Today, I discovered Bolt.

Much of the stuff we do is to make websites. At one point, we were discussing what CMS to use for a client. There was talk of using the proprietary CMS or WordPress or something similarly “heavy handed” CMS. At least for me, it seems heavy handed. I mean, if the site isn’t going to take full advantage of WordPress or Drupal or Joomla, why should we still choose these? There has to be a more lightweight solution. Something that’s still flexible enough for what’s needed but shouldn’t take much time to learn or modify.

That’s when I found out about Bolt. I haven’t quite played around with it yet, but I like the features. One of which is that I feel that it’s easier to find the parts I need to modify on Bolt. I also like the idea that I can take an HTML prototype and simply add fields into it to turn it into a dynamic page.

I still have to play around with Bolt to find out how stable this is. But people on Reddit and StackOverflow have highly recommended this.

So I officially joined Lowe Philippines last August 1 as the new Associate Creative Technology Director. Quite a mouthful, ain’t it? Well, for the second time in my life I’m faced with a problem on how explain what I do. The first time was when I had to explain what Actuarial Science was all about. In a nutshell: It’s the science of figuring out what are your chances of dying at a certain age and how much money we can squeeze out of you before you kick the bucket.

So, what exactly is Creative Technology anyway? I searched for the answer and found this:

Of course, I can’t show those slides just to explain what I do. I have come up with a short and sweet explanation once again to describe my job. I also have to make sure that it can be understood by almost everyone.

My friend Jon Lansangan has this to say about Creative Technology

“You harness technology to make great ideas become reality in the here and now that makes sense to people.” I think in many ways, great #startup teams are creative technologists. They just don’t call themselves that.

You can get the xulrunner here xulrunner-16.0.2.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2. Version 16.0.2 should be safe.

After you’ve downloaded the xulrunner archive, explode that into the /opt folder. Using your favorite text editor, open /usr/bin/pencil and change /usr/bin/firefox to /opt/xulrunner/xulrunner. That should solve the problem.

It took me some time to find this solution. But I do hope the people behind Evolus Pencil come around to fixing this bug.

I find it hard to study. A friend once mentioned that I may have ADD. I can’t listen to someone long enough to understand something. Self-study fares a bit better. I’m able to learn. But it’s still hard to retain the information. Over the years I realized that I retain the information longer if I am able to teach someone. It doesn’t matter if I teach face-to-face or virtually through written tutorials.

I’ve been wanting to learn the Go language since last year. And yes, I have learned and wrote a few programs. But heck, I’ve now forgotten about it and have now to start from scratch once again. I do need to use this for a personal project. So I’ve decided to create my own Go tutorials so I can finally get around to retaining what I learn from the language.

I’ll be sharing my tutorial here on my blog. I’m looking forward to also learning from other people as well. It would be nice to hear advice from others so I can integrate them into the tutorial.

At first I was thinking of just giving it a new look. Then I thought of moving the blog to a new webhost. I was hoping that the Amazon Web Service (AWS) EC2 instance would come out cheaper than using NearlyFreeSpeech. As it turns out, that’s not really the case. Then Marc Tan suggested I take a look at Octopress. And I did. And I fell in love with it. So now I’m getting ready to move my blog from Wordpress to Octopress.

Moving to Octopress also meant a change in my writing workflow. Now, more than ever, I’ll be able to write out my thoughts using my phone on Evernote. It also meant making use of my bluetooth keyboard again. Since the whole thing uses Markdown, it means I don’t have to think about HTML formatting while I’m typing out my thoughts.

I found a way to move most of my posts from Wordpress to Octopress. It just needs some minor corrections first. Then some changes to the look of the Octopress blog. Then I can finally switch the domain to the new platform.

I’ve been using my Core i7 laptop a lot for development and training nowadays. But it still is a bit heavy. There are times when I’m not really sure if I should bring the laptop or not. When I end up bringing it, I find that I don’t really have spare time to work on my project and end up regretting bringing extra weight for nothing. When I end up not bringing it, I suddenly find myself with spare time and I would regret not bringing along the laptop. So I was thinking of using my netbook instead. Unlike Java, Go is lightweight. I’m not using eclipse with it anyway. The netbook would definitely a perfect solution.

Things to remember when installing on a Windows 7 machine. When using Google App Engine, don’t forget to also install Python 2.5. I installed Python 2.7.x and it worked just fine. I’ve already installed Go and LiteIDE. I still need to install BlueGriffon (for HTML5 pages) and configure git on this thing. That way I can leave the laptop behind on days when I really don’t need the full power (and weight) of the i7.

Recently I upgraded the Ubuntu system on my VirtualBox. That included a correctional upgrade for the kernel. Lo and behold, after that upgrade my display wouldn’t behave anymore. It wouldn’t resize properly to the virtual machine (VM) window. It was either too big or too small for it. I figured I might need to do a reinstall of something.

Update AUG, 22, 2014 I just found out that NerdGrind’s link now points to a spammy site. So I’ve removed it. But if you’re looking for a fix, read on!

A quick search on Google came up with NerdGrind’s solution on how to increase screen resolution on VirtualBox for an Ubuntu install. So I went ahead and followed the directions. Long story short: I just needed to re-install the VirtualBox Guest Additions, restart the VM and everything was back to normal again. Thank goodness for that. I don’t think I can take having to reinstall the Ubuntu VM. Too much time will be wasted if I do.

Ubuntu VM System Version: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)

VirtualBox version: 4.1.18 R78361

One of the habits I’m forming is to exercise as much as I can. I used to swim at the Marikina Sports Park pool. But taking the car  everyday to the local pool soon took it’s toll on my wallet. I didnt like the idea of brisk walking around the village at the break of dawn or just as the sun sets. In the end I settled on speed roping.

It’s really jump rope that uses a much lighter material so it would go around faster. I had unearthed my speed rope and realized that it had broke near the handle. Thankfully the PVC cord  is adjustable. I’ll need to buy a new cord for it though.

So far the past four days have  shown how so out of shape I am. I haven’t gone beyond one minute a day. I easily run out of breath. Hopefully I can get beyond the one minute mark by next week.

The other habit is to write more often. To journal my day just to know if I’ve made the most of it. I’d love to do the 750 words a day goal. But I’ll be happy for now to just be able to write anything at all.

The goal is to do these two habits everyday for 30 days. Here’s hoping I dont break the chain.

Recently I was lucky enough to win a Sony Xperia P during its launch. It was wonderful to finally own a phone with NFC. I was a bit disappointed to find out that the SmartTags that came with it were read-only.

But that disappointment was short lived as a kind stranger on Twitter sent me a small pack on NFC stickers. Meanwhile, I was also given a couple of test cards from Jollibee’s HappyPlus rewards program.

Now to do some NFC magic!

The following setup makes use of the following computers:

• NEO B1230 netbook: Intel Atom N270 @ 1.60 GHz. 2 GB RAM. MS Windows Home Premium SP1
• NEO B5702 laptop: Intel Core i7-2630QM @ 2.0 GHz 6MB Cache. 4GB RAM. Linux Mint 12.

Setting up TightVNC on Linux

First I installed TightVNCServer and XTightVNCViewer. You don’t have to install the viewer, but I’m doing so in case I might want to log in to my netbook from the laptop.

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$ sudo apt-get install tightvncserver xtightvncviewer

Then I simply ran TightVNCServer from the command line. When you run this for the first time, it’s going to ask you for an access password and a read-only access password. Give different passwords for both. Afterwhich, TightVNCServer will tell you that it created a new desktop named $ServerName:1. If you run TightVNCServer again, it will create another new desktop named $ServerName:2. Remember those numbers. When you need to kill those desktops later, just type

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$ tightvncserver –kill :1

where the number is the desktop you’d like to close.

Another thing I also did was to enable desktop sharing and security on the laptop. Otherwise I won’t be able to get in.

Setting up TightVNC on Windows 7

Well, this was pretty easy. Just download TightVNC for Windows and install it.

Setting up the router

For the router, I needed to make use of Dyanamic DNS in order to connect to the laptop via internet. I registered at No-IP, got myself a free domain name and added that to the router settings to enable DDNS. I also set up port forwarding specifying 5901, 5900 and 5800 as service ports pointing towards my laptop’s IP address. 5900 and 5800 are default ports for the TightVNC server. Meanwhile 5901 corresponds to the server plus the TightVNC desktop number that I wanted to access.

Tying it all up together

From my netbook, I ran the TightVNC viewer. when it asked for the TightVNC server, I entered my No-IP domain name followed by the port number 5901. Example: myserver.myvnc.com:5901. Once I clicked on Connect, it would attempt to contact my laptop. If all goes well, it will ask for the password and I’m in!

So far I’ve tried accessing the laptop from within my own network using the No-IP domain. A friend also tried accessing my computer via the No-IP domain and found it to be practically dial-up slow. I still have to test the connection via mobile internet to see how fast or slow the connection will be. Nevertheless, it all looks promising.

Since I was still using Windows 7, I had to find a way to simply get started without fooling around much with configuring my system.  Thankfully I found Jason Meredith’s Git for Windows Developers series. I downloaded msysgit and started following Jason’s directions in part’s 1 and 2. I’ve yet to read Jason’s part 3.  That said, I was able to follow through quite well with his series. Definitely one of the better tutorials out there.

Another good git tutorial shared by a friend of mine is Nick Farina’s Git is Simpler Than You Think. It was Nick’s blog that made me decide that I really needed to go back and really learn git for my projects and documents.

So far I’ve moved two of my current projects to Bitbucket and I must say their servers are definitely faster than those of Project Locker. Using git will be so much easier to manage my projects across two computers and three operating systems (Windows 7, Windows XP, ArchBang Linux).

While I love the glossy feel of LUST-V2, I would like to use its top to show people who I am and what groups I’m active in. I have stickers from the different activities I’ve participated in but I don’t want to just simply stick them onto my laptop.  I remember Jerome wishing he had never put stickers on his laptop since it was so hard to remove them when it came time to pass on his unit to someone else. Thankfully CD-R King has cheap laptop skins for sale now. I intend to get a few transparent skins for my project. Barring that, I can opt for a plain dark or light colored skin to put on LUST-V2. When I need to pass this laptop on to someone else, I simply remove the skin and that’s that.

Once I have the skin on, I have three options.

Option # 1: Collect stickers and stick them on.

No brainer. Every time I get a sticker, I stick them on to the laptop.

Option # 2: Make my own stickers.

National Bookstore has vinyl sticker paper for sale. I can always print logos and stuff on them and stick them onto my laptop.

Option # 3: Print on ordinary paper and decoupage onto the laptop.

I found instructions on how to skin a laptop using the decoupage method.  It sounds like a plan. I just need to buy Mod Podge Gloss from Deovir Arts. Or I can just simply dilute Elmer’s Glue-All and use an acrylic spray to finish.

I’ll figure out which option to go for in the next few weekends. First I need to buy that skin.

Today the Ice Cream Sandwich mascot was unveiled on the Google Campus. See the unveiling for yourself!

Also if you’ve been dying to finally see the Samsung-Google launch, then mark your calendars! It’s going to happen on Oct 19, 10am Hong Kong time. You can watch the live coverage on http://youtube.com/Android on that day and time.

Meanwhile, I should whip up an Ice Cream Sandwich in honor of the unveiling!

The PLM students were such a lively bunch. I’m glad to see how eager they were to learn about the Android platform. The students continued to ask questions and tips for their projects and thesis.

At the end of the day we had the usual appreciation plaques. But the surprise of my life came when I opened up my package later. I was given another Starbucks drink tumbler. I don’t mind this since one can never have too many drink tumblers. But what surprised me was that they gave me a book: “Pastry” by Michel Roux! I eagerly read the book and started planning my next baking project from it. These students know how to do their research!

To the students of PLM, thank you for inviting us over! If you ever need help with your projects, you know where to find us. :)

We ended up baking five recipes. I was specially interested in making the foccacia since I had never tried making yeast breads by myself. It was fun to be able to knead and feel the dough in your hands. Some people think it would be easier to use an electric mixer with a dough hook. But I find doing it by hand more enjoyable.

We got to take home all of the food we baked. Next month they have an advanced baking class. Me and my new friends plan to get together again and join the same schedule. In fact, we bonded so much that we plan to have a monthly reunion to bake and share new recipes!

The thing with Google+ is that there isn’t any way to keep track of the messages you share to specific people.  In fact, it doesn’t even show up on your profile stream.  What to do?  The answer is to make a circle of one.  That is, create a circle and put yourself in it.  Then add that circle to the message and TA-DA! You can now keep track of the private stuff!

I created two “private” circles, one for private messages and another for my notes-to-self.  So far it’s worked out well.  The posts show up in the circles.  I finally have a way to keep track of my notes and the messages I post.  It only works one way though.  There’s still no way to tag incoming private messages created by other people.  But at least I’m halfway there.

For those of you who don’t know what Google Summer of Code is all about, it’s an annual program to give students from around to world some geek cred by working on several open source projects and get some cash on the side as well.  The program has been happening every summer (North American summer, that is!) since 2005.  This year an applicant can choose from 175 participating organizations for a project they’d want to do.  These include the Blender Foundation, Drupal, Inkscape, KDE, Moodle, The Honeynet Project, and WordPress.

Who can apply?  Well, first and foremost you have to be at least 18 years old on or before April 25, 2011.    You also have to be a student.  Doesn’t matter what kind of program you’re taking: college, university, masters, PhD, undergraduate.  The point is you have to show proof that you are currently enrolled in an accredited university/college educational program, whether full time or part time.  No, your course doesn’t need to be computer related to join the Summer of Code.  You just need to be technical enough to hack some code.

How do you apply?  You start off by making a proposal on the project you want to do.  The proposal is subject to approval by a participating open source organization.  You can check out the ideas page on the Summer of Code website to figure out what you’d like to do for a particular organization.  You can also check out the student manual for tips on how to make your proposal. Once you’re accepted, you can finally start coding!

But you don’t code for free though.  You get a stipend for all that hard work you put in!  This is how it works:  If you get accepted into the program, you get US$500.  When you pass the mid-term evaluation of your project, you get US$2,250.  When you pass the final mid-term evaluation, you get another US$2,250.  So by the time you end your project in August, you have a total of US$5,000 (roughly 200,000 pesos)!  If that isn’t incentive enough, I don’t know what is!

Need more information?  Head on over to the Google Summer of Code homepage right now!

Back in 1996, I underwent Photorefractive Keratectomy (PRK) to correct my myopia. My doctor at that time said that my sight might worsen again in the future due to lifestyle and age. I last had my post-op check-up in 2007. I was diagnosed with slight myopia, but it wasn’t bad enough to need a retouch. In my recent check-up, my sight grade didn’t change at all. I was diagnosed with eye fatigue with slight dry eye. My lifestyle finally caught up with me.

The doctor told me to use an ophthalmic lubricant (GenTeal) to use as needed. He doesn’t recommend using Visine or Eye-Mo since they’re harsh on the eyes for everyday use, even those “daily use” ones. He also told me to take frequent breaks away from the computer. The advice has made me rethink about the way I work. It also made me realize that taking frequent off-computer breaks is not really an option but a necessity.

To help me with my breaks, I reinstalled WorkRave on my computer and configured it with what I learned using the Pomodoro Technique. That is, 25-minute time slots for work, 5-minute breaks and 15-minute breaks for every consecutive four work slots done. I also listen to my body now. When my forehead starts aching, I take a break away from the computer. I use the breaks to see if I need to use the lubricant and to go get a glass of water. Maybe I should take Vitamin A supplements as well.

I also will have to give up on pulling all-nighters. It’s also a source of stress on the eyes. Indeed, while this is said to be part of the life of a developer, I’ve realized that it shouldn’t be and I should find ways to avoid this from ever happening.

My cheesecake recipe is actually a modified version of Chantal’s New York Cheesecake.  Since only a few people were eating (my best friend and I), I pared down the measurements enough to fill two 4 ½ inch springform pans. Other modifications I made:

• The graham crust is based on Lori’s Simply Sinful Cheesecake recipe.  Lori had baked the crust first before pouring in the cheesecake mixture.  I agree with her.  Pre-baking the crust gives you that nice cookie-like texture that holds throughout the baking process.

• I added an extra yolk to the recipe for a bit more custardy feel.  I would suggest you not add the extra yolk when you try this recipe the first time around, just so you’d have a baseline.  Add the yolk in your next batch and decide which you’d like best after that.

• Lori immediately removes her cheesecake once cooking time is done then leaves it out to cool.  I left mine inside until I can hold the pan of water with my bare hands.  It might depend on the oven and the cheesecake recipe you’re using.  Experiment to see which works best for you.

A tip with the bain-marie: Wrap your springform pan in foil before putting it in that pan of water.  This prevents water from seeping into the bottom and making your lovely crust soggy.  What I would do is to take some string and tie the foil around the top edge of the springform pan so no condensation collects inside the wrapper.  Or you can just simply fold the foil and crimp it over the edge of the your springform pan.

If you would rather want to bake this in a 9-inch springform pan, multiply the graham crust mixture by 2 and the cheesecake mixture by 4.  EXCEPT THE YOLKS.  I’m not really sure what would happen if you add four extra yolks to a quadrupled mixture.  I would suggest you remove the extra yolks and add up as needed.  Yes, it would mean multiple experiments with this recipe, but is that really a bad thing?

So, here’s my junior version of the New York Cheesecake.  Enjoy!

Junior New York Cheesecake

Graham Crust:

• 1 cup crushed graham crackers
• 1/8 cup sugar
• ¼ cup butter, melted

Cheesecake Mixture:

• 1 8-ounce package cream cheese
• ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk (optional)
• ¼ cup sour cream
• ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius).  Grease two 4 ½-inch springform pans.  Set the pans aside.
2. In a bowl, mix together the graham cracker crumbs, sugar and melted butter.  Divide the mixture equally between the springform pans.  Press the mixture down with a flat object (like the back of a spoon or a bottle lid.  Bake for 10-minutes.  Set aside to cool.
3. In another bowl, mix cream cheese and sugar until smooth.  Blend in milk, and then mix in the eggs one at a time, mixing just enough to incorporate.
4. Mix in sour cream, vanilla, and flour until smooth.  Divide equally and pour into the springform pans.  Wrap the pans with foil.
5. Get another pan big enough to hold the cheesecakes.  Place the cheesecakes into the pan.  Fill the pan halfway with hot water.
6. Place pan in preheated oven and bake for 30 minutes OR until center is slightly jiggly in the center but the perimeter is set.  Turn off the oven.  Cool in oven with the door slightly open.  Remove when you can handle pan with your bare hands.  Remove the foil and chill the cheesecakes at least four hours to let flavors develop.