Month: November 2007

An Impressive Show Of Farce

But first before I launch into my tirade, imagine how it feels like to be an active Marine in the military these days. First, you’re sent off to Basilan or Jolo to fight equally if not better equipped than you, with hardly the kind of support needed in case you get wounded or shot. Then, you get to watch the news aghast as Congressmen walk out of Malacanang with gift bags filled with P500,000.00 in cash bundles.

How would you feel? After seeing your comrades die in battle because the military lacks the funds to provide for them and after constantly risking your own life fully knowing you may be next, I’d probably riddle the tv with bullets right there.

But let’s not even talk about the Marines. How about the OFWs? The government heralds these as heroes, but let’s face it. They’re victims. Victims of a government that is so corrupt it has forsaken the country it’s supposed to work for, and so therefore these decide look for employment overseas instead. Calling them heroes is assuming that these people prefer to go abroad. That’s bullshit. Why in the world would you wanna leave your family? Why would you want to have your children raised parentless or your relatives never knowing who you are? Given a choice, of course you’d want to stay home.

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The Perfect Writing Machine

This post is about my eternal search for a laptop as a writing machine, as opposed to a coding machine, gaming machine or whatever – else machine.

First, the best so far. To date, nothing I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot, beats the experience of the 6 (?) year old PowerBook G4. Inasmuch as I dislike all sorts of hype from all sorts of manufacturers (yes and that includes Jobs), they have got it right with this one. I wrote about it in the defunct PWIT and I’ll say it again here. The few times I managed to use this really knocked me out. Not only were the keys big and easy to find, the material (anodized aluminum) was cool and smooth to the touch and seemed better resistant to scratches than the Titanium models. More importantly the keyboard gives a reassuring just – right click each time that never made you second guess whether you did it right. The body seemed never to get too warm (somewhat contested, this) and was compact and light. Finally the screen graphics was typical Mac, meaning it was never too glaring and still gave good light running on batteries which normally goes down a level or two to preserve juice.

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Fools Rush In Book Review

I really enjoyed reading Fools Rush In, Nina Munk‘s research on the gargantuan AOL – Time Warner fiasco of the late 90’s and early 2000s. There is no better way, I think for a person to understand the Internet Bubble and dot com disaster of that era than reading a book that puts you right into the action of that crazy time, when the world was upside down and companies with little income can be valued more than a company that can honestly turn in profits, when companies that have taken decades to establish themselves can be upended by one that contains only promises.

I was starting out in my career at that time and followed these events and many others like a hawk. I remember clearly making a shift in my own career, deciding to learn everything I can about the Internet and consequently find a way to live off of it, rather than the more traditional alternatives, which was to work at say, Oracle or Microsoft (still in the same more or less industry but in way different directions).

But I remember very clearly how I couldn’t understand for the life of me, how businesses which did not issue a clear and straightforward way to make money (other than ads), could be valued so highly by the public, and ask for (and get) so many millions if not billions of venture capital funding and via public IPOs.

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Lust, Caution Movie Review

From the moment that I first saw the movie’s preview I had determined that I wasn’t going to miss it, and when I finally watched it it just went ahead and exceeded all expectations. Lust, Caution (Se, Jie) is an amazing piece of story – telling – an intricate, tightly wound tale between lovers whose love has no right to exist in the turbulence and violence of the world that surrounds it, but exists just the same.

I had been thinking a great deal about this amazingly beautiful movie. Ang Lee never lets up at any time throughout, providing striking image upon image of a war torn yet still somewhat beautiful 1940s Hong Kong and Shanghai. Yet at the end of it in an almost Shakespearean process, it brings home the very simple story of a love that is not right, shouldn’t be, should never have been and yet still exists.

There is a great deal of pulling and pushing, of the story moving across time and involving characters who change and mature in the midst of a tumultuous war providing the backdrop to the conflict making their love even more implausible.

Read the rest at FlickManiac!

PLUG Meeting Notes

Note: In lieu of PLUG’s website, which is still to be reestablished, I am posting herewith notes of our meeting last 11.09.07 at Bo’s Coffee Robinson’s Galleria.

The following attended the meeting (loosely referred to as ‘the group’ below):

Ryan S. Ching ryan.s.ching@gmail.com
Victor E. Mendoza vicmendoza@gmail.com
Paolo Alexis Falcone pfalcone@free.net.ph
AC Perdon acperdon@gmail.com
Ian Sison ians@qsr.com.ph
Joebert Jacoba joebertj@gmail.com
Mark Achanzar mark@mymegamobile.com
Gabriel “Gary” Mercado (myself)

The topics discussed were as follows (in no particular order):

PLUG Website –

Paolo explained that the website is not functional due to an upgrade error. As a result he is unable to extricate the contents of a PLONE 2.0x archive file that contains 10 years worth of data. This has been compounded by the fact that since there is no PLUG board to decide on this, he has not been able to determine the proper course of action to take.

Inspite of the unavailability of this archive, the group has decided to establish a new one. While Ian prefers a WIKI type of website, Ryan has offered the services of a local Drupal Users Group which the group had decided to be the best path to take. Ian will volunteer a domain name for the website, while hosting will continue to be at Mr. Jijo Sevilla’s server.

The group has determined that establishing a new website is an important priority as this will function as an important way to communicate with its members alongside the mailing list.

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Oh Lord, won’t you give me $30,000.00?*

I just read this article talking about an internet startup involving a girl and her boyfriend in New York. Of course, the word ‘internet startup’ interests me, but when I read it involved just two people, a girl and her boyfriend living and working out of an apartment in New York on a shoestring budget, the similarities between what Jill and myself are doing got me hooked.

Naturally the parts that I could relate to were interesting to read. The fact we have to maintain day jobs, the sleepless nights, the unusual working conditions that are par for the course for most internet plays (or most starting businesses for that matter). But then I read they started out with USD $30,000.00, then the interest turned to something akin to ‘sus!‘.

$30k is P1,290,000.00 even in these weak dollar times, and by God if I had that kind of money, I promise you now, and I’m not kidding you: I’d have a site that’d be pulling hits in the 5,000 or so a day – almost every retail fashion store in Manila would want to be doing business with us – and I’d have 3 to 6 other sites shaking up their specific industries, doing strong plays on their own.

Continue reading Oh Lord, won’t you give me $30,000.00?*

Kikay Exchange’s Breakthrough Day

Our baby had an important day yesterday, Nov. 9th, for the first time registering 617 unique hits, the most ever in one day.

So let me just say it: Our little baby is now a lady :). Urk.

Anyway, the most number of visitors was recorded at 58 concurrent at 10:00 in the morning, with the least at 6 people at 5AM. That’s an average of 25.7 visitors per hour.

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aaand we’re back! (again)

Finally found a good enough host for this blog, and Movie Exchange as well, which we are now re-christening as (drumroll please…):

flickmaniac.com

awww yeah. I admit there was a point when I was wondering if I was even gonna resurrect either blog, but I decided, what the heck. The cost isn’t too steep and besides, I really don’t like the idea of stuff I’ve written in either blog to just disappear forever. Not that I’m necessarily the most read-worthy or sensible (or even consistent) blogger in the world but hey, I occasionally have my moments (at least I hope so) so I really don’t want it all to end up as some .tarball on my hard disk after all that work.

Having said that, I’d like to say I also miss PWIT (Philippine Week in Tech) too, which I was writing for a few months back but unfortunately was put to pasture by Adel. Truth is I have a lot of explaining to do as per the fact I missed out on writing duties on that blog when it was still around, but at the end of the day I kinda feel bad that stuff I wrote on it is gone forever. So Adel, if you read this, please holler if you’re interested in working to put it together again ok? I promise I’ll be more diligent in my writing duties.

Continue reading aaand we’re back! (again)

You gotta love Manong Masahista

I played a lot of ball most of the afternoon. As a result I’m completely bushed and aching all over, but overall I feel great. I outlasted a lot of guys mostly because, I think, I managed to get a good massage a few days ago. At this point you might think I’m about to recommend some ultra posh Thai or exotic place. Would you believe it was courtesy of your everyday typical manong barbershop around the village corner? And all of a pittance: P250.00 at that, with a haircut included.

I was having a haircut at said neighborhood barbershop when he started giving me a vigorous neck rub, a sign anyone who regularly goes to such places knows marks the end of the session. It felt great so I asked if he does massages, he said yes mentioned p200 and off we went. Now I’ve tried all sorts of ultra posh massages at so many places and even expensive home service types already, but this one made me feel like I wanted to knock my head for all that wasted money. Manong twisted, gripped and kneaded my back, arms and legs like so much pliant dough. He used his rough fingers (made smoother by some cheap lotion. Mental note: bring my own next time) to find knotted up veins jammed with toxins and proceeded to attack it with the force of a vise grip over and over until it softened and passed through. To the uninitiated it would have felt like complete torture, but I knew what he was doing. The last time I went through anything like that must have been more than a decade ago, when I was still playing for a team that had a guy like manong masahista slathering myself and my teammates with buckets of what seemed like ben gay, but was 10 times worse – and stung to high heavens, and then used the same tortuous procedure that makes you swear and spit in pain as if you were being knifed.

Continue reading You gotta love Manong Masahista