Skype, because the world is flat.

Just upgraded my Skype mac app. Noticed the shiny animation whenever you toggle show contacts or show history. Now its more Mac-ish than ever.

Skype is an OFW's best friend. You can skype-babad to your hearts content if your family back home is connected to the internet. Although it can't still (yet) substitute being there, it helps a lot to keep your sanity intact. The video is a welcome bonus, I hope in the future it becomes pervasive to mobile devices. 3G video calls is not the way to go, unless you want to burn a hole in your pocket. Not to mention international 3G video Cellco agreements is the exception rather than the norm.

If your are sleeping under the rock, then what the frack! Wake up! Mobile is the way to go. Advertisers must be itching to capture this personalized-direct marketing opportunity.


mobile nox
-- The futre is mobile...

FlickrVision

Shiniest Mashup WTF Web 2.0 I have seen so far.

One of those why didn't I think of that moments.

For the meantime. Am down with the flu.

Wifi beggar no more.

Yes, finally got my own DSL connection since monday.

So am now connected to the world again. So many things to blog. Life goes on pretty fast.

I also finally was able to open my own bank account. And was fascinated with the way they have automated ATMS for accepting cheque deposits here. All you have to do is follow the touchscreen enabled ATM instructions which are pretty much straightforward. The shiny part is when it comes to inserting your cheque to a slot in the machine. Not only will the machine accept your cheque, it will do optical character recognition (OCR) on the cheque and give you a printout of the image of your cheque together with the receipt. The OCR will read your cheque number and issuing bank. Pretty shiny!

I cannot blog about the new workplace. But am learning a lot on the non-technical side of working with a multi-national team as well as learning a new problem domain.

Back to the DSL connection, I miss my netgear wireless router back home. Will scout the computer stores here and buy one if its not too expensive. For the meantime the tethered setup is just fine. I dragged the table from the living room to the bedroom and loving the view outside the window.

Still, I miss my family so much. :(


Hope they can come over soon.


homesick nox
-No more weird looks when I camp out half a day with a laptop sa gilid ng starbucks ordering the cheapest drink...

Furious!

Frack! Someone tried to steal my shoes!

The doofus in me is so complacent that in a nice condo like this, nobody would ever dare touch my stinking shoes. Apparently I am wrong. As I was doing my laundry, I opened the door to get my soiled socks from the shoe cabinet outside. Only to find my work shoes and my 2 year old swatch seasider missing. Good thing the shoe cabinet has some weird design for opening the compartments, so my basketball shoes were not taken.

Fortunately, my flatmate and I decided to look around and lo and behold! My shoes are tucked neatly in the emergency staircase. Probably the thief is thinking of getting back on this later in the wee hours of the morning. Or, after realizing the shoe brand doesn't sound like florshiem or ferragamo decided what the heck, lets leave it here.

Also found out there are no CCTV's in the hallways, and when we went down to report to the security guard, we found no one on the desk.

Oh bugger. Life goes on.

Thank God Almighty I was still able to recover my shoes.


nox
- I love my shoes...

Life updates

Almost a month here.

- Found my own flat. I now live on the 15th floor on place cool enough to pass as a resort. Every block has its own pool. Awesome!
- The new place is 20-30-45 mins away from the office. Depending on the traffic and the alignment of the moon to the sun. Even if they indicate 10 - 20 mins interval, prepare your sanity for 30 to 60 minutes of waiting time for the bus. You can't beat the price tho, if you keep your ticktet, you are good to go anywhere. Each ticket is a whole day pass. Public bus is clean and nice, you get to enjoy the views and see more places compared to riding the train.
- I like the new place better. Something nice to look forward too after a hectic day in the office. I feel safer here than the previous guest flat.
- I get free wifi, and oh men, nothing beats free. No socket nearby tho.
- GPRS is the way to go for international messaging. YM + GPRS = Me chatting with my love ones back home anytime, anywhere. Take that you overpriced Philippine Cellcos!
- Work is ok, nothing I can't handle for the moment. The pressure is on delivering an enterprise app going to be deployed in 40 plus countries, each with varying challenges, one of them is making sure it is still useable in a dialup world. This should be fun.
- My lovey told me they were able to get their passports. Yippeeeee!!! That means they can visit or live with me here!
- Overall am beginning to love this country. First world amenities with 3rd world cost of living. That's redundantly awesome! Shiny!


Pictures to follow.

What's the stitch?

Some recent facts of life:
- I live on the 13th floor.
- Apparently, the number 14 is the one considered unlucky here. So instead of 14th floor you have 13A instead.
- My flatmate is a kind indian whom I until now I'm having trouble remembering and pronouncing his name.
- I need to improve my communication skills. Time to twist my tounge for pronounciations and a slightly modulated voice.
- I have to change my perspective on how to code things. Am used to fast and efficient. But now, the game is steady and stable.
- I have to keep reminding my self of modularization. Focusing on one part/tier of a system alone. I should lessen the entire-lifecycle super developer mentality so common back home.
- I have to appriacte swing. For all its shams and broken dreams, Swing is a fact of Java life.
- I escaped swing by accidentally blurting out hibernate and spring during a team conference. Now I have to defend why spring is needed and that hibernate is optional. I hope I win this framework debate. I am a spring junkie, and I want my POJO's flexible enough not to depend on Hibernate alone. Just in case there are drastic changes in the ORM framework in the future.
- Can't suggest aspectj domain object dependency injection at the moment. Too cutting edge and risky if the mantra is steady and stable.
- Today am probably going to defend why DAO's have to be implemented as interfaces rather than implementations. In a scenario of steady and stable code, I wonder if my argument that DAO's should be coded as an interface so that the actual ORM implementation (Hibernate, TopLink, EJB, JDBC, etc.) would make sense.
- I miss my DSL connnection back home. My flat doesn't have broadband access so am stuck with GPRS for my internet fix.
- I miss skype.
- I definitely appreciate the Treo now more than ever. YM via GPRS is worlds apart from internationl SMS charges. I only spent about 30 pesos a day, for roughly 2 hours of YM sessions. Add to the fact I can now get my email whenever I want to. Hooray for cheap mobile data services!
- I miss my wife and kids so much.
- I wept again last night when my wife told me my son keeps on hugging my picture frame back home.
- I wept some more, when my daughter typed I miss you so much Daddy on YM.
- I wept even more when my wife told me she just finished taking a bath and all the kids are asleep. I miss the parting legs and the parting lips. I miss her whispering I love yous in my ear. I miss our conversations. I miss her explaining to me the mechanics of PBB, and which housemate deserves to stay or not. I miss hugging her for no reason anytime, anywhere just to express what words cannot. I miss listening to her hearbeat after waking up in the morning. I miss feeling the love in close proximity.

homesick nox
-- Enduring the initial pains of becoming a global filipino...

Touchdown

Touchdown at 12:45am.

The last bus has just left.

Next bus 4:30.

Here I am, stuck at the moment. Good thing wifi is free. Can't configure Globe roaming on the Treo. I manually selected available networks but no dice. Either my Globe postpaid isn't yet configured for roaming (as opposed to what I had been told by the helpline), or the trouble is with the Treo.

Haven't slept a wink. Budget travel doesn't guarantee a working recline switch. Imagine the two other person beside you dreamfully taking a nap in a slightly reclined manner, and your stuck with your seat in upright position. Oh well, that's life.

Had my first taste of "Nasi Lemak", spicy! I choosed the beef version. Its like beefsilog aimed squarely for the chili loving Bicolanos. Never thought that rice and fried salted peanuts would actually taste good together. Didn't finish it all however, am still pacing my baby-fat-flaunting stomach.

1.5hrs till the next bus.


sleepy nox
-- miss ko na ang aming kama, at ang malupit kong unan...

Terminal Musings

Different worlds,
different people,
different faces,
different languages,
all waiting,
to fly
neath the moon
and the starry skies...

Samantalang ako,
may naiwan,
luhaan,
excited,
scared,
thrilled,
sad,
slightly looking forward,
antok,
puso ko,
kanina,
slightly nadurog.

Anak ng 365 na tipaklong,
homesick,
shit!
and to think
I haven't left yet,
bakit nga ba,
the world needs pera
And my katabi,
naka macbook pa.

But still,
amidst all of this.
I still miss,
my son's laughter
the witty conversations
with my daughter
The warm embrace
only my wife could offer.

Tonight will definitely be colder.


traveler nox
-- never mind the mosquito bites...

Decisions

Big fish in a small pond, or
Small fish in a big pond.

Or everyone wants to be a frackin' piranha?

Novell Linux Spoof Ad

Hilarious!

JPG Magazine

NatGeo quality photos without the nagging advertisements for now.

I like the theme, keeping it real. No photography/digital art non-sense. They like photos that capture what is "there" instead of an alternate reality depicting photoshop-induced artistry.


shutter nox
-- keepin it real...

Of Doll's and Marriage

Fresh from the inbox. This cracked me up!


A man and woman had been married for more than 60 years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about. For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife’s bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $95,000.

He asked her about the contents. “When we were to be married,” she said, “my grandmother
told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll.”

The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness.

“Honey,” he said, “that explains the doll, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?”. “Oh,” she said, “that’s the money I made from selling the dolls.”



husband nox
-- the joys of marriage...

Diggnation Vidcast on PSP

Wooooottt!!!

Am probably the last person to try this, having had the PSP since last year but never really got to try this feature since I was stuck with the 1.5 firmware.

Oh my, this is really shiny!

If I could get smoothjazz.com to stream on this thingy, that would really be rockingly shiny!

Location Free Television in Tokyo

Via Slashdot.

Picture this.

- You are an OFW.
- The Filipino Channel (TFC) for you is an expensive luxury.
- You got $200 plus to spare for a Location Free device (get the cheaper wired only model).
- You got reliable and cheap DSL connection back in the Philipines.
- You got some decent understanding of how TCP/IP works.

With location free, you can watch your favorite local shows (PBA, Teleseryes, etc) on your lappy-tappy, PSP and other supported devices anywhere with an internet connection.

Yes, you can currently time shift almost any video/audio at this current day and age, so why bother with location free? Well, this one is real time, meaning you can watch the local shows live!

Hooray! for the flat world.

Open Source Photography?

Wicked!

Interesting wiki.

Stream iTunes to your PSP

Sweeeeeettt!

With a bit more RSS XML whackery, mt-daapd can probably do the job. :))

Got to refresh my aging PERL kung-fu if the lazy web doesn't have a solution available at the moment.

PSP Update

3.10 Custom Firmware is out!

Tried updating our PSP last night because am interested in the slightly faster browsing experience the new firmware has to offer. Since this is a firmware flash, the risk of bricking is quite real. Fortunately the update process went smoothly and the PSP came out unscathed.

The update lets me for the first time try viewing the videos included in the sample UMD disc. And boy the screen is absolutely gorgeous! The spiderman 2 preview was difinitely shiny to watch on the PSP screen.

The update also updated the audio player. It now have a visual display akin to what you see on modern day media players. Pretty shiny still.

Sony should provide RSS feed reader for text tho. Until now you can only view video and audio RSS feeds. An email client would also add to this handheld's appeal. On the accessory side, an external keyboard will tripple the shiny factor of this little bugger. A driver for the Palm's Universal Keyboard will make this a really sweet machine.

Another app that Sony should add is a VOIP client. PSP with VOIP or Skype integration will really make it rock!

Anyway web browsing is a tad faster. Something that made me do the update in the first place. Still trying to find a decent web based RSS reader as Google still doesn't have a mobile version of its Google Reader app.

Location Free

Wow, this is seriously redundantly shiny!

Its like taking your PSP on steroids.


The network is the computer!

Google Themes

Since I use Google's personalized homepage as the default for all my browsers, the newly added theme-ing feature is rather shiny!

Take it for a spin, for now its restricted to a set of pre-defined themes, but knowing Google, expect user contributed/hacked versions in the future.

Best Career Advice in less than 30 seconds.

This early, I also encourage and tell my kids to do well in school, and someday have their own company. For me its quite important not to limit them by saying "study hard so that you can land a good job after school". I want them to grow up with the entrepreneurial mindset.

And last but not the least, I hope they grow up to be a global Filipino, exploring and learning the new flat world.