Category: Miscellaneous

I love Laszlo. But..

Ok fine. I’m starting to feel he’s a little underpowered. Hahaha. I know you’re laughing, Blen. But I can’t help it. Kapos e. Blame it on the fact I used to have a nice kick ass (ok, semi kick ass) Pentax SLR when I was a teen, and I took Mandy Navasero classes one bored summer way back 2,000 years ago in Makati. There I learned basic lighting and even *gasp* the lost art of film developing, which I eventually had to stop because it turned out I was allergic to the awful fumes. Sad, because I was actually getting pretty good at that.

Anyway point is, I’ve been doing the rounds of events and have started to make plans of my own, all involving the nice – to – have ability to produce good great fantastic images. Laszlo’s CMOS or whatever image gathering engine it has (I forgot) is up to the task. The problem is the lenses, or rather, the flexibility I miss if you can’t change to macro or wide angle lenses, or even insert filters. I absolutely loooved filters. I was Da Master of filters. I don’t think Laszlo’s lens can even do basic 35mm stuff the older SLRs could.

Continue reading I love Laszlo. But..

Finally Met Yuga

I’m very glad to have made Abe Olandre‘s acquaintance last Friday, finally, at a Nokia event. We were amongst the group who came very early, so I went up to him and explained who I was, and he was very accomodating.

He said he had heard of my sites from his kumpare Alwell whose managed web hosting service I used to use, probably when they were talking shop. I had to leave Mobilehive when the sites were exceeding my monthly allocations almost within the 1st week, which I’m sure I talked about at length on this blog.

Anyway, Abe has always been on my radar, but we’ve never had the chance to meet, mostly because I haven’t ever attended any sort of blog meetup or conference since I started. When we started talking, I felt as if I was talking to an old friend, and for good reason. He is the only person I have met who is in exactly the same business as I am, doing almost the same methods as I do as well. We are both publishers and we each own several blogs, each of which pursue their own paths. He came in from the web hosting side of things, never expecting to write, while I came from the writing and publishing world so to speak.

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Pacquiao Fearless Forecast plus Other Thoughts

I’ve been scouring the Internet for the past hour trying to find a streaming live video, audio or otherwise any whatever sort of livecast to no avail. I’ve found a few but they aren’t free, and their amateurish looking sites don’t look very reassuring, so no go.

Jill’s household usually buys into whatever Sky offers during Pacquiao fights to watch it live, but I’m still suffering from heat fatigue I got last Friday when I stupidly took a walk under direct sunlight for almost an hour, making me sick. I had two events that day and by the second one that evening my muscles were cramping and I felt like collapsing. Anyway I’ve decided to rest in for the weekend, and maybe get some work in too.

So anyway here’s what I think: Pacquiao’s gonna win. Which round? I dunno. What do I base this on? Just the way he looks. I know it sounds corny, but he does look like he’s got the ‘eye of the tiger’, whatever that is. Win or lose, he’s really become more impressive than I originally sized him up to be, mainly because inspite of the fact that he has already achieved far more than our wildest dreams would’ve thought anyone could, he’s still at it, training like his whole survival is at stake.

Continue reading Pacquiao Fearless Forecast plus Other Thoughts

Learn To Read

One of the nice things I like about big Press gigs is you occasionally get the chance to talk to other writers, many of whom have been in the business for decades. Yesterday I was seated beside friends from Manila Tribune, a sorta celeb guy from Studio 23 and interestingly enough, editors from 34 year old magazine Mod.

I unfortunately wasn’t able to ask for a calling card, so I forgot her name in the mayhem that is a Press event that included the usual big announcements, a displaying of new prods plus of course feeding us and raffling off prizes. At any rate we fortunately found time to small talk about a topic close to my heart, the dwindling number of readers and quality of written and spoken English in the Philippines, something she knew well about, coincidentally being a CEU Journalism Professor as well.

So here’re I’ll share a few things I’ve learned to believe.

One, is that I don’t think ‘Learn To Read campaigns’ are very effective. I’ve seen the ones Inquirer tried to do plus maybe a few others, and they’ve tried going the celebrity route (celebs explaining what reading has done for them etc.) but for the most part, that turns me off more than interests me. Of course, I’ve never been interested in celebs in the first place, so I’m probably an exception.

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I’m Coaching the 14-17 yr old boys Basketball Inter Village again

We’ll be known as the Clippers for some odd reason, and first practice is 7am Sat. I’m super excited primarily because it’s the same boys I’m coaching save for a few who’ve gotten older since last year, and secondarily because, secretly, I really wanna get back at the Blue team which beat us by a hair the last time.

As if I’m not busy enough.

Ack, no matter. The game has given me so much, but it has also taken so much as well. I would’ve thought that I’d have stopped learning now, years after the times when I was any good, and when I thought I could’ve contributed the most. If anything, I’ve learned playing it is essentially a selfish thing compared to coaching it. Consequently if there’s any reason why I’m not interested in playing it anymore, its because teaching it, coaching it and sharing it is a thousand times more fulfilling than playing it.

So there. Lesson learned. And more to come, it seems. At any rate, all basketball talk aside, if and when those boys need me, they know I’m just a knock on our door away.

Yay.

Today is a milestone day for the Exchanges, which I’ll extend to my person, if it doesn’t mind, as well. I just had a meeting that I’d never thought would’ve happened if I didn’t have my notes and their calling cards on my left breast pocket as proof. A meeting with the kind of people and the kind of topic that I’d have only dreamed about, and if you’d have told me would happen a month ago I’d have told you you were talking nonsense.

No it’s not Google or anything even close, but to me its a big step forward. I’m really sorry for not being able to talk about it directly, but I figure its good logic and business sense to keep my mouth shut, at least till things are on black and white.

Continue reading Yay.

Where’s My Money, PayPal?

Just wanted to add to the discussions around the local ‘net. Upon receiving news of the ability to withdraw from PayPal to a local account, I tried making a withdrawal of $50.00 to my Philippine bank account on Feb. 12, and I’ve yet to receive it. It’s already Feb. 27.

There are two methods for me to receive money via PayPal, one is via my UnionBank Eon card and another via the new method, using my SA account at a relatively big local bank. Today, I tried withdrawing via my Eon card (yes I haven’t learned my lesson), but I really need to set up a reliable method. I tried sending just $20.00 this time.

PayPal’s resolution system on their website is not adequate to handle these particular situations as it is designed primarily for ebay scenarios where delivery or service have been performed and there is non-payment, or variations of such.

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Taking Care Of My Sis’ Kids

I’ve been surrogate parent to my 2 nieces and nephew for the past 2 weeks since their mom has gone abroad. Lemme write down whats been going on:

  • The 19 year old is running for a Student Council position at UP and I don’t agree with her wild schedule that makes her go home near midnight almost daily. I’ve cleared most of it with her mom but I’ve pretty much made it clear making us worry isn’t cool. I don’t understand why she doesn’t wanna learn how to drive, I’d imagine teens would jump at a chance to learn because of the eventual next step – a car of their own, and besides we live so far away it’d definitely help her out. For the most part however she’s easy to deal with, it’s just the sched, and besides after seeing the traffic at our place she’s probably doing the right thing by not having to deal with that craziness everyday.

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