a park that is not like a typical Pinoy park…

(c)

clean… safe… fun… bright… unpolluted… well-kept…

normally, you would not equate these adjectives to a government-run park… but yesterday morning saw the wife and I over at Quezon Memorial Circle, and we experienced all of these, and more, at the park… why were we there? there was this food-writing workshop which will be held at Serye inside the Circle… we were early, so we decided to take a stroll around the park, or at least a part of it…

from the parking lot, which was very well-kept and cheap at P15 for the whole day of parking, we walked within the Circle… from the scenes we saw, one can do anything within the park [long as it's legal, of course], as well as participate in the events the park offers…

view all pictures from my gallery…

there were street and ballroom dancing, team-building activities, massage services, and a host of other activities going on while we were walking around… i was thinking to bring my 1-year old son here and just let him have a run of the place…

you into biking? or running? or simply strolling around a nice, clean and safe place? then, maybe, the Quezon City Memorial Circle is the place for you… i know i’d be back just to hang loose…

Ciao, sweetie…

[techtags: QCMR, safe, clean]

(i) aside: Join the 1st Internet and Mobile Marketing Summit on August 9 and 10… send in your votes now and, who knows? you just might win!!

This is a DigitalFilipino.com Club-sponsored Ad

top 10 most influential emerging filipino blogs for 2007 — UPDATE 20070710

(c)

Janette Toral posted last May 12 that her next project was “identifying identifying new and emerging blogs that are making an impact to its readers in 2007…” the only condition being that the blogs you nominate to your top 10 are those that started from 1^st August 2006… so, short of asking the blogger when exactly he or she has started, the best way to find out when this blog started is to look at the archive and look at the date the 1^st post was made… in the absence of the archives, you can look at the very 1^st post and look at the date the post was made… also, that it must be a Pinoy blog… and so, on to my Top 10 Most Influential Emerging Pinoy Blogs of 2007:

1. Carlo Ople’s Waukster: Ragnarok Online 2 & other MMORPGs — started March 7th, this blog jump immediately from PR0 to 4 in a matter of 2 months… Carlo is a brand manager of Philippine Ragnarok Online and himself a gamer, and his gaming blog caters to millions of pRO gamers in the Philippines… his posts, which consists of news about his favorite game, is the foremost site to look into first if you want the freshest news about pRO… well, that is, aside from the official forum of the game…

2. my own Kubiertos — this may be a shameless plug, but i believe that this blog i co-author with my wife Apples is the up and coming source of restaurants and food people may want to try… started November 2006 and currently at PR4, Kubiertos gives thumbs up to those who deserve them, and thumbs downs for those who don’t… and we can’t say that nothing’s personal when we do our rating, because this is all personal… of course we also accept paid reviews, but if we feel that we cannot give a positive review, we say so… if you want a no-nonsense food review blog, Kubiertos is what you’re looking for…

3. Carl Ocab’s Make Money Online With a 13-year Old — when SEO and making money online is your cup of tea, then, better head on out to this 13-year old’s blog… although a little young for his chosen niche, hist posts on 69 Ways to Boost your Web Exposure! Fast! and 5 Reasons Why People Don’t Read Your “Make Money Online” Blog (Probably) merit a look… you just might learn something new from this little fella… and he is not into SEO only!! he is also a prolific theme creator and a Web2.0 proponent, as well… oh, and his blog started just Feb 4th, 2007…

4. “Two people can look at the same thing and see it entirely differently. PROJMLA is how I see things differently.” this is the 1st line you’ll see after getting to Rick Manzano’s site, ProjectManila.com… the site looks at different aspects of Manila life from a different perspective, from restaurants to events, and it gives its readers a different view… i believe this a rebirth of the old site, and is worth mentioning as one of up-and-coming influential blogs of the year…

5. we all know that the Philippines, by now, is known all over the world as the texting capital of the world [if you didn't know that, from which rock did you crawl under from??] and apaprently, Carol Sinyel, owner and maintainer of TxtBuff.com — a Collection of SMS Quotes and Text Messages knows all about it, too!! her blog’s contents are all about txt messages friends and relatives forward to us everyday, which we also forward to other friends and family, and so on… a vicious cycle, maybe, but this is one cycle that makes you happier to know that someone else is willing to spend Php1.00 simply to send you a funny quote or an inspirational message… the site, which started Dec 2006, will surely not lack materials since she is inviting friends, family, and readers as contributors to her site…

6. what is a community without someone looking over our shoulders, eh? just like a kuya wanting to make our lives easier, Karlo Licudine of PinoyBlogero.com wanted to do just that… started barely 3 months ago, this blog aims to compile everything about blogging, from making a bloggers life easier to breaking the writer’s block… if you are a blogger and you think you still have some things to lear about blogging, head on over to Karlo’s site and you just might learn a thing or two…

7. another budding video blogger here… following in the footsteps of happyslip.com, Coy Caballes’ CokskiBlue is a vlog [short for video blog] of almost everything, from his personal travels to movie reviews… how he does that, all you need to do is head on over to his site and look for the SpiderMan 3 review and find out for yourself… who knows? he may just be the next happyslip, eh?? hehehe

8. …

because of that limitation of having started August 1, 2006, my list is currently limited to 7… will add on to the list as i find new ones… or, if your blog, or you know someone who’s blog fits into this category, please do comment here with your real name and blog URL… i promise i will look into it as soon as i get your comment… if it’s worth putting on the list, you’ll get to know it here on this list, as well…

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: Top 10 Most Influential Emerging Pinoy Blog]

meeting old and new friends

(c)

the past week was made very exciting because i met some [very] old friends, as well as new ones… walking along Libis, i was greeted with the sight of old studens and friends, that i wondered whether this area is now the new APC [http://www.apc.edu.ph]… hehehe…

the old ones

Che of KAlaWang yugto [http://cheheki.blogspot.com/] was one of my former students over at APC… we met last Friday while i was eating lunch… she sat down [not at first, though] at my table, and we just talked and talked until we were both reaady to return to our own offices… that was one of the highlights of my week as i was able to catch up on the goings on with her former classmates [like Jacob putting up his own consulting business, like the owner of Txtbuff.com (http://textbuff.com) was also a former student, Carol, etc], and many other things that were of concern to both of us…

Friday afternoon saw me at Extreme Gaming Grounds [EGG] in Glorietta for an EB with my clanmates over at PerfectWorld… but before that, i saw a very old [as in] friend in the guid of Lily… she was a college friend and a colleague atthe College Editors Guild of the Philippines [CEGP]… we weren’t able to catch up on things as i have things to do that night, and she still has to pick her son up from school… oh well…

last July 1, i was greeted by a call from, also, one of my former students, though i barely remembered her… Sheila Yu was with APC for just 1 term, and she said that i was one of her professors who made an impact in her life… since then, she will now [or has she?] graduate to become of the nurses in the country… i say, good for her!!

July 3 saw me leaving work at about 3pm when i saw, again, a student from my car… his name was Carlo, and one of my “good ones”… hehehe… i said good ones because, though he doesn’t look like he is serious in life, but when it comes to the work we were doing, he gives it all his time… i say, good luck!!

and finally, another Carlo, this time a colleague from PLUG [Philippine Linux Users Group] works in the same building i was in… he works in TrendMicro as trainer…

the new ones

one good thing about jumping work is that you get to meet all kinds of people, both bad and good ones… but with the new work i have, i have only very high praises for the people i work with… they are all good workers and they look up to me as some sort of a “kuya” only because i am the oldest of the bunch, the youngest being just 21…

the only bad thing in jumping companies is that you don’t get to grow roots… but who need roots when the soil is bad, eh?

anyway, another bunch of new [and very young] friends were from Clan =Lotus=… you see, i love playing MMORPGs and 2 of the games i played over the years were Ragnarok Online [played for over 4 years] and PerfectWorld, a new addition to the offerings of LevelUp… we held a mini-EB last July 1 for the softlaunching of the game, and a mini-grand EB at EGG with another clan, the Holy Order of Light [HOL]… we just played some games, and a dinner/inuman after that…

—————–

and so, that was my week… how was yours??

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: friends, MMORPGs, students]

(i) aside: The first and only awards that recognizes the role of Internet and Mobile platform in building the business of brands, services and companies in the Philippines. Submit an entry to the Boomerang Awards: the 1st Internet
and Mobile Marketing Awards.

This is a DigitalFilipino.com Club-sponsored post

Interestings Friday #3

(c)

i have been so out of the loop ni the blogging world for over a month that i am having a hard time filling this post up… but if there’s a will, there definitely is a way… so, for this Friday’s most interesting reads, here they are in no particular order:

• long have i been on the lookout for techie-materials that i have even sought out friends going abroad to have them buy for me… alas! i don’t have to do that anymore… tekingpinoy.com promises “to come up with unique apparel that showcases Filipino ingenuity in Information Technology specifically with free and open source software.” being an opensource advocate myself, this recent development really is welcome… but they don’t have anything on sale yet… so, guys, when?
• well, almost everyone is blogging about the Taste of Asia event over at the Mall of Asia which happened last Tuesday… sad to say, the wife and i [heavy eaters both] weren’t able to come because the wife had the cough and sniffles since Sunday up until yesterday… so, instead of going to the event, we decided to stay home and spend quality time together… *wink* *wink*
• i don’t know if i should cry or be happy about this bit of news from Abe… in his post, the BSA [Business Software Alliance] said that the Philippine software piracy rate is currently at 71% or $119M, which is lower that the previous rating of 90%… if only our OpenSource initiatives will push through, i am sure this number will significantly go down…

well, that’s it for now folks… see you again next week!! i promise i’d have more by then…

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: BSA, techie-pinoy, opensource, food]

new work, and my son being so “Wyse”…

(c)

ok, i am now settling very gently in my new job… i am a project manager for a company in Libis, QC, and i must say that the usual honeymoon period between PM and programmers [which usually last from a week to about 2, and not a month!!] didn’t happen in my case… after that 1st day of orienting myself with the operations of the company, and the individuals behind them, i went on ahead and started really working after that 1st day… i was barraged by work from then on, and that’s what’s keeping me busy nowadays… well, aside from PW, of course…

i am not complaining, though… far from it, in fact… i love my new job!! i get to play around with technology [Windows Vista really suck when your PCs RAM is only 512MB, tsk tsk tsk], and i get to manage a nice bunch of young people [am not the oldest at 39 with the youngest at 21], and i get to regularly talk to with my counterpart abroad… ti’s really a nice job so far… really… hehehe…

at the homefront, it really is nice to find out that your 1-year old son is following in your footsteps… the other day, while i was at my keyboard, he came near, and push my keyboard away from me, sat on my lap and said nonsense to me [like how 1 year olds do], pointed to my PC, and said “‘puter” indicating that he is telling me something about my computer… the wife remarked, “uh oh, even this early, i think i know what he will be when he grow up…” all the while tsking… and even before he was able to say “mommy!!“… he can now say “di” to call me, “ter” for water, and other gobbledy-gook which i can only call normal for his age… i can’t wait for him to close my monitor while i was working!!

makes you feel good knowing that your son is being brought up nice, eh?

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: work, parenting]

(i) aside: want to be a part of a Philippines Chat Room where you can express your thoughts and ideas on a variety of subjects?? well, there’s Kuro.ph, a message board which talks about parenting, photography, politics, love and courtship to marriage all in one breath… you don’t have to join those specialized boards anymore as there is one which basically talks about almost all a Pinoy here and abroad will encounter… so, why not try them out??

This is a DigitalFilipino.com Club-sponsored post

back to blogging again… i hope…

(c)

ok, i know i have been too remiss in my posts this past month… i actually have several in my plate right now, and i am having a hard time dealing with them… but slowly and surely, they’re all going away one at a time, and i hope to be back regularly posting in the next week or so…

to give all of you a rundown:

have you ever been fired from the company you were working from?? if you were and you want to get back, then, your bestfriend will be the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC)… if you really have a valid claim, then go to the NLRC along E. Rodriguez Avenue in Quezon City, file a simple form detailing the owner/general manager of the company you are filing a claim against, then have your claim raffled off to an arbiter… the arbiter will then set a date for a conference between you and the company or its representative at a later date…

if, during or after the conference, which is set for 2 days, you or the company representative do not agree on a settlement and decided to bring this to court, you have 2 choices: either 1) you get a lawyer to create and file a position paper for you; or 2) you can drop your claim if you think you don’t have the time or resources to go through with your suit…

me? i decided to go through with it since i know i have a very strong and very valid case… or at least, that’s what my lawyer was telling…. LOL

———–

i will be going to several blogging activities during this month… two of which will be A Taste of Asia at the Mall of Asia [July 3] and a food writing workshop [July 14]… last Tuesday [June 26], we also went to the opening of the Krispy Kreme DriveThrough in Greenhills, the 1st ever in Asia and the Philippines… we got to bring home to big boxes of their very tasty [but very fattening] donuts for free!! weeee….

we will now become regulars of the blogger badminton every Thursdays which include the likes of Abe, Gail with husband Marc, Bimbo and wife Des, and others… Abe invited us specifically to challenge the husband and wife teamup of Bimbo and Des… hehehe…

———–

i am now an avid player of PerfectWorld from LevelUp… you’ll be able to read a very extensive review of the game [at least from my point of view] from my game site…

a softlaunch of the game was held July 1 at the Robinson’s in Malate and i was able to get a set of installer CDs for the open beta which will start on the 18th…. but again, that news is not meant for this… watch out for that in my game site…

———–

it was a very good thing that i wasn’t very active in any activities, if there, where i need to take pictures, since i don’t have my Pentax with me… i have to bring it back to where i bought it from, and they, in turn, have to send it back to Japan, for repairs on the built-in flash… this i did last May 6, and only got my camera back last Friday, June 29, in time for the softlaunch yesterday afternoon…

———–
and finally, i have a new job… it is a project management job, and the guys i work with are all very good at what they do… as far as relationships go, i still am very new at the company, and will find out about that in the coming weeks and months… but we came off a good start, at least… so i am keeping my fingers crossed…

that’s it?? that’s it!! for now…

Ciao, sweetie…

Interestings Friday #2

(c)

it’s Friday again, and as promised, all interesting posts of the past week are aggregated here for your easy reading…

• THE Filipino Technopreneur’s post, Experiencing Seasonal Online Income?, talks about the current trends in Google Adsense’ income, and why they are going down during the hot summer months [aside: very hot, indeed!! imagine, heat at 6 in the morning??]… and his conclusion?? that most of his readers are students… go figure…
• Connie’s Dilemma of the cheated talks about why losing candidates in elections refuse to accept the truth behind losing, and instead turn to allegations of cheating and fraud, either in the elections proper or the counting of votes… haaayyy naku!! talo kung talo, wag na umangal!!
• Shari talks about her boobs and the Henna tattoo she has in What is it with the Boobs?, and it is itching, and she’s asking someone to scratch the itch for her… any takers?? she’d be the next President of the Philippines, y’know…
• Aileen Apolo came up with her own version of the Top 10 Most Influential Emerging Blogs with her Blogs I Read… i have to go through each one in her list to find out if i can include them in mine…
• GM Tristan’s Gamer Food 101 talks about the food gamers like him [and myself, used to] can eat during those long nights [and prolly days, too] which are not only quick and easy, but healthy as well…
• and from one of the fastest growing gaming blog dedicated to Ragnarok Online, Carlo’s post on Ragnarok Free In-game Items with Top-up gives gamers a chance to get back some more value for their money with free in-game items when they top up their game accounts…

see you next week!!

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: Interestings Friday]

open web analytics, senatorial unofficial tally, and celebrity magic fading

(c)

are you a fan of Google Analytics, the web web page testing tool which can help you understand which web page designs really work?? if you are and are looking for a better integration with your blog, there is now a new plugin recently released to imitate the great Google app…

Open Web Analytics v.1.0.3 released May 13th which you can install right in your WordPress-based blog and view the reports in your Dashboard… reports range from the usual keywords, referring web sites, and search engines for inbound readers, to the least usual like entry and exit pages to feeds reports…

go to their website and download and install the plugin now and find out how easy it is to use… and if your are a Google Adsense publisher, too, you can use this tool to modify your blogs to earn more…

~~~

with the elections over, and the counting of votes now crawling along very very slowly, the tally so far shows that 8 Genuine Opposition, 5 Team Unity, and 2 Independent candidates are in the top 15 as shown in the unofficial tally below:

go to the Inquirer.net page for an updated tally…

~~~

finally, it seems that the magic that celebrities, actors, and actresses hold over the people are finally waning… whereas before, people will vote simply because the candidate was well known for their movie antics and showbiz allure, voters today are becoming mature not to vote for them again… they probably learned from the lessons from a former ex-President, and several sports and movie personalities in the senate…

take the case of 2 very famous actors who just run for the senate, Richard Gomez and Cesar Montano, who are currently in the 18 place in the case of the latter and 25th for the former… and at the rate the counting is going, they will never set foot in the senate… not even the smiles of their equally-famous pretty wives campaigning for their husbands swayed the voters one bit…

also, Lito Lapid, running for mayor of Makati City, has finally conceded defeat to mayor Jejomar Binay… electorate of Makati City was not dazzled by Lapid’s waning star… likewise, his son, actor Mark Lapid, re-electionist for governor of Pampanga is in 3rd place behind 1st placer Fr Ed Panlilio and Lilia Pineda…

and lastly, champion boxer Manny Pacquiao seems bent on prolonging his agony and not likely to throw in the towel in his title fight bid for a congressional seat against re-electionist Darlene Antonino-Custodio, who’s father he has accused of trying to kill him before…

finally!! people are seeing into the real political agenda of these celebrities, and considering the needs of the Philippines more than their weakness for celebrity enchantment… ang galing ng Pinoy!!

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: Philippines, politics, OWA, celebrities]

WordPress version 2.2 “Getz” now out!

(c)

got this news from Matt:

the newest version of WordPress version 2.2 dubbed “Getz’ honor of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz came out today… it has more than 240 bug fixes and a bag of goodies came along with it… the goodies are the following:

• WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.
• Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.
• A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.
• Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
• We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
• Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.
• We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.

go to the WordPress.org blog to find out more…

i tried upgrading Kubiertos and the upgrade went well without a hitch!! if you are hosting your own blog and want to upgrade to the newest version of 2.2, you can look at the Upgrading page…

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: WordPress 2.2, Getz]

after the elections, what now??

(c)

now that the election fever is over, all stupid election commercials done away with, and all promises will remain just that, promises, where to now, Pinoy?? do we hold a fiesta for our winners?? do we bring out all our best suits and dresses and hold a ball?? or do we clean up after them, tearing down and scraping all their campaign posters posted all over?? and will something better happen now?? can we expect changes in our government now that we have put into position all of those we thought capable??

unless something astounding and freakish happens to our senators and congressmen and mayors, the same things will happen over and over again… and by the same things, i mean:

• our poor, which comprise almost 75% of our population, will remain poor and keep getting poorer… they will continue to live in shacks and eat only 1 meal a day, if even that… their children will continue begging for a few coins in the streets while their parents try to eke out a living… only 1 out of every 5 school-age children will be able to go to school… all the while, our senators and congressmen and mayors continue to fill their pockets with our tax money, living in plush mansions in Ayala Alabang, eating food bought with our money, and sending their children to schools abroad…
• those of us with 4 or 5 year old cars will continue to drive along semi-paved roads full of ruts and potholes, while our despised esteemed senators and congressmen and mayors continue to zoom along traffic in their new Expeditions and BMWs preceded by a convoy of military personnel…
• while so many of our countrymen ask for help from policemen and the law courts, our detested highly regarded senators and congressmen and mayors fuck with the little people, laugh at the courts, and waving their immunity at our faces… all the while getting protection from the the same policemen we little people pay with our hard-earned taxes…
• and, while we all grind to earn a decent and honest living everyday of our lives, we continue to hate venerate our senators and congressmen and mayors by sending them abroad on junkets so that they can have a well-earned vacation from their lives of pomp and high-living…

what can we expect this time around??

judging by past experiences, and i have had 37 years of that, i’d say more of the same… hey, we can’t expect our disdained respected politicians to change overnight, can we?? we just have to simply let them have their space and do their own thing in their own time… the time will come when we will harvest our just dues… but this will not come anywhere near our son’s sons lives…

next elections?? be ready for the same obnoxious politicians playing their obnoxious commercials on TV, attacking each other, continue fucking with the little people, and winning because of cheating their charms and stupidity wit…

remember everyone, we deserve what we get…

Ciao, sweetie…
[techtags: Philippines, Politics]

(i) aside: do you own a website? when searching for your particular brand or product, do you end up at least on the 1st page if not 1st on the list? if you don’t, then maybe you need help… in comes Singapore’s Top SEO… they call themselves cyber space consultants, and they provide search engine optimization consulting, the end of which is sure to make you 1st on the list of any search engine… you want at least a PR5 or 6?? then, Singapore’s Top SEO is your ticket to more visitors and increased revenue…

This is a DigitalFilipino.com Club-sponsored post