Author: Gabriel

Dani California Vid and what little I know of Rock

Ex-boss Boss Ruby (who’ll forever be called ‘boss’ till the day I die) was kind enough to correct me on my Beatle’s “Rain” post, where I mentioned Paul McCartney was ‘years away’ from the ‘Eagles’ when it should’ve been ‘Wings’. Arrgh. Hey at least it was close.

So no sooner than this snafu was pointed out than when I checked out the Red Hot Chili Peppers “Dani California” video, where they parody several other rock bands, further testing my (by now, well established) weak rock knowledge.

So what the hey, let’s try naming them all:

Continue reading Dani California Vid and what little I know of Rock

Songs that make you weep

I just uploaded my Strawberry Switchblade Video On Youtube, singing one of their most famous hits “Since Yesterday”. Strawberry Switchblade is a UK two-girl band that started in the early 80’s, and whose songs reverberated all the way throughout high school and college in the 90’s.

I have two of their albums in vinyl (hopefully still ok in a box under the stairs), and hundreds of memories listening to them along with many other artists of that era with my friends.

I happened onto Joey’s blogpost this morning about Nostalgictrip.wordpress.com, and immediately decided to upload it so I can share the video with them, along with my own Youtube find, the Beatle’s 1966 Rain video (which believe it or not I give a listen to at least once a day).

Anyway, here’s the video I just uploaded:

Continue reading Songs that make you weep

Chingy / Tyrese: Youtube pick of the week

My to-do list is full, I got up late, and I’m all confused on what to start. What then to do?

Why, Surf Youtube of course! Second favored activity to “aimless – blog – hopping”, and followed by “playing – NBALive – 2k – until – my – eyes – turn – red”, Surfing Youtube aims to serve my need for superflous information and voyeuristic impulses whilst being only slightly more entertaining than channel surfing on the couch for a few hours.

At any rate, today we’ve got Chingy & Tyrese, with “Pullin me back”, definitely on my A-list of “songs to surreptitously download off the Internet”, incidentally, another favored activity.

Other than the killer beat, it features the fantastic Aston Martin Vanquish, and for a techie bent, the interesting Helio mobile phone, which I really wanna get a hold off one of these days, if only because of it’s very hip website and Myspace connectivity.

Then of course, there’s Yaya DaCosta, supplying the shorty role for the video, who was in America’s Next Top Model (2003), and in the movie “Take The Lead”, which I reviewed for Movie Exchange, btw (notice the not – so – subtle plugging. Smooth no?).

And now, for your viewing pleasure:

Continue reading Chingy / Tyrese: Youtube pick of the week

Disparate crossed out howto lists, misc. tech ramblings, and the cool weather.

Been really busy this past weekend doing any of the ff.:

  1. update all blogs (movie, basketball, Portia, aklatangpambata, upwinlaw, and this site to WordPress 2.0.3).
  2. updated Pinoywritersonline to Drupal 4.7.2 (from whatever ancient version it was)
  3. updated my photo gallery to Coppermine 1.4.8, again from whatever ancient version previous.
  4. uploaded the excellent Aklatangpambata pics to my photo gallery and to Flickr (ill explain later), thanks very much to Mr. Chris Lagman, btw.
  5. uploaded a whole boatload of gadget pics as well, and I’ll be adding a few more as soon as I dig them up off my PC.
  6. Found a way to display these pics from my Coppermine photo gallery onto the site, as shown below

    7. .

  7. still trying to find a way to display the Aklatangpambata pics onto the Aklatangpambata.org website. Problem is, the coppermineSC plugin requires it connect to the localhost db, and I haven’t managed to make it connect across different hosts (it’s hosted elsewhere). I’ve tried mysql.myhost.ph, myhost.ph:mysql, mysql:myhost.ph, and even my IP address, but no go. I’ve sent an email to mobilehive.com, my host, asking how that’s done. In the meantime, will have to do with Flickr, which is great of course, but I like hosting my own stuff.

    8. Continue reading Disparate crossed out howto lists, misc. tech ramblings, and the cool weather.

Akismet API Key FAQ needs rewrite

I’d been getting spam lately on my blogs, so I decided to give Akismet, the built-in WordPress anti-spam plugin, a try (usually i use the excellent Bot-check, a 100% effective solution for this blog, but I wanted to try something new).

Akismet activation however will be confusing for non-wordpress.com users (read: people who run wordpress by themselves, like myself and others who have their own domain). When a non-wordpress.com user activates it on his plugin area, it’ll say “Akismet is not active. You must enter your WordPress.com API key for it to work.”, after which it’ll give you instructions to look for it on your WordPress Dashboard, either on the Dashboard itself or when you click “My Account” (Users > Your Profile).

Continue reading Akismet API Key FAQ needs rewrite

I want one

Imagine this. You’re McGyver, and ninjas have you cornered in an office. So you pull out your Swiss knife, and fashion a giant slingshot out of the carpet and the leather from the office chairs. You then use the office cleaning detergents to make an explosive chemical to blast them away, and finally, you boot a computer out of an image you burned into your 1gb. USB drive to set it up with your OS and fave applications so you can blog about it as well!!

Hooray!!!

Continue reading I want one

Take The Lead

I believe that every good looking Hollywood actor eventually has a ‘suit movie’. In a ‘suit movie’, he gets to look great in a expensive looking suit. Robert Redford did his in ‘Indecent Proposal‘. Richard Gere did his in ‘Pretty Woman‘. George Clooney had his in Ocean’s Eleven and Intolerable Cruelty. Andy Garcia has the Godfather III. I can name countless more.

For me, Antonio Banderas ‘suit movie’ is ‘Take The Lead’, where he gets to wear nice talian threads in this movie adaptation of the true experiences of Ballroom great Pierre Dulaine, as he takes his love for dancing from the studios to the streets, via a ‘Dancing Classroom’ outreach program which had since been implemented in almost 7,500 elementary schools in New York.

The key word of course being ‘adaptation’, the most obvious sign of which, is that the students in the film are in high school, while the outreach program dealt with elementary school kids. To me, this meant that once the producers bought the license for the story, and the rights to do whatever they wished with it, pretty much every need to remain true to the story goes out the window.

So while Banderas and high school crew go through the ups and downs of their relationships with each other, dealing with such things as drugs, prostitution and such, Mr. Dulaine’s most difficult experiences may well have just been the need to occasionally keep his elementary kids’ from putting bubblegum into each other’s hair, or chasing around each other on a big wooden dancefloor. The variations of what may had truly transpired and what the studio writers produced are unlimited, and this bothered me somewhat.

Having said that, all is of course not lost, as the writers can still come up with a good movie. At this, however, they failed.

Continue reading Take The Lead

Tip to CoffeeShop Wifi freeloaders: Buy Something

.. and conversely, Tip to coffee shops with wifi: Tell them to.

This was bound to happen. A 20 year old man in Washington, US was charged with “theft of services” after mooching off of a coffee shop’s free internet access for three months without buying anything.

“He doesn’t buy anything,” Emily Pranger, the shop’s manager, told KATU, a Portland, Ore. television station. “It’s not right for him to come and use it.”

Smith allegedly parked his truck in the parking lot to use Brewed Awakenings’ wireless access.

Continue reading Tip to CoffeeShop Wifi freeloaders: Buy Something