soda prices up next year

i just heard from the neighborhood store that coke lite will increase in price by 4 pesos. ugh. they already increased by 3 or 4 pesos just recently.

sooo.... diet pepsi anyone?

or pepsi max? "don't worry. no sugar."

note: i couldn't find "pepsi max" in the pepsi web site and i couldn't find "coke lite" in the coke usa web site. they have have rebranded it here.

the king kong that wasn't

my girlfriend and i went out last night on a movie date. something we haven't done for quite some time. we wanted to watch king kong which i heard was three hours long. its christmas week so i knew traffic is crazier than usual with the last minute shopping and all. what the hey, its king kong. most of the schools are on vacation already so i was hoping that getting to megamall would be relatively easy.

nope.

it took me almost an hour and a half to get there and it was hard to find parking. after a restful and sumptuous japanese dinner we went to the row of movie houses. sm megamall had 12 movie houses in all and they usually show big movies in at least two or three of them. i didn't think they'd run out of seats even if its the christmas season.

and since it is the christmas season, the movie houses — all 12 of them — were closed. for this particular night only.

the movie staff were out having their christmas party.

life really throws a pretty good loop and this is one of its biggies.

we couldn't help but just laugh about it.

then we had coffee and a dessert — a chocolate cake named oblivion. yum!

p.s. pictured is pandesal ni gerry. thanks dude! and the dog's name is eugene (i think)

feeling unwell

i've been feeling unwell for the past few days. nose is running. can't sleep well and generally feel tired and sleepy right about now. i guess i should be because i started the day at 3:30 in the morning.

moving complete (i think)

i think that the dns changes have propagated already and the move is pretty much complete. i can tell because of the amount of spam i'm getting in my junk folder. ha! at least this time, junk mail gets filtered out and automagically trashed by the server so i don't have to.

it is now time to put new site designs on paper. i also have been reading up on the current xhtml/html/css standards. there are a handful of changes that i have to hurdle (did you know that the table tag has been deprecated?) and maybe its time to update or change my html editor.

ps. broas and coffee. mine. dip broas in coffee. put broas in mouth. yum!

moving to another host

its been long in coming but i eventually transferred my website (not this one) to another host. the old one felt like it was getting tired and outdated. technology really gets old real fast these days. i'm paying a little more but i think i can hack it (hoping and praying).

the funny thing is that the most difficult part of moving is backing up the data to my hard disk and uploading it to the new site. those chores took a good part of the afternoon. all i have to do now is to wait for the dns changes to propagate through the internet which should be between 2 to 3 days.

i should redesign the site as well to commemorate its new home. its getting old and tired also. i already have ideas bouncing about in my head. i wish i could finish the redesign before the year ends. i would have to rework the content as well to better reflect what we do.

at least my brain and fingers will not be idle within the next few weeks.

web hosting by google?

this spoofing made me think about moving my site to another hosting service. yahoo provides pretty good web hosting packages at reasonable rates. and i read somewhere that they're turning a profit on those services. so i was wondering why google isn't in the web hosting scene.

they certainly have the technical and financial resources to create the service. so why not?

i actually wrote them about it a few hours ago but time zones have a way of making you wait especially if you're in the opposite side of the planet. i hope they respond soon.

i want your pandesal!

this is a call for people to send over a picture of their pandesal to me. it doesn't have to a a super duper high quality photo. just a simple photo will do. if i like it, i'll post it in my blug (smirk here), credit you for it and link back to your blug if you send to me your blug address.

you can send the photo to headlessspider at gmail dot com.

thank you!

spoofed! part 2

well, i got a handful of bounced messages again. the weird thing is that my workstation is off. grrrr...

time to get nasty. i turned off access to sending out mails from the server. like i said, its no biggie since i rarely use the address and i can still receive mails.

let's see what happens next.

spoofed!

i do believe that one of my e-mail addresses (i have several like most geeks) has been spoofed.

first i got a whole bunch of returned mails in a short span of time which got me edgy. i checked the mail headers and the from: line says its from my mail account and the to: line said it was for another address in the same domain.

hmmmm....

i checked my system and everything checks out. i'm pretty sure i don't have any worms sending out spam on my behalf. i also checked the message queue and there's several zero-byte entries. that shouldn't be a problem but i deleted them anyway. it's been clean for the past few hours.

next i got an e-mail from a postmaster to my postmaster which said that i've been spamming someone and that any mail from the domain will be blocked for 24 hours. that's no biggie because i've been using another e-mail address for quite some time. but what concerns me is what if i've been hacked.

so just to be safe, i changed my password to an even longer one.

let's see what happens in the next 48 hours.

what is pandesal?

pandesal or pan de sal is spanish for bread of salt. it was really salty when they made it before but it has evolved and now tastes a little on the sweet side.

it is a staple on a filipino breakfast table and best served hot. you can stuff it with corned beef (my personal favorite) or plain cheese, or pour sweeteded condensed milk in it. by itself, its great with coffee (kape) especially the barako blends of batangas.

prices range from php 1.00 to php 5.00 with size getting bigger as it gets more expensive.

ps. pictured is pandesal ni marien. of course, you can take it with wine

blogspot hack #2: random images in the header

i wanted to have a picture right beside the blog title (up there). not a big one, just a small teeny tiny one to "complement" the title. so i put one using hack #1. but that got tiring after 2 days. so i was looking around and found a hack that changes the subheader randomly. what if i change the code to change my header image ramdomly...? hmmmm...

hack #2 is the result. refresh the page a few times and you'll get what i mean.

this hack may or may not work for your blog depending on the design template you are using.

how
in your template, look for:

<div id="header"><div>

right after the code above, insert the code given below. change the images to the ones you like, please don't use mine.

to simplify things, i used the same dimensions for my images (80px by 55px @ 72dpi). i uploaded all five images to blogger, taking note of their addresses and plugging them into the code:

<script language="javascript">
var starttxt='<img width="80" height="55" 
  alt="revolving header picture" 
  style="margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px; 
  float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="';
var endtxt='" alt="" border="0" />';
var midtxt=new Array(
  'http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/537/1682/1600/header1.jpg',
  'http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/537/1682/1600/header2.jpg',
  'http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/537/1682/1600/header3.jpg',
  'http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/537/1682/1600/header4.jpg',
  'http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/537/1682/1600/header5.jpg'
);
document.write(
  starttxt + 
  midtxt[Math.round(Math.random()*(midtxt.length-1))] + 
  endtxt);
</script>
<noscript>
  <img width="80" height="55" 
  alt="My Photo" 
  style="margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px; 
  float: left; cursor: pointer;" 
  src="<$BlogOwnerPhotoUrl$>" alt="" border="0" />
</noscript>

if you want to use the code please change the images and use the dimensions that would work for you.

enjoy. i hope you like.

just thinking

wala
never bite the hand that feeds you. bad things happen after if you do. most dogs know this. some people just don't get it.

open office 2.0

tech
open office 2.0 is final and available for downloading at www.openoffice.org. its a free download but donations are very much appreciated.

for those who doesn't know, open office is a bunch of programs that you can use for word processing, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, graphics and drawings, etc. in other words its a free alternative to your other office programs.

crash

tech
i have a linux-based firewall between my home computer and the internet. i'm paranoid, what can i say and if you can see the intrusion detection logs you would be too. its a jungle out there.

the hard disk of my firewall crashed the day after i got my dsl. it just stopped working. i guess its about time because its more than five years old already. good thing i have an old hard disk lying around so it was easy enough to replace the dead disk and reinstall my firewall. all in all, it took about 30 minutes.

faster internet

tech
after several years on dial-up i finally upgraded to dsl. i went through six (6) analog modems with speeds ranging from 14.4k to the current standard of 56k. two of those modems died on me and the rest have fallen by the wayside to faster technolgy and newer standards.

my connect speed is around 4 to 5 times faster at 256k (233k on average) and the additional cost is minimal up from around php 700 (us$ 12.50) to php 999 (almost us$ 18.00). so i think the package is worth it. pages load faster. downloads are faster. getting updates is quicker. i don't want anything faster because:

1. i can't afford anything faster
2. at this moment, i don't need anything faster
3. and lastly, i can't afford anything faster

to test the thing i'm downloading breezy badger from ubuntu (linux). the size of the file is around 662 megabytes. it will still take a while for me to download but hey it still beats 56k hands down.

for now, i'm happy.

old friends, lamb burger and super dry

friends
last night we went out with an old friend. dinner was lamb burger with fries and coke light (i have to watch my tummy) with my date having roasted lamb. dinner was great! conversation was plentiful moving from "what have you been doing?" to "whatever happened to...?"

over super dry, san mig light, gin tonic and a great view of the city in the lightning and rain, we talked about other old friends -- people that we used to work with, people we've been involved with and people that we will be seeing in the future.

it was a pretty good "catching up" night.

ps. pictured are pandesal ni carla

wala

i wanted to try something new other than 360 so here i am.