Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD

This guy has the ability to *really* stand for what he believes. My hats off to him. OpenSSH would not be where it is now, if not for the valiant efforts of the OpenBSD team.

Reading this interview reminds me that people are indeed strange, everybody is deranged. And the striking difference between advocating for software freedom, and meatspace freedom.

Fruity Thoughts

Yesterday, the taxi driver gave an interesting advice: "One of the key secrets in enjoying a healthy life is to eat whatever fruit thats in season.". His argument is that God made fruits seasonal for a purpose.

Makes perfect sense. Who would argue with Mother Nature and God's design?

So today, in addition to our traditional "Adobo Sunday" (TM), we bought a bunch of sweet mangoes and had a grand time eating it after lunch. Mother nature really knows best.

DesktopBSD

Finally a BSD variant aimed for th desktop crowd. Although it begs the question: Why does it have to be KDE?

I have nothing against KDE. It just doesn't feel right. The innovation seems to happen in the Gnome crowd. Oh well.

The magic that makes Google tick - ZDNet UK Insight

A nice article providing an overview how the Mighty Google search engine makes searching a household name.

A nice read...

Hot Weather

Hot Weather

Literary hot these days. Yahoo weather reporting 36C average the past few days. Am having Asthma triggers more often. I should try to change my routine to go out of the house earlier and take advantage of somewhat a cooler time to commute and likewise go home late to wait for the streets to cool off a bit.

This are the times I wish I had a car with good airconditioning. Or wish that somewhat live in a place a bit further from the equator. Or wish telecommuting is the current standard norm. But such is life...

The gameplan is to send the kids to Bicol, which has a considerably more cooler climate since its nearer to mountains, to spend the rest of the summer. That would cut down our electricity bill and the savings could prepare us for the the next school year this june.

treonox
- typing away on a north bound MRT train

Folksonomy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apparently there is a term for what I have been interested in for good deal of time now. It's called Folksonomy: a collaboratively generated, open-ended labeling system that enables Internet users to categorize content such as Web pages, online photographs, and Web links.


folksonomist nox
- thinking of ways to simplify things in his spare time.

Sun Grid Compute Utility

Fascinating! A step towards the "network is the computer" Sun has been saying for eons.

Looking into the future, it could be apparent that all that you would need to run your apps is a thin client terminal. Your applications run on Grid computers like this and data stored on your personal terrabyte drive. Your mobile device doesn't have to have the latest high end processors. Just good enough to process HD data perhaps? Sun is doing the commercial side of this industry $1/CPU-hr. Would google be able to offer a public free on-deman grid compute facility? What apps would you like it to run?

That kind of computing power would be handy for the RSS agents I have in mind. Or maybe, finally upgrade PAGASA's weather prediction capability. Reminds me of William Yu's presentation on cluster computing last year. Speaking of which, he has been actively blogging of late, check it out on my feeds list.

Exciting times! Moving on...

Hardcore eh?

There is an ongoing thread on the PinoyJUG mailling list regarding the members favorite IDE. Amusingly some showoffs seem to indicate they mainly code in Vi(m). Hayyy... Idealists on the wrong side of the coin.

WTF? What kind of projects are they doing? I have used Vi since circa 96, but use it mainly to edit text files on unix environments. But to use it for mainly for real Java development with a fair number of classes would be downright stupidly arrogant/ignorant. How can it beat code completion and refactoring? These folks doesn't have something called common sense.

If they really love Vi for its really simple and straightforward keybindings, they should try an IDE with Vi support (I use Eclipse with Satokars Vi plugin). That way they benefit from the features of a full featured IDE and get the good ol' goodness of Vi keybindings.

Had a nice weekend!

pre-weekend highlights
- Rojan graduated from nursery! Perfected all quarterly exams. Bagged a medal. Accomplished something that neither of his parents did at that age. We are so proud! Had a small party were everybody got a taste of my fabled spaghetti.
- Burned the midnight oil for most of the workdays. Re-designed the main app. Read thru the POJO's in action and Head First Design Patterns. Realized that am implementing the POJO facades the wrong way. Sigh, a developers world is full of foggy references. Complexity vs. Simplicity. More on this later. The fog is getting rather thick in this arena.

weekend highlights
- Fight Night Round 3! Assumed the role of Pacman. Took a beating from Morales on the first try. End-result of stupidly and stubbornly not going thru the training module first. After learning how to lean and parry and do quick jabs, and counter punches, was able to beat Barrera on the 7th round. Corrales on the 4th. Morales on the 11th. Wasn't too inclined to sing "para sayo" tho. Anyway, it was a great game! The texture mapped characters are not yet of final fantasy film category but good enough to recognize the players and have a believable game. Got to love the CSI'esue scenes just before your opponent or you goes down. The controls are easy to use. Really great game.
- Did some website cleaning. Did a makeover of the main mobileindie.com website. Ditched the planetplanet and replaced it with Gregarius. This is the closest thing to what I want my aggregator to be. I can group feeds together and have each group have its own RSS feed. Its also quite easy to add new feeds. Found and AJAX enabled theme and its looking really sweet.
- Ran context analysis on my blog. Results were rather amusing. The tag outputs: Blog, Blogs, Mobile, Indie, Music, Humor, Erotica, Gadgets, M-Commerce etc. I never explected my blog to be erotic, maybe the occasional mention of the wild elmo triggered the thing. All in all a good start for my pet project that will potentially titilate the wet corners of the mind. Got to do some xml digging.

Theocacao. This is probably the best looking blog I have ever seen. Sweetly clean and nice. Makes you literally feel your reading a book just by its appearance. Wonder if this iWeb induced? Of course this doesn't blend well with the monetizing your content crowd. It does win in the simplicity department.

Thats why Einstein is a genius. He gets it! Make complicated things simple but no simpler. Same reason why Apple is successful. Same reason why GNOME is better than KDE. Same reason why *BSD simple and consistent layout structure kicks linux in the butt from a SysAd point of view. Same reason why Ubuntu is rocking on desktop adoption. Same reason why lightweight frameworks like Spring in Java beat the old EJB shit.

Make complicated things simple == More likely chance of success

Move along writely, here comes ajaxwrite!



The look, feel, and functionality of Microsoft Word, in a completely web-based AJAX platform. Try ajaxWrite today, and experience first-hand how AJAX applications are changing the way the web works, and redefining the software industry.

hmmmnnnn...

The *network* is the computer.
- Sun

Brainshare, Winforms, MonoDevelop. - Miguel de Icaza



This Mono project is seriously rocking. It is even humble enought to admit that some ideas for the MonoDevelop IDE (IDE features are plugin based) is inspired by Eclipse's implementation.

Paypal Mobile launches? - Engadget Mobile


you can either text PAYPAL (729725) with the dollar amount and recipients digits (i.e. "send 10 to 2125551212"), or you can do it manually by calling 1-800-4PAYPAL (1-800-472-9725), which is obviously far less exciting. There isn't any official press release we could find on this yet, so caveat emptor, we don't know what (if anything) they're gonna charge you. Oh, and do especially mind your phone from now on, ok? As if using it as an e-wallet didn't scare you enough, now it's linked to all your bank accounts and credit cards.

This is great! Hoping they open up to PH. Wonder if G-Cash or Smart Money would resist assimilation? This is telco agnostic m-commerce. With the only drawback that it requires a credit card. But it would be great for B2B and B2C applications.

Take note of the sarcasm bit: "Mind your phone from now on. As if using an e-wallet didn't scare you.". While Paypal is a direct link to your account, G-Cash and Smart Money is indirect. Those two can be treated as mobile cash/debit cards so it lessens the risk a bit. The moment you allow reloading the e-wallet from a real account via mobile, the risk meter increases a bit just below the paypal model.

Once you get into m-commerce, you basically treat your phone with outmost care just like a regular credit card. That means reporting it ASAP when it gets stolen etc. I don't know if telcos still allow specifying the from field (ever got a text that contains a name instead of a number in the from field?), so be also careful that you don't show your pin to anyone who also happens to know your number. Same with credit cards you don't want just anyone who happens to know your billing address to also know your cardnumber and the digits at the back.

The good news is that m-commerce is now a reality nad slowly taking off. Who will emerge as the leader? Is it the new currency that will play a vital role in powering the next gen economy?

Its still a long way to go tho, access to the local m-commerce infrastructure needs some loving. Its still a hassle to convert from cash to e-wallet or e-wallet to cash. Also the typical counter/cashier scenario doesn't blend very well with the SMS based way of transacting with a merchant. Peer to peer payment (mobile to mobile) doesn't appeal that much to a dominantly cash based society where majority are poor. Remittance delivered via m-commerce inherits the infrastructure problem mentioned above.

The current way of doing m-commerce on the otherhand should match nicely with e-commerce type applications. I wonder why the current options are not focusing on that one? hmmmnnn...

m-commerce + e-commerce? the practical killer combo?


Some say, I'm a dreamer...
But am not the only one...
-John Lennon

Local Digg, or Digg pinoy style!

oKs! People-powered News & Links

Would anyone know when did this start? Wonder if this would still be relevant if sites like digg add country categories? or map the ip to country for each submitted story? hmmmnnnn....

Upcoming NOVELL desktop video. Really showing exciting stuff for Xorg based desktops. Yummy XGL!. I really like the Novell's lead on this one. Opensource desktop finally gets it! Its not just the fancy eyecandy anymore, its about time to harness the power of your fancy video card to improve the desktop experience. Other stuff show are improved mono apps like beagle (desktop search), F-Spot (photo management) etc.

I'm a fan of the Gnome Desktop. KDE just doesn't feel right. Gnome rocks harder! :D

CocoaLab has released a free copy of Become An Xcoder Book. Perfect for newbies like me. Covers XCode 2.0. Nice!

Man vs. Machine

Dexter (first name basis :D), commented that Migs is already working on meme aggregation, and asks if that is what I have in mind.

I think Migs is doing the Google News like approach, where an application does the uber-cool meme tracking. While mine is contemplating on a simpler Digg/Slashdot, social network'ish like approach. For a quick background, Google News selection relies on a computer program running on top of several machines. Digg/Slashdot on the other hand relies on reproductive-determinism-end-result (humans), to submit stories that they think the world wide web should care about.

Mine is just an online application that lets me create my own planets/blogosphere. Grouping the blogs I like and apply my own naming convention.

E.g.

Group 1 (will spit out an rss aggreate of feed 1 to 3)
- feed1
- feed2
- feed3

Group 2 (will spit out an rss aggregate of feed 4 -5 )
- feed4
- feed5

...


It easily allows you to do recursion

e.g.
Mega Group (rss aggregate of group1 and 2)
- group1
- group2


Then you could now do some nifty (should be plugin like) context analysis per blog group. For example you analize the group and check which words are most often mentioned (lucene indexed?) and somewhat getting a pulse of your blogosphere. Or maybe analize the links and hook up with del.icio.us for some tagging goodness, technorati plugin? feedburner? tag cloud? rojo like?

The grouping would also help a lot of RSS-feed-dependent-space-shifting mobile applications like quicknews.

Maybe such a tool already exist? Or does the future belongs to A.I. algorithms which you can directly ask "What's hot on the Filipino blogosphere?". I think the whole RSS thing has reached the point of irrevesible complexity and is in dire need of simplification. Simplifiying it would mean more room to focus on complicating other things. :D

Globe GPRS (includes MMS) services down for the moment. Hopefully they are fixing the long standing problem of incorrect WAP charges. If you are on Globe and would to like to use WAP (to browse wap sites outside of globe) better inform (call cust care) before attempting to do so, else each WAP card/page will be charged to you at Premium MMS download rates. It takes about minium of 2 days for them to fix your settings. It boggles the mind why the fix can't be applied to all subscribers. Oh well, such is life...

Some say WAP has gone the way of the dodos. Subplanted with real mobile browsers for smartphones. The truth is, its still the most cost effective way for doing mobile apps, not for mass adoption but for internal mobile applications. You get the benefit of forms (UI) that would work on dinosaur grade (but cheap) WAP capable phones like the Nokia 6310i. Added bonus you can cram more transactions per peso, which your CFO would really like.


Cmon' and WAP me, WAP me, WAP me...
Baby, I'm yours cmon' and WAP me...
I'm gonna save you some money, money, money...
So baby....
- M.Y.M.P. (Make Your Mobile Proud)

Standing Still

Standing Still
Originally uploaded by nocs.

What's on her mind? Looking for Ken? Pondering the faith of the Filipino nation? Hungry? Happy? Wondering if the legend of Pinochio was true? Waiting for a silicon implant? Dreaming of Adobo? Lusting for cup of freshly brewed coffee? Puzzled with Sex and the City?



Sigh... Walang magawa. Waiting for my lovey to make up her mind. Ahhh... Women...



Love is real, real is love...

-John Lennon

Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing - Google Video




A 1972 documentary of the pre-cursor of the internet the ARPANET. Checkout how they explained what it is via a chalkboard. A glimpse of the early ATM like machines! its nice to go back in time and see how things were. Fascinating.

Simon Brown is doing a series of articles comparing web application frameworks. Good sweep of current goods in this arena. For the moment i'm sticking with springs webapp framework. It's not yet covered in the article tho. Check it out at http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/1.2.x/reference/mvc.html

I'm stubbornly sticking with the XML/XSLT way of doing things. I still think its the best way to decouple presentation layer from the rest of the tier. Hence sticking with the resin application server. Which, aside from its simplicity, offers a pretty decent XML/XSLT transformation engine. I don't know if that still applies up to this day, but it certainly was 2 or was it 3 years ago? when I benchmarked it against other xml/xslt transformator.

SCIFI.COM | Battlestar Galactica

"There are those who believe... that life here... began out there. Far across the universe. With tribes of humans... who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians... or the Toltecs... or the Mayans... that they may have been the architects of the Great Pyramids... or the lost civilizations of Lemuria... or Atlantis... Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man... who even now fight to survive... somewhere beyond the heavens."

Am halfway thru season 1. I like it. Its a complete package, with sex, politics, war and its science fiction revolving around a fledging group of species in the vast region of space. Spaceships! Its a we reap what we sow themed space adventure. But damn just like the pre-maturely canned Firefly series, rocking plot and wonderfully executed.

Heck even my one year old likes it. Both of us rooting for Galactica's viper squadron whenever Cylon's appear and its time for some space grade dogfights.

eJamming



Latency issues aside. This is one cool concept. Except of course that nothing replaces a real live jamming session. Ahhhhh... reminiscing the days my guitar feedback would annoy my bandmate to no end. This would interface nicely with modern guitars like the Gibson model with an ethernet port. The user interface is GarageBand'ish too, which makes it easy to use.

However, if we bring the latency issues back, it would be hard to make this thing work in real life. What would be more ideal I guess, is a cvs like system with a really cool web frontend for collaborating music. Think open source way of creating music. That would really rock.

Planets

Planets

Nice to see techscene.free.net.ph up and running again!

Anyway, am probably keeping the pinoy techscene mirror I had setup at http://mobileindie.com/planet/ for personal purposes. Mainly, for the RSS feed (and yes, even OPML for those who dig that stuff) generated by planetplanet backend. The resulting aggregated RSS content nicely matches my preffered method of keeping up with content that I'm interested in, via space shifting the content: from the web to a mobile device like the treo. With this setup, downtimes like the the train ride home becomes productive. Makes the boring commute fun, and gives you an excuse not give up your seat since you are busy reading. The last part was a joke. I still tend to be a gentleman every now and then.

Back to planets and rss feeds. It would be nice to have an online service that let's you group your feeds, give it decent names and produces the aggregated feed for you. That way you could group your feeds the way you like them, and it would be easier to manage and work nicely with your space shifting needs.

With this kind of service you can now throw in context analysis to get what's hot on your planet like rss groups. Mashup with tagging deliciousness etc. That would be cool. To have another simple way of managing rss feeds and to be able to get a pulse on each group you choose.

treonox
(enjoying an afternoon train ride home, with Jimi Hendrix's guitar silently weeping in the background)

Tomboy meets Leaftag



Tomboy is nifty wiki based notetaking application written in mono.

Leaftag for now is represented by a library for tagging just about anything on your desktop.

Tomboy + Leaftag = Terribly sweet!

Box.net - Free Online File Storage, Internet File Sharing, RSS Sharing, Access Documents & Files Anywhere, Backup Data, Share Files

Got this from Russell Beattie's blog. If you don't have a server out there that you can store your data into, and was happily experimenting with that GMail-turned-online-disk-space plugins, this could be just the thing for you.

The site has some recipes for success. Really easy signup process (tm). The website is simple yet pleasing to the eye. The name is short and sweet and clearly defines the value proposition.

Will take it for a spin. :D

Comic Life

Software Wars




War, what is it good for?

Comic Life



Life is good.
-nox (proud daddy)

YouTube - OSX Dual Booted on IBM Thinkpad



Cool! Thinkpad + OS X = Rugged low cost kickass mobile workstation.

Do you wanna? Do you wanna?


Oh listen, do you want to know a secret?
- Beatles

Sketching out a strategy - O'Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog. Google bought @Last Software makers of the really cool 3D design application SketchUp.

Lots of exciting possibilities!

Comma Sutra



LOL!

Under 30, on the Cutting Edge. This crop of fresh faces is poised to shake up the tech world. Here's their advice to wannabe entrepreneurs

Want to know what's hot in technology? Follow the money. That's what we did to find a fresh crop of tech's best young entrepreneurs. We surveyed dozens of VC firms, from Sequoia Capital in Silicon Valley to Austin Ventures in Texas to Battery Ventures in Boston, to find out who's generating buzz and getting funded -- if not bought.

You have Skype's Janus Friis there, the company was bought by eBay for a cool $2.6 billion. Interesting bunch of people. Definitely a good read.

A to G 1.2 - MacUpdate. Handy utility to sync your address book to your Gmail account via the import feature. Its basically produces a CSV (comma separated values) file that fits nicely into Gmail import address book format.

Now if only theres a G to A utility in case there is a need to restore the address book in the near future.

Google Mars. I kid you not.



Funny, a few days ago i blogged about Earth having sex with Mars. Can't wait for the 3D desktop client edition. :D

I missed late nights with Smoothjazz.Com - Where Smooth Meets Jazz streaming at the background during the 4 month broadband hiatus.

Current daytime music is dominated by With the Lights Out by the late Cobain. Late night with soothing jazz music on the other hand lowers the overall SGBR (Spouse Going Ballistic Risk). I don't want to use headphones as it makes it hard to hear if Janro or Rojan woke up for another bottle of milk.

Jazz me up...

Leaftag - ChippyWiki

This is exactly what I had in mind a few months back. Slap an F-Spot like interface where you can easily narrow down items and you've got a really nice application that can titilate the wet corners of the mind.

Think del.icio.us applied to your files on the desktop. Add to that an F-Spot interface instead of the current Gnome file manager. It would change the way you deal with your files. Add smart search folders via the beagle backend. Do a tag team with the nat friedman's dashboard project. That would be really sweet.

Patience is a virtue.

Broadband rushing thru our apartment's vein once again. An added bonus, for the same package were getting a speed bump. Sweet! Not so sweet on the otherhand is they no longer give static public IP's. Tunneling kung-fu all over again if I want to locate the home machine from the net.

The new X-Men 3 trailer totally rocks!!! too bad I can't try the pixel packed goodness of the HD version.

On the other hand, since Jay has crossed the line (got married), he took with him the Linksys WRT54G. Back to Ad-Hoc mode for our wireless fix.

Its good timing tho. Just in time for another juvenile attempt on social technopreneurship.

Once again, we are all but packets in the internet called life...

Apple - Movie Trailers

I doofusly tried the HD encoded formats. Unbearable viewing experience predictably followed. :D

Gary V. and Leah Salonga on iTunes. I'm no fan of either. Dunno how long it has been there. Just happy to see a kababayan there. Global filipinos on the rise. It might be old news to you iTunes loving folks tho. Wonder if there are other filipino artist there aside from the typical fil-ams.

Foodoroma, Episode 1

Foodoroma, Episode 1
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Janro sporting his new Jose Rizal inspired hairdo. Fun bonding time and giving him an early taste of long fabled takosa tradition of doing the groceries on weekends.

Quicksilver Changes Everything
at
The Apple Blog

This is an app that should be ported to Gnome now that it has a working spotlight like desktop search engine via beagle. Basically its an extensible application launcher. It simplifies the whole launching thing on the desktop. No need to wade thru icons, menus or folders to run your application. This is as close as you would get to manly CLI paradise. Its hard to describe what it does in words, you have to experience it to appreciate the beauty of this application.

It doesn changes everything. It simply rocks!

Ultra Mobile PC - Experience how the Ultra-Mobile PC works

I think this is microsofts answer to Nokia's 770 Internet Tablet!

Btw, or better yet, why not run linux/*bsd/tiger on those UMPC thingies.

UMPC == another jargon from hell.

Why don't they just use simpler catchy names?

Ultra-Mobile PC - Hardware a.k.a the microsoft origami project.

I haven't digested all the press releases yet. Apparently MS copying Apple's marketing tactic has paid off. Super secret announcements style that steve and co has mastered so well is now also being copied by bill and co.


The problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste.
- Steve Jobs

MRT Quickies

MRT Quickies

Noticed the one way ticket machines (TM) at the North Station finally usable. Wish they also had the same for stored values. And it really, really would help if they put some of them on major malls or other places frequented by the train loving public.

Finally had a different program displayed on the public tv screens. Was really getting tired hearing the same artist moaning for the past few weeks.


This post brought to you by a southbound train and a treonox.

OPML == The most horrific abuse of xml known to man. :D

Am getting a blank page at the pinoy techscene site http://techscene.free.net.ph for two days now. And to fulfill my pinoy tech news fix I decided to setup a planet pinoytechscene mirror. Managed to get the OPML file from Jan Alonzo's blog.

Planet Pinoy Techscene.

pinoy techscene seems down for today?

hmmmnn... where is that opml file...

Youtube.com is cool!

Check out this videos!

YouTube - Racecar simulator videogame.

The rumored widescreen ipod video

TV via IP (IPTV) delivery is quickly becoming a practical reality.

Tango Icon Gallery - Tango Desktop Project

If your artistically challenged like me, but have no choice but also do frontend thingies, tango is a great place to look for slick looking icons for both desktop and webtop use.

Do the tango!

u*blog again

u*blog again

After a few days of using it to post to both wordpress and blogger, I can definitely say this freeware Palm application rocks!

While blogging via email would suffice, there is one thing it can't do at the moment: edit previously posted blog entries. A dedicated blogging client like u*blog allows you to edit your previous blog postings. I also like the fact that it has a handy icon that let's you connect/disconnect your GPRS connection inside the application. The interface is amazingly very simple to use and allows you to define handy tag shortcuts.

The only minor gripe is the setup process. It would be nice for it to include sensible defaults for popular blogging engines. The u*blog website provides a pretty straightforward reference at the moment. It would also be nice to include basic help instructions inside the app to guide new users.

All in all, once you set it up, its pretty stable and you would be happily blogging while mobile with your network enabled palm device. And of course, did I forgot to tell you its FREE?


cheers!

treonox
(MRT, on my way home)

Earth having sex with Mars

Earth having sex with Mars

Yep, that's not too farfetched. Just one of the things that came up during The Long Now Foundation's (TLNF) seminar about the asteriod threat in the next 100,000 years. Its based on the idea that pieces of rock from both planets (as an effect of asteroid explosions) containing living organisms that could survive in space, could have seeded life from Mars to Earth, from Earth to Mars, or maybe cross polination perhaps?

Lots of other interesting stuff on TLNF's website. Basically stuff that needs long term thinking. The seminar topics are distributed in audio (mp3) form, and can be downloaded for free.

Its nice to have something like these to ponder from time to time. It gives one a different perspective about current life problems. Problems bigger than our own, bigger the our country. Heck, its not even global, like the asteriod threat, its universal! A problem every living organism in the universe would inevitably face. Resistance is futile.

Interestingly, the solution to the asteriod threat brings about huge ethical and moral implications. For example, if we only focus on blasting every threat in space, it could very well be the an excuse to build nuclear weapons in space (which might have a greater chance of endangering the human race). Also, if all we can do is deflect an asteriods path, who decides which place on earth should take the impact. Let alone who decides if the public should know if such a threat is detected in advance. Imagine the panic and pandemonium upon hearing your local station announcing an extinction level event.

The threat is very real tho. And we don't have the capability yet to monitor space effective enough to have realiable early warning protocols in place. A direct impact of 200 kilometer sized asteriod is enough to wipe out the human race and force another evolution. The ocean would boil, for some time the sun would not be able to penetrate the atmosphere, and a lot more armageddon like scenarios.

The good news is, its not likely to happen anytime soon. Nobody can predict the future. Its just one of those things that would be nice to think about during a star starry night.

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

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!

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.

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.

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!

Long Now > Shop > Free Downloads > Seminar Downloads

Interesting stuff there, like the The Asteroid Threat Over the Next 100,000 Years.

Mobile-review.com 3GSM Congress - Symbian, Linux, Windows
mobile

GTK+ on Palm devices via the Access Linux Platform. Sweet.

Why I passed up the chance to work at Apple ~ Authentic Boredom

Good points to ponder there. As a family man, I had been to similar situations in the past. Albeit with a different twist: Go abroad or stay here with the family.

There are really things that money just can't buy.

But nothing is constant except change. Lets see how long it would be till we decided that its time to go to a land where there is more milk and honey.

Corrupted Partition: Time for Philippines to have a Mobile VAS Clearing House?

Hmmmmnnnn... Been whining about that for the past 3 years. The current state of acquiring an access code is a major bottleneck for CP's.

Disected MacBook Pro. Took just a few hours after he received the item.

Two words...

Mac Porn!

The First Bootable OSx86 10.4.4 DVD ? cavemonkey50.com

Hmmmmnnnnn... When Apple moved to Intel, I think this is enevitable.

Podbop nets big prize at MashupCamp | CNET News.com

The winner gets to take home a Sun Niagara server. Servergasm...

Apple to hold special event on Feb. 28

Ohhh boy... here we go again!

The Daily Blog It - Cloning Music:Ely Buendia- Cursor

Ely's take on the whole piracy thing. Couldn't find the MB link. Seems he now has a column there.

Superproxy

Superproxy
Originally uploaded by nocs.

What kind of computers will kids like Janro have in the future? Would laptops still be practical in an increasingly mobile world? Will the ancient keyboard ever be replaced by newer input methods? With the advent of video recorder phones, will blogs be replaced by videocasts? Will the current text-dominated-web be replaced by visually richer multimedia-content-on-demand services? Will door bells/buzzers be obsolete?



When?

A year/months ago, we complained to Globe about incorrect WAP over GPRS charging (using a prepaid sim). Sometime reaching as high as 30-40 pesos per transaction! At some point in time they corrected the error and promised to refund the incorrectc harges. Now we are reviving our WAP application.

Hot damn! I really need a GPRS counter.

Some statistics:

2 wap cards cost 58 centavos
3 wap cards cost 96 centavos

Each card not more than 1k. Following the 15 centavos per kb charging I really was expecting not more than 50 for the 3 wap cards. The average size for our wap application. Of course I failed to count the necessary? headers. Its not exactly divisible by 15, so am also wondering how exactly do they count the traffic? or is VAT computed?

Wonder if a mobile WAP browser application with traffic statistics exist?

A Look at GNOME 2.14.

I seldom use Gnome these days. But its exciting to see its progress from time to time. Hopefully Cairo/XGL/Compiz will be available soonish too. Maybe at 2.16?

Adding -Xmx512m to your VM config for your JUnit test on Eclipse would spare you the agony of pulling your hair due to out of memory errors on your unit tests executed via the IDE. Sigh... my old fashioned ant build script has those and am now wondering why Eclipse doesn't make it the default VM config parameter? I've wasted half a day figuring out why my unit tests wouldn't run on the IDE but run when invoked thru good old command line.

Above config can be added to Eclipse by right clicking your JUnit test file and selecting Run As->Run... from the menu, select Arguments and add those to your VM arguments input box.

ACCESS and PalmSource Announce the ACCESS Linux Platform - Press Release

Linux officially at the Palm of your hand? AWESOME!

Now that is a good direction Palm. Harness the power of open source.

Wired News: TextPayMe: Elminating IOU

Another take on the m-commerce thing. Same slow pace of adoption.

Basically, TextPayMe its a virtual wallet created via linking your credit card/bank account. Nothing new here, same system implemented in the Philippines a year or two ago.

I have a feeling something is bound to dominate the m-commerce space. The technology is here. Somebody has to mashup the bits and pieces together.

Wired News: My First Screen Kiss

This seems to be common in Japan, which is a year or two ahead of us in terms of keitai technology. There video calls are the norm, not the exception I guess.

Now that 3G is finally here, stupidly expensive rates aside, maybe next valentine will be seeing a few people smooching their cell phones on the streets of Makati.

Which makes me asks the question. Is it mandatory for 3G or 3.5G phones to be drool proof?

With this kind of technology, long distance relationships just might be the next big thing. Afterall, most Web 2.0 apps are geared toward mashups of social networking apps.

Oh my beloved,
Give me thy lips...
End our conversation,
with your sweet screen kiss...
-nox (of the future)

Valentines Day.

Valentines Day.
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Spread the love!

Melvin, finally succumb to the allure of the mac. Bitten by the mac bug, he's now a fellow iBook totting lad happily counting the good looking women in Singapore.

And no, I did not influence him to buy an iBook. :D

PalmBible by Yih-Chun Hu - A free Bible reader under the GPL license

Probably the best app on the Treo right now. Be enlightened and be free.

"Firefly" (2002/I)

Just finished watching the entire season over the weekend. That was a GREAT sci-fi series. Wonder why the network doofusly canceled it.


Take my love.
Take my land.
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don’t care, I’m still free.
You can’t take the sky from me.

Take me out
to the black.
Tell ‘em I ain’t comin’ back.
Burn the land and boil the sea.
You can’t take the sky from me.

Have no place
I can be
Since I found Serenity.
But you can’t take the sky from me.
-Theme from Firefly

Lower back, waist area hurts like hell. The expected result of playing basketball after being sedentary for good while.

And yes, what the world needs now, is love sweet love...

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Wired News: Forget Jobs, Let's Worship Woz

Nice article. Sheds some facts about Woz, his tendency towards simple and open designs. Unattached to his money in normal ways, and never forgetting the fact that great people are where they are because they are standing on the shoulder of giants. Very NGO'ish geek. I like that.

Woz rocks!

Russell Beattie Notebook ? MaxDox Redux - Create your own mobile Java e-books

This could be a great mobile content product. Retail tagalog novelas per chapter download. hehehehe.

Pwede rin comics. Pugad baboy downloads!

I Retail mo baby, yeah!

AIDS virus attacked inside & out. Seems there is now a possible cure for HIV/AIDS! Hopefully, this gives hope to millions of people afflicted by the virus.

CoverflowRemote. This is salling clicker script to enable you to control Coverflow via your bluetooth enabled phone.

Wirelessly SWEEEEEET!

Found this out via the Diggnation (Episode 27) Vidcast ove iTunes

CoverFlow

Don’t know about you, but I find browsing a list of album names somewhat uninspiring, to say the least. One of the big attractions of a physical album is the beautiful packaging and aesthetic appeal, something that’s sorely missed with the digital equivalent.

CoverFlow aims to bring that aesthetic appeal to your mp3 collection. It allows you to browse your albums complete with beautiful artwork pulled from any sources it can find, whether that’s buried in your song tags, collected via Synergy, or looked up on Amazon.

Screenshot of CoverFlow on bookah below:

Blue afternoon sky...

Blue afternoon sky...
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Passing over the magallanes flyover. Loving the warm blue afternoon sky. In just a short while, hopefully the stars won't be too shy, begging you to smile even if happiness seems light years away. Its still a beatiful world.

Novell Linux Desktop Demonstration Videos | Linux Edge... It could also be the state of XGL and the shape of things to come.... Check out the cool videos. Finally, something to harness the power of those GPU's while you wiggle woogle your desktop windows on a boring day.

Oh goodie! Lookie here!
Linux running on a Treo!




Hope it still allows you to make/recieve phone calls. :D

Hack the Treo!

Mobile Monday USA

The Mobile Monday USA. mission is to cultivate and accelerate US mobile and telecom sectors through leadership, technology, government relations, research, education, mentoring, investment, recruitment, networking and promotion.

Wondering if we also have a local version of this. Mobile Tuesday perhaps?

Stellarium Astronomy Software: Sort of like the reverse of Google Earth (which allow you to view the earth in 3D), this one looks up to the sky. Linux/Mac/Windows versions available.

Its kind of weird looking at the stars on a computer screen in broad daylight. On the other hand, its a much cheaper, albeit free alternative to buying one of those fancy telescopes.

Scrap my last entry regarding doing a separate install of SJAS on OS X.

The latest netbeans 5.0 and SJAS 8.2 bundle now allows you to specificy a different destination dir for SJAS.

I'm begining to like netbeans. :D

p.s.

adding a Vi plugin for netbeans would really make my day.