Just when I thought my favorite locally circulated tech magazine has gone defunct, I went inside our neighborhood 7-11 to buy a bottle of my favorite apple-flavored green tea and, lo and behold, I saw copies of the March 2009 issue of Tomorrow's Technology Today, or T3.
I was totally stoked. I searched far and wide for the non-existent February issue last month and was convinced that the mag's local franchise has indeed been buried six feet under. But there it was. Megan Fox Young holding the Palm Pre on the cover. T3. Resuscitated. Hallelujah.
The comeback issue, as already mentioned, features the Palm Pre, touted as the ultimate iPhone killer. Really now? If anything, it only reinforces the iPhone's reputation as a piece of technology to be reckoned with. I find it quite amusing that in this issue bearing a so-called iPhone killer on the cover, the iPhone makes an appearance every five or so pages.
Between its features on the new wristphone from LG and its showdown of handheld game consoles, the article on tech gone horribly wrong entitled When Gadgets Attack was a particularly fun read. It recounts the story of the Y2K Bug, the ZTE-NBN scandal and the man who was arrested for shooting his allegedly sluggish laptop in the middle of a bar. Those stories pale in comparison though to that of America's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan, former US president George W. Bush and the gyroscopically geeky Segway.Segway tumbles
After George W Bush fell from his Segway in 2003, former Mirror editor Piers Morgan ran the headline: "You'd have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn't you Mr President?" Three years on, Morgan fell from a Segway, breaking three ribs. Takes one to know one, Morgan. (T3 Philippines, March 2009, p. 74)
Watch Piers Morgan and his trusty Segway in action through the tube below.
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T3: The Return of the Fallen
Paperplurk
In this first ever paperplurk...
dal, ROOOOON, ZOHAN, KhrysCyril, gawbler (the plurked, not the plurker) and adams_cute (one of dal's plurkemons).
Props to my plurkpals (the first four in above series) for yet another plurkthrough. (woot) You guys (rock)! (dance)
Continue reading...
ECE Board Exam March 2009 Starts Tomorrow!
28 March 2009
7.00AM - 7.45AM General instructions, filling out of forms
8.00AM - 12.00PM Mathematics (20%)
1.00PM - 6.00PM Electronics Engineering (30%)
29 March 2009
8.00AM - 12.00PM General Engineering and Applied Sciences (20%)
1.00PM - 6.00PM Electronics Systems and Technologies (30%)
Thank God this is not my schedule for the weekend. I've been through all of that, thank you very much. But for those of you whose planners include the above table, I wish you all good luck and hope your sanity remains intact as you take the Electronics Engineer (ECE) Licensure Exams. (Special shout-outs go to my good friends Earl and Jenny and to my fellow Louisians. You know the drill: Go SLU!)
In related news, the Institute of Electronics Engineers of the Philippines (IECEP), the Accredited Professional Organization (APO) for ECEs, has just launched a member blog. I'm not entirely sure though if it's supposed to be this one here or this one here. Either way, for an org that's supposed to represent innovation, I found the blog(s) to be less than appealing. The main IECEP site isn't remotely interesting either. Perhaps they could hire Web-savvy ECEs (such as myself *LOL*) to help design their pages. ECEs are not called designers for nothing, you know.
Continue reading...
Lunch Bag Art
Art on lunch bags. Lunch bag art. Made every day by one uber-talented dad for his uber-lucky kids.
Click here to check out his awesome collection. For certain, as soon as you do, you'll be wishing he was your dad, too.
Continue reading...
Of Hoomans and Plurkemons
One of this week's Urban Dictionary words of the day was this:
March 23: Facebookemon
The term used for the collection of people, on your Facebook friends list, that you don't actually talk to or know in real life. Related to popular tv program and game Pokemon, where the aim is to collect as many different Pocket Monsters as possible.
Dave - "Hey, my friends collection is getting up to two hundred"
Steve - "How many do you really know? Go admit it, most of them are Facebookemon"
John - "Gotta catch em all, gotta catch em all"
This word then inspired me to coin a term that is similar in meaning: Plurkemon.
In a nutshell, a Plurkemon is one of your fans on Plurk, as opposed to somebody on your Plurk friends list. Plurkemons are supposedly plurkers who by some wonderful or wicked (it all depends on what ensues) twist or fate landed on your Plurk page, found you quite interesting and asked you to add them up. You add them as fans of course. But it doesn't stop there.
Some of the more interesting Plurkemons I've come to know over the last few days actually aren't "mine." They're fans of a close friend and fellow plurker who currently goes by the Plurk display name, dal. I was going to link her name to her Plurk profile but I reckon she doesn't need the plug at all. She just informed me that today alone,
Anyhoo, what makes these Plurkemons interesting (read: by turns entertaining and annoying) are the incredible manner in which they manage to pop up with unintentionally funny replies and totally out-of-this-world comments to dal's often interrogative plurks. Case in point:
dal [says] how do you like your egg? scrambled.poached.. :-))
...
plurkemon1 [says] mas masarap ata ang scramble f ur, alone
...
plurkemon1 [says] masarap na kahit d mo na iluto, scramble mo lng ng mabilis.
Tsk, tsk. Taking a shot at a double entendre, are we now?
dal [asks] would you rather be invisible or invincible?
plurkemon2 [says] i rather be invincible..
plurkemon2 [says] but not for God..
plurkemon3 [says] none of the above..
plurkemon3 [says] God is the most powerful of all..
Er, Amen?
Gotta catch em all! On second thought, maybe not. :-P
Continue reading...
Privacy Policy
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Google Me This, Google Maps
Another post by Ian, a fellow Google enthusiast.
First of all, I just have to say that I am really sorry for not posting anything for the past two weeks. My day job has been quite taxing at the very least and I have had to stay at the office till the wee wee hours: around 8 to 10 pm. So, dear readers, I ask you to accept my most sincere apology...even though it wasn’t my fault.
Google Maps. Downloaded this little gem for my Nokia 5800 a little less than a week ago and my original opinion hasn’t changed since then: it beats the hay out of the pre-installed Nokia Maps 2.0.
For one thing, Google Maps is fast. It can locate my position within 30 meters in less than a minute whilst Nokia Maps clocked in at a very disappointing 5 minutes. This is probably because Google Maps, apart from GPS signals, also uses timing signals from the cellular network towers in the area. This means you can still see your position indoors. An added bonus with using a Google navigation app is access to Google Earth topography. That is, searchable satellite shots of any area you happen to be viewing are downloaded straight to your phone. Included also are all user created bookmarks on Google Earth. Of course, you’d need internet access to get the images but once they’re there the maps stay in memory. A 3G or HSDPA connection would be ideal. GPRS is okay but would definitely take longer to load.
I activated Google Maps on the shuttle on my way home from work last Friday. I couldn’t help but feel really cool as I watched my location being updated every few meters. Also came in handy this Saturday when I and Renee were looking for Robinson’s Mall at Sta. Rosa.
This is one app that’s definitely for keeps. Good thing it’s free as are most apps from Google. Gone are the days when I ask for directions from Chowking security guards and jeepney drivers. Metro Manila will never again seem so daunting.
What a Google-y Day!
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Scary. Apparently, the volume of queries sent from my IP address was too high for Google to handle. Go figure. This posed a host of problems for me, the most consequential of which was my being blocked from my blog's dashboard!
Good thing I'm using a humble USB HSDPA dongle for my Internet connection, which translates to dynamic IP addresses. I disconnected from the network, reconnected and sighed with relief. Nice to see you again, Google.
It's interesting to note that this incident happened a mere two hours after I successfully installed a Google-powered search engine on this blog. It's that lovely thing right there at the upper right corner. I woke up feeling particularly geeky so I signed up for an API here and set out to fashion myself my very own Ajax search engine. It was quite a demanding task but I'm mighty proud of the result. Try it out! Enter a keyword in the search bar and the results will automagically appear right below it. Click on the three little tabs to show just one result, show more results, or show all results. Thank God for Ajax.
After trying my very own implementation of Google, you might also want to try these cool Google mods:
I <3 Google. Even if it shut me off my blog. Continue reading...
iPhone OS 3.0. Can You Say, w00t?
I know this post is three days late, but here it is. Last March 17, the uber-geeky folks at Apple gave a Keynote presentation previewing the next big update to "the most advanced mobile OS" mankind has ever seen: the iPhone platform.
For developers, the good news comes in the shape of at least a thousand new APIs that would enable them to add more app functionalities. For consumers like me, it's even more drool-worthy. Cut, copy and paste. Finally! Landscape email and text messaging. Perfect for my stubby fingers. Search on the iPhone. Spotlight, sweet! Bluetooth sharing and A2DP. Sigh, suddenly I regret giving away my stereo Bluetooth headset. Plus more awesome new features. See the abridged YouTube video of the presentation and prepare to be awe-inspired after the jump.
New Pad, New Blog Theme
My loyal blog followers (I have three, based on my last count) may have noticed that this blog has undergone an overhaul. There's also a big chance that they have not. Regardless, I got rid of the former, ad-centric theme in favor of this content-centric, and more visually pleasing, if I say so myself, template. The makeover was instigated partly by another big shift that recently happened to my otherwise uneventful life. I moved house.
After reaching the end of our year-long contract with our landlord in our old--and I do mean old--townhouse located just 20 minutes away by foot from where I work, I and my co-tenants set out to find another domicile. Along the way I decided to go on a solo flight and in the end I landed on a room for rent in Sampaloc, Manila, just 20 minutes away by FX from the same destination.
I have to say I'm enjoying my new abode and the freedom that comes with sharing one's space with no-one. I'm particularly glad of the fact that, in this little cardboard box (a very apt phrase suggested by my editor at WhatsOniPhone.com, Dan) I now call my home away from home, I wouldn't have to worry about where to plug my mobile phone charger, my notebook and my other mobile phone charger every time I get home anymore. I am now the sole user of a wall socket and a universal extension cord. Sweet.
Haiku to Baguio
Paul Simon was going to Graceland, Toto blessed the rains down in Africa – what place would you write a song about?
It's known by a lot of titles. The Summer Capital of the Philippines. The City of Pines. The City of Lights. But I call this patch of heaven on earth only by its true name: Home.
Amid the cool breeze,
We journey down Session Road.
To infinity.
Continue reading...
The i's Have It
It's no secret that I'm a huge, huge Apple fan. From my mobile phone to my OS, it's evident that I'm all about anything and everything that originates from the Infinite Loop in Cupertino. As such, I always see to it that I'm up to date with what's up and what's new with Steve Jobs' consumer electronics chocolate factory. And this past week was a particularly exciting one, what with the release of a version-up for iTunes 8 and, far more important, the announcement of the 3rd-generation iPod shuffle.
Faster, smarter, better, iTunes 8.1 promises to be. The official release note reads:
Download iTunes 8.1 here.
The new iPod shuffle is touted as the world's smallest mp3 player, with dimensions of just 1.8" x 0.3". It's so small I'm pretty sure I'd lose it (or accidentally swallow it) within ten minutes after unboxing it, that is if I ever get one. Aside from the reduction in size, another key difference from previous generations is the location of controls. The new iPod shuffle has none of them; they're now located along the earbud cord. What this basically means is you can't use your favorite third-party earphones with it. Another selling point of the product is something called VoiceOver, which tells the title and the artist of the song that's playing. With 4GB of storage, more than enough for your beloved Boyce Avenue collection, the 3rd-gen iPod shuffle costs a little over P4000. Order online to avail of the free laser engraving on your new iPod.
In other Apple-related news, we have this YouTube video of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak doing his thing on the dance floor in Dancing with the Stars. You gotta hand it to the Woz...
Songs to Help You Through a Break-up
Granted, these songs are not big cheer-uppers. But they sure as heck help in releasing those bottled-up emo-tions. And I got them by doing a quick search for "break" on my iTunes Library. Guilty as charged. 0_o
Continue reading...
Plurk and Plinky, Sitting on a Tree
No, they're not K-I-S-S-I-N-G. They're revolutionizing the way Web-savvy people like me look at social networking and, specifically, microblogging.
Aside from the obvious Facebook, I've been wired to my notebook for quite some time now partly due to the two titular sites. And for good reasons.
I first registered for Plurk (Your life, on the line.) three months ago and has since created a total of three accounts, jumping from one to the newer until finally settling on my account here. It's by far the most addictive thing I've clicked my mouse on in the intertubes. It works much like the now world-famous Twitter, but I prefer Plurk for its awesome river-like timeline, neat karma implementation and compendium of fun emoticons. Another cool thing is the ability to automagically post your plurks (as your status updates are called in Plurkdom) to your accounts in Facebook, Friendster, Multiply and even Twitter.
A fairly new player in the social networking field, Plinky (You have lots to share. We can help.) claims to make creating "inspired content" easier by putting up a new prompt each day, which users post answers to. An example of a prompt is the one which asked, "Frankly, Rosebud, you can't handle the truth! Have a favorite line from a movie?" That prompt "inspired" my previous post. I was able to post my answer to this blog not by copy-and-paste, but by one of Plinky's features that lets adding rich media to other networks, including Blogger, Facebook and Twitter, easy as pie. You can view my newly installed Plinky profile here.
"Frankly, Rosebud, you can't handle the truth!"
My favorite movie line is from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, said by Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) to Clementime Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) in that exact scene depicted in the DVD cover, shown alongside the quote after the break.
"I could die right now, Clem. I'm just... happy. I've never felt that before. I'm just exactly where I want to be."
16-July-09
When that day arrives, I shall be on leave.
Why?
Harry Potter. That's why.
Scylla and Charybdis
Almost three years ago, while stuck between a rock and a hard place, I published my very first blog post. I was still smitten with Friendster then so I had my very first blog hosted on the site. That blog has long been dormant, as stagnant as the now moribund social networking site itself. It's still viewable here, all 22 of my stirring, often college-boy-angst-laden, posts. But I'm migrating some, if not all, of them to this blog for posterity, beginning with the one that started it all:Finally, I’ve gotten around to making one of these things where one writes supposedly interesting stuff that ultimately translates into useless crap in someone else’s self-proclaimed superior mind. Yeah, write.
Personally, I think blogs (that’s weblogs to you, Mr. The-Geek-Shall-Inherit-The-Earth) are underrated. The authors (most of them, at least) spend hours and hours composing a post or two just for the heck of it, knowing nobody ever reads them. Oh well.
As such, here I am. Stuck between the state of being completely drained out of what sanity I have left if I were not to conquer the ever persistent boredom that comes with living in the gutters of assiduousness and the state of being totally bored and filled up with random thoughts that make perfect sense at the onset then turns into outright shenanigans once I delve into them, I opted to boldly go where no sane man has gone before–blogging!
In view of that, the reader is hereby warned of what may come about in the coming days, weeks, and years.
Emo sucks and pigs can fly.
Harry Potter (Birthday greetings are in order to the most popular fictional character ever since Jim Carrey and to the author who imagined him.) is crap and ECE is a piece of cake.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Experience Secondhand Serenade Firsthand
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus was in town yesterday and an idiot let his indolence get in the way of catching the band perform live. Now that idiot just learned another of his favorite artists is coming to the metro for a series of free acoustic/rock/emo shows, and this time he vows to not be a complete idiot again.
John Vesely a.k.a Secondhand Serenade is stopping by the Philippines this March. The MySpace star will be on stage at the Greenbelt Mall, Makati, on the 28th, Trinoma, QC, on the 29th and at the Ayala Center, Cebu, on the 30th.
P.S. The non-idiot-to-be is going on the 29th. Catch you there!
Years Ago, I Knew a Boy...
So begins the newly released trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth installment in the highly lucrative film franchise based on the highly lucrative book series. All I can say is, "Wow!" It's dark, intense and absolutely epic. And I'm not just saying this because I'm a huge fan. It really is. The long wait could very well be worth it. Really worth it.
Download the iPod/iPhone version (.m4v) here. Watch the YouTube video after the jump.
Chuck Bartowski and the Government's Secrets
What will you do when, out of the blue, all of the United States government’s deepest and darkest secrets are downloaded to your brain? Will you get excited and feel a sudden surge of power and importance, knowing that you have an entire database of intelligence right beneath that hard skull of yours? Will you log in immediately to your Friendster, MySpace, Multiply and/or Facebook account and blog about the fact that you’re now a walking supercomputer? For Charles “Chuck” Bartowski, the answer is neither. When all of the United States government’s deepest and darkest secrets are downloaded to his brain, he will pass out. Indeed, in the pilot episode of the relatively new hit TV series, Chuck, Chuck passed out.
Chuck (portrayed by the charismatic Zachary Levi) is an unassuming Stanford University dropout who works at the Buy More consumer electronics store. Regarded as the best and nerdiest of a group of “IT consultants” working in the store known as the Nerd Herd, he is rather good at offering over-the-counter and on-call technical support, fixing busted cellphones and computers in a jiffy. Together with his hilarious bosom buddy and look-alike of another guy named Chuck (Clue: His last name rhymes with Morris.), Morgan (Joshua Gomez) and his caring sister, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster), Chuck lives a fairly normal life. Until… all of the United States government’s deepest and darkest secrets are downloaded to his brain, and he passes out.
Upon waking up, he has no idea what just happened with his head, but before he knows it he is being pursued by a pair of undercover agents sent by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). Sent by the CIA, Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) is as dangerous as she is drop dead gorgeous, a cross between Naomi Watts and a black widow, whereas NSA’s John Casey (Adam Baldwin) is just plain dangerous, period. Together, they inform Chuck that what he now has inside his cranium is everything the CIA and NSA have amassed for years and kept well hidden, hundreds of years and thousands of lives worth of intelligence. Together, they vow to protect Chuck, now a government secret as well, at all costs.
And that’s exactly what they manage to do so far over the course of one season, spanning 13 episodes, 42 minutes each without commercials. And they do this while fighting the featured bad guy in every episode, with Chuck being the hero, of course, as he gets to see flashes of seemingly disparate images that are in fact subliminally embedded with CIA and NSA data and intelligence. They make use of this information to apprehend the baddies, threats to national security whose personas range from a vertically challenged former Olympic gymnast to an eye-catching shawarma delivery girl.
But, mind you, Chuck is not all action. More than anything, it has good old fun in great amounts. The series has more than its share of rib-cracking laughs, mostly courtesy of the perpetually amusing Morgan, the culturally diverse employees of Buy More and tongue-tied Chuck himself. There’s also plenty of romance between our hero and Agent Walker (She’s not drop dead gorgeous for nothing.) to provide hopeless romantic viewers with that all-important kilig factor. And what’s more, one of Fujitsu Ten’s (where I work) very own car audio units makes a special appearance or two on the show, as a car stereo who transforms into a sophisticated, futuristic piece of GPS technology at the touch of a button (although I'm not quite sure if we actually designed something like that). If that’s not reason enough for you to give the series a try, I don’t know what is.
Hot on the heels of the success of Heroes, Lost and Prison Break, Chuck offers a great diversion from whatever is giving your forehead creases and making your blood pressure rise. So, I suggest you catch up on AXN or C/S on RPN, get hold of the complete first season along the curbsides of Quiapo, or download episodes from the Internet to your hard drive. Just be careful if you decide to go with the last option; you might accidentally download all of the Philippine government’s deepest and darkest secrets. I don't think anyone can handle that.
Why Watch Watchmen
300 sucked. It sucked the life out of me at the same time it lured my companion in the cinema toward fan boy nirvana. I know, I know. You and the next guy absolutely loved it. I just didn't. I never thought ridiculously muscular abs, coupled with preposterous slow motion scenes and Leonidas' tiresome proclamations, would have intense soporific effects. Then again, I never thought of those things. Until they were forced into every crevice in my unsuspecting gray matter. I only had Zack Snyder, the director, to blame.
Now, Mr. Snyder is back with another graphic novel film adaptation. Watchmen, no less. The most celebrated graphic novel of all time. How did he do this time? Perhaps more importantly, how did I do? Did I also fall asleep 20 minutes into the movie?
No. On the contrary, I had a rockin' good time. Here's a few reasons as to why I did.One word: Rorschach. He is no doubt the most interesting character in the story. He is played to perfection by Jackie Earl Haley, who I remember was also menacingly good in Little Children.
Another Little Children actor, Patrick Wilson, plays Nite Owl. In Little Children, he had extramarital affairs with Kate Winslet. In Watchmen, he gets to copulate while airborne with...
Malin Akerman. She plays Silk Spectre II, super-straight hair and all. Her acting's a bit wooden but she makes up for it with her stunner of a body covered in latex.
Slow-mos are inevitable, but when the device is used it's used effectively.
A non-linear narrative, which I'm a complete sucker for.
Violence. Lots of it. And sex, too. At least what MTRCB deemed enough for Filipino eyes to see.
A bafflingly thought-provoking (or thought-provokingly baffling) denouement.
The male genitalia. From here on out you can call it by its new name: Dr. Manhattan.
One thing I didn't like about the film? Richard Nixon's frozen upper lip.
My First Foray Into iPhone App Development
Pro RSS Reader (and by extension, its free lite version) holds the distinction of being the one feed reader iPhone app available in the iTunes App Store to have the most straightforward name for an app of its kind and wear the widely used orange RSS icon at the same time. In its roster of features are full text and image caching, the ability to categorize feeds into folders, item archiving, email support, image exporting to photo roll, and over-the-air OPML file and Google Reader import. The overall look of the app, characterized by minimal yet effective use of color gradients, is something I'm particularly fond of. And what makes it even more special for me is the fact that I recently became a part of its development, albeit a very small one.
Several weeks ago I got in touch with the very amicable Simon Oualid, the man behind Pro RSS Reader. I learned he was looking for individuals to translate his app into several foreign languages, and being somebody born and raised in the Land of the Flips, I volunteered to convert the strings within the app to Filipino (or Tagalog, not really sure). And so began my first foray into iPhone app development.
The result? I was later informed by Simon that my translations were integrated in the latest update of Pro RSS Reader. A section of his official statement in the App Store says:Many thanks to the people who helps in translating the app :
Danish : Christoffer "Raa-Y" Raabye
Deutsch : Andreas Müller
Dutch : Luuk Mulder
Filipino : Aldrin Calimlim
French : Antaya
Itialian : Marco Medori (marcomed_at_gmail.com)
Korean : Youngseok Oh
Polish : Maciej Król
Russian : Dmitry and Natasha Tsozik
Spanish : David Novella
Swedish : Sebastian Pundars
Turkish : Ayhan A. Birlik
So I guess it's Filipino after all.
--
This story originally appeared on WhatsOniPhone.com.
The Man with the Red Radio
From one great loss to another...
I just read a very good friend's note on Facebook dedicated to one Mamerto Caballero. With it is undoubtedly one of the most strikingly profound images I've seen in my entire life.
His granddaughter, Miya, described him as many things, not the least important of which is 'Artist.'That red radio he had since we were little kids. Nanay and Tatay would listen to the AM stations practically everyday. There was this Ilocano drama program which always made me sleepy. Tatay would listen to it while gardening or reading the paper; Nanay when she would handwash clothes or make us champorado.
To Miya, to Mrs. Agnes Caballero-Hwang (my College English mentor) and to everyone who was fortunate enough to get to know this exceptional man, my deepest condolences.
Yatta!
I couldn't help but utter Hiro Nakamura's catchphrase the instant I read the text message from a colleague informing me that I passed the exam I took exactly three months ago today in De La Salle University, Taft Avenue, Manila. I nailed the Nihongo Nōryoku Shiken, a.k.a. Japanese Language Proficiency Test a.k.a. JLPT!
Yatta! indeed. One of the perks (others see it as more of an imposition) of working for a Japanese company is you get to study Nihongo for free. I and a number of colleagues began preparing for the exam sometime in April last year. For almost eight months, we attended Nihongo classes, which I should say were unexpectedly nigiyaka (lively) and omoshiroi (interesting). You could tell I picked up quite a lot of words along the way.
The official results were to come tucked inside a very official-looking envelope. I was told though that it hasn't arrived in the company mailbox yet. What brought the good news was a list, The List, secured by our department sensei (mentor). Until I receive the letter from the good folks over at the Japan Foundation, who administer the test each year, exactly how well or poorly I performed remains shrouded in misuteri (mystery).
Way before I took the test, I learned that "Yatta!" literally means "I did it!" I consulted the Japanese dictionary app on my iPhone just now and found out several other meanings: hooray, whee, hot dog!, you beaut, whacko, yowzer!, whoopee! and yes!. If you ask me though, I'd say Yatta! in English is none other than the phenomenal w00t!
エンジョイライフ！
Three Stars and a Sun
In my book, three of the best OPM songs written in the past couple of decades or so are Eraserheads' Ang Huling El Bimbo, Rivermaya's 214, and, arguably the best of the best, the late Francis Magalona's Kaleidoscope World.Today at noon news of the Master Rapper's untimely demise broke, opening a floodgate of emotional comments (1749 and counting) below his last post in his Multiply site timestamped Jan 14, '09 5:50 AM. The proud Filipino died of leukemia at 44.
Admittedly, I'm not one of the biggest Francis M. fans out there. I have none of his albums. I don't wear a shirt from his nationalistic clothing line. But I have always admired his music. To this day, save for Chris Carabba's songs, no other piece has affected me as much as Kaleidoscope World's deeply charged poetry has.
To the guy who told me and countless others that it's okay to have a flat, less-than-perfect nose, may you rest in peace, man.
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iMiss My iPhone, Part 3 (Or How I Got a Brand Spankin' New One)
I ended my last post with a cliffhanger (not!). How come I still surrendered my iPhone when it wasn't going to be replaced by Globe and/or Apple? Answer: Simple. They hadn't seen the last of me yet.
Fast forward to roughly three months later, I again traversed the all-too-familiar path to the Globe Business Center in SM Megamall. This time, I was armed with a dead-ly weapon. A dead pixel. A teeny tiny white spot on my iPhone's screen that was hardly noticeable and detrimental to the device's functionality, but was a defect nonetheless.
And wouldn't you know it, Sir John saw the minute picture element devoid of any activity and declared my phone defective. Who would have thought somebody would be so elated to learn his prized possession was faulty? He then referred me to the lady stranger behind the shiny counter with her iTunes-ready laptop, who in turn asked me to fill out an iPhone repair form, to which I blurted out, "Wait a sec, a repair form? Not a replacement form?!" The lady then told me it's just how they call 'em. Oh.
I left the establishment with a bit of an ambiguous feeling. On one hand, I had to survive without my phone for at least two weeks. On the other, I might just get a brand spankin' new one after at least two weeks. And guess what, I did both! Praise Steve Jobs!
Last Wednesday evening, I went back to Globe on a whim. I talked to the lady and followed up my ticket. She consulted her iTunes-ready laptop and told me the good news I was waiting to hear for over a fortnight. It turned out the replacement (Yes! Re. Place. Ment.) was just a couple of meters away from where I was standing, waiting to be unbricked by its rightful owner. Suddenly the stranger had a name: Lyla. I was psyched enough then to actually care about what her name was and glance on her ID to find out. Thank heavens for Lyla. Or was it Laila? I forget.
Now excuse me while I wipe my all-new, calibrated-to-near-perfection, dead-pixel-free iPhone with a totally lint-free cloth. :P
iMiss My iPhone, Part 2
It all started one fine mid-afternoon, not long after I got ahold of my iPhone. I was playing Cube Runner, a free game where you have to steer an aircraft of sort away from cubes by tilting the iPhone sideways, lest it collide with one and explode into pieces (See YouTube video after the jump). For the information of those uninitiated in the wonderful pieces of technologies embedded within the iPhone, the device has an accelerometer that detects changes in its orientation and triggers the display to act in accordance to the algorithm of the application on hand.
Long story short, I noticed the calibration of my phone's accelerometer was a bit off. Wait, make that really, undeniably off. For when the display should be horizontal, it was off by at least 30 degrees. This struck me as odd seeing as I did not encounter this kind of malfunction with my old iPod touch. What I did was to manually calibrate the accelerometer using the settings within the Cube Runner app so I could play the game as designed. But even then, the other tilt-driven apps would bear the glitch and there's no guarantee each of them had a local calibration option.
Okay, okay, I'm sounding way too technical for my own sake, so I'll proceed with the thing that I'm sure all of us have had experiences of, pleasant or otherwise: dealing with customer service reps.
So I trekked to the Globe Business Center in SM Megamall where I got the phone and told Sir John, the supposed head honcho of them customer service reps, about my predicament. I demoed Cube Runner to him and showed the angular deviation. So will you replace my iPhone? I asked. He then took the phone and tried the pre-installed apps which were designed so as to change orientation when one tilts the device in a predetermined manner. As soon as he was certain that these apps shifted from portrait to landscape and back when he rotated the phone 90 degrees each time, he argued that my phone was not eligible for replacement after all since the accelerometer was functional and that as per Apple's cryptic policies third-party apps such as Cube Runner could not be used as basis for inspecting, troubleshooting or diagnosing an iPhone. Crud.
So how then did I end up letting go of my beloved iPhone, giving it to a lady stranger behind a shiny Globe Business Center counter? You didn't think I'd already stop at Part 2, did you? Like most film producers, I'm a sucker for trilogies.
To be concluded...
iMiss My iPhone, Part 1
Two weeks.
Exactly how I managed to live, let alone breathe, without my precious, my prized possession, my best friend (with all due respect to the girlfriend, of course), my iPhone, is way beyond me. How I even convinced myself into thinking I could get by in its absence well enough for me to hand it to a total stranger standing behind a shiny counter, wearing a Globe Telecom ID, casually clicking on her mouse beside a laptop bearing the label "iTunes Ready," promising to give me a call in two weeks to tell me that my precious, my prized possession, my best friend, my now sorely missed iPhone is back from Apple limbo and ready to be tapped again, swiped again, flicked again, pinched, tilted and shaken again by the hands that ever so carefully, er, took care of it--I realized this could very well be the longest sentence I've ever come up with in my entire writing career, if any--is a greater mystery.
But still, let me give you the 411 on this little 404 of mine.
But not now. Perhaps on my next post. 'Cause right now I just want to go to sleep and wake up (my pathetic attempt at an oxymoron) from make-believing that this cheap Motorola W-whatchamacallit I'm holding has multi-touch features, a tilt sensor and room for at least a hundred apps. It also doesn't help knowing that Ian just scored a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, even though I was never taken by anything that has the word Nokia in its name.
Oh well. It's been two weeks and still no call from the stranger with the Globe Telecom ID. What's another two weeks, right?
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Impulse Buy
Posted by a good friend whose name is Ian but who prefers to be called James online.
One thing about impulse buys, people almost always end up regretting them. That's exactly what I was thinking the other day as we rode the bus home from Alabang Festival Mall. I just bought something, on impulse. Something completely beyond my means. Something I would never buy on my own had it not been for a certain nagging voice in my left ear. I bought myself a new phone.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have finally relinquished my grip on my aging, obsolete Nokia 2600. I am now the proud owner of The Tube, Nokia's touchscreen flagship (or should I say flag-phone), the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.
I got to say, the marketing girl at WellCom did a really good job at getting my attention -- Something Renee (the girlfriend) wasn't exactly happy about but still, I was mighty impressed. First thing that got me was that the 5800 was a touch screen XpressMusic phone that had everything else Renee wanted! WiFi, HSDPA, A-GPS and a good 3.2 MP digital camera with Carl Zeiss optics. She just had to convince me to buy it. Needless to say, I was being reeled in. After more salestalk (quite unnecessary if you ask me), I caved. Walked out of there with the silliest smile on my face.
Do I regret it? I thought I would. But, no. The phone's great. The haptic response mechanism really helps me transition to touchscreen typing. Response is a bit slow sometimes, especially when I got a lot of apps open, but on the whole, I don't see anything I want to complain about. And the music, oh the music. I don't think I'll be regretting this impulse buy anytime soon. When I do, I'll just take Renee and my atm card again with me to the mall.
Gary's Real Life
While staring at the buffering tube, I was reminded of this amazing work of art I saw a couple of days ago. It's a picture of an adorable, wide-mouthed character named Gary posing as the famous golden statuette himself. If that isn't cute, I don't know what is.
Gary is the star of Gary's Real Life, a tumblelog that documents, er, Gary's real life. Every day, a guy named Josh Beggs posts a new picture of Gary on the site. It could be a photo of Gary doing one of his favorite things to do or what happens when he forgets to do stuff. Whatever it is, I'm a hundred percent certain that it's going to be more awesome than the last.
Bookmark www.garysreallife.com. Follow Gary on Twitter. Flick through his photos on Flickr. Enjoy life. Jai ho!
About Gawbler.com
What is Gawbler.com? Contrary to popular belief, Gawbler.com, or simply Gawbler, did not get its name from the onomatopoeiaic word, gobble. Nope, the site is not about turkeys nor is it a wannabe of the equally onomatopoeiaic Twitter. Gawbler got its name from gawble, a term in data communications jargon which means a bit block that is considerably larger than a nybble and a byte (bigger even than a playte and a chawmp!). In keeping with the site's tagline, bits. nybbles. bytes., Gawbler aims to "gawble" bits, nybbles and bytes of information, useful or otherwise, it could find from the Web and everywhere else and share it to readers so they (you!) could gawble them too!
Who is Gawbler.com? Gawbler.com is a bored jaded, but otherwise geeky and knowledge-greedy, electronics engineer, Web 2.0 advocate, bookmarker, music shuffler, motion picture enthusiast, iPhone app reviewer, Potterhead and blogger striving to get a life and make a living. His name is Aldrin Calimlim. You can follow him on Plurk, Twitter and/or Plinky, and/or friend him on Facebook.
Where is Gawbler.com? Gawbler.com is based in the Philippines but you can find it wherever you are in the world by entering www.gawbler.com in your Firefox address bar. Shame on you if you're still using IE!
Why is Gawbler.com? Good question.
How is Gawbler.com? Fine, thank you.
