New year, new site, new blog!

Well, it took a lot more work than I imagined it would, but my new blog is up on a new site. Buying the domain name was easy (I got it from GoDaddy), getting a host was a little difficult because I had no clue what my hosting requirements were going to be (I eventually chose Dayanahost), and setting up WordPress to run on the host was the toughest task of all. Thank goodness for the super clear, if slightly geeky, instructions on the WordPress site. Setting up your own blog on an independent host is definitely not for the technically fainthearted. It ate up maybe a day and a half’s worth of vacation time, but it’s up and running, finally.

Happy new year, and welcome to my new blog! (This one is getting retired, so bookmark the new one now)

Blogging break!

I'm in the midst of a project that's due the end of the year, and it's a classic case of biting off more than I can chew. I'm really excited about it, but it's requiring a lot more effort than I ever expected.

Merry Christmas, and see you on January 1!

Geekspeak: The next Treo models

Cross-posted from the m|ph blog.

Palm has announced three new Treo models (four if you count the Treo 700w that will be released next month) for 2006. What new features will they put in? A few days ago Palm sent a notice to registered Treo users inviting them to take an online survey. Among other things, they asked questions about the use of instant messaging on the Treo (I don't), a reasonable price for a smartphone (I said P20,000) and, more important, a list of features that you want included in a smartphone, ranked according to importance.

They listed the following features: radio, video conferencing, voice dialing, compact form factor, instant messaging, TV or streaming video, GPS navigation, more memory, WiFi capabilities, Skype compatibility, 3G, voice over IP, a high resolution camera, aesthetic design, and push email. I ranked as extremely important better looks (shed some weight and lose the antenna, principally), WiFi (and all the goodies that come with it, such as the possibility of using Skype or some other form ofVoIP, IM, etc.), and push email.

Even though it's Christmas, I don't think Palm will cram all those features into a single model that would end up costing as much as a mid-range laptop. My guess is that they will release a simpler, less expensive model and a smaller, sleeker version of the current Treo (code-named Lowrider and Hollywood, if online reports are to believed), maybe with WiFi, and a super model with even more features (larger screen, 3G, WiFi) toward the end of the year. All of a sudden my Treo 650 feels old.

Writing lessons

There’s a part of me that wishes I had chosen to pursue a writing career much, much earlier in my life, and had the chance to be “properly trained.” I consider myself a writer in the very limited sense of being able to write more or less grammatically correct prose, but not in the sense of being able to paint a story for my readers. Whatever I know I absorbed from a lifetime of prolific reading (I had gone through all 52 Hardy Boys books by Grade 6), and only once in my life did I have a chance to be “coached” professionally.

I had enrolled in a Master’s level creative writing course at the College of Arts and Letters called “The Informal Essay,” having exhausted all other possible electives in the College of Mass Communication to complete my penalty units for having exceeded, for the nth time, the MRR. I chose that particular course because Butch Dalisay was teaching it. We were required to write five essays over the course of the semester, each one to be read by the other members of the class⎯I remember that Paolo Manalo and Scott Garceau were among them⎯on the spot and then critiqued as if you were not there. I sweated and squirmed the entire semester but took home many lessons, many of them swallowed together with a heaping serving of humility.

And that’s why I'm so happy to see that Butch Dalisay has (finally!) begun blogging, and continues dishing out lessons for aspiring writers.

Gifted!

I am so looking forward to 365 days of cutting edge, socially relevant geekiness! Thanks, Santa!

Interestingness

It’s difficult to define, and better expressed in pictures. Flickr’s Interestingness page is what keeps me going back to Flickr, even though I rarely upload pictures these days (having your digital camera snatched in a crowded stairway outside the Baguio Public Market can make you lose your interest in photography quickly). And it’s there that I found rosemary*. I like shooting in macro mode, blowing up details that most people never really notice but heck, rosemary* does them so much better than I ever did. Enjoy!

The 12 Steps of Technoholics Anonymous

My column for the December issue of Mobile Philippines magazine, which I believe is now available in most places where magazines are sold. (Photo cribbed from the nerd series done by Andrew Hickinbottom).

Hello. My name is Jason and I’m a recovering technoholic. The best Christmas gift I’ve received so far is beeing clean for many months now. I haven’t bought a new gadget since February (I did succumb to a moment of weakness once, and got the Apple Mighty Mouse in August), and haven’t reviewed a gadget for the magazine since June.

I realized that my addiction to gadgets and technology was bad when I cared about the latest post on Engadget and PhilMUG more than the worsening political situation (it was the height of the Garci tape scandal). Thanks to Technoholics Anonymous (Mac Users’ Chapter), I overcame my addiction and am now able to step out of the house without my PowerBook and not feel a sense of panic. (As for the Treo 650, I’m working on it). Here are the 12 steps that changed my life.

1. We admitted that we were powerless against Steve Job’s marketing crap reality distortion field, and that we drooled over wanted each new device that he announced, no matter how marginal its utility and inflated its price.
2. We came to believe that there is a Power greater than electricity and the internet, and that the world will not end if our laptops were to run out of juice and our wireless connection were to go kaput.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to our wife (or significant other, or some other authority) and promised to really pay attention whenever they nagged said to us: “You’re going to buy a new (place name of gadget du jour here)? But your old one still works, doesn’t it?”
4. We made a searching and fearless inventory of our gadgets and gewgaws, including the ones we keep around even though we haven’t used them in the last three years.
5. We bravely admitted the nature of our mistakes⎯that we bought more than half of them because we thought they looked damn cool were going to be useful.
6. We made ourselves entirely ready to be cleansed of gadget lust, and promised to assess future purchases in terms of needs rather than wants.
7. We humbly asked our wife (or significant other, or some other authority) to take away our credit card, so that we would not succumb again in a moment of weakness.
8. We made a list of all the persons we sneered at ignored when their Windows computer went down with a virus or a worm or spyware, and promised to make amends.
9. We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, helping them update their virus definitions regularly and install AdAware.
10. We continued to take our personal inventory, and promised to give away or donate gadgets that we weren’t using anymore, and admit that Macs (occasionally) hang and crash.
11. Through prayer and reflection, we sought to improve our contact with our fellow men, striving to pay attention to their boring drivel what they are saying and not to interrupt the conversation to read SMS messages or to answer an incoming call.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other geeks, nerds, and dweebs technoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
    

Called for help

Being the resident techie in your office can sometimes make your days run like an episode of Call for Help for spectacularly clueless computer users. Here are two of the more memorable calls I got over the last couple of weeks.

Call #1

Caller: Hi. My laptop has a problem.
Me: What seems to be the problem?
Caller: There’s something wrong with the screen.
I pause. Could there be a problem with his six-month old iBook’s screen? It’s too new to have a problem.
Me: What’s wrong with it?
Caller: It’s too dark.
I pause. I have a hunch.
Me: Ok. Can you take a look at your keyboard? I want you to look at the keys on the upper left hand corner—the ones with the sun-like icons.
Caller: Ok, I see them.
Me: Press the one on the right—the one with the larger sun icon.
Caller: Oh!
Me: Press it again.
Caller: Oh!! Hey, thanks!
Me: Thanks for dialing Call for Help. We aim to please.

Call #2

Caller: Ummm… how do I eject a CD?
Me: Ok, look at the key on the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard, the one with the upward-pointing arrow.
Caller: Ok.
Me: Press it.
Caller: Ok, I pressed it. Nothing happened.
Me: Press it longer, until the eject icon appears on your screen.
Caller: Nothing’s happening.
Me: Hmmm… it sounds like your disc is stuck inside.
Caller: How do I get it out?
Me: Try restarting your laptop.
I wait for about a minute.
Caller: Ok, it ejected the disk.
A flashbulb goes off inside my head.
Me: Wait a minute. Did you insert it with the data side down?
Caller: Which side is the data side?
I try another tack.
Me: When you inserted it, where was the label—on top or at the bottom?
Caller: On the bottom.
Me: Thank you for dialing Call for Help…

Farewell to the King

I just finished the audiobook version of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones. Apparently, it’s a novel that King himself likes a lot⎯at least enough to narrate it himself in the audiobook version. It received a 4-1/2-star rating from Audible.com listeners, and that was what actually got me interested in the book in the first place.

The story was catchy enough, but the horror and action conjured up for the climax seemed artificial and just too convenient. All in all I got only one really good fright from the book, provoked by an especially cadaverous-looking beggar who knocked on my car window while I was listening to a particularly tense scene and waiting for the traffic light to turn green at the corner of Meralco and Ortigas Avenues. I liked it, but not enough to want to invest any more time or money on other Stephen King tomes, whether dead tree or audiobook version (with the exception, perhaps, of On Writing). I’ve long outgrown my scared-by-ghosts phase and prefer more serious fiction, something along the lines of Carlos Ruiz Zafón or even Jasper Fforde.

I avoided Stephen King and other horror writers when I was younger, mainly because Omen and then Amityville Horror had scared me sleepless for a couple of nights, and I forswore other horror novels and movies after that. Now that I’ve outgrown my fear of ghosts and demons (I still believe in them; it’s just that they don’t scare me as much), Bag of Bones is just a mildly interesting ghost story, good for an abridged retelling around the campfire on the beach or by a lake, or, a movie.