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.

Flower Power!

Flower Power
Originally uploaded by nocs.

Haven't blog in a while. Been too busy coding the Philippines coolest online tourism portal lately. I still have a ton of images to process during our Baguio Panagbenga trip.

Here is a teaser for now.

My Current Heroes

In no frackin' particular order.

- Apache mod alias "Redirect" feature. Smashingly shiny! Saved my butt because tiny_mce somehow ain't doing relative url mapping.
- JPEGImageEncode/Decoder and JPEGCodec bundled with most JDK's. Automatic server side image resizing galore. No more excuses to not accept high resolution images.
- The lazy web, for providing algorithms to keep that frackin' image aspect ratio.


Some thoughts, making an application user friendly is like asking a makeup artist to make her model look natural. Its a long and not so easy process.


dev nox
-- drag and drop, resize on demand, server side processing junkie...

Canola!

The Nokia N800 loaded with Canola is terribly sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttt!!!

However, I still dream of that dastardly result of combining the Sony PSP gaming system and the Maemo OS. That would really be undeniably shiny!

The Myth Of Talent

Worth the read. The download-able article argues that "talent is a set of skills you develop over time through desire". Not the typical "its either you have it or you don't".

Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Watch

Santa, its still a long time till Christmas, but maybe this could give you a headstart.

My fervent dreams of location based apps would definitely benefit from this little bulky bugger. Tracking the distance I walk everyday should be undeniably fun too. :)



gadget nox
-- wishful thinking...

Musings

- Frack! Broke my left eyeglass when am just about to leave the house this morning. Replacement would set me back 700 bucks. That's life.
- Loving NBA Live 2007 on the PSP. Makes me look forward to the train rides on my everday commute. Love the live commentaries and the much improved gameplay. My current season standing: 5 wins - 4 losses. Not bad for a newbie.Next game against the Bucks.

nox
-- on a northbound train...

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...