Monthly Archives: October 2008

..Is not a cat! It is a fish. Yes! it is a fish.

Posted by Borland_Cat on 10/12/2008 None comments

What kind of fish? Well actually this is a fish cracker (street foods) which is very popular snack in our country. This is a delicious salt and msg rich cracker usually yellow or yellowish in color and comes with different serving size that your families and friends will surely love. Great fun snack for people who loves visiting the doctor and hospital wards regularly. If you love diabetes, cancer, malnourishment, digestive problems, and infections then this snack is for you. Whatta fantastic cracker! so watch out man. Live a healthy life avoid junk foods.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jpo0HmCMImM/SPo8WZ5Vb8I/AAAAAAAAAJg/fG4nDfw5FkE/s1600-h/catnfish.JPG

Burnaby BC: A day in a life of Unix SysAdmin

Posted by Borland_Cat on 10/11/2008 None comments

downtown1After 13 hours inside the PAL’s four-engine jet plane then… touchdown Canada! Wow whatta nice and clean airport terminal. From Vancouver airport going to our rented house (homestay) in Burnaby B.C. is like driving inside the Ayala Alabang Village in Manila. The weather is cold and its about 5pm already when we arrived in Burke Street. After a day of rest and preparations, then here comes the first day of the class as usual a self introduction between off-site and the on-site SAs. Still groggy due to jet lag but I managed to look mentally perceptive and responsive most of the time during the training and it last for more than a week of adjustments before everything went fine.

The following weeks we visited Stanley Park, well of course the popular Downtown, Pier, Metrotown, the forest-like Parks at the heart of the city. Canada is a multicultural country just like Singapore because here there are Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, Koreans, Japanese, etc.. and you can see them everyday in malls, streets, parks, stores, and even in our office. Homestay is actually made for tourist students and in our case is somewhat a different scenario since we are here in Canada for on-the-job training. We’re lucky because the house is very near to the office and just a 10 minute walk going there. The house doesn’t have aircons but heaters, hi-tech dishwashing and laundry machines, quiet neighbourhood, free wireless high-speed internet, cold and hot showers, Satellite Tv programs, and cable Tv. Our house also is very near the Metrotown mall, BestBuy, FutureShop, Sears, and Toys-R-Us. For the fast foods you will find Starbucks, Subway, Mcdonald, Pizza Hut, A&W, and KFC but I noticed they don’t serve meal with rice! Oh no where is the rice?

The PC, Midi, and the Keyboard

Posted by Borland_Cat on 10/11/2008 1 comments

I bought my USB midi interface device in Singapore two years ago. Since then I can comfortably create or edit my midi files using the PC or directly from my Yamaha general midi keyboard. Before that I use my own built midi interface device to connect my PC to the keyboard. I searched in the internet and got one simple midi project there with detailed diagram but some electronic components are not available in our country so I used substitution parts as replacement to the original one. The midi/game port of my Yamaha XG PCI sound card is the one communicating with the keyboard (midi-in/out). The most sensitive device in making your own midi interface is the opto device. This is an electrical-to-optical or optical-to-electrical transducer chip that isolates the PC and the keyboard from electrical contact and it is also use light to transfer the electrical signal to the other end.

The result of my midi project is somewhat ok but from time to time I experiencing hang-up and end up resetting the keyboard and sometimes the midi application program –or both! Another problem is almost all modern x86 motherboards with built in sound chip doesn’t have midi/game port. Thanks! There is USB midi interface available in the market today. I’m using midi visual editor software to perfectly reproduce every sound of instruments in making my midi files. One nice thing about this hobby is that even you are not a good pianist or keyboardist you can learn to create your piece by yourself by just the aid of mouse since there is no scripting or coding knowledge is needed.

The Green Tennis Court

Posted by Borland_Cat on 10/11/2008 None comments

I started playing this game when I was 17 years old. It all started when I bought my first Dunlop tennis racquet in Cartimar shopping center in Manila. It is a light weight aluminum midsize racquet and that’s good for beginners. Tennis here in Manila is not so popular and only few tennis courts available for public use. The first tennis court I played with was in Derham Park (now Cuneta Astrodome) it is a shell court. After just 15 minutes of playing, I gave up! whooah not an easy sport, I’ve run out of energy and strength. Tennis is a tough game. My advice to beginners, start with walling first and know how to control the ball, know how to control your strokes, do some warm-up before playing. By the way always watch the ball this is one of the basic.

Reading some tennis mag or books will help but if you are serious enough and have a budget to pursue your career in this sport, enrol in some tennis clinic/schools or hire an instructor. Tennis is a nice sport for your family, friends, for your health, and beautiful as Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovich, and of course Daniela Hantuchova. At present I play regularly in Rizal green tennis courts located at the back of De La Salle University and at the same time I train my little kids there and hoping someday that I am sitting behind and watching them playing or competing in an international games.

My x86 Dream Box and the Disruptive Technologies

Posted by Borland_Cat on 10/10/2008 None comments

I think this is the right time to assemble my home theater PC. The price of computer parts continuously falling and at the same I must conserve electricity by building a non-gaming PC for my family. Well I already have an AM2 micro-ATX motherboard (with built-in video chip, NIC, and sound), a micro-ATX HTPC aluminum casing, and I’m on my way now in selecting the most energy efficient low-end processor that is capable of producing acceptable video and sound quality. I will also incorporate a modding device to control the speed of cooling fans (for noise & vibration) and to monitor the temperature of cpu, hdd, and the casing.

It’s hightime too to think about the condition of our mother earth so I’m doing my share to protect it. As mush as possible I’ll make my HTPC consumes minimal power only and last thing in the list is to buy a 19″ LCD monitor (or not..read below), a cheap external TV tuner, 4GB ram, DVD writer, and a laptop HDD. Ooops! I heard about the newest LCD projectors using low powered embedded LEDs or LED projector that can deliver a clear bright and real SVGA image. This is better than the hot and a hundred watters halogen lamp type. The power consumption of these small and light-weight LED projectors is between 15-25 watts! compare to 250+ watts LCD TVs.

So I’m thinking now between an LCD TV and a small and low power LED embedded LCD projector for my HTPC. By the way which is the best of the two in terms of response time in milliseconds (ms), the HDTV or this LED projector? more on that later. One thing for sure LEDs doesn’t need special handling, not fragile, and long life too. Now what’s playing in my mind now is the mass production of portable battery-powered wide screen HDTV projector in the succeeding years. I already saw a number of LED projector models from internet but currently I can’t find one in Futureshop or BestBuy stores here in Canada.

The SR Loft Team

Posted by Borland_Cat on 10/09/2008 None comments

Andromeda is one of the best racing pigeon I’ve ever had. This is my fastest short-middle distance bird with exceptional homing instinct. It took me 3 years to produce this talented bird which is a combination of many unknown strains. Before I preferred the brown feathered flyers to make my birds easily be identified specially during training and racing seasons. In Manila there are actually two racing schedules every year, the North for the month of October and the South for February.

The last lap for the south race is from Tacloban/Surigao to Manila and for the north is from Aparri to Manila. The north race is the tougher one where few among the thousand flyers survived and sometime no one came home within the cut-off time and one of the reasons is the weather, rainy season. Other pigeon clubs holds summer racing. Right now I stopped temporarily in joining the race due to my job time demand. Currently all my flyers and breeders are happily spending most of their time inside the loft. Sometime I’m a bit guilty when I hear Elton John’s Skyline Pigeon Fly song because pigeons loves to fly and play in the air specially in the morning where the sun is about to rise. Ohh! I forgot I race not for the money, I’m just an ordinary fancier with big dreams, I’m after for pigeon trophy or a club certificates which is enough to enjoy this hobby. If anyone of my flyers won the race well that is an achievement if they lose no problem.. getting back home alive is a winner for me.

Inside the virtualized evolution

Posted by Borland_Cat on 10/09/2008 None comments

sunsetThe earth future maybe just a repeat of the past. The same civilization we have right now that was existed million or billions years ago. What this post all about? Well this is only a product of my mind. I am thinking of a sci-fi movie and it’s about the war between the good and evil. This is also the story about the life of people with supernatural powers that live in a super sci-fi world. This can be an Anime movie or TV series hopefully someone out there from movie industry would have interest. The story will begin when someone accidentally unearthed the tomb of one the Pharaoh’s soothsayers who has a power in turning the stick into serpent. Scientist then extracted the DNA of this man and they cloned it and it resulted into the proliferations of people powered by bad spirits. More on this part later. Now on the other side who will be the saviour of mankind? Same thing some archaeologists found the remains of Moses and other God’s people who died thousand years ago. A group of scientist then rebuild their DNAs and also created cloned armies. The battleground is the earth and the universe. How about the main starrers of my movie? Later buddies…