Not An Email Person

There’s a feature on Kikay Exchange about this girl’s products which are gaining its fair share of attention. Consequently, people have started leaving comments and asking questions that naturally, only the girl can answer properly, given the fact she makes them. Unfortunately, she doesn’t reply to emails promptly, if at all, making the whole exercise pretty much a shot in the dark. Jill told me her website has also mysteriously gone down, making info about her and her products even harder to get – what more those inquiring to buy.

Today, there’s a request for me to assist someone to set up his email account. Which is perfectly reasonable if not for the fact that this same person has pretty much been using the same computer, the same operating system, the same email client, and the same email account, username and password and all, for the past five years. In fact, to add perspective to this, in the same period my nephew has grown up from grade school to high school, and now knows how to set up an email account with the ease of, well, a grade schooler. During which time, person requiring assistance has apparently learned nothing.

Continue reading Not An Email Person

Ratatouille

ratatouilleWriting this, I realized that there are many ways you can approach Ratatouille, which is probably it’s main weakness. First and foremost, you can write about the lead character Remy, which is a rat, and approach how inappropriate this is for a movie about food.

Second, you can talk about the food, and the fact that this is probably the best food movie I’ve ever watched in a long long time, and how the scene where the lead bad person Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) is brought back to his youth after he eats some of Remy’s Ratatouille (which apparently is a peasant dish. I wouldn’t know since I wouldn’t even know where to find some), is somewhat similar to how I feel whenever I have some Sinigang sa Miso – a simple sour fish broth which is probably equally humble yet I’d elect to have as my very last dish on Earth if I were to be a prisoner on death row.

Third is, as I’ve mentioned above, Disney – Pixar’s absolutely superb movie making magic, and the fact that they have in the last few years produced some of the most fantastic movies in the likes of Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story and A Bug’s Life – all understated, fully animated features that to me, represent hope for great movie making in the classic style. Here is a movie company that understands the use of full animation as a tool rather than an end in itself, a Hollywood movie company apparently staffed by artists who know that just making something colorful and loud and hiring big stars to voice them does not necessarily a great movie make – no matter how much money it ends up making anyway.

And those are just some of the things I think about when thinking about Ratatouille. All interesting for sure, but unfortunately, a sign that I do not really know what to make of it.

Continue reading Ratatouille

I was about to start writing about this tragic PBA event

at Ballex (Noli Eala’s disbarment), when I happened to speak (YM) with Ruby Gan, one of our faaahbulous sponsors at Kikay Exchange, and owner of the Schu line of women’s shoes. Of course while talking to her, I do what most people normally do, and that’s check out her blog.

And lo and behold, I chanced upon the results of our contest with her – an online contest where she asks schu owners to send in pictures with the theme ‘Are you wearing your today‘,(ongoing with still a month to go) and I was absolutely floored with the results so far. In particular, this one:

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by Aggie, taken at the very recognizable Bulwagang Pilipino steps, and this one:

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by Leah, showing how she uses her shoes for work.

Continue reading I was about to start writing about this tragic PBA event

Kikay’s Nav Issue Fixed. My Biggest Annoyance Resolved.

Ok the long story is a few weeks ago, I blindly upgraded Kikay Ex to WP version 2.1.1 without really thinking, and before I knew it, my Previous Entries and Next Entries links at the bottom of the index (front) page disappeared, to my great horror and frustration. Apparently I wasn’t the only one, and it was a big issue with most other folks who did the same. Fortunately I had only upgraded Kikay at the time, but unfortunately, Kikay is the biggest draw of all the sites, so the fact that people couldn’t go through each and every page and post was a big issue.

To those who understand WordPress (and here’s the techie part), 2.1.1 deprecates (a fancy word for retires), the next_post_link and previous_posts_link, essentially keeping you, the viewer, from moving away from the first batch of post on the index page. I have been pulling my hair out trying to find a decent fix, but no go.

Enter Lester Chan’s WP-PageNavi 2.11 Plugin, and my prayers were answered. The truth is, I didn’t wanna use a plugin as I wanted to exhaust all efforts trying to find the ‘legal’ way first. But after two or so weeks searching (ok well maybe a total of 3 – 4 hours, which is already a lot still), I considered myself exhausted, and the fact that IT LOOKS GREAT, I decided to go for it.

So here’s how it looks like at the start:

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and after tweaking it’s CSS, here’s how it looks like now:

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doesn’t it look GREAAAAAT?!?!?! I added it on both the top and bottom areas.

Ok, now here’s the SEO explanation. (I have decided to include my SEO opinions to help people out who wanna learn these things):

Continue reading Kikay’s Nav Issue Fixed. My Biggest Annoyance Resolved.

Here’s a short long list of things I
need / want to do at this very moment.

  • Write a pulsating, heart rending blogpost about DLSU getting ripped by ADMU the other night for Ballex.
  • *NEW – Write a pulsating, heart rending blogpost about RP’s win against China last night.
  • Fix Kikay’s navigation issues.
  • Make a graphic for Kikay re Sale Alerts.
  • Contact a manufacturer of a cool product I like for feature on Kikay.
  • Make a feature article for Kikay on a new product I checked out last night (secret)
  • Make the Nike Post for Momex.
  • Make a (camera manufacturer) post for Ballex.
  • Prepare Sales Kit for Kikay.
  • Make a graphic for Mom for MomEx Forum.
  • Ask parent – friends to sell their used stuff on MomEx Forum.
  • Deal with a person who wants to sell items on MomEx.
  • Make a movie review of any of the last 3-5 movies I’ve watched recently for MovieEx.
  • Make a new graphic for MomEx Parents Ponder.
  • Add RSS feeds to my phone whose GPRS I’m starting to enjoy.
  • Write Start on SME article.
  • Make a new poll for Ballex.
  • Investigate the forum mod John Knight and Cola requested for BallEx forum.
  • Work for an hour a day for a week on client’s site.

    okidokey. off to work.

  • Announcing: The Mom Exchange Garage Sale!

    What is the MomEx Garage Sale?

    The MomEx Garage Sale was created to address two nagging questions every parent eventually realizes: The first being: “What am I going to do with my baby’s old stuff?“, and the second: “Where can I buy a pre-owned but functional baby car seat, toys or educational material?“. Enter MomEx’s Garage Sale, which allows parents to get rid of old toys cluttering up their garage while at the same time, helping those who need them save money.

    How Does It Work?

    First, you signup, and make sure you enter the Location (City or Municipality) where you live. Second, click the category where your item falls under, and enter as much details as possible re your item. Items are segregated into Toys, Clothes, Books, Shoes, Strollers, Car Seats, etc. (we will add new categories as needed). You can also post pictures by uploading them in photo sharing sites such as Flickr or Photobucket, and just paste them onto your post. If you are selling numerous items, click the “By Lot” category, and enumerate the items you are selling. We also have a special “We are having a garage sale” category, where you can post the dates and times of your garage sale. We also have a “Looking To Buy” forum for those who are doing the the reverse of this process.

    Continue reading Announcing: The Mom Exchange Garage Sale!

    Announcing The Ballex Sim League,
    and the formation of my Dream Team (Armchair) Basketball Analysts

    Albeit somewhat late, I’d like to formally announce Exchange.ph’s latest project, The Ballex Sim League. Here’s the clickable graphic:

    In a nutshell, a Basketball Sim (simulation) league allows you the chance to run an NBA team as its General Manager (GM). As such, you are in control of your team’s destiny for a period of months similar to the NBA’s. You can make player trades with other virtual GMs like yourself, adjust your player rotations, and even do such things as increase and decrease specific skillsets for your player(s). Factors such as salaries, salary caps, team schedules and a player’s ‘greed’ (or his desire to play for money / loyalty) are additional things to think about which add to it’s realism.

    There are two areas a virtual GM need to keep track of, namely the page where the game results are shown here, and the forum above. After you make adjustments to your team and perform trade after trade at the forum, you observe the game results to see how things go and make further adjustments / trades as needed. A virtual Commissioner, in the person of Gil Moreno (forum id: Cola), runs the simulations via a software he runs on his computer, uploads these results, and confirms / allows / supervises over all aspects of trading and adjustments on the virtual league – just like a real commissioner.

    Continue reading Announcing The Ballex Sim League,
    and the formation of my Dream Team (Armchair) Basketball Analysts

    Free Wifi, Burgoo and Bupkus –
    The myopia of P50.00 / hour outlets.

    I got called over to my client at Galleria early this morning, twice by staff slightly in hysterics about ‘not being able to connect’. When I got there, the issue it turns out, whatever the heck that was, resolved by itself. In other words, I pretty much wasted my day as I am unable to do most of my to-do list. I like using Kramer (my Athlon XP desktop, 1gb. RAM with a lovely 19″ LCD) for webwork and coding, and Karen, the laptop, for just plain watching videos and writing. And by golly do I have a lot to code.

    And so it turns out, it’s just me, an underpowered Karen (for the work I wanna do), Robinson Galeria’s Free WiFi, and a shitload of work today. Going home this afternoon isn’t a good idea as I wanna play in our weekly ballgame this evening. The trip from Ortigas to Cainta and back again is a major pain that’d leave me too wasted to work. And if I do work, I’m sure I’d be too wasted to play afterwards.

    Which leads me then to my main topic: The myopia of restaurants at the ‘tech lounge’ that see it fit to charge P50 / hour to plug a laptop into their outlets, regardless of whether you ordered anything or not. To me, it’s painfully obvious how disastrous that move is in terms of PR. You can show me all the stats, bills and studies made about customers over – using their privilege and so on, but all I have to do is one thing : Tell people (via my blog or whatever) that restos at the ‘tech lounge’ charge P50 / hour whether you order anything or not – and you should get my point.

    Continue reading Free Wifi, Burgoo and Bupkus –
    The myopia of P50.00 / hour outlets.

    Everyone, meet Karen. Karen, everyone.

    Funny how, since I’ve not blogged for such a long time, I actually forgot I had one. There I was thinking – man I should blog about this (topic), but how? Then I realized I had good ol’ lefthandedlayup. Shame shame.

    Anyway, ladies and gents, meet Karen. To the world, an IBM X21 P3, 256mb 20gb laptop. To me, Karen Walker of Will & Grace fame, my latest PC in a long line of PCs named after fave sitcom characters.

    x21_400.jpg

    Here are the reason I got it + some observations:

    Continue reading Everyone, meet Karen. Karen, everyone.