Oh AeroSnap!

If you love Windows 7’s Aero Snap feature and you’re stuck with a Windows XP machine – like me with my office computer, don’t fret. Here’s a nifty little tool that mimics the feature. It’s a very handy productivity tool. Enjoy!

Re: Do I need a Zune HD right now?

ZunePH, one of my favorite blogs, made a very interesting blog entry about Zune HD. The blog entry, aptly titled “Do I need a Zune HD right now?” shares the author’s point/counterpoint in getting the Zune HD. Instead of making a comment on the blog I decided to dedicate an entire blog to it.

Here’s my take on that: High-end gadgets NEVER belong to need list. Case in point: there are thousands of cheap but functional phones out there but most people drool over smartphones. Even if the only thing they’ll need are the text and call feature. Another silly point here is that most advanced feature of a smartphone (albeit 90% of them) would require data plan for it to be truly functional – mobile internet. GPS, push email – but data plans are just too much for the masses. But that doesn’t stop people from getting an expensive phone. Another example are Portable Media Devices (PMP’s), Heck Sanza Clip alone could make Apple run for its money, it’s cheap and packed with features. But I don’t see it grabbing any market share from Apple.

The way I see it is there are handful of reasons why people haplessly fall for ridiculously priced gadgets. People just can’t get enough lust for high-end gadgets. Either spurred by their curiosity or their need for validation, we make gadgets a priority like it is one of our monthly bills. I can’t remember how many times I’ve been impulsive when it comes to buying gadgets. My iPod classic is a testament to that and no I will not tell it here, hehe. High-end gadgets are, in a way, a personal statement. Either we want to be differentiated from the crowd or we just want to show off what we can buy, is something high-end gadget can surely convey. I was long-time Nokia phone user but I wasn’t really happy. Until I learned about Windows Mobile phones where you could install apps, tweak it’s registry and even create your own software for the phone. When I got my hand on my first WinMo phone (O2 XDA mini), I told myself, “ok, this phone is my phone”. I figure it was the geek in me longing for the phone.

So I might not pre-order the Zune HD now or even order right after it’s release (September 15!) but I’m sure I will get it somehow, someday. I know I don’t need it but what the heck I can’t get enough of how sexy it is and it is one thing that will differentiate me from the millions of iPod lemmings out there!

deleted

There are some things that you don’t wish you’d use but you’re glad it’s there.

Yesterday my Windows 7 Beta expired, and me being a complete idiot was so excited installing the new build of the OS that I have completely forgot to back-up my 5-year collection of photos. The minute I realized my collection was gone, which I didn’t until the evening yesterday, I went like crazy. It all went blurry. All I can think about is I must have backed it up somewhere else. But of course, I haven’t.

And you know what’s the unbelievably stupid part is? (yes, deleting the pictures was not) I was able to save everything else, including a copy of ‘Kailangan Kita’, what the heck is wrong with me!

Seriously, I was really, really frustrated. It’s five years of my life gone because of my utter stupidity. Not to mention the efforts I made to organize, tag and edit this collection. Anyway, moving forward I know for a fact that deleted files – even formatted ones – can still be recovered using a software. I remember using a software called ‘File Scavenger’ before (yes, this is not the first time that I have ‘accidentally’ deleted some files). So there I was, I’ve spent the night scouring my hard drives looking for any trace of my photos, something that I never imagined doing. I recovered some of the pictures but not the entire collection. From the looks of it, it’s roughly 50% of the collection. Damn it. I’m gonna make a few more scans on my hard drives tonight and hoping that I’ll uncover more.

It’s gonna be a long night.

tweaking our home network

For a few months now, I’ve noticed that our home network is just painfully slow either on accessing files over the network or just surfing the net. We have three PC’s on the network, two of them run on Windows 7: a desktop, our media center and a Sony Vaio laptop running on Windows XP. We also have a few gadgets that occasionally piggyback on the network: three mobile phones and PMP (portable media player) with wi-fi and the only thing that connects them together is a 4-port wireless Linksys WRT54GC.

Googling (and Binging) around, I saw a couple of tips on how to improve our hapless router’s performance. Some of them are straightforward, like picking a good location for your router so that it has good coverage on each of the device on the house. Some of them are just trivial, which I will cover here:

• The first that I did was to change my router’s channel. It turns out that most routers use the same channel by default so if you’re in a wifi congested area, connection gets weaker. To change your router’s channel access the router’s page, if you’re using a Linksys router, point your browser to:

  http:///192.168.1.1/

  You will be prompted with a security dialog box, provide the credentials. The default username is admin, leave the password empty.

  
  Go to the wireless section of the page and the value router’s wireless channel. Six, one and eleven are common values so stay away from them. You can download net stumbler to detect the channels that are being used around your area.

 

• The next thing that I did is to tweak the settings of each of my PC’s wireless adapter. I’m not going to discuss them here since most of the things that I did was just fiddle with the values of the adapter’s settings. I suggest that you check the documentation of your network adapter first before changing anything.

  To view your wireless network adapter’s settings, right-click on “My Computer” > Manage > Device Manager > On the right pane, expand “Network Adapters” then double click your network adapter.

• The last that I did – it may sound Greek but just bare with me – was to configure my router to use  OpenDNS instead of the default DNS  from my ISP (SmartBro). OpenDNS is a fast, secure and reliable DNS alternative, in english, it’s just plain better. Anyway, applying DNS can be a little tricky depending on the router’s model. Case in point, Linksys WRT54GC only allows you to specify the DNS using “Static IP” and not “DHCP”. The first thing you need to do is go to the router’s settings page just like on the first tip. Once you’re there, go to the Set-up section of the router’s settings page. If you’re using a Linksys, its the default landing page. On this page, change your “Internet Connection Type” to “Static IP”. After this, you will need to supply the values for the fields. I found the values of these fields by checking the “Status” page of my router setting page.

  

  Copy these values on their respective fields.

  
  Don’t forget to click the “Save Settings” at the bottom of the page.

After these steps, there’s a noticeable change of speed in copying files over the network and some very subtle change in internet connection. There you go. I hope these tips help. Leave me a comment if you have some questions.

THE list

I think I’m a sucker for lists. Although I don’t qualify even remotely as an organize person. I don’t know, maybe it’s the thrill in organizing thoughts. Heh, ok now I’m also a perv.

So here’s another list for me and this is no ordinary one. This is THE list. I don’t wanna call it my bucket list, I’m not that old. But these are the things that I want to do (with my Bee, syem’pre) in the next quarter of my life.

• Attend a TED Conference – TED is a community of passionate people on their field who wants to make a difference on the world, literally. Every year, a conference is held to give some of these incredibly smart people to share what they’re doing to the community. There’s a lot of inspiring talks every conference. If you wanna see some of these talks, they are freely available at TED. I strongly that you add them to your podcasts.
• Watch Chris Rock live – If you haven’t seen any of Chris’ stand-ups (NOT the movies) then I suggest that you immediately stop reading, head to the nearest video rental shop and rent a copy of his shows Chris is just outrageously funny. He can talk about politics, race issues, romance and a whole more that you can pick up and laugh.
• Witness Aurora Borealis (or Australis. Either, I’m not really that picky, ha!) 
• Live for a year in Tuscany – I know, I know. That’s the gayest thing a man could ever put it his list but I can’t help it. I’m just in love with the place (and yes, I’ve seen “Under the Tuscan Sun” a million times and would not hesitate to see it again).
• Live for a year in New York – who doesn’t? I’m just curious what the fuss is all about, what makes it the greatest city in the world.

 

crossed out: la mesa eco park

Slowly, I am inching my way in crossing out all of the items in my list. This is my third item to cross out – here are the first and the second. Yesterday, since I’m pretty much unoccupied, we went to La Mesa Eco Park and and kill some time. We killed time alright, we blast every minute till we ran out of it.

It was a quickie, roughly just 2 hours, but we made every minute count! There are handful of fun activities that you can do there, but since we’re in nick of time, we made a little hands-on management: we prioritize. Boat riding was fun but can be little tiring and confusing at first. Rowing is not an easy chore! It’s more than just a physical activity, you need to think how you’ll paddle your way through the lake. And I thought I can leave my brain at home. The boat costs P100 for 30 minutes.

Fun slide was the highlight actually. Finally, some adrenaline for a slooow weak. It’s P100 per person which I think is a little pricey? Or am I just being tight on my wallet. Anyway, it’s really fun, you should try it. There are other stuff that you can do there like wall climbing, paint ball, etc.

Some of our pictures below:

episodal [strikes] back[slide]

  When you get used to being busy, holidays aren’t necessarily good news for you. Three days at home without work may sound relaxing, but if work is something that keeps your mind occupied then that means three days of being on-occupied. Three days of nothing to think about but catching up missed episodes of some TV shows, pigging out, afternoon sleeps and hours and hours of mindless surfing on the net.  Don’t get me wrong, I like doing those things. I love doing nothing. But for three days?

The thing that sucks when you’re not doing anything is your mind tends to fly. “Fly” and “mind” in one sentence is never a good one. All of these images swimming, backstroking in your brain like a scene from some weird movie. Picking some random thoughts from your recollection like its some kind of torture-yourself-day. And that’s not even the worst part, wait until you get to sleep and you couldn’t. When everybody is in la-la land and you’ve seen all the TV shows  and you’ve read every article on your RSS reader and you’re still wide awake.

Yes, It’s 2:18 in the morning and I wanna think about work. I am thinking of what I’m gonna do the minute I sit on my desk. I am composing in my mind every code that I’ll be writing, every email that I’ll be sending,  and every little thing that I need to do. I am thinking about anything because I don’t want to be not thinking. I think I’m wired this way. I think we’re all wired this way. And that’s just all right. Life is just too short to throw away some moments of not thinking. I’ve wasted enough.

I think I just had my “fill”. I’m hitting the sack now.

How does your desktop look right now?

(Click to enlarge)

I just love how my desktop look right now. Windows 7 + Night blur + blu twitter client + gadgets, really, really nice. Plus, since it has an overall dark color my carbon footprint is lower. Ok, I just made that up. How does your desktop look right now?

Donsol: A crazy trip

How do you turn a much-awaited vacation around when you didn’t catch your flight in the first place? Improvise, baby.

Yes, the trip that we planned for almost 3 months had a massive ignition failure: we missed our flight. It was supposed to be 6:00 AM and we woke up 5:47. With me praying for that slim chance that our flight might be delayed, we rushed to the airport. But of course we didn’t make it.

We tried  looking for another plane to Legazpi but they’re all fully booked. Fully booked until March. Ugh. The only chance we could fly is to try as chance passenger for a plane that will be leaving the next day with one-way ticket cost almost thrice both of our round-trip ticket combined! Yup, it was Friday 13th indeed. And it was all over us. I am blindly taking the blame here (Yan bee ha. fingers crossed, hehe). I set up my phone alarm to 4’o clock but it didn’t kick in, I have no idea why.

So we were at the airport by 8 AM, instead of relaxing on the beach,  we are frustrated, sleepy and hungry. Upon sleuthing on each airline’s counter, we learned that there’s an available flight to Virac, Catanduanes. Now to put this whole “craziness” thing in perspective, the only thing I know about Catanduanes is, like Legazpi, it also belongs under region V (Bicol region), so it still amazes me how the heck we end up thinking that we can make our way to Legazpi.

Maybe it was our eagerness to have this vacation. I mean, it’s been months since the last time we had a chance to getaway. Or maybe it was a sense of adventurism. I mean think about it, no map, just destination! How exciting! And the time was ticking so we have to decide, pronto!

So we bought 2 one-way ticket to a place we’re completely clueless about. We haven’t got the chance to Google it since NAIA doesn’t have wifi (yeah, what’s up with that?).

Virac, Catanduanes

I’ll be honest, Virac was merely a stopover, so take my comments here with a grain of salt. Virac greeted us with a Chocolait Hills-like mountains and calm seashores. Despite being a separate island from Luzon, every sign will tell you that you are still in the Philippines: old Spansih-influenced cathedral right at the center of the town, tricycle being one of, if not, the most important means of transportation, a town plaza and that slow, quaint feeling you get all over the place.

We were starting to get acquainted with the place when another problem came. To get to Legazpi, we have to take a 3-hour ferry ride from San Andres, a 45-minute town north of Virac, to Tabaco, Albay. But we’ve just missed the 1 PM last trip of the ferry. Then slowly whispered to myself, “this trip is starting to turn into a nightmare”. But I was cool since I don’t want let Cyd know that I’m already freaking out. After all, this mess was “my” fault (hehe). So we decided to stay and leave early in the morning the next day. That’s when everything started to turn well. We stayed on a place called Midtown Inn. It’s a fairly decent place to stay with reasonable fees. Overnight stay is P1,500 breakfast included. It’s right in the middle of the town so everything is just a few hops away. There’s nothing much to see that is within the town proper so just walk around and took some pictures. During the night we had a very nice meal with local cuisine at the Seabreeze restaurant. It’s an incredibly cheap restaurant that’s just few hundred meters away from the Inn. It’s also in front of the beach so the ambience is really nice. Cyd was craving for seafoods so that’s what we had. After the dinner, we decided drop by at the bar right next to the Inn, Chef de Leoj (neat huh). They played some real nice acoustic songs. Our night in Virac was plain and therapeutic. It was what we exactly needed, a mood setter. Something to swing our mood back to vacation mode having lost it from our misfortune. The restaurant was all smooth and cozy which reminded me of this song.

The next day, the hotel fixed us a vehicle to bring us to San Andres. Then we had the ferry ride to Tabaco. From there, we took another 30-minute drive to Legazpi.

 

Legazpi City

There are 2 things you need see here, one is Mayon Volcano, which you can’t miss because it’s just right out there, literally . The second one is the Cagsawa ruins. You can view these two at the same time by heading to Cagsawa Ruin Park in Daraga, Albay, just 10 minutes away from Legazpi. Daraga and Legazpi are two cities right next to each other so don’t be confused. The park is like a viewing deck of Mt. Mayon. It has a good angle to see the volcano and also, this is a good place to buy your pasalubongs and souvenirs and experience Bicol express and Laing. I’ve been here for a couple of times now and I can say that I’m impressed with this park’s consistency in over-all appearance.

After this, we headed to Donsol (finally!) which is an hour and a half jeepney drive from Legazpi. Here’s a tip, it will take you 2 rides from the park to the terminal and that’s a little tiring so what you can do is ask the tricycle driver to take you directly to the terminal. The fare should be around P30, but expect that they’ll ask more, anything more than P60 would be too much.

Donsol

In Donsol, there are 3 important things you need to concern about (Apple, are you taking notes?): a place to stay, firefly watching and, of course, whaleshark watching.

Finding a place to stay

Donsol coastline is like any other famous long beach, resorts are right  next to each other. Finding them is not the challenge, picking one is. Woodland and Vitton resorts are easy pick: they’re right next to the Eco-Tourism office and they have have nice facilities. The only problem is they’re a little pricey. Rooms are P1,800 per night with no breakfast included and a typical meal for two would cost you P500-P700 (you even have to buy the water! ugh) so I’m suggesting to look around if you’re tight on budget.

 

Firefly watching

Firefly watching will be one of the most unique experience you’ll ever have so be sure to sign-up. You’ll have to ride a boat from the shoreline to the Donsol river. By the way from this point forward, whenever I mention “boat” expect for the word “fee” but don’t worry you can also use the word “split” or “share”. The boat fee is P1250 and can accommodate up to 6 people depending on the size of the boat. Of course you can always split it with other tourists. The Eco-tourism office does the matching for you but in case all groups are filled, you have to do it on your own, that’s what we did anyway. Resorts also book their guests in Firefly watching so it’s a good place to start. Ask for the resort’s coordinator if you can join their guests. Worst case scenario is to look for groups that has less than six members. Talk to the boatmen, they will hook you up, hehe.

Once you’re in the river, be patient, they are worth the wait. Fireflies don’t come out unless the least streak of sunlight is out. And once they’re out, my oh my, it is a sight to die for. Imagine small electrical sparks that runs through every stem of a tree. Some glow in patterns, like Christmas lights on your window and some glow in random patterns like the Planetarium. The river, the night, they all add up to this enchanted moment. By the way, I find the best way to enjoy this moment is with silence so as much as possible avoid joining other boats. There are so many spots so pick one that’s not crowded. The most annoying part with watching fireflies with huge crowd is when people take pictures on the firefly with their camera flash on. It hurts your eyes like hell.

 

Whaleshark watching

So this is the main course of our journey, hold on I’m just gonna take a moment and organize my thoughts, hehe.

Whaleshark watching is only in the morning so you need to make your schedule fit with it. The boat cost P3,500 and can accommodate up to 7 people, that’s P500 each plus P100 for registration on the Ecotourism office. Don’t ask me what the hell is that for. They will tell you to get a snorkeling gear, which is P150, and a flipper, also P150, which is not really required. If you’re a pro in swimming then you may pass and save a few bucks. We rented the flippers but end up not using it anyway because we’re both not used to it.

To really enjoy Whaleshark watching a certain level of swimming skill or a good BOI (Butanding Interaction Officer) that can guide you on the water is required. Remember, once a Butanding is spotted, you will have to swim your way to it. Having a life vest is a good but there’s a good chance that it will slow you down. Here’s another tip, join a group with the same swimming skills as yours. This way the BIO can easily handle the entire group. For example, if you’re a noob and joins the pro group, you’re gonna eat dust! That’s what happened to us. We joined a bunch of foreigners that are like swimming Olympians. Two of them are professional divers, the other two have gills and fins and the last one is the last descendant of Atlantis (ok those were all jokes, but you get the idea). It was a challenge catching up! But we were able to interact with the Butandings quite a few times and it was really awesome! My first encounter was quick and exciting. When I submerged my head on the water, it was under me! A 10-meter whale swimming right under you, man, that was something. We were laughing when we get back to the boat. The subsequent citing we’re all exciting. I even had the chance to accidentally touch it.

 

Right after that we rushed quickly to the hotel and rented a van to take us directly to Legazpi airport. Vans cost around P1,000-P1,500.

That’s it. It was one crazy vacation but I’d do it again in heartbeat! No maps, just destination, that’s where the fun starts.

blu: the vista (and win 7) twitter client

I was surprised (and excited) to find this out. I’m not a huge twitter user primarily because twitter here in PI is not yet mainstream (I wish for the day where Telcos would start integrating Twitter on their services). Anyway, so I tried blu: the twitter client for Vista (and Win 7), I was blown away by the UI. I’m using thwirl as a twitter client, which is already amazing, but blu makes twhirl UI a joke. It has a very, very, very slick user interface and its easy on the eyes. It blends perfectly on the whole Aero glass interface. And I’m glad that it’s built using WPF and .NET Framework 3.0.