If you have a child who sings on a videooke machine placed outside on a street at seven in the morning, you fail at parenting and you should be barred from further procreation.
06
Dec 09
Tough Week
It’s been a tough week. For one thing, I’ve only slept every other day. The days I do get to sleep, I try to do as much as I can, out of a list of tasks required of me, and only those that are truly essential.
It’s very stressful, and no amount of life hacking or psychological tricks can significantly reduce the stress the body undergoes when deprived of sleep; you can control your emotions to a fair extent, but its much harder to control the biochemical processes of your body. Despite all of this, I’m feeling quite alright. Just trying to keep healthy and composed, and keep unnecessary stress to a minimum, if whatever that factor is is within my control.
I’m doing all I can right now to get myself righted again, but it doesn’t help that our upstairs neighbor is still treating his unit like it was his own personal nightclub. Pounding house music up until the wee hours of the morning isn’t exactly conducive to sleep. Despite the letter of complaint we’ve sent to the building management, it still continues; it’s either the landlord just doesn’t care, or the neighbors couldn’t care less. Might have to consider the next step we can take regarding that.
Work has been stripped down to the basic comic-making only; website coding stalled once again. Other long-delayed projects, much more so.
Not having left the house much due to current situation, I have grown a beard and have started to talk like a pirate just for kicks. Hurrr.
/brainfart
05
Dec 09
Old Family Photos
This is a photo of some of my not-so-distant relatives from Spain. I’ve been processing quite a number of these at the request of my abuela who lives with us here in the Philippines; these will be sent to her siblings in Spain, to be used as a reference for something the town of Ourense is doing to honor their father (my great-grandfather, it would turn out), according to what I have been told.
I am compelled to renew my efforts in getting to know my family on the other side of the world, as well as a return to a more rigid study of the Spanish language (I can converse in a fairly fluent manner, but lack of practical use has made me rusty).
All of this reveals a rich history within our family, from people who have experienced much, including going through the Spanish Civil war, according to my grandmother. It gets more fascinating the more I think about it.
For now, however, I have a bunch of photographs that are more than twice my age to process and send.
01
Dec 09
A Day In The Life
A Day In The Life from Harry Nesbitt on Vimeo.
The man also has some wonderful artwork on his personal / portfolio website. I recommend taking a peek.
15
Nov 09
Our Van Was Stolen! Please Help Us Find It
Our white Nissan Urvan bearing the plate ZED 886 was stolen this Sunday Morning, as it was parked right outside our apartment building here in Makati City.
Please help us find it! If you spot a vehicle going around the city or anywhere at all with the plate ZED 886, please inform the nearest police officer or traffic enforcer that it is a stolen vehicle!
We would greatly appreciate it if you could provide us with ANY information regarding our vehicle. Also, if you could retweet this or replurk this, it would be a great help.
Please keep an eye out for the vehicle if you can! Stolen White Nissan Urvan, ZED 886.
Thanks much.
Addendum: Identifying Marks
- The van has fog lamps in front and some square lamps at the back
- The van may also have DILG and DOTC placards displayed in the front windshields (or it may have been stashed or disposed of… but still).
- The rear door has noticeable dent around the license plate area.
- The rearmost seats have no head-rests; in fact we have them right here… mementos from our stolen vehicle (how ironic).
Note: I realize all these things can be… worked around, for lack of a better term, by the thieves, but just in case they’ve overlooked these things, they may help in identifying our vehicle.
10
Nov 09
Use Gedit To Edit Files Directly From Server With Gedit-FTP-Browser Plugin
Why the gedit-ftp-browser plugin doesn’t come right out of the box with gedit on every Ubuntu installation is beyond me. I love using Gedit to code because it’s lightweight, simple, uncluttered, extensible, and stable. I had already tried a bunch of other IDE’s for linux but they just don’t do it for me – most were bloated, unstable or just didn’t go with my workflow.
A sticking point with me was gedit’s inability to edit and save directly to servers. Prior to finding this plugin, I had to use a separate FTP program to upload any new work, and quite frankly, that’s very tedious. So anyway, plugin got.
A tip of the hat to the fellows who came up with this, and I hope that somewhere down the line, this functionality will come right out of the box.
Get the gedit-ftp-browser plugin.
27
Sep 09
Bagyong Ondoy Aftermath
IMPORTANT NOTICE: To the readers, please INFORM and HELP anyone you can, pass along important information and contact numbers to everyone! Please be very careful when going through flooded areas, as currents can be strong and you may get injured by debris. The authorities have pleaded that no one try to take matters into their own hands and attempt rescues of sorts; please be patient and wait for as long as you can for help, and above all, stay safe!
UPDATE 6: Google Has This Fantastic Page Containing Just About Everything You Need To Know To Help And Contribute in The Relief and Recovery Efforts.
- Click here to see the IMPORTANT PHONE NUMBERS AND HOTLINES
- Click here to see HOW YOU CAN HELP with DONATIONS and RELIEF GOODS
Photo by: Dan Saavedra
UPDATE 5, 6:25AM MONDAY: Some news items of interest:
- Death Toll To Rise to 100 (with slideshows).
- One-fifth of Meralco Subscribers Without Power, No classes until Tuesday this week, MMDA: Number Coding Suspended For The Week.
- Another Typhoon To Hit The Philippines In Three Days?
Information on how to help with donations, and relief goods along with important contact numbers and hotlines after the jump.
26
Sep 09
Well This Sucks.
UPDATE 3, 7:00AM, Sunday: The aftermath.
UPDATE 2, 4:00PM: Azrael has this good blog post that contains various media from different bloggers that may serve as somewhat of an overview of the current situation. You may want to take note of the following numbers he has posted:
If your area is in danger due to flood, dont hesitate to contact our National Disaster Coordinating Council Emergency Nos.: 912-5668, 911-1406, 912-2665, 911-5061
and Help hotlines: 734-2118, 734-2120Also contact Meralco to shutdown electricity feed if your area is in high flood water.
mobile : 09175592824 or 09209292824
Click here to read Azrael’s post.
Around here in our area, the flood water has receded by 4 inches or so, so I suppose that the power-shut off scenario has been suspended for the moment. The rain continues, however; by my count, it has been raining for more than 16 hours now.
UPDATE 1, 2:50PM: Building management’s told us to charge whatever we need to charge because they’ll be shutting off the power later on, as the flood water looks to get up as high as the power transformer located on the first floor. I s’pose this means we’ll be going offline as well. Stay safe, everyone – don’t do anything risky unless you really have to!
ORIGINAL POST: It’s been raining for more than 12 hours now, and reports are coming in all over the metro of floods going up as high as the roofs of single-story homes. Lots of people stranded, lots of people to rescue. The military’s mobilizing, and those who have ‘em are breaking out the boats.
Here in our community, floodwater’s chest deep in some streets. Cars are submerged, and water’s already coming into our building’s first floor, right up the steps. More photos after the jump.
16
Sep 09
Man, What’s Wrong With Delifrance?
Whenever we drop by the Ayala Center, we tend to grab a bite to eat over at Delifrance in SM Makati. They got good food and at fairly reasonable prices. Over the past few months, however, we’ve been noticing that service has been getting shabbier and shabbier.
Food arrives, there’s a good chance they’ll forget the cutlery and napkins. When you ask for the twain it’ll take just as long as the food you ordered to arrive, lest you get up and go to the counter yourself to get it. Used plates and glasses stay on the table long after the people who’ve eaten left. Even when there’s no one at the counter ordering food, not one idle waiter or waitress would bother to go on a quick bus run to collect the plates and take them to the kitchen. They stay there for up to ten minutes even. One table would take around just 30 seconds to clean up. Is that so hard to accomplish?
What’s more shameful is that this Delifrance is located at right between the bridgeway between SM Makati and Glorietta – a very high traffic area – and the fact that their unkempt dining area is exposed to an incredible amount of passersby and potential customers doesn’t seem to be a concern for them.
I don’t know if it’s a problem with the store manager or management at a higher level, but this is just inexcusable. You are not a carinderia on the street that you can simply not care if there’s a pile of used plates on the tables while people are looking to have a seat and order food. You are a respectable chain restaurant in a mall in Makati City.
I will admit that this isn’t exactly going to make me stop eating at Delifrance completely; They have delicious food at reasonable prices (although their coffee is still shit), but having to dine surrounded by empty tables with piles of used plates with leftovers in them is just not right.