Rocking Chapel

Family went to the local chapel in our village to hear mass today. Was pleasantly surprised at the end of the mass the local children choir were really awesome singing the song "One Way". Everybody was upbeat with the pop-rockin tune.

We have stayed for over a year in this village, and we are really loving the place. A local chapel within the village is really rockin, since its walking distance from the apartment and the mass schedule is 9am every sunday. Aside from that, its just one jeepney ride from the MRT and pretty much near the wet market so that makes it pretty darn convenient.

For the meantime the song is currently on top of my last song syndrome queue (LSS).


faithful nox
-- singin', One way, Jesus, your the only one that I could live for...

Back to earth.

Ok, am back to work, my mind that is.

My body feels different tho, after 4 days of non-stop walking in Baguio (really impractical not to go around on foot during the Panabenga festivities), its only now that the tired feeling is settling in.

Ok, back to work...

Touchdown in Baguio

Touchdown in Baguio
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Interesting place. Cool weather. Haven't slept a wink yet. Need to catch some Zzzzzs.

Baguio here we come!

Baguio Gear
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Ah the digital age. Back in the day, probably you only have to bring instamatic Kodak film type cameras to record your vacation. Past forward 2007, you have portable video recorder, digital SLR camera and portable gaming gear you can bring with you.

In two hours we will be leaving for Baguio. Our first family outing, just the four of us (Lovey, Rojan and Janro). Hope the kids will enjoy the uber cool weather and the flower (Panagbenga) festival.

Excited!

froggy nox
-- Hopping around in Baguio soon...

Improved Navigation

Woot!

Based on popular demand, we just added categorized views for location and interest pages. Simple modifications, but makes navigating the site much, much, better.

For the record, internet explorer (IE) still sucks! go Firefox!


froggy nox
-- Hop around, look around...

The new Canon 1D Mark III

10 FPS and dual digic III processors? SHINY!

The new accessories like the wireless transmitter is pretty shiny too. Can't find the info how to integrate a GPS into the thing, that would be redundantly shiny.

One of the things to salivate in your dreams. In reality a 5D with a 24-105 IS attached would be good enough for me. But even that is still a distant dream.

Don't get me wrong, the 350D that I have is pretty damn good starter kit. I just wish they made it more ergonomic and provided the adjustment wheel found on the 20D/30D and upward models. With that said, I could say the 30D is what I need and the 5D is what I want. The wife says a family car should be the real priority since the children are growing up, so for short, no other frackin' expense till we get that one.

Now if only I could earn from blabbering blogging... Maybe I should set up my own picture gallery and put some Ad Sense there and pretend number of people would be interested in them. Put up a donate to my 5D fund button if Paypal Philippines would put its act together and finally allow that feature for those of us living here.



shutter nox
-- back to work, nuff said...

Apple's new wireless router.

This Apple guys really gets it! No longer you have to buy a separate SLUG to plug your external storaged device into the network without a host computer.


mac nox
-- now back to work...

Bluer than blue.

Bluer than blue.
Originally uploaded by nocs.

I like how saturating the blue channel in this photo turned out. The correct exposure allowed the photo to retain the detail in the clouds even if I doofus-ly shot it in JPEG instead of RAW.

Solitude

Solitude
Originally uploaded by nocs.

My first stab at black and white. I like how the tiny image of the fisherman is framed nicely within the reflection of the sky. The mountain on the left side gives a cue on the scale I think.

I could imagine myself in place of the fisherman, neath a cloudy sky, thinking of nothing, pondering the mysteries of life and the universe, just me, the boat, the clouds, the view, the cool breeze of the ocean, wondering just how to get back to the frackin' shore.

Transient Objects

Am addicted to XML serialization and deserialization via XStream. It rocks!

One thing to watch out if you are using dependency injection (AspectJ) is to make sure your helper objects are declared transient. Else XStream will complain of stack overflow. So save yourself from countless omit field statements and just declare those injected objects as transient.


dev nox
-- swimming in a sea of XML data...

Firefox rocks on my mac, but...

It frackin' hogs the CPU. Safari on the other hand seems to slowly leaks in to memory, but doesn't hog the CPU that much. The web developer plugin on firefox is a gem of a tool that keeps me coming back to use it from time to time. Wish they could fix the CPU hogging thing so I could use it as my main browser on my poor single core G4 processor.

Enough, whining. Back to coding..


dev nox
-- wishing for a macbook pro...

TomTom Bluetooth GPS Receiver

Update: Of the GPS receivers I mentioned a while ago. The TomTom Bluetooth GPS receiver seems to be the sexiest. Not to mention small and interfaces nicely with most PDA's including my trusty old treo.

Too bad, I don't have Paypal Donate button.

GPS Hunt

I wonder which of this GPS list is the cheapest?

I need one for my location based services (LBS) ideas that still titillates the wet corners of my mind from time to time.


traveller nox
-- no direction home...

SysAd Musings

MRTG reporting something consuming the bandwidth at 80%. After checking the mailq, I have 6K plus deferred messages also holding the CPU hostage (almost 50% ).

One command to rule them all:

postsuper -d ALL deferred

Modern day digital surgery of a machine's electronic artery. They do rhyme, don't they?



sysad nox
-- loving one liners...

MTR

Yes, I had been slacking off my sysadmin required reading and only now discovered this wonderful little bugger. Better than traceroute and ping. I like the live latency updates, and its quite fun using this on a machine connected via GPRS and 3G.


sysad nox
-pingin' and tracin'...

MRT woes

Wondering why its so hard to geta stored value card this days. Seems to go together with the recent announcements that G-Pass conduits now available at all MRT stations. Add to that the recent sightings of future-dressed G-Pass girls with old school megaphones(?) hawking the merits of G-Pass.

Another thing that caught my attention is the 1% deduction for every reload. Aside from the fact that it requires that you have at least 16 pesos balance to use the thing.

Let me see, its more expensive, you don't seem to get a bonus ride, the convenience factor compared to card based entry isn't that noticeable and last but not the least proprietary. Not surprisingly, MRT passengers doesn't seem to line up on those G-Pass booths, so what's keeping them from using it?

mobile nox
- <i>mo-bloggin on a southbound train...</i>

Today's bathroom musings.

In no particular frackin' order:
• IE version 6 below sucks! Period. Its a PITA when its the only browser incorrectly rendering your webpage.
• Good thing am a back end developer, but crossing the front end line is downright unavoidable. That's the time you curse cross browser rendering issues.
• HappySlip on youtube rocks. Now I won't dare leave our toothbrush in the bathroom. Its the "meesst" that haunts you. Love the paean mac song too.

slippy nox
- <i>still cursing IE 6, while singing happyslip's mac song, whilst outside the room inside my mind...</i>

Manila Times HopAround.net Article

Our little baby in beta (hoparound.net) got featured in an online manila times article. Reposting it here.


HopAround.net benefits
microenterprises in Vigan


A local tour guide and car rental operator based in Vigan may not have the knowledge or the resources to promote their services to a potential tourist from the other side of the continent. But soon, even those tasty empanadas created by the town’s manangs can be a byword in the ever-growing global village concept created by Internet technology.

For those who are interested to climb the High Peak in Palauig, Zambales—considered the highest point in Central Luzon at 2,030 meters—can now start with “a click of a mouse” by visiting www.Hop­Around.net, a web portal offering Internet visibility to micro-entrepreneurs in the country, along with the capacity to provide tourism services to local and foreign travelers.

“Entrepreneurs engaged in the tourism industry from all over the country will soon be given a ‘voice’ and a ‘face’ in the worldwide web for all travelers to see with the launch of HopAround,” Philip Camara, president of HopAround.net said.

Micro entrepreneurs in Palauig and nearby Iba who provide 4x4 vehicles, packed meals, camping gear, personal guides, and more, can now make their services visible in the Internet by registering at HopAround.net.

“HopAround’s basic advocacy is ‘Local Economy for Local People.’ The web portal will create new business opportunities for micro-entrepreneurs, referred to as Micro Tourism Service Providers [MTSP], who can provide transport, lodging, meals, guides, gear, packaged tours among others, for tourists,” Philip said.

Because the MTSPs are from the area, they have extensive knowledge of their particular locations and therefore know the most scenic destinations, the most interesting local culture sites, the best out-of-the-way local fare eateries, the most knowledgeable personal guides, the cleanest and most comfortable lodgings, and at the most competitive rates available, offering the tourist a totally different experience from the usual tour and travel packages in the market.

The HopAround website presents popular spots around the Philippines which tourists can review while mapping out their travel plans. Each destination will be linked with registered MTSPs from the chosen locality, each MTSP allocated with an online information box where the MTSPs contact details are posted and a chat window for inquiries provided. The tourist may access the listing of MTSPs and the contact details by clicking on the desired point of interest or location, thereby allowing direct interaction between the MTSP and the tourist or allowing the tourist to post an inquiry in the MTSP’s chat window.

“The more service providers there are enlisted to cater to this growing number of tourists, the better the local tourism industry will be. And since tourism impacts the economy greatly, both people and country will benefit,” he added.



oh yeah, hopefully this will let both foreign and local tourists/travellers find awesome destinations in the Philippines!



froggie nox
-- Life is an adventure. Look around, hop around...

Still Life

Still Life
Originally uploaded by nocs.

The typical workstation scenario. Tools of the trade. Music, light, mountain dew, water, tissue, alcohol, a cup of coffee/tea, keyboard and mouse, and last but not the least, my trusty sidekick/pda.

Its been a week now since I leave the lappy at home. I still miss it. Desktop GNOME, while vastly improved is still no match for the tight integration of apps on OS X. But its close. But this would do, as the iBook is out of warranty and no money to upgrade yet.

On the other hand, the dual core office workstation rocks! My apps compiles twice as fast! Makes me yearn for a core 2 duo macbook or better yet, a macbook pro! Dream on...


worker nox
-- because a clean desk is a sign of sick mind...

Life is an adventure. Look around, hop around...

Yesterday we launched HopAround.net beta!

This is basically an online app that aims to discover the unbeaten path. A different perspective in the online tourism sector. Basically we want to norture and build micro tourism entrepreneurs and build local economy for the local people. By discovering new places to go and micro entrepreneurs, we hope to bring a fresh and less costly approach in discovering the beauty of the Philippines.

We are also adding a pinch of a web 2.0 ingredients: building online communities and social participation. We are working closely with the locals in each province to add content. We are also working hard to throw in there our m-commerce and mobile apps experience. We still have a gazillion long feature list. Stay tuned.

Other than that, we want to be the one of the premier destinations on the net if you want to hop around the Philippine archipelago.


froggie nox
-- The Philippines today, tomorrow the world! The future is mobile, look around, hop around...