Web Dev Matters and Me

Trading Status - Week Ending 01-27-2012

2012-01-27T06:44:00.000-08:00

... this week was really exciting and full of surprises. As people have seen LC/B sunk in dips, it recovered easily from 1.8 to 1.87, that gave a big profit already for those who are into short term with LC/B.

Funny here that, PX shares have matched although the display didn't update, or am I lucky at getting these views? hahaha. Just by one look, we can see that Philex Mining (PX) are in bullish trend which could last for months. I think this is a good entry point for those who are planning to buy, before the 4th quarter press release (or I should say, Praise Release) gets into news, as it will push the price even higher. Caveat for this and decide at your own risk :).

Nihao (Ni) on the other hand seems very volatile and too risky to touch. Just for fun, I invested small amount of money here, at the time of writing this post and at 4 days holding, I'm only at less than 200PHP loss :D, but I would prefer to buy Philex than this one. RSI for this is really telling us, that it is oversold. As expected of a JAP stock and one of the best jock player in PSE. (be warned)

Jollibee (JFC) and Universal Robina (URC) are both food stocks I'm eyeing at 89.5 and 50 respectively.Jollibee ended at 96 today in consecutive 2 day bull and URC too at 53.6.

Utility stocks are also great. Meralco (MER) was on the dips yesterday at 263 and closes at 274 today. that's almost 5% in just a day. Manila Water got me interested that it moves with less volatility but with less gain. Still, I think this is good because it has less risk compared to reward you can get. Utilities, especially MER is great, since it is a monopoly in Philippines and everybody need these utility companies.

Also, for those who are hearing market rumors, please do your homework and verify if the source is credible. I've heard rumors from a forum I'm in. This guy always post charts about PX and says it will go up, as shown in the charts he post. But as soon as PX hits 24, he sold all his position then said that it will go down back to 23... Who is his buyer?? His believers... poor believers, there is a book called "Technical Analysis for Dummies", yet they fall prey to the false prophet....

Today is friday night and I might get out somewhere to enjoy my small gains in trading :D

Enabling MS Office Application in Silverlight

2012-01-26T08:05:00.000-08:00

I had this task of making a proof of concept sample that will allow users to use the User-Rich text editor Microsoft Word.

It is really challenging, since working with those object are not something we can do in a jiffy , well at least for someone like me who rarely do MSWord macro things.

Reading thru API and using the new features of C#4.0 thru dynamic types, I'm able to design and implement a class library that can simply use MS Word and perform saving to database. It involves checking MRU and also subscribe to events of the MS Word Interop object.

Since it is in Silvelight, data access and operations should be thru WCF. I completed the solution, and only later figured out that my ADO.NET class won't work in silvelright.

(x_x) <= sick due to stress

I wish I can gamble, so I can have a chance for you..

2012-01-22T06:56:00.000-08:00

I'm enjoying (or enduring) a look weekend now, thanks to the current administration who declared "Chinese New Year" a special non-working holiday. Although it was good for my tired body, it is torment for my mind, as PSE is at holiday too (-_-;).

I'm loaded with things to do. I'm working on my website, and just considered to make it a little bit dependent to file system, since I won't be paying extra bucks for server power. At times, I would take time to step out to gym, train a little sweat-break exercise and sweat more in sauna and take hot shower afterwards.

Stock-wise, I unloaded my PNB for 64.2. I bought it for 59.5, which gave me about 8% of my capital (around 2-3 weeks holding period). I'm still holding LCB, altough it is already giving me an eyesore @ almost 5% loss.

NI is tempting, but that's what we can expect to a JAP stock, the strings are attached to the best jock player in PSE. It went from 5.5 to 6.67 in a day, even with high RSI. In short, it was too hot to handle.

Keeping my LCB loss, I decided to buy PX which just breaked the triangle. I'm expecting this stock to trade soon at 27-30 level (current was 23.1).

PD : 80% in PX, 20% in LCB.

Bloody 13th of Friday (01-13-2012)

2012-01-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

As I've got myself a good position on some of my lists, today was a bearish trade day. PNB was still good at 63.9 until somebody dumped at 63.2, but I believe PNB will move up, since the PNB-Allied Bank merger is still on early stage and might hit trade price of 70 soon. Mining was also hit today,and I would like to mark these prices because we might never see them again next week, after LCB breaks 2 TP. Unfortunately, the local share LC has strong resistance around 1.79-1.82 price. :(

Meralco seems to have good support and when it traded at 257, I'm pretty sure that it was just a test of support.

Seems like new HIs will be recorded on monday.(^_^)

Investing More Fun in the Philippines (^_^)

2012-01-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

After months of researching, reading technical analysis books and some experience, I'm fortunate enough to learn trading. (^_^).

The market saying about "Don't touch what you do not know" is true. There were times that I've made some mistakes in trades, like buying when the news already is out and the buyers on rumors stage are already enjoying their gains. I've also made mistake by selling prematurely and also left my sell order only to find out that the stock price have gone really higher.

Although, there are times that I buy on HI, most of my buy now are on LOW or at least below the median of the range. So far, at the time of writing this post, I haven't made a big loss. Probably my biggest loss in trading was -5% and that provoked me to learn how to cut my losses, though it is hard.. but it is a MUST in every trader... Although I may have gained more if I only knew how to cut losses back then, the experienced I gained is priceless.

I'm able to develop a small web app that helps me decide my trades. By reading technical analysis books, I just made some algorithm to detect patterns in the trade price. Sure, traders would say that they like to see graphs, candlesticks, etc.. but we can also use the numbers and have some codes to alert us of the trend or reversal.

So, for now.. I'm enjoying my gains... I'm not an expert trader, but my skills will help me to do a good trade. (^_^). I'm not still up to play basura stocks, but will consider someday..... I'm still happy making myself busy at work and investing my money.

C# Code Optimizations

2011-12-04T05:22:00.001-08:00

Today, I asked few developers from a forum(S.O) about some conversion. On my post, I said my need to get the data by performing bit shifts instead of divisions. Though, most of the people there suggested that it is not something that can improve optimization, I strongly disagree.

So, to make an experiment.. how about trying to make two Stopwatch objects ..

on the method that will be executed, initialize an instance, then invoke the Start method. just below that have a loop that performs 10000 times and inside this loop, perform a multiply operation.

After it exits the loop, invoke the Stop method.

then, on the next line, initialize the second Stopwatch object, invoke the start method and have a loop that performs 10000 times and inside this loop, perform a division operation.

after it exits the loop, invoke the Stop method of this object as well...

You can see the difference by checking on the ElapsedTicks of the Stopwatch objects.. I'm sure you now know what I'm talking about (^_^)

Getting reference to Controls in Lightswitch

2011-11-23T08:38:00.001-08:00

While trying something in Lightswitch, we encountered a problem that involves using different controls (non-default), like Textbox,Stackpanels, etc. Now, the problem is, the data that will be displayed using those custom controls are not really part of the actual data model.

getting reference to the name and simply perform casting to the right control type can't give us the desired result, (using the FindControl method which accepts a string parameter, the name assigned to the control).

Instead of boxing it to the right type, we should handle the "ControlAvailable" event, and perform boxing on the

Control property of the passed arguement.

Lightswitch is new (at least to me), but I'm glad that I'm able to share a bit about it.

To Cache or Not To Cache - ASP.NET

2011-11-20T05:10:00.000-08:00

I've recently implemented caching on some pages of my website. But it seems that caching won't help much because it is hosted on a shared server. While the page will be optimized using the cache, it can also be a reason to hit a 503 very soon, especially if caching is implemented with varying parameters.

But when should we use caching? I think caching can only solve scenarios to lessen the delay of serving resources to client browsers, instead of having a direct query to resources per request.

For example, I need to display data from database that takes about 1-2 minute query. This data can just be cached to have it served right away. But also, we should keep in mind that, if we put this on cache, we are putting these on memory..... and these memory takes a portion of the application pool's resource.

So, it is important to consider what to cache, and if the server (app pool) can cache.

Philippines amids issues, calamities, etc.

2011-10-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

After recent typhoons that hit Philippines, we're still experiencing slightly depressed weather and also moods. Just by looking at the news, we can see the damages these recent typhoons have left, especially in Agriculture businesses. It seems like typhoons get a little bit devastating over years, it was 2 years ago since we got hit by Ondoy (Intl' name Ketsuna), and now we had Pedring (Nesat), which is followed by two typhoons (Quiel and Ramon).

I'm writing this again on a sleepless night, and recalled a conversation with my two co-workers. we discussed about the recent rallying (planking) by jeepney drivers association, who did a mass, metro-wide strike in an effort to ask for higher fares fee and lower gasoline price. Sometimes, I'm getting sick of hearing the same stuffs where they don't care about the aftermaths of their doings.

As of the current post, standard fare was 8.00PHP. For me, if there are other modes of transportation, I would least prefer riding a jeepney. Why? I experienced great annoyances and discomfort when I ride them. I'm not a jeepney hater btw, I had a close friend who lives on a jeepney family business. I just don't feel like paying the fare is really worth when:

1. The driver have to make a stop at a gasoline station to refill gas while the passengers are there, when it can be done before. For me, it was really an act of disrespect to passengers. Ever heard a saying that if you take time from someone without their conscent, you are stealing money from them.

2. The driver calls that there are still available seats, but when you take a step inside, you'll see that it was really a small spot where you can't even sit comfortably. You have to squat inside until somebody disembark the vehicle. And if you decided not to ride, the driver will make the jeepney move, forcing you to just squat there...

3. Stopping anywhere and waiting like it is OK for passengers to waste their time! If Metro Manila only have the subways of Tokyo Metro, nobody will have to ride on these jeepneys.

As for the planking issue, they might feel bad about taxation things and complains about their taxes, but how about us who works on IT firm, including those who work on call-centers, BPO firm, etc. On every 15th and 30th of the month, there are no other thing that drives us mad other than looking at our payrolls, with high Gross pay and a low resulting net pay, then face the horror of the amount of tax deducted.... (T-T). Apparently, I believe that most of the contributions on income taxes came from IT/BPO/CallCenter industries, yet we don't even raise a strike and stop from doing our work. In fact, I wish we could just do, but by thinking of the work we do and the sincerity to deliver quality output, we just end up grinding our teeth and hoping that one day, our taxes will work for us.

Each time these jeepney drivers strike, we have difficulties going to work and return to home. The problem here is that, when they strike do they know where to direct all their issues? It seems like they are barking the wrong tree here... I hope they just go rally in front of the house of the person responsible for their sufferings... and do some planking there. Those people are just drinking wine, watching TV and laughing how they do their act. If they do this again some other day, it will be the same, because these people responsible for their problems don't even need to ride a public utility vehicle, because they own a lux car... yes, those are probably from hard extracted taxes....

HttpRequests, Browser, UI Invokes, asynchronous ways in Silverlight 4.0

2011-10-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

I had difficulties making HttpRequests/Response handling in Silverlight since it most of the events are asynchronous by nature. It all rooted on a task that involves data to be exported on CSV format. This is really easy (first approach) as I only have to format it accordingly using commas, but unfortunately this was not the case. SaveFileDialog must be invoked on a UI thread, meaning constructing it on non-UI event handlers will throw an exception (must be User invoked), which makes sense since we're dealing with client side here and placing files on a client side without the user's conscent is like planting something wicked on their machine.

With this, I have decided to just have Silverlight post to a server then store those data on the context of Application's Cache. With this, I don't need to worry about getting the stream and deal with the security. So, I did a quick handler hack. At first, I made a synchronous one. After I got it working, I considered a concurrent user request performance and converted it to asynchronous. I noticed slight difference here. The file received from a synchronous handler indicates the complete size of the file, while asynchronous handler don't. It doesn't affect how the request is handled, meaning if your usual query for a resource took 5 seconds, asynchronous handler can't change that. The performance benefit takes place when multiple users performs the same query. Since it doesn't have to wait for the handle to process the request and instead start on a new thread, it offers better performance.

But, I have to write HttpRequest, then another HttpRequest after the asynchronous callback fires, where I can write POST datas, then submit it again and take the response back. It was really different on what I used to do in web, but somehow I starting to find a bit of liking to it.

Things that I found useful:

Dispatcher.BeginInvoke();// Use anonymous method to invoke or set properties

getting my hands dirty on Silverlight 4

2011-09-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

I was too busy doing silverlight 4 related works that I'm unable to blog here. And since it was a client-side application, I don't have to worry much about the control states , unlike web development , but still I prefer doing web development since I'll have some time reading those MCTS learning kit while doing some quality deliverables of work.

Anyway, I'm able to familiarize myself that controls without actual click or selectedindexchanged events are only solid on their borders. Filtering datas from DomainDataSource is quite a pain, since nested filters doesn't work with DDS... unless one can bear with a ContainedIn method with non-accurate result and the asynchronous way of loading data, I missed Dataset based manipulation, although it seems that Microsoft believed that DomainDataSource is the right direction and Datasets are history.

Another thing that gave me sleepless nights are the the SaveFileDialog objects. These things protect client side things that sometimes they are a pain to deal with. For example, if I have an asynchronous data from DB or from a Service call, and I need to save the result of the query or service call somewhere in the client PC. Showing the SaveFileDialog in non-UI related events (like button click, selected index changed, etc) will throw an exception that "Dialog must be user initiated".

I understand that Silverlight was a client-side application and if SFD won't do it like this, client PC are at big risk to malicious things, but because of this restriction, it is hard or maybe impossible to keep the saving and loading of data in sync, even with sleeping threads, on assumption that it runs on different thread..

I hope they made some fix for those issues in SL 5.0

Substring function in XSLT

2011-07-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

And they just didn't make it something like javascript... I'm never expected that XSLT has function like this, and it just helped me in one of my XML/XSL parsing task.

substring("ABCDEFG",3,3) will display CDE since XSLT doesn't refer the first element on 0 index.

Actually, I really disliked the way XSLT do in loops. you can't overwrite variables, and for-looping and performing something on a node-specific basis is really painful, you have to do it the HARD way, which makes your coding experience a bit dirty, especially if you are already attached to the OOP way of doing things...

XSLT was never meant to be a programming language anyway.. .

Learning Silverlight 4.0 from 1.0

2011-06-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

Finally! Maybe I should thank my previous manager. Now I have this much awaited chance to continue my Silverlight 1.0 experience to Silverlight 4.0 and maybe 5.0. When Silverlight was on pilot version, I was enthusiast enough to apply it to a task, 2008 (I'm still on Tokyo that time). It was completely a client-side thing, that I have to make AJAX request just to make a server-side request and back to XAML.

I noticed the great addition since version 1.0. There are many controls now, which I also expected. I remember my nostalgic 1.0 days making animations using simple ellipses, rectangles, some fills and few images. Now, there are controls. I'm starting to feel that, it was like an ASPX/Windows Form hybrid which have mutated over time , but for good.

But, I still have something that I'm expecting Silverlight team to draw. I'm sure every youtube fans already know that they can record a video using their computer's built in camera and have it uploaded in youtube servers. I've long expected Silverlight to have this, without having users make a custom control, at least for the part that accepts the data binaries and have it collected at serverside (like aspx posted file, or wcf way).

Or maybe, I'll just implement one, if I can grab some reference on how to use video devices and have the stream buffered and then send to server.

Get XML results for your Query (SQL 2008)

2011-06-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

I'm still find it hard to squeeze all available optimization on my site. I successfully had facebook plugins in it after trying, and now I'm staring at the SQL Server database, which can be a potential bottleneck to my web app.

So, maybe it would be nice if I can simply get my query as XML and pass it directly to be rendered. This will eliminate additional mappings and will free me some rendering process too, which is sweet! ^_^

So, how to do it? Very simple...just use "FOR", "XML PATH" and TYPE

so, in this sample query...

         SELECT 'TEST Title' as title
       ,'SAMPLE Description' as [description]
       FOR
       XML PATH(''),
       TYPE


will produce

＜title＞TEST Title＜/title＞
＜description ＞SAMPLE Description ＜/description ＞

Simply replace the hard-coded string to column-names and you're making XML queries in no time. So, instead of mapping everything to some object/classes, I'll have this coupled by the presenter page to the view. Now, the only problem I have is to wait for weekends to continue doing my xslt site.

Decoding Google's querystring

2011-06-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

Everytime we search our web companion google, our form from google's page is posted to another page handler. It was really hard to know what informations are obtained on process since it is doing a POST (probably to get few information that the users cannot set, plus the logging for querystring based request).

Google had many versions of the domain based on the browser's local language. But, we can change the results by altering the querystring.

For example, let's take a look at this sample query. I omitted the domain name.

http://www.google.com#hl=en&source=hp&q=ashigakari&oq=ashig&aq=1&aqi=g5&aql=&

gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1472l12540l0l14l12l4l0l0l1l2918l9404l1.3.1.9-3&fp=a578e5d014bca5dd

&biw=1280&bih=601

hl is the local language. en for English (also the default), tl for Tagalog (Philippines) and ja for Japanese. (Please refer to the localization code).

q (query)is the search term I used. We can see plus sign (+) for all the spaces included in the search term

aq (advanced query) is the zero-based index from the auto-suggest pulldown menu. From here, we can see that I clicked the pulldown menu item number 3 (was index 2).

aqi (advanced query index) is the last letter I hit with keyboard, and the number next to it was the order in which I entered the key. I typed ashig (g was the 5th character).

oq (original query), this is the word on the search box when search was performed.

I have no idea at present what is aql, as it is left blank.

Other querystring keys as well , gs_sm, gs_upl and fp. I guess that has something to do with location.

biw on other hand was my screen width (1280), and obviously bih (601) was my actual browser resolution height(probably minus the menu, status bars, etc).

How important are these things? With these under-rated informations, we can simply check the referrer site and if it came from Google, we can extract additional information to the user and make their user experience in your website even better.

Will update on other keys as soon as I figure them out. :)

Deploying WCF to IIS Server 7.5

2011-05-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

I had to take few minutes to figure out how to deploy Virtual Applications, etc in IIS 7.5 . For me, deploying web applications and services in IIS 5 and 6 is easy, but maybe Microsoft did something new in IIS 7, that can improve the way we develop in .NET technologies.

Although, I still believe that a Web Service doesn't differ much to a Web Application (web service just do the XML parsing and header checking for you), Microsoft really did add awesome features in webservices/wcf framework. I liked doing the classic way, but most of the time utilizing the ready made framework is easier.

Let's start with WCF package deployment.

1. First, you have to build a deployment package. (Right click the solution to
choose it).
2. Once the build is successful, locate the project folder and look for the deployment package on the Debug folder. There are zipped version and the Files and Folder version, which you can simply take to the server.

3. Once you have placed the files on your server, you have to add necessary permissions that will allow IIS to serve your WCF solution. (Network Service, Machinename/IIS_IUSRS)

4. You may add an application pool if you want your WCF solution to have its own application pool (isolated from other application pool, which means there are certain amount of server resources allocated for your WCF).

5. Add an application , referencing the directory of your WCF solution.

If you followed this steps, your WCF should be displaying the instruction to get the proxy code (svcutil.exe etc.).

Otherwise, you might bump on this problems.

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error

The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

Module	IIS Web Core
Notification	BeginRequest
Handler	Not yet determined
Error Code	0x80070005
Config Error	Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions

Or this one

Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive.

Solution to the Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions

- Just convert the WCF directory to an Application.

Solution to the Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive

-Check the application and see if it is running .NET Framework 4.0. When I checked mine, it was default to .NET 2.0

Web Optimizations in a shared hosting environment

2011-05-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

One of my hosted site receives concurrent visitors, and eventually goes down in few seconds. I never thought that it would be that bad, when most of the websites/web applications I've done runs smoothly in web servers where I deployed it. Just how many application pools are running in that shared server? Probably, hundreds? I tried to check for the specs, but unfortunately Diagnostics classes are prevented due to security policies (clients might close their site hosting from them if they realize that the server is crappy).

The biggest challenge here is to optimize everything. Instead of an object mapper, I'll just have the database return specific records, and perform minimal manipulation. Use limited variables and trim everything by size. ( I think that server runs approx 1MB - 100MB RAM for my application pool).

The page loads faster now, though still cant survive the slashdot effect.

Problem with IE

2011-05-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

On my recent web development, I've decided to implement XML+XSLT to save some server processing to render HTML contents. Also, I'm considering this for future maintenance, if ever I would need to change the layout, I'll simply change the XSL templates.The next time xml pages are loaded using that XSL transform file, the browser will not download it anymore and simply apply the transform locally. This also has the benefit of making information reusable. Since the information is already available as an XML document, anyone can simply make a Webrequest to a page URL, convert the stream into an XmlDocument, and information is there. I also decided to monitor all file request on my website. This is to get all site activity as much as possible,and make it invisible to user without specifying additional variables (session, querystring, form, viewstate or cookie).

I've tested this on FF, Chrome and IE9. Got it working, but when I tried it on IE 8, it made me sad that IE8 strips UrlReferrer of XSLT file. (other files do have their UrlReferer btw).

I can't make a big step to decide and assume that all visitors of my site won't be using IE8 or below. I think IE is still the most used browser, and it was already a fact. And another depressing fact is that, to install Internet Explorer 9, you need to upgrade to a more recent version of Windows *cough* 7. Yes,

IE9 is only available to Windows 7.

Now, this has been an issue with Web Developers. Flash or Javascript? How many users would install or upgrade their Flash version just to have everything on your website rendering OK? I don't want to think that, I can have few visitors to install Windows 7 for me and have them use IE9.

Beware of Credit Card Scams used in Fitness Gyms

2011-05-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't cared much about this until later when I got my Credit card charged with un-Authorized transactions. To share this, I enrolled to a Fitness Gym. At first, I was hesitant to use my credit card but with good salestalk, I was blinded by the freebies provided for those who will register, and also avail their promo. Then, after I got everything OK, I was approached by one of their staff. I was told that there are other members who want to join, but don't have a credit card. So, this staff explained to me that they just need some credit card to be registered with their registration, so they can avail their promo but no charges will be sent to my credit card, as it will be nullified on purpose (Was explained to me that, they will just charge 1 peso and cancel the transaction, so no charges will be sent.). I'm just tired and really want to call it a day, so I said, OK but be sure that I won't have any trouble with this, which the staff expressively said "yes, absolutely no problem!".

I received my billing for that month and I didn't receive any charges, so I believed that they really nullified the transaction. Then, the other day I was again asked for it. Since we have done that before, and it really didn't gave me any trouble, I agree to lend my card again, so that another batch of joiners can avail the promo.

But then, just as the next month started (because they charge every 1st day of the month), I was surprised to be called on attention when I was about to enter the gym premises. The receptionist was asking me to pay my monthly due plus penalty fee for not making it on time (credit card charge). I said, my monthly fee is supposedly charged to my card every month. How come I have to pay for it, when I'm already paying for it on my card? The receptionist told me that my credit card rejected their billed transaction for that month, hence I was forced to pay plus the additional penalty fee.

I was furious and rushed my way back home to call on my credit card agent. To my surprise, I saw 4 different transaction made on my credit card (excluding my monthly fee). This was also the reason why my card reached the limit and rejected incoming charges. I was really mad and informed the staffs who borrowed my card. Then they explained that it wasn't suppose to happen. So, I asked for them to pay the dues... Then, I was told that they are asking for payments from the other members, which they told me that was in Cebu (the gym was in Metro Manila). There was in no way to make the payment other than to wait for them to pay. At first, a staff even ask me to get the payments from them! WTF!!!! I was really mad and said, why do I have to do it?! I don't even know them, and yet they used my credit card for them? With the recurring charges, I was even asked to cancel my own credit card and apply for a new one! I was really damn pissed.....I didn't like the idea, but when I inquired for my credit card balance, it only made me more furious to know that, 2 more charge are done plus the penalty fee for those two charge, amounting to 14,200 PHP. Immediately, I phoned the credit card agent, agreed to pay 400php fee for credit card renewal....

I'm not sure whether I will be paid or not, but I hope my experience will serve a lesson to everyone. I will post update here about the incident...

Frustration in XML+XSLT

2011-05-08T11:42:00.000-07:00

Had a hard time developing my site. One of doubting challenge would be SEO. We all know (ok, maybe not really), that a site is friendly to search engines when contents can be "somehow" readable to the search engine crawlers. The site I'm making now is not for a popular brand that people already know. So, every web crawler's effort is appreciated.

If we send the data thru XML, we are sending the raw information using our own format. Google, Yahoo or Bing won't know that a text I've enclosed with some name tags is for, other than it is a readable text, something that can be matched with related informations.

So, the present that XML data to a human user, we have to transform it HTML that the browsers can understand, using XSLT. During testing, I have noticed that the browser caches few files, which made me conclude that, it really does save bandwidth problems for high-traffic sites.

Added up with HTML5 (which gives me some real pain in the neck, thanks to stubborn as ever, IE), it is possible to make cool web UIs. I already up'ed the site, and will see in weeks how the contents result in major search engine results.

Using MVP Pattern + XSLT

2011-04-14T01:58:00.000-07:00

I just finished developing my web framework in MVP and now, it is time to do work on the client side. XSLT made the missing piece I want for my website complete. Using this, data will be presented in pure XML, which means datas on the website can be easily re-used on different platforms, and even javascript too, which is nice.

This doesn't limit my site to just have a passive view. I can still have all those input fields and accept all those user input datas, yet my site will be in XML form, web crawlers can easily see my site, no unnecessary SEO paranoia things, hehe.

All this facts leaves me to one last task, mapping each request in IIS to make those URLs pretty to search engines.

UPDATE:

I tried some dynamic XSLT approach, Chrome is OK, IE is OK (even 6.0), but FF (3.5 and 4.0)gives an error... I think I need to make a good re-write rule to trick FF that the xsl file referenced is a static one.

Current cravings for development

2011-03-26T03:20:00.000-07:00

Lately, I'm doing a series of RnD. These involves facebook integration, few optimization in IIS 6/7.x and some UI considerations, thanks to HTML5, CSS3 , javascript and some SVG things as well.

For the FB integration, it was really simple in concept, quite intimidating at first. FB uses OAuth as a mean of authentication. This means developers doesn't have to store private informations (like user password), they just require an access token, something that grants them specific permission given by users of their appliction. This token can do lots of things on behalf of the user.

No one can stop facebook from growing now. I think everyone is already hooked with facebook, so developing something inline with FB's graph API is a good choice, IMO.

After few handshake process, a token must be stored and can be re-used. post to friends's wall, like something, etc.

Top 10 Web Application Security Risks

2011-03-19T06:17:00.000-07:00

What makes Web Application different from Windows apps or other client apps is that it is accessible remotely and all users can access the same application anywhere. This also eliminates the need to have all users install software upgrades, the developer can update the version on the server. However, web applications are prone to security issues like

1: Injection

- Can be done by simply adding input to invalidate SQL query and add their own potentially dangerous query.
- Can be prevented by filtering the user inputs and have the methods accept specific types of data (parameter based query commands).

2: Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- Same with injection. If the inputs available to user are filtered,

3: Broken Authentication and Session Management

4: Insecure Direct Object References

5: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

6: Security Misconfiguration
- configs

7: Insecure Cryptographic Storage

8: Failure to Restrict URL Access
- disable directory browsing

9: Insufficient Transport Layer Protection
- SSL

10: Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards

Source: OWASP (http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Top_Ten_Project)

Cheap webhosting for ASP pages

2011-02-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

I was really amazed that winhost now offers these to subscribers, Microsoft WebMatrix and ASP.NET MVC 3 for small investment of 5USD. I really love web development and I enjoy studying new technologies which probably won't be allowed at work.

Anyway, to mention some specs for the cheap 5USD per month bill, I have 2GB disk space, nice monthly bandwidth , 200mb MSSQL (the new version, at the time of writing 2008 R2) and 200mb MySQL, which makes it 400mb. This is enough for me to develop some good apps or make a portfolio site.

Checking for iDevices

2011-02-05T20:04:00.000-08:00

C#(asp.net)

Request.UserAgent.ToLower.Contains("iphone;"))

Javascript

navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)

I think this can be used with iPads/iTouch

CNEG Smallest-In-the-World USB Wireless Adapter

2011-02-05T09:11:00.000-08:00

I noticed this tiny USB device while walking somewhere in mall. It is a small USB device that allows you to setup an access point. I'm not into making an internet sharing thing, but I think I'll use it to test my web applications using other devices like PSP, iPhone, etc. I'll simply setup an access point and have IIS enabled and serve request to all clients connecting to my notebook (yes, I cant carry my heavy things while I'm taking break at Starbucks).

Probably will try it and update some findings here in the coming days.

with HTML5 or not?

2011-01-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

With new mobile devices selling like hot cakes, I think web developers should really consider using HTML5 and apply good practices when designing their UI. I've always wanted to extend my webdev in mobile too, and with the latest iPhone browser, everything is displayed OK, things are placed exactly where it is on the layout (liquid layout), javascripts are working fine, css is OK, except for one thing, which is "sprite-ing".

I used sprite techniques to make a fast-loading UI. I just came up with the term when I remembered playing 8-bit games. Whenever the game would crash, a screen with multiple repeated image will be displayed.

Back to webdev.Since my UI images will be in a sprite image, I'll just have the browser load it once, and just use CSS to point to a file, instead of having the browser load different image, one by one. This really helps a lot, especially if we are aiming for the 5-10 seconds rule of websites. BTW, for those who aren't familiar with it, X seconds rule simply means, the page must deliver the idea to the viewer in X seconds, otherwise that viewer is lost.

Makes sense. Let's say you have a shopping website, and a potential customer tried to view your page, you must show customer friendly things and convince the viewer that you got what they are looking for. But instead, they waited for the page to load, got impatient and closed the page. One potential customer away. It can be a trivial thing, but shouldn't be taken lightly, just as considering cross browser compatibilities, etc.

Canvas might eliminate the need to make complex UI sprites, but might depend heavily on javascripts, which is not common to all browsers. (For example, making AJAX request for IE vs other browsers).

Configuration files - which is for what

2010-12-31T01:25:00.000-08:00

When we are developing applications, one of the considerations that we do is to make some configurable sections that will allow anyone to change how the application run without modifying the codes. app config for window based applications and web.config for web applications. how about for a SQLCLR? they are located in sqlservr.exe.config. This can be located easily by looking at the installation folder of SQL and find the Binn folder. Look for the latest version of SQL (you might see 8.0, 9.0, 10.0).

Now, how these config files take effect is quite tricky. For a web.config hosted in IIS, you must reset the IIS first, thru the IIS GUI or by running iisreset in command prompt. As for the machine.config, you must restart the machine, which means you should be careful deciding to shutdown a machine, especially if it is used as a server. For sqlserver configs, there is no need to restart the machine, as changes take effect after restarting the SQL Server service (Start> Run > services.msc then scroll to the sqlserver service).

A .NET Framework error occurred during execution of user-defined routine or aggregate

2010-12-16T02:51:00.000-08:00

Msg 6522, Level 16, State 1, Procedure, Line 1
A .NET Framework error occurred during execution of user-defined routine or aggregate :
System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer threw an exception. ---> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'System.ServiceModel.WSReliableMessagingFebruary2005Version' threw an exception. ---> System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Runtime.Serialization, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' or one of its dependencies. Assembly in host store has a different signature than assembly in GAC. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131050) See Microsoft Knowledge Base article 949080 for more information.
System.IO.FileLoadException:
   at System.ServiceModel.WSReliableMessagingFebruary2005Version..ctor()
   at System.ServiceModel.WSReliableMessagingFebruary2005Version..cctor()
System.TypeInitializationException:
   at System.ServiceModel.WSReliableMessagingFebruary2005Version.get_Instance()
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ReliableSessionBindingElement..ctor(Boolean ordered)
   at System.ServiceModel.WSHttpBindingBase.Initialize()
   at System.ServiceModel.WSHttpBinding..ctor()
   at ADMS.CommonClrSQL.StoredProcedures..cctor()
System.TypeInitializationException:
.
The statement has been terminated.

====================================================

Hi! If you are experiencing the above error, I'm guessing that you are trying to invoke a Webservice from SQL. Just lately, I was involved with a task that performs some upgrade in SQL Server database and making the database make a call to a WCF Service. Now, the problem is, whenever the procedure/trigger will make a request to the hosted service, it will throw an Error. This made us sleepless for days, trying to figure out the fix, but fortunately we are able to make things working.

We are experiencing the above error because the assemblies deployed in GAC(Global Assemby Cache) is different to assemblies loaded to the database. So, we tried to load the assembly from the GAC itself. There is a caution here. Be sure that the correct version of dll is loaded. Since there are 32 bit and 64 bit assemblies, you must refer FIRST to the GAC MSIL then if the assembly doesnt exist in there, refer to the appropriate X-Bit folder(32 or 64).

Doing this solved our problem. On our case, the error message we get now points to a machine configuration. An endpoint entry which is a malformed XML must be removed or commented out, then have the machine restart (since it is machine configuration).

The questionable Question Mark (?) in C#

2010-10-02T01:10:00.000-07:00

This under-rated character can make writing C#(or Perl) codes easier and simple.

It can either be a comparator or a null-conditional if-else statement, in just a single line.

it can simplify

string SampleText;

if(Datetime.Now.Month == 12)

{

SampleText = "Christmas Month";

}

else

{

SampleText = "Some Other Month";

}

into

string SampleText = Datetime.Now.Month == 12 ? "Christmas Month" : "Some Other Month";

or much even this

string SampleText;

if(passedParameter != null)

{

SampleText = passedParameter;

}

else if (passedParameter1 != null)

{

SampleText = passedParameter1;

}

else if (passedParameter2 != null)

{

SampleText = passedParameter2;

}

else if (passedParameter3 != null)

{

SampleText = passedParameter3;

}

else

{

SampleText = string.Empty;

}

to simple

string SampleText = passedParameter ?? passedParameter1 ?? passedParameter2 ?? passedParameter3 ?? String.Empty;

and this is not limited to strings, it also applies to Objects.

More to share as we go to the world of coding (^-^)

Javascript is under rated, but powerful

2010-09-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

On my way home, I had a chance to talk to a fellow Web Developer working at a bank. She holds web projects of a small IT department of the bank. She is very confident at how she handles server scripts and out of somewhere said, I won't have to worry about all those client side scripts because it will always run at the back end.

While a bit worried, I said that she might haven't heard of XSS(or CSS, cross site scripting). Probably she haven't tried few developments on the wild internet, but actually a small javascript code can override functions, even prevent a server control's default action to a new one, thru Javascript. I agree that, server side validation is powerful, but javascript is like a shoelace, that on a hand of an assassin, can even be deadly.

I have posted an article here about PRC website hacking incident. I believe it was done thru SQL Injection and XSS (by injecting script tag). Reputation of PRC website for google is laced with malicious attempts to download harmful materials.

For those who doesn't acknowledge what Javascript can do. It can even change your web application to post to a remote server and steal informations. That's a good reason to do validation, both client and server side.

T4 in ASP.NET MVC 2

2010-09-09T09:30:00.001-07:00

One of the dilemmas I had with ASP.NET development is that, ASP.NET render server controls their own way, stuffs like Gridviews, Radio button list, Check box list, etc. Sure it does the work and saves time, but not long enough, until future changes are considered. Also, flexibility in manipulating front-end things (CSS) would be hard, without altering the markup, adding classes or ids, etc...

I really liked ASP.NET server controls and data binding. Those made my life easy, but because of poor rendering technique, it is a disappointment (at least for me) to see that my markups are rendered poorly and non-standard compliant. (i never imagined stuffing things sandwiched by a span tag).

good thing, there is a nice feature for ASP.NET MVC that prevents me from, seemingly re-invent the wheel (i hate re-writing custom server controls when all it needs is some mark-up changes). Code Templates T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit) will make rendering easy and gives you full control on the mark-up.

these T4 is a format that expresses how a model will be rendered. So if you got a lot of datas to be displayed, it doesn't necessarily mean to render it as a table or nest controls inside span, etc...

So, once you got a View, just specify a T4 template that it will use for the model datas that it will display, and there you got it, a web application that implements a separation of concern, front end developers just deal with their CSS and javascripts.

Philippine Hostage taking ends in a bloody way

2010-08-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

Another sad news that might hurt the economy of the Philippines. Due to some selfish ignorance, someone who was dismissed from his duty just proved himself that he is worthy of being kicked out of service. I just don't understand why people dismissed at their service would still have high-caliber weapons that will enable someone to do terrorist acts.

Early morning, a tourist bus boarded by 22 Chinese citizens was hijacked by a Policeman in UNIFORM, carrying an M-16 rifle, ammunition and few pistols. Then, later posted something on the window of the bus, that seems to be asking for demands.

The hostage-taker was expelled from duty because of alleged involvement to drug related case and illegal distortion. He is HOPING to be enlisted again, but presumably rejected due to involvement to the mentioned crimes.

9 Chinese are allowed to go earlier and then on the midst of the rain, loud gunshots are heard from inside of the bus.

The hostage taker died on the assault and fortunately, not everyone on the bus was killed, as earlier stated by the driver.

But why does this thing happen? First of all, this is not a new incident. Years ago, somebody did this, and the aftermath, he was freed and the hostages (filipino kids) are even granted scholarships. I kept on asking myself, why things like this happen? How many lives needs to be taken first? How many loses do Philippines have to endure?

I hope somebody can resolve this. Fight people who masquerade themselves as justice.

*UPDATE*

8 Chinese Nationals are confirmed dead.
7 Chinese wounded.
1 bystander, a Filipino boy was wounded.

Hong Kong issued a travel advisory to HK residents to avoid Philippines.

jQuery extends jQuery Mobile Framework

2010-08-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

With constant birth of new Mobile devices, checking for changes to web development becomes a task that web developers need to do, whenever something big will be released in the market. Many are hoping that HTML 5 will address rendering issues and make it consistent for both mobile and desktop/laptop devices. Probably, CMS developers will make some changes on how each data are rendered.

While the display consistency will be done in no time, jQuery Mobile framework will probably make UI development easy. I have used the jQuery UI in various Web Applications I developed that doesn't have enough time to design screen UI, and the result is a user-friendly UI that is also XHTML compliant.

CD-R King's Wi-Fi + Bluetooth USB Combo Dongle in Ubuntu 10.4

2010-06-25T06:29:00.000-07:00

Since my mom's computer is quite outdated, running on Intel's Pentium 4 1.8GHz + 256MB RAM, I decided to install Ubuntu side by side. The reason for this is that, most of my mom's friends are already on facebook and she asked me how to setup an account for this, which eventually requires stable internet connection. (I'm not letting her use dial-up internet and feel more stressed).

I already have a broadband connection from Globe. For 995php/month, it would be at 1Mbps rate. I already have a Wireless N router (Belkin) and it is great. I bought this from Japan, and I was slightly troubled that it runs on 110V and fortunately, Belkin have their support partner "Microwarehouse", that exchanged my old power supply to 220v.

After installing Ubuntu, I have to download drivers from internet, which relies on Internet and I have to configure my router to act as an access point, while my laptop is connected directly to my broadband, and distribute the connection using "Internet Connection Sharing". (believe it or not, I used to share dial-up internet as well... (-_-;) ). Here is my setup.

1. Laptop is connected directly to Broadband Internet (LAN)
2. Router is configured as Access Point (be sure to enable DHCP)
3. Laptop connects to Access Point and set static IP
4. Laptop's Internet Connection (LAN) is shared, with connection in Access Point.
5. Mom's Computer connects to access point, (LAN)

So, the problem here is that, I don't want to place the router near mom's PC all the time, with those wired things. That is when I decided to find a wi-fi device. I found a cheap Wi-Fi dongle from CD-R King, for 780php, it is said that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth function is there.

I was really pleased................... that didn't last long. When I was about to pay, I was asked about my "OS". So, I was thinking, "Hey, what business that requires you to know what OS I'll be using this?!". After saying, "Uhhh, XP? ", then staffs at CD-R King immidiately replied that it would not work in Windows 7, so I was a bit worried. I was asked to proceed to the tech guy, that pulled out a tiny CD from the dongle and test it. It seems that this thing is marketed to run only on OLD Windows Computers. I was sick-worried, "I might have given them a free 780php for nothing", which even provoked me to return the next day, when I tried to install it on XP service pack 3, and failed. The dongle they are selling is optimal for OS XP service pack 2 and below.

I am reading the back which reads 3 Months free service warranty, and I'm losing hope that I will get a good technical support. They don't even have a "money-back" guarantee, and I feel very upset about this. I talked to the guy who tested it, and the arguing guy told me that it worked in their PC... Yeah, just their PC.... But, aren't they forgetting that consumers are buying their products for themselves and not CD-R King's PC?

I was asked to copy the files from CD to hard disk... I also told the CD-R King guy that, the accessibility is not an issue, it is "COMPATIBILITY". I mean, before I payed they said it will work on Windows XP, and failed.before I lose my temper and just annoy myself more hearing pointless reasoning, we had a compromise that they would just visit my house and install it for me after 9PM. At that time, I'm sure typical customer won't agree, but I was also eager to make my mom enjoy e-life, talk with friends online and surf the internet.

My desperate option is to just let him install it on XP (which should work), but my goal is to make it work for Linux based and Windows based OS'es. I'm new to Linux OS'es so, I really had a terrible experience just to make this thing run comfortably.

ubuntu

http://www.stk.com.tw/driver/Wireless/Release_ForUSBLinux/Ubuntu/BlueW-2310U_2.4.2_100603_Ubuntu10.04_withouthotkey.tar.gz

Instruction:
After download, run Install_3DSPUSB.sh
From Accessories, you can activate the Wi-Fi radar.

xp
http://www.stk.com.tw/driver/Wireless/Release_ForUSBWindows/Bluewu_3.1.04.20100318_softhotkey_32bitOS(IVT).exe

Windows 7
http://www.stk.com.tw/driver/Wireless/Release_ForUSBWindows/Bluewu_2.2.04.20100520_softhotkey_32bitOS(Microsoft).exe

vista
http://www.stk.com.tw/driver/Wireless/Release_ForUSBWindows/Bluewu_2.2.04.20091127_softhotkey_32bitOS(IVT).exe

I had mine working, 100%.. But, I feel really disappointed that I have to do all the troubles of finding drivers, installling, etc... when CD-R King are supposed to know their products and provide their customers the satisfaction that they deserve. But, on my case... no.. They even offered me other Wi-Fi device, which cost higher than the dongle I bought, but I said, if the results would be the same, I won't hesitate to return at them again and demand a replacement (or REFUND, the best). They said it should work on XP, if installed properly, but how can you install it properly if it is not compatible to begin with?

I might still visit CD-R king just to buy some CDs, but I'm not sure about buying high-end devices. Maling Pagtitipid often leads to MORE STRESS, MORE COST and MORE ANNOYANCE. If you want to save, buy PRODUCTS WITH QUALITIES, not cheap, small fry items.

Developing .NET Web applications using MonoDevelop

2010-06-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

Just these past days, I considered installing Ubuntu to one of my Notebook and, after finally upgrading it to Ubuntu 9.10, the next thing I planned is to use some visual-studio like API for Ubuntu.

I liked Ubuntu's environment. Just beside the panel that displays Date and Time, you can also see the temperature and weather of your current city. Something I would like to see in Windows OS, without using Widgets, as introduced in Vista.

you can download monodevelop at monodevelop.com

reference : VAIO Type P Guide for XP, Ubuntu, Vista and Windows 7

HTML 5 Ruby Annotation.

2010-06-11T08:09:00.001-07:00

A complete ruby annotation in HTML 5 consist
of ruby, rt and rp tag.

<ruby>
私

<rt>
わたし(watashi)
</rt><rp>Sorry your browser doesn't support HTML5</rp>
</ruby>

as we all know, ruby tag is to add ruby annotation in our HTML, rt is the text that was supposed to be, the

pronounciation guide. rp tag is optional, since it won't show up if the browser doesn't support ruby annotation, but not if the browser doesn't support HTML 5. If the browser can't, it will STILL DISPLAY THE RP TAG along with other tags, as if they are unknown HTML elements.

Twitter got injected with malformed HTML

2010-06-11T04:39:00.000-07:00

Just a few minutes ago, I checked twitter just to see that, somebody have successfully enter some counter-HTML to prevent twitter from displaying contents. It seems that they made it this fair by adding extra closing tags,like to close other elements, giving them way to add new tag elements.

even the links are altered. Probably, these users are really pissed at the "Whale image"

Twitter over Capacity - "Stupid Whale"

2010-06-11T04:38:00.000-07:00

Lately, many disgruntled twitter users got pissed by this image, that they even trend a topic "Stupid Whale"

Routing web traffic

2010-06-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

With few SEO things I had in mind, I'm able to produce big changes from site deployment that took about 1 month. Although I'm a bit surprised about the result, I'm not yet satisfied since I believe there is a much better way of having these figures.

So, the problem here actually isn't the traffic routing capability. It is easy to find potential web visitors that may find your site interesting, but the real problem is in the server itself. Is it powerful enough to process all the request, or end up like the famed slashdot effect. Actually, minus the slashdot traffics, the site I host somewhere failed to accept new request. And locked itself up.

Of course support people won't admit, that it was their fault but I should expect this for a shared hosting. Bandwidth isn't the issue, it was the server that can't handle much of consecutive request happening at the same time. Security wise, I think SNS can take websites down, especially small fry ones, who can only afford to host websites on cheap shared hosting.

5 Ways to tell major search engines that you're serious in getting the #1 search result

2010-05-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

Aside from good HTML element arrangements, optional attributes, additional meta elements , canonical or backlinks, you must have properly told major search engines where to find those pages, or at least tell them that those pages exist. How? Using sitemaps. yes, SITEMAPS. If you think having one is enough, then maybe it is, for a normal website. But if you are really dedicated to reach the #1 spot, have you tried these:

1. RSS Feed- these are blog xml based file that tells more information than what we usually see.

2. ATOM Feed - Same as RSS, but different format.

3. Sitemap - Sitemap format. Consider the optional tag, and omit them if not really necessary, since they can cause warnings that search engine won't really like.

4. Sitemap Index - Now, things can get really big. What makes this one unique is that, you don't put actual page URLs in it, but URLs of SITEMAPS. It will display all links in total, both submitted and indexed. Don't be surprised to see really big number here.

5. List - Who said there is no glory if there isn't guts? List is simply a line-break separated link list. Just put in all URLs and make it available as a text file (at least, make it look like one).

Currently, I control a website with 3 different sub-domain. each with own version of sitemaps. Search engine tracking is really fun, if you know what and where to look at it. ^_^

Found the culprit!

2010-05-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

From my previous post, the culprit was really on the server.

It prepends an IFRAME pointing to Http://taobao69.blogcn.com/
BEWARE, because this one can steal SESSIONS saved in COOKIES for that site and they can use it to hijack your account.

I tried to check the domain, and it is a DEDICATED server somewhere in CHINA.

Analysis of recent injection attack

2010-05-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

Just few minutes ago, one of the websites I currently own was attacked. Since I am expecting this really soon (because the site is gaining high traffic recently), I wonder how it is made possible.

Due to security reasons, I won't be posting the screen cap of the site when I checked it. But, when I tried to load the page, First I saw the ASP Headers that should be kept visible. This provoked me to login to my CP account, and checked my settings. I confirmed that it is still kept invisible . I returned to my site, and now it has an IFRAME pointing to other site now, and below the ASP headers,showing the connection state, ASP version. There is not much information disclosed, so still whoever it is, I'm sure the attack wasn't successful.

So, one by one, I tried to look for the possibilities that are available to the attacker. I know where should my inputs are and I'm sure it is properly filtered. Just to confirm, I checked the databases where appropriate contents are located, but I can't find any text that would lead to the *seemingly* injected string. tried to look for files, and yet no where to see it.

And all of a sudden, while checking my files, an FTP login is prompting me to enter user credentials, which I ignored. (haha, I know what you're thinking).

Checked twitter, it only streamed garbled text...

So, I tried to fetch the page as a googlebot, I see no header or iframe..

which leaves me down to 2 from pointless reason why it was possible.

1. It is injected from my Web Server (probably done by staff, or the web server is hacked)
2. From my ISP, which prepend text on every request that I will do to twitter and my site.

Now, each time I check it, it appears to be normal again. I'll ask my web hosting representative prior to this, just for clarification. Depending on the answer I will receive, I might consider migration of all the sites I control to a different one, or maybe consider using PHP for most of my sites.

Random Check for Browsers

2010-05-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

A random check, I tried to put a test page on one of domains I control. I really liked the results because most people are getting smarter now by using Chrome. One of the best things I liked in Chrome is speed. In terms of executing Javascripts, no browser can match Chrome.

Random resolution check

2010-05-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

a random check of web resolution. there is no 640x480 and 800x600 anymore. I wonder what will happen to all of those ICE BOX (one that stays always on left, leaving a large area of website WASTED! I've seen this a lot from companies in Japan) layout design and JELLY layout designs (those who float at the center and leaves WASTED space at both sides, I've seen this well on many CMS sites, as well as some improvements from ICE BOX). They should try to consider liquid layout that easily adopts to resolution. It is the best, but requires math as you would make some assumptions.

I liked the #10 1600 x 768. I'm sure it was from VAIO P.

Google's PACMAN Game - PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary

2010-05-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary - pacman game, instead of searching something.

Overall optimization

2010-05-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

At first, I only thought that this applies most at Back-End, but actually an overall task that needs to be done. In case of websites (except stateless) needs overall optimization: (based on my exp)

Code-Behind
-prevent unnecessary object creation. (Consider re-use, Singleton class to hold global variables)
-don't develop with the purpose of using design patterns. Use design pattern where applicable.
-unnecessary try ? catch ? would affect performance.

Database
-1st thing to be considered. most of the time, the bottleneck
-don't make unnecessary select (overused *). just take out the fields that you need.
-dont forget to close connection when not needed.

Client-Side
-cache the output for non-dynamic files
-static & dynamic compression, gzip
-optimize external files (js, css)
-consider sprite-technique on CSS layout (example : 足掛かり.com uses sprite techniques that changing CSS class wouldn't require another download)
-un-comment and compress JS and CSS

HTML 5 is here!

2010-05-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

I've tried to check for new HTML 5 tags and I'm surprised that it is turning just like the version 1 of Silverlight. If you're not familiar with Silverlight, it is used for making some animations but more on clientside, since all you can do on version 1 was XAML and javascript.

Just by looking at this, I can tell that HTML5 will alert everyone. From CMS/Forum/Blog developer to typical internet users.

A new tag catches my attention. The ruby tag is used to add pronunciation guide to certain words. I have hopes of seeing this to be used in many websites.

<ruby>
英語 <rt> えいご</rt>
</ruby>

results to

えいご
英語

<ruby>

Philippines <rt> フィリピン</rt>

</ruby>

<ruby>

Ewan <rt> エワン</rt>

</ruby>

This will change HTML writing as what we know HTML today. Will there be inconsistent rendering for browsers?

Let's find out. ^_^

Web Optimizations

2010-05-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

I just deployed the web project that took almost 3 months to deploy, thanks to the CC problems I had. Things seems to be fine and I think I would be spending some time to write some contents.

But before that, I wanted to optimize few things that are not visible until it was deployed in a shared remote server.

The web project has volatile layout that changes every request. Colors, pictures, etc. Making these request can take some time, and may hurt loading time if the files needed for rendering UI will not be loaded properly.

Good thing, you set some file extensions to be cached which can be done on the Output Caching module of IIS manager. All you have to do is to provide all the UI things that won't be changed for quite some time, like view JS, CSS, some jpg/png.

Another thing to consider is the compression, though the dynamic compression doesn't work well on my web project as it treat the last line of my HTML to be a part to be removed. It was bizarre, but I got that figured out after testing the rendered HTML many times.

I also disabled session state, since most of the actions are just database retrievals.

The last optimization I'm considering is to make the code manageable. Design patterns apply here ^_^;

Currently reading Dummy series for Design patterns and realized that,

hey, that is not really hard, you got me there!

Configuring website rules in IIS Manager

2010-05-10T00:57:00.000-07:00

Managing websites can be a pain in the neck. Sometimes you'll find yourself fixing some broken links, editing style sheets because of routing side-effects and even managing bandwidth limit. You probably won't be fit for a web admin task if you can't make a solution for all of those things. Good thing there are few tips that you can do now.

Managing routing in IIS 7.0 is really easy. While there are options to use wildcards, I found that regular expressions solve most of my routing problems. You can even just upload a file, point all request to that file during site maintenance. You can also make SEO friendly URL, and make the real querystring request unknown to site visitors, just don't forget to make rules in robot.txt and add a canonical link to the preferred URL.

And the bandwidth problems. Actually, you can solve this in two ways. You can just check the referrer either in IIS or the code behind and make a response. it is very simple.

Twitter now gets special results in Google

2010-04-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

Tweets from twitter doesn't appear as regular pages now. I wonder if other SNS sites will follow soon.

March 33 Anniversary (April 2) for custom firmware in PSP

2010-04-02T03:50:00.000-07:00

April 1 usually for fooling other people, but if you have tried a custom firmware for your PSP, you might notice that you'll be dealing with few 3s.

This was on purpose, the date was set to March 33 (actually April 2), System Software set to 3.33 M33-3 (but I had upgraded version), Nickname changed to March 33, MAC address changed to 33:33:33s (continues).

This doesn't do any harm, but you might find it annoying, so don't change your date to April 2, since it will just replace it with M33 date.

Facebook isn't designed as robust as it seems...

2010-01-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

My understanding of a robust application is that under strict conditions, it should degrade gracefully. That's why it is a good practice to design from basic HTML, and later upgrade to an AJAX rich version. If done this way, even if CSS, Javascript failed to load, the user will still be able to at least submit few things.

Maybe it is good to simply do AJAX rich applications, since big sites like facebook doesn't consider graceful degradation.

Improving loading speed

2009-12-20T07:39:00.000-08:00

Last time, I posted about using Google's new tool that can help you analyze if your page needs further optimization. There are many reason to do it. First would be, the bandwidth space would be less than usual data transfer. This will be good since users won't have to wait a long time just to see your page and will also cost you less about site bandwidth (high-traffic websites).

First, it will ask you to complete the following suggestions.

and if you do what they suggested, you should get an optimized page, something like this...

which I think is cool. Way better if you serve many people and if you reference your SRCs wisely, chances are they don't have to download all those images, and just depend on HTML data. That's how it is designed and the web consortium designed it like that, to provide an easy, yet convenient way to communicate data over internet.

80% before deployment..

2009-12-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

It's been weeks since I started the web project. So, now I'm in semi-testing, debug and fix mode. Every pictures now has the dynamic text I wanted plus rendering optimizations, which will improve once I uploaded it to the server, something faster than the development machine I'm using now. Also, I picked few SNS bookmarks, although there is hatena for japanese related contents. I'll consider adding it, after checking a week of web traffics.

I decided to just use on a flat database compared to the MS SQL 2008 DB (which is really small, so stiff that I have to develop an algorithm to just use 100MB of MS SQL DB as a buffer and rely on the physical storage as a database, thru an access file). It works as I expected until I decided to just keep the MS SQL 2008 DB for webservice that I might use in the future (probably for costing ads or review things...).

And URL encoding.. I know I should have, but for some reasons, I didn't (purposely)...

before asking me, please search in google for these words.

生産,seisan,produce, makejapanese sentence patterns |sayinjapanese

and, see the results while putting your attention on the "GREEN URL" part.

if you don't get it, just try making a sitemap with text like that and submit it to google, then try to fetch it as a googlebot. try it. it would be best if you do..

Just a few days more... I hope I can grab my credit/debit soon so I can up this as soon as possible. The worst case scenario is that, all banks will be close until January next year.....

Philippine banks' PayPal codes

2009-12-14T02:12:00.000-08:00

Took a while to search for the list so I can integrate my paypal account to a local bank.

BANK NAME	9 digit bank code
ALLIED BANKING CORP	010320013
AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND	010700015
ASIA UNITED BANK	011020011
BANGKO SENTRAL NG PILIPINAS	010030015
BANGKOK BANK	010670019
BANK OF AMERICA	010120019
BANK OF CHINA	011140014
BANK OF TOKYO	010460012
BANCO DE ORO (& EPCIB)	010530667
BANK OF COMMERCE	010440016
BANK OF THE PHIL ISLANDS	010040018
CHINA BANKING CORP	010100013
CHINA TRUST COMML BANK	010690015
CITIBANK N.A.	010070017
DEVT BANK OF THE PHILS	010590018
DEUTSCHE BANK	010650013
EAST WEST BANK	010620014
EXPORT & INDUSTRY BANK	010860010
FUJI BANK	010640010
HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANK	010060014
INTL COMML BANK OF CHINA	010560019
INTL EXCHANGE BANK	010680012
JP MORGAN CHASE BANK	010720011
KOREA EXCHANGE BANK	010710018
INTL NEDERLAND BANK	010660016
LAND BANK OF THE PHILS	010350025
MAYBANK OF THE PHILS	010220016
METROPOLITAN BANK & TRUST CO	010269996
PHIL BANK OF COMMUNICATION	010110016
PHIL TRUST COMPANY	010090039
PHIL NATIONAL BANK	010080010
PRUDENTIAL BANK	010150018
PHIL VETERANS BANK	010330016
RIZAL COMML BANKING CORP	010280014
SECURITY BANK & TRUST CO	010140015
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK	010050011
UNITED COCONUT PLANTERS BANK	010299995
UNION BANK OF THE PHILS	010419995
UNITED OVERSEAS BANK	010270189

source(http://pages.ebay.ph/bankwithdrawal/bank_codes_ph.html)

Access as DB

2009-12-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

in a website that I've been coding for weeks, I really need a DB to store site contents and pictures, unfortunately, the webhosting company charges more for less DB space (100 MB is my only option since I don't want to spend more). the disk space is 1GB.

then I looked at my VAIO P, it is 256GB and the RAM is 2GB, but still it is fit enough for development task. I had a thought of using the 100MB MSSQL 2008 DB space as a buffer and take advantage of the storage space using access DB.

with this, I can deploy the CMS of the website, be a web application or even a windows application. I can make the data model isolated and make a web service to invoke actions that will transfer data from the buffer to the access storage. of course, I need to make several files and I have to be sure to make backups as much as possible since access DB is much prone to be corrupted than SQL DBs.

just a little bit more.. I can't wait but it is also hard to type when your fingers get numb... (I'm starting to hate winter....)

Facebook hijacked?!

2009-12-06T22:02:00.000-08:00

Whenever I type facebook URL in GoogleChrome or even click on google SERP, I always arrive here. Take note of the URL. It seems like a web design company in India... tried clearing the cookies, but it is still there.....

Targeting appropriate encoding

2009-12-06T07:45:00.000-08:00

Writing web applications/website is easy and I can understand why other people can commit to do it in 10 straight days, but that is because they only focus on one language application/site. Eventually you will deal with a multilingual requirement that requires you to check against encoding.

Sometimes, just specifying the code below will not save you
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=(yourtarget encoding)">

so, here are the things you must consider, especially for dynamic pages.

1. Check or specify an encoding for your output.
on asp, you can specify codepage = number, example 932 for SHIFT-JIS

2. If not dynamic page, try to save the file in that encoding.

you can edit the page, re-save it, and use the "UTF-8" encoding.

3. specify the html attribute lang.
it will not help much in formatting, but at least help search engine bots to find and
determine the content of your site/application.

4. Check the font.

There are also times that, it is the font family that you're using that prevents the text to be rendered properly. For example,

日本 will be displayed as 日口 when using Copperlate Gothic Light.

5. Encode URL if you're using it as a link.

Since it will be used as a link, it will be passed in URL, and since the URL cannot accept non-ascii characters, there are possibilities of error. There won't be any problems in the SEO since, google can detect and convert them as the original text.
Url encoding will guarantee that a string will be passed correctly.

Another tool from Google. Page Speed Tool

2009-12-03T07:37:00.000-08:00

By checking all the website I manager from fetching pages in googlebot's perspective, I noticed a new beta tool called Page Speed tool. I think google is always finding ways to improve web user's experience on the internet, and one of the factors that can ruin (piss, annoy, yell, tantrum, etc) a user is page loading time.

When I first learned my HTML (I was 15 years old, that time), displaying webpages thru frames is just a new thing and almost seen it everywhere. that time, if you understand HTML, you can be a web programmer (and a plus if you know javascript). All you have to do is, put your contents, put links, put images, put "Sorry, this site/section is under construction" sign, put noframes, noscript, etc... you just put everything, as in without consideration of user experience.

But now, if you still use that, it is like you didn't improve yourself for a long time. I don't want to sound mean, but when I see websites done using the Javascript preload method, I can assess their skill. Actually, I don't hate the javascript preload image way , in fact I used it many times, but that was when I was 15 years old, way back 11 years ago. I mean, if they want to pre-load images, just use CSS and preload the images there.

But still, that is like yesterday... I'm just fixing some last minute requirements (my cravings), for a website that I'll upload soon, and I really want to use this new Google Page Speed tool.

Page Speed tool seems to give your site a good diagnostic test and tips.
But in short, the only solution to this is to keep your files , as much as possible , limited.
On my site, I will just use 2 picture for the site layout and the other things will be from database. This technique is called "sprites", and no, before you open your mouth and let your soul go out, let me interrupt you that, this isn't a new technology. In fact, it was really really old, it was done as even earlier than you've seen Street Fighter or even Super Mario your NES (Family Computer).

Since you would minimize bandwidth usage by preventing browsers to download and download files, your site will load faster. If your website loads faster, your contents can be read faster, and (depending on your site) understand what you would like them to know. I know first impression is important, and last impression is lasting, but that is not the case when your page visitor doesn't even know you or in any way curious about you.

Great tool. Don't take my word for it. Use it and decide if your site is slow or not.

Difference between HttpInputFile and HttpPosted file.

2009-12-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

while developing a new website and CMS where I need to manage uploaded files, I realized that the rchLibrary I wrote (idea from my previous work,and created a new version) only deals with the HttpInput file. To my knowledge I already coded an easy uploader for managing the uploaded files and checking the binaries, until I prefer to use the HttpPosted one.

Both are classes for uploads, with the first one, available on ASP.NET. But when you deal files , and you have to make ASP.NET controls for every file you need to upload... it will just make your application messy. (Well, ASP.NET is still a drag and drop, even those without solid experience in web development can still use it.).

But, using the HttpPosted file class will make your web app more flexible. All you have to do is to collect all the files posted and add them per posted file. You can also easily convert the stream to byte, and soon landing your database .

Saving Table structure in MS SQL 2008 not permitted

2009-11-28T03:31:00.000-08:00

Once you created a datatable in MSSQL 2008, and later decided to modify the table,it will prompt you that saving is not permitted because the changes you just did requires the current table to be dropped and re-created (OMG!).

Actions that invoke this behavior involves adding new columns, changing the order of columns, or column data type).

Fortunately, you cna just unset this behavior by checking on Tools menu > Options and Designers then Table & database designers. Just un-check the checkbox "prevent saving changes that require the table to be re-created". and everything should be OK.

Galaxy JS error and redirect loop @ yahoo

2009-11-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

lately, yahoo mail is weird. checking mails would end up in the screen above, after a series of redirection in Javascript ( as i'Ve seen it change in the address bar many times).

and switching to classic view can at least make it usable, good thing they implemented their mail application without relying 100% to javascripts. but, suffers from the above (redirection loop).

is this a sign that yahoo is being hacked or someone just forgot to add ";" to their javascripts?

BUG in CSS 3.0?

2009-11-11T07:37:00.000-08:00

I'm designing a layout for a blog I'm planning to setup and happen to notice this BUG. I'm not a real genius to CSS knowing all the properties without an API reference, but at least I know how it works. I carefully checked all the rules I've written, because this bug seem to freeze the hover, visited and other states.

What the bug does is that, it will ignore the states you apply on an element. It will remain on the default settings applied to it.

To have that scenario, you must reference your elements in hierarchy by many times. I wrote many CSS rules and access the elements in hierarchy, to get accurate at the cost of writing some element selectors over other.

When I encountered this bug, I tested it in FF (3.5.5) and Google Chrome (3.0.195.27). Both doesn't accept any rules I add, but once I remove some element.

example:

<div class="gray">
<div class="postButtons">

<a href="#" class="postReadMore" >
<span class="left"></span><span class="linkto">READ MORE</span>
</a>

<a href="#" class="postReadOTH" >
<span class="right"></span><span class="linkto">日本語で読む</span>
</a>
</div>

</div>

.postReadMore,.postReadOTH
{
float:left;
margin:10px;
}

.postReadMore span.linkto, .postReadOTH span.linkto
{
float:left;

}

.gray .postButtons .postReadMore:hover,.gray .postButtons .postReadOTH:hover
{

border-top:solid 1px #CCC;
border-left:solid 1px #CCC;
border-right:ridge 1px #000;
border-bottom:ridge 1px #000;

}

.gray .postButtons .postReadMore:hover .left
{
width:57px;
height:57px;
background: transparent url(../rchImages/sprites.png) no-repeat scroll -274px -202px;

}

.gray .postButtons .postReadOTH:visited .right
{
background: transparent url(../rchImages/sprites.png) no-repeat scroll -274px -202px;

}

.gray .postButtons .postReadMore:visited .left
{
background: transparent url(../rchImages/sprites.png) no-repeat scroll 0px -202px;
}

.gray .postButtons .postReadOTH:hover .right
{
width:57px;
height:57px;
background: transparent url(../rchImages/sprites.png) no-repeat scroll 0px -202px;
}

using these will freeze the .readMore element to default, nothing happens on hover, on visited,

but, once I remove an element to the hierarchy

FROM

.gray .postButtons .postReadMore:visited .left

{

background: transparent url(../rchImages/sprites.png) no-repeat scroll 0px -202px;

}

.gray .postReadMore:visited .left

{

background: transparent url(../rchImages/sprites.png) no-repeat scroll 0px -202px;

}

thinks work now... this is not a matter of browsers, since I tried different browser and still it didn't worked. I tried to remove some element in selector, and both works...

I guess there is just a limit to anything.

A step into Semantic Web - XFN

2009-09-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

I just drop by few blogs and wondered what does XFN attribute is for. Curious about the unknown XHTML attribute that I'm really sure I've used well, I tried searching and found XNF site, that is relating websites. How to use it is as simple like this:

1. First, if you have a link (anchor), just add an attribute "rel on it.
2. The value of attributes are as follows (reference: http://gmpg.org/xfn/join)

<a href="http://mypartnersite.com/" rel="acquantance met co-worker">text for my co-worker site</a>

XFN quick reference
relationship category	XFN values
friendship (at most one):	`friend` `acquaintance` `contact`
physical:	`met`
professional:	`co-worker` `colleague`
geographical (at most one):	`co-resident` `neighbor`
family (at most one):	`child` `parent` `sibling` `spouse` `kin`
romantic:	`muse` `crush` `date` `sweetheart`
identity:	`me`

3. Then, at your head tag, you must reference the XFN profile by adding an attribute "profile" and giving it a value of "http://gmpg.org/xfn/11" . and that's it.
< head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11" >

I'm just thinking that doing this will improve the Web 3.0 - Semantic Web, since it will have something to check whether sites are in what way related or not. That, I'll have to find out and see what happen next. ^_^

Twitter still under siege?

2009-09-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

twitter is still under siege

Common functions in Web Development

2009-09-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

Websites, Web Applictions, Web Services..,etc. While there are many aliases for them, the functions behind every web thing is very common, and once anyone get a clear understanding of these, they can fully develop their own class library in such a way that they don't have to repeat coding everything from scratch.

From my previous worked, I'm able to create class libraries that significantly improved the way I develop applications. Because these things doesn't need to be designed again, and just by taking the necessary parameters, all I have to do is to pass these informations, then everything is just like assembling a lego puzzle.

These are few to mention:

1. Mailer - Almost every website needs this. Feedback, comment, suggestions? All of them require mailing functionality. You can use it in your Contact Us sections, or even on your automated things, where you need to spend time sitting in front of PC just to get a track of something. How about tracking that task with a mailer so once it is completed, you'll just be notified with an e-mail? Very convinient, isn't it?

2. Encryption/Decryption - Who wants their data easily readable in ABC. These function needs a couple of parameters , like a few matching code, salt code, encryption algorithm and a few loop and you'll be playing cryptologist in no time. You'll often use this on password forms, and if you want even more, you can even encrypt a whole data table but you have to compensate that security with an extra pain in storage (you'll also make your DB Admin a bit mad). The good thing here is that, your data is safe unless they know the algorithm you use and the parameters involve. Don't play with this unless you know what you are doing. Else it is like putting papers on shredders.

3. Web Functions - GET, POST, Session, Cookies,Form, etc. They are repetitive so writing a class library saves time. I always feel comfort doing AJAX with this library since I don't have to make messy additional codes, but rather just pass a specific variable, and everything will be ajaxified back.

4. Streaming Data - Do you need to output data into tables, excel document or even pdf files? Then you must make a class that will handle all the data stream and perform output stream to each request. Since all data are basically binary streams, you can easily make a class that handle stream data and just perform specific control for each file types (using the mime).

5. String Manipulation - the very basics of programming. add it up with regular expressions and you got a very powerful control class. While this might be basic, this saves me time. Millions of CDR needs to be parsed? No problem? Even a complicated task can be finished within minutes, depending on your computer.

6. Sounds - While this may be rare, doing so won't hurt. How about making a class that can invoke streamed data and output them to human audible sound. Not bad and I find it also interesting. (I just make my VAIO P speak up japanese words whenever I can't read some).

7. Network Related class- Imagine doing socket programming. What needs to be modified here is only a matter of port settings and few output preference. It can be easily done with a parameter that takes a port to open/listen and an output method to use.

And it is called Web Development. It may be hard at first but once you get a grasp of it, doing other things is just a matter of creative thinking and like exploring the back of your hand.

Is this a google error?

2009-08-24T15:09:00.001-07:00

Hehe, I don't really mind if it snow on summer, but seriously this is some error.

5E0 4L60R1THM - 自分の実験解析

2009-08-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

a. To be listed under a textbox with fluctuating numbers

since they are multiple domain controller, the efficiency of this depends on the amount of queries done for a particular value. a proof of this is that, the value for a US "Tokyo Webdeveloper" (without qoutes) is not the same for the same value in JP or PH, for example.

b. To be included ..

since this is just a matter of 0's and 1's, there is no way of checking the usefulness value of pages without reading it one by one, which is impossible. Without voting sites involved, the only thing to check the value is how much you say about it.At this point, it doesn't matter if you are talking about trash or something, since at this point in time, quantity wins over quality, of course until later. Proof of this, 1 in their free rant about life services + 2 in their free exhibition yourself services

c. To have your components under you, blue underlined.

this involves the user logs. how many times this path is accessed? if they would just go this area after entering the door, would it be just great to make a door that will just take them to their location easily. It doesn't matter if you are not that highly profiled, but if people checked for your house, they should be able to see it and the doors created for it (if they have many visitors)

d. To have that long textbox under your components

since your house is too big, it would be hard to simply make doors for all those rooms. How about we just ask them what do they want and simply open a door for them leading to that search term?

e. To get alias...

this is easy... history of miserable failure. there could be changes, but I think that is just to find, if these suits him as he said he was, OK.. if not, trash it

And it is easy to just apply workarounds for others.. ^_^

I hope you understand. It has to be a riddle, but very common,

分からないと、そんなことは僕の知ったことないので、すみません。

Result after 1 week

2009-07-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

I guess the web crawlers are working really hard that they manage to crawl to the site easily. Also, the pages will appear delicious to the bots, since it is catered to provide the information they need in a way they can easily understand

But good thing is that, even if it app.ears smashed in the address bar, it is properly displayed in the results page. So at this rate, the strength of the website can be determined by the amount of useful information provided, of course, made easy by MVC approach.

Recovering of Partition Table Information

2009-07-31T00:51:00.000-07:00

One of the most nasty things happened while shrinking drives is this unreadable partition. Sometimes this also could happen, if you accidentally cleanED (using windows DISKPART) a disk. At first when I thought it was deleted, it is a 500GB hard disk, so you can imagine how much information it holds. I tried to get a cup of coffee and convinced myself that "Hey, it is not all deleted. No computer can delete such file size in a few seconds. If you want to delete a Hard Disk without a trace, you have to switch 1 and 0 per 8 bits of a byte of that 500 gigabytes." Thus, I decided to spend this night sleepless, trying to recover the data.

Searching on the internet is hard. I tried many softwares there, and sadly some are hijacked with virus, rootkits and some even tried to write a function after few months to mess my drive's partition table after uninstall. I also installed some "promising" softwares, but in the end they won't allow you to fix your partition table.

Good thing, I'm able to find this good tool called TestDisk. At first it is hard to use and after trying all those crapwares, I already lose hope, but TestDisk worked like a charm. From the damaged partition, it can even extract files back and also fix the partition that I accidentally cleanED using the diskpart tool. After analyzing the disk partition, it will write a new one and instruct you to restart it to take effect. On my case, it is a removable device. Simply unplug, plug, found new device and WHOA! the files are there.

and the best thing about this, it is FREE! Thanks to the genius behind this Open Source Project.

Self Generating Contents Website in less than 60 hours

2009-07-24T02:18:00.000-07:00

I just challenged myself to make a simple website that will display Japanese verb conjugation. I think this site is very useful to improve vocabulary provided that one already recall some sentence patterns, then this would surely help them to even higher levels. This japanese fundamental learning tool is made less than 60 hours. Yes! you read it right. I did it alone, including the database, few SEO guidelines, planning, DEBUGGING (and I say hello to somee), few graphics and verb check up ,etc.


CONTROLLER <======>  VIEW
                    |^
                    ||
                    ||
MODEL<================

So, here is the plan. I do know the fundamentals of Japanese language, but to get even more better and fluent, I must improve my vocabulary and the only thing that comes in my mind is to improve retention. Past exams that I have taken proved me that, whenever anyone sees something in a timely fashion, then your mind will remember it, whether you like it or not. Much better if you would like it, though. So from this, I put up a list of all the verbs I can term as fundamental. Verbs in Japanese is as complicated as speaking the language.

I also need it, at the same time, want to share this to other people who might thinking of the same thing. Thus, this is where my web dev skills apply.

First I tried to search for free webhost, but unfortunately they only allow MS Access database (at least for a FREE account). They also don't have support to MVC, so I'll be downgrading few features based on the resources available to me.

I don't have much time, so I guess MVC approach suits this. There are patterns for each Japanese groups, to which few are exceptions.

I manually entered all the verbs, the conjugation and thought of some rules to make the conjugation automatic. there are 359 verbs in the access database, using MVC approach, I'm able to produce 359 verbs x 10 different conjugation + 3 verb groups x 359 verbs + 3 list page and 1 front page resulting to 5,015 different page views using 1 aspx.

It took me less than 60 hours to make a working copy on my local. This will be search engine friendly. By looking at the code, I think I did well. With just 1 ASPX file as my VIEW. I have an isolated MODEL that deals with the access database. There is a controller who will check which pages are requested, check the model, pass the data to view and return the data to site visitors.

Also, I mentioned search engine friendly. I made a function that outputs all the possible combinations of URL into sitemap. This is dynamically run, so I don't have to worry about it each time I made an update.

All worked perfectly until one thing I realized... the server is not as good as they claim to be..

They don't support url changing so, my controller class already failed. This made me review all the SEO books I know. I tried all the methods to make it work. Overall, I tried 3. (from Intellegencias code, to Global asax application start approach to even path convertion), but alas nothing work. So, I guess I have to make another trick. the leading "/". Now everything will appear as if it is 1 file.

so, one thing I'm sure of. If I get my credit card, I'll just buy a hosting, transfer all of it there and upgrade it to what I really planned.

It is really tiring to adjust to limitations , find solution than just to let money talk. But it was fun. Another experience that improved my skillset. And that less than 60 hours is not consecutive. I'm also a human being, I need to rest, eat, take bath and some other things. I just keep track of that on assumption of normal working days. like 8 hour in 1 day. I finished this in almost 1 week. I could have done better, but since the server will not allow all of those optimization, I decided to leave it as is, for now.

this is the sitemap that gets generated each time the web crawler checks for my sitemap.

http://sayinjapanese.somee.com/?XML=ウェブ開発者&sitemap=sayinjapanese.somee.com/

Google changed their sitemap format

2009-07-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

From this

<urlset xmlns='http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9'>
<url>
URL
</url>
<lastmod>DATE</lastmod>
<changefreq>FREQ</changefreq>
</urlset>

To this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>URL</loc>
<lastmod>DATE</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Windows 7 - How to Enable the Start > Run from Start Menu

2009-07-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

1. Right-Click on Start Menu

2. Click "Properties"

3. Under Start Menu Tab, Click "Customize"

4. Scroll Down and Check "Run Command"

5. Click "OK".

Gundam RX78 : Sighted at Odaiba (Japan)

2009-07-19T11:38:00.001-07:00

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the popular Anime series "Gundam", they placed this Amuro Ray Gundam unit here in Odaiba. This 18 meter model stands at Shiokaze Kouen in Odaiba Park.

We didn't went there just to see the unit, so I'm unable to take the illumination event. I noticed that the head can look up, sideways and a bit down. Everything looks realistic too, the lights, and the mist , whoa! Everyone can just say it is wonderful!

I wonder if they can make the advance units, like ZGMF-X19A or ZGMF-X10A in HiMat mode.

I'll post more pics and the actual footage, I can't upload them all since I'm not using the super fast wired internet. (*sigh*, maybe e-mobile is only good for mailing, surfing.. even a no for youtube uploads).

Installing Windows 7 : SUCCESS

2009-07-16T22:12:00.000-07:00

I just finished installing Windows 7. It took me less than an hour just to get things installed and see the Windows 7 fighting fish wallpaper. And the sound is also perfectly fine, no need to get the drivers, unless I am really picky.

By checking things, I can tell that Microsoft really have done a good thing about Windows 7, compared to Vista. There are still the semi-eye candy thing, probably they just disabled aero feature from Vista, but it is still cool.

First, this is just to prepare for the VAIO Type P that I preordered. It is an owner made, running with Atom 550 (2.0Ghz), 256GB SSD HD, 2GB RAM. I took the Japanese keyboard, because the ENTER key is easier to hit and also, I want to type Japanese characters on my VAIO P as well. I also took the brown one over the typical silver, because the silver keyboard hits hard on fingertips while I feel much better typing on the brown keyboard. I also didn't take the Wireless WAN/GPS since I can live without it. It is binded to NTT Docomo but there are always some way to unlock it.

First is to make a portion of Windows 7 into my HD. This is where I will put those Windows 7 files and remove it afterwards.

After few minutes, the Fighting Fish wallpaper shows up!

Google add warning to PRC website as HARMFUL?

2009-07-15T09:28:00.001-07:00

What the hell's going on? PRC website hacked by someone, that Google sees it as an offensive site?

Check the proof below. I verified this when a friend told me to check my name on google.

It seems that PRC's page got injected by codes that redirect to harmful sites. Maybe this is why google marked the page as "HARMFUL".

Not only that. Once you checked PRC website, the browser will either stop or warn you that the site is not safe and may cause something to your computer. I hope they do something about this even before google or other search engine delete their indexes on search engine results.Result from Firefox

Result from Google Chrome

Result from IE. They even prevent the page from being displayed. I check my internet connection and it is perfectly OK. (In Tokyo, Japan)

Error in PHP when accessing SQL Express

2009-07-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

I started to play around with PHP - MSSQL when I bumped on an error that took me some time before I managed to find some fix. PHP is OK, all the functions, all green. But if I would try mssql functions, I would get 500 error (Internal Server Error) and even threw me a FastCGI Error, to which I really gave a laugh. FastCGI is sitting idly like an angel, while blame on it.

Then, I found the faulty part.

On the PHP folder, check the version of ntwdblib.dll file. If the version is like 2000.2.8.0 , just download the same file from a trustworthy source. I downloaded 2000.80.194.0 version of the DLL.

And things went OK.

Now time to convert all those things to PHP functions.

Here are the libraries I've done for ASP.NET.

Mailer

Web Request (POST/GET/Redirect/Stream)

Sockets

Audio

TTS

and If I can make it maybe even 80% of it in PHP, I would be sipping Java Chip F in any starbucks with my Type P.

Even just the rchWeb part.

Can't wait. ^-^

Sony Vaio Type- P - Getting cheaper because of Windows 7?

2009-07-13T04:46:00.000-07:00

I recently pre-ordered a Japanese Owner-Made VAIO Type-P. Although, they told me that it is within my responsibility if I install English OS on it, I just laughed and said "Hai, wakarimashita" with a grin on my face. Of course, I took the best specs.

For me, it doesn't matter which OS, because most probably I'll just be using it for writing web scripts that need to be done ASAP whenever, whereever I am. I also took the 256 SSD, so hope that I'll be making a walkthorough here, or else just cross my palm with silver and I'll it for you, Sony Vaio Type-P , English.

I also grabbed the e-mobile package, but somehow I feel a bit of regret. e-mobile took 30000 yen from the total amount, but I have to subscribe to their service for 2 years, which would cost me minimum of 2,480 yen to maximum of around 6900 yen. And if I cancel now, I have to pay them 60,000 yen. I can't hardly google a thing from my current location unless I step on a nearby starbucks.... wtf!

Can't wait to get my mini machine.

Japanese Entertainment: Hilarious, but to what extent?

2009-06-30T05:02:00.000-07:00

At first try, it is really funny and really do pulled a laugh from me, but sometimes I feel worried because, in a 3rd person point of view, we can enjoy, but how about those who got themselves fooled.

Well, I hope they got some money or two for being part of the show.

Slowly killing time: Shibuya

2009-06-22T09:23:00.001-07:00

A typical scene at Shibuya, Tokyo.
I always enjoy looking from above, watching busy people crossing the street.
I feel like time moves slowly and very relaxing.

Another apocalypse movie: 2012

2009-06-21T00:04:00.000-07:00

I just watched the trailer of this new movie, 2012. It may sounds like another "Independence Day" or "The day after tomorrow". Just by looking at the trailer, I can imagine the work they've done using those effects, earthquake, volcano, destruction, etc.

The story? The earth will be destroyed on 12/12/2012.

Hoping for this to show in nearby theaters.

Finding a picture to fit on… TOKYO

2009-06-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

I just realized how hard it is to live alone in Tokyo. I mean all by yourself, having no company to help you with the accommodation, finding job, etc.

Consider this scenario. If one would try to find job here, first a shelter is necessary. There's no problem in food as you can just find everything you need in a nearby convenience store if cooking is a hassle and having limited budget. If you still find those convini foods to be expensive, try waiting around 9 – 11pm and the price will surely go down. Usually you can see this kanji引き (biki) preceeded by a number, which means, % discount. So if you see a bentou box with 500 yen tag and with 20%引き, it means you only have to pay 400 yen for it. And if you can see this ,

半額

(hangaku) it means 50% discount or HALF – PRICE.

The condition to find yourself an apartment is that, you must have a WORK to start with or you must have a Japanese guarantor, someone who would stand there in case you would run from paying the rent (of course we know we won't do it, but there are different people too and we can't blame the owners).

There is an option, but quite expensive. Staying on sakura houses might not be a bad idea. I can have my own room, having shared bathroom, toilet, kitchen, etc with other foreigners. With that amount per month, I can already rent my own apartment, provided I have Japanese guarantor and a present job. The monthly rent is really shocking if you would take Tokyo central places. But might suffer if you have to commute very far.

The picture above is taken while I was inside a coffee shop. I was surprised because this pigeon walked from the park all the way to this place, and even waited for the traffic lights too. It walked all the way just to mingle with people in the coffee shop, hoping that they would at least share a part of what they are taking, quite a picture, isn't it.

My 2nd year in Tokyo

2009-06-17T07:08:00.000-07:00

Whew, I almost forgot that it was my second year here in Tokyo, Japan. How time really flies and I couldn't remember the things that happened, as I can still feel things as if they happened yesterday.

分からないことで、どこか行きたい感じがあるんだが、どこへ行くのが分からない。おかしいだね？

さも僕の足が自分の頭があって、駅に歩かせちゃった。

Then I just found myself in Shibuya... I haven't eaten anything, but just before I entered some place where I can eat, I already placed a ticket to Den-EnToshi line... I just feel weird, I take the train. Then after seating, I enjoyed looking outside the window, looking at places that feels like familiar.

Then, thinking it was already far, I disembarked at Nagatsuta. I was amazed, I went all the way here, I don't even know if someone I knew used to live here, or by any chance I might bump on some fellow "Kababayan"...

Then, I want to move a little bit more, but my tummy is already complaining. I planned to go through the last stop of JR Yokohama, but I end up disembarking at the very next station, Naruse.

The place is somewhat different from Tokyo, it is like a province.

I happen to pass by a bridge, and beneath is a cemetery. There is also a water gate next to it, controlled by a sluice gate somewhere. I walked straight and straight, looking a something that I can't even describe, but I feel like I need to go there. Very weird, but it gave me a good exercise walking.

Then on this (I saw some sign, Aobayama, nantoka... something.. I'm getting drowsy since Ihaven't eaten anything and I'M tired and also quite exhausted because of the rain torrents, walking without the umbrella ....). I felt really worried. I looked around and at night time, it seems really dark on these areas. I hope somebody has been there for them, that those who do this act can't do their foolish acts without getting a fight or something..

I think I really lost my way. I tried to look for taxi, but can't find one. There are bus stops but I think they go to other direction. I can't see some kanji that I've seen on the station. So I just continued walking.

And then, I reached here, going out to a place that I believe I've been.

I feel like, I was looking for a missing fragment of my memory. It feels strange, and I felt like I've been here before. This looks like a school. I was looking at the big clock near the field. I looked for students busy running around the school, chatting, parting ways....

somehow I feel relieved and smiled... I decided to just rest at the nearby pasta restaurant. 学校のClockに見ながら、ゆっくりして、にこにこ笑わせた。 ^_^

Then... after some time, I went back home. It was a long day.

quite tiring, but I feel great. I don't know what I've found, but somehow I feel satisfied.

Making A Web Crawler :

2009-06-14T07:01:00.000-07:00

I have thought of this for many times and wondered, how to Google, Yahoo! and other search engines do this stuffs, sniffing all the net info? Does every page have to submit to their directory?

Well constant thinking gave me an idea, and somehow I think I can also make one using C#.

Their algorithm probably runs like this (I could be wrong, but this is just an assumption based on what I percieve as possible).

First, this program will check things from 1.0.0.0 until it reach 255.255.255.255.

Then, for every dataset result on each page landing on every tick of the IP, this bot will check the contents, and will try to read all HTML elements, or just the contents. After which he will follow, if those are links to other document, using the root IP. If it detects an error (404 - Not Found), it will try the other part, and also will try to check files on every directory. Then this will save the contents on the DB, and also try to check the links to where it points to do a new scan.

So maybe, sometimes we have to submit our site to these search engine because it could take time for the bots to crawl on every pages. Another thing that these web bots can detect are the "GET" request, which get cached.

So far that is the fundamental, I think. And the other things like meta analysis, checking based on contents and other black SEO practices done based on that Search engine policies.

Web Layouts: What differs a Graphics Designer from Web Designer

2009-06-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

When I was given a web project, I started to read some details to get opinions of other people. This is different from just dragging and dropping things in your visual IDE and worst, you might suffer later for cross browser compatibility (say hello to IE 6).

So because of this cross browser rendering issues, these layouts are used.

The Ice Cube Box

-these kind of websites tend to stay on the left side of the screen. They "STATICALLY" stay there,in such a way that they would be "SOMEHOW" rendered in that position. It is true, this will stay aligned to the left, but one big disadvantage of this is, when users who have resolution greater than the static dimension (w, h), things from their view will not be balanced.

The Jelly Box

-these kind of websites tend to stay on the middle of the screen. This layout address to the ICE CUBE Box limitation, the lack of "Balance". They are still somewhat "STATICALLY" measured, adjusting to the lowest possible browser resolution (I still consider 760px , although sometimes I fear those who use 640 x 480 resolution). Most who do this use the 760 px adjustment, thinking that most users still hae 800 x 600 px resolution. Since this stays in the middle of your screen, eerything appears to be proportionally balanced. However, since the dimensions are still statically set, this layout will waste some of the space, that you can also use to add some elements, or maybe additional ads space to earn extra.

The Liquid Layout

- Finally, to address those holes. The Liquid layout is dynamically adjusted, depending on the user's resolution. To accomplish this, you should not give an element some fixed value if they would act as "CONTAINER" for other elements (adjust to page element on percentage units). This is quite hard to accomplish, so you have to check every browsers, especially IE. Add some extra space, in such a way that if rendering error occur, your layout won't suffer much. Other thing is to reset all element renderings to have a uniform setting for all elements. Most of these I saw online are ice-boxed,liquid type since they adjust from LEFT. I would rather prefer the Liquid-Jelly layout, since it would appear more balanced.

I've seen many websites, and sometimes I still see people using the old approach for image switchovers (Javascript), preloader (still Javascript, duh)...and even some people who give form driven name some kanji or katakana or hiragana names... (Ouch). well, we can always learn from experience and someday we'll be able to do things in a more appropriate way.

OK. To answer the question. Graphics Designer are gurus when it comes to desktop publishing, but a Web Designer is someone who can extend those skills to a higher level.

Akihabara : A glimpse of a tradegy...

2009-06-11T08:10:00.001-07:00

At first glimpe, you would think that those are some garbage, I suppose. But a closer look, they are really flowers, drinks, snacks and others used as an offering for those who died in Akihabara last year, a stabbing rampage.

Japan's working lifestyle is reall strict. One mistake, you'll become an outcast. No body invites you to group parties, no body informs you about recent company policy or event, everybody mobs you on their conversation after work, etc.... very unforgiving in such a way, someone who experience those would most likely to be violent, do something sneaky, just to adjust for such unfair act.

Because of this, he tried to express himself in such a way that his existance will not be ignored. He posted several message to a Social Networking Site, and when he arrived at Akihabara, randomly stabbed everyone after he hit pedestrians using the truck he drove.

I also feel sorry for them and also for this guy, who didn't find a way to prove everyone that they are wrong about him.

Ginza: Back to Feudal Tokyo?

2009-06-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

What is this? Am I seeing this right? Am I in Tokyo, year 2009?

I recalled my world history lessons when I saw this. Also, one of the things that Jose Rizal didn't like when he visited Japan. This man-pulled cart called "Jin-Riksha".

I tried to look inside the window, but it is hard to see. Maybe this is some special service. Sometimes, I can also pedal powered taxi here, streets of Ginza.

Function evaluation disabled because a previous function evaluation timed out. You must continue execution to reenable function evaluation.

2009-06-09T17:05:00.000-07:00

Function evaluation disabled because a previous function evaluation timed out. You must continue execution to reenable function evaluation.

this error ticks me, I'm running this parser program I make since monday night and I'm stuck with just one month.

I'll try a work around on this since I use the debugger CLI from VS 2k5 which is rumored to be a "BUG".

I also tried to clean up the code and divide the load because I have to take text (if you know SQL datatypes, you know how big is this) long datas and roughly 3 million row that I have to parse, something which my computer running 1 GB, Pentium D can't stand, it can't even fill a datatable with all those data. >_<

So, my workaround is to just get some id, then get another query specific to that ID, so in that way I'll be able to see the progress per row processed and, should not end up like the first attempt, since I'm only storing integers in datatables. I'll POST later for this breakpoint thrilling debug.

*UPDATE* Things seems to work now, but only insert row at 1 row per sec, my notebook at home is much faster than this computer....>_<

Lesson Learned: "It is hard to be deprived..."

Ano ba ang "Plastic" sa Japanese?

2009-06-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

Minsan, natanong ko na rin to sa sarili ko. Ano nga ba yun?...

Example:

Nung dumating ako dito, sobrang excited ako. I want to meet many friends, so as much as possible, I keep on my mind all the things that would most likely open up a conversation, a lively one. So, when I do, parang ang naging dating sa kanila, immature. Yung laging nakangiti (smiling face ba lagi), ang dating sa kanila nun hindi ka seryoso sa mga ginagawa mo. Pati yung mga usual natin na ginagawa sa pinas, hindi katulad yun dito...from here, pumapasok yung term na "Tatemae".

Meron silang saying, na minsan natanong ko sa pinoy na sempai. "Honne to Tatemae ga chigau".. Ibig sabihin, mag-kaiba yung tunay na personality sa personality na ipinapakita. So, may mga time na meron tayong ka officemate na Haponesa, tapos parang ang sweet-sweet satin, it doesn't necessarily mean na gusto nila tayo. I'm also not saying na malabo mangyari yun, pero usually Tatemae yun. Sa mga Japanese kasi, napakaimportante ng Work life, kasi most of their life dito na napupunta, well depende pa rin sa Japanese to, kasi meron ako kilala na Japanese, super bait nya mas pinili nya na mag volunteer work, than to earn money here.

Anyway. back to the topic. Ayun, gusto kasi nila makapag work sila ng maayos, so para mangyari yun, dapat as much as possible wala ka kaaway sa work. Yun ang Tatemae, minsan hindi sila talaga umiinom ng alak, pero para magandang pakikisama, iinom sila. Parang ganito rin sa atin, although at some point, parang ka-plastican ito, di ba? Pero I think, for a good cause.

Tapos isa pa, example kunwari meron ka bagong hairdo, tapos pag nakita ka nila, sasabihin nila "Wow, ayos ng buhok mo.. kakkoii". Pero sa loob loob nila, "Hala, saang carnival ka nanggaling? Nag cosplay ka ba?"... dito naman Pumapasok yung isang term, na ang tawag e "Omoteura ga aru"....

One notable na nangyari sakin na ganito, isang beses merong Japanese na me hawak ng main computer. So yung computer na to, dito ako gumagawa ng mga applications ko, usually web application. Ginawa nun, nagbigay sya sakin ng access, naka CC sa ibang japanese. tapos, nung aaccess ko na yung computer, ayaw... Yun pala, mali yung binigay sakin. nung lumapit ako, aba, eh iba iba yung case nung username and password, mali pa yung spelling. Para sakin, eto ang tunay na ka plastican. Pero parang doble kara ito, so kahit biro wag nyo sana sabihin sa Japanese. kung sa atin, parang pag sinabi mo, "sus, plastik mo..." , matatawa pa tayo. Sila, hindi....

And another thing, napaka sensitive nila sa pagkakamali. Make a mistake and you're lucky if pagbigyan ka nila ng pagkakataon.

At sana, wag nyo isipin na lahat ng Japanese ganito. Meron din mababait na Japanese, parang sa atin din, or kahit saang lugar. Every place is a forest, ika nga..

One Coin Internet

2009-06-06T06:15:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to see this. On top of Tokyo being the most expensive city to live in, there are still some bits of cheap things found in limited place.

Using 100 yen, you can use the computer. This is useful when you're dying to check mails. (I was like this before...)

Shiodome @ Night

2009-06-06T06:13:00.000-07:00

Just to share some view I took at top of Shiodome towers.

It was really cool. A sight on top of very tall tower. From this point, I can see the busy streets of Tokyo.

Yakiniku : Han no Daidokoro (Kitchen of Han)

2009-06-06T05:57:00.000-07:00

My friends said Philippines people really like BBQ. But I said, of course maybe everyone does, with the exception of those who are vegetarians. When I take them to a Yakiniku Tabehoudai (eat all you can) place, they said they don't feel like eating within span of time, so this time I was taken to a different place.

The name of the place reminds of a Korean dynasty, Han. It is indeed, Han's daidokoro. (Kitchen of Han).

I can't say more about this place. They really give good service. They replace the grill every other minute, because it gets black if you grilled things in there.

If you look at the table, you can see that technology in Tokyo improved their daily lives, the grill can be controlled here, and also it has some sort of a clock that will show how long it is used. This is not chargable to customers though, I think they put it there so they can estimate how much their monthly electric bill will cost.

So we tried this. I forgot what this one is called , but this meet is one part of Cow's Tounge.

And we took this much. It was not as much as "gatsu-gatsu" in tabehoudai, but this is great. We had a good time talking and not rushing to fires.

And, I was quite hesitant to eat this. I just had my sashimi eating lessons few weeks ago but this time, no.. it was not yet the Ootoro, I'm reserving that for some special day. This is what they call "Wagyuu Nigiri". It is "RAW" Beef.

At first I thought I can't eat it, but I just put the wasabe I can and the ginger I can and the garlic I can and the soy sauce. And I ate one. Oishikatta~~~Yo!

Steam Turtle : Shiodome

2009-06-06T05:52:00.000-07:00

After the Shogi sights, we went to Shiodome and look what we saw, a steaming turtle. It is like a Geyzer.

An event at Shimbashi : Shogi Game?

2009-06-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

My friends and I decided to do "Machiawase" (wait) at Shimbashi station. I was there and after 15 minutes of waiting, got bored and walked around. Then, I saw this interesting event. It is like a tourney, where everyone would play a boardgame.

This one is called, Shogi. This is the Japanese chess.

And this one is the game we knew, "Chess". And they also have some limited move puzzle.

I was amazed. Both young and old played shogi and chess, they played as if they we're just playing with some friend of same age. I also saw some bad losers and threw pieces, but maybe sometimes there are people like that.

After which, my companion arrived (at last..) (T-T)

Friday Night

2009-06-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the desert from Outback, Roppongi.
I'm really laughing because whenever I go to TGIFridays or Outback, there always a birthday. Yay! Happy Birthday... >_<>

The cheese cake taste better, IMO. I don't like sweet things that much , but the cheese cake is not that sweet. and it is very big, good enough for 5 - 6 people.

After dinner, we went to GasPanic. I think this place is much livelier than Motown and I feel like this is for younger people too. The music, light,smoke is cool. But if you are not holding a drink next to you, you need to get out.

We tried to dance a like, then I saw another indian again, touching japanese. I tried to purposely blocked him because the girl is running away from him. I know it is quite mean of me to do this and sometimes my friend are worried about me when I make "Jama" to such things.

But sometimes, it can't be prevented. There are foreigners, who thinks Japanese people go there to meet them. While in some part it can be true, I hope everyone know their limits, as to where to stop. I'm really feel sick seeing Japanese girls moving away (because they're shy to say NO, or maybe by saying NO will not work either), and being constantly chased by some pervy foreigner.

So, if you would happen to visit Roppongi, just an advice. Know your limits. Japanese go there to unwind from stress, some really look for partners, but if they show signs no interest of you, just leave them alone, they want to find others. Don't push your luck.

A(H1N1) attacks DLSU : An outbreak of Swine Flu in Philippines?

2009-06-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

It was yesterday I was informed by a close friend who goes to La Salle that A(H1N1) outbreak paid their school a visit. 2 Japanese exchange student who visited La Salle last May 25 (A japanese female) starting new term . After 3 days, signs of A(H1N1) of showed, and just yesterday the news broke.

DLSU, in response to this, decided to suspend classes for 10 days.

more reading here

Tool Request

2009-06-03T17:43:00.001-07:00

Out of boredom, I would start to accept tool request. Just tell me what you have to accomplish and don't give me deadline (unless you are willing to pay, that's another story).

I'll develop these tools for those who are not technically savvy. I'll just post here the request (and some name, depending on your requirement). and another thing, I'll just develop for those using Microsoft OS(es). I think it can also run in Linux environment (you have to install Mono),but for now I don't want much trouble and just want to offer some hand.

Finally: some additional savings

2009-06-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

I just checked my bankbook, and look what I got. The 12,000 yen is already there. やった！This can add to my savings. It took some time, maybe about 1 or 2 months wait after I sent my copy to the city hall.

If only I can get myself a credit card here. Too bad, my employer seems paranoid about me having a credit card. I just want to have something for my e-wallet....

anyway, I'll just hope next time will be OK.

Free Diamonds at Mauboussin , in Ginza

2009-06-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

Afternoon, I walked in Ginza and wondered why there are people all lined up in a store. I didn’t see this place before so I assume this is new. Afterall, Japanese people fall for new things

And when I asked what is it all about, they said the store is giving away free diamonds. “WHOA”. I only have 1 hour so I didn’t bother joining them, although I was tempted a bit. They said it was a French franchised diamond store, Mauboussin (an old lady said it is pronounced Mabousan)

The tiny free diamonds worth 5000 yen, and the store is encouraging people to have their free diamond to be made into rings or accessories starting roughly at 50,000 yen

I just smiled and walked away while looking at my bank book.