My Second Attempt at Blogging

Umbrellas Anyone?

2012-01-30T17:09:00.000+08:00

Aside from liquids, the airport authority (MIAA) at NAIA3 also does not allow umbrellas in hand carry luggages. I took this shot of a "trash bin" after the x-ray machine where people have to leave their foldable umbrellas behind. That's a lot of umbrellas.

At NAIA Terminal 3 Again

2012-01-29T11:38:00.000+08:00

I'm at Cafe France again eating while waiting for my CEB flight to Gen San. Getting connected to Globe's free WiFi service was a lot more complicated this time. Took several attempts of disconnect/reconnect before I got through. When I last used it, it was a really simple process of just connecting to the access point. Now, they added a redirect to MIAA's web page first.

I noticed that the escalators from the Level 3 departure area to the Level 4 shops/restaurants area are all still "under repair". They were like that when I was here last month! I guess if people are desperate enough to want to go up, then they will look for the elevator at the back hall. But casual passengers would just skip the stores altogether and head straight in to the pre-departure area. I pity the concessionaires/tenants at Level 4. There must be almost no business.

In one of the elevators being repaired (yes, there are actually maintenance men fixing it), there was my pet peeve repair "on-going" sign. Sigh.... this is actually the second time I've seen the "on-going" sign in the past 2 days. Yesterday, it was along Libis where road repairs were also "on-going".

Running Skype on our TV

2012-01-28T23:00:00.008+08:00

We had a video-conference with Cols at Gen San using the Samsung Smart TV on our end (and its free webcam), and the Samsung Galaxy Tab on Cols' end. It was pretty interesting to do a Skype session just using the TV and the home Wifi system. Navigation is pretty simple once the account is setup.

I taught Caitlin how to do it so that she can initiate a Video Call when I go to Gen San also tomorrow. She can probably figure out how to do it on the computer, but this one is simpler. She just uses the TV remote to initiate a call.

Google Chrome Printing Problem

2012-01-28T15:30:00.000+08:00

I don't know if it is just me, but I really hate the printer manager built into the Chrome browser. I don't know why Google bothered to make one instead of just relying on the operating system's printer dialog. The built-in print manager keeps hanging -- maybe 1 out of every 5 tries or so. And when it crashes, it takes the whole browser with it. Closing and restarting the browser doesn't seem to do much good either. A full restart of the PC seems to be the only way to correct it.

So whenever I need to print my forms from BIR's eFPS system, I have to switch to Internet Explorer just so I can print properly.

Moving Virtual Machines

2012-01-19T23:17:00.012+08:00

I moved several of my small virtual machines (VM's) from my old server to the new HP server. The process was pretty smooth. Just copy the entire VM folder (which was about 4GB) to the new machine; load it to VMWare Server's inventory list; start it, and voila! The only thing that took long was the physical moving of the VM folder.

I can imagine putting all VM's in a shared storage device, or SAN, can make the whole process so much simpler. If you have several servers running VMWare, you can just un-register it from one server, and register it to another, to "move" it easily across your server farm.

Finished my 3rd audio book

2012-01-16T23:16:00.038+08:00

I'm starting to become an audiobook junkie! I just finished my 3rd one. Having started with Steve Jobs' biography, I went next with Stephen King's Cell. Now, I just finished Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars.

I actually haven't read Stephen King's novels for a very long time. I think the last one I read was back in 1994 or 1995. My favorite authors in more recent years are/were Michael Crichton (he's dead now), Dan Brown and James Rollins. Unlike these guys, Stephen King does not really go out of way to explain WHY certain things are such in his stories. You just have to take it as is.

Cell started out as a techno-thriller where the entire population turned into zombies simply because of a "pulse" that were sent to the mobile phones. Now if it were Crichton or Rollins, they would at least try to find a reasonable explanation as to how that can theoretically be possible. But with King, it just have to enjoy the bloodbath and gore that ensues. No explanations necessary.

Full Dark, No Stars is an anthology of 4 short stories. It took me about 2 weeks to finish it since I just get to listen to it on my way to work, and then on the drive back home. I really liked this one. In particular, Big Driver and A Good Marriage were pretty good even though their story line were kind of similar. The protagonist was a woman who was a victim of a serial killer. She takes the law into her own hands at the end, and somehow gets absolution from the other characters for "doing the right thing".

The epilogue was interesting. I'm not sure if it was actually Stephen King's voice or the reader/narrator. But it basically explained the story behind the story -- ie. where he got the inspiration for Big Driver or the real story that served as the basis for A Good Marriage. Especially for the latter, its interesting to know that it was actually based on a real story.

Old School Computers

2012-01-11T21:52:00.000+08:00

Ethan approached me today and asked if I have every seen those "old computers" which do not come with a mouse, and displays its output onto paper. He was asking what it was called again because he forgot. My initial thoughts were he must have seen images of the old IBM punch-card based computers like the ENIAC. And then it hit me! "Do you mean a typewriter?", I asked. "Yes! a typewriter!", he exclaimed. Old school computers indeed.

Flying to Gen San for Christmas

2011-12-24T11:45:00.000+08:00

The traffic to NAIA was very light, but I left home 9:30am for my 12:30pm flight. The queue at the airport was pretty bad but moving. Even the web check-in line was pretty long. I went to the no checked-in baggage lane instead which was much shorter than web check-in. I noticed Cebu Pacific also setup 2 x PC's for people to do self check-in. But no one was using it. :P

My gate is packed like divisoria with no seats available. So I decided to hang out here at Cafe France (the cafe formerly known as Delifrance before Jollibee sold it off). The free Wifi here by Globe is actually pretty decent. Makes the free PLDT Wifi at NAIA1 pale by comparison.

Samsung Allshare

2011-12-23T22:45:00.014+08:00

I was experimenting with Samsung's Allshare feature. Its a way for Samsung devices to share media among each other. As far as I can tell, it seems to be Samsung's proprietary implementation of the DLNA standards which allow home devices to "talk" to each other over IP.

I can use my Samsung Galaxy S mobile phone to play its audio and video content on my Samsung LED TV. My Samsung TV can also "see" what's on my phone and play it (if the format is supported) -- all using our home Wifi network. Its pretty cool!

Samsung's proprietary implementation does not seem to be setting well in the forums though. Many people are complaining that it does not adhere to the DLNA standards even though Samsung is claiming they are. For example, if you run a DLNA server software on Linux, Samsung cannot "see" it. Samsung devices seem to only work if you use their Windows-based Allshare server software on a Windows PC. I've haven't tested this part yet.

Just Upgraded My TV's Firmware

2011-12-21T22:37:00.014+08:00

This blog entry title would have sounded really strange a couple years ago. But Smart TV's are really computers already. And their features can be updated by loading the proper firmware.

I've been trying to figure out how to make our qwerty remote work with the U55D6600WP. It actually uses Bluetooth technology to "pair" with the TV to send all those keystrokes. But it will not work with the firmware that comes shipped with the TV.

I could not figure out how to make the TV perform a firmware upgrade via its Wi-Fi connection since the button is disabled. So I opted to download the firmware on a regular computer; transferred it to USB; and performed the firmware upgrade via USB.

The upgrade went smoothly and the qwerty remote is now working!

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Will Not Start Up

2011-12-18T19:03:00.000+08:00

I was using my Galaxy Tab to read some comics. I'm sure when I powered it down, the battery still had some juice left. When Cols tried to turn it on today, it would not power up anymore. I tried different electric sockets and plugging it direct to a USB port to no avail.

Finally, after reading some Android/Galaxy Tab forums, other users suggested holding down the power button for at least 10 seconds. Some suggested touching the screen at the same time. I don't know if the latter is just coincidental, but I pressed and touched at the same time and it worked!

Audiobooks

2011-12-05T21:58:00.031+08:00

I've never really understood before why people listen to audiobooks. Are they visually challenged? Are they just plain too lazy to read? Well, as things turned out, I'm now an audiobook convert!

Yes, I found it to be the perfect cure for boredom during the long commute to work and going back home. I easily spend between 2.5 hrs to 3 hrs a day driving to and from work. Since it would be impossible to read a book while wading through traffic, listening through an audiobook on my Samsung Galaxy S makes the time just zoom by.

My first audiobook attempt was Stephen King's Cell (sometimes referred to as Pulse) read by Campbell Scott. Unfortunately, my download seem to have gotten truncated at Chapter 7. So I was left a bit hanging. In the meantime, I switched to Steve Jobs official Biography by Walter Isaacson. I've read iCon before, but "reading" (or "listening") to this one felt very fresh. It was like listening to Steve's amazing life story for the first time. Its just astounding how much of what we know about personal computing and user interface today originated from him.

As strange as it may sound, I now actually sort of look forward to the daily commute to catch up on my reading. The only downside is you can only go at the pace of the reader, unlike a book where you can skim certain paragraphs or read at a faster pace.

Cheap Fiber Optic Cable

2011-11-27T21:57:00.026+08:00

The Samsung Blu-Ray player that came with our new Samsung U55D6600WP TV did not come anymore with a coaxial audio port. It only has an optical audio port at the back. I was not aware that my really old Yamaha receiver actually had optical ports all these years. The old Philips player was just connected to it via coaxial audio. But after tinkering with the back panel of the Yamaha a bit, I noticed that the optical port was just covered. D'oh!

I previously shopped for an optical cable at Shangri-La Mall where the audio/video shops there were selling them for like P1,500 or more. Since we were at SM Marikina this afternoon, I tried going to Ace Hardware. Lo-and-behold, they have China-made ones for a measly P250. Digital data is digital data no matter how thick or how well-insulated a fiber optic cable is. So I plunked in my hard-earned P250 and bought the low-end cables.

When I got home, I tried it and it worked perfectly fine! Granted that I am not really an audiophile and that my hearing is not that sensitive to distinguish a cheap cable from an expensive one. But the sounds are good enough for my regular movies. 'Nuff said.

New Samsung 55" LED TV

2011-11-26T21:57:00.051+08:00

We've been wanting to upgrade our 3-year old Samsung 40" LCD Series 5 TV with a bigger one. And finally, the successor was delivered today. We bought a Samsung 55" LED TV (U55D6600WP). Its a Series 6 TV, and not the top-of-the-line, break-your-piggy-bank Series 8 TV. I've never been a bleeding-edge guy. Even with computers, my specs are always 2 to 3 generations behind the latest-and-greatest technology out there.

The new TV came with 3D capability. Granted that there are really not that many 3D movies out there yet, I guess its an investment for the future since that seems to be where the industry is headed. Personally, I don't find 3D that amazing. It doesn't really make the movie any "better".

What is interesting about the 3D capability of the U55D6600WP is it can make standard 2D output into pseudo-3D. Its a software trick, but it does give a 3D feel to regular shows. I don't know how the TV determines which part of a 2D show to make 3D-ish. Does it assume that areas with pixels moving a lot faster to belong to an image that should be in the foreground, while slower-moving pixels are assumed to be background images? I watched a short segment of 2D Captain America in this 3D-mode, and does get some sort of a feel of 3D admittedly.

The U55D660WP is labeled as a "Smart TV", a fancy word for a TV with a built-in computer. It comes with an internal media player which can pretty much play a very broad range of media formats. It renders having a separate player (ex. DVD) redundant. You just copy the file you want to watch into a USB flash drive; stick it into one of the 3 available USB ports at the side; the TV takes over and can play the file directly. I tried plugging in my WD portable drive to one of the USB ports and it could see all my movies inside and play it directly!

The unit also comes with built-in wifi capability and a wired ethernet port (which I am not using). You would need it to download Samsung Apps; surf on the Internet; watch YouTube; have a Skype session; etc. A qwerty remote control helps you navigate easily.

The freebies that came with the unit are:

Samsung Blu-ray Player
4 x 3D Glasses
Megamind 3D Blu-ray Disc
Web cam
32" Series 4 LCD TV

Although I've been a skeptic before, I now believe LED output really looks better than LCD. It just looks so much brighter and colors are sharper.

Worst Passwords for 2011

2011-11-19T13:58:00.001+08:00

Mashable compiled this list of the most commonly used passwords on the Internet for 2011. Do any of them look familiar to you? :P

1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football

11.11.11

2011-11-11T15:59:00.001+08:00

Numerologists and geeks today are having a field day today. This will be the only 11/11/11 that we will have in our lifetime (the next one will be 2111 already).

On a bright note, Gmail is back to "normal". For several months, most of my outbound mail has been bouncing back to me. The Gmail filters seem to think I'm a spammer for some reason. It has rendered my Gmail account almost useless and I had to install Thunderbird just so I can send out email via Mozcom's SMTP. Thank goodness somebody there must have fixed something.

But on a sad note, Google announced that they will be shutting down Google Notebook by year-end. Its not exactly a popular app, but next to Gmail, its my most-used Google product! Its kinda like Microsoft One-Note. Its like notepad and is great for unstructured data. Now Google will be migrating all Google Notebook content into Google Docs (which I'm actually not that big of a fan).

Toothache

2011-11-07T23:46:00.000+08:00

I've been suffering from a really bad toothache in my inner left molar the past couple of days. Since its a national holiday today in observance of a Muslim celebration, I went to see the dentist beside Ilene's nail space at QC.

When I got there, she confirmed my worst fear -- I needed to get a root canal! However, since its currently inflamed, she cannot perform the procedure yet. The infection need to subside first. She cracked the cap covering that tooth and bore holes onto the damaged tooth to let it "singaw". I didn't realize rotten tooth can smell so bad. The stink permeated the entire room.

Once the pressure has been relieved by the removal of the cap, I finally feel a whole lot better. But I'm not exactly looking forward at the inevitable root canal procedure itself.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-23T21:17:00.002+08:00

Much have already been said about the recent death of Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder. I don't really have much to add. I admire him for what he has done for the tech industry, movies (Pixar), music (iTunes, iPod), typography (fonts), telecommunications (iPhone), etc. Young and Simon's iCon is one of the best biographies I've ever read.

But strangely -- I've never been an Apple fan. I've bought an iPod for Cols before, but that's it. I don't personally own any Apple product myself. I have never lusted for an iPhone. I bought a Samsung Galaxy Android phone instead. I have no plans of getting an iPad, but a Galaxy Tab is in my shopping list this month-end at Singapore. I do love Pixar movies though.

I cannot deny the fact though that products like the Android phones or the Galaxy Tab would not have seen the light of the day were it not for Steve Jobs' creations.

Database Mishap

2011-10-06T15:43:00.002+08:00

My database file has been growing big making backups rather slow. I decided to delete old records but things took an unexpected downward turn when I punched in the wrong query. What I wanted was:

delete from table1 where (cond1 or cond2) and cond3;

But the problem was I did not include the parenthesis and that completely changed the logic:

delete from table1 where cond1 or cond2 and cond3;

Crap! Had to spent the whole day restoring lost records. Luckily, my daily backups actually work. I was able to restore all data as of 2am. Just had to reconstruct the last few hundred records from 2am to around 11am when the disaster happened.

Thank goodness too for FBExport which significantly helped in the reconstruction. I should look more into this tool for doing incremental backups. The default gbak utility does not have that capability making backups of large Firebird files over-the-network really slow.

GMail Sucks

2011-08-26T14:25:00.002+08:00

I never thought the day would come when I would say this, but -- I hate GMail! It seems that the GMail guys recently made lots of adjustments on their system to prevent spammers from taking advantage of their resources. But in the process, it has affected a lot of users including myself.

For the past 3 days, almost all my outgoing mail is being tagged as spam and is bounced back to me. I can receive incoming email without problems, but I can hardly reply to any of them. And the worst part is, after so many failed attempts in a day, my account got locked up for 24 hours!

So now I installed Mozilla Thunderbird and just configured it for IMAP with my GMail account. Then for my SMTP server, I just pointed it to Mozcom's SMTP so I can send out email. Its taking forever to synchronize the mailboxes though since I've been using GMail for years.

More Philippine Bank Codes

2011-08-09T11:30:00.002+08:00

I tried to do an online fund transfer today from my Unionbank account to a client's HSBC account. When I checked the dropdown list, there was no HSBC but there was a "Hongkong Bank". Since I was not sure if it was one and the same, I called up Unionbank's Customer Service hotline. The phone rep put me on hold for a couple of minutes while she verified the info. She came back and told me that they are not the same.

I looked at the HTML code of the Unionbank Retail Internet Banking fund transfer page and it shows the different bank codes assigned to each item. I noticed that Hongkong Bank has a code of 010060014. I blogged a couple of years back about the possible bank codes that can be used when withdrawing money from PayPal to a bank account. I noted in that blog entry that based on Citibank's fund transfer page, code 010060014 belongs to HSBC.

Still not convinced, I decided to call a friend who works at HSBC and he confirmed that, a long time ago, HSBC was known simply as Hongkong Bank in the Philippines. So it seems that the Unionbank lady is mistaken.

Here's the bank code listing I got from Unionbank's page:

010770074 --- ABN AMRO
010320013 --- Allied Bank
010700015 --- ANZ Bank
011020011 --- Asia United Bank
010530667 --- Banco de Oro
010760013 --- Banco Santander Phil.Inc
010030015 --- Bangko Sentral
010670019 --- Bangkok Bank
010120019 --- Bank of America
011140014 --- Bank Of China (Manila)
010440016 --- Bank of Commerce
010040018 --- Bank of the Philippine Islands
010460012 --- Bank of Tokyo
010720011 --- Chase Manhattan Bank
010100013 --- China Bank
010690015 --- Chinatrust Commercial Bank
010070017 --- Citibank, N.A.
010650013 --- Deutsche Bank
010590018 --- Development Bank of the Phils.
010620014 --- East-West Bank
010130012 --- Equitable-PCI Bank
010860010 --- Export and Industry Bank
010169999 --- First E-Bank Corporation
010640010 --- Fuji Bank
010509999 --- Global Bank
010060014 --- Hongkong Bank
010560019 --- Intl Comml Bank of China
010660016 --- Intle Nederlanden Bank
010710018 --- Korea Exchange Bank
010350025 --- Land Bank
010220016 --- Maybank Philippines, Inc.
010269996 --- MetroBank
010110016 --- Phil. Bank of Communication
010080010 --- Philippine National Bank
010090039 --- PhilTrust Bank
010150018 --- Prudential Bank
010280014 --- RCBC
010140015 --- Security Bank
010050011 --- Standard Chartered Bank
010299995 --- UCPB
010270189 --- United Overseas Bank Phils.
010330016 --- Veterans Bank

Smartphone Predictive Texting

2011-07-30T17:06:00.004+08:00

Its been a couple of months since I switched from Nokia "dumb phone" to my Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. I was originally expecting to experience withdrawal symptoms after using the old mobile phone keypad with predictive texting for 15 years. But surprisingly, I'm getting the hang of qwerty typing on the lcd touchscreen surface of my smartphone.

Predictive texting on the Samsung is far more superior than in the dumb phone. I guess the manufacturerforesaw that thumb-typing on a small screen can produce a lot of wrong spellings. So the predictive texting tries to figure out what you are typing even if you occasionally hit an adjacent key and corrects it based on its dictionary.

Also unlike dumb phone predictive texting wherein you still have to type all the letters (for example, if the word has 10 letters, you still have to press 10 keys), the Samsung predictive text lets you just enter the first few letters. If you see that the word it predicted is correct, just hit space or some other punctuation and it performs auto-word completion.

If you type a new word that is not in the dictionary, it automatically adds it. It does not bring up a dialog box unlike Nokia dumb phone where you have to add the new word first.

Lastly, the predictive texting seem to learn which words you use most often and gives suggestion for auto-completion. Like in my case, just typing "Dr" automatically brings up "Dragonpay". The Nokia dumb phone dictionary is more based on just word frequency in general use and not specific to the user.

Getting Ready for Singapore

2011-07-23T22:21:00.002+08:00

I bought Jetstar ticket online for the first time. We're planning to go to Singapore during the semestral break of the kids. Jetstar seems to have the best rate from Manila to Singapore as compared to Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific (I could never seem to catch those elusive Cebu Pacific seat sales). Jetstar flies out of NAIA unlike most other budget airlines who fly out of Clark (ex. AirAsia, Tiger Airways). And the Manila departure of 10:30am, and Singapore departure of 4:20pm, are just ideal.

While filling up the online credit card form using Google Chrome, the Jetstar site kept telling me that there were missing/invalid fields. I'm sure I filled up everything. This is reminiscent of PayEasy customers questioning us now and then about them filling up all the fields in PayEasy and yet its complaining of missing fields. So I followed the same advise I always give PayEasy customers -- try it out on Interne Explorer. Sure enough, it worked fine with IE. Very strange.

Goodbye Lullaby

2011-07-08T20:56:00.001+08:00

Its not often that I get to hear a record album where I end up liking almost all the tracks. But Avril Lavigne's Goodbye Lullaby is one such album. Yeah, I know... Avril Lavigne is not exactly the type of singer that is supposed to appeal to 40-year-old-married-males-with-2 kids, but I actually like her music. Her genre of punk rock (with lots of angst), admittedly, is not my normal cup of tea either. But when I first saw the music video for Smile, one of the top singles from the album, I just had to hear the rest of the album.

Avril has matured a little bit with her music compared to her Under My Skin days. She still cusses a lot in her lyrics though. I believe she's a mom now and maybe that mellowed her a little bit. The title track, Goodbye Lullaby, seems to be her singing to her child (baby?).

Her acoustic rendition of the Guns 'N Roses classic, Knocking on Heaven's Door, added a nice contrasting touch to Avril's typical punk/pop-rock beat.

Darn That Landbank Dongle

2011-07-08T14:57:00.002+08:00

I hate the whole concept of using dongles for Internet banking. Dongles are such a hassle to use. You have to run the custom program everytime to generate the unique password just to login. Then if you travel around, you have to remember to bring along the dongle. Otherwise, you cannot access your own bank account.

But some overly-protective banks require 2 factor authentication -- passwords (what you know) and physical USB dongles (what you have). Landbank is one of these paranoid banks. For corporate clients, Landbank gives up to three (3) dongles for free. They use Transcend USB flash drives with a custom Java program (on a positive note, I do get to use the 2GB storage as my general-purpose flash drive as well).

It is probably not surprising that they use Java since its supposed to be cross-platform. However, installing it on Windows does require running some batch file installer. And this is where the problem starts.

The dongle program installer that Landbank provides is not directly compatible with Windows 7. It works out-of-the-box for XP, but it completely thrashes Windows 7. It somehow disables all the USB ports after installation. And since our new home PC did not come anymore with PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports but USB ports only, even the keyboard and mouse were rendered unusable forcing me to reformat the entire PC. Jeez! I hate dongles!