Mount Wandering Geek, and A Wedding

First off, this deserves the first line of my post:
Congratulations Frank and Ria!
(sorry we didn't make it to the big day, both mommy Han and Sam were sick)

Mount Wandering Geek: It's a pretty steep mountain to climb, but I'm going on anyway. See you at the top!

First, a few milestones:

• Starter template. Hope i can improve on this along the way
  
• Powered by feeds! Two things to note: My linkblog feed and the Recent comments feed.
• LinkBlog - this is an agreggated content of the top 5 recent items in my Link Blog, powered by Google Reader's Shared Items. For those interested in my recent gold finds in the intarweb (hi angel) this is where the action is. Link to the whole link blog is also provided.
  
• Recent thoughts - from the most recent comments in my blog, so that you will know where the conversation is happening.
  
• A blog roll that is 80% done. Just the pisay contemporaries for now, the rest to follow.
• Ah, a link to my info page (powered by Google Pages). That page is already months old, now I'm putting it to use, though notice that the URL is still a remnant of my emelgeek days. That would change as soon as I get on working on the new one. For those who are interested in my current commitments, you can find in in my Info page. And that's all I can say for now.
  
• A link to my Link Blog, for the whole shebang.
• And the most important part of whole. One post a week. That's all i can commit for now, taking one step at a time.
  
• That's all. Happy New Year!
• Oh, one more thing, Just so you know, the whole time this blog is dead, I was lurking around your blogs, so i'm up-to-date with the recent happenings. Thanks to Google Reader.
  

Google acquires JotSpot

Hah! Now this is an acquisition that I'm really excited about....
Google just acquired Jotspot!

The Acquisition FAQ is available in Jotspot's website.

Jotspot is a company that provides a collaboration platform that is hinged on the concept of wiki. It's a very welcome addition to Google's growing arsenal of web applications for office and collaboration.

If this doesn't send the message loud enough that Google is serious in the web-native Office, i don't know what will.

[update: added a brief summary bout Jotspot]

Lesson #1

In migrating your gmail identity.

Autoforwarding.

My currently active Gmail handle has been with me for a while now, but i use it merely for professional / formal correspondences. So the way I did it is to set up my multiple email accounts in emelgeek to be able to send using my (mark.gamis) identity. I then setup the latter's (mark.gamis) email forwarding to forward everything to emelgeek.

Then when i decided to start dumping my emelgeek account, i also set it up to forward everything to mark.gamis. But i forgot to turn off the forwarding settings in my mark.gamis account, so in turn i have set both inboxes to forward to each other. TF!

Now that answers the question that has been bugging my mind: Why on earth did people stop emailing me on the day that i decided to change handle? I was starting to think that changing handle was a bad idea... Sigh. I feel like an ass.

Pumpkin Sam

From Halloween 2006

emelgeek

It was originally emelgee, a derivative of my name's initials (Mark L. Gamis = MLG ="em" "el" "gee")
then Jasmin added playful twist to it - emelgeek, to somehow describe my then starting enthusiasm in technology. I think it was on her phonebook -- when i first saw emelgeek.

So emelgeek stuck, and became sort of my universal handle.

But things change, and sometimes you want to leave things behind and just move on. Nikki said in our conversation this morning (thru google talk, using my new handle of course, :P )
"sayang yung 'emelgeek' :P"

He was right, pero oh well.

The new handle? nothing could be more boring: my firstname and lastname separated by a dot.
(jumping in the bandwagon?) .

It's just my first day and it's not easy. The first thing i did was invite people again to my google talk. Nikki (of course) was one of the first to respond. But nothing can be more virtually depressing than an empty Gmail inbox and very few green dots on your Google talk friends list.

Anyway, why the change? Hmm. I was trying to think of something less destructive than deleting this blog (which is, btw, bound to be transformed anyway, when i have made the necessary things in transferring my blog) which is what i'm always tempted to do whenever things are not doing right..

But it's just hard to find the guts to delete a blog with posts that dates back to 2003. It's a part of my life's online history now, and it just didn't feel right deleting it.

So what's the next best thing to do? Create a new blog, select a new handle. Drop the old one.

How sure am i that this won't screw up my online identity for a while? 0%. Change has always been difficult. And no matter how much it sucks, it has to happen anyway.

So there, my little (but incomplete -- i feel so sleepy) story about my handle.

I will certainly miss it like hell, but it has to go... bye emelgeek. :) hello, boring handle.

A Story

Image from Gaping Void

Last...

There are wrong things thatI wish I never did,
and there are things I did that I wish were never wrong.

iTunes 7... Where's Piles?

Okay jut so we're clear, this post does not criticize the Cover Flow view of the new iTunes, but rather, the Album art list view. I think th Cover Flow UI is slick. The list view with Cover Arts is not.

I don't get it. Apple owns the patent for the Piles UI concept (demo, description) , one of the more novel ideas in UI that i know of, and they just let the perfect oppurtunity to showcase it slip away by not using some part of it in the newly-added Album Art View in iTunes 7.

Cover Flow in iTunes 7 - Cool



List View - Not Cool

And what adds to the weirdness is the fact that it's Microsoft (of all companies) who seems to be the one who's more serious in using piles (or at least a variant of it) in the form of Stacks in the upcoming Media Player 11.

Stacks in Media Player 11

In fairness to Apple's User Interface experts, i have no idea how the concept fared with the users in actual usability tests done by Apple.

Just wondering... why my list of songs are soo widely spaced when viewing artworks in iTunes 7 when i think that it could have been implemented differently...

Otherwise, iTunes 7 rocks, so far. :)

(Not So) Smart Mail

August 22, 2006 - Took a leave from work to process my Police clearance. Proud that i still get to enjoy the power of email with my state of the art nokia 1100 phone, i emailed my boss using smart's mobile email feaure to ask for permission to leave.

"Sir, i won't be working today because i have to process... blah blah"

August 30, 2006 one week later - In the office:

Boss: Sinong absent? May nagsend sakin ng email galing ata sa cellphone...

Holy shit Smart. One week? WTF! Dapat nagsnail mail na lang siguro ako.

Handle this...

I thought emelgeek is geeky enough for a handle...

This is what Gmail offerred me when i tried to create a new Gmail account:

emelgeekenator@gmail.com (cue music)

OMG... it's the emelgeekenator! Run!!!

Google Reader

For those who haven't discovered yet....

Google reader has a very slick way of navigating through your labels. Just type G and the starting letters of your label. :D Enjoy.

Bawal tumakbo sa Walkway

Last thursday, hinahabol ko yung closing time ng Bank ni Han, so tumatakbo ako sa Walkway (from Rufino papuntang Enterprise) nang biglang may guard na tumawag sakin...

Guard: "Bakit ka tumatakbo?"
Me: "Ummm, hinahabol ko bangko eh (glances at my left wrist kahit la akong watch, to gesture the time)"
Guard: "Bawal tumakbo sa walkway eh"
Me (in my mind): WTF? Bakit bawal tumakbo sa walk...? Oh.

Anyway tumakbo ulit ako after namin mag-usap.

Bookish Bimbo: Bring back the books

Bookish Bimbo: Bring back the books

:) It's nice to see this post, knowing that you haven't read a good one in a while. It's even nicer because now I know what to give you. heh.

Sam video

Sam....

Writer, Blogger and a few other stuff...

I am currently using Windows Live Writer to post this...

My blogging life is in chaos right now. There are many things that I have been wanting to do(change), like moving to wordpress.com, using my immortal handle as my blog url, making a new original template, promoting world peace, setting up a regular posting schedule, etc... But it's so hard to get started, and the fact that I have a regular day job now doesn't really help either. (I am not even supposed to be blogging right now, according to the guidelines i personally set..)

The fact that most of my friends (well, at least the blogging ones) are here in Blogger, and the mantra "if it ain't broke, don't fix" held me back from moving to WP. Though some people complain about how Blogger sucks, it surpisingly fits me just right. It's not perfect, but it's something that I could live (blog) without.

Which brings me to my next point: new blogger version!

Google is about to launch a new (and improved) version of Blogger, along with move to integrate users' Google and Blogger accounts.

At this point, only a few existing Blogger users are allowed to migrate to the new version, though if you really want to try the new bits, you can sign up (or just use your Gmail/Google login account ) to beta.blogger.com

Blogger buzz lists some of the notable new features here.

Back back back

Back from the dead,

just to vent out my frustrations (and one good reason at the bottom of this post) on my screwed up blogger template. Blogger has this annoying bug of clipping off the blog's template while you are saving/publishing some changes to it. I was trying to fix the botched up nav bar this morning when, during one of my save-publish routine I realized that my template got messed up, this time pretty badly. I don't know if i'll restore the old template but since I don't have it with me now (i'm on cel's pc), i will just use a new one. Stale content I can take, not a bastardized template.

And oh, it's Italy for World Cup 2006, but the real highlight was Zidane's headbutt(video). Wtf was that?

Btw, I stopped watching the matches when Brazil got dropped. Damnit...
--

And i finally got Google Browser Sync to work (dialup sucks). Ah... the convenience of not having to enter passwords again and being able to retain your history, cookies, and even opened tabs and windows, even when you're using another pc. (and the risk of someone else taking over your online persona. hehe). Seriously though, the idea of your browser's data (firefox) data following you wherever you go is much more convenient than it sounds.
--

Thanks for those who greeted baby Sam on his first birthday, and for those who came. :-) . Every birthday is special, but Han and I both agreed that next year's would be the first of many birthdays that will be very meaningful for our little family. As you know, when they first diagnosed Sam, the longest time that he was expected to live was 18 months. So next year we'll be celebrating the first of the many extra birthdays that he was given . Truly a milestone, truly a miracle of life. :-)

(Updated: added Google browser sync link)

...This is my techie blog.

The previous post was actually started as a distraction. This is what i originally intended to post.

I've been thinking lately to pull out my blog altogether. I don't know. Maybe when you want to start a new chapter in your life, you just want to get rid of the things that remind you of that particular chapter that you want to end, or maybe i just wanted to go away, and crawl back to my own antisocial cave. Had a serious heart to heart talk with Han about it (amongst other things), and i decided, to her prodding, to just go on a blog hiatus instead (though she wants to call it a sabbatical blog leave, heh). We've also analysed that maybe this is my own innermost urge to send a signal to the world that No, I am not ok. The tech-related posts are there because not because i have nothing else to blog about, but they are there because they are the only ones that I have to courage to blog about. I mentioned this before-- for every boring, techie content i blog about, there are hundreds of things bothering my mind that I don't. So this is it I guess, no more blogging for me, for a while. (I almost started my pullout last week actually, by deleting my comments on other people's blogs, bad bad, i know. Sorry)

But this is not all bleak, my dear 3 readers. You see, i have just updated my sidebar, and now it contains 3 dynamic lists, the most interesting i guess is the newest Recently, elsewhere section. Hah. I hope that gives you the reason to continue visiting this place, now that it also acts as your aggregator. :) (while you're still too lazy to set up your own).

Bye, for now.

The Sidebar

My sidebar has evolved from your default out-of-the-box blogspot sidebar to what it is now. Most of the time i spent fiddling it was to make it reflect more of my online existence. Also, a considerable chunk of of the effort was to make it as useful as I could possibly make it. It's in a form far from what i really want it to be, but it's a work in progress (albeit slow).

Partly inspired by Nikki's explanation of his blog redesign (also a slow work in progress, heh), Here's a quick list of what you can find on my sidebar, since it's length might have discouraged you (and the fact that our generations' attention span is really getting shorter each day) from fully utilizing its usefulness .

• Profile - The default blogspot profile block. Used to have a link to my technorati profile, but after doubting its usefulness, decided to remove it (might put it back later on though).
• Calendar - powered by 30boxes, a list of public calendar events that i remember to put on my online calendar.
  
• Previous posts - needs no explanation
• Recently, elsewhere - New! this is my dynamic link roll, the 5 most recent posts from my contemporary bloggers listed below. And yeah, powered by Google Reader.
  
• Contemporary bloggers - my list (a bit outdated) of fellow bloggers.
• Archives - dropdown list format, to conserve space.
• Photos - powered by Flickr . Most recent uploads to my flickr account.
• Bookmarks - powered by del.icio.us. List of sites that I find interesting. Arranged in chronological order as i bookmarked them
• Buttons
  
• Get Firefox with Google toolbar - I love Google, I love Firefox, and I love the idea that I might be able to make a litle money from promoting it. :)
• Add to Google - if you're using the Google reader or the Personalized Google Homepage, this button lets you add my blog to them.
• Add to My Yahoo - adds my Blog to your My Yahoo content aggregator
• Hopefully i can improve this particular part of my sidebar, until then, if you don't know my rss feed, just add /atom.xml to my blog url (this btw, works for all blogspot blogs with their feeds turned on)
  
• I power blogger. Licking the hand that feeds. hehe.
  

BackBlog

Stowe Boyd nailed what I think is the real big implication of what Gmail is doing in integrating Google Talk with Gmail.

"...Google is hastening the inevitable collapse of the Berlin Wall
between real-time communication (chat) and slow-time communication
(email)."

I meant to post this on the day Google integrated Talk with Gmail, then forgot about it in my local drafts. Since i don't remember what i was trying to say after this anyway, i might as well post it now. Now, because there are now too many good stuff piled in my to-blog list, i can't take it anymore.

First. (chronologically, as i remember it)
Google launched its web-page creator (pages.google.com), though i think they're suspended registration till now. This is one of the products that is aimed to pass the grand-ma test (my grandma can use it). Excellent showcase of AJAX stuff for the geeks, a super-easy to use tool for those mere mortals who just want to contribute to the world wide web of information pool. Check my test page. When Google pages opens up for larger public consumption, i highly recommend it for your family members, a very nice way to get them started in creating online content.

Second.
Ray Ozzie, the man who is behind Microsoft's efforts in being relevant again in the world of network computing, presented in Etech the idea of extending the idea of the clipboard in the web 2.0 context. Read more on his blog and this simple demo.

Third
Mike of Techcrunch.com presented the screenshots of the upcoming (i hope soon) CL2, Google's Calendar. I've been using 30Boxes for the past weeks as my main online calendaring app, but Google's offering just blows 30 boxes away. I've never felt this urge to become a beta tester again since Gmail launched.

Fourth.
Writely, a web-based word processor, gets acquired by Google. Nothing surprising here, but still, it's very exciting to hear this development. More on the Google blog and Writely blog.

that's all for now. Links coming later.

A Picture

speaks a thousand praises. Sam, growing stronger...
Thanks for the prayers and the support guys. :D