It’s a lean month for me when it comes to movie watching that I managed only to view four movies as listed below. Okuribito is really a beautiful film that garnered it the 2009 Oscar Best Foreign Language Film award. It has a mix of drama and comedy as a cellist becomes an accidental encoffiner.

17 fois Cecile Cassard is another notable film that is worth watching. It was shown in this year’s French Film Festival at the Shangri-la Plaza Mall. As for the other two: Drag Me to Hell and, especially Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, are not so good. Transformers has become a joke with a thin story but the computer generated graphics do really stand out.

Okuribito (Departures) – Yojiro Takita, 2008 (Japan)
17 fois Cecile Cassard (Seventeen Times Cecile Cassard) – Christophe Honore, 2002 (France)
Drag Me to Hell – Sam Raimi, 2009 (United States)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Michael Bay, 2009 (United States)

I had problems with Wordpress 2.8 ever since I installed it in my blogs. The Incoming Links fatal error at the dashboard was already addressed. This time, I have finally solved the image uploader problem when making new posts.

How?

I disabled the Click Tags plugin. That’s it. Problem solved.

Most of my blogs are already in Wordpress 2.8 but unfortunately, I am having problems. First, I can’t upload images using the uploader. Nothing happens when I click on it. The other, which I will deal here is this:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/.pooper/estancabigas/simbahan.net/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 647

This is the error seen at the Incoming Links box that renders the rest of the dashboard page blank. It means that there is a problem with the RSS link that will serve the information. In my case, its this:

http://feeds.technorati.com/cosmos/rss/?url=http://simbahan.net

It’s not only simbahan.net, but also two other blogs.

The solution?

• hover on the Incoming Links and click on the configure hyperlink that will appear
• in the Enter the RSS feed URL here: box, replace it with

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&scoring=d&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss&partner=wordpress&q=link:http://your.blog.address.here/

• submit

That’s it! Your Incoming Links is now okay and your dashboard will render completely.

A photo exhibition of our work for the upcoming book Balaanong Bahandi: Sacred Treasures of the Archdiocese of Cebu will open on 3 July at the Cathedral Museum of Cebu. Check out simbahan.net for more details.

Well, I have already started the redesign of my beetle site, salagubang.net, a plan that I have been pondering for the last few months but was only done late last week starting with the blog. I like the Bosco theme but I got bored with it as it has been the same old theme ever since I’ve started the blog section exactly two years ago.

One major change of the theme is the expanded width which is now 960 pixels from the previous 760. This, to accommodate a general sidebar which I can use to feature links and posts as well as upcoming downloads and other stuff. You see, in the previous theme, the sidebar can only be found at the blog section. This time, it will be implemented site wide including the HTML pages.

As the width was increased, the challenge now is how can I address the posts section from around 460pixels to 760. I want to retain the previous width as it will really be too tedious to do the changes with the new width. I don’t want to edit each and every post to accommodate the expanded length. My solution? Implement the same style I did with my Binary Silver wordpress theme.

Each post has a sidebar that is 300 pixels wide which will contain the title as well as the date, tags and comments. With this, I can still retain the previous width, have a cleaner, more elegant design as well as give me the option to include a 300×250 ad rectangle in the single page. What you can see now is a theme with plenty of white space, a pleasing layout that lets my post breath.

Another major change is the index file at root. Previously, it was a simple HTML file that has a static image of a beetle, the title and subtitle, count as well as a few links to the major parts of the site. In the current design, I’ve opted to use the wordpress page instead of a static HTML. This will enable me to have the same header and footer look. For the content section, I replaced it with one without a sidebar. With the nextGEN gallery plugin, I now have a beetle slideshow featuring some spectacular species in my collection.

However, as of this time, I am having problems with this one. When I opted to have a page for my index or front page, whenever I click on the blog, it gets redirected to the index page. This I am still trying to address. For the meantime, the front page is the blog section.

What’s next? With the blog already redesigned, I will address the index/frontpage problem. Beyond that, I am already starting the redesign of the static HTML pages with the new theme. I have already finished some parts like the checklist as well as gallery which will be uploaded within the week. For the individual species and papers pages, it will take much longer because of the number as well as I cleaned up the underlying CSS as it has become too messy.

Wa pei (Painted Skin) – Gordon Chan, 2008 (China)
Chi bi (Red Cliff) – John Woo, 2008 (China)
Mongol - Sergei Bodrov, 2007 (Germany)
X-Men Origins Wolverine – Gavin Hood, 2009 (US)
Star Trek: The Future Begins - JJ Abrans, 2009 (US)
Monsters vs. Aliens – Rob Letterman & Conrad Vernon, 2009 (US)
Dragonball Evolution – James Wong,2009 (US)
Angels and Demons – Ron Howard, 2009 (US)
Terminator Salvation – McG, 2009 (US)

How to optimize Windows? How to improve Windows performance? These are the questions that have been bugging me six months after I have made a fresh install of my Windows Vista on my HP notebook computer. For the past two months, there has been a noticeable slowing down on how applications run or as simple as opening files is just longer than usual. This tempted me to do another fresh install. However, such a desicion is time consuming and the task of backing up huge amounts of files, passwords, bookmarks as well as reconfiguring systems and applications is daunting. Add to the fact that I have installed and uninstalled several applications in the course of trying out software that I need from time to time. This might be one of the culprits as the Windows registry gets bloated from files and entries that are no longer needed. Looking at my file system, it doesn’t help that files accumulated over the course of the year is already a clutter. After checking the internet, reading online reviews and checking out user experiences in forums and blogs, I tried two applications of which, jv16 PowerTools 2009 came out a winner. What made me prefer this one than the other? Two things:

• it does what it says
• user interface is simple and intuitive, and
• it has enough bells and whistles to add to its usefulness

The application has four main components:

• registry tools – optimizes the Windows registry from deleting unused entries to compacting it for more efficient use of space. Its a nifty tool that you can use to find and replace, manipulate and monitor
• file tools – the search function is better than the built in Windows find utility wherein you can set several conditions, recover deleted files, organize, find duplicates or similar files and directories. With the “More Functions…” button, you are offered several options on what to do like copy, paste, rename, encrypt, change attributes, split and several other useful tasks without leaving the application.
• system tools – I would consider this as one of the most important components in the software. While it has some functions that is found in Windows Vista, having it in one location makes it all the more useful. And better still, the System Optimizer is the best. It consists of three tweaks: Performance, of which several options helps make the system run faster; User interface, enables or disables several interface functions and, Other tweaks, which is limited to bypassing the Recycle Bin or disabling automatic restart after Windows is updated.
• privacy tools – what I do like about this software is its thrust on security as well as cognescent of the user’s privacy. History cleaner, system cleaner and disk wiper gives you peace of mind especially if your computer is always online or is being used by other people from time to time.

Interfacewise, it is simple and intuitive with its components in a familiar control panel. It also offers excellent back up functions of system, registry and files. It can also be used by power users and novices alike with special care for the latter wherein function description is understandable and explains and, if needed, cautions, what it does. It’s available as a Shareware with a 30 day trial. During this period, jv16 Powertools 2009 functions fully, unlimited and no nagging windows. After using it, I did find a marked increase in system performance and would say that it really is one important tool.

Finally, after encounter problems with twitter, I’ve updated my background page. Check it out!

Check out this new wordpress theme over at Binary Silver! Its free and beautiful!

Well, with nothing left to say, Notorious “sex tripper” Dr. Hayden Kho, through his lawyer, admitted that his perversity is a sickness and is undergoing therapy and spiritual counseling.

Hahaha…

Next time, he should be more careful in keeping those sex videos.

- read from the inquirer.