random blurb just to give this animal a bit of a jolt.

for you presentation junkies/rats:

 KeyJnote - pretty kickass presentation "launcher" that'll jazz up your presentations with zoom effects, "spotlight" effects and a gaggle of other "eye-candy-effects," that should help you close that deal, wow your boss or just make your eyes pop out -- and leave your karmic aura feel good since it's open source (read: free and unadulterated). Store on a flashdrive, launch using the command line (and tweak the settings using the command line (terminal for mac users)); doesn't get as geeky as this.

Oh and for a couple of useful presentation tips head onto Garr Reynold's site.

If you do a lot of software demos check these out:

Launchy - simple, light and customizable windows program launcher (ala-Quicksilver, but on a Windows machine). Won't have you fidgeting with the Start button and inadvertently exposing your "Hallmark Card Maker" program (or that pron-simulator program you have installed).

My programmer here at the office finishes off half a pack of Juicy Fruit gum before lunch. Damn. This guy must have some strong masticator muscles with the workout he has.

So much for a from-lurker-mode-post. I'm still alive, world.     

Rest in peace Mr. Vonnegut. 1922-2007

One of my favourite authors passed away yesterday. :(

Been remiss in updating this creature. Finally a weekend truly free of work-hassles.

New job, new responsibilities, new stress; love it actually to an extent that I've been bringing home work even during weekends and I love it. I guess my old job had me bringing home work I could do with my eyes closed and after a while it just got a bit too "feh". That, and a couple of other issues I'd rather just purge out of my system.

So yeah, I made the "switch" a couple of months ago. Been meaning to post from my babeeehhh but alas, I have yet to find some quality time with it. It doesn't help that it's in the hospital right now getting something changed. Oh and with the current job I work with 2 windowze machines every single day, and most of the things I have to do I can only do through the peecees (and my service laptop), so my mac is pretty much a music, movie, productivity and downloading thingamajig...FOR now.

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So yeah. I'm sure everyone has seen 300, and I'm sure the debate and claims that the actors had a lot of CGI working for them or they had make-up artists who kicked major ass when it came to ab-faking -- well head on over to gymjones and checkout the "300-workout". Interesting stuff for you gymrats.

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Oh and a Crocs store just opened by my favourite coffee shop over at the promenade. Fuck.

IFC bit (w/ podcast) on David Lynch's new movie Inland Empire, the link also has this small list (5) of the staff-writer's favourite Lynch characters.

My own little list.

1. The Radiator Lady from Eraserhead


2. John Merrick a.k.a The Elephant Man


3. My fave Lynch character OAT: Michael J. Anderson a.k.a (aptly) The Man from Another Place from Twin Peaks


4. Mystery Man from Lost Highway


5. Mr Percolator Himself, Jack Nance a.k.a Pete Martell from Twinpeaks. He also played Henry Spencer in Eraserhead



Ahhh Lynch-goodness. Alavet. Quoting something from the link (on Lynch's characters): "...beautiful freaks, larger-than-life ingénues and inexplicable entities that immediately lodge themselves in your memory".

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If you've been living under a rock, and have not been able to catch an episode of The Office, head on out kiddo! And download/buy/steal/kill anything/anywhere to watch an episode! While you're at it, go and catch an episode of The IT Crowd too. Ok? OK?

Oh yeah I'm pimping The Office just because there's this neat article on Ricky Gervais over at Wired.com

Ricky Gervais also has a kick-ass fart-funny podcast: The Ricky Gervais show!
Oh and there's a US version of The Office. I've still to watch an episode, but I heard it's just as good.

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Croc-of-shiite.



This logo, to me, brings about the similar feelings/fear whenever I see skull-and-cross-bones (READ: Poison), Or Carlos Agassi's ABnormal-pics: . READ: Stay Away!

Seriously. I have friends who dig 'em. Lia's one of 'em. Brrr...I just can't stand how these dastardly abominations disguised as trendy footwear are actually worn by practically every other person I see in malls!!! FUGGGGGLLLLYYY I tell ya.

Lookit:



Brrr.....Fugly. Dutch-maid-shoes-from-hell/mars.

Oh and their flip-flop line is just barely bearable.



Ulk.

Oh and I'm using this as a segway to these equally horric pictures of ELEPHANT-footwear for kids (who thinks of these goddamned things?!!).



*Boingboing article

Back in the day we had:

Bow Biters:

The Reebok Pump:

And those acid-tripping LA Gear Lights:


Now these..Grrr...

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Oh and since I went kinda retro there, remember Silly String? 'Ya know, that gunk-in-a-can that spews out spaghetti-confetti? Anyway, so yeah, apparently US soldiers use the stuff to detect trip-wires each time they enter a building/room. Coolness.

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Oh, and one last bit. c/o Boingboing: Hollywood's dumbest depictions of code. Having done my fair share of coding, this made me laugh. Non-geeks need not click. :)

"...but last I checked my terminal app doesn't require OpenGL. I'm working here, bitches - I'm not playing quake."

Alavet

Lately, I've been feeling like the guy from Notes from the Underground. Tootache. Angsty. And just stressed. Had my first root canal yesterday (sans any anesthesia, just because I have this huge fear of anything sharp pricking any part of my body: read needles/syringes/knives), but before that my fucking molar (and the infection around it) gave me this kickass fever. Fucked up I tell you. Sucks to be me. I pop a pain killer thrice a day, and my antibiotics have been messing up my tummy. I feel like a junkie, that and I have my nightly insulin shots. Haha!
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I'm moving jobs. '07 is the year baybeh. Hope to post something good about it here soon.

The International Plastic Modelers Society (IPMS) Philippines Bert Anido is having its 4th National Scale Model Competition. Models (of the plastic kind) of cars, tanks, airplans, ships, and mecha/sci-fi subjects will be on display at The Atrium Bldg. A SM Megamall. The event will be from November 26 - 30, 2006. So if you're going to be around the area, do drop by! Entrance is FREE!!! You get to see kickass creations of sexy geeks!  Huzzah!

Kickass idea: Fat Legged table to route wires. I want to make my own shelves, tsk, that'd make for a good weekend project, listing that down now...Hrmmm...

I'm trying to "up" my reading-output to about 3 books a week, I finished 2 books last week. I've been trying to sneak in a couple of hours of reading within the day (mostly in between breaks and while I'm in the loo). Let's see what happens next week..I plan on starting an 880 pager on Friday.

Chris Ware does the New Yorker. Sweet. I lost all my desktop icons when I tried making Chris Ware's artwork as my wallpaper. Haha.

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For all you Wes Anderson freaks: THEROYALTENENBAUMSSKETCHBOOK!!!! (link c/osleeplessplanet!!) Kickasskickasskickass.

Random attack of DVD-freakness.




Reservoir Dogs (15th Anniversary Edition)

Kickass.

Starbucks has a snazzy looking 2007 planner; thinking of actually foregoing Figaro for a bit, just to earn stickers for the planner.

My car needs a new air freshener, starting to get tired of industrial-new-car-smell. I was by this surf shop a friend owns with the bruvfs, and got a sniff of the wax they use on their boards (I don't surf), and man did it smell good! Apparently, the manufacturer of the wax (Sticky Bumps) has a line of air fresheners! Thinking really hard about getting a bar (Php 250.00 per), the bar reminds me of those Christmas tree air fresheners; it comes in Blueberry, Coconut and Banana. Hrmm...

Jack's back.

So yeah Firefox 2.0 just came out this week. I'm loving v.2.0 so far, although I wish the thing left a smaller-RAM-footprint every time I'd have more than 12 tabs open. The undo-closed-tab (CTRL+SHIFT+T) function has saved people around me from hearing me sputter out expletives because of an accidentally closed tab. I've managed to install Firefox in all the computers at the office, but people still find themselves using IE!!?!! WTF. And they run to me when a virus/trojan/spyware messes up their workflow for the day! I'm only forced to use IE for some sites I have to log onto for work (mostly government regulation sites whose databases I need to access, apparently a lot of people still submit themselves to the animal called MS Frontpage and IE; scary).

I've taken to writing down stuff on a notebook I always keep hand, stuff I'd like to blog about, stuff I need to buy (mostly office-supplies which recently I just can't seem to get enough of!?!?! why? I don't know). So yeah I might just do a late-post about how my birthday went, new stuff I'm reading, shit I'm listening to, etc.

The Vatican has its firewall/security computer named Michael (one of the archangels). Apparently they also have other servers named Gabriel and Raphael. Sweet.

I heart The Promenade over at Greenhills; me and a couple of my officemates have made it our somewhat 'pantry'/'home' of sorts. All the baristas over at the Figaro we're first name basis with, and they know how we specifically want our coffee done.  Actually I've been to a lot of Figaro branches already, and so far the one over at Promenade stands out, great service, great food and coffee! Something about how they brew the coffee over there, head on over there and tell the owner/baristas I sent 'ya. This whole experience with Figaro makes me appreciate the concept of "follow-through-sales", the sales/service-people actually taking care of customers actually returning to a business for further purchases or whatnot. I guess the whole concept of the 'suki' for us Filipinos does play a big part for business; the product eventually becomes a secondary need to the service (well at least for restaurants and bars) you're expecting; the short chats with the barista (I know the Zodiac signs, and the kids of the baristas over at Figaro for example) and their quirks are things I personally look forward to. Just some thoughts. I'm babbling here.

So yeah, the Promenade just kicks ass. Figaro, a Fully Booked and a decent movie-theater. I could live in the place for a month, and not get bored! Oh yeah me and an office mate were looking for a copy of Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree, but as it turns out with Milenyo hitting us 2 weeks back, the only copy FBooked had got wet! Apparently they can't sell the book even at a discount since they still had insurance-claims on the batch of books that got wet -- so even if the salesperson wanted to really sell us the book, they still haven't been able to turn over the damaged stock to the insurance company; I tell you, I saw stacks-and-stacks of water-damaged books (a lot of them were hardbound versions, too!) and I just started wondering: after the claim goes through with the insurance company, what happens to the books? Do they sell them off for rock-bottom prices (where?), or do they just get burnt (WTF?!). Hmmm...

Check out this freaky image: What would happen if all humans disappeared from the Earth?

While we're on humans-disappearing-from-the-face-of-the-earth, I'm going to go pimp two tv-shows I've been busying myself with (both somehow apocalyptic in nature): Jericho and Heroes. Both kick ass. Oh and while you're at it, you might want to check out Smith. Ray Liotta back from the dead! Seriously, I've only seen 2 episodes, and I like what I've seen so far.

I want these space invader cufflinks!

I've been trying out Mozilla Sunbird. It's a standalone calendar program for people who, like me, rely on webmail and don't really use Outlook or any other email-client; and I'm loving it. Oh and head on over to PDFPAD for your pdf-needs (calendars, sudoku sheets, etc.).

I used to play WoW, religiously, everyday, back when I was just bumming around. I've frozen my account since then. The expansion is coming out in a month, I'm still thinking of reviving my account; but with the amount of work I take home, and the corresponding amount of time I have/want/will have to invest in playing WoW just in case I do jump in, is making me think twice. But I just read this article on Wired which talks a bit about Burning Crusade.

They're coming out with, get this: flying mounts.

If you used to quest with me, you'd know how fucking brilliant this is. The concept of flying mounts has always been my (and I'm sure a handful others) "wet-dream" ever since I jumped in playing WoW. And now they're actually implementing it.

The expansion is coming out November 11, I hear.

Let's hope work eases up a bit, and I still don't have enought moolah for the expansion by then; or hey, I might be thumbing around with a DS Lite by then.

But man, flying mounts. Forget the hotsex, flying mounts, italics. alavet. FTW.

*ear/brain snack*
(both c/o boingboing)

Interesting discussion involving Cory Doctorow and Wendy Seltzer (lawyer + computer coder = l33t) on "cease and desist" and "takedown" letters/etc.. essentially about censoring the internet.

RU Sirius Show interview with Neil Gaiman.

And engadget interviews John Hodgman (the PC from the Get a Mac ads).

the blackouts fried our dsl modem at home; window broken, no internet, swamped with take-home-work. sucks to be me.

Here's an article on "The Return of David Lynch", there's a bit on Inland Empire and this book he's writing on "the creative process". 2 pages, nonetheless it's Lynch news!

oh yeah I discovered the website of the Korean Film Council a few months back; great content I tell 'ya. Downloadable pdfs (interviews, etc.). I think they still have the director series up (Chan Woo Park, Bong Joon-ho and Ryoo Seung-wan). Enjoy.

A friend from the US sent some swag my way: BTE's Live in New Orleans DVD. Kickass. I'm a pretty late-BTE-fan; so yeah, I actually feel a bit deprived having only discovered them now. My friend got me a beautiful bible too, the Word of God never looked and felt this good.
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South Super Highway looks weird (in a good way, I guess), with all the billboards that collapsed. Such devastation; though if you ask me the Metro does look a bit better/cleaner. Hmmm.. Less clutter, more skyline. Or haze. Or both.

so yeah Manila got hit by a friggin typhoon! was on the way back home from work during Milenyo's peak. darn forgot to bring my camera (overturning cars, flying "yero", etc.), but for a time I felt like dorothy/helen hunt in wizard of oz/twister. hold on, i just compared myself to two women. scratch that...anyhoo so yeah electricity was down for about 2 1/2 days. funny how all the hotels around the metro suddenly, in a span of just about 2 hours when the blackouts happened and the winds subsided, became fully booked. my room got thrashed, a lot of my books and CD's took the brunt of the wind+rain. sad. the glass on one of the windows of my room just gave in; tsk.

on the upside, check out the internet speeds right after a typhoon:


Holla!