Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.
I could say this all day in an Ahnuld accent and never get tired of it.
I hate how Filipino TV manages to mangles imported shows. Aside from the fact that Kris “I’m going to talk like a retarded colegiala high on drugs” Aquino is the host, I just saw that one of their words today is “eleventh monthsary” and it’s categorized as an “event”. O RLY? Aside from the fact that monthsary is a word made up by kids and 20-somethings who can’t even manage to stay together long enough for an anniversary (o hai, self), how the fuck is that an event?!?!?! Seriously! Like, you could have picked “first monthsary” and that would have made more sense! I don’t even know why this bothers me so much but it really really does.
Yeah I know it’s been out a while, but I only got to watch it over the weekend in bohol, thanks to my cracked and bruised but still managing to survive Creative Zen. The short of it is that I loved it. Since this movie is made by the same guys who did “The 40 year old virgin”, I was almost positive that I’d be laughing my ass off at it, but I’d say this was a better movie if only because it just felt more real. Nothing in it felt contrived, and the lessons learned weren’t passed along by some bartender giving sage advice. This, along with “The Breakup” is probably one of the most accurate portrayals of real life relationships that you can get when watching movies.
Also, this movie proves that men are animals, and there’s no way any of us can defend it. I’m looking at you, manblog.
I suppose I should explain. I liked the old theme better, but I noticed that it didn’t give you the ability to make pages like “about” or “contact”. So I thought to myself, well what if people want to give me free shit, or want to invite me to go bombing or something, how would they let me know? So yeah, had to change the theme so people could get in touch with me.
Hey Cebu Pacific, you listening?
Still getting used to being in Manila and slogging through work. In the meantime, here are some bohol pictures taken with my d900. Going to bohol made me miss having a good camera. I still don’t think I’m enough of an enthusiast to purchase (or rather, repurchase) a dslr, but I’m now definitely in the market for a good compact camera with some manual controls, mostly because I don’t wanna have to lug a dslr around.
More pictures soon, hopefully not on this blog, but on the new one we’re planning but still have yet to name. It is difficult, coming up with a good name for a blog. Especially if you have standards.
Spotted again on Amang Rodriguez. Looks like it’s a favorite spot of his.
Drew this after watching too much Avatar:The last airbender. Squiggled some rocks in the background that might suggest he’s an earthbender, but the pattern on his clothes is more waterbender-y.
Oh my god. You have no idea how horrible this week has been without internet. It actually started last Thursday when I found out I had very limited access to the net. I figured it was a temporary thing and soldiered on. Communicating with my boss was a bitch, as we had to make do with gmail, which thankfully enough was one of the sites I could access (my main yahoo email was inaccessible, and so was my company email through thunderbird). With no YM and no podcasts, I was bracing for the worst workweek of my life, bereft of the company of my virtual friends.
Friday: Still no YM and mail. I listen to the last of my podcasts and hope for a better tomorrow.
Saturday: I write what will be my last blog entry for the following week, blissfully unaware that I will be locked out of my blog tomorrow.
Sunday: I can no longer blog. I break down and withdraw from the internet for the day, hoping for a better tomorrow.
Monday: I have Yahoo mail! I have YM! I can has internets! Not. I have limited net access, but still don’t have access to key sites. And by key sites I mean podcasts.
Tuesday: I have a podcast! It’s only 20 minutes long but The Basketball Jones is on 5 days a week, so this is still good news.
Wednesday: Revision3 and twit.tv are finally accessible, providing me with meatier content to supplement the snack that is the basketball jones.
Thursday: Actually worked my ass off today, no time for complaining. I use up my last supply of podcasts.
And today, I have it all back. Oh glorious, glorious internet, how would I make it through the day without you? *kisses monitor*
I’m actually off for bohol tomorrow so I’ll try to timestamp some shit to keep up with my new year’s resolution. Also, this trip to bohol will be the start of a travel blog that I hope to run with some friends. Why do I want to start a travel blog you ask? To get free shit of course, like overnight stays at resorts and all that good stuff. Let’s hope it works.
Internet is still total ass, but just to keep up my new year’s resolution I wanna point y’all to RJD2 
(born Ramble John “RJ” Krohn)
, who I only recently discovered but who is apparently a well known musician in the instrumental hip hop scene. I’m currently digging his album The Third Hand, which is supposedly the “poppiest” of all his albums. Anyone who appreciates hip hop that isn’t all about bitches and bling should give him a listen. My favorite track on the album right now is “Get it”. It’s got this killer opening groove that I’m not musically adept enough to identify or even describe, but it sure got my head bopping while listening to it.
My internet’s messed up. I can’t access certain sites, have limited and slow ass access to the sites I can go to, and PLDT isn’t being very helpful about it. Consider me annoyed.
What do you call these things anyway? Phoneboxes? Found on the same road as the multicolored Nunos.
I’m thrilled that some of the guys whose street art I’ve put up have come to the site (what’s up pilipinas street plan and the K-street crew), so I’m putting up some more today. This was found along the little side street that connects c-5 and Amang Rodriguez, taken a few days ago. It’s actually a row of three Nunos in different colors, but I couldn’t get a good enough angle to get them all in one picture.
After watching a BBC report on it this morning, I decided to look into how much it would cost to buy an island. Not that I’m looking to buy one, mind you, I was just mildly curious because in the back of my head if I ever got filthy rich that’s one of the things I’d do with my money, buy an island getaway. What I found out astounded me. You can get a small island in the Philippines for about as much as a condominium. Take for example Gilligan’s Island in Palawan. This 3 acre island with a small cottage and tiny beachfront area set someone back just $45,000. When converted to peso, that translates into roughly 1,800,000 pesos, or a studio unit in Eastwood or the Fort. I don’t know about you guys, but that totally blew my mind. Of course buying an island comes with its own set of problems and responsibilities, but the fact that it’s actually within reach (relatively speaking) is astounding to me.
One of the funny things that happen to you when you start to work from home is that you realize you have to start making time fore friends. In today’ workplace, where we spend most of our daily lives, we already have instant access to friends (assuming you’re the friendly type) at work, so we don’t feel the need to spend any more time with them afterwards. Every workday our friendship quota is filled, and we’re satisfied with going home for some relaxing alone time.
Working from home however, is all about alone time. No friends, some family that you see everyday, it can be an isolating experience. Podcasts help, but in one embarrassing moment I was telling my girlfriend about a TV show that “my friend” was totally in love with, “my friend” being the host of a podcast I listen to. Yeah, it was that bad. For maybe a month it was like that, with my reactionary self not willing to go out because I was too lazy, until I finally realized that I had to MAKE time for my friends. This seems self evident in retrospect but it took a while to dawn on me.
So now, aside from seeing my girlfriend, I make sure to at least see one set of friends a week, so I don’t end up being a total hermit. I get home later and drunker more often than I should, but at least I’m happier and I’m keeping those connections alive.
This right here is a Fujitsu laptop made of corn. That’s right, CORN! CORN!!!!! Well, not the entire thing of course, but the plastic casing of the laptop is made of 50% plastic dereved for corn product and 50% regular petroleum plastic. Apparently they managed to make a plastic casing made of pure corn, but that just struck people the wrong way for some reason. Read more at dvorak.org slash blog.
Just noodling around on Photoshop.
Looks like the Powermac store in greenbelt was raided, but there’s little definite information as to the the reasons and occurences. I couldn’t find any news bits online and only have this forum to go on, but it looks like they had either pirated music or software on some of their computers on display. Not entirely sure how I feel about this. I hate the powermac store because they overprice their products (don’t believe me? walk a few meters from the powermac store to Avant in Greenbelt and compare prices) these raids always feel like a waste of taxpayers’ money to me.
Made for some friends, none of whom have received them yet.
Spotted this along A.Rodriguez in Pasig city. Can’t really make out what it says, but the tag on top seems to say “K-street 2007″.
Love
Tipidpc.com. Because you find great deals like this Gears of War for Windows at less than 40 percent retail value. Gotta love the underground economy.
Hate
Filipinos. Why? Because Pinoys are sensitive, racist motherfuckers that’s why. They look down on people with dark skin and at the same time are overly sensitive when someone makes a bisaya joke. Then they go up in arms about how Filipino isn’t really Filipino but just a dialect of Tagalog. Granted, their arguments are probably valid, but the answer isn’t to give equal importance to other dialects and thus further erode any sense of national unity we have. As much as the Bisayas claim that Tagalogs look down on them, I’ve heard of Bisayas threatening to kill people who speak Tagalog while on their home turf. It isn’t a joke and it’s not funny and it’s this kind of clannishness that fucks up the country. If you gave equal prominence to other dialects you’d end up with certain areas becoming strongholds of a dialect, and when you go there you wouldn’t understand jack shit. That shit’s not funny, I tried it in Shanghai. Charades can only take you so far. I mean, have you ever tried charading to a taxi driver that you wanna go to the zoo? I digress.
Just have English as the national language, seriously. That way everyone’s happy, you can all go write your local broadsheets in your own dialects and make snide remarks to each other that no one will understand, and there won’t be a barrier of communication and people would stop bitching about this nonsense.
I finally upgraded my clunky old used 19 inch 2nd hand from Korea to a brand spankin new AOC 210v 22 inch monitor, and I’m still in awe at how awesome it looks. I can’t tell you what a huge difference it makes moving from a CRT to an LCD, and one of this size for that matter. I’d been looking at getting a 19 inch LCD but since my boss subsidized the purchase I figured I might as well go all in and get a 22. Of course the budget geek in me refused to be left unheard, so I did my research and concluded that the AOC 210V is the best value for money 22 inch monitor on the market right now. I got it for 12430 pesos at PC express, on 3 months 0% installment, and got me a cheapo UPS as well just to keep all the components safe. It’s a promo they have on offer right now, so if you’ve got a hankering for gear, I’d say this is the right time to buy.
Interestingly, PC express is selling another AOC unit at the same price, the 223VW, but I’ve heard that the 210V uses a better screen and overall gives a much better experience. It also has 2000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, but I rarely use that anyway. Still, it’s a bonus for the average PC user who just wants to watch movies and play games and doesn’t need to be finicky with all this contrast ratio nonsense.
My only issue? The pics from my camera phone that used to look ok on my CRT monitor now look like total ass on the new one.
This is not a game review. This is. This is me creaming myself over a video game, which would sound pathetic if you haven’t played company of heroes. But if you have, you will understand where I’m coming from, and I’m sure you would welcome me into your saggy, creamy arms.
Where to begin? The fully destructible environments? The numerous ways you can use to destroy your enemies? The variety of mission types? The fact that this is a world war 2 game that somehow manages to rejuvenate a genre that’s been resurrected 20 times over? The way everything seems calibrated to bring the maximum amount of tension to a situation before granting you a reprieve?
For example. One of my favorite missions is a “defend the base” type of scenario where german panzer companies are bearing down on my HQ. I have no armor, and one measly anti tank gun to fend them off. Otherwise I have to make do with discarded panzerschreks and stickybombs that my valiant riflemen throw onto the mechanical monsters. A timer is counting down the number of minutes before reinforcements arrive. At 2:00, the germans have encroached into my territory, and the tanks are laying down fire on my AT gun. The seconds feel like years as urge my riflemen to play chicken with a panzer to distract it long enough to gain a few precious seconds, madly clicking left and right and watching the turret slowly catch up. The panzer shoots at my squad and I watch as the ragdoll physics of the game enable my men (and their body parts) to fly gracefully into the rubble of what was once a cathedral. The panzers are bearing down on my AT gun. A lone gunner struggles mightily to load the cannon to fire when suddenly…
“reinforcements have arrived”
And they’ve brought Shermans with them goddamit. The shermans take care of the damaged panzers, and in a short span of time, I’ve retaken the battlefield and sealed victory. That’s the kind of experience that Company of Heroes has to offer, so it’s well worth the money. Also, I think certain 8-series nvidia videocards offer it as a free pack-in game, so you can save some money if you’re looking to upgrade your box.
The one thing I hate about COH? The massive patches. I mean seriously, I just want to play online, and I’m now downloading a 1.8 gig patch. I probably have enough time to get my tire vulcanized and be back home before the path is done downloading!
*checks download*
Actually you know what? Scratch that. I’ll have enough time to get my tire vulcanized, take a shower, go out and have lunch, and THEN maybe it’ll be done.
I’m taking my cue from 1up’s sports anomaly and introducing a new part of the blog called love and hate. Essentially, it’s just me saying what I’m feeling good about, and what I want to take a shit on.
Love
Rory’s bar in Katipunan. It’s the ultimate definition of a “hole in the wall” (trust me if I didn’t know beforehand that it was there’s I’d never have seen it) bar and restaurant opened up by some of Aissa’s friends. It’s right next to Bo’s Coffee and a few stores before Ilocos Empanada along Katipunan Ave. Best bets on the menu are Tofu and Mushrooms, and some sort of fish in mango pesto sauce . No pictures yet, but I’m sure we’ll be back there eventually.
Got to see the Stereolalas and Luna last night in Route 196. She still doesn’t recognize me, but hey the music was great. Had to leave the venue soon thoguh, being crammed in a room full of emo people was starting to get to me.
Hate
Mike Arroyo, for being involved in sports again. I hate this guy for being such an attention whore. He raises funds for sports and the training of athletes for the olympic games simply because hew wants to be seen as the saviour of Filipino sports. I will never forgive him for threatening to cut his support to sports programs because “no one appreciates his efforts anyway”. Fuck you for being a whiny bitch. If you really cared about sports, it would show, and people wouldn’t jeer at you for dancing in the boxing ring when manny pacquiao wins a match.
This started out as me wanting to draw a round robot, in homage to GO-TO of KOTOR2. I still had a bit of time so i thought what the hell, let’s draw a robot arm in the air. Then I thought well that looks like rubbish sitting in the air, let’s attach a body and head to it. Great stuff, but now I have a half formed robot in the air and I didn’t want to finish the whole robot body so I decide the circular robot is operating on the droid, who lies on a lab table. One last issue though, the robodoc’s eye isn’t even remotely looking at the droid on the table, so I draw an extra arm and pretend he’s a medical quack that looks at robot porn while he’s operating.
Spotted under the ortigas/C5 flyover in pasig.
Geek quote of the day from Alex Albrecht of Diggnation:
“I would love to see redneck robotech!”
Referring to a spider mech built by rednecks. Rednecks or no, this shit is totally awesome.
I wonder who could have put this in a CR in powerplant? *snicker*
I’m not one for new year’s resolutions, but I want to try to be more disciplined in my life so I’m using joe’s goals to help me keep track of my habits. I have three simple goals this year:
The first two are the literary and artistic equivalent of starting your car every morning during weeks of disuse in order to make sure the battery doesn’t discharge. I want to keep my mind sharp and give my drawing muscle memory a tiny workout everyday so I don’t get rusty when I really want to work on a larger or more detailed piece.
The exercise is just because I’m becoming a fatass from being home all day.
Also spotted near my old office, stuck on a signpost along HV delacosta. What, do I look like a map to you?
I swear to god I’m like a fucking girl, I can’t stop buying shoes, especially when they’re on sale (go to the podium people, 50-00% off on shoes, shirts, jackets!! It’s crazy!CRAZY!!!!) Course, these particular shoes were 60% off and subsidized by my folks as a birthday gift, so I didn’t spend too much, but I have to put a stop to my shoe spending or finally just invest in a shoe rack.
