Xtian's Clutter

After the miscommunication, proper credits were given for photos used Good job by Globe’s people, in less than half a day, communication was established and proper credits were given. Kudos!

The Razorback page by Globe Telecom can be viewed Here

Checked into the hotel in Beijing, well, guess what? No Facebook, no Plurk, No Twitter, No blogspot, wowzers, lots of sites are blocked… hehe o well Will update with pics later.

Image by Fatty Tuna via Flickr

When I heard the news earlier (from a local radio station too!) that the venerable Reader’s Digest was filing for Bankruptcy Protection, the first thought that popped into my head was, damn, I won’t have anything to read on long plane trips anymore.

I remember as a child reading old issues of RD that were stockpiled in an old room in my grandparents’ house. It was always exciting, reading of real stories, touching stories, funny stories and thought provoking stories. I remember getting my first subscription of the publication when I was in high school, every month waiting for the mail for the newest edition. I remember grabbing a copy every time I went on a long plane trip, something to read on those boring flights… ahhh.. nostalgic.

Hopefully with the Chapter 11 and the restructuring, RD will be able to pull it’s shit together and continue to publish excellent stories in a real format. I guess the internet’s data-on demand allure has even affected the giants of the written world. Why can’t tabloids go out of business instead of RD… bah…

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Wow, after being bombarded with trailers for the new season Survivor Philippines, I realized that Survivor has gone from it’s humble beginnings to a more… uhh… dumbed down, state. I always thought that watching regular Joes and Janes get stranded on a remote location and seeing how they cope with challenges that were thrown at them. Now, after looking at the trailer, almost every single one of the supposed “Castaways” have their own pre-screened personality quirks. You’ll already know what to expect from each one of them as they already have their designated tags like “The Mentalist” and “The Metrosexual” or… so on and so forth. Whatever happened to just having a bunch of people on an island and to the fun of watching them reveal their neuroses and as opposed to watching a bunch of personalities play out their respective roles as dictated by the producers?

I guess that’s Philippine TV for you, you need to be good looking to be on, talent is not a pre-requisite. Even if you cant act, but ladies go ga-ga over you, you’re a star! You can’t act for shit and your grammar is even worse, but you have the face and body of a supermodel, get on tv! You can’t go on Survivor Philippines because you’re not a model, you can’t sing, you don’t look good, you don’t have a quirk that fills in a certain demographic need…

Image by jagelado via Flickr

I’m a big believer in "technology over politics". I don’t care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don’t have to worry about licensing etc issues. I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out. There are ‘extremists’ in the free software world, but that’s one major reason why I don’t call what I do ‘free software’ any more. I don’t want to be associated with the people for whom it’s about exclusion and hatred. –Linus Torvalds

Well, I guess he pretty much summed everything up. I mean, I’m no fanboy, I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinions. What just rocks my boat are people who say that Microsoft Sucks, blah blah blah, Go fruit, Go Penguin, blah blah blah, without actually using the product themselves.

If you’re happy with what you’re using, then be happy with it. Stop criticizing others for their choices. I don’t go to your house and tell you what to do. I don’t look over your shoulder and tell you that this, this, this and this is better that that.

Personally, I have a powerhouse of a laptop (MSI GT725-075) running Windows 7 64-bit RC1, it can pretty much run any app and game that I throw at it with settings on maximum most of the time. I haven’t had any problems, I like the improvements, and personally, I don’t really care if yours is better in your opinion, that’s why they call it an opinion.

I’ve been using computers for over 16 years, used MS products maybe 80% of the time, immersed myself in -nix environments for a few years before saying to hell with it. If you handed me a Mac now, I would be lost like a newborn babe, but you won’t see me saying that I couldn’t find my way around and it sucks, I’d be like… “Meh… not for me” nothing to see here… move along.

Who was it that said, “Why can’t we all get along?”

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Wow, the first thing that popped on my screen when my feeds came up was the title above. I’ve always thought that the Beastie Boys would go out with a bang, some sort of sensational misadventure or something. Who doesn’t know of the Beastie Boys? I’m sure that most of us hopped to their beats one time or another during our childhood.

They were going to have a tour and a new album, but I guess those things can wait. The announcement was made on their youtube channel just a few hours ago.

Well, I took the plunge and migrated the whole blog to Wordpress! I was a first a blogger user, then wordpress, then back to blogger, then wordpress again, then to live writer and now finally back to wordpress. I know I’ve hopped platforms many a time, but this time it should be (cross fingers) the last switch I make.

Image by lemonkey via Flickr

It’s been years and years since I played “The Secret of Monkey Island.” I could still remember the highlights of the game, funny, funny stuff… So when I saw that it was re-released, I just had to get a copy for myself. Featuring new high-definition graphics and a re-mastered musical score, it brought the timeless classic back to life. All the original cast members (those that were still alive anyway….) doing the voices… wow… The first 10 minutes of the game brought me back to a time when games were about the storyline and humor played a huge part in the game.

The game is in the truest form a re-make of the previous game. It’s actually the exact same game with the exact… well… everything! You can even hot-swap from the new high-def graphics to the older VGA graphic version with a a press of the button (for those feeling nostalgic) but with the voices, the dialogue and the musical score accompanying the beautiful visuals, one can’t help but stay in the “Special Edition” version of the game.

Well, enough typing for me, and back to playing and hopefully they’ll release all of the sequels to the monkey island franchise after this one. One can’t keep a good pirate down! Here’s to Guybrush Threepwood! Yarr!

5/5! Definitely.

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I finally took the plunge yesterday and bought myself a new Xbox 360. I’ve been drooling over this machine for the past year and finally I have my own! After doing tons of research on the dreaded 3 red light problem, or better known as 3RL, I decided to cough up a premium for the Pro edition Jasper over the marked-down Falcon editions

On my initial purchase, I decided to get 2 games with it, Fable II and Street Fighter 4. Fable II for those long hauls of boredom, RPG-ing the time away and Street Fighter 4 for instant gratification, for those times that I need a quick gaming fix.

Still haven’t had the chance to buy myself a Gold Membership to Xbox live so I’m staying offline most of the time. Although… browsing the online marketplace for Xbox live… I’m leaning towards getting a copy of Rocket Riot for that multiplayer fix… hmm… maybe next week… 800 store points is roughly $20 so that’s a small one time expense I have to save up justify  for.

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Just for kicks, I joined the IHC Lottery, IHC meaning Institute for Human Continuity. Sounds strange and wacko-ish, but still fun nonetheless. Ever since seeing the 2012 ads in movie houses, I’ve been obsessed with finding out more about the Mayan end of time prophecy. Will disasters strike earth in 2012? Or did they just get tired of adding additional years to the calendar and stopped at 2012.