The Geek Brewery

Tomorrow is the start of classes for the second semester in UP Diliman. Students will be confronted with new class schedules. Yikes!

Fortunately for those who are lazy enough to take a peek on their form 5 from time to time, there’s this Google Calendar SMS notification for you. Google will text you your next class minutes or hours before your class, based on your preference.

You just need a Google account (which is free) to enjoy this free service! (more…)

I’ve learned about this website, Surviving the World, after a friend posted a link to one of their entries in Plurk.

Surviving the World is a webcomic focusing on all shades of life, from science to literature, politics to sports, romance to religion, and everything else in between. –Surviving the World FAQ

The website is updated daily so you don’t have to worry not having a daily dose of STW.

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Short rant. Wow, I am busy that I can hardly update this blog.

I am officially enjoying Google Map Maker now.

Google Map Maker is Google’s crowd-sourcing tool to gather geographical information and turn them to maps. Google Map Maker was launched in the Philippines October of last year. Due to the positive response to the product, Google deployed Map Maker data in the Philippines to Google Maps.

I always loved the idea of crowd-sourcing (like Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, etc). There are other similar online tools out there such as OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia. My only problem with OpenStreetMap is that their default editor doesn’t have satellite imagery which makes it hard to point areas of interest or identify location of roads unless you have GPS. Wikimapia, though, uses Google’s imagery but their moderation scheme is not good at all. I find it very prone to vandals. (more…)

Last Friday, we had our Globe Broadband connected at the apartment. Globe Telecom deployed a PROLiNK Hurricane 5200 as our ADSL modem. Since we wanted to share the Internet connection throughout the room, we bought a Linksys WRT54G2 wireless router.

Configuring the PROLiNK Hurricane 5200 to work with Linksys WRT54G2 wasn’t that easy. Here’s a rough guide on how to do it. This guide must work with other models (such as Hurricane 9200) and other brands, but the steps will differ. (more…)

Globe Telecom uses a transparent proxy on it’s http.globe.com.ph access point. This means when you open a website, it passes thru their server for caching or whatever purpose it might server before it reaches your cellphone or computer.

URL of image when not cached.

I’ve noticed though that they replace the URL of images inside <img> tags with another URL on their server for caching. This, in turn, causes some problems with web applications that requires authentication and generates images on the fly such as StatCounter. This replacement/caching process is only done when Globe Telecom detects that you are using a web browser on a computer or on a mobile phone (I curl-ed this website and the output did not have any URL replacements).

URL after caching. Notice, the cached and compressed image is in Globe or a third-party partner’s server.

As a workaround, you can spoof your User-Agent by modifying the headers of your requests. You may do this in Firefox by:

1. Going to about:config. A warning will have to scare you but just continue.
2. Then, find the general.useragent.extra.firefox setting. Using the filter above may help you find it.
3. Once you find it, double click the entry and change it to whatever you want. For it to work, it should not contain words like Mozilla, Firefox, Safari or other web browsers. I’ve changed mine to MikkoFox.

Have fun browsing without cached images.

The Long Short Story

Some three days ago, I was complaining to RapidVPS that my websites were loading really slow. I logged on to my server thru SSH and checked the server load. To my amazement, it was on it’s 300+ mark. Way above my 1.00 average. The servers running my account could have been boiling by that time.

It was around 7 hours after my first ticket when they responded. They gave me a very surprising surprise. RapidVPS permanently suspended my hosting account after it sent mass-mails to tons of people, thus spiking the server load which was detrimental to their services. They said my data was too risky to host. Up to now, I don’t know how it happened. As far as I knew, I did not have any cron job on that account. Someone might have sneaked in to my server and ran a really bad script using my account.

So I was forced to host a 503 (maintenance) page thru DreamHost to avoid search engines to remove my pages from the index while waiting for the backup of my files to be sent back to me. It took me around 36 hours to get a reply. By the 40th hour, I got a link to a tarred file of my backups. I immediately logged in thru my A Small Orange (ASO) account thru SSH and wget-ted the file. Sadly, I can’t untar the file on my ASO server since I only had very limited web space. Tandandandan.

What I did was I sent a request to A Small Orange to untar my files and copy the files for The Geek Brewery to the root of conradmiguel.com. I also asked them to import my SQL databases. Within five minutes, I got a reply. They were willing to help me out even if it was not part of my subscription. A Small Orange, FTW! (more…)

UPDATE: It’s confirmed. The new name will be Bing (http://bing.com). Rumors are spreading that they will launch it on May 29, 2009.

There are various reports in the Internet that says Microsoft is doing a rebrand of Live Search, their very own search engine. Live Search lost its luster in the search engine game, just as how Internet Explorer lost the consumer’s trust. Microsoft’s several failed attempts to buy Yahoo may have led them to do the rebrand.

Rumored potential names of the search engine reboot are Bing, Kumo and Hook. Both bing.com and kumo.com are already on the hands of Microsoft, while hook.com is still owned by another party. (more…)

Google is buggy right now. It even tagged itself as an unsafe website. Rumors have been spreading that the issue’s scope is worldwide — this I can’t confirm myself.

The bug shows up when opening an entry from the search engine results page.

Translation of the error above. Warning- visiting this website may harm your computer.

Late night yesterday, I happened to read something regarding an National Telecommunications Commission proposal on the Guidelines on the Provision of Contents, Information, Applications and Electronic Games [copy thru Google cache]. I tried to read the text of the said proposal and I find it kind of vague. The following are my views and interpretation of the text.

One of the goals of the proposed guidelines is to encourage and facilitate the development of contents, but I think not. The following are my views and interpretation of the said text. I am not claiming that my interpretation is right; feel free to read the full text and correct my interpretation.

A License is required to

Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Providers, Contents Developers, Information Sources, Applications Developers, and Electronic Games Developers are required to have commercial presence in the country and shall secure Certificate of Registration (COR) from the Commission.

• post a picture on Friendster, video on Youtube, music on Imeem and the likes. The said proposal defines content as all types of contents delivered to/accessed by the users/subscribers such as music, ring tones, logos, video clips, etc.
• create a website, web application, SMS gateway and the likes that provide information such as board exam passers, news, maps and other useful information. The website/web app/SMS gateway all falls under their definition of application while the information delivered by the application falls under their definition of information. My SMS Plurk notification falls under this one.
• blog, plurk, twitter or post any content online. The vagueness of their definition of contents developer is hilarious. The text defines contents developer as persons or entities creating contents.
• web developers and programmers who create web applications, SMS gateways and the likes to distribute content or information. Does this means schools need to have license to post admission test results online?

Requirements, Prerequisites and Fees for Application

The application shall include valid registration from the Security and Exchange Commissions or from the Department of Trade and Industry, [...] facilities lease agreement with duly enfranchised and certificated public telecommunications entity. (see full text, cache) [under item B]

The following fees and charges shall be imposed. PhP 300.00 filing fee, PhP 6,000.00 registration fee,  [...]. (see full text, cache) [under item B]

Enough said by the excerpt. Does this mean I have to register my blog (community) as an entity to the Security and Exchange Commissions or as a business (advertisement space) to the Department of Trade and Industry? Woah, freaky!

Conclusion

Interestingly (as noticed by Codamon.com), the online document’s file name is electronicgames.html. Another thing, the guidelines and provisions doesn’t have item C. No idea if the hardcopy has it.

I don’t think the proposed guidelines and provisions are ready. Most terms were defined vaguely and may cover entities that aren’t supposed to covered.

Feel free to read the full text and discuss your views or correct me.

Related reads on the blogs:

• Philippines to require license to post content | The Mike Abundo Effect
• NTC requires license for Pinoy online content creators | Pinoy Gaming, Babes & Anime Blog Philippines by Kiven
• NTC Memorandum – 22 December 2008 Draft_analysis

The recently-installed Internet access in the dorm has brought much fun and comfort for all of us. Before, we had to go to the University Computer Center to access the Internet. Worse, it was not available on Sundays, and was only accessible till 7pm for the rest of the week.

This evening, Jeff of the adjacent room tried to google my given name, Conrad Miguel. The results page was filled by pages and profiles made by me. I got excited when he told me about an article by someone with my name on it.

I am Now a Web Celebrity

It was a blog post from my blockmate Nathan, titled “Kakalase ko si CatWoman, si Conrad Miguel (the Web Celeb), nakita na namin si “Sarah”, at naligaw ako sa CS subject ko” posted last June 14, 2008, start of the school year. It shared Nathan’s experiences in his first days in college. Here’s an excerpt from his blog:

Kaklase ko rin si Conrad Miguel. Well, di siya artista, cguro di nio xa kilala, ako, di ko xa kilala dati, pero nung sinabi ng prof namin na blogger xa, at nalaman kay michelle na WEB CELEB xa, nagulat ako. He pays his own fees sa server nia, and ang laptop nia, SWIVEL lang naman.

I did not expect that someone would actually blog that I was his classmate. Moreover, I wasn’t expecting that there were people who considered me as a Web Celebrity – but they did. This reminds me of my first day in CS11 (my major class) when my CS11 instructor recognized me right before I introduced myself to the class. Pretty cool, eh.

Reading the article drove me to look for more articles. Here’s another interesting one.

This Blog has a WikiPilipinas Article

Cool! WikiPilipinas is a Philippine-centric encyclopedia in wiki format.

Who would expect that my website would have an article there? Most of the contents of the article, though, came from my very own about page. It’s sort of outdated ’cause according to the article I am still an incoming freshie in UP Diliman.

I’m tempted to share more, but I guess I have to limit it. Here’s the last one.

People talked about me on forums, at least once.

Honestly, this one was caught my attention the most. One blockmate of mine and other members of the CandyMag forum talked about me and my attendance in class. My blockmate was sharing on how stubborn I was back then; on skipping my Math class and on how late I entered the same class (entering a 10:00 to 11:15 class 15 minutes before dismissal). Some people even asked if I passed the subject which I did.

Just a defense, despite my stubborneity (for sure, such word doesn’t exist but I know you know what I mean), I still manage to get concerned on my grades.

Conclusion

And that’s me on the World Wide Web. Have a nice week!