All I'm left with is 20/20 Hearing

It was already 11:39 in the evening, and oh heaven help me I still didn't have a blog... so I just sat there, drumming my fingers on our battered computer keyboard (guilty as charged) and then I just decided to search for the smallest keyboard on the internet. The idea practically reeked to high heaven, but I just wanted to see what the internet had to offer. Which would be this:



And I was kinda thinking that you had to be a new-born baby just to be able to type quickly into that thing, else connect toothpicks to the tips of your fingernails, which probably wouldn't be very comfortable.

I mean hey, they already have the smallest book, even the smallest optical mouse:



But what I NEVER planned to encounter when I typed "The World's smallest—" and accidentally pressed the enter button without finishing what I was typing was "The world's smallest website."

Apparently, a lot of people are competing for the World's Smallest Website right now, and I thought it rather ridiculous, and—I don't know, maybe stupid? How, I ask you, are people going to enjoy something which they have to see through a magnifying glass just to be able to CLICK? What's the point of buying a huge monitor screen when all you're going to be looking at in the end is a website no bigger than Thumbelina's head??

And true to its word, it really is tiny. I mean, when I clicked the link and was looking all around the screen, waiting for it to load, I just saw this 18 x 18 picture in the middle of the purple background, looking like a squarish chocolate chip in all it's shining glory, and realized that it had already finished loading and that that was the website itself. Dude! I do believe I'm nearsighted enough, no need to make me blind! But I found myself playing Pacman in it anyway. And hey, that ghost is unnaturally fast.



See it? That's Pacman. And apparently, there was only room for one ghost.

However, this really isn't the world's smallest; something else beat guimp.com, but since it was so boring and was definitely winning the gold prize in the Headache Giving Contest, I didn't even bother. Small is cute, I admit, but when it's this small, it's just plain insane.



Check it:
http://www.guimp.com/ (SQUINTING)
http://dot16.pixeltemple.com/ (HEADACHE)

I'm pretty sure that if Mom had been able to see these websites, she wouldn't even bother to get her glasses and just chuck the monitor out of the window with an award-winning battle-cry.

The Grandpappy of all Nosebleeds

I used to keep seeing this on HBO, and back then I really wasn't very interested. All I knew was that it involved a bank, cars, chases, a lot of shouting, hostages, some techy terms I couldn't even comprehend anyway and the usual bad-guy-kidnaps-family-goody-guy-outsmarts-bad-guy-police-comes-at-the-END-of-story gig. Even the fact that Harrison Ford played the lead role (the only reason why I'm interested in said actor was because he played Han Solo in Star Wars) wasn't enough for me to stay put and watch it. I knew it was something that my dad would like; my preference would've been adventure, fantasy, maybe a little horror and your occasional talking animal, and there was clearly none of these in the movie. So when Ms. Kath told us we were going to watch it, I prepared my face for the ever-anticipated "duhhhhh" expression.

But the movie was actually really cool. And even though it didn't have its fair share of talking animals, at least it had a dog in it. It also had any number of techy stuff in it, like all the hacking and the codes in the bank, and all the cool just-press-your-thumb-against-the-sensor-and-hey-presto!-the-doors-open things, from the pen-in-the-camera to the Pet Nav (XD but it actually doesn't exist, there's nothing on Google). Hey, can those work on chickens?

Soon after, I searched for their goofs on IMDb, which is something I usually find myself doing when there's nothing else to do. Cool, they used six water trucks for the rain effects, and I soon found out the glitches in the movie: that the daughter dialed a possible 299, 599, or 899 instead of 911 because the tones were wrong, and that an iPod mini cannot store 10,000 songs.

Although, my happy "duhhh" face wasn't wasted for nothing... there were times I just found myself staring at the screen, just nodding my head because I understood nothing of what they were doing, especially when they were typing all those matrix looking thingies into the computer. At one point in the movie the whole scene sprouted techy terms with a vengeance. It was that time when the main character finally found a way to hack into the system, talking from bad-guy to bad-guy-sidekick after he ripped off a piece of a fax machine and borrowed his daughter's iPod. They gabbled in words I couldn't understand and I looked from face to face like a paranoid chicken. I wish I could've found the exact lines. But then I'd be nosebleeding again all over the place.

If words were gold, I'd treat Hongkong Disneyland as my personal backyard and then some.

A robot beat me out for Employee of the Month

There are some who are excited by the prospect of AI humans; some, who have watched too many sci-fi movies, however, fear that machines will enslave us when brainstorming has finally paid off (slowly raising hand). A lot of people also argue that AI research is "immoral." Truth be told, I don't really find myself immersed in this sort of computery business (just look at the size of this blog entry); just as long as they create something that doesn't lop off my head in my sleep when I think its turning down the air conditioner, I'm cool with the whole AI gig.

Sometimes I find myself thinking if they've ever watched those movies with the tagline, "Some things must never be tampered with" or something along those lines... I can just imagine the mad scientist rubbing his cracking knuckles together and screaming, "It's alive!" Less of the dead-beat look, the bolts jutting out of the neck and the constant "Aaarrr..." and more along the lines of shining-shimmering-splendid.

I saw a lot of controversies popping up out of sites in tag along with AI, and one of these is, "What about God?"

We believe that God created all living things. So if we create artificial life (which is still life) then what do we become?

Drumroll, please

There are probably only four things I’m passionate about (which already looks more than enough):

Drawing.

Reading.

Writing.

Environment.

Yup, I could get stranded in a desert island with enough materials to do those first three things and I wouldn’t even get bored. Bump the computers, the ipods, the TV (but not food, please) and I’d definitely survive.

Drawing is something I’ve been doing for a very long time. Since the beginning of first grade, even though the pictures weren’t wow-worthy, I put much more effort into my drawings than the rest of my classmates. If the teacher asked for a picture starting with the letter Z, others would draw a zebra; I’d draw the whole zoo.

Reading came soon after. I grew to love books, and even started reading the first book of Harry Potter before my teeny brain could comprehend the words. “Dumbledore took the what out of his pocket??” (it happened to be the put-outer, the one he used to extinguish the lamp lights). I had to read it over and over and over again, and mom had to take my lampshade from me just to stop me from reading until early morning. During high school, my cravings for books took an all-out turn, and I could hardly stop myself from buying (you could almost see the moth flying out of my wallet when you open it, not that there’s any money in there to begin with. The word “allowance” didn’t exist in my and my brothers’ vocabulary during high school). However, when National Bookstore appeared in Paseo, dad thought of banning me from said bookstore and putting a restraining order of 20 feet.

Reading produced two things:

Quick reading, and writing. The multitude of books I’ve read made me want to create stories of my own. Sometimes I had this small fantasy of beating the popularity of the Harry Potter books once I had my own story worked out. It’s wishful thinking, really, but out of all the four, this is the one I'm trying hardest to pursue. We-e-ell... that, and maybe work as a graphics artist in Pixar (Ha!). I know, I know, but like I said, it's wishful thinking.

Environment… hmmm… sometimes I couldn’t keep from nagging my older and younger brother regarding electricity. Don’t they get the picture?? Global warming, people… Every. Single. Darn. Time. They leave the room, they keep forgetting to put the lights and electric fan off. My little brother, however, seemed to have acquired the never-ending passion of wasting water. He’d open the water faucets full-speed ahead, and then he starts looking for the soap. Tch. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole subdivision lost its water overnight.

Which just about sums it up. If I had wanted to compile all these "passions" into one thing, I'd write a book about the environment and be my own illustrator. Convenient, no? It's much better than talking, anyway: amateur at its best.

Mad Love for the King Size

B.A. Week held a lot of activities, and part of this was a small seminar (?) to help you discover if you’re a true entrepreneur or not. And mostly to encourage you to pursue to that “calling” if you are one.

The speaker started off by showing us one of the most successful entrepreneurs, which I knew by face. Their names seem to escape me though. I saw them in TV before and sort of had a small background about their experiences before this seminar started, but as usual, I kept my mouth shut when the speaker started asking questions.

First off was Tony Tan Caktiong (is that even right??), who was the current chairman of Jollibee. Who knew such a small misspelling could be so popular. It started off with ice cream and soon grew to be one of the most popular fast food chains in the Philippines and even in other countries.

The next was Socorro Ramos, who founded National Bookstore. “National”… hmmm… naturally what came to my mind when I was small was that it was a bigshot bookstore known all over the world because… well… the word “National” really does the trick. Only when I saw her history on TV and how she made this possible did I realize that she sort of “started from scrap” before National Bookstore easily became the most well-known go-to place for--books. And a lot of stuff.

The last was Henry Sy, founder and chairman of SM Prime Holdings. The first question I remember asking about it when the acronym was first mentioned was what the word meant. When they replied “Shoemart” I just shrugged and accepted the answer without any further questions, not knowing that SM in the past was just simply that: Sy started out SM by selling shoes. Crikey, what a whopper.

After which, they gave us tests at the end of the presentation to see if we had “the blood of an entrepreneur”; I already knew the answer, but I swung along with the gig anyway (and just in case it’s not obvious, it’s a very short sentence made up of the letters “N” and ending with the letter “O”). When the answer came out, I wasn’t exactly surprised. Rather, I welcomed it. I knew I’d make a lousy entrepreneur anyway. If I even tried to knock on a door and ask people to buy some brownies, the most I could do is open my mouth, shut it again, and then run for cover. Others, however, seemed to have the calling; all they needed was the hallelujah chorus and the scene would be perfect.

MacBook Air: Where's my Diskdrive?

MacBook Air is considered the world’s thinnest laptop. Look for the ad in YouTube, and you’ll be more convinced. Now you can go around challenging other people to shove their laptops in an envelope; when they can't, you can easily slip your $3000 MacBook Air and tuck it inside. Your jealous friends will worship you forever.

Sure it’s thin; there’s no denying that one factor. It’s got a Multi-Touch trackpad; while you still have to hold the ctrl or whatever button you have to press so that you can zoom in on something while you roll the mouse wheel, here you can just put two fingers on the touchpad and wiki-wiki your way around like a DJ, zooming in and zooming out to your heart's desire. Impressing.

However: Apple, I think you forgot something. Please send my diskdrive through snail mail. Thanks.

Pride of the king’s army, MacBook Air is so impressively thin that it can no longer contain a diskdrive; you still need an external drive to actually play a CD on it. But hey, it still fits in a Manila envelope, right? Neat-o!

Don't get me wrong: if looks could kill, then MacBook Air could finish off the population in one fell swoop. But as it is, in terms of practicality, nobody would want to buy something so expensive and so fragile. Shove it in a bulky bag full of pencil sharpeners, cellphone chargers and a ton of books, and it might not have more resistance than a watered-down sugar biscuit.

MacBook Air: Why the heck not?