Images of Transportations

Taking a hint from the comment of AnP, I decided to upload some images I have leisurely taken using my Nokia camera phone while I go out every day. Here are some:

Walking down CCP, I noticed this AFP truck parked nearby; while walking forward I tried to focus my camera back. Alas, I captured one big part of my left ear but the result looks interesting (as if I am listening to the sounds from this truck). Again, don't focus on my ear please.

With a friend, I noticed this stalled old vintage car in the middle of a road (which looks like a hearse but is not). The front right wheel is broken and misaligned; notice the skid marks below (white marks).

I captured this image of the arriving LRT (Light Rail Transit) train (from Monumento) at the other side of the station while waiting for my ride towards Gil Puyat Avenue (formerly known as Buendia Avenue, though I still use Buendia more comfortably when asking for the route of city buses here).

Silence, Just A Thought

Funny when something so used to be loud can be so silent and often when becomes silent can be so loud.

Just a sudden thought after our office air-conditioning was turned off a few minutes ago; a deafening silence surrounded us all. And when it started again, I could hear the natural hissing and droning of our office's air-conditioning shafts.

Everyday, routine work and play sure makes one ignore some people, places, or things in life. Sometimes, it pays to give attention and time to these people (give a helping hand to parents, say something nice to loved ones, greet a good day to friends), places (go out in the sunshine, walk over bay walk, have a picnic with friends in a park), or things (take care of one's belongings, read old books from the attic, clean up home appliances) before it's too late to hear again their presence.

We may never know when they will stop making their sounds in life.

My SONA Views

I know there are a hundred (or maybe thousands) of SONA blog posts out there from fellow Pinoy bloggers sharing their thoughts and reactions on the recent state of the nation address (SONA) by our Philippine president.

I'll not go into depths nor analyze into extemporaneous details about how the speech of the president could impact the economic and political stability of the nation. That job is the work of a political analyst and/or experienced newspaper columnists (look for them in news websites or political blogs). Mine, I'll make it short. Okay, medium.

In my observation of what has happened and shown in TV, we can group every citizen of the country into only three groups according to how they view or reacted from the president's SONA.

First, there is the Pro-GMA (Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) group who liked what the president said and plan to do in the next years of administration. You see them in TV standing and clapping endlessly towards the president. Either they suck up to the president for returned favors or other intentions, include such people in this group.

The second is the group is the Anti-GMA or opposition group. No matter what the president would say (or would have spoken in the SONA) they already made up their mind to "impeach" and remove GMA from the presidency. No amount of sugar-coating or persuasion from the current administration would move them to see the brighter side of things amidst the government scandals and intrigues.

Lastly, we have the indifferent people – who cares what either side would say or do. They mind their own everyday life and won't mind what type of government would rule eventually so long as they get something out of it. Let's put the business sector and the elite here.

As what I have learned and heard from others, you choose which group you belong to according to how you reacted to the SONA.

I belong to the last one. I became indifferent. I became numb already of the political bickering and nonsense. No I do not belong to the elite. So okay, let's add to the last group: include people who are tired of political babble and gobbledygook.

Which group do you belong to?

Why I Quit Blogging Then...

A short history, if you may.

It was year 2001. I did not know anything about creating web sites nor even writing HTML codes. I used to envy even the young son of my previous employer's president who she always brags about his cute homepage complete with images her son created.

It was year 2001. With nothing to do within our development group (no project at all), each one of us decided to learn something new, some computer language and web development skill to train on. I chose ASP technology, but that would mean I have to learn first HTML.

While learning HTML, I stumbled across an article in Sitepoint about a new revolution in personal homepages called web blogs or simply blogs. Interested, I read everything in the article; inspired, I started to create my first web site cum blog. And the rest was history (But where is the copy of my previous blog? I have to find the rest of my posts here in Blogger somewhere and I'll let you take a peek of my previous writings soon).

And now for the reasons why I quit blogging then. Here is the list:

• I had full of ideas about the new version of my (previous) blog. I was so enthusiastic to create a fresh concept for a blog site. But all of a sudden... I got that blogger's block. Yeah, like burnout. My mind froze on anything I would like to talk, comment, share and speak my mind on. I lost on ideas.


• Upon rereading my previous posts, I realized that I have been writing carelessly on topics I should have not posted (At this moment, I begin to remember this page by Heather in Dooce regarding things that should not be posted. But trust me, what I have written before were not as serious as what she shared in her blog. I know then my limits.)


• I also felt pressure in blogging. You know the feeling that, sometimes, having some faithful readers of your blog, you would always like to come up with topics that interest them constantly. I became too conscious with everything I write, forgetting that I am in command of blogging. My readers should not be the reason for blogging, my interest for sharing and expressing my thoughts is the reason for blogging in the first place.

To counter these, I had to:

• Free myself from blogging from time to time. Stay away from the computer, the Internet and Blogger. This will give me time to gather thoughts and de-stress myself from blogging.


• To counteract lost of ideas, take note of things and events that happen around, if not daily then weekly. Life is full of surprises and things to talk about.


• Keep myself always focused and aware that this blog is part of the Internet and every content included here is in public domain (unless I install a security application barring others except friends and family readers). Public matters should be made public; private matters are definitely out of this blog.

Covering The Rally

In trying to be a pseudo-photo journalist during the height of the rally last Tuesday (07/19/05), I attempted to take some photos (via cellphone only) of the event as shown below:

Line of protesters (I saw this while exiting our building)

People of the city forced to avoid the rally

I did cross Ayala Avenue (and right in the middle of the protesters)

Sitting around and waiting for some leader's commands

A different angle of the rallyists

Too shy to show their faces, they hide in masks (I think they saw me taking pictures so they suddenly covered themselves)

Oblivious of the stares of some of the protesters, I just assumed myself invisible while taking stolen shots of the scenery.

Though amused with these pictures, I am still angry with the protests being staged during business hours. It's not good for business. It scares anything good within this city that I learned to love for the past seven years of working life.

Meanwhile, nature has her strange ways of showing its own protest to the current events as shown by this succulent cactus in our house:

(Dirty impression. Well, what can you do if nature designed it this way? You simply have to accept it.)

Don't think you're the only one who can show some bad sign languages.

Fixing Firefox CSS Problem

Class, we'll go technical today.

Someone reported to me that this site was having display problems in FireFox browser. I had downloaded the much talked about browser and had it running, viewing this site. While every other HTML components are in place, the divisions and boxed layouts were rendered with missing two to four letters of text content (as if cut off at the ends). I tried viewing previous layouts of the site relying heavily with styled divisions to display compact boxed areas (divisions with paddings and borders); all were having similar problems with cut off end texts.

I had to search through Google for possible solutions for this and successfully found a useful simple workaround in CSS. Box model issue was mentioned and I inserted the single line of code below to all of my DIV styles in this site's style sheet.

  -moz-box-sizing:border-box; box-sizing:border-box;margin:0;padding:0;

In a DIV tag style, the line code would appear as a sample below:

DIV#main
{
   -moz-box-sizing:border-box;box-sizing:border-box;margin:0;padding:0;
   width:100%;
   height:100%;
   padding-top:10px;
   padding-left:20px;
   padding-bottom:10px;
   padding-right:15px;
}

Though still unfamiliar with how FireFox handles CSS display, the code worked for my site in Mozilla FireFox the same way as it is in Internet Explorer.

I haven't tested the site with Netscape though. Most Internet users, according to statistics are either using FireFox or IE. With that, I assume Netscape is dead.

Or will it rise up again from the dead?

Me, I'm still loyal to Maxthon. Try it, you may be surprised.

Potter Had Errors?

While everybody's going gaga over the new Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Mark had already pointed out some proofreading error in his blog (with sample image, thus spoiler alert especially for those who haven't destroyed the plastic covering of their newly bought copy of the novel). Is that really a grammatical error? I am no English guru, so I couldn't decide if it is (can somebody also verify that error?).

Anyway, blame me as a lowly muggle, but I am not much into Harry Potter books. Sorry to say that to the millions of Harry Potter fans out there. But I have read the first book of the series to see what the commotion is and I must say, I did like it. Though I couldn't help myself comparing it to reading a children's detective book series such as... Bobbsey Twins. You know - children involved, cheesy storyline, light and fluffy events that kindle to anyone still child at heart (Do not be misled, I am not saying I dislike these types of stories. They're not my current interests though).

New Home, Same Blogger

Moved out of the old blog. And now I have moved here.

To start things off, I need to repost again the purposes for this blog creation:

• I always wanted to have my own column to write down my thoughts and opinions or anything I wanted to say. I am a highly opinionated person, depending on the topic or hot issue of the day. Influenced by high school and college paper columns up to current newspaper opinion pages, I decided to make one through blogging.
• I like to tell others what I know and share them ideas no matter how useful or not what I tell them. Man is a social animal and communication is natural to him.
• I have plans to move out and work abroad (when, I am not sure, but plans B, C, D and others are momentarily in process). When that time comes, I will continue to communicate and tell about my status abroad with my family and friends through this online blog.
• To meet new cyber friends. During my heydays of blogging (past few years ago), I met some of the Pinoy bloggers out there through mini-gatherings and enjoyed their company.
• I would agree with most bloggers on this: to record events big and small. Now that my blog will include pictures, I would be able to look back and recall certain times in my life visually.
• Indirectly, this is one of my purposes for blogging: to learn more about web-designing and website construction. It's true that I learned to create a well designed website by creating my own weblog. This is not my first blog, this is actually my fourth blog.
• To practice writing in English. Laugh, but it's true. I might have a grammatical error here somewhere...