Friday, December 22, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
My kde-core Adventures
Everything is now at: http://jucato.org/kde/kde-core.html
Post your comments at: http://www.jucato.org/blog/my-kde-core-adventures/
Thank you!
Post your comments at: http://www.jucato.org/blog/my-kde-core-adventures/
Thank you!
Monday, November 13, 2006
Realizations and New Frontiers
Ok, that's just one cheesy title. Only because I can't think of a better one right now.
Realizations...
Two weeks ago, I joined (for the first time in my entire life, as far as I can recall) our local Parish Youth Ministry recollection. (For those who don't know what a recollection is, think: talks, sessions, meditation, processing, etc.) Well, of course it didn't turn out to be the kind of recollection that I was used to, but it was both fun and meaningful. I'm actually looking forward to the next recollection. But probably next time, I'm gonna bring some heavy gear, like the ones American football players wear.
Anyway, one of the sessions involved some visualization and imagination (and some soothing, though unrelated, music). You're on a ship with your family, on your way to a dream vacation when, suddenly, everyone panics as the ship begins to sink. In all the confusion, only one slot was left for on the last lifeboat. Your family chose you to be the one to survive. You were given a few last minutes to say farewell to your family. You remember the times you shared, the good and the bad. You recalled how you sometimes fought and disagreed with each other. And yet, despite and in spite of it all, they chose you. They have decided to give you the gift to live on, to do what you still could and wanted to do, to carry on their name and their memories in your heart.
This was probably the most significant part of that day for me, regardless of the fact that the focus of the entire day was really on team-building. It was, in a way, a sort of a personal wake up call (again). The biggest question that ran in my mind that time was, "Why wait for such a tragedy to happen before I realize how special people are and how important the time I have really is?" I guess I've spent more time planning and "visualizing" what I want, and never really got down to doing the things I planned for. Planning is good, but it's not everything. I guess I should take up that motto again: Do it NOW!
New Frontiers
Someone (I'm not saying who, as I doubt that he'd want that) was kind enough to share with me some web hosting space and to give me a domain name, for a whole year, for free! And this is from someone who I've only met online (IRC) and have been with for just 3 months. So now, jucato.org, while still a bit empty, is available.
This means, though, that I'm dropping some of the online services I've subscribed to. I've definitely decided to drop Multiply.com, even before I got the free web hosting. I realized that it was hard maintaining and customizing 3 separate sites (Friendster, Blogger, and Multiply) and decided to just focus on Blogger and Friendster, with Blogger being my primary blog. But now, I'm not sure whether I'm going to keep even Blogger. I already have WordPress installed, and that gives me (almost) absolute blogging freedom, with everything that WordPress has to offer. Although, I haven't seen any "limitation" to what Blogger offers that I didn't like so far (except for the abscence of WordPress-like static Pages). This makes the decision a bit more difficult, again...
Anyway, this setup is certain for only a year. After that, everything depends on whehter my friend will renew his subscription, or whether I will look for a webhost of my own. Who knows? Maybe I'll host my own stuff, on my own home server, in the future.
Realizations...
Two weeks ago, I joined (for the first time in my entire life, as far as I can recall) our local Parish Youth Ministry recollection. (For those who don't know what a recollection is, think: talks, sessions, meditation, processing, etc.) Well, of course it didn't turn out to be the kind of recollection that I was used to, but it was both fun and meaningful. I'm actually looking forward to the next recollection. But probably next time, I'm gonna bring some heavy gear, like the ones American football players wear.
Anyway, one of the sessions involved some visualization and imagination (and some soothing, though unrelated, music). You're on a ship with your family, on your way to a dream vacation when, suddenly, everyone panics as the ship begins to sink. In all the confusion, only one slot was left for on the last lifeboat. Your family chose you to be the one to survive. You were given a few last minutes to say farewell to your family. You remember the times you shared, the good and the bad. You recalled how you sometimes fought and disagreed with each other. And yet, despite and in spite of it all, they chose you. They have decided to give you the gift to live on, to do what you still could and wanted to do, to carry on their name and their memories in your heart.
This was probably the most significant part of that day for me, regardless of the fact that the focus of the entire day was really on team-building. It was, in a way, a sort of a personal wake up call (again). The biggest question that ran in my mind that time was, "Why wait for such a tragedy to happen before I realize how special people are and how important the time I have really is?" I guess I've spent more time planning and "visualizing" what I want, and never really got down to doing the things I planned for. Planning is good, but it's not everything. I guess I should take up that motto again: Do it NOW!
New Frontiers
Someone (I'm not saying who, as I doubt that he'd want that) was kind enough to share with me some web hosting space and to give me a domain name, for a whole year, for free! And this is from someone who I've only met online (IRC) and have been with for just 3 months. So now, jucato.org, while still a bit empty, is available.
This means, though, that I'm dropping some of the online services I've subscribed to. I've definitely decided to drop Multiply.com, even before I got the free web hosting. I realized that it was hard maintaining and customizing 3 separate sites (Friendster, Blogger, and Multiply) and decided to just focus on Blogger and Friendster, with Blogger being my primary blog. But now, I'm not sure whether I'm going to keep even Blogger. I already have WordPress installed, and that gives me (almost) absolute blogging freedom, with everything that WordPress has to offer. Although, I haven't seen any "limitation" to what Blogger offers that I didn't like so far (except for the abscence of WordPress-like static Pages). This makes the decision a bit more difficult, again...
Anyway, this setup is certain for only a year. After that, everything depends on whehter my friend will renew his subscription, or whether I will look for a webhost of my own. Who knows? Maybe I'll host my own stuff, on my own home server, in the future.
Friday, November 03, 2006
An angel on earth
When people say "angels don't exist", I merely smile. Obviously, they haven't met my Mama.
Yesterday, we celebrated our Mama's birthday. We didn't do anything special. She cooked her famous spaghetti the day before, as well as some potato salad (we did contemplate on drinking Bailey's but were too lazy to mix stuff in the middle of dinner). So, there was not much fanfare. It did, however, give me the opportunity to think about the special person who was born on that special day.
I can't say how blessed I am to have a mother like her. I can't fully express my gratitude to God and to my grandparents for giving me one of the greatest gifts in my life. My Mama is no ordinary mom. She's a Super Mom! Through trials and tribulations, through good times and bad, through thick or thin, rain or shine, she goes through them all and emerges victorious! Not only that, she remains as beautiful, fresh and looking young as ever! I have met a lot of mothers in my life time. I've met mothers who went through almost the same things that my Mama went through. But when I look at my mother, I breathe a sigh of release, grateful that she did not end up like them, that she did not give up, that she kept on fighting for her family and for herself. I dread to think where we would be right now if she had given up.
Mama is very special. She is more than just a mother to us. She's also like a sister and a friend. When we go out together, people comment that we just look like siblings. And sometimes we act that way, too. We sometimes enjoy the same cartoons (of course she doesn't share my taste in anime), we "get" the same jokes, laugh at the same silly stuff, talk about what's in or what's out (please don't tell me I just sounded like Sandara!), and doing lots of other fun stuff together.
Mama is more than a mother, a sister, or a friend. She's an angel. God sends angels to watch over you and keep you from harm. Angels are there to protect you, to care for you, to embrace you, to love you. That's what my Mama is. An angel on earth and a foretaste of heaven in my life.
Happy (belated) Birthday, Mama! I love you so, so much!
Monday, October 30, 2006
Stable again?
So what's up? What has been happening to me for the past weeks (make that a month) of not posting anything? Well, ever since the tropical cyclone "Milenyo" (Xangsane) hit us (and hit us really hard) last month, life has been a roller coaster ride for me.
The typhoon caused a lot of inconvenience. We were without electricity for 3 days, and without water for almost 4 days. It was pretty inconvenient, but we were still fortunate. Other areas were not so lucky. Cleaning up afterwards was also a bit of a PITA (pain in the ***).
Then, as luck would have it, my PC broke down just when power was restored to our little town. I knew that there was something wrong with my PC before, specifically with the power supply unit. But this time, it won't even start! Long story short, I was without my own PC for almost 3 weeks. During that time, I had to resort to going to cyber/internet cafes and using my sister's PC, just to keep up with things and prevent my e-mail inbox from being swamped.
And to add insult to injury, I caught the flu last week! Although I did have a PC that I could use (my sister's), I was not in the condition to use it. Yeah, I could go online, read some mail/feeds, chat, etc. But I don't think I was really thinking straight during those times. The good news is that I lose 3 kilos in that one week. That's more than I have lost in months! Maybe I should get sick more often. heheh!
So now I have everything back again: weather, PC, and health. Well, I've partly regained my health, though I'm not sure I'm up for doing heavy exercises again. So is everything stable again? Hopefully so. And in the meantime, I've decided and done quit a few things the past days. Here they are, in random order:
Well, it's past midnight again, and I should really be sleeping now.
The typhoon caused a lot of inconvenience. We were without electricity for 3 days, and without water for almost 4 days. It was pretty inconvenient, but we were still fortunate. Other areas were not so lucky. Cleaning up afterwards was also a bit of a PITA (pain in the ***).
Then, as luck would have it, my PC broke down just when power was restored to our little town. I knew that there was something wrong with my PC before, specifically with the power supply unit. But this time, it won't even start! Long story short, I was without my own PC for almost 3 weeks. During that time, I had to resort to going to cyber/internet cafes and using my sister's PC, just to keep up with things and prevent my e-mail inbox from being swamped.
And to add insult to injury, I caught the flu last week! Although I did have a PC that I could use (my sister's), I was not in the condition to use it. Yeah, I could go online, read some mail/feeds, chat, etc. But I don't think I was really thinking straight during those times. The good news is that I lose 3 kilos in that one week. That's more than I have lost in months! Maybe I should get sick more often. heheh!
So now I have everything back again: weather, PC, and health. Well, I've partly regained my health, though I'm not sure I'm up for doing heavy exercises again. So is everything stable again? Hopefully so. And in the meantime, I've decided and done quit a few things the past days. Here they are, in random order:
- Start studying! Make use of the loads of free time that I have. Dreaming and planning will come to nothing if I don't do anything at all.
- I'm moving into Blogger! While Multiply is still my service of choice, I really need a blog/site where people can comment on what I post, member or non-member. I don't foresee Multiply getting anything resembling that feature anytime soon. So it's with a heavy heart that I turn away from it. I'll still be updating it, though. Cross-posting between the two is easy. And the Photo and Video galleries are definitely nice.
- I've reformatted, repartitioned, and reinstalled. I've upgraded to the latest release of Kubuntu. Here comes the Edgy Eft! What I've installed isn't really the default Kubuntu installation. I've customized it heavily to meet my needs and wants. And I'm proud of it. So far, I haven't run into much trouble. It's not like I don't like the Kubuntu defaults. The artwork by Kenneth Wimer is truly amazing and the work done by the devs is praiseworthy. It's just that I like to tinker with things, and want an OS that is really mine, without having to really sweat over it unnecessarily. Screenshots of what I've done soon to follow.
Well, it's past midnight again, and I should really be sleeping now.
