Monthly Archives: November 2011

focus_on_the_family
Nov 5 2011

More Birthdays To Come

Most close friends of mine know I don’t usually throw parties during my birthdays. My parents usually insist on throwing a party for me, and they always tell me it’s not really my celebration but it’s for the people around me. I used to think this is silly because, after all, it is my day, so what I usually do is I go out, alone, in my Zen mode and try to find or do something for myself to treat me.

I remember one birthday celebrating it on my own in an Open Source camp in Cavite, another one in Binondo, and another watching a movie just for the sake of dating myself. I always liked this type of birthdays…

Until recently, I had an event that almost changed my perspective about life. I realized it’s too short to be lived alone and to never share those triumphs and joys to anyone. I now want more birthdays to come. Happy ones. This one will really sound silly, but I am actually picturing myself enjoying with my brothers and sisters, popping balloons, spraying shaving cream at each other and laughing with our parents in a game of newspaper dancing.

I miss my being young, innocent, and fun-loving. I want to start over and spend more time with my family. They never left me in times of crisis, and even though I am helping out, I don’t think I can pay them back enough.

Or maybe we could all go to UP today. Have fun in the park.

Maybe we don’t need to do it on someone’s birthday. Maybe any day could do.

Untitled
Nov 2 2011

Happy 20th Birthday, VIM Editor

I know VIM is old, but never thought it was like almost my age!

Kidding aside, VIM has been my lifesaver when it comes to editing stuff from a remote server, especially those ugly bugs that can be squashed by either removing a line, or just changing spellings. For those who don’t know what VIM does, VIM is a commandline-based text editor with a cool TUI (text-based user interface), sporting tons of features and supporting almost all programming languages. If you started in DOS like me, you might remember using Wordstar or the “edit” command in your DOS prompt. VIM is similar to these, in which all of these programs run in that blackened screen called the command prompt.

I remember my mentor teaching me VIM, and all I can think about is why would someone make colons as menu shortcuts? Those were my first days learning Linux and I can barely mount a floppy disk from the terminal.

Still, VIM played a huge role in my entire career, and I always tell my students and colleagues that if they don’t learn VIM, they won’t survive pro Linux.

For more history about VIM, go to the Ars Technica birthday tribute article to appreciate it more.

iPadLovesGMail
Nov 2 2011

GMail Launches Its New iOS App

Everybody’s favorite tech company, Google, has just recently launched (and pulled out) the very much rumored GMail app for iOS. It’s a hurray, and then halfed!

A lot of our Android friends (including me) have already enjoyed using the GMail native app, and we all loved its simplicity, less distractions, full labels support, and, of course, local searching. With iOS now being blessed by good ol’ Goog with a new mail app, I wonder what other apps they still have in store for the Apple platform…

Below are screenshots from GMail’s blog:

iPhone Screenies

Photo Attachments

GMail Message Menu. Notice the "Report Spam" and "Mute" choices.

Labels show up when screen is swiped to the right

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iPad Screenshots

iPad Screenshot with Thread View

Real awesome stuff since you get to have full features of GMail in a native speedy way. As exciting as it may seem, Google unfortunately pulled the app from the App Store due to “a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app.” 

I would love to have a clean and speedy (also, free) version of Google Reader inside my iPad, so it could compete head on with Reeder, sort of the top-selling Google Reader client for iOS. If they could do it the Flipboard way, the better.

Bookworm Clipart
Nov 1 2011

Reading List for November

Been reading a lot lately. Well, I’ve been reading tons of RSS stuff my whole career life, but this time I have bought myself new books for this part of the year. Kind of a “gift” for me, if you know what I mean. (smirks) Here goes the list!

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

This one’s a no-brainer. Everyone loves Steve. I love his way of seeing things, how less could be more. I always tell my students and colleagues Steve’s best contribution to society, more than the set of gimicky gadgets he came up with, is the idea of celebrating and enhancing life as we know it, everything from work to non-work. And if you could earn billions while doing it, why not?

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

Truly an enjoyable read, The Lean Startup is a must-have for aspiring startup people who just want to make their share of world-changing things in the history of doing business. But I haven’t finished this one yet.

Startups Open Sourced by Jared Tame

Get inside the minds of today’s leading startup founders with the most honest and candid collection of startup founder interviews. Contains interviews with 33 startups discussing the most difficult topics entrepreneurs face: creating and validating ideas, finding cofounders, obtaining users, growing revenue, staying motivated, acquisition process, and more.

Anyone who knows me, knows I’m an open-source lover… or addict… or worshipper (I think more between being and addict and a worshipper). At work, I live and breathe open source. When I teach, I always make it a point that there are alternatives. I have to say, if ever I will start a business up (not saying soon, not saying never), I’m pretty lost when it comes to keeping IP and / or sharing source code to everyone. This book is helpful in choosing to make developers and go-getters happy, while keeping your business afloat. A must-read for me (I already bought it so I’m forced to read it).

 

… and for my monthly fiction fix… just wait for my next post. Hehe.

 

strawberry-whipped-cream
Nov 1 2011

Something Creamy’s Whipppin’

Mmm-mmm.

Me and a few friends are whippin’ something out, and I can’t wait to let everybody have a taste of it. We just need a little more whiskin’ and sprinklin’ on it and hopefully it’ll get puffy and creamy very soon.

Clues will come out during the course of its qreation.

18499_game_of_thrones
Nov 1 2011

New Beginning

 

Starting from this blog, I’ll try my best to not be too personal about my blogs. Instead, I’ll put content that I always do at work: tutorials, (re)discoveries, hacks… life hacks, too.

For now, let the games begin!