Coredump

I've reverted to a Blogger template. That is, until I can fix the browser-compatibility issues with my previous CSS . This is a lesson for me: I have a lot to learn about CSS. What a retard! It's a cardinal rule: nothing works for all browsers out of the box. Well, back to the drawing board. Next week, I'll probably have something new.

Friends have pointed out to me that this blog doesn't view properly in Opera and IE. (Yes, they have wasted time reading this blog.) Surely they jest, I said. Being a bit arrogant, I dimwittedly thought that all people (at least in my circle) use the greatest browser on earth . Alas, I have seen the error of my ways, in a big way. This blog, looking shitty as it is, looks even shittier in IE. I don't know how it looks like in Opera, but I'll bet it's just as crappy. Gawd. So, back to the drawing board. (In the meantime, I feign ignorance when my friends tell me my blog doesn't look right. I secretly email them a link to the downloads page of the greatest browser on earth , with the promise that if they lack the bandwidth, the toothfairy will put CDs under their pillows.)

Ever got tired of film reviews and critics? Your bum numbed in all that sitting through a movie wondering when the plot will begin? No more worries, Movie-A-Minute has cut through all the crap and gives you the lowdown on some of the best films in our time. And if you love books, surely you'll love Book-A-Minute .

My family and I are off to Zambales later this morning (it is, after all, 1:51 AM in my time zone). Yey! This is my son's (all two-and-a-half years of him) first trip to the beach, and just the second time with my wife. The first time my wife and I went to the beach, we weren't even friends. Ah, I remember that time (though my wife keeps teasing me that I was with someone else that time that's why I remember it so vividly -- jealous, she is): it was in the Hundred Islands, Pangasinan. I took a photo of her wading in a puddle beside a boat. Lovely, that one. I kick myself now why I didn't even give her more attention back then, it would have been well worth it. But now is the time to rekindle that spark that could have been. Something needs rekindling, I think. My wife and I are undergoing a bit of a stress lately, but nothing we couldn't handle, the way we've managed everything else so far. So off we go! (My wife and the little one's asleep now. I'm upda...

I've added a site counter here to check up on any visits. (As if there'll be any. =/) I'm not that confident that anyone can dig into my site. But I espouse this philosophy that has never failed me so far: put your content, and if it's any good, people will catch it. Still, I haven't advertised this site -- only to a few friends with open minds. I'm playing this one by ear, I suppose, trying to see what happens. This site is, after all, a proof-of-concept that blogs will work in a community effort that I'll be putting up soon together with some pals. It'll need a lot of work, this site: no provision for commenting yet (will have to put that next week); the CSS is a bit whacked (although I've already had a feel of it, which is normal, as I'm a quick learner -- eherm!); the scheme is probably a bit off -- I'm really not into dark things, I want a white background or something light, next time, next time; and I have to generate meaningful conten...

Ugh! That's gross. *P I just joined into this quaint forum here , and so far, it's been okay. It's my first foray into web-based forum discussions and I'm a bit of a loss when navigating through the side. I have yet to decide if this is my *thing* or not. Hope I haven't made any bloopers to earn the ire of the other forum members. The content so far is far from what I'm used to -- you know, tech stuff and all that. And I'm a bit of a moron when it comes to dealing with other people. I mean, it took me six months of lurking the mailing lists before I finally joined in on the fun! This is a big plunge for me. Hope I don't get drowned. About the title, well, it's in the spirit of there yonder forum, methinks.

Gawd, wish I'd have more of it! =P I was browsing through Lar Holst's Well-Designed Web Logs to get CSS enlightenment on this here trash when lo! and behold! I chance upon a kitty who wants to save the world from a little red monkey . Neat-looking site, great content, too. She writes good, and I think she's got lots of things between her lovely ears. Okay, alright already. AND SHE'S SO BLUSHINGLY INCREDIBLY GORGEOUS!!! There, I've said it. =D Too bad, I'm not Quirkyalone . Damn... (Ooopsss. Hope my wife doesn't read this. If ever she does: luv u, baby! Jest a joke, the previous paragraph is. Hehe. Awww. Now, put down that keyboard right this minute...) Hehe.

I can relate with the Bastard Operator From Hell . Oh, I've handled 'lusers' in my work. Lots of them. Too bad I never got to do anything close to what the BOFH has done to his wards. Tsk.

I call this "deep-blue zen." A friend made a comment about the unfinished look of this blog, in its previous incarnation. Well, I was able to spend a bit of time with this, just sitting in front of the console, staring off into the infinity of the phosphorescent glow of electrons firing in the ether. Then it happened. This happened. A few credits are in order. Please see the links at the left for how this was done.

By Atom & His Package (album: Debatable). Damn hilarious, this one! (Sample: "this song is for my crush, enya...she's from ireland...enya good, masturbation good!") Indie rock, well, rocks! Got this from LAUNCHcast on my Yahoo! Messenger (BETA) . Nice stuff. I get to choose music from artists listed by categories (Classic Rock, Blues, R&B, etc.); put those choices in my own "radio station"; have them streamed to my YM (with its new interface -- better, this one is), and get other songs, as well, as recommended by the service. Oh, did I mention that this is for free? Okay, you get some ads interspersed between songs, but that's acceptable. If you opt for their Plus (premium) service, you get to shell out something like US$3 - US$4 per month. Not bad, ey?

dat's da title of me friend's website. he sort of reminded me dat da title of dz here blog is da same as his collection of poetry & wat-not. not dat i ripped it off him. heh, well, mebbe i did, subconsciously, i think. (like m ripping off da way he writes in der his site. heh.) but i xplained 2 him twas jest co-accidence. "we're, like, on da same wavelength, man," i said, "both deranged and twisted." kinda reminds me of dem days way back n college. man, those were fun days, indeed. pangs of regret's also biting me now. oucchhh! shoulda put down dem thoughts b4 on da web. but, no, m ur traditional journalist (as in, one who keeps/writes journals. heh.) so put em ramblings in dead trees, i did. lost a few notebooks in da process. damn! not like me pal, killyrbf: he placed them "psychotic ramblings," as he put it, in a tripod site -- one of the early ones, i may add. and when i finally got to assembling all them random things that keep fl...

A minor one, that is. Finally, I've found a free image-hosting site. It's called PhotoBucket , which offers 100MB space and limits uploads to 250KB. Credits to Dave Shea for the granville header photo. Don't worry, if I've made any copyright infringement, I'll correct it today. Promise. I just tested the functionality of the image-host.

Another facelift. Well, okay, this isn't even *nice*. See, I'm just experimenting with CSS positioning in this new template. And take note: this is my own template . I'm just poking around, is all. That's no excuse for ugliness, I know. But hey, in the next few outings, I'll be changing this. Notice that this is still very raw. You may want to view the source to see how raw this is. And I still don't know how to link images from another server. One, I haven't found a server for that purpose; and two, I'm aware that there are performance issues involved in this scheme. The color scheme is still all wrong, but I'm concentrating with the structure and the overall layout first so that I can focus on the other aesthetic elements later.

This blog is having a makeover. From the default templates available from Blogger , I'm trying to make a custom template. I've based the current look from one available in Blogskins.com . I've tweaked a bit, cleaned up some of the CSS, but this still needs a lot of work. First of all, I really don't like the color scheme. This is just something I work with to get things started. Although the title of this blog denotes the rants and raves, I don't want it to be doom and gloom. Later on, I'll firm up on a cheery color scheme. Secondly, the tables. As much as possible, I want to follow the current web standards , refraining from using table layouts. The basic layout is okay: a sidebar and the main body. I'll be adding images later, to enhance the site. Blogger does not allow the local storage of images so I have to find server space for the images. Right now, I'm walking through the CSS Zen Garden for, uh, enlightenment. I'm still trying to get a grip...

No, I'm not gonna do a la Proust on this one. More like, serendipity. Yep, that's it. I was trying to tweak Google's page-ranking system to see if how this blog hits on the search engine , so I was fooling around with some keywords. I typed in my name , and voila! on the fourth hit, it was related to our case against AMA Computer College. Actually, there were two Supreme Court rulings related to our case: A complaint against the judge who handled the case for gross ignorance of the law; and A complaint by our counsel against the counsel of the other party for unethical conduct. But first, a backgrounder on the case: I was the editor-in-chief of the AMACC student publication, Dataline . We came out with a lampoon issue that tackled on issues like tuition fee increases, undelivered services, and other misconduct and abuses by the school administration. Obviously, we cannot do that out front without subjecting ourselves (I meant, my editorial staff and me) to the fascistic...

I'm a lurker. That much I confess. I've been lurking the mailing lists of the Philippine Linux community for about half a year now -- really, I can't remember when I received my first digest. So far, I've learned a lot in those six months or so. (But six months is too long for someone like me who wants to learn as much about Linux -- and open source, in general -- as I can.) That is not to say that I am a 'convert'. Okay, I admit, I still use Windows and other close source software. It's part of my job, there's no escaping that. But I'm convinced, not so much by my forays into the lists, but also by the need I feel to free myself from the shackles of closed technologies, that open source is the way to go, and that Linux is the vanguard towards that goal. I'm not about to pontificate about the vagaries of using Windows and the wonder of being able to *actually* look at the innards of the tools that put food in my table. No, I'm not gonna do t...

So this is a blog. Not much to look at, I know, but in the next few days, I'll beef this up. I'm currently testing three CMS software -- all open source , if I may add: Drupal , TikiWiki , and Plone . I've installed Drupal in my WinXP partition, running on Apache, MySQL and PHP (does that make it WAMP? =D). I've set up Drupal and TikiWiki on my Fedora Core 1 Linux part (the LAMP). I've yet to Plone, not through reading the docs yet. So far, it's been pretty smooth. Initial impressions: Drupal is easier to set up, modules can be added in a zip, and the UI (uses PHP + CSS themes) is great! TikiWiki, on the other hand, requires a bit more tinkering, with its bevy of features, and the UI is somewhat generic. Plone, from what I've read so far, uses Zope as its web server and content management platform, its features generally the same as the other two, and the UI somewhat a bit more sophisticated. (My UI preferences border on the minimalist, you see.) I'm...