noel alanguilan

- its news to me—“windows 7 is the most superior operating system on the planet”. i admit that 7 is better than xp and tons better than vista but its not without its flaws.

- tom’s hardware compares the top 3 browsers running on linux. this should be an interesting ‘geek’ reading. last place goes to firefox. i hope the guys at mozilla have something more interesting up their sleeves.

- nuclear energy is now more expensive than solar energy.

- an affordable 11-speed groupset from campy. do we really need that many?

- the international cycling union (uci) has allowed the use of disc brakes in cyclo-cross in competition for 2010-2011. i hope this paves the way for using disc brakes for road racing in the near future.

- the internet is so over. omg. omg. i have to get another job then. wtf?!? good thing i only bought one of his albums—the first one. on tape. that’s one for the archives.

- microsoft support for windows xp service pack 2 ends july 13. 2010. its you either upgrade to service pack 3 or windows 7 or else you leave your computer vulnerable to attacks because microsoft will not be updating sp2 with security patches. you can also ‘upgrade’ to linux.

- if your password is in this list, change it.

- sandisk recently introduced a secure digital (sd) card that can store data for a hundred years. yup 100 years. you can only write to it once and after that you will not be able to alter or delete the data. this would be great with legal documents but i’m more concerned about preserving my photos and videos.  i hope its not expensive.

- 1.7 million iphone 4 sold in 3 days. start with a design that’s sleek and mostly shiny, hammer in an intuitive interface and make it mostly work. and you’ve got a winner. mostly. i’m waiting for htc (or samsung or lg) to design something more sleek and shiny and have google hammer in a more intuitive android. price it lower than the iphone and you’ve got a winner.

- the most entertaining hair of the 2010 world cup. the title says it all.

- html5 is the next generation web standard. if you’re a developer its best to get into it early.

- and 3 terabytes of space from an external usb 2.0 drive. from seagate. us$ 250. i think you have to buy direct.

its the place where they cross going to or from either side of the ether. most of these gates look like obvious passages—appearing as doors or real gates. some are almost unnoticeable being hidden as trees or large rocks. but all the gates have one thing in common—they always have two “pillars” with symbols and inscriptions written in an aged, almost forgotten language.

most of these gates have their own guardians who keep track of who or what comes and goes. they’re also responsible for keeping the gates hidden away from prying eyes which should be easier these days. many people have forgotten how to see beyond what their sight shows them.

it was just my luck that my nana was one of those keepers. i often would help her clean up at the end of the day and in exchange she would tell me stories of the people she has met and the places that she’s set foot on. her stories always held me in fascination.

i was with her one summer solstice night several years ago when naala arrived through the gate. there were only a handful of folks who crossed that day and she as the last to arrive. as soon as she saw me she gave me an angry, piercing stare like i wasn’t suppose to exist.

she just stopped long enough to acknowledge my nana with a nod and then she was gone.

my nana looked at me, “what did you do? she looked angry at you.”

“nothing. i didn’t do anything.” and i looked back at where she was standing last.

nana just said, “mmmmm…” and went back to cooking the rice.

if you’re following the world cup then you might have heard of the vuvuzela. its a traditional horn made of plastic and when you blow on it, it blares a sound similar to a buzzing elephant. it is also annoying the heck out of a lot of the world cup tv viewers. some networks have tried to cancel out the sound from their broadcasts with good results.

youtube, on the other hand, wants you to experience this unique world cup noise on demand. as you can see from this screenshot, there’s this new “soccer” button. clicking it would turn on and off the vuvuzela sound irregardless if your playing a video or not. its not present in all the videos though.

if you want to hear what a vuvuzela sounds like i’ve embedded the video here from shaheenjay. its not my video. fair warning: turn down your sound to a level next to zero and then slowy bring it up. you’ve been warned.

- with adobe and apple trading jabs maybe its time for adobe to consider porting their products, namely photoshop and indesign, to linux instead of suing the fruit. i think that would be more rewarding and satisfying in the long run.

- wordpress 3.0 has been released. matt said, “3.0 is faster, stabler, and more secure” and it looks like its faster and the interface is cleaner. the next few days will certainly be a bit busier. so far it certainly looks interesting enough. i’m particularly intrigued by the new multisite feature.

- google embeds a pdf reader into chrome. so far, its only available in the 6.x beta versions of chrome.

- open source lessons from the porn industry. the article shows how the industry maximizes the use information technology. don’t worry the article is rated g so its safe for work.

- dell said linux is safer than windows then a few days after it says its not. which one is it, dell? well, i know my answer. just take a peek at this picture and see for yourself.

[sarcasm on]
this has got to be one of the more helpful error messages that i’ve gotted from yahoo mail.
[sarcasm off]

the solstice is almost here. the old waypoints are becoming clearer and the signs are beginning to appear one by one.

the passes will open soon.

its not difficult to see the solstice signals especially if you’re seeking them out. they don’t really make any effort hide themselves. most of the time you’ll see it in and around the lakes—especially at the big lake. sometimes the surface of the water almost becomes like a looking glass and you can’t see anything below. its as if you’re looking up from below the surface of the water.

from the appearance of the first sign the visit preparations starts. most of them usually pack light going for a quick look just to see what’s it like on the other side of the mirror and they go back before the moon sets. some only have short visits sharing only a meal or two with very old friends or family. less than a handful stay until the next solstice.

chrome—google’s web browser feels fast, yes. the linux version just came out a couple of weeks ago and its only now that i was able to sprinkle my impressions about it on this blog.

i found the interface uncluttered giving a little more screen space for web pages. it passed both the acid2 and acid3 (100/100) tests which is very good for my web development work.

what doesn’t work for me so far, is that i can’t preview my posts in a mailing list i manage in yahoo groups. clicking on the preview button just gives me, essentially,  a blank page. not good. but i do realize that this may not be a chrome problem but using firefox and opera works. also some add-ons in that i use in firefox is not yet available or only has the ‘lite’ version in chrome. i use noscript in firefox but there is no equivalent in chrome.

what does work for me is the way the interface comes out as uncluttered and that i get some extra screen space. importing settings and bookmarks from firefox was a breeze. it even imported the passwords i use in the sites i visit. and of course i like the speed.

so far its been good to me. there are minor quirks for the week that i have been using it but it’s nothing major. i’m thinking of what mozilla might be bringing to the table next.