Author: Gabriel

Two Article Reposts and my fave PDI writers Part 1

So anyway, here are two of my articles that came out recently. One for PDI entitled “Two Stories of Technology Achievement Charity and Fulfillment“, and the cover story for this month’s issue for Speed Mag titled “A first view of Microsoft Vista”

Ok I know the PDI one was renamed to some incomprehensible title, with absolutely no relation to the subject story whatsoever, but what can I do? That’s what they wanna name it, fine. I can only close my eyes and re-read my orig version to enjoy it.

Incidentally, that was the ‘important’ article I was talking about last week. Important in the sense that it involved tech touching people’s lives and improving their appreciation of themselves, which, I suspect to everyone’s surprise, is what tech is supposed to do. A far cry from what they have become, flashy accoutrements to one’s life, to be used like jewelry to impress people, attain faux social status and burden one’s monthly income.

Continue reading Two Article Reposts and my fave PDI writers Part 1

I do not want to be busy anymore

I just dont. I want to go back to the days when we would just traipse to the mall to watch a movie at a moment’s notice. When we would roam the shops and the stores and the ruins (as in bf) of this world, and cause ourselves to get hungry and eat burritos and sip coffee and schedule trips out of town and change them as we saw fit at that moment to do.

Far, far too much to do. Much, much easier way there must be.

It’s all good.

i just spent almost 15 hours straight dealing with php, mysql, drupal, wordpress, iis, windows services, the mysql configurator, phpmyadmin, and googling topics like ‘mysql can’t find any matching role in the user table’, ‘#2003 – The server is not responding’, ‘Client does not support authentication protocol’, and the intricacies of ‘create table’, ‘create user’, ‘grant’ and ‘old passwords’, and i’ve finally gotten the goddam project running, but certainly not finished.

Ive got 2 articles to finish, 1 or 2 editors texting, another large project breathing down my neck, interviews to transcribe, videos to upload rip and burn, quotations and projects to quote and layout, clients to bill, receivables to receive, and a goddam water bill that’s threatening to cut us off tomorrow so that means I have to take a trip down to get money to pay it, pay it, then get back here hopefully with enough energy to resume what i’m doing before I left off.

Before that, i spent hours trying to figure out why kikay ex’s sidebar takes up more space when looking at individual posts than during the index, and before that, firing emails at a mailing list trying to fix my problem with the eventcal plugin, which is currently screwing up four of my blogs, all of which remain unresolved, at this moment eating away at my html / php / wordpress / mysql obsessive compulsive disorders.

Continue reading It’s all good.

Minor Panic

Deciding to take advantage of the morning – only bursts of speed ye PLDT DSL Gods allow us, I upgraded most of my blogs to the all – new, bright and shiny WordPress 2.1, after which I was jolted by a multiple post issue, where a post comes out in several instances depending on how many categories it was marked under.

I immediately posted it to the wordpress support area, which has now become a sort of archive for a blow by blow account of my experience, here.

Continue reading Minor Panic

The Slow

I hereby christen this horrible ordeal we’re going through as “The Slow”. And oh, for some visuals, here’s the only map of the cables I could find across our section of the world, stolen from awsj.com. And since I am a Spanish speaking God, I will translate it for you.

 
It says “Oh my God, the cables around this area have been severed, leaving the poor, unimportant z-rated bloggers around that area of the world cut off. But really, who cares? They don’t know half of what they’re talking about anyway. And besides, it makes the Internet just a little bit faster for the rest of us. Whoopee!!”

Continue reading The Slow

Do.Something.Productive.Now. and other Random Monday Thoughts

I just got back from the palengke. I love the palengke. It reminds me of Linux. Yes Linux. Basically, you get get only what you want, ignore everything you don’t want, and make it work exactly the way you want it. Sa palengke, bibilhin mo lang ang kailangan mo, sans wrapping, packaging and manufacturer marketing, tapos ok na, mabubuhay ka na dun. Sarap pa. At the guaranteed cheapest lowest price you can imagine.

No I don’t make a tech – analogy for everything I do. It’s just in this case it was because I was pursuing the idea in my mind so I can post it at PWIT. You see, I want to post a non – [tag]MAC[/tag] post at PWIT, declaring my love for the cheap, easy to use, always ready – to – go PC. Why? Because they’re all [tag]Mac lover[/tag]s there. From Adel to Art (I think) to Butch Dalisay. Yes I wanted to use his name so I can brag that I am group – blog mates with Palanca Hall of Famer Butch Dalisay. This gives me an, albeit misguided, but nice feeling just the same, that I have made it somewhere in the writing world. To prove we’re close, here’s a link to his blog. O diba? Put your 2nd and 3rd finger on your left hand together. Ganyan kami ka-close, pare.

At any rate, let me try to write the things down I wanna do today, disclaiming as I do, as to whether any or all of them will get done at all, considering how goddam slow the Internet is. In table form pa, with a 1 pixel border and 5 pixel cellpadding:

Continue reading Do.Something.Productive.Now. and other Random Monday Thoughts

Ok ok I’ll talk about the iPhone

Is it possible for someone to get sick of a product a few days after its announced, six months before it goes on retail, and a whole year (or so) before it’s available in Asia?

I mean, everywhere you go, it’s [tag]iPhone[/tag] this, iPhone that. On Google News, PWIT, Inq7 (oops ok that’s ‘inquirer.net’ now), all the local blogs and there’s even one in moderation queue at Kikay Exchange by one of the contributors. I talked about it both at my client’s office yesterday, and even with basketball buddies at our game last night. Talk about getting in the news, Jobs is a news – hogging God, but it’s not like we didn’t know that already.

Ok, here’s the things that kind of jumped out at me the first time I read its specs – which is pretty much what everybody else in the whole world can only do since like I said, it ain’t around yet and won’t be for a while.

Continue reading Ok ok I’ll talk about the iPhone

How much is slow costing us?

Yes I’m still talking about the Taiwan earthquake and resultant Internet mess. And the fact I am still on it means I am starting to get angry. And if you deduce that when I say I am starting to get angry it means I will huff and puff but do nothing but write on my blog pounding my keyboard a little harder, then you are correct-a-mondo.

At any rate, I had been invited by Hingemedia super head chief editor gadget head in, err, chief Adel to contri to P.W.I.T., (Philippine Week in Technology), the resulting acronym possibly recognizant of how he feels about it, but more likely because he thinks it sounds fun. A fun and intelligent man, Adel is. And surprisingly athletic! When we were in Tagaytay we caught MS Windows PM Chay Saputil smiling and enjoying an m|ph issue and I swear I’d never seen a man run, flip open his Canon 400d, get down on his knees and take a magazine worthy snap in, oh, that must have been .5 seconds! Amazing.

So anyway, let me take you to his post in PWIT, where he describes in light detail how affected they are at the office. Here he says:

Continue reading How much is slow costing us?

Article Repost: Things To Know About Microsoft Windows Vista

I regret the fact I didn’t write about how slow the ‘net was gonna be when I was writing my article about tech in 2007. I wrote it about the time the Taiwan earthquake happened and it was easy to see it was gonna kick us in the ass like it is now, as I wrote earlier. Incidentally I also regret not mentioning [tag]Alyssa Alano[/tag] in the ‘Year that was in Tech’ article, whom imo singlehandedly promoted YouTube to the masa via her manhandling of end make d parflays dance sylvimousse is barkley, so keys me. I mean, it’s even a consistent amongst my top posts, so how could I had possibly missed that??? Arrg.

Anyway, below is another article that came out today, re Vista. I’m still waiting for a promised test laptop (no, not a free one), which I gather is being upgraded to handle it better (the ones we tried in Tagaytay were rather inadequate), along with an interesting presentation that by Ivan Franco, MS Consumer Marketing Manager, re customer buying habits. I can probably make ten articles alone from his findings, so I’m raring to get my hands on that.

Continue reading Article Repost: Things To Know About Microsoft Windows Vista