There’s a secret drink in Starbucks called the Undertow. The Undertow is composed of vanilla syrup with a shot of milk poured first on a double shot glass. A shot of espresso is then poured on top of the milk using the back end of a spoon so that the hot espresso stays on top and does not mix with the milk. It’s called the undertow because when you drink it (and you need to drink it immediately), you will feel the surge of piping hot espresso that almost burns your tongue. But then, the sweet cold milk kicks in almost immediately (hence the name of the drink) neutralizing the hot espresso, the sweetness making it go down smoothly.

Now I’m not sure if you can order this in Manila. But you can definitely make it at home. I use Philippine-grown arabica beans and grind enough for one shot. Afterwards, I prepare a spoon, one shot glass and a double shot glass. The double shot glass will contain a teaspoon of vanilla syrup and milk (I use skim milk) filled halfway. I make one shot of espresso on the second shot glass. Immediately after the entire shot is extracted, I pour it onto the double shot glass. I use the back end of a spoon to “catch” the espresso so that it doesn’t mix with the cold milk. Drink immediately after.

As you can see, I don’t have photos of the finished product as well … I drank it immediately. It’s bad to waste.

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With good lighting and a steady hand, you can take great “photos” straight from your video camera. These are video caps taken from all my RAW video archive of underwater flora and fauna.

It’s really simple — all you need to do is make sure that you have very still shots of your subject with relatively good light. The STILL part is most important. Motion blur is a frequent culprit in videocaps so make sure your hands don’t shake. It also helps if your subjects don’t move.

It also helps that the camera is 1080p quality.

I’ll be doing this regularly in Facebook and on Flickr. In the meantime, the link is here:

http://bit.ly/underwatershots

Enjoy!

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Have you tried Ping? After fiddling with the service for a couple of hours, I have concluded the following:

The business model seems to make sense: over 120,000,000 iOS devices sold and over 275 million iPods as well. That puts Apple in pretty good shape to manage it’s clout into a social network for music.

I can understand the mixed reactions from many US iTunes users of how Ping is going to be a “Facebook killer” or how Last.FM is still way better. As someone who lives in the Philippines, I don’t feel very much “connected” to the events on Ping. Unlike Facebook which is a venue for conversation, the goal of Ping is to connect you directly to the musician’s schedule allowing you to buy concert tickets and albums. So essentially the social network classifies you as a customer. When Apple finally rolls out a local PH version (and that means going through the brick wall laid down by record labels), that may be more enticing.

Apparently there’s really a reason why people specialize in social networking apps. Ping doesn’t seem to keep the look and feel of Apple’s usual elegance. It’s a bit confusing to browse at first, as I always end up back at the iTunes store, like I’m being compelled to buy an album off the digital rack. And my profile photo — more than 24 hours and it still is “being processed.” Apparently it’s the same for almost everyone — even the artists. Lady Gaga’s profile photo is still a default avatar. And I highly doubt that it’s her choice.

Well it’s only day 3.

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These are screen cap from Apple’s livestream. Pretty good eh? This is Steve showing off the new iPod line: it’s completely revamped, leaving out the iPod classic. The revamped design for the shuffle is really a marriage of the button-style layout with the voice commands. And they made it smaller. The new nano is essentially a square touch screen which you can flick through. The new iPod touch brings in a front and rear camera, the new iOS 4.1 which includes HDR imaging and Game Center (essentially a could based multiplayer platform that turns your iPhone / iPod touch into a social gaming network). The new games look pretty neat as well — we saw the Project Sword running on the Unreal Engine (EPIC Games) and Street Fighter IV.

We’ll get Philippine pricing soon.

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If you’re a fanboy like me, you’re probably still awake waiting for the live stream. Have you read the fine print at the bottom of the announcement? You need to be running on Safari or using iOS to view the stream. WTF! Sure, they’re doing a stress test of their new datacenters but they just shut out everybody running Windows from viewing the stream. From the other side of the coin though, the live stream quality is amazing.

Reminds me of this tweet by @phil_nash:

I still love my MacBook Pro though. It’s running Windows 7.

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I had recently bought the latest 13 inch MacBook Pro and installed both Snow Leopard and WIndows 7 Ultimate via BootCamp. Everything went well save for an annoying problem with the audio not being able to work. Puzzling. After several unsuccessful tries I found out that this was a problem with BootCamp 3.0, and not Windows 7 compatibility. It seems that BootCamp 2.2 is more friendly than its latter release.

The solution to this problem is to find BootCamp 2.2 in the Apple website and extract the audio drivers from the installation file using 7ZIP. If you’re like me and have encountered this problem, then you’re in luck — I’ve extracted the files using 7ZIP (Note: I only have the 32bit audio drivers for Windows 7, not the 64bit ones.).

If you need the file (note: this is for 32bit Windows), access it through my Dropbox.

Good luck!

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Text from an editorial note I made after sifting through our Afterburner section to upload online:

I remembered Eggy today after looking through the archives of our Afterburner section for the magazine. Unlike most, I was introduced to Alexis outside his career in film, as we went to the same college, he being a batch lower. We were friends. Later on in the following semesters, we got involved in a point of conflict, details of which I would rather not talk about — but it is suffice to say that these were, in his words to Erwin Romulo, “a little bit of weirdness.” We parted ways. Many years later, we were in touch thanks to the wonders of Facebook, but never got to speak in person. I was excited to hear from Erwin that Alexis would be working with UNO. That we’d both be working together. But alas, fate had other plans. Today I still read his work. It’s the next best thing to talking to him again. — Jayvee

——————

A note from the editor, Erwin Romulo (@erwinromulo)

I wish this issue didn’t have to exist.

It’s been a year since our good friends Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc were murdered in their home. Up until now, there has been no movement on the case and none of us know why they were killed. All I know is that it wasn’t a robbery and that the authorities have not done a proper investigation. I should know. Along with the Tioseco family, I’ve met too many police officials, bureaucrats, investigators, lawyers, politicians, psychics, and inept people named Agnes to say otherwise.

Alexis, in particular, meant a lot to those of us here in UNO. He’d even sit in during our editorial meetings. (See picture.) He was very much a part of what this magazine was all about, why we all chose to take on the challenge of doing it. But our friendship with him went well beyond working together. At least for me, he was no less than a brother. And I’m lucky that I was able to tell him that I loved him before he died. I told it to him quite often actually and he never gave up on me even when I gave up on myself.

It’s also with heavy hearts that we mark the recent death of another friend, cinematographer Miguel Fabie III. Miguel wrote to me last year, shortly after Alexis died. The letter is excerpted below:

Dear Erwin—

I met [Alexis] after one of the first screenings of Batang West Side—he approached me, introduced himself, commended me, then slowly… in editing lingo—“dissolved to black.” That was my first feature film and though he sounded like he knew what he was talking about, I was taken aback by this young punk who seemed so sincere and passionate that my selective-memoried brain decided to keep him in its archives.

Anyway, in his case praise came across not as something to feed my ego but actually inspired me to better my craft. The same way Eddie Romero did on our first introduction when he commented about the same flick (Batang W.S.)—“Young man, either you’re extremely stupid and just plain lucky, or a genius”… To this day, I am trying to prove it’s not the former. The latter is something I believe is a DNA thing; you can’t work to be a genius, but you CAN work to be a better cinematographer/writer/musician/doctor ON YOUR OWN TERMS.

In [his famous letter], Alexis hoped that he and Nika would be together in/’till “the end.” Maybe they’re just beginning, but if this is the first step toward that direction or a major leap to the eternal we have yet to find out for ourselves in OUR own time, willingly or otherwise. Wake up call: get ready to be willing.

May we ALL rest in peace, in WHATEVER stage or phase in life.

Peace,
Miguel

I couldn’t agree with Miguel more though it’s tough for those of us they left behind.

In that Alexis-written piece reprinted in this issue in its definitive form, he says that “There’s a line in Aguila where a Moro secessionist is told his cause is lost. He replies that winning doesn’t matter, it’s doing what one feels one should do. That’s wisdom for you.”

With this issue we mourn, we mark, we reminisce, we remind. Let not another year pass before justice is done. We fight, not just against forgetfulness and the apathy that follows, but because it is what we feel we should do.

Here’s to Alexis, Nika and Miguel. And, yes, we’ll keep on going no matter what. ‘Till we hopefully meet again.

Erwin Romulo
Editor-in-Chief

Original sources are here and here.

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With Microsoft Philippines as sponsor I am raffling off a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Ed., perhaps the pinnacle of all Microsoft platforms for 2010. The contest may look difficult as there’s a lot of text, but it’s actually very simple. All you need to do is capture your surroundings and turn it into a Photosynth with one click.

The details of the contest follow with this link. Please spread the word!

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This movie stars Rhian Ramos. Can’t wait. Thanks to Luis Katigbak for the tip.

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This post is dedicated to Helga, Fritz, Peter, Ade, Anne, Marco S., Rico, Marco P., Bim, Lauren and the rest of The Man Blog. It is also dedicated to all the friends and clients I have drank with in the past several years especially to you, Mark P., Brad and Markku!

It finally arrived. The box of 13 330ml bottles of beer from Brewdog is finally safe inside my room. Of the 13 bottles, one is noteworthy: ‘Sink the Bismarck’ is the strongest commercially available beer at 82 proof (41% alcohol). Their previous record was the Tactical Nuclear Penguin (64 proof) and a limited run ‘The End of History’ (110 proof) which was also sold with the pelt of roadkill squirrels used as decanters.

Gross. Although the limited run sold for nearly USD $800.00 a bottle.

But I digress.

I’ve been a distant fan of Brewdog for months and it was only recently did I decide to take the plunge and invest a little money to produce, ship and pass these bottles through customs. Let’s just say I spent 5 digits to get everything here. If you check the prices on their website, most of the cost is attributed to the shipping and customs. I was lucky that the guys from Brewdog were cunning enough to indicate that the items were “yeast samples” on paper and from what I’ve been reading it can actually pass through the proper authorities without extra fees. It’s probably different in the Philippines. If anyone knows how to get these things in cheaper, tell me!

Again, sorry. I have digressed.

There are 13 bottles. One is odd.

The package that was delivered contains a sample pack of three different kinds of beer, four bottles each. These are the Punk IPA, the Zeitgeist and the Trashy Blonde. Click on the images to view the larger versions.

And now for the icing on the cake.

The ‘Sink the Bismarck’ comes in rather ‘makeshift elegant’ packaging. First thing you’ll notice is the bold 41% written on a piece of wrapping paper that covers the 330ml bottle indicating that this is an 82 proof brew. There is a stopper tied around the packaging.

The stopper is used for resealing the bottle. To borrow text from their site, “This is an extremely strong beer, it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance. In exactly the same manner that you would enjoy a fine whisky, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost.”

This is the text on the label. I’ve converted the photo to black and white to make reading easier. Click on the image to make it larger.

I’m crazy.

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