The Bastard

I got bogged down with two much work after the new year and then my birthday that I forgot about the future me email I received.  Yes guys and gals, it works!

It’s a funny thing.  I almost didn’t see it among all my other job emails and when I did, did I laugh my head off or what.  I sent it around August when I posted this other article, and totally forgot about it.  I got some feedback from other people that it wasn’t working or didn’t work for them so I was expecting the same.

Anyway, I posted the note I sent myself below.  I sent it around August 25, 2008.

Dear FutureMe,

Happy Birthday!! I wish you all the best, and I hope you got it.

I know it’s only been a short time, but I hope you have already lost weight. I hope you’ve also stopped smoking.

How’s the job or business? I hope it’s keeping you busy and happy.

Well, anyway. Write back soon to tell me how everything went.

I love you.

It’s so weird.  Like traveling through time and talking to myself, an actual voice from the past.

Now if there was only a way to answer back and tell myself not to do the things I regret doing these past 5 months.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Someone tuned me into this blog post from Mike Abundo and this other blog post from Pinoy Pro Blogger and finally this other blog post from codamon.com.

This is stupid.

Regulation, AFTER THE FACT, never helped spur on development.  It entrenches those who have geared themselves to such enterprises and squelches those only beginning to get on the track.

It’s unnecessary bureaucratic shit and what it does is make you a target.  If you register, you’re on a list somewhere where someone can pull up your name and put undue pressure on you or your work.  Typical despotic(arroyo) move.

They can’t possibly expect people locally, even in other countries, to actually need to pay them to publish their content on the net.  What are they going to do, start a central proxy for the Philippines and have every content filtered?  What are we turning into?

As far as I can tell from the draft, if you ever publish anything you may get paid for, you need a license.  It’s too freakin’ broad.  If I was a professional blogger, then I would need to apply for a license.  If I have a website advertising my services, then I need to get a license.  If I even think about developing a website, I need to get a license.  If my free web host publishes ad banners on my site, I could still be said to be gaining something for publishing content.

The draft doesn’t specify whether this affects content only on mobile networks or if it will cover all forms of online content.  It “looks” like it covers mobile phone networks, but phones have the capability to browse the net as well, so it only takes a little extension and everyone publishing something on the net can be considered a “contents, information, applications and/or electronic games providers” with this draft.

And since the major telecoms control our connections, not only on mobile networks but also for internet access, they have the ability to cut our online presence.  They can just label you a “contents, information, applications and/or electronic games provider” and they can charge you differently for your connection.  The draft also stipulates that any complaints can lead to sanctions where the provider “has the burden of proof”, guilty until proven innocent.  They can make up any excuse to cancel our connection.

This looks too much like the handiwork of our major telecoms providers to get something more out of the consumers.    I mean, who the fuck doesn’t publish content in this day and age?  If you’re online, you or someone in your family probably has a blog or a photo site.

No matter who originally proposed this or whether the major telecoms have a hand in it, this proposal is a small step towards curtailing our freedoms.

Be afraid.

Popularity: 67% [?]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about a person who is born and starts life as an old man and goes through life in reverse.  Bizarre enough to peak my interest but had to pass the first week it played locally because I have seen mixed reviews about it.  I don’t usually wait around for reviews, but this movie played well ahead of local cinemas that it was hard not to notice one or two bloggers writing about it.  The MAIN reason it didn’t play at the same time locally is because of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), but that’s an entry for another day.

As I don’t like telling the whole story, mainly because it’s too long and I remember too many details that I’d probably be rambling on long after any reader would have lost interest, let me just say that the lightning strikes are a welcome distraction from the main plot (count them!), a tugboat and a submarine is involved, sex, it encompasses two wars or at least the end of WWI and most of WWII, lots of travel to places that most Americans find exotic, and sex.

It was long, but there was never a dull moment.  I couldn’t believe that there was so much bullshit I could sit through, but I couldn’t wait to see what Benjamin did next (and when the next lightning strike would come).  The ending was a let down and a little too much to take in or even realistically figure out, I mean, they turned him into a baby and made all the signs of age disappear but they left a scar just for the heck of it?  Oh well.

It was generally well written and the director, David Fincher, pulled a rabbit out his hat with this one.  Although, I guess having worked with Brad Pitt before does have it’s advantages.  This genre is bizarre enough to just fit into the director’s comfort zone and he delivered well enough to make you forget he directed se7en and Zodiac.

All in all, I would still recommend it despite the ending.

Popularity: 100% [?]

I just had a birthday a few days ago. There wasn’t that much of a celebration, mostly because I didn’t want to.  I decided that I won’t mark the passing years.

I don’t know maybe it’s just my way of going in denial about the fact that I am that much closer to dying.

34 isn’t that bad.  I know a few people who didn’t even reach that age.  There was a girl in my 5th grade class who killed herself because everyone was picking on her because of her looks.  A few kids my age and some a little older, died while horsing around in a waterfall/river I used to frequent in my childhood.  An uncle I can’t remember burned to death when he was 16.  My brother died when he was 22.

Are we supposed to mark our life by the years that pass or how we live them?  I want to break away from the cycle of getting excited about a day that comes to everyone once in a year, exactly as it did the year before.  I’ll mark my days and life with the things I’ve done, the people I’ve met, the lives I’ve touched.

Or maybe I’ll just have cake.

Popularity: 30% [?]

I never really watch trailers or talking-heads hype about movies that I am planning to watch.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Although, it can be said that more than one woman before have escaped the charming James Bond, it still disappoints. James is batting more than average with the Bond Girls, but sometimes I wonder why they couldn’t at least let him get away with a 1.00. We’d forgive them for it. We really would.

Quantum of Solace is the second film in which Daniel Craig plays Ian Flemming’s James Bond. I’m still not convinced he (craig) is the next Bond, even after 2 films to his name. I’m still waiting for someone to clone Sean Connery. But that’s just me.

The story picks up where Casino Royale left off. And goes nowhere still. I guess I’m still waiting for them to come up with the real GLOBAL MELTDOWN GOAL of the organization called Quantum. I mean, the only thing I’ve seen so far is a Bond that sulks around all day even after getting laid. How sad is that?

Yeah, i’m feeling they cut up a pretty good story into 3 or more parts to give to us piecemeal. It’s not such a bad thing but I was just hoping for more.. well, MORE! OK, James is back, but where is he really going and what dastardly evil globe-encompassing plan is he going to thwart? How many more tickets do I need to buy?

Popularity: 34% [?]

I’ve twitted recently that I have purchased a few new domains.

One of those domains is Programmers-Philippines.net. I currently don’t have any idea what I’m going to do with it yet but one of these days I want to make it a community site of some sort. For programmers of course.

For now, DNS is handled by FreeDNS. It’s a great service. You use their name servers to point your domain name to your IP (dynamic or static) and they offer this service for FREE! The only thing they ask in return is you allow people to create subdomains on your domain. They don’t even force you to do that. You CAN allow unlimited access to subdomains by setting your domain to public (anyone can register a subdomain) or restrict it by setting it to private (you get to approve what subdomains you allow). They do have premium services where you can totally close off your domains and that’s where they get the funds to keep their operation going.

Which brings us back to Programmers-Philippines.net. If you’re a programmer and you’re from the Philippines (even if you don’t live here now), I would like to encourage you to go ahead and register a subdomain. I can’t offer hosting services (yet) but there are a lot of free hosting services out there anyway that you can redirect to.

Below, you can find a widget from FreeDNS to allow you to register a subdomain under programmers-philippines.net or a few other domains at FreeDNS. I would prefer you use your name for your subdomain (i.e. bart.programmers-philippines.net) but feel free to come up with something all your own and just email me at bart [at] programmers-philippines [dot] net to lemme know who you are and the subdomain you’re creating.

Technorati Profile

Popularity: 39% [?]

Like so many of the features/apps of Google I’ve been getting into lately, I was so excited to hear about Google Mapmaker. You have an intimate knowledge of a place, say, your neighborhood, and you get to add it to the map for everyone to see. Seems simple enough, and it should be, the whole point was that you add to the existing map based on what you know because they assume you actually go to that place or reside there.

Looks good so far. Then when you finish editing, adding those little known nuances of the place or area that only someone who’s been there all his life would know, here comes map edit moderations. Basically, someone has to review your addition to ensure “accuracy”. Looks good when you read it, but then you encounter the map fascist. These pukes don’t care about your “intimate knowledge” of the place. All they care about is that they’ve been in this shit way longer than you have and they can moderate your editions and reject it on a whim. They don’t bother asking you why you drew a particular road feature this way or that. All you get is a terse review stating that your edit can be misleading because the road looks different than what it aught to be and you’re new so you can’t be correct.

Well screw you and the horse you rode in. You don’t need to tell me the road looks odd. I’ve seen that road, travelled it, went from one end to the next and still managed to screw your wife. It’s that way because some stupid engineer didn’t take into account that people like you would be alive someday to critique his road designing and building skills. And just for the record, can I see your credentials? What makes you an expert in this little known part of the world I call my neighborhood? Maybe you live here? I’d like to meet you so I can drag your ass across the road who’s existence you deny.

I’d really like to meet you so I can slap you with physical maps that I have of my neighborhood.

Anyway, I’m leaving this particular app alone for now. Maybe I’ll return to it in the future, after I’ve slapped someone silly. Until then, I’d suggest bringing along smurfs (people who will say yes even if you tell them you’d kill their wives) when you edit something so someone can approve it before a troll wastes the time you spent on your edits.

Popularity: 44% [?]