Friday night (Nov. 19) me, 4 photography enthusiasts (Alvin, Jap, Myrbs, Jason) , and Teresa (who wants a get away experience) set off to San Antonio, Zambales to start our most awaited trip before the end of the year. After 4 hours of bus ride and an hour of boat ride at the dark sea we arrived at Nagsasa Cove just in time before the sunrise. It was a great start seeing the sun rise from behind the mountains and as the sea becomes clear and turned blue. Everyone was so busy looking around the place taking pictures. Not a single minute is wasted as my photographer companions are so excited to take a shot of every good angle of the place including me using my cheap lousy digital camera. There’s no electricity, no cellphone signal, no internet, and nothing to eat except for the canned foods and snacks that we bought before hand. We camped eating just canned corned beef, fried and dried fish, and salted egg with chopped tomatoes. We started a bonfire, roasted marshmallows, take shots of vodka and called it a night. The next day we  sailed again going to Anawangin which is the last destination for our trip. We got there early before 7 in the morning and started trekking. We reached the top and took some pictures and then headed back to the beach to take more pictures. Did I ever mention that we never really spend our time swimming? Yes, we never swimmed. Most of our time is spent taking pictures, my companions are so in loved with their cameras and doesn’t want to miss a single spot, lol. But it was cool. Overall, it’s one hell of a trip. I got some scratches and sunburned a bit but no complaints, I had fun. I wish there were more people who joined us, though. Right now I’m still waiting for the pictures and will put up a link when they’re available.

Here’s a photo from Jap Salem, photographer and programmer (zomg) who lives in the same place where I’m staying in Makati. This is definitely one of my fave shot because I’m in it ^_^

Despite my horrible work schedule and unusual busyness I still have a “social” life after all. Glad I’m still able to hang out with some friends and have fun. Oh, did I mention all of them were girls I hanged out with? Awesome! And also, I need to find a girlfriend soon – added in my ToDo list.

I wasn’t so happy about yesterday’s changes. I hate changing the layout because I know it will take me a while to think of one that I will like for more than 2 hours. Luckily, I stumbled upon the Pastie blog which happens to be one of the many sites I visit. This is it, I have an idea. I remember dreaming about having a layout that looks like a sheet of paper and the Pastie blog is a perfect example of that. For the record I am not stealing the design, I am inspired by it. Why did I say that? Because there had been issues about copyrighted “look and feel” which had been talked about in the Pastie blog. I just want to be clear on that point.

Finally, a real update after a long time. Here are the changes:

- Theme. Yes, it may look like I didn’t but I really did changed it. If you’ve been here before you’ll notice that it’s not so colorful anymore. I’ve also removed my picture on the sidebar. It was a hard decision but I don’t see the point of having my picture there. I also added Tags so people can quickly identify the nature of my posts which no one cares about.

- Syntax Highlighting. For nerds only. I hope you appreciate my new code syntax highlighting. It’s simpler than the old one with alternating row colors.

- WordPress. Updated to the latest WP version which is 3.0.1.

- Logo. Changed color to plain white and removed the distorted effect. Still kept the binary background and japanese text underneath.

- jQuery. Again, for nerds only. I updated my Javascript library to the latest version which is 1.4.3.
- jQuery back to top link should be working just fine. Tested and made sure it is compatible.

- Other stuff. Things even if I tell no one will see it.

Looking forward to more updates.

Yes, I’m doing it now. Things around may explode. Done.

Hello internet! Time to post again and I’ll be listing some stuff which I’m not sure if I’m going to do (but probably I will). Right now there are things that I want but haven’t decided yet:

- Buy a Nintendo DSi because it’s so freakin awesome. Well, I already have a PSP and Gameboy Advance SP but I need one more handheld console so I can play other stuff that I’m not able to play with the ones that I have.

- Fix this site because this place is a pile of shit. I dunno what’s wrong but I want a new theme and I already have some ideas. Because I’m busy and no time to play around with the ideas I have to kinda find some time to do it (maybe).

- Get me some new clothes, I haven’t shopped in a while because I have no money to spare lately but before this I need to get me that Nintendo DSi.

- Take a break. I’ve always been busy and working my ass until I can’t recognize the days. I don’t know what I’ll do but this is definitely worth doing. Will go back to Anawangin Beach Cove with some friends (went there last summer).

Update: 10-21-2010 I’m totally broke.  No money. Forget about buying things.
Update: 11-06-2010 I can’t believe it, I actually had spare time and crossed-out the entry about updating the site cause it’s done.
Update: 11-28-2010 Refer to this post for my so-called break.

If you’re trying to copy a large file to a destination drive, say, a USB drive and keep getting an error saying that the file is larger than the destination file system despite having enough or larger space then this can help you solve the problem. Usually USB drives are FAT32 with max file size of 4GB, if you’re copying large files (like movies) more than 4GB then you may want to convert your drive to NTFS which has a larger file size limit. See differences of file systems here. To convert your drive to a different file system without losing any data or need to format your drive you only need to use this simple command. Go to Start > Run > then type cmd to open the command line. Type:

convert <drive_letter>:/fs:ntfs

Here’s an example screenshot when I converted my USB drive’s file system, g is the drive letter in this case:

Once conversion is completed just exit the command line and proceed copying your file(s), you should be able to copy large files by then.

Nerd Talk

Food for thought, PHP automatically converts dots (‘.’) with underscores (‘_’) on GET or POST (or REQUEST) variables.

// sample url using GET: page.php?foo.bar=value
print_r($_GET);
 
// output:
// variable "foo.bar" becomes "foo_bar"
// array([foo_bar] => value)
echo $_GET['foo_bar']; // prints "value"

The news feed of Facebook these days is more like spam feeds cause of gazillion games, apps, and friend updates. Recently I noticed people are just crazy over the “Share” button. Posting just anything and I mean anything. Be it a personal problem, complaints, being stressed, etc. It’s okay to share what you feel or if you’re going through something but I think there should be a limitation for it. It’s okay to seek sympathy from others but there are times that we have to keep it to ourselves cause some things are not really worth other people’s time. So anyways, if some people are big fans of the “Share” button which they like to press every now and then, I also have a feature that I really like and thankful to Facebook that they have. It’s the “Hide” button. Most people knew about this already and I’ve been using it for a while now. Just today I was reading the news feed and find some posts that are spammish so once again I pressed the “x” button next to my friend’s name and poof, gone!

I have lost count how many friends I’ve hidden in the past which are mostly hidden cause of their spam posts of their daily problems and complaints which I really don’t care about. I checked and counted the names and wow I already hidden exactly 80 of my friends out of 244. Sorry guys, I don’t want to remove you in my list but your posts are just…. too much.

Look at the scroll bar in my hidden friends box, there’s just too many of them hidden >:)

Finally I can sleep more and will sleep more! Last week we had a crazy schedule and been busier than ever. No time to visit social networks and no time to blog. No time to watch TV and no time to text people, even just to say Hi. Daily routine is to take a nap, eat (snacks), take a bath, and then go back to work. I remember only eating once a day because I’m so sleepy that when I got home all I want is sleep. Really some ass-busting week for us. It was good, we get to finish what we need but it’s just a start. More work coming up! Ok, I have to sleep.

Been busy lately and no time to blog because my brain is always fried. I spent my time this weekend hanging out and meeting few people at Soshified. Other than that, I’ve been coding and thinking all day ^^

One of the first strange things to ever happen was when a man was born and turned out to be nothing more than twelve legs coming from a cloud. When people saw him, they usually ended up thinking that he was David Blaine or some other magician pulling a stunt.

So David Blaine got a really bad rap about it and people started putting a lot of pressure on him to do regular card tricks that just told a story or something.

Nerd Talk

Search functionality can be done in two ways, (1) the usual form submit that reloads the page to submit the query and (2) through Ajax, doesn’t require a page reload because it sends the query in the background which is cool. If you’re working on a search functionality it is best to always optimize the process because every time the user hits the submit button your server gets hit in the head to perform the request. As we know, searching requires database query and we don’t want to request from the database that often because it’ll bite you in the ass when there’s a lot of searches going on. In this post I won’t be providing tips on how to optimize search queries or any caching methods but this is a start for an optimized search functionality. This is to help you save server requests if you’re working on a similar search functionality.

If you’re working on a search functionality that triggers onkeyup:

<input onkeyup="Search(this)" name="search" />

You know, the kind of search functionality where you submit the request to the server when the user stops typing the keyword to save them time clicking the submit button or if you don’t have a submit button at all. When doing this we must make sure that we only submit or send the request to the server once the user had stopped typing. So if the user wanted to search for ‘krispy kreme’, take note if you’re using onkeyup event, your Search() function will get triggered every time your user lifts his finger off the keyboard key. Imagine the amount of request you’re sending to the server when searching for ‘krispy kreme’, that’s 12 characters, 12 Ajax requests. Code below will help to only send a request to the server when the user had stopped typing, we assume that the user already finished typing the search keyword.

// initial interval value
var SearchTimeOut = 0;
// how long before the execution starts; in milliseconds (1000 = 1 second)
// just the value i'm happy with, not too fast or slow
// increase value if you think users type 1 ltr (letter per second) >:)
var Interval = 333;
 
// stores the search keyword
var CurrentSearchKey = '';
var Search = function(obj) {
	// get the keyword from the field
	var keyword = obj.value;
 
	// cancel the previous search
	// SearchTimeOut contains a value more than zero when assigned with
	// a setTimeout()
	if(SearchTimeOut > 0)
		ResetSearch();
 
	// we only start a request when the search keyword is different from
	// the current keyword
	if(CurrentSearchKey == keyword)
		return;
 
	// the magic, we attach the search process to setTimeout to put in an
	// interval every time the Search() is executed
	// setTimeout() returns a value assigned to SearchTimeOut everytime
	// it's called since SearchTimeOut now holds whatever StartSearch()
	// is doing when we do a keyup event, everytime we execute Search()
	// we will cancel SearchTimeOut and start a new one, that's what makes
	// sending a request to the server lesser because we only do a request
	// to the server when we stop typing a keyword
	SearchTimeOut = setTimeout("StartSearch('"+keyword+"')", Interval);
}
 
// the actual search function
var StartSearch = function(keyword) {
	CurrentSearchKey = keyword;
	// here is where you put your Ajax request code, regardless if you're
	// using jQuery, Prototype JS, or the conventional way of doing Ajax
}
 
// cancels the previous search interval
var	ResetSearch = function() {
	// this is what cancels the setTimeout interval assigned
	// to SearchTimeOut
	clearTimeout(SearchTimeOut);
	SearchTimeOut = 0;
}

There you have it, hope that helps!

The color of their shirts used to match the color of my old logo. I just love these girls ;p

Last Updated: 11-07-2010

Activate your Windows 7 in no time! Use this tool to activate your Windows 7 and get rid of that pesky notification that tells you to activate your OS. http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/8632-Program-based-Windows-7-loader. I’ve used it myself and it’s working like a charm. Kudos to Daz, freakin awesome programmer.

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