Tech Gadgets that made the decade!

Xbox 360 made the list! cool.

Check out Engadget list of the top ten gadgets that made the decade.

I can't imagine how life would have been without them.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/30/ten-gadgets-that-defined-the-decade/

Best Christmas Ever! Best Girlfriend Ever.

This Christmas is a bit different from the others, but I feel its the best cause I have someone to share it with.

My girlfriend just gave me the bestestest gift, she knows me and I'm so impressed by her gift, it makes my gift to her feel pwned (owned to the non-geeks).

In a huge box, she got me a Nike dry fit shirt, A Zara T and a videogame for my xbox 360!

The bestest part of the gift was the card and zipper tag. very very cute. What else could I expect from the girl who gave me Windows 7 Ultimate as a pasalubong from Microsoft in Seattle?

Thanks babe, you made what I thought would be a dry one, the best one ever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is how we rock it in vic's school of law

This is how we rock it in Vic's school of law.

Rockband Beatles for the Xbox 360. How cool people stay sane in law school LOL.

The World is more than law school.

What pisses me off is when people act like barbarians in law school. Geez, you're in a professional school and you act like a kindergarden kid.

For the holier then thou types, remember, what you do in law school is jack shit because what happens outside the front door, down those steps, whatever happens there, is for real. And in the real world no one cares (or maybe some do) but I doubt that the 87 million Filipinos, 90% of which are starving give a crap what you call yourself.

Some words of wisdom from my father:

Be good to everyone on the way up, you'll see them on the way down.

No pictures for now, but I'll to post over the christmas break.

Philmug Christmas Party 2009

Another great Christmas/Raffle Party as Elbert Cuenca said of the Philippine Mac Users Group Party held at Figaro at the 88 building next to Paseo de Roxas.

This is my second time to go there with miggie. We enjoyed the mad mic skills of elbert and rbenzon. Miggie couldnt stop laughing so thanks!

Now here are our prizes. I was lucky enough to get something I was actually planning on buying; a neoprene laptop case for my aluminum unibody macbook pro 15" so lo and behold, i won on my first raffle try. The other wins can be seen in the pictures.

Thanks to Philmug and the Philmug group!

Counting Life's Blessings

My Father was a romantic. This next line was the last great message he sent to my mom before he had to leave for the other side of life. The great beyond.

When I count life's blessings, I cannot count you as a blessing, because you are my life...

The Muppets Sing Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen!

The Muppets sing Bohemian Rhapsody!

Miggie helps me do my score card

Law School is tiring, and it helps to have someone willing to spend some time to help finish some documentation.

SEC Corporate Governance Score Card. This is not just school work, but work directly delegated by the Securities and Exchange Commission to validate personal reviews of publicly listed companies. Stressfull, and for some, the paper work can go as much as a foot high!

I'm so glad I had my fight pilot with me to finish this. I don't know where I'd be without her. We started around ten pm and finished around 2am.

Thank you miggie, I love you :)

Starting another sem

The beginning of another end.


Here I am cleaning my study table. The first few pictures will show how my table was after spring cleaning during sem break, and how fast it filled up during the first week of school. Papers etc.

I also bought 10 highlighters to see how many i use during a semester. Just for the heck of it.

In total, I have 14 highlighters and as of yesterday, already finished using two (but that's because they were already used the last sem.)

here goes to another sem of lawlessness.

Like Sweeney Todd said, when eating a lawyer, don't swallow twice!

During Sembreak spring cleaned:

During the first week of 2nd semester with my highlighter experiment:

 

Are Globe and Smart Lying about their network capacity?

Are Globe Telecom and Smart lying about their network capacity? I can't help but feel this way ever since typhoon Ondoy ended.

Globe has been horrible. Calls are fuzzy and drop. It is not as clear as it was before Ondoy. Text messages sometimes arrive hours to a day late and inter-network calls are downright bad. I can't understand my mom when she calls me using her Smart. I live in Makati and rarely leave the Makati area.

Smart has been horrible for my mom too, but thats probably because many people call her on her smart using Globe numbers.

The funny thing is, the winner of all this seems to be Sun Cellular. Their network quality hasn't changed. Sometimes their call quality is better than Globe when being used in the same area. Either their cell sites were not affected by Ondoy, or people have been so used to their bad service that no one really notices the difference unless Globe or Smart fall below Sun's quality.

Oh well. They better work this out. There's a mean joke about all this, but we can save that for comments if ever.

My futile try to eat Chicken Wings

A few posts ago I posted a video on how to properly eat chicken wings to get the most meat off the bones. I got that from yahoo.

Tuesday, I got the craving for buffalo wings from Burgoo at Rockwell before class and with the help of Miggie, made my own video.

Alas, it's a lot harder to eat Burgoo Chicken Wings cleanly than the regular chicken wings shown on the yahoo video, my hands were a red mess! A great tasting red mess :D

The first video is the original from yahoo and the one after that is my own amateur try to copy it.

How to Eat a Chicken Wing - An Eating Chicken Wings Breakthough! @ Yahoo! Video

And my futile attempt to copy it:

No Modern Warfare 2 reviews?

Why are there very few Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 reviews up?

Its November 11, the game was released November 10 and the only sites I've seen was IGN and Gametrailers.

Why is Gamespot so late?

hmmm.

Maybe its because of the airport level where you kill innocent passengers. They probably don't want people to know about it yet till they've all bought the game

Who Brought Down The Berlin Wall? Funny!

An American Poll on Time.Com, the online version of Time Magazine had a poll open to all internet readers asking, Who brought down the Berlin Wall?

Do not Hassle the Hoff.

















Click to see the larger version.

Will Night Vision Goggles Turn You Into a Pervert? (Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2!!!!)

Tomorrow, November 10 and the day after, November 11, are going to be big days for gaming.

Tomorrow they release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC. On November 11 they release Left 4 Dead 2 for the same systems.

I can't wait to get these games and go for rounds on end finishing! Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (the first Modern Warfare) was the first Xbox 360 game I had that I got all one thousand achievement points for by finishing it on the veteran (hardest difficulty) mode on the first try. I wonder if I'll be able to do the same for MW2. I guess if ever, I'll have to do that during Christmas break which is still 5 weeks away.

What does interest me, is this MW2 Prestige Edition. It is a collectors edition which will be released with Night Vision Goggles that actually work! Yeah, they will be toy grade, but to think about all those geeks who can see in the dark now!

I've read that a UK tabloid has predicted a surge in perverts increasing because of the night vision goggles. Little geeks playing in the dark hiding while they watch their peers undress. Which led me to wonder... who undresses in pitch black darkness?!?! The UK Tabloid obviously had nothing else to write about.

If I did have the spare green, I would get the Prestige edition for the game and night vision goggles, but since Left 4 Dead 2 is also coming out, I might have to split the cash for both games. 200 dollars is mighty steep and could get me Rockband Beatles!

Check out this unboxing of  all the different Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Editions. (Warning, only for the GEEKY!!!)

Now should I get both for the 360 or one for the 360 and another for my Mac/PC so I can play with my Mac/PC friends?

How to Properly Eat Chicken Wings (COOL!)

I can only imagine how many chicken wing meat I've wasted when eating spicy buffalo wings at TGIF and Burgoo. If I knew this years ago, I could have ate so much more.

Now I'm craving for Buffalo wings.

How to Eat a Chicken Wing - An Eating Chicken Wings Breakthough! @ Yahoo! Video

Forza Motorsport 3

Just received my newest videogame from my Auntie Ceres, Forza Motorsport 3. I guess it's trying to make it at the tail-end of my sem-break.

Sorry for the crappy pic, Didn't really feel like getting out the SLR to take a photo. Too bad the boy's came over last night and not today, I'm sure they would have enjoyed this. The significance of getting this game in the US is that it's region locked and my Xbox 360 plays only US NTSC games or Region Free asian/NTSC-J games. Forza 3 being NTSC should work with my console.

I've played Forza 2, but only with the demo game I downloaded off Xbox Live. That seemed dry and numerous tries to buy it second hand for a few hundred pesos (maybe ten US dollars) have always failed due to lack of time or patience to deal with the seller. Apparently it was  all for the better cause Forza 2 wasn't that great to begin with.

I'm going to have to install a second disk in Forza 3 cause of all the cars it contains. Its a good thing I have a 120gig Hard drive for my 360. The box says it requires 3 gigs of space. I installed disc 2 first then disc 1 only to find out that when you play the game, it will ask you to install disc 2 from inside the game itself. oh well.

Just finished the 1st race of the game with the red Audi R8 5.2 liter that they make you use. I was surprised the controls were set to the old Gran Turismo settings of front buttons being gas and brake and bumper buttons for shifting gears. I prefer that over having it the opposite but was expecting to get used to accelerating with the bumpers anyway. 3 achievements unlocked in the first race. The game is more polished than the second and the rewind function isn't as bad as people say it is.

I used the cockpit view and that felt to be easiest for giving depth of space. While playing career mode the announcer that guides you sounds British, giving the game a Top Gear feel to it haha.

I'll play some more now :D!

Perfect Strangers

Who can forget this famous show. Perfect Strangers, a sitcom that lived during the eighties and early nineties. Just hearing the theme song brings me back.

Samsung B2100 vs Nokia 6250 Water and Shock Proof Phones

Samsung's B2100 seems to be the successor to the old Nokia 6250 I used to lug around. This seems to be a niche market the phone makers have been avoiding for a long time. Phones that can get wet and dropped without worry of breaking. The 6250 was huge and looked just right for a construction worker. It was almost as long as a Parker Ballpen case and 1.5x times as thick as a DVD case.

The Samsung B2100 on the other hand looks about the same size as regular candy bar cellphone. If I had P6,500 MSRP (more or less) I'd probably get one to sub for my Nokia Carbon Arte when I go out of town or go out on the field (I don't want the Carbon Fiber to get scratched LOL).

The B2100 looks smaller but similar to Nokia's faux water/shock resistant 5210:

Nokia 6250:

Nokia 5210:

Photos and links found here:

http://www.letsgomobile.org/en/review/0129/samsung-b2100/
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_6250-pictures-13.php

Totally Non-political Politician Post

****To the KJs out there, be warned that this is a non-political post about politicians with no intention whatsoever to besmirch their reputation or put to shame any aspect of their person. These are mere observations that, if taken in the proper context, with a dash of salt, vinegar and a healthy helping of a sense of humour should be used as nothing but a useless observation. Taking any of these seriously will show how intense of an idiot you may be for taking the word of a fellow idiot to heart.



My opinions on the following Presidential aspirants based on personal observation:


Loren Legarda:

See her in church and around the community, she's shorter than I am, but her bodyguards are taller than me so I hope they don't kick my ass.

Captain Planet can be her spokesperson. I'm not taller than any of the trees she protects.


Gilbert Teodoro:

He's taller than me or about the same height. His bodyguards are just as tough as Loren's but they have a cool factor cause they're probably issued by the Department of Defense which mean's one of them can be the Filipino equivalent of Jack Bauer from the TV show 24 (Keifer Sutherland).

If the guy becomes President, He'll have it all. Nephew of Danding Cojuangco, President of the Philippines and... a model family (you'll get this when you do ;).

If ever you're not so busy, lets have neighborly talk sometime Gibo! we're just a few streets away!



Manny Villar:

The guy is the new Erap without the track record. He's a bit shorter than me. I was studying for my Constitutional Law 1 finals (under Dean Andy Bautista of Shangri-La Properties), when he sat next to me at Bo's Coffee at High Street at the Fort. Having been razed from all the reading, I amused myself by asking him to sign Article 6 section 16 (stuck to my head till now) about the structure of the Legislature of the Philippines and its composition (him being Senate President at the time and all). He signed it.

The maldito inside me kept me from having him sign Article 7 of the constitution which refers to the Presidency, but it was still too early at the campaign for me to give it with some class. He gets kudos from me for his friendliness. Albeit ala politico (as I've seen at our own shindig politico events for the family in Aklan) Manny did very well. He could deal with the youth very easily,


Noynoy Aquino:

You had great parents. They inspired a nation. Yet, they hold it against you that you do not have the credentials to lead the Filipino people. You don't have the drive, Well, Speaking as a man who has also lost my father to a gun man, let that be the spirit that makes you push forward. I can personally speak of being kept right and proper by the mere image of my dead father reminding me to be always respectful, understanding and kind to all that need it, If I, a simple Law Student, may master his fears through prayer stemming from my biggest pain. I don't see why prayer cannot help you reach your top.

And when you do, I pray you maintain the principles Your parents were fighting for. This country needs a second chance at life. Everyone is hoping you will be the captain to move us forward. Good Luck.

But to put your post on equal footing with the other candidates who live in our community, when you have your meetings in your Forbes house by the Dasma gate, please discipline your drivers on how to park. They tend to double park a. The Cojaungco familiy meets at that place turn the Dasma/Forbes exit into an EDSA hell free for all with the many cars parked so close to the main entrance to the village.

And yellow is the colour of Big Bird from Sesame Street.

Just a thought. Thanks!

My Girlfriend Kicks Ass! (Windows 7)

My girlfriend kicks ass! Thanks Miggie!

Miggie gave me my pasalubong from her vacation and the inner geek in me is thrilled.

She got me Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64-bit/32-bit (MSRP $350!)!!! Ok, I know I'm a Mac guy and Snow Leopard has been great on my Macbook Pro but that doesn't mean I can't tech lust over the newest highly-rated OS from Microsoft!

To top it off, she got me a Geek t-shirt, notebook and a pen from the Microsoft store in the Redmond, Washington Microsoft Headquarters!!! GGEEEEEEEEKKKKK!!!

Add to that some Geek food like ready made Salmon and cream biscuits, I'm roaring to install Windows 7 on bootcamp to complement my Mac OSX.

Check out the photos! The Microsoft bag was the Ultimate Microsoft Geek gift-wrapper.

Thank You MIGGIE!

Di Ka Nag-Iisa!

Time to start the post-dead mourning with something exciting, next years Presidential campaign!

This is in no way a political statement, and I'm not for or against Noynoy Aquino.

I personally have not decided on who to vote for next year, but I must give props for the new ad for Noynoy's campaign.



Dramatic to the very end with a list of big name endorsers from business and showbiz. Pause the video to see, it goes by very fast.

At the very least Noy,  you're not alone, you have the whole ABS-C... A strong group of influential people behind you.

Do you know how to play the game? Was it worth it? (extremely graphic)

This is going to be my most graphic post about my father and what he went through just to do what was right, not only for love of God and country, but also for love of himself. His act was not to protect his worldy being, but his spirit, his conscience, which according to him, was worth more and transcended all that the material world had to offer.

When my dad was killed there were some comments about how my dad just did not know how to play the game. Their premise was that government in general was dirty, and that my dad, should have known when and when not to "play the game". Especially when his life was put at stake.

As a backgrounder, my Dad did not accept a bribe from a drug lord whom he sentenced to death. On June 10, 2004, according to eye-witness accounts, as he left his Court, barely 5 meters away, his car was blocked off by an armed group of thugs. Both in front and in the back while the assailant went up to my dad's driver's side where he was driving and shot my father 10 times in the head. He survived for a bit longer, but that story can be better told by clicking here.

This reminds me of one of the most common topics of discussion between my father and I; "Was it worth it?"

I used to ask him, was it really worth it NOT to accept the money? The world will surely still go round despite a few of his lapses, and it will work out later. What if all this other-world talk meant nothing because there was nothing after this life? What if after all this we just died and nothing of us was left except the dust of our disintegrated body? If such were so, everything he had done would be fruitless and he'd be leaving the people he loved behind.

My dad would simply answer, "If this is the only world we have, then I might as well make it good".

It's another Halloween again without my dad. I can't help but remember him after what he went through, after what we, as a family had to go through. The mental images are hard to erase. The shot up car, him all bloody and dying with several gun shots all over him. He was shot at least ten times in the head. They wanted to make sure he was dead. They sent groups of people after one man. It was their third try, but they had to take him out for good. The doctor once told me that it was post traumatic stress and these things are extremely difficult to just blank out. Maybe that how soldiers who see their close friends die feel.

Having had a Forensic Medicine class recently aggravated the memory. Being forced (for academic purposes) to view autopsies of other people who have been shot (Ninoy Aquino and other notables), I was reminded of the same pictures I had seen of my own father. I imagined the sticks they had to stick through his head to figure out the trajectory of the bullets and the cause of death.

I've unearthed some very old pictures from my dad's case.

Obviously I won't show you the pictures of my dad, but I can show you pictures of the vehicle he was in. Let it speak for itself of the pain we all had to go through, that day when his car was blocked off by gunmen and he was shot in cold blood. The keys I remember he used to carry around to lock the evidence room went missing, and the drugs from the case supposedly disappeared. All because he did not play the game.

I would like to end this post with some hope. To all those who feel this government does nothing, take heart that not all government officials are crooked. There are many I have met who want to do what is right. They risk their life, and because of the nature of being a public official, the lives and happiness of their family as well.

This is for all those in public service who have tried and continue to make a difference. From the cops in the field to the government desk jockeys, truth is on your side, and you will live on in every life you have touched.


RIP +++
Judge Voltaire Antonio Ylagan Rosales
May 30, 1956 - June 10, 2004