Nag-isip na lang ako, mabuti pa. :))

• Mabuti pa ang bubuyog, may honey.
• Mabuti pa ang Facebook account, laging binibisita.
• Mabuti pa ang spelling, laging chine-check.
• Mabuti pa ang laptop, lagi mong tini-turn on.
• Mabuti pa ang ATM PIN, di nakakalimutan.
• Mabuti pa ang CTRL key, laging may kasabay.
• Mabuti pa ang digicam, lagi kang naka-smile agad.
• Mabuti pa ang sister team sa PBA, pinagbibigyan.
• Mabuti pa ang window seat, gusto mo lagi mong katabi.
• Mabuti pa ang ube, prine-preserve.
• Mabuti pa ang mga presyo, umaangat.
• Mabuti pa ang medyas, may kapareha.
• Mabuti pa ang jumpshot pic — pag sinabing talon, talon naman agad.
• Mabuti pa ang auto-timer ng digicam, inaantay. naka-smile pa.
• Mabuti pa sa lotto, may pag-asa.
• Mabuti pa ang Plurk — kesa Twitter. :p
• Mabuti pa — matulog na ko uli. zzzzzZZZZZ

Bought my friend’s iPhone 3Gs (he got a new iPhone 4) and I’ve been testing it out for a couple of days. General verdict: meets my expectations so far, great surfing, mediocre battery life, some UI head-scratchers, and nice apps, as long as you’re content being tied down to iTunes for your multimedia content.

I’m using the official Tumblr app to post this. The keyboard is a chore to work with, especially one-handed (two-handed ain’t much better as far as accuracy). I’ve also used the official FaceBook and Yahoo!Messenger apps and the iPhone-optimized Engadget and Yahoo!Mail sites.

My major gripe is how much battery life the iPhone sucks even without being network-connected. I played a few minutes of Solitaire and was shocked to see the battery meter go down to 91% from 100%. Surfing sucks your charge too, especially with 3G on.

The keyboard is awkward to use — I’m forced to use a crab-like grip with my two pinkies cradling the device, my index fingers keeping it steady, and my thumbs doing the typing. Apple could have added common punctuation such as the comma, period, and apostrophe to the default set but didn’t. No capslock key as well, though the multi-touch keyboard allow you to hold down the Shift key while typing several keys.

Another gripe is the lack of multi-select controls — for example, there’s no way to mark several text messages or photos prior to performing a delete operation on all of them.

There is also no way to access the SIM menu that I could find.There is also no way to obtain more information about individual SMS messages, such as time sent. I also need to be able to copy SMS messages to and from the SIM card.

I should mention at this point that my crab grip is resulting in numbness creeping in in my pinkies.

Good thing that Apple has worked in a cursor movement mechanism, copy-paste, and limited multitasking into its recent iOS updates, or I would have more gripes.

My pinkies have gone numb at this point so I’ve switched to a single hand hunt-and-peck.

The apps are the saving grace of the iPhone. The Facebook and Yahoo!Messenger apps let you enjoy the functionalities and content available on the desktop and web versions while carrying forward the iPhone UI touch-and-feel.

I can see, however, that the screen size limits the web browsing experience as it is too small to let you view the web pages smoothly.

The voice calling experience is unremarkable. I couldn’t understand a lot of what my friend was saying, there were echoes and a robotic quality to the sound. I’ll have to do more testing in this regard.

I have yet to sync the phone with iTunes and this is another area I anticipate having trouble with. Apple wants all the multimedia content you want to listen to or watch on your device to go through iTunes and this limits the flexibility and versatility of the experience.

That’s it for now, I’ll be updating this post in future with more insights.

Found this recording — my cover of “All These Things” by Stephen Speaks — in my cellphone.

All These Things

Artist: Stephen Speaks

Composer: TJ McCloud

Maybe it’s her face, no makeup at all

As she tells me she’s not beautiful
Maybe it’s her hair, soft golden and wind blown
As we drive through the streets of town
It could be all these things
But I think it’s her smile
Maybe it’s her laugh when she throws back and sighs
Or her eyebrows when I do something stupid
Maybe it’s her smell, the lotion she wears
Or how my hands smell like country pear for days
You know it could be all these things
But I think mostly it is her smile
 

Cause I love to see her smile back at me
And I know she is happy
Maybe it’s her touch, the feel of her hands
When she puts her tiny fingers in mine
Maybe it’s her eyes gently searching my soul
Still nothing stirs me like when I see those lips roll
and I see her smile
Cause I love to see her smile back at me
And I know she is happy

So yesterday I was an examiner for the DLSU College Entrance Test (or CET) for the second time this year. I used to do this every year since 2005 but I passed on it for the past couple of years coz I wanted to give others the chance to earn some cash. Now, though, it’s me who needs the cash so there I was at 6:30AM with bags under my eyes and lugging that heavy green bag full of test booklets and what-nots.

The morning session was a boisterous bunch of students from Xavier School (no, not the mutant school) and Immaculate Conception Academy. I just let them banter noisily for a half hour (like they were in their own classroom or something) coz that’s how cool I am. :P but about 10 minutes before 7AM when the test was set to begin I raised my voice and told them (I had to shout “Excuse me!” twice — they were that noisy) that only students who were supposed to be in that room should be there. What I meant was that they should check that they were in the right room for their exam but I was surprised to see a handful saunter out — turns out they were from the next room shooting the breeze with their friends.

Anyway, the students became serious once the test began. I was so sleepy though that one point I was jogging in place outside in the corridor to get my blood flowing. Oh, and during the 15 minute break I actually (and unintentionally) drifted off while sitting in the teacher’s chair and I came to two minutes after the time I was supposed to have resumed with the test! I woke up with a shock but it was worth it coz I felt a lot better afterwards.

What I wanted to blog about was the experience of being an examiner. I take this duty very seriously — I am supposed to be the authority in supervising the test so that no cheaters will be able to dance through it and into DLSU. Also, since I was a professional cheater in high school (mostly I was the benefactor though and my classmates were the beneficiaries) I took it upon myself to make sure no two-bit cheater-wannabe was going to get away with it on my watch.

So here are some tips that will definitely help you if you’re ever in the same boat. Let’s call it Cheatbuster 101.

1. Set The Tone Early. During the test, the examiner guidelines say you’re supposed to roam around between the tests to make sure no cheating is going on. You should do this early on so that the students will know that they will be watched throughout and right then and there kill off any ideas about cheating.

2. The Eagle’s Nest. I do the roaming thing from time to time but I find that the most effective thing to do is to just stand at the teacher’s platform and employ a sweeping hard glance at them. The extra height gives you the advantage of sight and you can see the whole room from there. The important thing to watch for are their eyes, which is a cheater’s most important tool. Which brings us to…

3. The-I-See-You-Look. Most cheaters will from time to time check where you are, just to see if they can get away with something. This is the only major reason why students will ever look at you during the exam (a distant second is if the student thinks you’re hot and an even more distant third is the student needs to go to the crapper). Anyway, if you see a student glance at you, you should immediately meet it with the I-See-You look — an impersonal, unflinching stare that, if done correctly, will immedialy result in the student looking down, thus confirming your suspicion that he/she intends to cheat. Keep a mental list of these students as they will be the one who will bear close watching.

4. The Heatseeker. You can actually wait till you see someone trying to glance at another student’s paper, but it sometimes pays off to just throw out a random “Eyes on your own paper please!” This will immediately alert would-be-cheaters that one of their own kind was caught and that they’d better not try anything coz the second incursion might not merit just a warning.

5. Sealing The Leak. You should watch out for students who, intentionally or not, may be letting those seated around them see their answer sheets. If you see any, go up quietly to the student and warn them to cover their paper.

6. The Sphere Of Fear. When you do the roam-around, imagine that there’s a sphere surrounding you. Those students who are in this sphere with you will not try to cheat, hence the name Sphere Of Fear. What this means is that your mere physical proximity to them is enough to stop cheating in your immediate vicinity, so you need not glance at the students within the Sphere Of Fear. Instead, concentrate your gaze on those outside the Sphere Of Fear especially those behind you, since amateur cheaters think that just because your back is turned means that you’re unable to see them. With this tactic, you actually extend the Sphere Of Fear over a wider area.

7. Watch For The Drop. Cheaters will sometimes use some other paper for scratch work instead of the one provided. Watch out for this because this can be easily passed off to another colleague during the exam or the break. Make them use the provided scratch paper, which they are required to write their name on and submit along with their answer sheet.

8. The Conference Call. Never allow more than one student to leave the room to go to the comfort room during the test. You can, however, allow one male and one female to go since they will be using separate comfort rooms. Generally, though, don’t let them go before they are through with the current section of the test.

9. Be Spontaneous. When roaming, do not follow a set pattern. Criss-cross, double back, stop, write your name with your steps. This will discourage those who are watching for the Sphere of Fear.

10. The Home Stretch. This marks the last hour or so of the test during which you may let your guard down. DON’T!!!! This is when you should be most vigilant. Cheaters can take advantage of this natural tendency and they will reap the most reward given the fact that by this time most of the questions have been answered and a quick glance at their seatmate’s paper will yield big dividends.

Hope this has been of interest and that you’ve picked up things of value. Now get out of here, I wanna sleep. zzzzzZZZZZZZZ

Dramatic title, but it’s just to introduce my latest trivia discovery. Wait for it… here it is: there is no such dinosaur as a brontosaurus.

This may sound surprising if you’ve regularly heard this cool-sounding dino name ever since you were old enough to read or see something about dinosaurs. The brontosaurus was always one of the big, nasty ones that can bite your head off.

According to OMG-Facts (http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/8152) however — the best thing for info addicts like moi since, well, the telephone — paleontologist O.C. Marsh discovered a dino skeleton in 1879 that had no head. He added a head he dug up miles away to complete the skeleton which he called “brontosaurus”. It turns out that the head is of another dinosaur — an apatosaurus — that O.C. Marsh himself discovered two years before. Also the skeleton was later found to be that of a camarasaurus. So, if anything, the brontosaurus is actually a camarapatosaurus.

I can see you bobbing your head knowledgeably at this nice little tidbit of new information. You’re welcome! :D

Sky Factory’s SkyV product is very compelling because it is subtle and yet very convincing. And what is SkyV? Take a peek at the pictures:

Those images of sky or space behind the fake skylights are virtual sky scenes. Using state-of-the-art HD LCD panels and video processors, SkyV can give you a relaxing and peaceful view of nature right “outside” even if you’re, erhm, inside. Sky Factory has a list of sky scenes, each about two hours long, that you can purchase, some of which are:

• Tropical Late Afternoon Trade Wind Clouds with Palms
  
• Tropical Mid-day Jungle Canopy
  
• Summer Sunset on High Clouds Through Tall Cottonwoods
  
• Autumn Sky Transitions, Noon through Sunset with Ginkgo & Pine
  
• Summer Early-Afternoon Sky with Aspens

Imagine being able to set your desired skylight or window view depending on your mood. Even if it’s stormy outside, you can keep your environment sunny and warm even if you’re in a basement or window-less room. Add some soothing sound effects such as waves softly crashing on sand, leaves blowing in the wind, or even the soft patter of rain, and you have a controlled environment all year round.

Aside from the relaxing side of this product, it interests me because it is in line with a business idea of mine that could prove successful. I’ll talk about it some other time. :)

1. form a company? what kind of company?
2. start a business? maybe food?
3. apply for job abroad? where? US? Australia? Singapore? Hong Kong? New Zealand? Canada?
4. go back to Dagupan and join the school and eventually take it over?
5. stay on at DLSU?
6. give up?

Options, options.

Starting July 2010, all Finnish citizens have the legal right to 1Mbps broadband connection.

That’s right, legal right. 1Mbps.

And the same law provides that this will rise to 100Mbps by 2015.

If that’s not being civilized, I don’t know what is.

While I have to pay PHP899/mo for my meager 768Kbps DSL connection, even street-dwellers in Finland have to be provided with a 1Mbps broadband connection. Wait, are there street-dwellers in Finland? I’ll have to check lol (UPDATE: Yes, there are.)

And Finland has a 96% Internet penetration rate — bravo!

Source link: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/10461048.stm)

Finally gave up Plurk. Won’t be Twitting as well. Facebook… meh, maybe sometimes. I’ll be Tumbling almost exclusively from now on.

What prompted me to make this decision? Well, almost no one replies to my Plurks anymore. Plurk is really only fun when there’s interaction — stimulus. response. — otherwise, it’s really just talking to myself. If I wanted to talk to myself, I can do so even more effectively via a blog post. More space, more focused thoughts, no censorship.

I’ve been meaning to give blogging another try. Micro-blogging (e.g. Plurk, Twitter) was nice because I get (past tense) almost instantaneous response. However, it also forced me to shorten my sentences, substitute more meaningful words with shorter ones, and rather dampened my propensity to expound or relate my main topic to related ones. I was a pretty interesting blogger before, I think I can be again.

I’ll be reposting some of my old (really very old) blog posts here seeing as I could change the post date to reflect the original ones. There are lots of stuff to migrate but eventually this Tumblr will be as comprehensive of my thoughts as it can be. Well, this and my Plurk. My Plurk account can still be viewed at http://www.plurk.com/cooldoods IF you are one of Plurk friends. If you want to be added to my Plurk friends, let me know.

Anyway, nothing exciting happen today. Except an officemate treated me to lunch. Oh, and I talked to an ex-crush today, though it was only to ask her to log me into a shared drive on the network lol. I got my basketball uniform today too, I’m with the Black Team, and the opening ceremonies are on Saturday morning. And the sucky thing about it? The misspelled my name! Instead of “Doods”, the back of my jersey says “Dods” fer cryin’ out loud! I can imagine my teammates calling out “Dods! Dito!” as they holler to me to pass the ball. Sickening…

Oh, I almost forgot — I made a date for Sunday to watch Eclipse. The last time I saw a movie with a girl? Avatar with Grace, but that doesn’t count :D Before that, my last movie date was probably with my ex and I don’t recall what the movie was, it was that long ago. Anyway, this Sunday I’ll be going to SM North for the first time in years — certainly the first time since they renovated the place — and it will be my first movie date for even longer.

Tonight, I made a money tree. Basically, it’s made from dried twigs stuck into an empty 1.5L plastic bottle of Mountain Dew.  Then a made a slot on the side for coins and dropped in a few coins for good measure. Then I cut out “leaves” out of green crepe paper and glued them randomly so that it looks like a tree that just started to sprout leaves. The idea is that it will be a collection jar for donations towards our office’s fund for seedlings. One of the projects I’m looking at as Team Building Committee Head is a tree planting activity. I’ve already talked to COSCA about it, and I plan to put the money tree at the Helpdesk area so that students will see it and drop Daddy’s moolah in it, it being a worthy cause. Yeah, I know, I’m a genius. (smug look on my face)

My netbook’s battery just gave me a warning that it’s running low. So with that, I end my first post in my new blog. Hope to write longer next time!

This is the first time I’m going to blog on a year in retrospect. It may not be the last, we’ll see how it goes.

Overall, I think 2009 was interesting in the sense that there were opportunities out there in certain areas that I explored (though admittedly lacked in execution) but this indicates to me that despite my advancing years (or perhaps because of it) I am still willing to take chances. That things didn’t turn out as I expected was disappointing but still the exercise of life should demonstrate ups and downs if it is to be denoted to be “interesting”.

One area that definitely improved in 2009 was friendship. Whereas in previous years I was content to stick with my old dependable friends from college and immediate officemates, in 2009 I made and cultivated several new ones — “cultivated” meaning I throw my usual crap at them to make the friendship grow. In this I was successful enough that I may perhaps be said to have a green thumb at it, which is fortunate because in growing actual plants (specifically a cactus) I was immensely less successful.

So here I make a roll call of new friends I made in 2009 — Des, Grace, Ruth, Kenneth, Czarie, Eva, Liszt, Aaron, Tine, Nins, Mer, Claire, and Mark E. — some of whom I’ve only had online contact with but I fondly call my friends nevertheless (whether they like it or not lol). I also list here other friends whom I’ve known before 2009 but with whom I’ve formed a closer relationship with in the previous year — Ming, Mark R., Rod, Lynn,  and Rose — and made my daily life more interesting and bearable.

I am especially grateful to Des, Grace, Ruth, Tine, and Nins for their willingness to share their time, opinions, and wit with me in 2009. You gals have made 2009 a year to remember with great fondness and I hope it will only get better in the years to come. :)

Of course, I must mention Vea here for enabling some of these new friendships to emerge by opening her circle of friends to me. In gratitude, I made her cry on her birthday — haha! — with a special note I sent to her on Facebook. It was also Vea who got me started on Plurk (now a year old, yay!), Twitter, SingSnap and Tumblr and even got me to sign up for Fashion Wars so she can have more friends. (To answer your unspoken question, no, I did not play Fashion Wars after signing up. Duh!).

To counterbalance the warm feelings I’ve raised so far, 2009 was interesting but ultimately disappointing in terms of my career. With only a token salary raise and no promotion in 2009, I also at one time handed in my resignation to pursue my plan to move to Singapore to work. I rescinded my resignation shortly after as a precautionary measure which, luckily as it turns out, allowed me to continue to work after my visa application for Singapore was shockingly disapproved. I am planning some things for this year but I can’t reveal them now for fear of jinxing them. :D

In terms of my lovelife in 2009, nothing much to report except I did send flowers to a girl on Valentine’s Day for the first time in many years. It resulted in the girl ignoring me for the rest of the year though so, in that respect, I was a dismal failure in 2009. For the immediate future, I’m planning to “do the single thing” with no end in sight. Thanks to my new friends, the occasional loneliness of being single was largely bearable so love isn’t really a thorny issue currently for me.

I travelled several times in 2009, all of them domestically. For the first time, I went to the Bicol region (twice — in April and in November) and Davao City (in September). In Bicol, I went swimming in Caramoan and also visited the Mayon Volcano in Albay. It was on the same trip that I went to Donsol in Sorsogon to swim with the butanding (whale sharks) and where I had my “I almost died!” moment for 2009. I loved Davao City — swimming in the waters of Pearl Farm, enjoying nature spots, and partaking of all the great food the region has to offer. I particularly loved Blugre’s durian coffee and marang fruit. For our summer outing, we went to Potipot Island in Zambales which was a long trip but proved to be a memorable destination nevertheless. I also went to Bataan twice for the year.

2009 was also memorable for new gadgets I purchased — my first brand-new digital camera (which I promptly named Cammy), a Gigabyte touchscreen netbook (which I fondly call Gigi), and a WD Live TV HD Player (which you may call Liv) which I hooked up to my LCD TV. I also bought a MIDI DVD Component and Videoke Player (as yet unnamed, being so cheap) which provided hours of entertainment right at home. I would have bought some other gadgets if not for the fact that I was saving up for my Singapore trip. I hope I can temper my gadget lust in 2010 as successfully.

Not many health issues in the past year, except for a prolonged problem with airplane ear after my Davao trip. Despite perhaps a record number of buffet meals for the year, I successfully kept my weight down through a period marked with disciplined dumbbell exercises and smart dieting. I also played a lot of basketball in 2009 though not as regularly as I’d like.

Finance-wise, I was able to save quite a bit though not as much as I had targeted for the year. I hope to do much better this year.

Some memorable moments in 2009 — that was the year where I was part of a second basketball champion team, as ITC finally beat the PE department during the year’s faculty association sports tournament. That night I also sang with a band at an officemate’s birthday party in Caloocan, which was a thrill. 2009 also marked the first time I ate dimsum and mami at a Binondo Chinese restaurant (yum-yum) after several years of dreaming about it. I and some friends also participated in AXN’s first 3-on-3 basketball tournament, though it didn’t turn out well for us. I also went to Enchanted Kingdom again after a period of about four years, made more memorable by the lively company of the TESI girls. Throughout the year I made full use of my digital camera, sometimes on my folding bike, by taking some nice shots in such places as the CCP boardwalk, the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, and at courtside of a couple of UAAP women’s volleyball games. Oh, and talking to five-time UAAP Women’s Volleyball MVP, Manilla Santos, was a 2009 highlight as well. :D

All in all, a good year. May 2010 be at least as interesting and bring much more success to me as 2009 did.