Cleaning my Mailbox

New Year, New Mailbox. I decided to clear up my mailbox by replying to those important e-mail, organizing others into archive, bills, receipts, web accounts, software licenses, personal and work. I couldn’t believe what the end result was – zero e-mail in my mailbox.

I found out that I have spent a lot of money buying software on-line! Yeah, I am not the type who uses illegally acquired software. The thing with on-line purchases, you do not get a CD or DVD and a box with some useless mumbo-jumbo printed on dead trees that nobody reads anyway, so you really need to practice backing-up your installers and licenses.

Wiiiiii!!!!!!

Thanks to my friend, Joel, for testing the blog on his Wii (and taking this photo of it as well). Nice, eh?

If you want to do the same for your WordPress-powered blog, get the WiiPress plug-in.

I saw an Australian/New Zealand Wii for sale somewhere but it only supports PAL and I want NTSC. Hehe. I wonder if my brother-in-law can still find ‘em in the US at the original retail price of US$250+ (Amazon third-party resellers have them at US$550++ – no way!). I just want one now but then again, only 10 more nights to go til the MacWorld keynote… hehehe…

Technorati Tags: wii

2007 Predictions

Today marks the end of the year 2006 and what will a New Year celebration be without predictions, right? The coming 2007 marks the start of the year of the Fire Boar. Hmmm… the foodie in me thinks about roast suckling pig (the name of my old blog) or “lechon”.

Anyway, what do I think will 2007 bring in tech?

Blog updates

New year, new look.

I decided to change the theme of my blog to reflect a new year. It is clean and simple just like the original. I hope that you like it, too.

I also managed to Wii-fy it but I have not tested it yet. I am hoping that my Wii-playing friends can test it for me. I am still waiting for the Wii to be available at a more affordable price (not the PhP30K price tag that Toy Kingdom wants!).

Happy New Year!

Krispy Kreme

The other day, I went to SM Megamall to buy my mom a birthday gift (happy birthday, mom!) and on the way home, I decided to grab some doughnuts at the newly opened Krispy Kreme branch. I thought of just buying some for merienda for my parents, siblings, my wife and kids. I ended up buying 3 dozens – a dozen of their original glazed doughnuts and 2 dozens of assorted doughnuts.
How did the KK doughnuts rate? The kids, who are all sugar addicts (at least until Dec. 31, 2006 — they will have healthier diet starting this 2007), loved ‘em. The wife found it as nothing special – specially the flavoured ones. My parents, who are not fond of sweets except for chocolates, did not like it either. As for me, it is nothing really special — in fact, I found it extremely sweet! BUT it is a good companion to your triple-shot espresso with no sugar whatsoever! Believe me, the sugar in those KK doughnuts can kill you!

Photo courtesy of diametrik.

Technorati Tags: Krispy Kreme,doughtnut

Quake causes ISP problems

Taiwan quake damages RP Internet links – INQ7.net:

THE 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck Taiwan early Wednesday damaged the Philippines’ links to the Internet, telecommunications executives have said.

BayanTel spokesman John Rojo confirmed this and said he was not sure when normal services would resume.

No wonder I am getting problems connecting to some of the sites like the iTunes Store. Argh! I hope that everything will normalize soon. Need full bandwidth before Apple’s MacWorld keynote.

Edit: Tested the connection and got these. Not bad.

Technorati Tags: dsl

Fox News Video Issues

Fox News is part of my daily news round so it is part of my News bookmarks along with Manila Bulletin, Philippine Daily Inquirer and Slashdot, of course. I prefer Fox News over CNN because I can view videos without installing any of those Microsoft software crap. However, until recently, I could not view the videos off of Fox News.
My default browser is Safari and complemented with Camino. I also have Firefox 2 installed but it only serves as a backup. Anyway, Safari and Camino were unable to display the view but Firefox can. Weird, huh?
First, I thought it was my version of Flash so I immediately downloaded and installed the latest version. Re-launched both Safari and Camino, still no go.
Next, I tried to re-configure Quicktime Player, hoping that it’s the fix that I need after the last Security Update that involved QT. Unfortunately, it is not related.
Finally, just to be sure, I fired up Firefox 2 and there it was – streaming the video after I clicked on the Flash icon (since I have the Flash block extension installed).
So, what does Firefox have that Safari and Camino don’t? I experimented with Safari first by disabling Ad/Banner blocking (via Saft and guess what? It worked! Tried it with Camino and it worked as well. Apparently, Fox News requires adverts before you can view their videos. I cannot blame them since the service is free (unlike CNN’s Pipeline). With Camino, you need to go to the preferences to set it; with Safari, you can use hotkeys or simply toggle it from the Safari menu.
So, until I find a better way of allowing Fox News adverts whilst preventing all other adverts, I will have to stick with this solution. If you know the proper Saft filter configuration, please do let me know.

Technorati Tags: Fox News,Safari,Camino,Firefox,CNN,Saft

Bug-a-roo!

With Vista released a few weeks ago, we now have security researchers releasing advisories on Vista vulnerabilities.

On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a person’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista.

Over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

With these vulnerabilities, I highly recommend users to try out other more affordable alternatives such as Linux or even the Mac, if you are upgrading your hardware (you may need to, if you plan on getting Vista).

Image courtesy of borghal.

Technorati Tags: Vista,vulnerability

One is not enough!

For some, one iPod isn’t enough:

For music lovers and gadget geeks, Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod portable music player has long been a must-have accessory. But now, some of Apple’s most loyal customers are finding that one iPod just isn’t enough.

Apart from the Motorola ROKR on the photo, all of these iPods are still with me. I am using 3 of 4 (the 3rd Gen is being used by my brother) iPods on a regular basis. The shuffle is often with me when I am traveling light and need to bring some data for syncing. The Nano is almost always with me as my everyday iPod – contains my running playlists, audiobooks and podcasts. The Video is often used at home – to screen TV shows & video podcasts downloaded off of iTunes (recently, the WWDC 06 sessions that I was not able to attend).

Despite the collection, I am still eyeing the new iPod Shuffle and the upcoming wide-screen video-playing iPod or the rumoured iPhone.

How about you? How many iPods do you have?

Technorati Tags: ipod

Fedora Core 6 LiveCD

I blogged about this over at my “serious” Linux blog. Check it out – it really is great news!