Author: Gabriel

Sorry no smart title for this one

At the moment I can’t help but want more than anything else to wring someone’s neck. A situation happened with a client late this morning and it has led an influential person there to come to the conclusion that I am trying to squeeze him for money. It basically involves asking me to do a service he is assuming to be free but is definitely not and can never be such.

As a result, and this is more distressing, the whole day hasn’t turned out as productive as I would’ve hoped. I made a firm decision to stay home today to try and work through my to do list and I was actually starting out like a house on fire in the morning. But due to the situation and the ensuing phone call where the harsh words caught me off guard, I’ve been severely distracted.

I cannot for the life of me try and concentrate on the tasks at hand and catch myself thinking about it every few minutes. I’ve tried taking a walk, playing a video game, speaking about it with Jill for a few minutes and even watching an NBA game, hoping that by the time it’s over I’d be able to get back to work, but no go.

The strange thing about this is for the most part, I’m not usually easily distracted by issues and arguments with difficult people. In fact I like to think I’ve got a technique down pat, which involves categorizing people who make life difficult for me as fools not worth my time. It’s 100% effective because from that point onwards I start ignoring even their best efforts to make it worse.

Continue reading Sorry no smart title for this one

You’re A God And I Am Not And I Just Thought That You Would Know

Yes those are lyrics, but before all that:

“Yes. Thank you very much for the excellent service. Looking forward to more transactions with you.” – Ms. J. M. Rodrigo of ADMU

– and that my friends, is a quote (with permission) just received from a buyer from the Kikay Shop, after a routine check if they’ve rec’vd the goods.

WOOOOHOOOOOO!

I suppose I should be even a little bit used to it by now, but I swear to God the high I get from encouraging words are worth all the hard work, and by hard work, I mean not having a life anymore, constantly worrying about the site(s), and working on it day in and day out so much that everyday is just a gray blur. Sooner or later we’re gonna get a sucky mark I know, that’s the way things work. So when that happens its best to remember quotes like that wouldn’t you agree?

And now that’s over with, to the topic at hand.

Vertical Horizon is coming to Manila.

Continue reading You’re A God And I Am Not And I Just Thought That You Would Know

Fairly eventful day if not marked somewhat by physical inactivity

I wanted to work out this morning but hey, what I like about working out is that its easy to make excuses, right? So my excuse is I slept late and therefore woke up late and hence my life albeit unhealthy is, however, explained properly, for what that’s worth.

But first, CONGRATULATIONS MAUI. To anyone that wants to see a unique and special incident check that out. You got your celebrity, your big drama and suspense, your internet angle (for the techies) plus pics and everything to document it. Way to go.

Other things marking this day is the completion of 4 out 1,384,592 on my todo list. Primarily, I’ve started uploading Schu products on the Kikay Shop. I’ve uploaded 18, so there’s 423,382,782 to go. Then I billed 3 clients and submitted a ‘Kikay Shop Recommendations for the Holiday Season’ to a publication that will remain unnamed, but if you wanna know, check out the Inquirer on Wednesday.

Then I asked a question about local hosting (yes I’m thinking of hosting again) on PLUG’s mailing list, where respondents unfortunately explained what I already feared – that there is no such thing as affordable hosting in the Philippines. If you wanna know why, hosting in the Philippines is better for me since 79% of the site’s visitors are local. Well, ok I admit I just made that up but that’s a good guesstimate.

Continue reading Fairly eventful day if not marked somewhat by physical inactivity

OpenSocial and the Freaky Future

Google’s video re Opensocial is a freaking 57 minutes long so I didn’t get to watch all of it (my downloads are hogging the bandwidth), but it’s purpose is fairly clear. The Social networking phenomenon needs a way to hook them all up together and Google is answering the call. The html+javascript implementation is a no brainer for most developers and by using it, not only are social networking sites accessing other, more established services and therefore saving yourself the time and effort of development and research, while at the same time actually saving bandwidth as you are pulling from their servers.

Before I watched the video the whole idea reminded me somewhat (whether related or not), about OpenID. It’s obviously far more richer and deeper than that, but for the most part the ‘sharing’ idea is the same.

So my thoughts:

Continue reading OpenSocial and the Freaky Future

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.

Continue reading PLUG Meeting Notes