Two words...

Portlets and Photography...

That pretty much describes my day to day activities...

Still has a lot to learn.

Code lang ng code... Shoot lang ng shoot...

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

Still the best web app prototyping tool!

Haven't tried Ruby on Rails yet tho.

Apple's Battery Recall

Apple's Battery Recall

Got my brand new spankin' replacement battery courtesy of Senco (Thanks Carlos!). That was quick! Filed for replacement last August 25, and replacement arrived last August 31. Apparently, they called home last week, but our household companion wasn't able to inform us.

Anyway, they called again today and was wondering if am still interested since they need to ship back my old battery to Apple SG. I hurriedly went to the office (sprained my left ankle in the process, avoiding a puddle) and surrendered my old battery, thank them, and left smiling :D

Good times...

Can you feel the love?

This hobby is very addicting. Can't wait to go home and experiment. Thanks to God for giving me such lovely subjects.

Its the Indian, not the Pana

Although, at this day and age, a better Pana can compensate for the not so skilled indian. Hehehe.

Some shots to justify to my lovey that its worth it.







Simply because, captured moments like these are priceless. :D

Hidalgo Adventure

Hidalgo Adventure

Currently in Hidalgo waiting for the shops to open. Hoping to take advantage of the "buena mano" factor to haggle to the last penny. Hoping mang ramon is on a good mood this morn. Hayyy...

Wish me luck. :D

Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens (Black)

And when I dream, I dream of you...

Am bitten by the shutter bug, really hard...

The inspirational thread by John "Magic Eye" Chua, is really amplifying the desire even more...

Oh well, sabi nga doon sa thread, "Mangarap ka ng gising". Other notable quotes: "Its the indian and not the pana!". And that a photographer doesnt snap a picture, HE CREATES A PICTURE!

Dream on...

Bob Dylan's iTunes Ad

Modern times for the good ol' rock fellow...

Times are indeed a-changin...

Pentium 4 woes

One of the P4 2.4ghz machine is now only 1.8ghz. Granted its 3 years old. Oh well...

Blog test

Blog test

One, two, tres...

Q&A: Linux Guns for Desktop - OSNews.com

This is related to the issue I had brought up with BiOS a few months back.

In order to have a more efficient advocacy, we have to think past one day affairs such as SFD's! Am not implying we don't have SFD's, am implying we should have plans/strategies aside from SFD's. Choice is good, but thats a hard sell to new users you want to entice to use FOSS.

Oh well... Moving on...

Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL

Shiny!

Hopefully this will drive the cost of a brand new 350D down. :D

Battery Exchange Program iBook G4 and PowerBook G4

Wooot!!!

My iBook is included in the recall. Am eligible to get a new replacement battery for my just out of warranty Bookah Wookah!

Kudos for Apple for being responsible enough. Gotta love the customer love.

Good times :D

Bicolano.org - Beta

Busy, busy bee...

Now on its 3rd attempt, because baby you can bet your pwet I'll do it again. :D

Madya na! Payt sana!

Why is Linux Successful?

You've got to be kidding me?

While certain factors cited there was true, I think they could have explained better.

First on the list: "overcontrol" led to BSD's fragmentation. Isn't the Linux kernel largely decided on by Linus?

Second on the list: "If Mac and Windows didn't suck, people would've used them". DiBona was flame baiting there. The real question is, if Mac and Windows are opensourced will Linux be as successful as it is today? More to the point, as of late I don't think Linux has yet dominated those pretty pie charts in terms of usage.

Hmmmnnn... Must be the weather.

MRT Quickies

MRT Quickies

Currently annoyed by:
- MRT waiting for people to pile up on the platform.
- Being duped replying to a message sent via Chikka. Cmon' how hard is it to slap a "From Chikka" string for all their outbound messages? They are capitalizing on the fact that most (all?) mobile phones use a certain number of digits to match incoming messages from your phone's address book. wonder how many users are duped everyday and the corresponding amount of transactions?


treonox
- on a northbound train

Writely.com re-opened for public consumtion

Oh yeah, the age of collaboration!

Google spreadsheets and writely (acquired by google) is again making the world flatter. This means anyone with internet access and a decent web browser can avail of a an online word processsing application (can load word docs) and spreadsheet app and at the same time allow for group editing/collaboration!

This is great for 3rd world countries like the Philippines, last mile access can benefit for not having the need to purchase costly and expensive word processing application. Imagine a teacher in Bicol editing a study/research together with another teacher in Mindanao or Visayas. Heck imagine NGO's on another side of the globe collaborating with research writers in the Philippines. The possibilities are endless.

Telecommuting craze is just around the bend. :D


The network is the computer.
- Sun Microsystems

Overview - - Mobile phone -Sony EricssonK610i?-?

Whilst paying my bill for Globe at the SM North Cyberzone we chanced upon this sweet bugger currently offered at temptingly for extension plans. We have long been planning to get an extension since its actually more practical. Just that the offered options were not too tempting.

We asked if they have one in stock and fortunately they have one, and assured we could the unit right outright if we sign up for the extension. I couldn't wipe the grin on my lovey's face. The phone was a beauty, and not as bulky-ugly as the other current crop of 3G phones. They don't have the red one in stock tho, but it seems the cover plate can be replaced in the future.

Comparing this to my old T610 back in the day, its way wicked. Built in support for RSS feeds!, working SSL enabled pop/imap client (Gmail works nicely), 2 megapixel camera (which beats the Treo 650 camera to a pulp), Flash lite support?. Will try the Yamigo/Yahoo (IMPS) interface later. Very, very light, has bluetooth and verly usable speaker phone function.

Was itching to try the video call since our apartment seems to be covered by 3G. "Seems", since we sometimes see the 3G icon, and sometimes we don't. Hope they lower data rates tho. Something like Smarts 10/30mins or lower will do :D

Barney!

Barney!
Originally uploaded by nocs.

It really does capture a kid's imagination. If Jolibee would only push it, I think he can be as popular worldwide as Barney.



Ah kids, gotta love em. Every drooling kiss washes away our fears and brings renewed hope for the unstoppable future.



Treonox

- Singing out of tune happy birthday songs. Happy Dad. Good times. :-D

Google Maps Flight Sim!

Shiny!

Was hovering above the streets of London and HK. You can also choose to navigate around the moon or mars with the little bugger.

Even the kids love it!

Whats next? The things you can do with open platforms! :D

Discovery of the week: Journler - O'Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog

Been using Journler for the past few days and in a word "ROCKS!".

Way better than my previous method of puting it in a word document and organizing via directories. With this app, you have on unified repository of your notes which can embed URLS, PDF's, regular files, pictures etc. Integration iLife makes your digital life a bit more easier. Supports keywords/tagging and allows you to blog (supports blogger/wordpress) and email from within the app. You could also insert audio (great for meetings) and video if that pleases you.

My typical usage would be in writing down notes for research, and dragging a bunch of URL's there, link related files lurking in the hard drive. After which I could now draft the formal document on another word processor. The Journler fits this workflow perfectly and allows you one stop flexible repository of notes.

I seem to notice that the Mac community has a lot of high quality GTD-ish and digital life organizing apps. Most of them free! The high level of integration between apps is also quite noticeable. All in all helping a lot in the productivity department.

And before I forget, Journler is donationware!

Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek - iChat

And oh, I like the new iChat theatre feature too. No not the philandering background feature (hehe). Rather the one that allows you to show your presentation. That would be great for "distant teaching" (tm). Or doing remote presentations for that matter. You can also use it ala VNC (screen sharing), and remotely control another mac while perhaps guiding the other person on the other end of the conversation.

Another shiny tool in making the world flat!

Live from WWDC 2006: Steve Jobs keynote - Engadget

Thats it folks!

Keynote over.

Things I liked in the upcoming Leopard! (sneak peak)

- Time Machine: Automatic incremental backups for dummies.
- Spaces: Virtual workspaces at last! No need to envy X11/Xorg window managers.
- Widget toolkits: Drag and drop widget creation.

And yeah! Macpro! Drool on... Dream on...

ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

VMware announces Mac client!

Woot!!!

I hope it supports the PPC architecture.

Btw, WWDC in a few hours! Hasta La Vista? Could it be??? What is Steve up to this time? Your guess is as good as mine. :)


Chaaiirrrssss!!! I would like some pop corn too.

Testing Journler

ADVANCED USAGE

If you need to pass special options to Java, please set the resin3_flags option
in /etc/rc.conf, see examples below:

# Prevent Java from opening an X11 display

resin3_flags="-Djava.awt.headless=true"

# Increase memory limit of the Java virtual machine

resin3_flags="-Xms32m -Xmx256m"

# Run Java with remote debugging turned on on port 8000

resin3_flags="-Xdebug -Xnoagent
-Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=8000"

Mayon eruption %u2018imminent,%u2019 over 70,000 face evacuation - INQ7.net

Alert Level 4!

Worried at my folks in Legaspi and my in-laws in Ligao. Hope it doesn't do much damage. But the danger is real, a volcano on the verge of eruption is not a tourist attraction! Just look around at the rocks/boulders scattered along Legaspi, Ligao, Camalig etc., to get a grip on how far the range of Mayon is.

Active FTPD

For the record, there is not much to love about hosting companies who stubbornly insist that their FTP daemons only function correctly if your ftp client uses the active mode. Double worse, its the only way to update the site. WTF? why not just use good ol ssh protocols if your line of reasoning is you want it to be secure. Its a a PITA for us accessing the net with a NAT gateway.

Shinnier than tho!

From the site:

Keepin' it Real: Pushing the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen


Wonder how the Java looking glass 3D desktop is coming along. With decent GPU's almost standard with any new desktop/laptop computer now, we need a new way of interacting with the desktop.

Genetics

Genetics

Janro has fever today, sad we couldn't do our nightly playtime bonding. Hopefully he gets well asap. Doctor also confirmed that like me, he also has asthma and adviced we buy a nebulizer. We bought one at Watsons at SM North after much deliberation which one (Sunrise or Omron) to get. We settled for the Omron due to its readily available parts and lifetime service warranty. We also noticed that it doesn't heat as much as the Sunrise branded one, so hopefully that translates to longer compressor life. Haven't used a nebulizer except the one at the hospitals. I grew up relying on disc based ventolin rotadisk most of the time, also since my asthma attacks isn't so often. Hoping Janro's asthma would still go away, or at least not the severe type.

Hopefully the fever goes away soon. The apartment ain't the same without my two kids running around.

Btw, he is turning two this coming August 12: "Mga Ninong at Ninang..."

Quickies

Life as usual goes faster than a speeding bullet.

Was happy that Janro, who will be a two year old in a few days, can now be undertood more clearly to have a real conversation. Previously we would just do baby talk coupled with hand signs and funny facial expressions.

Rojan, growing smarter each day is loving all the online games on nick jr website. Also now has an average of 4 wpm (proper typing) according to Mavis Beacon. She can do the home row keys with ease, and she's progressing to the top and bottom rows.

Managed to figure out liferay to a non-root context. The trick is to unjar portal-ejb.jar edit portal.properties (portal.ctx) to your liking, then create a new portal-ejb.jar. Next edit your web.xml root path, then modify the index.xml. That should do it. Only tested this on Resin by the way, Glassfish next.

On another news, noticed that all the G-pass interfaces on Magallanes and Kamuning MRT station having a nice red X sticker on top. Bummer, was itching to try it out a while ago.

treonox
- mobloggin' on a southbound train.

Tech Perks

Am currently viewing Mt. Mayon via a live feed from a friends webcam thru Yahoo. Hope the eruption won't be as the devastating as the one that ruined the town Cagsawa.

The Philippines is flat. Shiny!

G-Pass (mis) adventure

G-Pass (mis) adventure

Saw the Globe G-Pass Ad yesterday on TV. So just a few minutes ago I asked the cashier at the MRT North vending station if I could buy one. Surprise, "hangang Cubao pa lang yon", the kind lady answered. I looked around and noticed that indeed this station doesn't have yet the G-pass interface.

That means G-pass usage is still limited, and that you can't enter on a G-pass enable station and alight at stations like MRT north station where the interface is not yet in-place.

Curious how the reloading of G-pass would be implemented. Via G-cash at the MRT stations? Or via OTA? Either way, if its going to on top of SMS infrastructure, its still bound to the issues I discussed before.

Cmon' Smart, (*hint*, *hint*, *hint*) you have the debit card-swipe thing, join the fun!

And before I forget, interface-wise, I still think Smart money has the edge over G-Cash. They are just not as aggressive on the innovation front.

treonox
- on a southbound train, daydreaming on a flat world m-conomy.

NEC VERSA P8100 Minisite

I accompanied my neighboor to Microstation at Shangrila to help him decide what laptop to get. Along the way he told me that a just-arrived stock of NEC Versa P8100 in that store. The specs were much better than any of the current sub Php 40K laptop's he showed me before. I was even skeptical at first. Not until I saw the lappy.

The 15" screen was gorgeous! Wide screen, and was glass like. It has a DVD writer and all the ports you could wish for. It even has an SD card slot and build quality "seems" sturdy enough, not much flex on the keyboard area. No pre-loaded OS tho. Has a B/G capable built in wifi. The battery was a standard 6 cell one, which was the only one item that didn't beat the Lenovo/IBM model he canvassed (Php 36K) that included an 8 cell? battery. After inspection I found out the video chip was of the Intel kind and not the NVidia one described on the NEC site. At any rate it was still rather a good buy.

The Aquarium: GlassFish on FreeBSD

Just saw this on the Aquarium (Glassfish weblog). Kind of funny seeing my picture there. A friend of mine has commented before that from a different angle, it looks like am poking something in my nose. Hehehehe. I guess time to replace that that avatar. Makes me remember when a stranger asked me if am mobileindie.com. Weird and disorienting in some ways. :D

On the other hand, I direly need to manage my sched in order to continue with my Liferay experiments and Glassfish on the FreeBSD platform. The Liferay really just needs a few tweaks for it to use context path rather than stubbornly insisting to be on the root context. And so far the Glassfish running on FreeBSD seems to go along well like good ol' isaw and cheap red wine.

OS X VM

Doing a "du -sh /" on an OS X terminal forces the VM to reclaim inactive memory. Should be adding this to a crontab if not for the fact that it would make the disk spin at regular intervals. Hmmmmnnn...

Philips SHE9500

Philips SHE9500

A week ago, I replaced my el-cheapo in-ear phones with a pair of Philips SHE9500 that went on sale at Astrovision at SM North (at 1.4K, formerly 1.8K). The previous in-ear I blogged before was clearly lacking in bass. Am not a bass head but the bass on that thing was really inaudible even after a week of burn in period. But what really prompted me to buy a replacement was the earbud that comes it with it was made of hard rubber that's literally intolerable for prolonged use.

Back to the Philips SHE9500, level of detail was awesome! I could clearly hear the guitar pick hit the strings as Eric Clapton does his stuff unplugged, or that chuckle at the end of Norah Jones song, or the varying delays and distortion mixed with haunting melodies of Radiohead, the exasperation in Ely Buendia's voice in Ligaya, etc. I could go on and on. The thing makes you jump with joy that you ripped your audio in higher bitrates. Added bonus, bass was tight and not wasn't exagerated at all like some drivers do.

Noise isolation was quite good. Not too sealed that you won't hear the loud honking sound of a car approaching, although I still won't recommend using it while crossing the street or driving a car. But just enough to block out street noise, or the idiot talking rather loudly on a jam-packed train.

Build quality was also decent. Not as flimsy as the Sony Fontopia models I have seen at Park Square 1. Overall am pretty happy with the in-your-ear music experience that this thing delivers.

treonox
- humming "If I could be, who you wanted... If I could be, who you wanted..." on northbound train

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Dave Birch: Upwardly mobile

I think this summarizes my thoughts on where m-commerce fits. It doesn't fit very well with face-to-face transactions. Rather, its a disruptive technology that allows an individual to participate in a FLAT WORLD ECONOMY (TM).

And what does G-Cash and Smart Money need to do in order for it to fit in a flat world economy? Or at least titilate the current generations mind to use the technology?

In some angles it already has gotten its feet wet, but really, there is no point in pursuing a lock-in model when the trend is collaboration and participation. Gone are the days that proprietary technologies are the in thing. Look around, the successful models that have the fastest adoption rate are the ones that fit in a flat world domain.

In the example given on the link above, can you guess who was trying to explain that model to a bunch of close minded cellco executives circa 2003?

The world is flat. Adapt or die.

M-Commerce Thoughts

M-Commerce Thoughts

A few things on the top of my head why m-commerce has not taken off. Remember, the current local implementations rely on SMS. That means it inherits all the characteristics of SMS.

Now, my dear gentle reader, have you ever experienced:
- The text you sent did not reach the destination.
- The text you sent did reach your destination, but was delayed by more a few minutes, or even a few hours perhaps?
- You received the same SMS message more than once? But the sender sent it only once.

Now picture those scenarios on the current m-commerce platforms. What do you do if you didn't get a confirmation from your m-commerce transaction? Will you repeat the transaction? Or will you wait for the confirmation message. Now what if you received the confirmation, but the merchant in front of you didn't? Will you force the merchant to give you the goods? Force majure, the cell tower in your area goes kaput, imagine the implications on a heavily m-commerce dependent community?

Anyway, posting my thoughts here, hoping for the lazy web to summon the collective minds of similarly interested individuals. :D

treonox
- on a northbound train

G-Cash [rebelpixel productions]

Nice ongoing discussion there about G-Cash and S-Money. Another one here, courtesy of the recently resurrected ka edong

I also explained this sometime ago to a chinese gentleman from a market research firm trying to find out if the model would also fit in china. I think the main barrier is the current local m-commerce platform offered by Smart and Globe are both very limiting. Not only that you can't transact from both one platform to another, but both platforms has very few applications and connections.

On the other side of the coin, this is m-commerce, and there is more than meets the eye regarding the security considerations that goes with this kind of systems. Inter-operability is both a blessing and a curse depending on which side peg your question.

treonox
- And everybody's shouting. "Which side are you on?"

Mumblings

Mumblings

And I hereby quote:

"People will punch thru any technological barrier, if there is a real carrot at the end of that stick."

treonox
- listening to Fake Plastic Trees on a southbound train.

Snapshots of life

Snapshots of life
Originally uploaded by nocs.

It seems just like yesterday when they were still babies. Sigh...



OTOH, I direly need a better digital camera. Dear Santa...

Test blog, 1 2 tres...

I had posted 3 quickies since my last post but none seems to have successfully penetrated blogger.

Oh well back to the inevitable irony of power outages. One of the servers am maintaining currently co-located at EV1, got hit a by a mere seconds power outage and refuses to go back online since yesterday. And due to the event, remote KVM's are pretty scarce and the support guys on the other end won't give a clue how far am I in the queue.

There goes my weekend. :((

17 dead, 106 injured as quake rocks southwest China - INQ7.net

There seems to be a lot of natural calamities lately. Mother Earth seems to be a bit pissed off nowadays.

Seriously, global warming and other environmental issues should start getting attention and action as of yesterday. Its unlikely that we can re-locate to a galaxy far away at the moment.

Yes we geeks should care about the environment. Simply because the world looks good in green.

Akamaru Dock for linux

Akamaru is a simple, but fun, physics engine prototype. It's named after the super awesome ninja dog, Akamaru, from the Naruto anime and based on the article Advanced Character Physics by Thomas Jakobsen on Verlet integration. Pretty fun and shiny! Another nice justification to those idle GPU's. Go GNOME!

Gizmo %u2013 A free phone for your computer - Learn More Overview

WOW!

More countries listed than Skype.

Still trying to figure out the viable business model. But hey, this is frackin' shiny!

But before you wet your pants, not surprisingly the Philippines is not on the list.

But if you have OFW's/Friends/Family members on those countries listed then you can call them for free. I wonder if that constitutes an operator bypass? And if this is similar to Skype which restricts the service to chosen countries. At any rate, this is based on top of the net infrastructure, so there are ways to route your packets.

VOIP is an emerging tool in making the world flat! Definitely, something that could bring a smile to Thomas Friedman. :D

Spring Beans

Stumbled upon this one while on browsing thru the liferay forums. Seems to have less fat than liferay and doesn't have a complicated installation procedure. Will give this a spin.

glassfish: Quick Start Guide

another quickie on this glassfish freebsd combo:

the slick web based admin gui tool works like a charm. got reminded again how spartan the resin am accustomed to compared to to SJSAS. :D

as FreeBSD is not officially supported by glassfish, am really just surprised it worked. was worried since I spotted a few .so files unpacked, JNI dependencies perhaps. anyway lets see where this goes.

glassfish: Quick Start Guide

hmmnn...

managed to run glassfish on top of FreeBSD 6 using the mac os x binary. tested the main page and it does seem to work. not surprisingly since os x userland is based on FreeBSD also. however, haven't tested yet the other glassfish components. if its 100% java and doesnt do jni calls, it just might hum along properly. will try installing liferay on top of this setup and hoping it performance would be a bit better than my earlier G4 experience.

Liferay Forums

Finally managed to setup liferay on bookah. I must say am really impressed with the polish of the UI. AJAX-ish and even has a cute analog clock. Major gripe was the default war file which has a hard coded context so you are forced to set it up on the ROOT if you are using resin.

On the other hand, its a bit slow on a G4 iBook, even the 1.5G of ram didn't help. Will try it on the Glassfish and SJAS 8 and see if there are noticeable speed improvements on the same machine.

Will try my luck running it on my FreeBSD 6.1 home machine (pikah). Specially, since I managed to squeeze some time a few hours ago to setup the brand spanking new (an offshoot of thee free distribution license recently granted by Sun) diablo jdk (1.5).

Next step is to learn the portlet specification. Liferay is also EJB-ish, which I hadn't been using for more than a year now. Last project I with EJB was still with the old EJB 2 spec (in which xdoclet is a pre-requisite to be be bearable). Also curious how it was architectured, and how it compares to the domain model driven design I had been using of late.

Liferay - Home

I had enough of Infoglue and so I asked the lazy web once again for an opensource cms solution for my bicolano.org project. Primarily because I was trying the hibernate/postgresl version. Am currently not in the mood to debug the thingy just to make it run.

Liferay seems fun! And it even has a few themes. That would help a lot for backend developers like me who doesn't have the artistic skills to make a masterpiece out of blank HTML.

Here's to hoping Liferay and me would get along just fine. Its also a good excuse to dive into the Portlet API (JSR-168) specification.

Here we go again.

Interactive Earth: Download Shape2Earth Beta 2

Got a couple of PH related shapefiles at home. Could be a nice after work hobby project. Except ironically it will only run on windows. Although MapWindow GIS is opensource. Hmmmn... Seems to be requiring dotnet 2.0 sdk too.

What I don't have is a windows installation. Bummer. Got to find the installer that came with the lappy. Its burried neath' those Ubuntu/FreeBSD CD's last time I checked. heh.

JAJAH - web-activated telephony

Good friend winston in HK notified me of this free 5 minutes call without registration. According to him works as advertised. Hmmmmn... This smells like skype killer-ish.

And I like the tag line "FREE.YOUR.VOICE".

Shiny!

Eclipse.org home

Oh yeah. Version 3.2 seems a tad more snappier on the mac than the previous version.

Updated my Eclipse Vi plugin and life is again sweet. Satokar your the man!

Perceptions

Perceptions

Sometimes you can't help but feel sad when some people draw conclusions without really knowing the root of the problem.

Last week was all about perceptions and growing a few white hairs due to incompetence. Some people really can't get a clue as to where my kindness ends and my limited patience for incompetence and unprofesionalism begins.

Oh well, its a monday. Here's to hoping no major WTF's these week.

Huzahhh... Goos fraba fraba...

In-ear for cheapskates

In-ear for cheapskates
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Yesterday, I was lamenting that my Treo earphones broke. And even asked the lazy web what would be an inexpensive in-ear alternative aw my ears weren't designed for regular earphone designs (i lack a docking station). The cheapest would be the hard to find Sony Fontopia EX71 (street price 2k - 2.8K) or the readily available Philips SHE9501 (street price 1.4K - 1.7K). Now, even at that price, it would still have a hard time convincing my budget conscious wife.



Now whilst wandering around Circle C waiting for the girls having their hair trimmed, I stumbled upon this in-ear with a brand-i-dont-know-because-its-written-in-frackin-whatever. I asked for the price and the kind sales lady said it can be had for 300 pesos only! And I could test drive it! (yucky I know, this being in-ear-shove-it-in-your-ear-canal design). And so I tested it and it sounds quite good. Way better than my previous earphone. And so I put on my cutest smile and haggled till the mesmerized sales lady finally agreed to sell it for 200 pesos. Now at that price, I won't be required to undergo the justification process.



One major gripe tho is that it only comes with one size earbud. And it doesn't come with a spare pair. Other than that, its sweet music.



Treonox

- rockin in Circle C

shop.brando.com.hk - Sony MDR-EX71SL Earphone

Frack! My good ol' SE 2-in-1 earphones just broke. Right earphone doesn't work anymore. And since its an old model, stores don't carry it anymore, sigh, that was a steal for P400 bucks. Although apparently, Norah Jones voice and other jazz type music pushes the poor thing to the limit, complains in the form of crackling noise.

And so I asked the lazy web which in-ear noise isolating earbud is best for a cheapskate like me?

And thus it answered.



This seems to be the most practical, quality, best bang for the buck, in-ear for the moment. Its also getting good reviews. The only problem is where to find it locally. Sincerely hoping that its priced closer to reality.

Java Practices: Immutable objects

Defensive copying. Just like defensive driving, can save you from a major head break.

You really have to stick this in your head. Parameters being passed or returned from methods. Else you suddenly have unpredictable objects acting more strangely than the last zombies from the resident evil movie.

There is a big difference between:

public Date getDateOfDiscovery() {
return new Date(fDateOfDiscovery.getTime());
}

and the wimpy version of above:

public Date getDateOfDiscovery() {
return fDateOfDiscovery.getTime();
}



And likewise should always remember that "setters are evil (tm)".

E.g.

You have a domain object named account. And naturally you want to do insert some good old strategy pattern to implement the behaviour of your debit method. So that you have:

account.debit();

Which encapsulates all the technical wizardry known to man to securely do a debit transaction. After which, it stores it to a transaction table associated to your account object.

Now if you have a setter for that transaction table like:

account.setTransactions(Set _transactions).

The crooked descendant of green lantern coder can just as easily do something with the transactions table without going thru the carefully crafted debit function mentioned previously.

So thats our lesson for today, Defensive Copying, and Setters are Evil.


codingnox
- (bitten by the un-defensive copying bug...)

WriteRoom | Hog Bay Software

When you are a writer and you just dont have enough will power to fight back procastination. then Writeroom just might be the tool you are looking for.

Distraction free writing. For developers, distractiong free code writing. Although this Writeroom app isn't that suitable for code writing. A full screen terminal with Vi is a handy substitue.

Nowadays, I too try to to turn off all apps not needed to do the task at hand. Unitasking sometimes helps a lot in getting things done (GTD).

Pacquiao Vs. Larios

Pacquiao Vs. Larios

Let the games begin!

Go Pacman!

Eclipse RCP Meets Spring: A Perfect Thick-Client Match

Yummy!

Google Checkout Tour

I remembered blogging something is bound to dominate the e/m-commerce space.

Oh well, here comes google checkout!

Wonder if it accepts credit cards from the Philippines? Will it be the end of Paypal? or like Visa and Mastercard co-exist peacefully?

Exciting times to be in the e/m-commerce industry!

And for cellco's out there, I kid you not, the next wave is on the data highway. Start offering practical data plans!

Its not in the box, its in the band baby...

Yahoo! Messenger for Mac

probably long overdue.

but hey, this new yahoo messenger mac client is pretty shiny!

First night of SCJP review thoughts

It seems to be a bunch of lively and jolly folks. Kudos to the O & B team led by Charo, Calen, Ealden and Owie for organizing the review. Looking forward for the next review session.

As I have said during the initial getting to know part, its more of the curiosity that drives me to try to take an SCJP exam. Passing the exam would be an added bonus and needless to say, justify the pocket pain inducing price of the voucher (3rd world dictates that you should make every penny count). Here's to hoping I do pass, as the O & B folks were telling us that most Java developers already doing software development had statistically lower passing average than those greenhorns fresh from learning Java as a language. Emphasis on Java as a language, as opposed to Java as a developer tool. Anyway, at the end of the day, its the journey and not the destination thingy.

On the other hand, I think we took the long way back, took more or less 30 minutes to get to the Ayala MRT station. Something the treadmill back home would probably be jealous. Will try the Pasong Tamo-Magallanes route next time. Else, not only do we get to review the syntactical beauty of the Java 1.5 specs, we also get to loose a handful of pounds (baby fats) in the process.

Waiting neath the gloomy sky

Waiting neath the gloomy sky

With a cup of rice, a handful of tocino bits and sunny side up fried egg (rare) and last but not the least a cup of coffee.

Will pass time before the review starts. Meanwhile, its chow time.

treonox
- somewhere in salcedo street.

Skype - The whole world can talk for free.

On another note, a co-worker of mine as well as my loving wife got an email from skype announcing a free 60 minute call added to their account. We tried it and called a relative on a cellphone in bicol. It worked! although predictably just a few minutes (5 minutes i think). Obviously the 60 minute applies to calls made to the US and other VOIP friendly teritorries.

Some observations on this Skype out thingy:
1. The call made to a landline (Digitel) in Bicol was a bit garbled, and delayed. You have to do the walky-talky talk in order for you to understand each other.

2. The call made to the cellphone (Globe) was a bit better, and was just like a regular cell phone to cell phone call. We could even hear those tricycles whizzing in the background.

Anyway, it was fun while it lasted. Nothing beats free. Hopefully Skype will soon let you call any landline for free, just like what they are doing now for the US and Canadian teritorries.


Time to go to bed. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

New GPRS rates

New GPRS rates

Am probably the last one to know, a friend of mine who recently got a treo told me that Smart is now currently charging 10 per 30 minutes of GPRS use.

This makes loggin on the internet via Smart prepaid SIM a bit more practical. Assuming of course that you don't get disconnected often, as each reconnection would reset your usage and you will be charged 10 pesos per 30 minutes again.

Hopefully Globe would introduce a counter scheme asap.

If the cellco's still don't get it, the next big cashcows will be killer apps that rides on the data pipe. Put your data rates down, and let em rip.


treonox
- looking for a hand me down Smart prepaid SIM

Back to Basics

Back to Basics

Tom will be the start of the free SCJP review offered by the good folks at Orange and Bronze. Looking forward to rattle my brain and meet new friends.

Might be nice to blog about this review thingy. Hmmmnnn...

Metro Manila Makeover: Naga 3D

Way Cool!

Naga in 3D!

Google is pretty shiny! for opening their products for end user hacking.

Mauragon ining mga kahimanwa na nag-gibo kaini! Saludo akong marhay!

Talented Bicolanos now on the rise!

Weblog of Peter %u201CAlarmnummer%u201D Veentjer - Blog about Spring, Acegi, concurrency and other JEE related subjects.

Interesting thoughts on DDD and a bunch of other interesting stuff for enterprise java dev.

Mike Dunn's Weblog

For the sake of making my domain model richer, I hereby succumb to the convenience brought by DependencyInjectionInterceptorFactoryBean. This doesn't address new objects not fetched from the database. My workaround is to add a newInstance method in the DAO. The newInstance just calls in the same bean that all objects taken from the database used.

for example:
newInstance() {
return ServiceLocator.getImpl("Instance");
}

This requires getting your hands dirty with spring framework CVS as this code currently lives only in the sandbox. And yes, this interceptor relies on springs autowire capability, keep that in mind when naming those beans to be injected into your domain object.


Anyway, if you still want rich domain models but don't want AOP or Dependency Injection via an interceptor, there's always a Service Locator pattern to save your day.

for example:

domainOjbect.doSomething() {
iShouldBeAutoInjectedService = ServiceLocator.getImpl("SpringDefinedBean");

iShouldBeAutoInjectedService.doService();
}

Be wary, that this somehow makes your domain object dependent on service locators. This also works well at scenarios where the auto injected service needs to be defined only during deployment time. Whether or not that is good thing, YMMV.

Why do you need rich domain models? Well, it just goes back to the aim of OOP. Objects that pretty much can do things by themselves. Rich domain objects helps a lot in mapping the meatspace domain problem to your application. It also allows your domain model POJO's to naturally follow design patterns principles, since it is now more than just a bunch of getter and setter methods to access a database fields (a.k.a. anemic domain model). You can inject stuff that allows you to add behaviour to your objects.

The Gadgeteer - Sony Vaio VGN-UX50 uPC

Sexy device!

Its screaming for a better interface tho. Should have a more PDA or Front Row like interface.

That said, wouldn't mind Santa dropping one the chimney.


nox
- got to have a chimney first...

Just Another Blog: Dependency Injection OR Service Locator in Domain Objects with Spring and Hibernate frameworks

This probably summarizes one of the nagging problems of making your domain objects rich.

Coming from a C/C++ background, one of the things that I missed when I started doing business applications in Java (or any business type application for that matter) is the richness of object oriented programming. Objects are lively, as in the case of a point object where you can "tell" it to move via point.move(x,y).

For business domain objects like an account for example, I would like it to be able to tell it to debit an amount via account.debit(amount). This doesn't come naturally for these types of applications since when they are revived from storage they only contain data.

For now, I do the "assembling" in the DAO objects and create new objects via an ImplementationLocator, which is basically a service locator that uses spring underneath. e.g. for the account DO, ImplLocator.getImpl("Account").

Hopefully in the future there would be a more natural way of doing this. Am still skeptical with AOP.

Setting up an iTunes server in FreeBSD

sweet!

sweeettt!!

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttt!!!

although in the end i settled for mt-daapd. even the album art and equalizer settings are retained.

this could increase my free disk space by a good margin. yay!


don't know why...
- (Norah Jones streamin' via mt-daapd)

Google Video Player Download

Shiny!

Thanks google!

Love, is you.

Love, is you.
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Love is real, real is love...

I think its time the whole world wide web to know how much I love you.

You may never read my blog, but the fact still remains.

No amount of technology can measure my love for you in its purest form.

You alone can stare right thru my soul.

You alone can inspire the geek in me.

You alone can bring immense joy to me and our two bundles of joy.



Love, is you.



Treonox

- janelletic

:: lisondra.net haraya project ::

a good friend way back the PDI #forum days, is now into context analysis of filipino poems thru his hiraya project. actually its more than context analysis he is after, more like finding where local poets get their out of this world inspirations thru mind numbing lexical algorithms.

what boggles the mind tho, is that "libog" is not on the list. "laman" is at the bottom.

WTF is wrong with our current local poets today?

Freud would not be so proud.

OSNews.com

I like the author mentioning he has no need of video and photo editing/management among other things, as the reason he switched from OS X to a pure Linux setup for his Powerbook.

Makes me wonder if he has a life? I mean at this day and age if video and photo management isn't part of your digital life (add the proliferation of mobile devices with photo and video capabilities) then you should seriously consider having one. If I have to prioritize the data on my hard drive, those home made videos and every day photos certainly is on the top of the list.

Anyway, the article is not an "effective way" to advocate the linux desktop to a mass audience. In fairness, it didn't claim to be one.

X-Men 3

X-Men 3

Off to watch X-Men 3 with the whole family!

treonox
-Good times! :D

F/OSS Thoughts

Found this in my looney bin. A couple of weeks old but posting it here for future reference. Bookmarking or taking a snapshot of my mind to review a year (or years) after for those Back to the Future (tm) moments :D.


On F/OSS Advocacy:

Advocating FOSS arrogantly  as something so technically superior than commercial alternatives is idealism on the wrong side of the coin. This might work in geek circles, but is not the nicest or effective way of reaching a broader audience.

Not minding existing solutions is bad too. The way some FOSS projects is headed, humbly acknowledging and learning from existing solutions is a great leap forward wider FOSS adoption. Technologies such as Cairo, XGL/Compiz, etc., are just a taste of things to come. The FOSS desktop is finally maturing to the point of mass usability. On the server space, we see efforts to simplify administration, this is an era where we see more focus on automation, tuning and monitoring. A good example would be to see recent developments of Theo's OpenBSD gang and FreeBSD dtrace port. 

Look at OS X, *lots* of FOSS components in there. An interface that even Grandma can use, yet pop the hood and you have something there to titillate the geek in  you. Recent FOSS desktop developments acknowledges this facts, clearly seeing the value of hiding the technical mojo from the casual user, and yet still have the terminal in case the user wants to get down and dirty to expand his horizon.

Technical superiority alone is not an effective marketing tactic. There is more to FOSS than technical superiority. 

OpenSource.Nokia.com - Mobile Web Server

Excitingggggg times!!!

What does this mean? Mobile devices can now be reached via URL! It doesn't matter which network it belongs. The device is now part of web!

Do you wanna??? Do you wanna???


Imagine the possibilities! Doing and http post/get on the device via its url and sending data to the application on the device.


Good times to be in the mobile industry.

Team Building

Back from our team building session held in Antipolo's Camp Explore at Mount Puro. Really, REALLY nice place. You sleep among the trees. Our cabin was at the level of the trees and designed with lots of open spaces. Air flows freely at its spacious loft and food served was again really good!

I realized that one of the best things that team building sessions can bring is that it makes the facilitators state the obvious in a manner that all you won't get offended. Its quite different when its you or your colleague explaining the same things to you. There is often personal friction involved if say you try to mention to your co-worker the value of teamwork, or trust and all the other basic things that makes a high performing team.

The place was really awesome. Hope I can have the same haven when my life is nearing the sunset. That would be a nice place to spend your not so tender years.

BSD News

Hooray! DTrace for FreeBSD port now working!

This just made my day!

TNPI - Do it Yourself .mac v2

Should find time to do this hack one of these days. Another alternative could be iFolder, but it still has no running port yet on FreeBSD. Besides, iDisk is relatively sweet and nicely integrated with the rest of OS X apps.


Find, find time...
Forever, would be fine...

OLPC - a photoset on Flickr

Sweet! Hopefully this thing also gets to our local countryside. Hoping too, that it certainly brings one of the greatest equalizer of modern times (the internet) to areas that need it the most.

And its running a stripped down FC5. Shiny!

Apple - Nike iPod

Shiny! shoes. It that kind of gear doesn't inspire you to run, nothing else will. hehehe.

Mailling List annoyance

Subscribed to PLUG a few weeks ago to get the feel of the local linux community. As with other local ML you can't help but notice members of the list posting with half a page worth of signature attached to their post. You would mildly understand if this are just the usual quotes or PGP keys. But it boggles the mind why some have to include half a dozen of the internet domains they are affiliated with. Worse, each domain includes its own tag line, motto, etc., whatever. And thats not even mentioning untrimmed replies :(

Hopefully these type of posters will be considerate enough in the future to think about us digest mode loving peeps.

Commercials, Piolo and Me

Overheard during a commercial break.

Me: "Kahit ganyan lang na katawan, ok na sa akin".

Wifey: "Marami ka pang bigas na aalisin".

Seriously needing an exercise routine hacked into my sedentary meatspace world. Anybody selling a rather unused good quality treadmill? The last time I jogged around the village involved a scary encounter with a bunch of malnourished four legged mammals. Clearly, not the type I would consider as my best friend.

YouTube - Fast OS Switching on MacBook

OS X, Windows and Ubuntu YouTube Video. Check out the "switching" action. Man! Those new mactels are looking rather sweet and rockingly handsome, performance wise!



Oh Santa, I promise to be really nice this year. A MacBook Pro or a MacBook (black if possible) will really make a nice Christmas gift. :D

myGlobe - Configuration Guides

Finally was able to figure out the right WAP proxy settings for Globe so that I can test our WAP apps on my Treo, instead of annoying someone elses phone. The one mentioned on the Globe site configuration guide has the wrong port for WAP.

Use instead this:
Proxy Address: 203.177.43.214
Port: 8080

Yes, you can browse wap sites using the Globe Internet settings on the treo but has two issues:

1. You are charged via the regular GPRS rates of 0.25/kb. Unlike WAP over GPRS which is currently at 0.15/kb.

2. Your application on the other end would not get the phone number of the user accessing your WAP app. Not an issue if you are just displaying content, but really handy if you are doing customized apps (you want to store user preferences for this type of apps).


Oh the things you can do with WAP. It might not be suitable for "masa" type apps where SMS is still the medium of choice. But rockingly awesome for mobile to machine (M2M) applications. Added bonus, most mobile phones of late (even the inexpensive ones) are GPRS and WAP enabled at the very least.

Another bonus, WAP is capable of displaying images like a barcode that can be read by other machines. Independently mobile ideas for the mobile indie in you. :D


treonox
- am WAP'ed and am happy...

The Lenovo Tapes

Frackin' shiny! if those are true. :D

Google Web Toolkit - Build AJAX apps in the Java language

Way to go Google! Shiny!

That's love, developer love... :D


Update:
I spoke too soon. Windows and Linux only. Nothing for Steve Job's fanboys. Not happy.

Java Now Redistributable by Distros; Sun to Open Source Java - OSNews.com

This is good news! F/OSS distros can now bundle the JDK!

It just keeps getting better. :D

Apple - MacBook

WOW! Just one word. WOW!

Dual core, glossy wide screen, mag safe, iSight, remote, to name a few. This is digital mobile nirvana. And finally a black version is available!

Price is not bad either. PC laptops on that range doesn't even compare. OS X and that kind of hardware at that price is unbeatable.

Anyone wants to buy a less than a year old 12" iBook G4 1.33ghz?

Shame on you Apple for creating such a thing of beauty and tormenting previous model owners.

screen - The Terminal Multiplexer

Spoiled by the Gnome Terminal application's tabbed shells, I was looking for a similar terminal with support for tabs on OS X. The default Terminal.app doesn't support tabs. A friend adviced using iTerm, but found it rather slow and unresponsive.

So back to tab-less Terminal.app. Then I remembered this command line gem called "screen" which I used a while back before being addicted to Gnome Term. It lets you multiplex your terminal, giving you the same tab functionality within a single terminal session.

Happy screen multiplexing. Because in the age of enevitable multitasking, life needs more than one active terminal session. :D

jkOnTheRun: More Sony UX pics

Sexy and shiny!

Nicer still if it runs on an open source OS like maemo. :D

Monday Blues

Monday Blues

Frack! I feel light headed. I should remind myself not to drink green tea at 12am . Else be subjected to that weird feeling when your body is dead tired, your eyes shut but your mind still trying to map out meatspace problems to their domain model counterpart. Worse, its automatically refactoring the damn domain model to manageable design patterns.


treonox
- mobloggin' on a southbound train. exquisite headeache seeping thru my sleep deprived brain.

Sticker Happy!

Sticker Happy!
Originally uploaded by nocs.

The iBook's surface makes it rather conducive to put stickers. It can be easily removed when needed and doesn't require much effort to clean up the adhesive residue. What sucks tho, is printer ran out of ink. Well... we live to stick another day :D

Sunflower

Sunflower

Flower power eh?

For the past two weeks, I feel like a sunflower missing the sun amidst the rainy season.

Tommorow, will probably be hugging them to no end.

Yay! can't wait!

treonox
- moblogging on north bound train

Persistent Domain Objects Pattern.

PDO vs DAO.

I think the DAO method is much more closer to meatspace scenarios. Assuming we have a robot factory.

Pseudo in PDO:

Robot find/get Robot123 and be that robot.

Pseudo in DAO.

RobotManager find/get Robot123 .

I think the machines responsible for finding and extracting Robots from the factory be a different entity. Its more simpler that way.

RobotManager can be an interface and might have varying implementations. This answers the need to decouple the database specific implementation.

Rapleaf -- Portable Ratings for Buyers and Sellers

Shiny!

Reputation server. Hmmmnnnn.

Credibility of the reputation would be rather be the hard part.