random.links

iPod-ready jukebox...for $700 you can have the vintage look with modern features...or you can always buy a pair of Levi's with iPod support :)) (Thanks for the link Jhoe)

Ever wanted to retrofit a PC on your car?...The CarPC
Korea's Ever-1 Android and China's Rong Cheng...Inflatable dolls goes hi-tech? What happens if robots turn out to be sexy?

and finally, the reason why every city council needs at least one geek.

random.links

Voice wreckognition....Microsoft's voice recognition software is in a bad mood :D
What's wrong with the mouse and keyboard anyway?

Finally we have an excuse to knock our laptops :D

Eggs that tells you when its perfectly boiled...so what's next? chicken wings that flap when its golden brown?

The Airhockey goes hi-tech!

random.thoughts

Another successful GGD jammeeting was held last Monday (July 17) at the Elevation bar. Everyone managed to play their respective guitar pieces with barely a few mistakes…It’s a very interesting challenge guys and quite honestly forced me to pick a favorite musical piece and really learn it.

Two days after, we had a special jammeeting session at the Kanto Bar (MTS Davao) along with Joey Ayala and Cynthia Alexander! When I said I was hoping for bigger things for GGD I didn’t expect it to be that soon :D

A few days back our big boss entered the office and showed me her new Fujitsu Lifebook P1510, she needs me to basically transfer everything (well most of it) from her Toshiba Tecra M3 (lets just say that the M3 isn’t water-proof :D ). The lifebook is a nifty little ultra-portable notebook that is best described as an oversized Clie UX50 but with way more features. It sports a Pentium M 753 (1.2 GHz), 512mb of RAM and 30GB of hard drive space. It’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth compatible and with a little twist (literally twisting the LCD) it transforms into a tablet pc. All this are packed into conveniently light form factor. The only problem I have with it is the keyboard; w/c proves to be too small for my fingers, comparing it with my foldable PalmOne keyboard, the Lifebook’s keyboard leaves little to be desired. Other than that it’s a fine piece of hardware and you can really see how much effort was put on the design engineering of the Lifebook P1510.

Yesterday was my birthday (yay! to me) and wifey was bugging me to ask her for a gift, but then again I can’t think of any…the macaroni was more than enough, but give me time I’ll think of something (nyahaha). A few weeks back I sold my desktop PC and bought a brand new MSI megabook s270 from a friend, and I’m happy I did… I’ll be posting a review next time.

random.thoughts

My arms and chest are sore…that’s all I can say after yesterday’s gym session. May all this hard work payoff :D

The ixus err...the ixus replacement is back! I got a call from Canon’s customer service that a replacement unit has arrived (the model was not mentioned) and is ready for pickup. A few weeks back I bought a brand new ixus 800 from a friend who didn’t need it (a few thousand pesos cheaper than retail I might add). The ixus 800 is top notched in terms of features and quality, it’s the best digicam I’ve used to far and I’m pretty sure the ixus replacement won’t be able to top that. So anyone interested in a new ixus, give me a ring or message me. I’m very willing to sell it :D

A good friend and fellow GGD-mate, Jon Joaquin blogs about our recent Jammeeting. No amount of rain could stop us :D. We brought our guitars and played along backing tracks provided by Dante's T5

Thank you guys for coming, hoping for better things to come on the next meet

random.links

»» Extension phone. Wait till PLDT and BayanTel hears about this one :D
»» A new radar system than is undetectable when used , but will it detect this stealth plane?

can't.scratch.me

Once again I've been too busy to blog, well honestly I have a lot of “bloggable” experiences lately but the minute I try to write about it the whole essence of the story is lost. I guess I was in a blogger’s rut and needed a real vacation to change the routine. In fact I was on a vacation for a few days and snapped a few pictures that would be worthy of posting here. Once again I promise to post it on another blog :D

This morning I got an email from a reader asking about what happened to my iPod Nano and another one asking whether the Invisible Shield works as advertised. Sorry for my rather late blog guys, but I hope it helps in your decision to buy one.

Let's start with the iPod Nano. I own a 2GB model and bought it from a local-based online trading site. I got it cheap, along with a crystal case, 3 earphones and a charger. The nifty player works like a charm and my only complaint is that it scratches easily (not to mention the whole metal backside was full of scratches when I acquired it).

I’ve read a blog where someone used a can of Brasso to remove the scratches, I’m pretty sure his idea worked except that in this country, I’ve yet to see a can of Brasso :D. So I searched for alternatives and like most Pinoys, settled for the lower priced, readily-available versions. I visited ACE Hardware trying to look for anything remotely similar to Brasso, unfortunately I never saw one. But a small vial of acrylic polish did catch my eye. I bought one and applied it on the nano without even thinking. The Php 80.00 polish was took take care of the minor scratches but took a considerable amount of time to polish. Back in my high school days, I used to shine my buckle with GLO metal polish, and it never failed to impress our training officers, so I thought “Hey, the backside is metal and it needs polishing, it just might work”. OK, I know I’m crazy for subjecting a $199 piece of equipment to corrosive substances but it worked! Btw, I’m not saying you go gung-ho and do what I did, All I’m saying that it worked for me, It might work for you but I’m not promising anything. I started with the metal backside, coated it with GLO and left it to semi-dry then started polishing using a soft cloth. It removed the dirt and grime and left the backside shiny and scratch-free. I did the same on the plastic side but this time using a 3M micro fiber cloth (readily available in HardwareMax @ NCCC mall hehehe plugging sir yet!). My theory is that the micro fibers are better at polishing the acrylic side since it does not retain dusts and other micro-abrasives. Repeat as necessary guys, once you’re done, put it in a dust free plastic container or a zip-lock it until you have your invisible shield ready.

For the second part of this blog, let’s look at the Invisible Shield, it’s a tough plastic material that’s thicker than your usual iPod screen protectors. Read the instruction manual carefully and make sure everything is ready before peeling it off. Make sure you are in an environment that is clean and dust-free because I’m sure you’d panicked the moment you see specks of dust on your nano. Btw, the plastic has to be immersed in water then applied to your nano, sounds crazy right? But that’s what the manual tell you and I suggest you follow it. Just make sure you don’t wet the interface ports and the audio output jack. More often than not, your first application usually is the best one. If you found yourself taking it out 4 times already it won’t get any better. The nice thing about the iShield is that it comes with a small vial of liquid that allows you to remove the shield if you’re not satisfied with how you applied it. My only gripe is that they should have included more of the liquid, because unless you have been doing this for quite some time, it might be pretty tough to install. The application is relatively easy, but it’s the specks of dust I’m more concerned about. But here’s a tip (one that I’ve been using for my PDAs) if you run out of that bundled liquid, Mix semi-cold water and a glass cleaner (etc. gleen or kiwi glass shine), and use that instead. Once you’re satisfied use a credit card to force the extra water/fluid out. Target the big air bubbles first; the smaller ones will usually go away in a day or two. Leave the unit alone for 24hrs, yes it’s a sad feeling when you can’t use it for next 24hrs, but trust me, you don’t want to mess with it while it’s wet. After 24hrs you’d notice that your iPod is still alive and the click wheel still functions the same, but this time you can attempt to scratch it with a coin or your keys and you’d be happy to know that the shield does its job quite beautifully. So buy yourself a pizza and celebrate, or better yet buy ME a pizza so I can celebrate with you. :D

scratch.me.not!

I just got the Invisible Shield from Sharlene this morning (thanks Sha!), the supposed military grade protection for helicopter blades, is now made available for the iPod..now that’s TOUGH!. She was also generous enough to include a vial of iClean cleaning solution with it.



Looks like I'll be able to restore the Nano to its former glory after all :D
But with the ixus gone, I won't be able to snap pictures of the whole process. I'll let you guys know if it really works on my next blog. Let's see if their "Pay once, protect forever" tagline holds true.

out.with.old.in.with.the.new

Two new "versions" of uber techy tools were released this week and I'm starting to drool, so please feel free to visit the links while I wipe my office table dry :D

»»Treo 700p. And I thought Palm was dropping PalmOS. No GSM versions as of the moment, I guess I'll have to wait a little bit longer...better form factor, 1.2 Bluetooth and 128mb RAM...gotta have one
»»MacBook. The iBooks replacement sports a dual core Intel processor, is available in jet black and can run windows XP hmmm could it be that Apple is releasing a Dell notebook? :D

And for those of you who are virtually clueless regarding the difference between a PC and a Mac visit this link »»Mac TV Ad

ixus.goes.bye-bye

Yesterday, wifey woke me with sad news...our digicam (Canon SD110 Digital ELPH aka ixus IIs), the first gadget that wifey and I bought after we got married, has finally given up. A few weeks back I did notice some partial color casts which I manage to solve (temporarily) by doing it the old fashioned way...the ever reliable "beat the hell out of it!" approach, or in this case shake it up a bit till the lines clear. Of course it never really works, but that’s how we’d tend to do it when we’re frustrated at any gadget that doesn't work right? I had a hunch something’s wrong with the camera’s CCD chip but its almost 3yrs old and already out of warranty. The repair is definitely going to cost me.

To avoid unnecessary guesswork we took it to a local Canon dealer and have it checked, to my surprise the store manager told us to take it to their service center ASAP. Hmmm…something is definitely wrong but he’s not talking. These days all the answers you’ll ever need can be found by googling it.

So let see what Google found out »»bad CCDs and this

I guess I was semi-right, it was at least CCD related, no one is confirming it but the evidence points to the package type used for those CCD. Its cheap and as expected turned out to be sub-standard. Initially, I was a bit irritated that the cam needs to be repaired I am a Canon fan and I’ve always thought they made the best digicams, but the Canon shop was quick to point out that in case they won’t be able to repair it (which they probably won’t) they will replace it with a new one or possibly a better model. I talked to a few “victims” and they told me Canon will replace it with an ixus i zoom. I’m not complaining till I get my hands on it. And if it sucks I’ll blog about it :D.

But I’m quite happy how Canon handled the problem, they could have simply told me the item was out of warranty but they offered to repair it or replace it if need be. Let’s see how thing turn out in a month’s time.

random.links

»»flashbag ."The size of the device changes depending on the amount of data it holds." interesting, except that your officemates will now have a clear idea how much porn you're carrying :D
»»Ron Mueck's sculpture rocks! This is what you get when you mix Jim Henson and Da Vinci.
»»3rd Grader changes Apple's policy. Yeah!
»»Patent for virtual displays for inputting characters and symbols on mobile phone. Will it fly?
»»Robot give's birth. Shouldn't they make a Dad-bot that faints when the baby-bot comes out? :D
»»Beolink Wireless. Bang & Olufsen for my birthday? I can always dream right?
»»Nice addition for your Frankenstein kit. Anything that runs on orange juice and soy sauce is fine by me!

lemon.drops

After subjecting myself to a weekend of another neuron hanging, brain bashing RPG session (topic: subfiles arrrghh!!!) the gods of IT were not finished. I got a call last Sunday (no rest for the wicked eh?) from IT branch support asking why they can't access the "Beast" (iSeries 825)...How the hell should I know? Its Sunday and I'm about to extend my blessings to an "inaanak", oh well duty calls. So I told the staff I'll be there in a few minutes. Fortunately I'm only about 4 blocks away from the data center, so I rushed to the place, secured the keys, opened the server room...and just when I'm about to turn on the monitors, IT support calls in and tells me the server is ok! Arrgh...*!@#$%^&*! Why can't the Beast behave for crying out loud. So I left without so much as a whim, thinking its over and spent the rest of my Sunday with Gavin and Wifey.
Fast forward a day after, its about 10am and I'm talking with the training staff, another call comes in informing me of the same problem as yesterday, so I grabbed my pc and lo and behold! I got a gazillion jabber messages all asking the same thing "what happened to the server?" at this point my mind was flying in all directions...did the apps failed?, did the subsystem die somehow? did it finally gave out after 3 years of constant pounding by ever demanding users? Nah it couldn't be, the Beast was built for this, its self optimizing; self managing and self healing...well apparently those attributes don't really apply this time. So I opened up the server room door, turned on the lights walked straight to the console PC to view a message I'd never forget..."CRITICAL STORAGE CONDITION EXISTS", I examined the system status and there it was in big highlighted letters "% system ASP used....99.7298"!

99%?!, it was just 73% the last time I checked, needless to say I was about to faint at this point, I'm sweating (in a freezing room I might add) and I'm having tunnel vision.
The Beast is definitely sick, I mean who wouldn't be? If someone forced feed you, you'd be sick too. But in this case its not food, (but I was very hungry at that point :D ) but a renegade file spewing gigabytes of info and choked the Beast's innards. How did I find out? Here is something you might be able to use yourself.

SBMJOB CMD(DSPFD FILE(MYLIB/*ALL) TYPE(*MBRLIST) OUTPIT(*OUTFILE)
OUTFILE(MYLIB/MYFILE)) JOB(MYJOB) LOG(4 0 *SECLVL) LOGCLPGM(*YES)

where:
MYLIB = library you need to check
MYFILE = output file to store the results

After the job finished you need to review the results by creating an SQL query using MYFILE. You could then sort the result by file size and find which ones are the largest. One thing you should remember, and probably what most iSeries admins forget is that the largest figures might not be the biggest ones in terms of space consumption. Also take a careful look at the bottom of the listing, assuming you sort then in descending order(large file sizes first), and find files with negative disk spaces. These files may be negative because they exceeded the figure allowed in the output file and may well be the one you needed to trim down.
In our case the unexplained system usage was due to two entries at the bottom list and a failure on one of the 15 hard drives. Fortunately the Beast healed the disk after I told it to (so much for self-healing). After backing up and purging the contents (which took about half a day!) the Beast slimmed down to 56%...and my blood pressure and heart rate when down as well :D

So where do the lemon drops (my blog title) fit in the story? I've consumed a pack of Orbit Drops(lemon mint) through the whole ordeal. Its sugar-free and quite relaxing in the mouth, so I don't have to clench my teeth so much every time I see the usage meter rising! :D
------------------------------------------------
A slew of Ajax-based calendars for you to try
»»Trumba, Kiko, 30Boxes, Yahoo! Calendar & Spongecell

random.links

»»On Target.One really smart way of preventing "spills" and improving "accuracy" :D
»»Case mods. Check out the Kana case

not.so.random.links

»»the iPod Hi-Fi is Time's gadget of the week. Nah, I'd pick my JVC component over this one
anytime :D
»»check out iPod's latest ad
»»WinXP on Mac. Now its the Mac's turn to be violated :D
»»Dual booting WinXP on the MacBook pro...and a nice video of the real thing!

Weekend.RPG

I haven't been able to program in .NET as much as I wanted to. I've promised myself a few months back to take it seriously and make "real" apps with it. But as of the moment I'm preoccupied with work and this weekend RPG sessions. No, I''m not talking about role-playing games nor am I talking about rocket propelled grenades. RPG in this case stands for Report Program Generator, the ever so popular programming language for the IBM AS400 /iSeries machines, the "Beast" preferred lingo :D

It’s a rather old programming language much akin to Cobol but a bit modernized to suite the evolving needs of the OS400 developers. I have a love-hate relationship with it. The IDE, if you could consider it as one, is extremely crude, confusing for novices and can be extremely frustrating to use if someone hasn't shown you how. Keywords and commands needs to be aligned to certain columns in order for the compiler to understand it. In the end you get a fixed-format and seemingly cryptic coding that more often than not results to a convoluted hodge-podge of spaghetti code. Check out the code below and you’ll get the drift.

0051.00 C                   EVAL      HLD_USER = $USER                        
0052.00 C                   IF        $USER = 'QSECOFR'                       
0053.00 C                   MOVE      '1'           *IN(33)                   
0054.00 C                   ELSE                                              
0055.00 C     $USER         CHAIN     EMPLYFL                            72   
0056.00 C     *IN(72)       CABEQ     '1'           END_IT                    
0057.00 C     STS           CABEQ     'X'           END_IT                    
0058.00 C                   EVAL      HLD_DEPT = DEPTCD                       
0059.00 C                   IF        DEPTCD = 'MIS' AND $USER <>   'RICH'    
0060.00 C                   MOVE      '1'           *IN(33)                   
0061.00 C                   ENDIF                                             
0062.00 C                   ENDIF                                             
0063.00 C                   MOVE      '0'           *IN(76)                   
0064.00 C                   IF        DSP_TEST = 'DSP'                        
0065.00 C                   MOVE      '1'           *IN(76)                   
0066.00 C                   ENDIF                                                                    

There is a way to overcome this problem, it’s a partial solution but quite helpful to improve your code, and I promise to post it on the next blog.

Code maintainability for RPG can very difficult that I’m quite surprised why even today these RPG codes still power the business applications that run on many AS/400 machines. Most banks still has an AS400 running at the back, and I know ATM machines uses an RPG based application for backend processing. On the other side, RPG can be quite interesting to learn. It makes you think, it encourages you to outline your program flow (because its not that easy to follow logic unless you’ve written it or drawn a chart), if wielded properly it can be a very powerful programming language that allows you to do just about anything on an OS/400 platform.

Now the obvious question is, is it worth learning? I can’t really give a good answer for this one because unlike most programming languages this one is very machine specific. You can’t run it on other OS simply because its not implemented anywhere else nor is there an emulator for it. But the bottom line is there is a growing market for new iSeries/AS400 developers. There is definitely a good opportunity for developers, IBM is not abandoning the system and companies are still using it, even Dole Philippines recently purchased one.

I’m fortunate that I’m given a chance to learn and use it. Training alone would cost Php 16,000 per module per person, that’s about a week of training and its not even available locally. On the other hand its also unfortunate that I’m killing my brain cells each Saturday to learn it, hopefully saving enough to last me another week. :D

So there i’ve blogged about whats keeping me busy for 2 months now. I’ll be posting RPG and CL (control language) codes and tips on my next blog. I’m currently working on a project that allows me to manage iSeries user maintenance using an external Windows application. I’ll post codes snippets based on the project to help out other developers that are caught in same predicament as I am. It’s a win32+CL code hybrid that’s quite useful for any iSeries administrator. I feel that I might help someone out there trying to learn the ropes as I am, and making sure that they don’t strangle themselves in the process. :D

new.year.new.gadgets!

Another year has passed, and I'm suppose to make a year in review blog featuring the best products to ever come out of 2005, But I guess everyone already did it so I might as well spare you the long read and blog about something else.

But what did I get for 2005? its a short list I guess but one I'm very happy about

1. Toshiba Portege a100 ( nice price)

2. Palm Tungsten T|5 + keyboard + Wifi Card ( nice discount)

3. SE K700i (nice trade)

4. iPod Shuffle (got it for free)

5. Desktop PC (rock bottom price)

6. Nvidia 6600GT (got it cheap)

7. Lexar Jumpdrive (thanks! especially the ***** heheheh)

8. Morris W-18 (It's a solid-top guitar not a gadget, but hey you can't blame me if I want it on my list)

As far as gear acquisitions are concerned I think I got what I wanted and maybe even more. And you probably know by now that I'm a cheapskate :D. So I'm looking forward to another year of cool gears at rock bottom prices.

But what is in store for 2006? A lot of surprises actually, the Treo700w is finally out, its a marriage of Palm's superior hardware and Microsoft's superior(?) mobile OS, but from the looks of things I'd still be lusting for a Treo 650. Apple's almighty Steve Jobs launched the Apple MacBook, sporting dual core Intel chips...yes boys and girls you read it right...Intel chips! no more PowerPC for the next generation of Mac users, so stop crying because hell didn't really freeze over :D

Frankly, I think its a welcome change, the new macBooks will be 4x faster and about an inch thin. The only drawback I guess is the absence of a 12” model (you just gotta love those ultra-portables). I'll leave you guys to read the specs because I'm pretty sure you'd be surprise at how powerful the macBooks has become and how cheap the older G4s will go( hopefully!) . Btw, the magsafe feature is a clever idea that only the guys at Cupertino could ever think of, how I wish my a100 has it too. Telecom giants Globe and Smart will be offering 3G this year, so expect an onslaught of mobile phones with model numbers that are too confusing to remember.

2006 will also be the year of web apps utilizing both .NET and AJAX ....finally the vision of a truly portable desktop can be realized. Visit www19.meebo.com and get a taste of what I'm talking about.