the boredom of ramfree17

• A SMS message flashing on a very early TV-Radio show:

  “Pakigising naman po si [] … ” (“Please wake up [name]…”)

  I am still wondering how mass media can do that to a sleeping person unless their TV/Radio has a programmable alarm and they have perfectly timed it that it will go off at the exact time that message was posted. It would have been easier to just call that person’s phone or somebody from the same household.

  Here is your card….

• A radio news anchor broadcasting the latest news about a potentially strong incoming storm:

  “May posibilidad na lumihis ang bagyo papuntang Taiwan. Magdasal tayo na sana lumihis nga at hindi na tamaan ang North Luzon.” (“There is a possibility that the storm’s path will deviate to Taiwan. Let’s pray that it will do so and miss the North Luzon area.”)

  I understand what the news anchor intends to convey but somehow the sequencing of the sentence was not right. Unless the $DEITY is the mischievous Loki, I don’t think it is right to pray that you pass on the suffering to your neighbor.

ciao!

Tags: Garbage, Humor, Top of my head by Erin
No Comments »

– The car owners from Green Ridge who turns left too early and hog the opposite lane of the Barkadahan bridge. I hope you have a worst day than I have today and for the rest of your $DEITY forsaken lives while you are inside any vehicle.
– The 3.5 hours commute to the office. We left at 5:10AM and arrived at 8:40AM.
– The Pasig rainforest route is still submerged in flood water. We can still see the water from the west bank of the floodway road.
– The cyclist who almost let himself get run over by a tricycle when he made an abrupt left to cross the street.The reason: some street vagrants are having an early morning drinking binge and they offered him a shot of Red Horse Beer.
– Pasig Blue Boys (traffic enforcers) who opened a counter-flow west bound but made sure those those came from under the Jenny’s avenue bridge would not be able to use it and get stuck in horrible traffic.
– Jeepneys, FX taxis and buses plying the Ortigas route who insists on weaving through the traffic and loading/unloading people in the middle of the road.
– Inconsiderate pricks who keeps on ejecting their sputum and saliva on the side of the overpass that I am using such that their bodily fluids are always aligned with my line of sight.
– The other inconsiderate prick who blew his/her breakfast on the landing of the said overpass.
– The bus driver from hell who drives pedal to the metal as soon as the last passenger steps on or off the bus. I know there are hand-rails but human beings are not designed to be standing upright when their inertia shifts from 0 to 40kph. Sideways.
– The $#@%# building administration who insists that sauna treatments are good for your health by making sure their ground floor hallways and elevators are a couple of degrees above the comfortable temperature.

And my work hours has only just started…

Tags: Garbage, Work by Erin
2 Comments »

Chin Wong echoed a Mozilla call to gauge the interest in creating a Filipino version of Firefox. As Chin has posted, the Firefox localization is not isolated to translation but the localization of the whole user experience. The question is if the Filipinos are going to be interested in joining this effort as localization is entirely a volunteer-based effort.

I have the same sentiment as Chin with regards to localization. The Filipino language is a romantic language that not suited for technical terms. I would hazard a conservative guess that at least 40% of the resulting translation is going to be a pidgin version where foreign terms without direct counterpart. For the rest will be some very deep Tagalog words that will not be appreciated by the masses unless they have a balarila ready at hand (online balarila, anyone?). Would you prefer reading a menu item labeled “Simulan|Umpisahan ang Pansariling Pagbabaybay…” or “Start Private Browsing…”. My translation may be poor but that is already a 15-character difference that will definitely be noticed.

Another point is that Filipinos in general are familiar with the English language. Another pompous guess from me would that a great majority 90-95% of Filipino Internet users are comfortable with using a browser using English menu items. The translation risk of introducing confusion due to the translated texts is greater than the benefit of using the English variant. Compound this with the risk that English-savvy support persons (cousins, child, grandchild, etc.) will be scratching their head on what the menu item in question is for.

With the other non-translation related customizations, I would rather have a firefox extension that does the internal reconfiguration seamlessly rather than messing up the standard Firefox UI experience.

Just an opinion on a middle-aged middle-class IT worker who hates the Tagalized cartoons and foreign tele-novelas and film shown in local channels.

$DEITY forbid that somebody starts using street slang and text-speak to fill in the void.

ciao!

Tags: Garbage by Erin
No Comments »

I normally don’t frequently check my balances as a Php500 load usually lasts me 6 weeks. If my load runs out earlier then I can easily get a load from the Internet (hint: if you are near me I can send eLoads ). I will be going to the province over the weekend wherein I have no reliable Internet as 3G/EDGE coverage in our Barrio is very spotty. I just found out that SMART has reformatted their balance SMS and it is way more informative than the old one which just contains the remaining balance and the time it was sent. The current format looks like this:

date/timestamp
Load Bal: P(amount)
Free Txt to
Smart/TNT:(amount)
Free Txt to all
networks:(amount)

Admittedly I would have wanted a few more information in there like the expiration but the current format will already run somewhere around 80 characters if the amount values are maxed out. I would assume that the carrier would want to keep the character count to the maximum allowed in a single SMS so I am already a satisfied camper. Kudos SMART.

ciao!

Tags: Garbage by Erin
No Comments »

Everybody said that if you want to get the most nutrients out of a fruit or vegetable then you should eat the skin, unless it is a hard/thick skinned fruit like coconut or watermelon[1] where we usually discard the skin and concentrate on the fleshy pulp.

I thought the same goes for the kalabasa (aka squash) until we saw last Saturday a cooking show in a channel we less frequently watch wherein Nova Villa said that the kalabasa skin should be left in the pot as it will soften enough to be as soft as the pulp. Our food today was ginataang jalabasa at sitaw (squash and string bean in coconut milk) so we tried leaving the skin on. The skin was suprisingly tender.

This is why it sometimes pay to watch channel surf and watch boring shows.

[1] Although I have seen a weekend morning show feature cook the watermelon skin being into a candy product.

ciao!

Tags: Garbage by Erin
No Comments »