Erwin's Technological Realm

Shutdown

2006-02-23T00:52:00.000-08:00

I am thinking on shutting down this blog. I want to build a personal website where my blog can reside and add a gallery of pictures, music, and do some PHP programming. This blog doesn't excite me anymore. I need to build one that can be shared with my friends and family.

Glassfish

2006-02-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

Sun Microsystems made a bold move last December by donating their Sun Java Application Server to the open source community and named the project Glassfish. Probably, Sun started to realize the advantages of open sourcing their application server and that bringing it closer to the developers would probably gain more support from the Java community. One thing I noticed is that the name they gave to the project has no reference to coffee or any java bean. Since the announcement, I started pondering on buying Sun Microsystems stocks. Its current value of around $4.50 per share.It might go up more than 100% its current value in the near future.

2006

2006-01-03T01:50:00.000-08:00

After a long break, I will be going back to work later today. I still have trouble sleeping after drinking a cup of freshly brewed coffee after dinner. The caffeine is keeping me awake and the good thing is, I still happen to watch the Duane Barry episodes of X-Files on TNT at one in the morning.

I believe 2005 has been a better year for me - in terms of my career. I feel that everything I wanted in my career is falling in place. So in 2006, I am looking forward to doing new things I've never done before - explore other sports, hobbies and more opportunities for personal growth. Of course, I need to work harder on losing weight and make sure I don't indulge myself with too much delicious foods. Usually, ingesting to much delicious foods would most likely give you high cholesterol and diabetes.

I keep on digressing here. But the fact is, I wanted to start this year and make sure that I keep my plans on the right track.

Interesting Techie Blogs

2005-11-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

I've been browsing over my collection of RSS feeds using Omea Reader 2.0 and found a couple of interesting techie blogs:

1. ArchiTechie Journal - a discussion of OO principles, architecture and design patterns
2. Daniel Lemire’s blog - Computer Science topics
3. Handbook of Software Architecture - architecture, design principles, Rational Unified Process

Omea Reader 2.0

2005-10-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

For almost a year now, I have been using JetBrains' Omea Reader for aggregating my favorite blogs. It is a very useful tool, especially if you want to aggregate news and blogs, filter what you want and what you don't need. You also have the option to categorize information and mark it for future needs. It would help a lot if you are into research where you have to categorize blogs with different sources and put them under one roof.

When I upgraded to Omea Reader 2.0 a couple of months back, aggregating blogs couldn't have been much better. Indexing was faster, better and a non-memory/cpu hog. A plug-in into Mozilla Firefox allowed me to subscribe to a new RSS Feed from Firefox into Omea Reader.

Download of Omea Reader and license is free for personal use.

Super Friends on DVD

2005-10-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

I just watched a rented DVD from NetFlix called Challenge of the SuperFriends. SuperFriends was my favorite Saturday morning cartoon about a couple of decades ago. The idea of bringing together the super heroes such as Batman, Superman and Green Lantern was really exciting.

When I saw the episodes last night, I found it really amusing and funny. Here are the reasons why :

1. Bizarro and Solomon Grundy sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
2. Green Lantern seems to get really powerless on anything yellow. He probably avoids eating bananas!
3. The Justice League computer basically knows everything you ask it to figure out. Most probably the JL computer is 'networked' to the Bat Computer.
4. Batman and Robin can read punch cards from the JL and Bat Computer.
5. Batman's utility belt virtually contains anything Batman needs whenever he needs them.
6. The large TV screen in the Hall of Justice is probably connected to CNN because it seems like to get the latest live feed about what's happening around the world.
7. On this DVD set, the SuperFriends won the battle on every episode but never captured the Legion of Doom. They always had the chance to do it but Superman always says "We'll get them next time we meet them." at the end. Talk about the SuperFriends promoting procrastination!!

What's up?

2005-10-09T01:24:00.001-07:00

Promotion
I've been busy for the last month and a half. Perhaps too lazy to blog after starting on setting up my Fedora Linux box. Or maybe I just enjoyed a moment of feeling good after being promoted and having a considerably competetive salary increase that I've been expecting four months earlier. I never thought this promotion would really have a great effect on me. It's probably not the promotion but the salary increase that went with it.

Fantasy Football
Hey, it's football season once again! I had too many excuses for not really updating my blog but one of the major reasons is that I've been very busy for the last month participating in one of the fantasy football leagues over the internet. This has been an annual event since my friends,(former) co-workers and I started in 2001. The event seems to be a way of keeping in touch with friends across the continent.

Photography

I finally bought myself a Nikon N75 35mm SLR and started studying photography. I had to do some research over the library on aperture opening and shutter speed to make sure I get things right. Though initial shots have been preety disappointing, I must say my second roll of film showed promising signs that I am already planning to set up a photoblog in the near future.

Music
I finally bought a CD(actually 2 CDs) after three years. I bought two Ben Folds' album : Rockin' the Suburbs and Songs for Silverman. I just wanted to get my piano groove back again. I haven't been playing seriously for the last two and a half years and listening to Ben Folds' music has inspired me to get back to playing piano seriously and concentrate on honing my craft. It has been a lifelong dream to write a decent song that can be shared with other people. Perhaps I would be sharing my mp3s over the web soon.

Wikipedia
I have been addicted to Wikipedia for the last week since I discovered it last week. I have heard of Wikipedia before but I never believed that those stuff could work. I mean, people from all over the world contributing to the Great Encyclopedia and you do not even know if you can trust the information that gets written there. But when I learned that it uses the Open Source concept, I must say it's headed to the right direction.

Lennon
Today is the 9th of October and John Lennon fans(including me) are celebrating this man's birthday. He is known to be the driving force behind The Beatles and a rock and roll legend that inspired a lot of successful musicians today. My favorite Lennon songs include Strawberry Fields Forever, Imagine, Woman, Nowhere Man and In My Life.

Netflix
I finally switched to Netflix which I find really more economical than my Blockbuster Movie Pass. With Netflix, I could save a trip to the Blockbuster store. Waiting time was not really a problem, especially in weekdays. Netflix - $17.99/month.

More...
I probably would like to write more ... about Java 5.0, Java EE, VoIP, new interesting Fall TV Shows ... I hope I could find time in the next couple of days.

My Own Website

2005-08-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

I am currently ramping up my own website. Thanks to Fedora, Tomcat, Blojsom and DNS2GO, I was able to setup a Linux OS, Java App Server,a blogging software and expose my box to the internet in a day.

Check it out!

On Software Development

2005-07-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

After ten years of working in the IT industry, I have encountered lots of up and downs in software development. The following are the things that I have learned after all these years :

1. Software projects fail because of poor management: not having the right resources for the job and not keeping them happy with what they do.

2. Software projects fail because of lack of good processes and methodologies.

3. Software development is more than just programming. It has become both science and art. Not only does it involve technical expertise, but a lot of creativity, intuition and foresight.

4. Software development is also about teamwork. Architects, designers, testers and programmers should work and support each other along the way. They should maintain respect towards each other's work.

5. System requirements always change and a well-designed system is one that can easily adapt to any type of changes in the fastest amount of development time.

Google Earth

2005-07-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

I recently downloaded and installed Google Earth on my desktop PC. The application will virtually take you around the globe given the name of the place. I placed 'Marikina, Philippines' and it took me to a not-so-detailed map of Marikina and its vicinities. It is an amazing piece of software. Check it out!

Batman Begins

2005-06-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

I just saw Batman Begins this afternoon and was very surprised that the movie turned out to be better than I expected. I was apprehensive in paying $9.50 to see this movie because of the boring trailer. It turned out to be a great movie. I felt this movie was better than Tim Burton's Batman. It took out Batman's cartoonish character and made him a more realistic person.

Life is for Living

2005-06-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

I once again listened to one of my all-time favorites CD - Parachutes by Coldplay. I noticed that the last track of the CD contains a separate song, Life is for Living. It's a very short song with very simple lyrics but melodic tune.

Life Is For Living

now i never meant to do you wrong
that's what i came here to say
and if i was wrong then I'm sorry
but don't let it stand in our way
cause my head just aches when I think of
the things that i shouldn't have done
but life is for living, we all know
and i don't want to live it alone

sing ah
sing ah
and just sing ah

Blockbuster Movie Pass

2005-06-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

Summer is here once again. As I said before, it is going to be a very boring one unless I find something interesting to do. The first thing that I did to partially solve this boredom is to get a Blockbuster Movie Pass. It allows me to rent unlimited number of DVDs per month for $24.99, 2 DVDs at a time.

With the exception of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, I do not really go to movie theatres often. Before Sith, I have not gone into a movie theatre for more than six months. So I think this is a very good deal for me!

Just imagine the savings. Normally, you can rent a DVD at Blockbuster for $3.99. If you rent more than 6 DVDs for a month, then you already have gotten the best of Blockbuster. In a span of two weeks,I have already rented 8 DVDs. At this rate, I could rent an average of 32 DVDs a month for the next three months.

The good thing is: as soon as fall TV shows come back months from now, I will cancel my subscription.

IBM Buys Gluecode

2005-05-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

Recently, IBM bought Gluecode, a company that sells corporate customers services around a suite of open-source software developed at the Apache Software Foundation. IBM will most likely contribute to Apache's J2EE Application Server, Geronimo. Gluecode products would most likely fill-out the needs of low-end consumers who could not afford IBM Websphere's development suite. This will also have an impact on the J2EE Application Server market and would be a direct attack to JBOSS' business.

It seems like as time goes by, IBM is dominating the Java/J2EE space. They have lured Java developers in using Eclipse IDE(which they initially owned, but donated to the open-source community) and now they are dominating the open-source arena. For J2EE developers, this is a good thing because at least, we know Java would still be around for a longer time because of IBM's strong support. The downside is that small innovative companies are being subdued by a giant like IBM. My worst fear is that in the near future, IBM may become another Microsoft.

Java Turns 10

2005-05-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

When I graduated from college, computer science students' favorite programming language was C. It was then considered to be a powerful high-level language which can be used to write a variety of applications in different platform. I was looking forward for C++ to emerge as the future of Object-Oriented(OO) computing. But it seems like the IT industry found it too difficult to learn and accept. During that time, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic which made people with no programming background develop Client/Server applications easily.

When Java was introduced, it promised a simpler C++ and was marketed as 'Write Once, Run Anywhere' language. It also became a rallying point for anti-Microsoft people. They embraced Java as the technology that will topple Microsoft's dominance of client/server computing. By the year 2000, Java has emerged to be the best choice for enterprise and web application development because of the support of major IT players such as IBM and BEA. Java Technology became a major threat to Microsoft that Bill Gates himself had to oversee the birth of .NET platform to keep up with the Enterprise Java Platform, J2EE.

Microsoft evangelists predicted that .NET will overpower the J2EE for the next ten years. I doubt it. There has to be a balance of forces to keep the IT industry more competitive and innovative.

Yoda Rocks!

2005-05-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

I watched Star Wars' final episode last night. Yoda's skirmish with Lord Sidious was probably better than the ones in Attack of the Clones . There were some moments where I felt Yoda moves like Mr. Miyagi which is probably a compliment because, at least for this episode, Yoda looks more real than just a CGI character or puppet. Once again, George Lucas came up with a masterpiece after a disappointing Phantom Menace. I will probably be waiting for the complete set in DVD for the six movies.

Blank

2005-05-19T00:44:00.000-07:00

I've been blank these days
Can't seem to write anything new and interesting
Summer is almost here
Days seem to be a bit longer
The sun is still up at 9pm
TV shows are reaching their season finales
Jack Bauer will again save the day in 24 with its two-hour season finale
The NBA playoffs is on its final stretch
Four months to go before the new NFL season starts

I've got to find something interesting to do

The Star Trek Experience

2005-05-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

I spent my birthday at Las Vegas over the weekend and before starting to hit the Casinos, I went to the Hilton to see Star Trek : The Experience. There were two events : Borg Invasion 4D and The Klingon Encounter. It costs $35. I thought initially that it was a waste of money. But after the experience, I would probably come back and see it again. It was a good ride to the Star Trek world.

Even though I lost $60 on a BlackJack table, I got a chance to be a part of the Enterprise crew.

Job Opportunities

2005-04-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

I have recently rolled-off my current project and I am currently reevaluating my skills. It seems that every time I update my resume, I tend to revise previous entries and make the resume look better. It's not that I write false information. I just feel the need to rephrase, or should I say, 'repackage' my skills. Most of the time, it is the choice of words that matters to get scheduled for an interview.

The demand for software engineers like me is no longer as high as before. Companies are carefully hiring people to make sure they fit their needs. They want to offshore 80% of the work. That leaves the remaining 20% for team leads, architects, consultants and business analysts.

Google Now Offers 2GB of E-mail Storage

2005-04-02T18:25:00.000-08:00

Google recently doubled their Gmail storage from 1GB to 2GB. This is their response to Yahoo's recent move to increase their e-mail storage from 250 MB to 1 GB. Google seems to be always a step ahead of the competition.

By the way, I still have 50 Gmail invites available. Shoot me an e-mail if anyone is interested in having one.

Why I like Watching The Star Trek Series

2005-03-23T00:08:00.000-08:00

People have been asking me why I like watching tv reruns of the Star Trek series: Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and recently, Enterprise. I am a techie but I never pay attention to the advanced technology concepts and terminologies they use on their stories. What interests me a lot in watching these Star Trek episodes is the philosophical concepts and human issues like culture, values and morality which they inject to their stories.

The main plot for the Star Trek series may be futuristic but it also gives us a glimpse of a higher level of thinking where people no longer strive for wealth in terms of money but strive for wealth in terms knowledge about the universe by exploring new worlds and civilization. It may be pure science fiction but I am amazed how Gene Roddenberry and the writers make it very interesting by introducing concepts that make us rethink and re-examine our own humanity in the eyes of the characters like Mr. Spock, Q, and Commander Data.

I grew up watching Star Trek and I can say that I learned many things watching the series. Some of the things I learned had a great influence in my life.

Customizable Google News

2005-03-11T21:23:00.000-08:00

Google just rolled out a customizable Google News page. It's preety cool. You can customize the news that will be displayed based on a keyword(s) that you will supply. I tried to add custom news with 'Java' as keyword, and it gave me the latest news on Java/J2EE stuff. Great stuff!

Fighting Spyware

2005-03-11T00:07:00.000-08:00

To avoid spyware, I install different tools in my desktop pc like Yahoo's Anti-spy software that comes with Yahoo Toolbar for free or Norton System Works that contains Norton Firewall worth $69.99. I also refrain from installing those 'free' P2P software that suspiciously contain spyware. One way to determine if the installed software is spying on you is to have Norton Firewall manually prompt you when an unrecognized program is attempting to connect to the internet. It could be annoying when these stuff pops up everytime you launch a program but you can actually configure to allow the program to run if you trust the software.

I had a problem with one those P2P software I installed in my pc before I bought Norton System Works. My browser was hijacked and lots of things began popping out of my desktop. I felt like I no longer have any control of my pc. When I installed Norton System Works, although I was unable to remove spyware, I was able to block these programs attempting to connect to the internet by using Norton Firewall. It's a good tool that I would highly recommend to people who want to protect their computers from spyware.

To Leave or Not to Leave

2005-03-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

I am currently in the middle of deciding whether I should start thinking of finding a new employer or not. First of all, I am a candidate for promotion in September and I am assuming I would gain a significant increase in salary. On the other hand, why wait for September when there are lots of opportunities that offer better salary and benefits. In the end, it all boils down to my needs and preferences. I am no longer getting any younger and I feel its time to take chances. The demand for Java Developers/Architects is increasing and I think this is a good time to do it.

Fans Rally to Save Star Trek

2005-02-27T19:41:00.000-08:00

Fans all over the world are protesting the cancellation of UPN's Star Trek Enterprise. They are raising $32 Million to fund Star Trek's next season.

Star Trek Enterprise has been one of those TV shows that earns the respect of the 'thinking' people. The last two years of the show demonstrated great storytelling and screenplay probably at par with X-Files. It seems like low-budget reality tv has been the trend for the last three years and it is killing good tv shows like Enterprise. People would rather watch Paris Hilton's Simple Life than watch an episode of Enterprise. I hope people will get tired of reality tv soon because I believe these shows are detrimental to the development of our society and human race!

Life is Never Fair

2005-02-26T17:47:00.000-08:00

Life is never fair. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Sometimes, it's the situation itself that presents unjust circumstances created by selfish and greedy people. As a Christian, I've been taught that all the good things I do will be rewarded after death, not in my lifetime. But sometimes, I believe that as long as we live, we have to fight for fairness and justice in any way we can for good to triumph over evil.

Eclipse IDE

2005-02-24T20:51:00.000-08:00

I've been playing around with open-source Eclipse IDE lately. Since our team at work is using Websphere Application Developer(which was built on top of Eclipse framework), I am currently studying Eclipse's PDE(Plug-in Development Environment) to be able to create tools that would assist us in our software development. This has been keeping me up late at night because I find it very interesting and cool.

IBM originally invested $40 million dollars in research and development of Eclipse software and later on gave it to the open-source community. IBM has made a large contribution to the Java Community with this world-class free software. This software could match the Microsoft Visual Studio's developer-friendly look and capabilities. In terms of extensibility, Eclipse IDE can be customized according to developer and business needs.

Microsoft Feels the Pressure from Firefox

2005-02-17T20:29:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates promises a new version of Internet Explorer by mid-year. He was probably pressured by an ongoing trend - people switching from IE to Mozilla Firefox. In addition to this, he also announced that the new Microsoft anti-spyware software will be free to Windows users. The emergence of Firefox drove Microsoft to re-think about IE's future. This is a good example that competition drives innovation.

Archiving E-mails and Instant Messages

2005-02-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

Two things I find interesting to keep are archived e-mails and instant messages. At work, instant messages and e-mail archives help me recover past conversations when resolving issues and problems. Another thing about these archives is that they refresh your memory and gives you a chance to go back in time to examine how things went before especially in a critical part of a high-visibility project. Instant messages are more spontaneous. Since my project required conversing with off-site(out-of-state) people who are working on the other components of the application, instant messages are crucial in having real-time communication. Usually, a phone conversation is the last resort when some issues cannot be easily explained in an instant message conversation.

At home, I archive instant messages especially if it's a conversation with old or long- lost friends and relatives, making sure that you won't forget their contact information or any other important things that you have discussed. Usually, if you had an unforgettably interesting conversation, you would like to treasure and store it safely in order for you to go back and read it over again someday.

Time Travel

2005-02-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

Time travel has always been something I find very interesting especially when watching sci-fi movies like the Back To the Future trilogy or tv series like Quantum Leap. In the Star Trek Voyager series, they introduced the Temporal Prime Directive where the Starfleet officers are forbidden to interfere with history and alter the timeline.

I was thinking that if I had a power to go back in time and prevent a lot of bad things to happen(like preventing The Twin Towers attack or maybe warning people ahead of time before the Tsunami struck), would it be a justified action? If we consider or accept the concept of the Butterfly Effect, I believe that the action is not justified. A minor change on the past could have a very significant effect on a lot of things in our lives. Not only the physical things change but the collective emotions and experiences people learn when encountering a tragedy.

Google Maps

2005-02-08T19:53:00.000-08:00

Google has just rolled out Google Maps. It is far more sophisticated and user-friendly than Yahoo Maps and Map Quest. Google never ceases to amaze me with all of these fresh ideas.

Super Bowl XXXIX

2005-02-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

There was really nothing super and exciting about Super Bowl XXXIX except for Paul Mccartney's halftime show. The first half of the game was really slow that I took a nap during the entire second quarter and woke up just in time for Paul Mccartney's great performance. I just thought the song 'Live and Let Die' with all the fireworks was one of the best things that happened tonight.

----

Still, those Super Bowl commercials were something to look forward to everytime one team starts to punt the football. I liked the CareerBuilder.com commercials which have different variations. Maybe I was just biased because I am considering switching jobs right now. Another interesting commercial is GoDaddy.Com where a model, who rips a strap of her skimpy tank-top, almost pulls a Janet Jackson while testifying to a fictional government committee. They only showed it once because NFL and Fox Sports decided to pull it out.

----

I was right on my 'fearless forecast' that the Pats will win over the Eagles. Pats showed composure and experience. The Eagles wasted a lot of time on their drive on the last 4 minutes of the game that should have gave them a chance to at least bring the game into overtime

New Look for ETR

2005-02-05T22:21:00.000-08:00

After further studying the elements of CSS and the way Blogger.com is interpreting the templates, I decided to give sometime to have my blog a facelift. This is the first time I attempted to design a page using CSS only. It was very much easier than using tables in HTML. I am not a web design expert but I sure was happy to see something that pleases me. Anyway, this is just the first step in developing my website that runs web applications in Tomcat server. As of now, I am starting from scratch and developing HTML prototypes. I also added something new - a logo created from Adobe Photoshop.

OOP Is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice?

2005-02-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

Article : OOP Is Much Better in Theory Than in Practice

I believe that everything in theory is always better than practice. But to say that procedural programming is BETTER than Object-Oriented Programming is BS. One has to understand that OOP evolved from the best practices of procedural programming. OOP was conceptualized because of a necessity to minimize the weaknesses of procedural programming. OOP design is both science and art. OO maximizes code reuse and provides flexibility and creativity for programmers with encapsulation and inheritance.

WFH: Working From Home

2005-02-01T21:19:00.000-08:00

WFH has been the term I've been using for the past four months since I was allowed to connect to the office via VPN once every week. It saves me fifty miles from my car mileage and a couple of dollars every week. Instant messaging is a big help, too. I don't have to always use e-mail or phone to communicate to my teammates or client. Issues are being discussed, analyzed and resolved via instant messaging.

Anyway, I just mentioned this in my blog because I watched a movie re-run of 'The Net' last weekend in cable. The movie was made 10/11 years ago in the early days of the world wide web when Virtual Private Networks has not been fully realized. I just graduated from college during that time and have not heard of e-commerce yet. And now, ten years later, all the technologies featured on that movie are already part of mainstream computing.

Free Open-Source Software

2005-01-30T20:49:00.000-08:00

Yahoo News : Activists Urge Free Open-Source Software

The idea of a free open-source software is a great and noble idea. But considering the amount of energy and time that OSS developers put into building OSS software without getting anything back in return is an impossible scenario. Developers have their own families to feed. For developing countries that pay a lot on commercial software, their own government should be appropriating funds for building and hiring talented open-source developers locally in building alternative software that can be distributed freely amongst their own people who will benefit with cheaper quality software. This way, they could avoid buying expensive software such as Windows and Microsoft Office.

Music Activism

2005-01-27T20:22:00.000-08:00

I stumbled recently into the Downhill Battle website. Its interesting how this group is challenging the current state of the music industry by promoting filesharing. They are rallying for a legal P2P compensation system where downloading is allowed to people who pay a flat monthly rate.

"Five major record labels have a monopoly that's bad for musicians and music culture, but now we have an opportunity to change that. We can use tools like filesharing to strengthen independent labels and end the major label monopoly."

- www.downhillbattle.org

Eagles and Patriots Make It to Super Bowl

2005-01-23T20:06:00.000-08:00

The Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots convincingly beat their opponents to reach the Super Bowl. The Eagles, led by Donovan Mcnabb, thrashed the Michael Vick-led Atlanta Falcons, 27-10. On the other hand, the Patriots silenced the Pittsburgh Steelers, 41-27. It was a boring afternoon for me because I expected both games to be down-the-wire. Unlike last week, the suspense and excitement dissipated when Steelers' QB Ben Roethlisberger, threw his second and third interceptions. On the other game, Michael Vick got sacked four times and never showed signs how great they were after beating the St. Louis Rams last week with their 300+ rushing yards.

Well, its the Eagles' turn to win the NFC after a two-year losing streak. Donovan Mcnabb showed maturity and confidence compared to the last two seasons. On the other hand, the defending champions Patriots showed what stuff they were made of. Their offensive and defensive teams work like a well-oiled machine.

My Super Bowl prediction : Patriots over Eagles, 35-28.

''Hook 'em, 'horns'"

2005-01-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

Funny.

From Yahoo News:

President Bush (news - web sites) gestures the ''Hook 'em, 'horns' salute of the University of Texas Longhorns as he and his family watch the Inaugural Parade Thursday Jan. 20, 2005, in Washington. President Bush's 'Hook 'em, 'horns' salute got lost in translation in Norway, where shocked people interpreted his hand gesture during his inauguration as a salute to Satan. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhgite)

Source: Associated Press

Cheaper Tech Books

2005-01-19T22:23:00.000-08:00

Bookpool.com sells technical books with a large discount. I usually do my usual 'window shopping' of books at Borders and Barnes and Noble before buying online. You would see a very large discrepancy on the prices. Another way to get cheaper books is to subscribe to Books 24x7 which costs only $45/year with a lot of technical books available for reading. Subscription is more practical because as long as you have an internet connection, you can easily view the books you need. You don't have to worry about disposing your books when it becomes obsolete after three years.

Chicago Bulls On A Roll

2005-01-18T21:44:00.000-08:00

If you have been monitoring the NBA, you may have noticed that for the past month the Chicago Bulls have climbed their way up to the Eastern Conference Standings. They have won seven in a row and 13 of their last 17 games. For the past six years since Michael Jordan left the Bulls, the Bulls never had a winning streak like this and never had a chance to join the playoffs. They have a young and very talented team led by veteran center Eddy Curry and a very promising sophomore point guard Kirk Hinrich. Together with top-notch rookies Luol Deng, Ben Gordon and Andres Nocioni, the Bulls are steadily climbing to .500 before the All-Star Break.

IT Offshore Outsourcing in the Philippines

2005-01-15T00:48:00.000-08:00

IT offshore outsourcing has been the trend here in the United States. U.S companies look for cheaper IT resources that can develop and maintain their systems.

Its sad to know that the Philippines has been very slow in competing with India in the IT offshore outsourcing industry. Political instability and the Philippine government's lack of support have always hampered the growth of most IT companies' effort to bring home lucrative U.S. contracts.

IPTV is Coming

2005-01-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

Recently, SBC partnered with Microsoft to provide services for the future of television, IPTV. This technology combines integrated digital TV and the power of broadband internet. With this service, view-on-demand is going to be a reality. You would never be able to miss your favorite drama series or sitcom again. It will give the customers the choice of whenever and whatever they want to view on TV.

If you want to know more about this amazing technology, read this.

Jack is Back!

2005-01-10T23:51:00.000-08:00

Jack Bauer is back!

The fourth season of "24" started last Sunday after the NFL Wildcard game between the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers. Almost all the characters from the last season were gone but it still possesses the same thrill, excitement and action from the last three seasons. I got to watch the last three seasons of "24" from DVDs I rented using BlockBuster's Movie Pass(unlimited movies) and now is the first time I am watching it on FOX.

"24" on FOX - Mondays 9pm/8c

Setting-up My Own Website

2005-01-10T23:33:00.000-08:00

For years I've been planning to put out my own personal website but never had a time and resources to do it. Now that I have the time, I still don't have the resources to do it. I am still looking for old Pentium II machines with at least 256MB of RAM that I could use for a server.

I was planning to setup a Linux server with Apache as web server and Tomcat as the application server installed. This will be my 'playground' for experimenting different J2EE patterns and architectures ( something I could not do at work). I plan to expose this in the internet using DNS2Go software that makes your machine appear to have a static IP over the internet. The license for the software is just $19/yr.

I will probably move my current blog to this new site when it gets set up. I am thinking of using Blojsom OSS to as my blogging software and JForum for the discussion boards. These are really great and free software that I can use to start my website.

Anyway, I hope I find a cheap a machine so that I could set it up next month.

Blogging Pioneers Join Forces

2005-01-06T21:43:00.000-08:00

Yahoo News: Six Apart, TypePad Buy Danga Interactive

A year after Google bought Pyra Labs, creator of Blogger.com, two blogging pioneers have joined forces in positioning themselves for the 'blogosphere' business. Although the future of blogging has yet to be seen, these merger will put them into a position to host 6.5 million bloggers. The problem is that venture capitalists have not yet flocked to the blogging business.

It is still early to say if blogging could be a big business. The question is: how can blogs generate income?

500 GB Hard Disk

2005-01-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

Story: 500 GB Hard Disk - World's Largest Ever - Being Launched By Hitachi in Q1

I remember the days when I was so very proud to have a 100 MB Hard Drive in my desktop PC - and I thought it was enough for me. Almost 15 years have passed, and now we are already talking about 500 Gigabytes of disk storage. This is probably the reason why Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are competing against each other over providing large e-mail storage capacity. Disk Storage is becoming cheaper as I write this blog.

With a 500 GB storage, I could probably do some video editing without having to worry about the remaining capacity of my drive. DVRs will probably upgrade from an 80GB capacity to 500 GB with more tv shows and movies to store.

A few years from now, we will no longer be talking about Gigabytes but Terabytes.

A Way to Organize your World of Information

2005-01-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

JetBrains, the company responsble for creating the popular IntelliJ Idea for Java/J2EE developers, has released another software called Omea Reader. Using Omea Reader, you can easily organize your weblog subscriptions, RSS feeds, e-mail(Omea Pro) and even other documents in your hard drive. I mainly use it as an RSS aggregator so that information can be accessed and organized according to your needs and preferences like monitoring your favorite weblogs or yahoo news feeds. Currently, the software is available for free until end of March 2005. The only downside of this software is that it is built on .NET framework, so it works only on Windows-type OSs that support .NET.

Blogging in 2004

2005-01-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

Yahoo News : Blog Creation, Readership Rise in 2004

Blogging has made a great impact on a lot of events in 2004. Once again, a lot of people exercised their freedom of expression especially in the last elections where blogging has been used to propagate agendas and ideas.

I've started blogging in September 2003 but wasn't able to update it regularly because I was running out of ideas to blog. It took me sometime to study and read other blogs to understand what and how to write stuff. And now, I am beginning to feel blog addiction.

I believe that blogging is not just a fad. It will eventually evolve into something more powerful than what we can ever conceive -- and that we have to wait for a couple more years. More people will be expressing their opinions and ideas in the web and more people will be reading it. Blogging itself will have a great impact on the way people think and how people influence other people. This will drive advertising into a different direction. Probably Google has already had a headstart with this idea with its Google Ad Sense and its probably the main reason why Google bought Blogger.com.

This is my first blog in the year 2005 and I want it to be as meaningful as possible to those who could read it. May we all have a great blogging year ahead of us!

Last Day of 2004

2004-12-31T15:22:00.000-08:00

I can't believe this is the last day of 2004. This is my fifth year here in the United States and I am getting used to a silent New Year's eve. Unlike in the Philippines, where there are lots of fireworks in every street, you have to find a scheduled fireworks show here sponsored by some company that promotes a particular product or service. I remember Watusis, Sinturon ni Hudas and Super Lolos, watching burning tires and waking up New Year's day cleaning my nostrils because of the dark smoke generated by the fireworks. I also remember thousands of people especially kids who suffer injuries/amputations because of mishandling those fireworks. People never learn so this becomes a yearly event.

The only thing we will be doing tonight is to celebrate the New Year with chicken arroz-caldo and spaghetti with meatballs. Eating chicken arroz-caldo during New Year's Eve has been a tradition my famiy and I started when I was around 12 years old. Spaghetti with meatballs is something new that we just included for tonight's celebration.

Let's hope and pray that the next year would be a better year. No more wars. No more tsunamis. No more earthquakes.

Happy New Year to Everyone!

BitTorrent Architecture

2004-12-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

P2P(Peer-to-Peer) Technology is something new to me although Napster has gained popularity and lawsuits because of its concept of file-sharing mp3s. I knew the concept of P2P but never really looked into the architecture behind the protocols they used to implement it. I heard about BitTorrent P2P software six months ago but ignored it because of the crackdown the music industry on users of Kazaa and other Napster-like software. It seems like P2P software has nowhere to go but down.

After getting my January edition of WIRED magazine last night(BitTorrent Effect), I was able to read the article that featured BitTorrent's creator, Bram Cohen. His idea of distributing the files across different 'hubs' and act as 'servers' themselves would solve the upstream/downstream bottleneck of ISPs. Cohen created a protocol to distribute pieces of file to different machines and re-construct these pieces to form a single file again. This is the reason why movie downloads are faster in BitTorrent compared to other P2P networks.

Manning sets single-season TD record

2004-12-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

I missed to blog about Peyton Mannings's record-breaking feat last Sunday because of a bad cold I had yesterday. With still one game to play, he reached 49 touchdowns against San Diego Chargers. He broke Dan Marino's record of 48 in 1984 with the Miami Dolphins.
He would probably go down as one of NFL's best quarterback with his precision passing and playmaking capabilities.

Although I am a Vikings/Packers fan, I would be rooting for the Indianapolis Colts to win the Super Bowl this season!

Source: NFL.com

Google Suggest

2004-12-26T19:13:00.000-08:00

Google just rolled out Google Suggest(Beta). If you play around this page, you will notice that the dropdown list is updating at real-time with word suggestions and statistics. If you are a techie interested on how it works, you can go to this page "Google Suggest Dissected". This is pure javascript that accesses the server on the background via RPC(Remote Procedure Call). I find this technology revolutionizing the way future web pages will be written using real-time access to the server without updating the page itself. We will be expecting similar implementation on more web sites in the future.

Merry Christmas

2004-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to everyone! Let's pray for peace on earth.

Source: James Gosling's Blog

My Top 10 Movie Picks of 2004

2004-12-23T01:26:00.000-08:00

The following movies are my top picks for year 2004(in order):

The Terminal	Eternal Sunshine ...	Butterfly Effect
Source: http://movies.yahoo.com

1. The Terminal
2. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
3. Butterfly Effect
4. Spiderman 2
5. I, Robot
6. Before Sunset
7. Bourne Supremacy
8. Shrek 2
9. The Girl Next Door
10. 50 First Dates

These ten movies are selected from the movies I have seen. I am still waiting for the other movies in DVD. I might even bump one of these movies from my list once I see 'Ocean's Twelve' or 'Closer' in theatres during the holidays or even 'Collateral' on DVD. Critics have good reviews for those three films.

Long Vacation

2004-12-21T16:56:00.000-08:00

Everyone here at the office are preparing for a long vacation starting tomorrow until the 1st of January. Others have started their vacation since Monday. It's going to be a very long rest after months of hard work and OTs. It also gives me a great feeling that our online project went well into production without any major defects. I hope the contract with the client will be extended so we can continue with the future releases.

Hopefully, while on vacation, I will be updating my blogs regularly. I'll probably have a countdown of my personal top 10 events of 2004.

Wal-Mart Offers $498 Linux Laptop

2004-12-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

It seems like Wal-Mart, the largest retail store in the US, now wants
to sell low-end laptops for $498 only. Nobody can beat this price but I
don't think it will attract many customers because of the operating
system(Linspire 4.5) and fewer functionalities. Linspire 4.5 is a
Linux OS and could only attract students who need the minimum
functionalities such as word processing, e-mail and internet. Gaming
and multimedia functionalities may be limited with 1Ghz processor and
128 MB of RAM.

The question is, will it succeed? We'll see ...

Coldplay

2004-12-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

I've been listening over my Coldplay-Parachutes CD for the past hour. I was going thru my collection of CDs last night and decided to listen to the entire CD which I bought four years ago. Even though a couple of years have passed and Coldplay is now a very popular band compared to when I first bought the CD, I find it to be better compared to their last two CD releases.

I remember that I only bought this CD because I liked the hit 'Yellow' when I first heard/saw it over at MTV. Then, I began to appreciate the band a little more because of their unique sound and lyrics. 'Trouble' was totally cool the first time i heard it and began to play over the piano.

I can't remember why I missed 'Everything's not lost' before. Maybe I was so in to playing 'Trouble' in my head over and over and forgot to appreciate the other songs on the CD. When I heard the song again today, I started to like it too. It's like rediscovering something that has always been there but nearly lost.

Coldplay - Parachutes

Peyton Manning Needs One More TD

2004-12-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Peyton Manning only had ONE touchdown and 249 yards against the Baltimore Ravens tonight but they still won the game, 20-10. He had a string of consecutive 4-TD games prior to Week 13 of the NFL Season. Everyone was anticipating at least 3 TDs from him today to beat Dan Marino's record of 48 touchdowns on a single season. He can still surpass the record with three more games remaining. This is something to look forward to on Christmas Eve.

AFP Photos

Mozilla Firefox

2004-12-19T01:03:00.000-08:00

I have been using Mozilla Firefox for approximately six months now and I like it better than Internet Explorer. It is also the best way to avoid spyware to crawl into your PCs. Lately, I read news reports that more internet users are slowly moving from IE to Firefox - something that Microsoft is probably worrying about right now.

One of the features that I liked about Firefox is the ability to group and tab bookmarks and open these bookmarks at the same time. This way I can organize the current Firefox instance to open the bookmarked tabs at the same time (for example, a set of bookmarked Java API Documentation or sports-related websites). Other features are the built-in pop-up blocker, download manager and HTML/CSS developer support.

It's definitely going to give some challenge to IE. Let's be prepared for the Browser Wars!

Mozilla Photo

IBM Integrates RFID with WebSphere

2004-12-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

IBM is investing on RFID with its integration with Websphere. Although there are still issues on placing RFIDs on products especially on consumers' privacy, many companies are gearing up and positioning themselves for its implementation. They can track inventories at real-time and minimize theft. Retail giants such as Wal-Mart are ready to implement it.

Just imagine your box of milk, orange juice or even a can of coke being tracked down by their computer systems. Imagine the information these companies can gather and use to their advantage. We'll see ...

For a software developer like me, this would be an interesting technology for implementation - a Websphere J2EE-based application that tracks RFIDs. Websphere rocks!

AFP Photos

US Missile Defense System Fails Test

2004-12-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times reported that US Missile Defense System Fails Test. This news scares the hell out of me. I used to believe those hollywood movies convincing us that U.S. has the most advanced technology to be defend itself from external aggression. With this news, I believe its far from being accurate. What scares me is the fact that if the terrorists got hold of powerful missiles from the former Soviet Union, then we are in serious danger.

A Collection of Java Open Source Software

2004-12-16T10:18:00.000-08:00

I just found a website that contains a list of different java-based
open source software along with some information on its usage.

http://java-source.net/

This would be a good reference for Java enthusiasts looking to learn
and explore existing codes and incorporarting them to their apps.

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0

2004-12-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

I just setup Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 in my PC and it seems to be preety
good but still has a long way to go compared to MS Outlook which is not
free.

At the same time, this is also a test e-mail for blogger.com's feature
for me to be able to blog by sending an e-mail to the 'secret' e-mail
address so that I could blog from work.

Thunderbird 1.0 also works well with POP3 access to my Gmail account.

Cool!

Google building a Virtual Library

2004-12-15T15:55:00.000-08:00

Google is planning to digitize all the books from Oxford library, index them and make them available to the world wide web. This undertaking would take probably take 10-20 years to accomplish.

This, in my opinion, is the turning point of the Information Age. Relevant information can easily be available within your fingertips. This type of news is what inspires me to be to a part of the IT Industry.

Google Turns a New Page in Library Project

Oracle buys Peoplesoft

2004-12-15T15:42:00.000-08:00

Larry Ellison has finally succeeded in buying PeopleSoft.
Oracle is finally in a position to compete with SAP. Oracle said that they will continue to support the future versions of PeopleSoft. One thing is for sure, thousands of PeopleSoft employees will be laid-off and this will have a large impact on the people living here at the Bay Area. Damn! Why are rich people so greedy??!

Reuter's Photo

Go Live

2004-12-15T02:27:00.000-08:00

After a year of hard work and overtime hours, my current project will finally go live. This is a web application development project that we developed for a large telecommunications firm. This is my first online project that will be available to the internet that expects a market of more than a million people. This is a J2EE-based web application that utilizes XML and XSL technologies.

One thing that I learned from this project is that for a project to succeed, it needs a lot of teamwork especially from a large group of developers, analysts and managers. It is imperative that each member of the team should maintain respect for each other especially when working under pressure. Communication lines between managers and developers should always be open so that issues can be addressed immediately.

Finally, its over now. No more sleepless nights.

Its Time!

2004-12-15T01:38:00.000-08:00

Finally, I got FREE time to create this blog. Nothing special here - just a straightforward attempt to share my ideas and opinions on a lot of things. I just hope that I would at least be updating this blog twice or thrice a week.