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  • jbbuena 4:39 am on May 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: WordCamp, WordCamp Philippines   

    I’m Joining WordCamp Philippines! 

    IT’S official. WordCamp Philippines is slated for September 6 at the College of St. Benilde, Taft Ave., Manila. The event is being organized by the same team that made the 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit possible last year.

    It’s quite hard to believe how just when I started fiddling with WordPress sometime during the first week of May, news came out a couple of days later as to the possibility of hosting the country’s first WordCamp. I’m giddy to go but perhaps it’s better if I douse my hopes a bit just in case it doesn’t live up to the hype I’m subconsciously building in my mind.

    What I had in mind was a bit of greens and outdoors just to make the place conducive enough for learning and writing (Ateneo would have been it *hint*). Then again, internet connection is more a priority than ambiance, of course. With the venue decided, I just hope the event will lean more towards end-users with just enough of a side dish to make your average developer happy.

    So if you’re interested at all in coming, gear up your laptops. 9/6 is a date!

    IN other news, happy 5th birthday WordPress! Too bad the San Francisco party is on the other side of the world and there’s no way to get this penniless ass over there.

    Update: The list of sponsors has been updated and from the looks of it, it’s going to be a big thing.

     

    • Blogie Robillo 6:13 am on May 28, 2008 Permalink

      Nice post! Thanks for the links.

      Hmmm… you want WordCamp to be held at the Ateneo although you’re from La Salle. And I’m from the Ateneo and yet I’m bringing the event to La Salle… :D

      Fear not, we’ll try to make WordCamp live up to everyone’s expectations! See you in September.

    • jbbuena 6:22 pm on June 1, 2008 Permalink

      @Blogie Hah! The reason I made this post was because I read on the Sponsorships page that only those who made I’m Joining WordCamp Philippines! entries will be given the camper’s badge.

      For the record though, that was my first comment from a non-bot. Cheers! And thanks for dropping by! :)

    • MiGs 10:55 am on July 23, 2008 Permalink

      Thank you for registering for WordCamp Philippines!

      You will be receiving your camper pass via email soon.

      For updates, please visit http://philippines.wordcamp.org
      and/or subscribe to its feeds: http://feeds.feedburner.com/wcphils

      See you in WordCamp!

      MiGs
      on behalf of WordCamp Philippines Organizers

  • jbbuena 5:10 am on May 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Getting Cozy with Disillusionment 

    I think I might just be turning into some Tim O’Reilly clone. A bold–even conceited–statement, but nevertheless not so far from the truth. That is, I’m getting a degree in literature and probably end up working with computers.

    I initially started college with a career in the field of electronics and communications in mind but I spent the entire first year reading trash novels so much that I managed to convince myself a year later that I was meant to be a literature/English/creative writing major. And I did. In retrospect, what I think really happened was a sort of rebellion against my parents whose plans, though well-meaning, were nevertheless theirs and not mine.

    Five years into the literature program, I realized most of these people are pretentious wankers who like having their egos stroked. It’s quite sad how they take so much pride in getting their works published yet fail to see how meaningless it actually is no matter how witty or educated.

    I’ve never been so disillusioned as when I have to deal with their academic elitism. They give so much praise to literary works critical of human condition when they can never be more out of touch with reality themselves. These hypocrites confine themselves within their walls with their pen and paper, avoiding any contact with the dirty, the perverse, and the uneducated. And by virtue of association, I feel like an accomplice to this unfortunate ignorance. It is a denial that nobody inside ever talks about in the same manner they keep their antagonisms against each other buried under their friendly faces. Fuck them!

    Last Friday, I told my parents how I want myself in again on their initial plan. I’m going right back into engineering when I get my degree. Too bad I have until then to say good riddance!

     

  • jbbuena 11:59 pm on May 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: gallery, photos,   

    WordPress 2.5 Gallery Feature 

    I literally spent all of yesterday gushing over photos from various WordCamps Matt had been to these past few months so that my usual 8 a.m. bedtime somehow pushed itself all the way to 1 p.m. Yes, I’m nocturnal and I don’t have a life.

    The guy is living the life I want. Damn him. I’m green with envy. :(

    Anyways, I figured I’d give the gallery feature a shot. Looking at his photos made me want to own a Nikon D3, but seriously, who would spend $4,999 on a camera?

    The following photos are taken from when Carlos, Kim, Maui, and I went to see Cloverfield when it opened in theaters last January.

     

  • jbbuena 4:01 pm on May 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: World of Warcraft   

    Two Weeks After World of Warcraft 

    The crying peon

    When I impulsively decided to make a career out of blogging two weeks ago despite a tugging awareness that it’s not going to turn out the way I planned it in my mind, I quit my other addiction: World of Warcraft. I remember quitting twice before but in both instances, either the withdrawal was too strong or I was simply too weak not to yield to pitying the crying peon on the Cancel Subscription page.

    The first quit lasted for about two hours. Upon canceling my subscription, the next hundred and twenty minutes were spent thinking about the friends I have in the guild and how they’d fare in Karazhan without their top hunter to help with crowd control, and making elaborate entrepreneurial plans of monopolizing the adamantite market in the Auction House so I could get the 5000g I needed for my epic flying mount training. Fortunately, my second quit during the last week of October 2007 didn’t become quite a withdrawal disaster as the first. Only this time, I managed to protract all the same ideas for one week before I went back to renew my subscription.

    When I quit two weeks ago, it was partly because I wouldn’t be able to literally afford another miscellaneous expense after the web domain and the web host. Ergo, my credit card eating another $15 a month for WoW is gluttony.

    What really pushed me to leave the game, however, were the insensitive people in the guild. Hut & Spicy isn’t really accommodating to newcomers. I’m fairly new to the Kil’jaeden server to which I transferred, along with a couple of friends, upon invitation of HnS’s guildmaster for the reason that there is a much solid Filipino population there, Alliance-side, than the server I’m from.

    What he failed to emphasize was how most of the veterans in the guild are just plain immature and hard to deal with, and the guild officers are terribly apathetic. I could hardly believe this puerility comes from twenty-something professionals, some of whom are already married.

    I remember I was once told to shut up in /gchat for the reason (if you can call it that!) that I didn’t have a raiding spot and therefore, I earn no right to communicate. It was meant to be halfway somewhere between a joke and the gentle sarcasm you associate yourself with newbies to establish your authority but how the guy said it was nowhere near polite. He ended up getting a spot on my /ignore list, though not without us throwing shit at each other.

    I’m sober for a straight two weeks now after finally cutting it cold turkey. It’s hard getting clean and the prospect of going back to the game is always on the horizon each time I wake up but from the quitting WoW stories I’ve read online thus far, looks like I have a bumpy road ahead of me–for the next few months, at least.

     

  • jbbuena 5:01 pm on May 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Google Adsense   

    Blogging 101: The Downside of Starting from Scratch 

    This website is beginning to be a thorn on the side.

    My primary concern for leaving the confines of developer-hosted blogs is the enormous monetization potential of affiliate marketing, contextual advertising (Google AdSense comes to mind), and pay-per-click marketing–all of which I’m not the least familiar with until a week ago. In fact, I barely even thought it possible for me to single-handedly build a website from the ground up.

    Various informative articles scattered online managed to get me through all the preliminary obstacles of setting up a website but newbies seem to have a way of attracting new and difficult problems along the way. As I have mentioned before, I don’t have previous knowledge about any advanced programming languages except for the elementary HTML I gleaned from my Livejournal days (even that, is a bit shaky). It is quite understandable therefore why I find myself struggling with layout designs and feeding on free WordPress themes from generous designers online.

    The real problem, however, is not in the technical aspects of developing a blog so much as generating internet traffic your way. I’ve set up some trial ads from AdSense but of course, there isn’t anyone around to visit the site and do the clickity-clicks.

     

    • Mikko 12:05 am on October 6, 2008 Permalink

      Uh, emo. Sige, visit ako sa blog mo from time to time.

  • jbbuena 12:24 am on May 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Digg, Philippines   

    Gay Bigfoot & the 7 Weirdest Mythical Creatures in the World 

    I came across this post on Digg early this morning when I was randomly browsing for interesting headlines for a good coffee substitute. I didn’t know whether to feel proud that the Philippines snagged two out of the seven not-so-coveted spots for weirdest mythical creatures; but I guess it’s still good publicity.

    Strangely enough, the tikbalang is gaining popularity and has managed to amass a fair share of international audience. One minute they’re living deep in the forests, next thing you know they’re rocking cyberspace.

    Every country has its own version of Bigfoot. Some are terrifying, some are awesome, and some are just plain ridiculous. We’ve found the seven creatures that manage to be all three.

    read more | digg story

     

  • jbbuena 7:08 am on May 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anti-virus, AVG, Windows Vista   

    Thoughts on AVG8 

    Last April 24, AVG released the 8.0 free version of their popular anti-virus so I was forced to update the ever-reliable 7.5 expecting that AVG found a way to top 7.5′s performance and efficiency. AVG8 promises both basic anti-virus and anti-spyware protection, combining two previously separate programs in a single interface.

    Just recently however, I upgraded my operating system from the stable XP to the not-so-stable Vista despite the generous caution against Vista people have been handing out to likely candidates who are willing to take the bait. Needless to say, the new AVG8 didn’t quite make an impression on me as I failed to try it out due to compatibility issues. I was getting an application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect error. The installation files said that it is compatible with Vista but it didn’t explicitly say Vista SP1. Makes me wonder if I’d ever encounter the same problem at all if I chose to hang on to XP.

    It could probably be a faulty version or installation of a Visual Studio update, though. I’ll try removing the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable, revert back to the 2005 Redistributable, and see how it goes. Meanwhile, I’m using avast! and it’s doing really great I might consider sticking to it if I don’t get AVG to work.

     

  • jbbuena 10:11 am on May 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    How WordPress Got My Writing Groove Back 

    It’s a little late for spring cleaning but I decided it’s no use waiting for next year just to sort things out. It’s official: I’m moving to my very own domain and leaving my LiveJournal account for good. Yes, jbbuena.com is going to be my new home.

    For some strange reason, I woke up last Tuesday morning feeling a very strong urge to write although I didn’t find the time to because there was too much sun outside. Nevertheless, I spent the entire day reading news items and blogs, hopping from one link to another until I found myself overcome with the great possibilities the blogosphere has to offer those that actively pursue it.

    Later on, I realized most of these sites are published with WordPress so I went on to download it expecting I would soon be installing a desktop client from which I can write and publish voila-style. Apparently, I was next to illiterate at pro blogging. The download gave me a couple of files that needed uploading to a web host–and I wouldn’t have known about that either unless I Google-ed “WordPress installation.”

    Soon enough, I was reading everything about buying web domains, web hosting, name servers, a little bit of CSS, X/HTML, PHP, and mySQL, leaving the computer afterwards feeling I only understood about 10% of it. Experience, as they say, is the best teacher, so I braved the intimidating world (wide web) and went to sleep that night with a free domain and web host, and a functional but empty WordPress account.

     

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