Oh Sisig!
Posted on August 28th, 2011 by Erin
Kay hirap mong gawin
Kay dali mong ubusin
Coke o beer bilang inumin
Puso’y lalong aatakihin.
Listening to BattleAxeNetwork podcasts in Android
Posted on August 1st, 2011 by Erin
I have started listening to the GoodTimesWithMo Podcasts for those dead-air moments during my every day travel/commute. The new Android phone provided a good vehicle for listening to the podcasts. Way better than my old (and stolen) Sansa Fuze. The people running the podcasts are pretty much iTunes-specific so here are the steps I did to have the podcasts ready.
- Install a podcast manager in your Android device. I use Google Listen so you can search and install it form the AppMarket or scan the QR code here:
- Go to the www.motwister.com site and copy the link to the Video/Audio podcast. I dont want my phone to get stolen so I use the audio link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/gtwm-audio. You can also get an alternative link via the www.battleaxe.network site but I will leave that exercise to the reader.
- Launch the Listen application and go to the “My Subscriptions” section.
- Tap on the “Add Subscription” button and enter the link to the podcast feed retrieved in an earlier step.
- Tap on the GWTM podcast entry, refreshing as needed, and tap+hold on the episodes that you want to queue.
- Once done, go back to the main screen and tap on the “My listen items”. Tap/play the podcast you want to listen to and it will start downloading.
Some tips and notes:
- Google Listen will link up with your Google Reader account. Well it did on my setup. Use a separate podcast manager if you dont want to do this.
- Listening to a podcast will buffer and save it locally. Each GWTM podcast comes at around 50MB so be prepared to wait.
- My trick is to start a podcast, then pause once it starts playing. Google Listen will keep on downloading the podcast until it completes.
- While downloading, I repeat the steps above for the succeeding episodes on the queue. Only one podcast will be downloaded at a time but the application will start the other “buffering” episodes once the current one is done. A nice activity to do before you sleep.
- Make sure you revisit each finished item and remove the local data to free up some more space for the next wave of episodes. Or buy a larger SD card.
- Google Listen doesn’t have the feature of preventing your phone from sleeping. In my experience this means the player will suspend after 60-90 minutes of inactivity.
- Google Listen also doesn’t yet have the feature of moving the local storage to another directory, or importing an already downloaded podcast.
Have fun. And also try Gabe Mercado’s Geek Chorus podcast from the BattleAxeNetwork.
ciao!
[TipJar] High and Snipe
Posted on June 23rd, 2011 by Erin
At work, the Windows 7 workstation we were given came with a Trojan-esque gift: several instances of wscript.exe are running at startup and uses all available CPU processing cycles. Killing them off does not show any adverse effects (yet) but the graphical way is a bit time consuming as the machine is already slow at this point.
Below is the quickest way to snipe these instances using the lowest memory-guzzler tool in every Windows arsenal: the command line processor window. The only catch is that the wscript instances would require the kill command to be executed from an elevated command prompt as the Windows User Access Control (UAC) is active.
1. Press the Window key to bring up the startup menu.
2. In the Start menu search box, type “cmd”. The first entry highlighted is the program entry.
3. Press “Ctrl+Shift+Enter” to run the command in elevated mode. If UAC is really running, a confirmation prompt will be displayed for the command line processor.
4. Invoke the command “taskkill /im wscript.exe /f ” to kill all running instances of wscript.exe.
5. To validate if there are still instances running, run the command “tasklist | find “wscript” ” (omit the first and last double quotes). Nothing should be shown.
The exercise above can be adapted to quickly kill some errant processes without going through the task manager or resource monitor GUI clients. Be careful in what you kill for it might bite back.
[UPDATE] A colleague,Ron Emil Castro, has provided this trick on combining both in a script that will load up with administrator privileges upon startup for Vista/Win7 machines.
- Create a batch script with the following code
CHOICE /N /C YN /T 15 /D Y
taskkill /im wscript.exe /f
The first command waits for 15 seconds to give the script enough time to run and the second kills it as specified in the script above.
- Open the startup folder by right-clicking on the Start->All Programs->Startup item then selecting the Open option.
- Create a shortcut to the batch script. Right-click on the shortcut and open the properties window. Select the “Run as Administrator” option under the Advanced section.
[UPDATE] The processes are because of an errant firewall checker script loaded by the domain policies. The alternate solution provided by the support team is to execute the C:\Windows\system32\wscript.exe binary and set the timeout to a low number (5 or 10 seconds). Use the recommendation at your own risk as this basically handicaps the execution of other scripts that would require more time than the set timeout.
Chicken all you can
Posted on June 11th, 2011 by Erin
Max’s Restaurant, which uses the slogan “The house that fried chicken built”, has brought back the unlimited fried chicken promo for a month. The promo starts on June 10 and will end after a month. This round is a bit pricier than the previous one (from 165 to 199), and will no longer be an all-day event but would be restricted to the 6pm-10pm slot. The package comes with a regular drink that can be converted to bottomless for Php25 more. Rice or roll will cost extra.
Neth and I were in SM Taytay at around 3PM today to do some groceries and ended up waiting for the promot to kick in. The queue outside of the Max restaurant started to form at about 5:45PM so I decided to fall in line. We got seated at around 6:15PM and promptly ordered for to chicken-all-you-can with bottomless Mountain Dew (of course) and 2 rice servings. I ended up with 1.5 servings of rice as Neth graciously gave half of her rice to me.
The chicken was as good as we expected although the refilling slowed down after the third piece. I guess that was the time when all of the tables in the place were now availing of the promo. All-in-all the slowdown and the checking of the crew asking if we want other stuff made us break the 20-minute barrier[1].
Overall, I had 5 pieces of chicken (roughly 1 whole chicken), 4 glasses of Mountain Dew, and 1.5 servings of rice. Neth had 3 pieces of chicken, 2 glasses of the Dew, and half serving of rice. Our total bill ended up as Php518. Not bad.
And some optional snapshots:
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BURP!
[1] For those who don’t know, scientific studies have shown that a person’s appetite lasts only 20 minutes after the first swallow. This is the reason why slowly chewing and eating your food can help in maintaining or reducing your weight as the food intake will be less.
Down to earth
Posted on May 3rd, 2011 by Erin
A small miscalculation made unconsciously and before I knew it the price is being paid in full. For a moment I forgot the key to happiness: lowered expectation.
The stress of the past few weeks and a string of events made me lower my guard for a bit. It allowed hope to sneak in unnoticed. I started raising my expectation and for a time it felt good. Then reality came crashing back in and I am scrambling to get hold of my previous position.
Lowered expectation is pessimism. Nothing is wrong with it. It was even stressed during one of the motivational lectures that I have attended. “Aim for the stars, and even if you miss them you will hit the moon.” It may look like looking at the glass half-full but it was already setting the audience for failure.
Tomorrow is going to be day 1 again of the journey back to my place of happiness. I need to re-learn how to lower down my expectations so that I will always be pleasantly surprised on any outcome that is other than what I am expecting. This is not going to be an easy journey as the taste of disappointment has a lingering effect.
Wat: You have been weighed.
Roland: You have been measured.
Kate: And you have absolutely…
Chaucer: Been found wanting.
William: Welcome to New World. God save you, if it is right that he should do so.Source: IMDB
