Coredump

I learned a long time ago never to argue with a woman. It's futile. She'll win anyway. She always does. No, this isn't an a tirade against feminism. This is simply in reaction to a film that reinforces this notion. Enter "My Sassy Girl" (or "Yupgi Girl" {[or "Yeopgijeogin geunyeo", if you understand Korean}), a Korean romantic comedy filmed produced in 2001. In the great tradition of noontime "Chinovelas", it's a mushy, feel-good treat that features women who sport trendy outfits, look real nice, and talk funny. (Okay, so I forgot to turn on the English subtitles the first time -- I was too engrossed with Jeon Ji-hyun {I had to look this up} , the sassy girl.) The story is about a young man who just wanted to meet the right girl, instead he ended up meeting a weird and sassy one. He sort of saved her from a mishap, got into trouble when she barfed on a train passenger who mistook him for her boyfriend, then landed in jail when p...

Excerpts from a recent IM exchange with a colleague: me : ey, got some dvds? c : i have a list somewhere. let me check. me : a list, huh? how are things, btw? c : major backlog. my load piled up while i was away on travel. me : right. =) c : k, found it. they're at \\c\something\dvds.lst me : cool. thanks. me : wow. natawa naman ako sa list mo: "in", "out", "by"? o.c.? =P c : m trying to organize lang, noh? me : haha! whatever you say. got an idea: why don't we pool our dvds and vcds, then rent them out? like one of those bookpools out there, except they sell their books. c : hmm, that's a nice idea. let's explore that later. me : ok, so i'll have "paycheck", "butterfly effect", and "y tu mama". is there a 3+1 offer? in that case, i'll have "minority report", too. ka-ching! how much would that be? c : libre yan, noh! u and a-- can borrow them for free. hmp. me : e ba't parang galit ka? ;D ...

I'm fixing the CSS on the portal because the existing one just doesn't validate. I've trimmed down the DOCTYPE to XHTML 1.0 Transitional because one thing keeps nagging me: the without a block-level element. It's just not valid with XHTML 1.0 Strict, and a div creates a gaping space between two div containers. Mozilla doesn't allow for empty div s, so that's out of the question. Well, Transitional is still XHTML, anyway. Also, I've managed to solve the problem with form . Before, I had to add the inline unordered list inside the form tag for them to align, but a simple CSS attribute did the trick: #topnav form { display: inline; } Short and sweet. Now, my only problem is that IE and Mozilla renders this differntly. IE aligns the form element (in this case, a select drop-down box) with the baseline; while Mozilla does it in the middle. Guess which is better looking. The previous code in the prototype had me specifying the vertical nav bar elements in ...

Check out some uses for GMail, besides, uh, mail: A blog ( Gallina ). Site seems to be down, though. A mountable Linux filesystem ( GmailFS ). Haven't tried out this one yet. Update : Tried it. Works like a charm. A photo gallery ( Goollery ). An atom feed. While logged in on GMail, go to https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom . Go ahead, give it a whirl. A shell namespace extension for Windows ( Gmail Drive ) (Not exactly another use for GMail, rather) A browser status bar notifier ( GMail Notifier ). Your own vanity GMail button . Hey, look! There's even a Java API! What will they think of next? Mobile GMail, perhaps? Or a mailing list archive based on GMail? NB: jump to Aimless Words for more ways to use GMail. Update : Google Mail is now mobile.

Am trying to fix the CSS and XHTML in the portal design. The current markup just doesn't validate, even in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Anyway, it's just a few minor changes in the code -- mostly regarding case consistencies for keywords and variables, and a few deprecated tags for form . By tomorrow, I'll have it fixed. I'd still have to hurdle the cross-browser-compatibility issue, though. My current layout breaks in IE5.0 browsers, specially in narrow displays. I've confirmed that it renders well in Opera, though. (Way to go, Opera!) And, of course, it should fare nicely in Mozilla.

Found this nice tool while frantically scrounging the net for design ideas. Even if you have no background whatsoever on color theory -- only gifted people raised on Promil® have a firm grasp on it, anyway -- you'll appreciate how you can tweak the settings to come up with an apt color scheme for your site. There's even an accessibility option to adjust your scheme for people with color-blindness (forgot the politically correct term, sorry). So say goodbye to guesswork and repetitive reloads -- plus countless clicking on the Photoshop eyedropper tool -- to see if your pages look good.

Snagged these off some chain email I got from co-workers. Ever wondered: Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin? Why women can't put on mascara with their mouth closed? Why you don't ever see the headline: "Psychic Wins Lottery"? Why "abbreviated" is such a long word? Why doctors call what they do "practice"? Why you have to click on "Start" to stop Windows? Why lemon juice is made with artificial flavor, while dishwashing l liquid is made with real lemons? Why the man who invests all your money is called a "broker"? Why there isn't mouse flavored cat food? Who tastes dog food when it has a "new and improved" flavor? Why Noah didn't swat those two mosquitoes? Why they sterilize the needle for lethal injections? Why they don't make the whole plane out of the material used for the indestructible black box? Why sheep don't shrink when it rains? Why they are called...

Whew! It was. I was tasked to come up with a prototype design for a portal. I thought, hey, four days for a portal? Got my work cut out for me. Turns out I was in for a very interesting (Chinese connotation) week. Making the site structure was okay, since the Boss had an inkling of what to place on the site. Problem was actually composing a site that is usable, friendly and not intimidating to beginners, which would comprise the end-users of the sites. Layouting in CSS can be a bummer. I had to take care not to break the layout across different browsers. Again, MS refuses to cooperate. IE does its own rendering and interpretation of well-established web standards (read: non-standard). It took a horribly long time just getting the look right. IE is specially fragged when it comes to interpreting padding and margin tags in CSS. The box layout is also buggered. But all's well that ends well. I finally came up with a decent-looking site by the end of office time on Friday. Lessons: t...

Or: traipsing through digital dust. More like, clawing around looking for words to write. It 's 00:36, and I'm still up. Just got my LG CED 8080-B CD-RW (it's *old*, I know) working on FC2. Funny, I never did try to write CDs on FC. Always did that on WinXP, using Nero. man cdrecord wasn't much help for me. I used cdrecord2.01.1-0.FC2.1 from Dag's Apt Repository (lots of interesting RPMs there, by the way). Tried to do everything the manual said. First, I scanned for the CD-RW: $ sudo cdrecord -scanbus Cdrecord-Clone 2.01-dvd (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg Schilling Note: This version is an unofficial (modified) version with DVD support Note: and therefore may have bugs that are not present in the original. Note: Please send bug reports or support requests to http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla Note: The author of cdrecord should not be bothered with problems in this version. scsidev: 'ATA' devname: 'ATA' scsibus: -2 target: -2...

We became bodega (warehouse) boys for the day. The company was up for a surveillance audit on its ISO 14001:1996 environmental management system, and a clean-up of the IT store room was long overdue. The clean-up was exhausting, but fun. We had to wade through old computers and peripherals, sort out cables and cabling components, and inventory stock parts and equipment. It was also a pleasant surprise to see old -- and I mean, *really* old -- user manuals for IBM PS/2s, RS600s (which, by the way, has recently been recommissioned to serve as a Lotus Domino proxy connected to the VSAT network of the DA NIN project), and even a TRS-80. Also gathering dust were docs for Harvard Graphics, Windows 3.11, and DOS 3.3! Now, *that's* really old. I remembered DOS back in high school: the all-too-familiar phosphorescent green C:> prompt flashing on a black background. No BSDs back then, and Wordstar was the workhorse of many writer-wannabes. I thought I was high tech because I used Wordsta...