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

looking forward to watching that imelda film too...

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

most generous comment i've had so far:

"Hi man!

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

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

Best regards,
Michael Bartl"

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

and all i could reply was:

man,

you ROCK!

MANY THANKS!

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

for what its worth, get well soon PAT!

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

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

in .bashrc or /etc/profile:

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

as root:

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

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

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

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

my gulay! here comes Google SMS...

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

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

sweeet chair o' mine...



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

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

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

oh goodie! GMail POP now works on versamail on my clie... wickedly cool! what doesnt work is the smtp since the versamail version i used doesnt support secure smtp... i just set it to smtp.globetel.com.ph to enable sending mail via gprs...

hmmmnn... naughty -> Depenguinator... wonder if this can be a valid reason for terminating a colo service? better just wait till colo companies offer's freebsd 5.3 stable based boxes...

hmmmnnn... doing NAT on linux didnt change that much since a few years back... the *bsd way is definitely much, much easier... but then again, i think linux is way ahead on the desktop front... but still needs to learn a few tricks from *bsd when it comes to things like these... *bsd's are still a sysadmin's best friend...

now, if only the current crop of popular inexpensive colo's would start offering Freebsd 5.3 based servers... so far its still 4.x series on cihost, ev1 and the like.... and as of now 4.x is not that too happy with java's 1.4 or 5.x series...

broadband at last... bayantel's lowest plan, i applied for the 128 but just a few days ago got upgraded to 256 due to their ongoing promo! now santa if you can hear me, this would do for christmas -> linksys router/wap/switch combo... ;-)

attended the mobile e-commerce congress organized by PICS at the intercon... i still think the barrier to entry for most SME's is the difficulty of getting a short access code... and a common access code (same short access code number to be used across the major telcos) is ironically NOT common... never mind that the revenue share is 70/30 cause the brighter side of things (as one of the speaker highlighted) is if some content developers are thriving and profiting with that arrangement, imagine the opportunity if you could enable your app on other countries where the revenue share is slightly higher... no need for lengthy legislation process to regulate this revenue sharing scheme either, let the market dictate... btw, i still wish there would be a way for this telcos to easily provide a test environment to budding content providers, or a way to easily/quickly provide telco grade short access code to content developers... i dont know how, but somehow there must be a way...

the keynote speaker, a congressman also hinted on the need to set voip free... cited that we should follow the FCC... cool guy, unmindful of the sponsors written on the the background... VOIP seems to be the future... what would that be like, your email addy as your phone number? nations clothed with wifi, wifi phones galore! maybe at plans below 500 you get unlimited 256k bandwidth a month... you can use it for data and voice or what have you... heck maybe even good ol tv shows would entirely be streamed or pushed to tivo like devices... daydreaming again, back to reality...

of course, 50% of the time during the conference i have to listen to this obnoxious fellow, trying hard to put an accent to his english (why on earth does he need to do that! i heard him talking to his filipino companion and he can talk without the accent and its certainly more clearer and better for other ears to sustain) while obviously trying to impress his indian boss... aside from his f@#$%@! (fucking) loud annoying voice, this guy is obviously clueless on what he is talking about... the lady in front of me gave him a note, probably telling him shut up or leave... havent heard a word from him since...

oh well, was probably pissed off because i cant take a quick nap with his loud voice during the time the speaker was obviously just making peachy sales talk...

speaking of streams, this is probably the coolest livecd ever! yipee! for open source! it would be cool to do a j2me version of their applet client and see how good the performance is on multimedia phones with gprs...

a while back only the version compatible with eclipse 2.x series were still available for free... i was surprised when i checked the sourceforge version of thevi plugin was updated for eclipse 3.x series... not as full featured as the commercial version... but hey, basic navigation is supported as well as copy/paste/search and : which allows you to quickly go to a line number (very handy for debugging)... my hands seems to be dancing with joy of this new found goodness...

design patterns are a necessity (i hope i spelled that right) for anyone doing programming, for java i find this book indispensible java patterns... and its absulutely free!... based heavily on the GoF book... adding this to my december to read list...

my constant reminder at work...

We do what we can
We give what we have
Our doubt is our passion
And our passion is our task
The rest is the madness of art
- Henry James


at home... having two kids is not easy... and nowadays spending quality time with them is priority # 1... everyday am amazed of thier developments... my eldest, 3 years old could already control the mouse better than *other* grownups... she could play all those barney games on the net via barney online... she could type simple english words and her name using the keyboard... at the same time perfectly say "barney, anong petsa na???" when my dialup connection is having a bad hair day... the youngest a few months old can now follow you with his eyes, smile, and starts to blurt out baby sounds every now and then... am extremely curious how a child develops speech recognition, and at this stage am guessing his trying to experiment with what sounds he could make, later on will try to emulate the sounds that he hears...

elsewhere, a new video rental shop opened nearby our house and for the past few weekends i had been catching up on the movies that i have missed (watching a movie at a movie house is a luxury nowadays)... at 15 pesos per movie and 40 pesos for three movies its a steal... the quality is light years away from those "beeseedee" and "deebeedee" boys... watched "the last samurai" (japanese people are an epitome of efficiency and dedication, from the moment they wake up, they pusrue perfection on whatever endeavor strikes their fancy), "taking lives" (mildly hot jolie), "cold mountain" (jude youre a lucky dude!), "kill bill 1 and 2" (uberly cool hantaro sword) , "gothika" (suspense), "paycheck" (a sneak peak into teh future of consultants)... also had a chance to rent peque gallaga's greatest movie ;) "scorpio nights" (raw erotica delivered in artful cinematic sequences)... and last but not the least "mystic river" (sean pean made me cry, such performance! probably the best movie i have seen so far, made me hug my daughter at the end of the movie and hope and pray that never happens to her)...

that's it, and i still think the eraserheads were poetic... shake yer head!