Year: 2007
Re Comcast, AOL and MS buying into Facebook
There have been 3 alarming things re the internet on the news today. (btw yeah i’m gonna talk about tech again for once. Dont worry i’m not getting all political as per last few posts. I just write whatever gets in my head basically).
Anyway, these are that Comcast had apparently been blocking / delaying some Internet traffic, and that ‘Email forwarding’ is being looked into by the US’ FCC after someone there lost a lot of business when AOL closed her account without warning, cancelling her email account and damaging her business. And the 3rd and final one is that Microsoft has bought into Facebook.
Obviously these issues happened in the States and had affected Americans directly, but being on the Internet, the effect of these things are universal. If Comcast decides to limit Internet traffic on certain protocols, servers, or whatever, anyone on the Internet accessing them is gonna be affected, and yes that includes us here in the bush.
Continue reading Re Comcast, AOL and MS buying into Facebook
Looks like I’m gonna have to move this blog again.
My hosting costs are a bitch. Fortunately my previous problems with mysql and speed issues seem to have been resolved, but now my data transfer rates are through the roof, and I am making an inventory of everything in my server and deciding on whether to take them out (and most of the time it’s out).
So goodbye Movie Exchange?
Goodbye (gasp) Basketball Exchange?
Sigh. I dunno. It feels lousy that I’m stuck with the bill after projects didn’t push through. But what the hey, better they had failed now than in the future I guess. In the meantime, I’m sure this blog has to go too.
Oh well. Decisions have to be made. Nobody said it was gonna be easy.
A Review of ‘My Game’
This is a review of ‘My Game‘, an hour long documentary by director-producer tandem Carlo Ledesma and Mel Lozano that aims to highlight the roots of some of our basketball heroes, namely Nike talents Ren-Ren Ritualo, Don-Don Hontiveros, Arwind Santos, Jobe Nkemakolam, James Yap and Rico Maierhofer. Premiered last October 18, 2007 at the Powerplant Mall in Makati, it was a well – attended affair with a lot of prominent College and PBA stars in attendance, as well as numerous press and celebrities. Here are some reflections about the documentary. I will be writing about the players themselves in a future post.
First and foremost I’ll go right out and say that it is a terrific piece of work. Carlo Ledesma and Mel Lozano obviously put in a great amount of time and effort in this, but the most important factor that they brought is the one thing that previous and current coverage of basketball in the Philippines consistently fails to deliver – and that is soul.
Read the rest at Ballex!
RIP
- Jose Allan De Jesus
- Liza Marquez
- Lester Peregrina
- Janine Marcos
- Anthony Marius Arroyo
- Maria Celeste Cruz
- Jee Ann De Gracia
- Ceasar Niño Vidamo (earlier posted as Cesar Nino Vidano)
- Rainier Tan
- Maureen de Leon
- Ricardo Petras (earlier posted as Bertras)
As of right now these are the names of eleven people whose lives were inexplicably taken from them by some maniac who decided to blow up Glorietta the other day. I read these names and I wonder who they are, what they could have probably done to deserve their fate, and what level of lunacy there is to have influenced the nameless forces that had seen it fit to do such a thing.
And since we have no answer to any of these, the only thing we can do is to pray for them, and hope that one day whoever it is to have caused such grief will be held responsible, so as to bring even a flicker of meaning to all this craziness. It is only right.
Talking Myself To The Gym
No sooner had I finished two sessions at a nearby neighborhood gym than poof, off they go to a new location, nearer the new SM Tanay. Obviously Ye Gods are against me improving my health. There’s proof right there!
At any rate am trying at this very moment, as I write this, to get into my sweats and go over there to do some reps. I’ve not seen the new location yet but what the heck I got a rough sketch and idea where it is so I should really hie off to it.
It turns out I had been suffering from fatigue after Jill told me that that was usually the case when you wake up feeling completely exhausted and aching all over even after a full night’s sleep. Further investigation proves the same, and although I know I’m self – medicating here, it makes pretty much good sense. The past two workouts, a full two weeks ago by now, proved absolutely energizing and I felt completely refreshed and back to my old self – that being the bouncing off the walls – full of energy – ready to take on the world type. A week after that, I overworked myself when I went to a client and the day after woke up after a full 8 hours completely dazed, with a pounding headache and aching all over, with the light still turned on and holding the phone at that – indicating I fell asleep almost instantaneously after speaking on the phone, and stayed still throughout the night.
Accepting Money is ALWAYS a Bribe.
To all the governors, congressmen, mayors, and everyone involved. Let there be no mistake about it: The moment you accept cash, you are considered bribed. You have sold out. It’s amazing to me that there’s even debate about it, when it is crystal clear. It really doesn’t matter what you do with that money or whether they ask something from you or not.
Ok let me clarify that last statement down in three phases: First, how you’re gonna spend the money: In a situation like a Malacanang meeting, being given cash with no receipt by a cohort of the President indicates that she wants you to align yourself with her. You can spend it to feed the poor and homeless ala Mother Teresa, or you can go on a month long cruise in the Bahamas – it doesn’t matter.
Second, where it came from: Obviously the large sums of money didn’t come with a receipt. It was put in an envelope and handed out to them like so much hor’s devours at a dinner party. This indicates that efforts were made to detach the money from any sort of accounting and doing so, given the amounts, is already suspect. How could red flags not rise when you’re being given such a large amount? How could it not surprise anyone, or at the very least make it to the news if it weren’t for Among Ed’s almost casual remark about it? I’d suspect that if they received a P1,000.00 peso bill it should already have come to the press’ attention immediate, let alone P500,000.00
Thoughts on the Senate Hearings
This is a waaaay belated post that shouldve come out last month. Was just too lazy to actually publish it here but for all its worth, here are some random thoughts I put down when I was watching the Senate hearings of mid to late September. Enjoy.
I loved the Senate hearings. You don’t need to use words like ‘true to life’ when describing it, because it’s real live drama and comedy right there and then. Finally a way to figure out these people via realtime impression! Anyway, I thought I’d list down some impressions before I forget them, considering we may or may not be seeing any more of these for a while depending on further events.
Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano – As head of the panel on the NBN deal, I thought he was fairly up to task inasmuch as most of the Senators were eager to line up to ask their questions. Truth is, I was never really impressed at the guy. He’d occasionally make some slam bang accusation against the administration, guaranteeing an audience when he makes some speech or presentation, only to result in pffft, nothing. It has a lot to do with his lack of speaking (and maybe even writing) ability, in particular, focusing on what he’s trying to say. This is a basic, I think, most politicians need to master – which after developing that, a sense of drama would then be next. I have heard and watched a lot of his speeches and so called ‘exposes’, all of which leave me aching to tweak his speech. I’d understand what he’s trying to say, and imagine how best he should say it, but instead he says something that’s completely off-base, misses the point entirely, or most of the time forks onto another topic or topics. It’s a pain to hear him talk. Sometimes I think he just has too many things he wants to say at the same time.
Sen. Mar Roxas – I was actually planning to mention Mr. Palengke later on, but I’m adding him directly under Alan Cayetano to serve as a contrast to Cayetano’s inability to express himself. If A. Cayetano cannot bring two different thoughts on a single paragraph together, Roxas on the other hand is the master of it. When he started on CHED (formerly NEDA) chair Neri, Roxas knew exactly what he was doing, with one question leading to another and to another and onto, finally, his point. It’s obvious he thought it out as if knowing what the answers would be before he asks them, leading me to wonder if he was a lawyer (I couldn’t find out if he is on his website). He displayed the thought organization needed to make a point via direct questions, and then brought on the drama big and powerful as he reached the end. Unfortunately he starts screaming when he gets near his point, but I could see it as a headline maker anyway. And even then it was ok, because sure enough he finally got the clear reply – the two or three clear statement from Neri that made you second guess his sincerity – and you feel like applauding. Sure enough, Roxas gets the headline the next day. When the papers need an image or the TV needs a two second headline video, it’s Mar Roxas we’ll see, pounding (and screaming) away as he makes his point. As such there’s no question we’re going to see more of this guy in this country’s future. He obviously knows how to work a performance and I’m glad, in this case at least, he was on the side of the truth.
Hosting Thoughts
Migs, the high priest of Linux and server administration, whom I always look to for advice on such things, told me to write about my latest hosting issues and so I shall. I suppose this is a good way to talk and archive the recent problems I’d been having with the sites and what I do to fix it, and how I’m starting to realize that whatever ‘fix’ I do seems temporary since the site’s traffic increase again anyway that as soon as I enhance / improve performance, traffic increases again. I am therefore plagued, within days, by either mysql inefficiencies or run out of RAM. Anyway here’s a rundown:
Here’s a screenshot of Aug. 30’s mysql issues. WordPress serves that up when it can’t connect to the db. I emailed Rimuhosting about it and they figured out I was having issues with one of my favorite WordPress plugins called Counterize, which allowed me to produce those interesting stats at the footer of KikayEx which says ‘x number of visitors visited today, xx number the past 7 days. xxx number total since forever, and so on…‘. We activated an option on mysql to produce a ‘mysql-slow.log‘ which lists down all the mysql queries that take more than 2 seconds to complete. The results were stunning, as Counterize apparently had queries that take as long as 20 seconds, and at a given morning (not even a whole day), there were 40 queries already. Here’s how it looked:
Random Thoughts on KE and MomEx
I’m flummoxed by a bit of news I just now received over IM from a friend, and just when I was about to start writing this. It’s hit me like a ton of bricks but at this very moment I think the best thing to do is to act normal and hope for the best. Not that there’s a best thing to do in this case anyway. You just go ahead and do it.
I suppose this is a kind of obligatory blog update, considering its been weeks since I greeted Freddie Mercury a happy birthday. I will obligatorily mention how so many things have happened since, and how I’m obligated to say I don’t know where to start. But for the most part I think my attention has been focused on the Kikay Shop. I’ve added new face and body care products from Leyende, and the rest of the products are due for an overhaul as well, with their suppliers coming out with new stuff.
I’ve pretty much laid out how things are gonna go for Kikay Exchange I think. As a matter of fact it was the same way as I planned it out years ago, but I admit I lost my way a bit partly due to getting too involved in the nitty gritty details and partly because I may have lost confidence in my original plans. But, as a testament to the value of planning, the foundations of a good idea are really what carries it onwards. Sooner or later (hopefully sooner), the site’s strengths come out, and you find yourself carrying out the plan whether you’re still intent on it or not. It’s sort of like planning and working your ass of to make something work and then, years later saying ‘Wow! It Worked! Who knew?!‘