Our Dying Press

Just now, I read Manila Bulletin's latest bombshell in the cold war arms race of retarded online articles by our lovable newspapers. I've seen the future of journalism. It's brave. It's bold. Damn straight, it's loaded with double dutch special of dumb shit I won't pay for if it's print.

Case in point? The link to the article is here:

Gargoyles Out To Snatch Christmas


(more after the jump)

It took me half of the article to realize what the hell Allan Fransisco was talking about. The column is supposed to be about IT. There is the world Gargoyle on the title. And under normal circumstances not involving mild retardation, there has to be some connection.

Two paragraphs later, my good friend "correlation" still cannot be found. Neither are there any attributable context clues that would point out that I was, in fact, reading the writer's mental fart about the Maguindanao Massacre, and not about a videogame involving Gargoyles (which would've been awesome)

Speaking of which, GARGOYLES. Let's talk about that for a minute here. Think of a bad word to describe the Ampatuans. Try to think of as many as you can, and see how long the list goes before the word "Gargoyle" enters your mind. A stone, gothic looking waterspout carved in the image of a winged beast. An ELEGANT STONE RAIN DRAIN. It never entered my brain. It probably never will.

Jesus. No.

And that's just the start. For the sake of being fair, I'll assume that four paragraphs later, Allan Fransico was hit by a hard object at the soft spot of his skull and completely dislodged the idea that he was writing about the Ampatuans in the article and replaced it completely with iPhones, because honestly, I can't think of two topics more irrelevant to each other than a cold blooded killer and a trendy communications device.

Writing style is absolutely purple. I had to remind myself twice while reading the article that I'm not reading Twilight fanfiction. I can also understand that this is supposed to be an opinion-type of column, but the lack of facts almost makes me think the guy basically sat down, thought of one or two things he and his friends talked over lunch that day, and just wrote them the fuck down like nobody would ever read it. Because that's what I think this is. Glorified scribble.

If winners get to write history, I would assume columns like this are what losers would write. Is this what journalism has come to? Some guy sitting down for 15 minutes without researching anything and then publishing substandard horse shit for people to read? Quoting Michael Crichton, "In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought"

What the fuck happened? It almost feels like there was some point in time not too long ago, editors of online newspapers woke up one morning, realized that unlike their traditional counterparts, their money won't come from people who will appreciate their journalistic prowess, integrity, and writing skills.

No, on the internet, it's all about how many people accidentally stumble on your website and consciously/unconsciously click on your ads. Imagine being an opera singer whose income depends on how many packs of peanuts gets sold during her performance. You don't have to sing well, just have lots of shows to get more peanuts.

In a knee jerk reaction, the editors went "Fuck it. Fuck integrity. Let's make money!" and just went on letting writers do whatever the fuck they want for articles like the dumb sonnvabitch gargoyle article that fucking pointless and a waste of my time.

*pant pant*

Going back.

I remember before, I was being recruited by a friend to write online articles for him for 300 pesos per piece. He says it's a good way to make money and exercise my literary muscles. He knew it in his heart as well as I did that it's not really about what I write about, but how much visibility my article will give his clients on search engines. I could write as horribly as I could for all he cared but it wouldn't really matter. I turned down the offer and politely asked him to go fuck himself. (we're not friends anymore, if you still haven't figured that one out).

There are still days I refuse to believe this model is now what our once revered publications are now adopting. And clearly, there is something fundamentally wrong in having the voice of civilized society turn into money-making drabble.

Fuck gargoyles. More than anything else, I believe this warehouse-style of writing is killing our free press faster than any Ampatuan can.

Regarding NiHao (NI)'s rescheduled SRO

This is related to my previous posts regarding trading with NiHao(NI). Reposted from my favorite message board.

Maybe JAP and his gang had this planned out from the start. Everybody knows the moment Dec 11 neared, the stock will drop. Looking at the drop the past week or so, they could have sh**ted along the way to a very huge profit. And then they execute an extension at the last possible minute, disrupting the timing of everybody.

Eto lang po idea ko.

Now we're thinking, maybe they are going to push the price up again? One week is more than enough to squeeze in yet another rise/fall cycle. People will look into buying becuase of this thought. And the jockeys aren't stupid. They will expect this mentality and work their magic trying to reinforce that idea by jockeying the price and let the buyers play last touch until sometime next week. They have the funds after all, from the sh*rts they could have done.

If the jockeys play their cards right, the stock price will rise at a rate higher than ever, and there's no way in hell even a pricedrop halfway through the week can bring it back to the level it's touched today. Because if we learned something about NI, its price doesn't avalanche down, so by the time the SRO shares get released, the amount will be bigger.

Guess what's happening after the SRO listing date? LIHC ASM. They'll announce the par change, the SRO and let the sellers jump ship to yet another M7 stock.

Talk about keeping money within the community eh?

Of course, you'd ask, this is a zero sum game right? Unless new investors start flocking, it's probably true. Then how come everybody seems to be winning? The people who got stuck at the top, those to cut loss. That's where the profit is coming from. The philosopher's stone is made with the blood of victims.

Now all of this is just a theory. I cannot say I'm exceptionally good in TA or FA. Best indicator I can think of is is if the price of NI starts rising on Friday and continues on Monday. In that case, the real game begins.

Again, just a wild theory.

Yes, Damn It, I'm Endorsing Somebody

Vandalism, Highlighters

I used to wonder why the MMDA insisted on drawing pink lines on ALL streets in Manila, until I realized one thing. Holy shit, Bayani Fernando wants our streets to be highlighted in Google Maps! Think of Manila as review material and MMDA as a HUGE Stabilo highlighter.

Which reminds me, I never really got to understand why some people insist on using a highlighter, to highlight every fucking word in whatever they're reviewing. Where's the point there? So your notes can double up as a roadside warning device?

I remember back in highschool, vandalism was such a big problem all sorts of felt-tip markers were banned. The pentel pens were the first to go, understandably. But being highschool students in an All-Boys school, that wasn't nearly enough to stop us from drawing penis symbols all over the campus, as though a testicular voice from outerspace commands us to pay homage. No, we turned to Stabilo highlighters, which in the end were banned too. So much for Neon graffiti. But did that stop our artistic drive?

Not even close. Seeing there are no longer other options, vandals started using the only things still legal - ballpoint pens. Can you imagine how hard it is to vandalize a bathroom tile with just a pen? You don't write anymore. You CARVE. You can just imagine the dedication of the people who did vandalisms in our all-tile CR (designed as such so vandalisms are easy to clean up). The guys who did Mount Rushmore would be so proud. Although, they might not be as approving of the message "Malaki ang Suso ni Miss Tabuso", complete with a graphical representation to drive the point home.

I don't even get why we have to write those things. I mean, our teacher has a huge rack. That's a given. Normal people would smile at the thought. Normal teenagers would probably masturbate. A small minority will see this as an opportunity to capture a message and get it out the only way they can - WRITE IT ON THE COMFORT ROOM WALLS.

Other times, you'd even see replies to vandalisms, and replies to replies, each just as funny and depressing as the last.

And then I realized, it was 1996, and I was in highschool.

I was staring at threads upon threads of anonymous conversation on the CR walls.

And numbers of illustrations, both lewd and random.

And probably the earliest incarnation of 4chan.

Apparently, even Ohm got it all wrong.

Rubber gloves = 1 MILLION OHMS. Touch them and you'll die.

Condoms = ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND OHMS. Protection? More like SUICIDE.

Listen to this man. He knows his Physics.

Random Banter

When a row of seats inside a jeepney contains at least one fat guy whose humongous buttocks displaces the equivalent of the ass-space of one and a half persons, does it make sense for the last guy to charge the fat guy half of his fare for the asscheek he will not be able to sit properly? If he does not, does it not constitute as stealing? Note that I am not discriminating fat people. I simply believe in pragmatic rationalization. You take up more mass. You need to pay more.

An upsidedown cake is an upsidedown cake, until you give it to a bat.

There's no "i" in "team", but interestingly, there's an "i" in the "square root of negative one".

Inquirer Hates Numbers

Dear Inquirer,

Make up your goddamn mind. Bodycounts do not rise and fall every other hour.

Thanks,
Public Static

Spore Islands Cheats, Tips, and Tricks

Spore Islands is a facebook game based on the popular PC game SPORE. In this game, you play the invisible hand of evolution/intelligent design (whichever you think made us what we are). The game is mostly about balancing your creature's stats enough so that it thrives in the Spore Islands area map and dominates the other species. You can go to other people's maps as well for more points, and they can go to yours too.

Here are some cheats, tips, and tricks for Spore Islands that I've been able to figure during my playing time. I hope this guide will guide you to a better playing position.

- You don't necessarily have to be the top of the food chain. If you can reproduce faster than your predators can eat you, you will still win in dominance.

- Using only one source of food is very risky, specially in crowded maps of Spore island.

- Fastest way to accumulate points is to appoint friends who can design "food" creatures for yours. To be fair, you can also design "food" creatures for them. Food creatures are badly designed creatures that can be eaten by your creatures as additional sources of food, all the while ensuring they do not compete with your creatures in terms of resources (make them eat rare herbs for example)

- If you're going for top predator, you can lower the sensitivity to danger to just one, because if anybody attacks you, you can always just annihilate them. Increase food/spark sensitivity instead.

- When building noncarnivores, go for either the extremity of defense or speed. Speed works well with fast multiplication and light weight. Kinda like real life.

- Lots of friends = more diversity = more points for all. So keep inviting people to your island.

- The more creatures you have roaming in your island, the faster points accumulates. If you're the top predator, expect to dominate the early part of the round, but as your food falls and your numbers go up, hunger will kill off most of your kind. If you're unlucky and get one creature stuck on a creatureless sector, you will be left with no creatures at all! After that, it's going to be a tough climb back up.

- Adding up above, consistency is key. To avoid overpopulation and crashing afterwards, carefully balance out your reproduction rate with the available food, which varies from location to location, and the local inhabitants of the place. In the event that you're not on top of the chain however, you should also take into account the chance your creature will get eaten. Again, getting eaten is not such a bad thing, as long as you can sustain losses. Don't worry about having your creature's ass handed back to him everytime it gets into a fight.We're playing survival here of a species, not just one creature. Insects are weak compared to humans, but they outnumber us by a million to one. Same logic applies. To sum up, do not overreproduce, do not underreproduce and you get the points.

- One interesting thing about this game is that what works for one island will not necessarily work on the next. Stats for every animal on your island is available in the main screen so you can copy interesting builds for your creatures.

- It's easy to give builds to people, but the fact is, all builds are equal and differ only by how well they interact with each other. The main objective of you as a player of this game is to figure out how to exploit the ecosystem. If you see a type of resource being underutilized, adopt your creature to it.

That's it for now, I'll add more tips and tricks later. Good luck with your spore island! Happy gaming!

The REAL Alternative for 2010

Tired of having to pick over fruits being handed out to you by dubious looking strangers? Me too. To be quite frank, picking a presidentiable right now feels like picking the type of firearm you want to shoot yourself with. We need somebody who can represent our feeling that we're already tired of the usual gang of posers. Somebody who can make the country follow them. Make the country listen. We need people who can educate our masses. We need people who can foster values. My fellow citizens, I hereby propose the creation of a new party. Bayang Ayaw sa Tiwaling Indibidwal, Balimbing, O Trapo PANAHON NA. TAYO NA. DOON SA BATIBOT. President - Kuya Bodjie - Sino pa ba nag pwedeng makapagpasunod sa bayan na ito kundi ang ating "kuya" na kinalakihan? Sya lang ang kayang magasabi ng "Mga Bata!" na hindi mo iisiping kontra bida sya. Vice President - Ate Sienna - Si Sienna, natural na vice president kasi magaling syang sumuporta sa mga layunin ni Bodjie, at hindi sya balimbing. Department of Defense - Pong Pagong - May mas titibay pa ba sa pagong? Amphibious, malaki, matibay, malaki ang mata. Office of the Ombudsman - Kiko Matsing - Kung ungguyan din lang, si Ka Kiko na sasalo sa iyo. Walang makakapagtago sa baging ng batas. DOST - Sitsiritsit - San ka pa? Alien to tol. From outerspace, hindi India. Hightech. DOH - Alibangbang - Alam kong bawal ang nepotismo sa gobyerno, pero hindi naman talaga magkapatid sila ni Sitsiritsit. Preba? Hindi pareho ang apelyido nila. Dela Cruz si Sitsiritsit, Perez naman si Alibangbang. (sinabi nila sakin to dati, pero top secret daw kasi nga alien sila) Press Secretary - Irma Daldal - Artista. Madaldal. Parang si Kris Aquino, pero walang STD. DECS - Kapitan Basa - Galit sa illiteracy at mga malimaling libro. Lumilipad. Kaya ba ng DECS secretary natin na lumipad? Pakyu. Dito na tayo. DPWH - Koko Kwik-Kwak - Tutal naman walang may gusto sa kanya, inilagay sya sa DPWH, para kung maging tiwali sya, pwede natin syang ipabaril. Walang malulungkot. PANAHON NA. TAYO NA. DOON SA BATIBOT. BATIBOT PARTY. VOTE STRAIGHT. VOTE SMART.

Meaning of Workplace Objects

Here's a list of common items you find on the workdesks of your officemates. I've taken the time to translate what they're trying to convey and what they really mean.

Anime Figurines

- I am a connoisseur of the oriental art of animation.

- I secretly masturbate to this figurine when nobody is around.

World's Best Dad Mug

- I have children who love me, hence the mug.

- My children are either largely unimaginative or gifted with the virtue of sarcasm

Lots of paperwork

- I'm a very busy person, back off.

- I hate mother nature, and digital information.

Certificates/Trophies

- I am the alpha employee in this office. Just take a look at it.

- But it doesn't make up for my small penis.

Pictures of Children

- My children are awesome.

- If you hate long long tales of my kid's firsts, avoid bringing that topic up.

Chinese ornaments

- I've very sensitive to the chi around me, which I feel compelled to protect with these artifacts.

- Sometimes, I see dead people.

Rubbing Alcohol

- I'm a very hygienic person.

- Sometimes, when we talk, I imagine bacteria coming out of your mouth hitting my face. Gross.

Top 10 Reasons the 2012 Apocalypse Will Not Happen

10. Duke Nukem Forever still needs to come out.

9. We're still waiting for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's offspring to grow up so we can see what happens when you win the biggest genetic powerball in history.

8. Twilight Saga's next twenty films ensure we have bigger things to worry about.

7. I still haven't seen any cellphone capable of toasting bread.

6. Nobody's decided yet which religion will bring people to heaven.

5. Hell's probably still too overcrowded, no thanks to internet and internet p0rn.

4. After six years, Ragnarok Online is still in beta, as God intended.

3. Erap might win this election, in which case apocalypse will happen sooner than later.

2. Kris Aquino can't run for presidency until the next election.

1. Chuck Norris does not wait for the apocalypse. The apocalypse waits for Chuck Norris.

Red Dates A Supermodel

I went out on a date with a supermodel one day. I was not even impressed. The whole night, I didn't even get to see her fly. The supermodel told me, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I told her no of course. I'm pretty sure supermodels can't be called super unless they can fly. They're just hiding it. Why else would they call the stage "RUNWAY"?

Sabrina’s “I Love Acoustic: Intimate Interpretations of Your Favorite Hits Download/Review

Author's note:
What I did here was tasteless, rude, and not really funny. In light of recent correspondences I've had with some readers, I've decided to take it down. Because I like diplomacy like that, yeah.

Full Disclosure

I just one to let this out. One more time. I am so fucking angry at my fucking job right now. For those of you who aren't too familiar about what I do, I am working for a year-old IT firm that absorbed my old company last year. Upon absorption, I retained my status as Lead Analyst of the Java team, and it's all been good. Or rather it would have, except after being absorbed by our new company, the workload that was coming from our client company more than doubled. Meanwhile, our team increased by a magnitude of big fat zero. Simple math says, everybody had to take in double responsibilities, and half the normal rest time.

Frequent friction between our team and our client's side lead to the decision of upper management that maybe, to solve issues that stem from people making mistakes because of overwork, it'd be a good idea to lynch everybody that made mistakes. Three more staff left/were force to leave, bringing our total strength from 16 to thirteen. One of the staff that got removed was my direct head, our section manager.

Not wanting to see some nobody to take the now vacant helm, I was literally forced into taking my boss' position, without so much as an increase in pay, or even a change in title. But I figured it had to be done, so I did it anyway. Our general manager said the promotion will follow eventually. My workload, already double, went triple because I had to do what my section manager used to do, on top of what I'm doing already. Chalk it up to experience. Suck it all in.

We were basically overloaded for the better half of this year. I couldn't even take one vacation leave for the last five months. Not a single fucking one. And we did our job as good as we could. My team basically outperformed the better part of this company in cost/revenue. And HK even sent good words to upper management for our performance.

We're not perfect and god knows we've had our share of mistakes along the way, but we knew we our standing. We were making money and the clients are happy. That's the bottom line.

Then came the appraisals. Our former section manager appraised most of my team, as well as me. And to his credit, I can understand his somewhat modest ratings, as it made sense to make sure that the bell curve to be normal, meaning more people get the middle value compared to the lower and upper extremes. We still got higher than the average so it's more than acceptable. (see graph)


After performing the appraisals, carefully informing the staff of their strengths and points of improvements, we submitted the results to management, who then performed the subsequent calculations for the actual performance adjustment.

Now this is where shit hit the fan. Somewhere along the way, somebody thought it wise to just move the scale up, even though it will pull everybody's scores down inexplicably and produce a motherfucking skewed distribution below.

Because of the adjustment, all of my team members, including me, suddenly appeared subpar. On a scale from A-H, the highest any single member of my team got was E, while some of us did not even get a rank (because they were too low).

Talk about pushing hard and slapping people in the face.

Can you imagine that? Working hard the whole year, being told by everybody including the upper management that your team is doing great, and is one miracle short of being Jesus and then you get a fucking F for all your hassles?

Because of that, and the amazingly stingy policy of management, I got a raise that's not even half of the first raise that I got when I started as a trainee, 5 years ago.

But nevermind the money. On top of that, upper management had the gall to tell my staff individually about complaints coming from HK, which appeared to be random, because even the highest regarded developers somehow got requests of demotion from HK. We verified this and the reports were obviously pulled out of thin air. No substantial evidence could be given. Nothing.

Of course I complained. Oh hell I complained. I asked management if they thought there was something wrong with the team getting real low results despite being good performers. They told me, yes there's something wrong with that. Then I ask them if it can be fixed. I got a big fat NO for an answer. You know what's worse than getting ripped? Being told by whoever ripped you that they really did rip you, but only because they know you can't do anything about it.

Morale in our group has been in an all time low since that day.

I have never been so insulted in my whole career as the day I got my appraisal results, to be honest. It wouldn't have hurt as much if it happened some other time. Any year but this year, because this year, fuck, I knew deep inside my heart that
this was the year I tried hardest.

I argued of course. And in the end, our general manager told me that he will try to make amends through the title adjustments that was supposed to happen after a month. If people got promoted, we figured, salaries are bound to go up and at the very least, people will get their needed reassurance that they didn't work their asses off just to get E's and F's.

Earlier, during a meeting, we were told that the promotions will not happen anytime this year, and even if it did, that I cannot promote everybody - a stark contrast to what I was told, and what I committed to my staff, simply because it's "hard" to do. Funny, because I can't remember an instance we stopped doing something just because it was "hard".

Appraisals are supposed to give people something to look forward to, something that will make them want to work more, because god knows work in itself is just toxic. This year, the appraisal worked opposite, making you just want to work less sterlingly.

And personally, doing management work while retaining my old title is awkward as fuck. Nobody wants to get instructed by somebody who's barely their rank.

What the fuck.

People will think this post is biased on my side, because I'm angry and I just need to vent out. I don't really care. I have numbers to back my side. Substantial numbers that can prove beyond the shadow of the doubt how much BS we got for our efforts.

MindBlogging: This Is It (the movie)

9:40PM, Outside the theater.

Is that Ben playing in the audio system? They're really going all out on this one huh.

Okay, I see lots of people outside the theater. This is the last full show. Why are there so many people? Somebody might recognize me.

Michael Jackson hat count: five. Fuck it, I'mma go get me popcorn.

Oh sweet. This popcorn can only be the best tribute to Michael. Overflowing pop inside a plastic container.

Okay, my sisters are screaming like crazy. I should have bought something else. Like a face mask. Or extra dignity.

9:45 Inside the theater.

Oh hey, trailers. I love trailers. They don't have Michael Jackson innit.

Fuck, New Moon. I've changed my mind. On with the movie.

Sisters are screaming again. I can feel parts of my soul silently shrinking.

This has got to be the longest "The Making Of" show I've ever seen.

Great, more commentaries from crusty white people and too-perky-to-be-normal black people.

So this kinda makes things more like "This Would've Been It" instead of "This Is It".

Michael Jackson is just so meticulous in everything. If I were one of these people, who rehearsed for months for a big fat nothing, I'd probably kill the doctor who OD'ed Jacko.

I will not make jokes about children appearing in this movie.

I will not make jokes about children appearing in this movie.

I will not make jokes about children appearing in this movie.

Sisters are screaming and clapping after every performance. The crowd's getting infected. I hear sporadic screaming too.

Michael Jackson started thanking everybody in his family but Janet Jackson. Does this mean the superbowl titty got her disowned?

Disowned by the weirdest person on earth. Wow that sucks.

To be fair, at 50 years old, Michael's in pretty good shape. But then again, plastic is supposed to last for hundreds of years before decaying.

Okay, my sister is staring at me. She can read my thoughts. I know it. I have to be careful. Rabid fans are deadlier than drunks.

More screaming. It's official. My sisters are now officially barred from mocking rabid Twilight fans. Forever.

There's a cute screaming MJ fan four rows above me. I wonder if she'll put out if I tell her I've seen the '96 concert.

On second thought, I'd rather stay here and try to recuperate what dignity I have left.

Out of popcorn. I'm on my own now. Damn it.

1 hour and 30 minutes. It's official, this shit is longer than the tribute we gave Mother Teresa.

Credit roll. Wow, the movie is actually over. My sisters are not leaving. The other fans are staying behind too.

This cannot be good. This cannot be good.

Okay, there's something else after the credits.

The whole theater is screaming now, including the fat chinese guy behidn me. I'm panicking. I'm panicking. I'm panicking.

False alarm. I need to urinate.

NOW.

Philippine Stock Broker Codes

This post is more of a post for me than you guys. Here is a list of Philippine stock broker and their corresponding broker codes. You will need this when monitoring which Brokerage is buying/selling what stock, specially when tracking the movements of holding companies. If it's relevant to your interests, you're welcome. If it's not, come back tomorrow or later. We'll talk about something else.



Broker Number Broker Name
101 A & A Securities, Inc.
104 A.T. De Castro Securities Corporation
237 Aaa Southeast Equities, Inc.
112 Ab Capital Securities, Inc.
102 Abacus Securities Corporation
103 Accord Capital Equities Corporation
369 Active Earnings, Inc.
232 Alakor Securities Corporation
105 All Asiasecurities Management Corporation
106 Alpha Securities Corporation
110 Angping & Associates Securities, Inc.
111 Ansaldo, Godinez & Company, Inc.
255 Apex Phils. Equities Corporation
388 Armstrong Securities, Inc.
116 Asia Pacific Capital Equities & Securities Corp.
117 Asiamerit Securities, Inc.
118 Asiasec Equities, Inc.
119 Astra Securities Corporation
120 Atc Securities, Inc.
220 Atr Kimeng Securities, Inc.
167 Aurora Securities, Inc.
124 B. H. Chua Securities Corporation
109 Ba Securities, Inc.
279 Bdo Securities, Inc.
122 Belson Securities, Inc.
123 Benjamin Co Ca & Company, Inc.
272 Bernad Securities, Inc.
221 Bnp Paribas Investment (Phils.), Inc.
207 Bnp Paribas Peregrine Securities, Inc.
126 Bpi Securities Corporation
128 Campos, Lanuza & Company, Inc.
186 Cdib Venture Investment (Asia) Limited
130 Century Securities Corporation
226 Chilip, Christopher
173 Christfund Securities (Phils.), Inc.
134 Citicorp Securities International (Rp), Inc.
203 Citiseconline.Com., Inc.
133 Citisecurities, Inc.
323 Clsa Philippines, Inc.
387 Coherco Securities, Inc.
141 Cualoping Securities Corporation
204 Da Market Securities, Inc.
143 David Go Securities Corporation
142 Dbp-Daiwa Securities Smbc Philippines., Inc.
184 Dbs Vickers Securities (Phils.), Inc.
209 Deutsche Regis Partners, Inc.
145 Diversified Securities, Inc.
328 Dw Capital, Inc.
212 E*Trade Securities Corporation
147 E. Chua Chiaco Securities, Inc.
283 Eagle Equities, Inc.
150 Eastern Securities Development Corp.
149 Eastwest Capital Corporation
151 Ebc Securities Corporation
261 Eib Securities, Inc.
153 Equitiworld Securities, Inc.
154 Evergreen Stock Brokerage & Securities, Inc.
162 F. Yap Securities, Inc.
155 Feb Stock Brokers, Inc.
243 Fidelity Securities, Inc.
156 Finvest Securities Company, Inc
159 First Integrated Capital Sec., Inc.
267 First Metro Securities Brokerage Corporation
157 First Orient Securities, Inc.
108 Five Karats Property Holdings, Inc.
160 Fortune Securities, Inc.
161 Francisco Ortigas Securities, Inc.
288 G. D. Tan & Company, Inc.
165 G. K. Goh Securities (Phils.), Inc.
168 Globalinks Securities & Stocks, Inc.
191 Go, Ma. Angelica V.
285 Golden Tower Sec. & Holdings, Inc.
170 Goldstar Securities, Inc.
289 Grand Asia Secuirites, Inc.
172 Guild Securities, Inc.
171 Guoco Securities (Phils.), Inc.
175 H.E. Bennett Securities, Inc.
174 Hdi Securities, Inc.
177 Highland Securities Phils., Inc.
178 Hk Securities, Inc.
268 Hsbc Securities(Philippines), Inc.
179 I. Ackerman & Company, Inc.
180 I. B. Gimenez Securities, Inc.
140 Igc Securities, Inc.
182 Imperial De Guzman, Abalos & Co., Inc.
183 Intra-Invest Securities, Inc.
181 Investors Securities, Inc.
188 J. M. Barcelon & Company, Inc.
185 J. P. Morgan Securities Philippines, Inc.
125 Jaka Securities Corporation
265 Jocrison Securities, Inc.
234 John Dy Hianto
169 Jsg Securities, Inc.
271 Kgi Securities (Phils.), Inc.
389 King`S Power Securities, Inc.
193 Larrgo Securities Company, Inc.
187 Lee Hiong T. Wee
195 Litonjua Securities, Inc.
197 Lopez, Locsin, Ledesma & Company, Inc.
198 Lucky Securities, Inc.
199 Luy`S Securities Company, Inc.
121 Macquarie Capital Securities (Philippines), Inc.
139 Magnum International Securities, Inc.
200 Mandarin Securities Corporation
201 Marian Securities, Inc.
202 Marino Olondriz Y Cia
208 Mdr Securities, Inc.
205 Mercantile Securities Corp.
206 Meridian Securities, Inc.
210 Mount Peak Securities, Inc.
211 New World Securities, Inc.
213 Nieves Sanchez, Inc.
214 Nomura Securities Phils., Inc.
228 Norman Vincent L. Wee
227 Ocbc Securities Phils., Inc.
215 Optimum Securities Corporation
245 Orion-Squire Capital, Inc.
218 Pan Asia Securities Corporation
219 Papa Securities Corporation
287 Paragon Strategic Holdings, Inc.
282 Pcci Securities Brokers Corp.
131 Pcib Securities, Inc.
250 Pearlbank Securities, Inc.
276 Phil-Progress Securities Corp.
138 Phileoallied Securities (Philippines), Inc.
338 Philippine Equity Partners, Inc.
132 Philippine Ta Securities, Inc.
222 Pierce Interlink Securities, Inc.
223 Platinum Securities, Inc.
224 Pnb Securities, Inc.
225 Premium Securities, Inc.
229 Public Securities Corporation
230 Quality Investment & Securities Corp.
231 R & L Investments, Inc.
233 R. Coyiuto Securities, Inc.
236 R. Nubla Securities, Inc.
238 R.S. Lim & Company, Inc.
152 Rashid Hussain Securities (Phils.), Inc.
176 Rbs Asia Securities Inc.
217 Rcbc Securities, Inc.
235 Regina Capital Development Corp.
239 Rtg & Company, Inc.
240 S.J. Roxas & Company, Inc.
241 Sapphire Securities, Inc.
113 Sarangani Securities, Inc.
115 Sb Equities, Inc.
368 Securities 2000, Inc.
148 Securities Plus, Inc.
242 Securities Specialists, Inc.
258 Sg Securities (Hk) Limited
129 Sincere Securities Corporation
286 Solar Securities, Inc.
247 Standard Securities Corporation
192 Strategic Equities Corporation
246 Summit Securities, Inc
248 Sun Hung Kai Securities (Phils.), Inc.
249 Supreme Stockbroker, Inc.
251 Tansengco & Company, Inc.
252 The First Resources Management & Securities Corporation
280 Topwin Securities, Inc.
253 Tower Securities, Inc.
254 Trans-Asia Securities, Inc.
256 Trendline Securities Corporation
257 Tri-State Securities, Inc.
136 Triton Securities Corporation
333 Ubs Securities Philippines Inc.
259 Ucpb Securities, Inc.
345 Unicapital Securities, Inc.
260 Uob-Kay Hian Securities (Philippines), Inc.
100 Upcc Securities Corporation
190 Value Quest Securities Corporation
158 Velasco, Geronimo Jr. F.
263 Venture Securities, Inc.
266 Vicsal Securities & Stock Brokerage, Inc.
135 Vsec.Com Inc.
269 Wealth Securities, Inc.
270 Westlink Global Equities, Inc.
146 Wise Securities Phils., Inc.
273 Wong Securities Corporation
274 Worldsec International Sec. (Phils.) Inc.
275 Yao & Zialcita, Inc.
277 Yaptinchay Securities Corporation
278 Yu & Company, Inc.

Legarda: Underachieving Her Way To Success

Now here's something new in our proud history as a country whose government's entertainment value exceeds that of the actual entertainment industry: Loren Legarda - notable political driftwood, major consumer of what appears to be transformative cosmetics, and bitter loser of the last election for vice president, has announced her intention to run as - wait for it - VICE PRESIDENT.

Again.

Without a co-runner for the presidential position.

I don't really find it strange to find her running again as vice president. We're all encouraged to keep on trying until we're dead (see Ping Lacson for more info) but I think this has to be the first time somebody has ever been deadset into running as Vice-President, a position usually reserved for only three types of politicians:

1. Presidentiables who figured they just can't win
2. People who got bribed into running for posterity purposes
3. Presidentiables who can't read and mistakenly checked Vice President instead during the filing of candidacy.

Usually, somebody runs for president and just asks anybody who has a pulse and good hair (the only basic requirements for successfully acting as a vice president in this country) as a running mate.

No. Loren Legarda's decided to go against that trend. In a sweet reverse of situation, she's decided to gun for second place, making her the political equivalent of the student who studies just to barely pass. AND she's looking for a presidential running mate. We may be seeing the birth of a new career: Professional Vice Presidentiable.

Call center agents, watch out.

This just might be the next big thing.

News Brief for this Week

The DepEd is now being indicted once more for purchasing expensive shampoo for the children. Shampoo? Really? Looks like somebody had the wrong idea when we told them to take care of the kids' heads.

International storm "Lupit" is headed our way. Something's wrong. "Lupit" should be the local name. "Kickass" should be the international name.

Gunmen stormed a timepiece store last Sunday in Greenbelt 5, taking about 6 million pesos worth of Rolex and Tudor watches. It should be worth noting that nobody touched the Fossil watches on display, proving once and for all that nobody gives a fuck about Fossil whether they're on your hand or they're up for stealing.

According to Dangerous Drugs Board chief-drug-user Sotto, 14 mayors are now under watch for involvement in drugs. The only reason they could only tag 14 is that the rest are too high up in the clouds to be investigated.

Two Koreans were arrested last Sunday after getting caught smoking pot outside a disco in Cebu city. A Korean representative visited the two afterward in an attempt to get the whole story of the incident. Yeah, sure. Good luck there, buddy.

Different Swimming Styles

Lately I've been going back to my regular Sunday swimming routine just to remind myself how out-of-shape I am. To celebrate the effort I spent to convince myself to leave the comfort of my room, and on a Sunday afternoon for that matter, I will now write about the different types of swimming strokes. On a lighter note, funny how they call swimming styles "strokes", since I can only think of two other uses for that word. One of them leads in masculine pleasure, and the other, in death. Anyway, on with the article!

Freestyle - When talking about freestyle swimming, I imagine the usual anything-goes dogpaddling that often leads to looking retarded/cramping/drowing, in that order for most cases. This is, of course, not correct, but it looks like what people know about freestyle isn't either. Hah. As a little trivia, the "freestyle" often described on TV is not actually freestyle but is a fast stroke called the "Front Crawl", presumably named by the Committee of Ironic Names.

The term freestyle actually refers to the general rule that you can swim any way you want in a freestyle race. It just so happens that the "crawl" style is the fastest. I know. Shut up already. Anyway, the front stroke is currently the fastest stroke in the world, at least until somebody discovers how to use releasing liquids from our various orifices as a turbo mechanism of sorts, shortly afterwhich the Olympic committee will probably decide to have competitors fight it out on seperate pools in the interest of hygiene.

Breast Stroke - The breast stroke is said to be the oldest stroke in the world, used even during the prehistoric times, but not probably by the dinosaurs, as most of them simply do not have the arm length to swim. The breast stroke is often referred to as the laziest of the swimming strokes next to drowning, which could actually be counted as the oldest stroke that _doesnt_ require the person to actually survive the activity. Anyway, breaststroke leaves the swimmers head above the water for a very long time, enabling the person to do small talk while swimming. Which is a good thing if you have a hot chick swimming beside you.

Contrary to the idea that lazy stroke means easy stroke, the breast stroke is actually one of the hardest strokes to perform, as it requires a special sense of timing and ridiculously strong legs for the frog kick motion. But of course, good luck explaining that to the people who don't see what the rest of your body is doing while swimming. They probably think you're just doing the dogpaddle.

Backstroke - The back stroke is one of many types of swimming on your back, and is probably one of the only few strokes that don't make you look like you are being raped by a water nypmh (see Makes you gay; reverse breast stroke) Although the form of backstroke is very similar to that used during front crawl, the inverted position makes the swimmer use a completely different set of muscles, making backstroke the ideal compliment for front crawl users who want a fullbody workout and have a particular deathwish. The backstroke is the third leading cause of water cramps - next only to horseplay and swimming while a sexy lifeguard is on duty.

Butterfly stroke - The butterfly stroke is yet another awkwardly named stroke, since any man who can perform the stroke is anything but gay. If it were up to me, I'd have named it "If I were to do this shit out of the water, you'd be dead by now" stroke. The butterfly stroke is the newest, hardest, and most aesthetic stroke around, and in short bursts, it also is the fastest stroke around. If swimming will ever become an extreme sport, this would be the main event. With or without sharks.

If the difficulty of the stroke is not evident, just think for a moment that on the recovery phase of the stroke, you are required to have your body from the waist up to be over water. That's borderline flying over water, halfway close to what Jesus was able to do. And you have to do that while catching your breath.

The butterfly stroke is a style also used mainly to swim in choppy waters like the open ocean. Presumably because breaststroke is too slow, while freestyle requires as minimal terbulence in the water as possible.

Either that or butterfly stroke users are just badass and would not swim anywhere but the open sea, with other dangerous things like Great Whites and the Cloverfield Monster.

A Man's Advice to the Heartbroken

Getting dumped sucks. Getting dumped in the midst of an f'ing storm sucks even more. But what can I say? Sh*t happens.

I won't give you bullsh*t nicey pansy sunshines-and-flowers-all over advice because frankly, nothing's going to help you feel really better in the long run. Beer, women, dating, friends, religion? They're drops of water amidst a raging inferno. Nice, but useless.

No. You're going to feel bad. After that, you're going to feel worse. Then you're going to want to have her back, swallowing pride, dignity, and testicles (case to case) in the process. And it's going to feel worse once you're trying that. You will want to vomit your heart out, but even after you've thrown up as much as you can, the heart will still be there. The hurt will remain. That's what breakups are like.

The only comfort you can take in is that you are not alone. Every other guy in this forum whose lovelife doesn't consist of masturbating to pictures of ABS-CBN notebooks and/or hentai has probably gotten hurt once or twice before. It's kinda like circumcision, for REAL men.

Ever got into a fight where you lost so bad, got punched in the face so hard so many times that you can almost hear St. Peter call for a stretcher to wait for the arrival of whatever's left of you in heaven?

Your face will swell and each throb afterwards will feel like a nut punch delivered straight to your face. That's a lot like getting dumped.

But you know, after a while, you just get used to the pain and forget its even there. You will not be able to recall the exact moment your body will go "f*ck this, I got better things to do than say ouch like a pansy" but it will happen. In due time.

And the same can be said of getting dumped.

You take a hit, you shout like a madman, then you realize it's not something that you can die from. You grumble. You forget. You move on.

Recap:
1. prepare for lots of hurt
2. stay long enough to realize it's gone
3. send me her revealing pictures/vids

p.s. (I'm not kidding, you haven't seen sh*t yet. It's going to HURT.)

p.p.s. (I'm not kidding about the pics either. GO)

Stock Talks NI SRO Notes (Part 2)

To those following Nihao Mineral Resources (NI), after I posted my last entry about the stock, the price of the stock came crashing down like a badly made house of cards down from 14.25 to a measly 11 pesos just before the EX date.

HOLY SHIT THAT WAS SCARY.

Computing the paperlosses if you bailed out at the last minute, it would have been very bloody.



That's a whopping 20% cutloss.

I'd admit I cut losses as well at some point during the drop. The fear kinda just got to me. But that's just how trading goes. Anyway, the SRO came and went and yesterday, the intial price settled at, guess what, 3.25.

Break even for the guys who bought at 14.25.

But that's not really how it ends.

As of the end of today, the price of the stock has risen to 4.8 and it still looks poised to trend up further in the medium term.

What does that mean?

That means 4.8/3.25 = 50% paper gain on your investment, or following our example, 70,000 pesos for December on top of the initial 140,000 investment. Fuck time deposit. This is like Back-To-The-Future-Time Deposit.

Of course, paper gain is paper gain, and from what I've seen, prices on the release date come december will probably send prices dropping again, regardless of market status, but with the jockeys around, chances are they wont really let it end at 5 pesos per share.

Now the only factor we have left for this equation is, "What will happen to the market in 2 months time?"

Coco Jumbo - Mr. President

I think I first heard of this song back in 1997. I'll leave this video here and let you contemplate on the meaning of "coco jumbo" and its contribution to society.

Quotes for the Season

Good foreplay is like wading in flood. It should get you wet only where you want to be, and not so much it gives you an infection.

One positive thing about people panic buying: The following week, you're guaranteed fresh stock.

Saying braving 200km winds won't kill you because it's just wind is like saying hookers are safe because they're just women wearing funny outfits. (tip: it's what they're bringing that does)

I think the reason why they've started to use men names for storms is because more and more men are starting to act like women (from nikumanju <3)

People are wondering why DSWD kept on distributing supplies in Makati even to those that weren't too affected by Ondoy. It probably has something to do with their local government flooding them neck-up in bullshit about "ganito kami..."

While I'm all against the statement that the storms were caused by the nation's sinners. That's bull. If it's true, the first district to have flooded should've been the red light districts.

On a more serious note, there's nothing funny about what happened to our fellow countrymen. Keep the donations coming, and let's all stay vigilant against any further complications that we might come across.

Remember?

Four years is a long time.

She told me to my face that we never had a chance, but her avoiding eyes were never meant for lying. People outside the cafe moved about, like a flowing river that served as her only diversion from the ugly truth. I remember her lips slightly trembling, I remember every damning minute and detail of it all, as though her very actions spoke to me that day, that if she, if we, could've tried harder to just stop our busy lives and listen to what we both had kept so often to ourselves, that we would not be in that coffeeshop and not be talking about the end.


We were both civil about things. I, for the most part, felt that it was the last thing I could do for her as a boyfriend. I openly admitted that I had been too busy for work and that she had her needs that I willfully neglected in providing. All those raincheck dinners, canceled dates, missed calls. It was clear whose fault it was. I didn't even make excuses. The coming of another person in our relationship was more of a consequence than a cause, and the silence between me and her was a testament to that fact. I touched her cheek, she looked at me again. "If in the future," she told me in a fidgeting unsure tone, "we still don't find what we are looking for, please know that I'm willing to give this, us, a chance again."

I touch her arms once and shook my head once. Her face paled and she finally shed long abated tears, not because we broke something special, but because it was lost long before we could ever strain it hard enough to break, and that there was no turning things back as much as she wished she could, for broken things could be mended, but lost things were rarely ever found again.

For the rest of our stay there we just sat silently in front of each other, on opposite chairs, about as far as we were when we first went out, and perhaps as close as we would ever get again.

We kept our feelings jarred inside up to the last moment, too dignified, too proud, and too damned to show each other how weak we were. Ah, those times. It was such a tragedy, like a party ending without the fireworks.

For we both thought things would end with a bang, but horrified at the eventuality that died with a passing whimper.

Like most good things.

Kingdom Hearts DS R4 Revolution 358/2 Days Download

Surprise surprise. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for the Nintendo DS is out, with a whopping 250++MB of memory requirement, and a new piracy protection scheme. I was afraid my cloned R4 Revolution III wouldn't be able to handle it but after experimenting with some of the available patches online, one of them actually worked. (so far)

Rapidshare download after the skip.

Anyway, I had to use the patching program @ GBATemp.Net but in the process I had to reupdate my .NET plugin for my pc after some minor complications. No biggie. Since I know half of the people who will be stumbling across this post can't even be bothered to execute an already prepackaged patching program without every having their hands dirtied by actual hex editing, or god forbid, reverse engineering, I've taken the liberty of uploading a copy in Rapidshare.

p.s. don't ask me to do the same in megaupload. I hate their site and I don't like my pc being raped by trojans.

Special thanks to AntonKan who made it possible to work around Squeenix's piracy protection by just using a few

You can download the NDS file here:

edit: removed, file oversized.

Just try to manually patch using this link until I find some other place to upload.

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=7223

Feel free to suggest the location.

Stock Talks: NI SRO Notes

Yesterday, I talked things over with Anna and decided to go along with the 1:5 SRO of NiHao Mining Resources (NI) this coming Monday. Here's a short computation for my stake, not including the charges which is about 0.5% per transaction:

Original purchase: 10,000 shares at 14.25 = 142,500 pesos

Price per SRO stock: 1 peso

SRO Purchase: 50,000 shares at 1 = 50,000

Total investments: 192,500 pesos

Total shares: 60,000

Adjusted break-even price: 3.20 pesos

Theoretical Adjusted target price: 5 pesos

Projected value @ target price: 300,000 pesos

Net earnings: 107,500 pesos

Money Shot:
Now the question is whether or not the price of NI will go up higher than this price by the time the lockdown period until December expires. For sure, the price will avalanche the moment people start selling off their stocks, IF they still would want by that time. Risky if you think about it, because there's also the gamble on assuming that the market will still be healthy by the end of this year (which can't be guaranteed). The only safeguards I can think of is that NI is a strongly jockeyed stock and that the outlook for the end of this year is better than last year.

Ah well. Risks risks.

Typhoon Ondoy vs Boy Who Didn't Study Geography

Yesterday the internet flooded with heartwarming appeals and understandably frustrated comments because of Typhoon Ondoy's wrath. With the good, however, came the bad. And by bad, I mean retarded.



Dream car? Really? Is that really the best thing to worry about? What did you really expect the officials of Magallanes to do? Bring out straws and drain your streets by continously sucking and peeing the rain water into buckets? PROP the entire village up in stilts?

Scribblenauts Words List (funny, unique, interesting, weird)

Here's a partial list of interesting words that seems to be accepted by the DS game Scribblenauts. Scribblenauts is a game that allows you to write words and substantiate whatever the word means into an item ingame. While the word list is far from complete, the list is so comprehensive it's hard to believe the game has the actual raw size of 32MB uncompressed.

Memes:
- Rickroll
- LongCat
- Tacgnol
- Keyboardcat
- Anonymous
- Virgin
- Gamer
- Keyboard Cat
- Orly Owl
- LOL WUT

Mythology:
- Ymir
- Medusa
- Cerberrus
- Zeus
- Chuthlu

Weapons
- Rail Gun
- Mech
- Mecha
- Howitzer
- Large Hadron Collider (HDC)
- Sniper
- Sniper Rifle

PeopleEinstein
Michael Jackson
Harry Potter
Einstein
God

(more to come)

Early Campaigning, Bad Photoshopping

When put to good use, Photoshop accentuates the message of a signboard and really brings out the good angles of women, for this case a woman who looks like she really hates her husband's surname.


Mr. David, take a hint. This woman would rather have the word TULE in large red font beside her face than have your family's surname accented. She hates you that much.






There's lazy, and then there's template lazy. This piece looks like whoever made this had 5 minutes to do it and could only make use of the same banner as above for a guide, with that Holy Mary thing theme going on. Seeing the minor portraits of Mayor Lim and Gloria there, it's almost like the nativity scene actually, with Mary, Joseph, and a mascot that looks like Stitch.






Still on the topic of lazy, I guess some people can't even be bothered to pose with a REAL FUCKING HELMET ON. Maybe she's too busy wiht work to actually do it, let's give her the benefit of the doubt. The biggest problem here actually, is relying too much on some overpaid photoshop asshole who makes me feel like I'm Leonardo Da Vinci. The helmet shoop is about as conspicuous as using road ashpalt for facial reconstruction.

A quick roundup of SouthEast Asian languages.

Chinese - Even the Chinese people admit, Chinese is a language that is hard to use even when you practically grew up in China. With close to a million special characters, half of them looking like each other with the difference of a stroke or two, mastering this language is about as futile as trying to memorize the wardrobe philosophy of Lady Gaga. Chinese demands only the strictest of tongue control, which may appear horrifyingly hard to newbies, but generally useful for things other than speaking (if you know what I mean). Because of dependence on inflection rather than syllabication, a Chinese person on the average speaks faster than an American (among other reasons). If in the future we develop methods for developing orations deliverable at speeds that can break the sound barrier, I strongly believe it will be chinese, and they will be from a newscaster of CCTV.


Korean - The written counterpart of Korean called Hangul is one of the most elegant, futuristic languages out there, filled with circles and lines and stuff. I believe in the future, we'd all be eating dominoes pizzas and Hangul is a language derived from the logo of dominos found in the discarded pizza boxes left by visitors from the future. The spoken language of Korean, and I still do not understand to this day why so many people think it's beautiful, is probably the most abusive hard-palate languages in the world, making you unable to distinguish an batshit angry korean from a lucid one without looking at lip movement.

Thai - To be fair, I have no idea how kids in Thailand look at it, but from my point of view, the Thai written language is a nightmare to learn because even though the Chinese characters are just as complicated, the Thai language almost looks like you have to write it with the precision of etching microcircuits. The language structure of Thai was developed through the centuries independently from other civilizations, which resulted in the massive incompability with most Western languages. Spoken Thai is a lot like speaking with your nostrils stapled shut, which is good or bad, depending on whether or not you hate people who speak through their noses.

Filipino - Filipino is like the bastard child of all the South East Asian languages and Spanish, making it weird to both Asians AND Westerners. Surprisingly though, this feature also makes Filipino easy to learn, with words and syntax almost identical to English. Almost, being the operative word, since this rapidly evolving language is now almost becoming Hebrew-ish, discarding vowels in the written form. (i.e. D2 NK PPNT K?) Written language is same as western text, with a couple of added Spanish letters just to fuck with you. (ñ? SERIOUSLY? WHO USES THAT? OTHER THAN IN NAMES?)

Bahasa Indonesian - Honestly, majority of my experience with this language came from the back of shampoo bottles that constituted 90% of my reading material inside the bathroom as a kid, leading me to think Indonesians are people who are just crazy about hair care, in the same way Koreans make it seem like they're crazy about yawning. As for the words, speaking as a Filipino, Bahasa sounds like taking every awkward word in Filipino and turning it into a full spoken language of its own. Remarkably, if you play back Indonesian on a particularly shitty speaker, you can almost swear it's just drunk Filipino.

Vietnamese - I don't know. I don't really care. I'm only for the food, not the language.

Open-Source Philippine Text Books - WIKIBOOKS - Something For The Future

If you were about half as smart as a ripe banana in Highschool you'd probably know as much that our local text books are the Senate's equivalent of academic writing, more likely to slow down progress through misdirection than help anybody because of the number of mistakes we see every session. (like Jamby Madrigal, following the Senate analogy)

I don't need 2000 words to prove it. And you can read all about it online.. With the bloodlust hounding of private publishing companies attempting to keep on profiting by forcing our kids to use substandard books written by academic failures who obviously can't teach squat, it's a dismal situation.

But here's an idea, if you hear me out.


Currently, there is a site called WikiBooks, which is basically like Wikipedia, but structures its content in the form of books, translatable to the printed format and usable by students. The only difference is that unlike the traditional books, authorship is not restricted to a bunch of thirdstringer researchers paid minimum wage.

We can use this instead to build a better edited version of our text books. While normal netizens like us are unqualified for such an endeavor, I'm sure our collective effort will be definitely be better checked than what we currently have.

In time, perhaps we can convince teachers to start using these "free, easily corrected" books that only need to be peer reviewed once before being used for academic purposes.

Any takers?

I have a plurk

http://www.plurk.com/morgenwriter/invite

If you want faster updates, you can use this instead. Don't be a jerk though.

Random Trivia

Manila's name , originally Maynilad , is derived from that of the nilad plant , a flowering shrub adapted to marshy conditions , which once grew profusely along the banks of the river; the name was shortened first to Maynila and then to its present form. We should now call our city walangnilad.

For imperialist *ssholes who think there are too many Muslims invading Quiapo, Manila 400 years ago was a walled Muslim settlement. They got here first, but the Spaniards wiped them out.

Manila has since been invaded by many countries. China invaded it twice, the Dutch and the British once. Nowadays it looks like we're being invaded by Koreans.

Manila is the second most destroyed city of World War 2. Don't blame the Japs though. Half of the city turned into rubble when the Americans decided artillery would have to be used to flush out the Japanese during the reinvasion of 1945.

Juan De La Cruz came from a reporter who saw that it was the most common name that appeared on the blotters, forever dooming us to a fate of being a nation of crooks.

Manuel L Quezon actually defeated Emilio Aguinaldo in the elections. This is also probably why a Quezon can get you a jeepney ride while an Aguinaldo won't even pass minimum fare.

Wanted: Web Developer

I need a web developer for developing an application for me. I know it sounds weird considering web development is part of my line of work, but I don't really have a lot of time to do programming on the side.

Project scale is moderately sized and is a personal project, i.e. you will be directly working with me and only me. Language of choice is up to you but PHP/JSP is preferred. Experience in actual web deployments is a must as well.

Payment can be on a project basis, 1/3 down, 2/3rds on completion or in the form of limited profit percentage sharing upon completion of the website.

Contact me via YM "nefasturis" for more details.

Stock Disclosure

BRN - long term "sit my ass on this stock for a while" investment.
MEG - "waiting for announcement of the bidding results and then some" ipit stock
FLI - I am not sure why I keep on buying this stock and selling it at a loss.

Let's just wait for tomorrow and next week.

Noynoy for President?

A couple of days back, Mar Roxas has agreed to back down of the election, which is tantamount to throwing his support at upstart Senator Noynoy Aquino, and God knows there's nothing wrong with that. It's a free country after all.

And I'm just a normal tax-paying citizen, so I won't ask for much. But is there anybody on the internet, or the country for that matter who can provide a single picture of Senator Noynoy that doesn't make him look like he's mildly handicapped?

I don't really want to be discriminating and all, but I still got standards. I refuse to vote somebody who looks like that kid we all kept on ignoring in first grade because he kept on eating everybody's crayons and shitting in his pants. I probably wouldn't even have hung out with him in highschool and we're supposed to make him as our alpha male of democracy? America's got Obama and we're going to get this guy? Aw hell no.

The only good thing I can think of him being a president is we'd have the first masturbate-worthy first spouse in quite literally, decades. (Does Imelda count? Once upon a time she didn't look like a genderbend Jabba the Hutt, you know) Noynoy's still an Aquino, and with his name, he gets the luxury of choice and taste.


infinitely better than a sedentary first gentleman, yes?

I know it's superficial to base presidency on looks. I know that and that's not what I want. I'm just saying we should maintain a bare minimum in terms of looks. We don't want our children to be asked to make projects about our presidents and start asking why they have to make writeups and plays about Noynoy all the while mumbling "fuck you dad for voting this guy". Worst case scenario, they'd be ask to go up on stage and pretend to be a Philippine president, and your kid gets to act mental-par-below-acumen because he got assigned Noynoy. Think of that.

Think of your future children.

I rest my case.

Quake2/Halflife : Top 5 Influential PC Multiplayer Games In The Philippines

Going back to our list of influential local pc games, our next game in the list is a tie. Actually, it wasn't like that at first but long time resident blog asshole Fishcake was quick to remind me though that sometimes more than one game causes a change to the pc community, the same way it took more than a couple of Final Fantasies until we realized Squaresoft was just fucking with us by trying to find out how much zippers,belts, and emo they can cram into a single game before we start cringing.

Anyway, on our second spot, we have Quake 2 and Half-Life, both first person shooters that signaled the reincarnation of the first person shooter as a fast-paced, true 3d competitive game where characters can actually jump (fuck you Doom)



On a side note, Quake 2 for me is like my first entry into the pirated games market. I bought it as a gift to a friend and couldn't resist playing a few before giving it to him. The CD was with me for 24 hours and I ended up playing with it for 20.

Lan-games-wise, this is the first game that I actually played in a net cafe with friends, teaching me three things:

- if you don't know how to aim, look for the biggest gun available
- if the biggest gun is unavailable, learn how to aim
- Fuck railguns

Quake 2 was a game that played infinitely faster than any RTS. You login, you create a game, people login and then you just keep killing each other until it's 9PM and you're still 40kms from your house on a weeknight. It's that fast.

Half-Life was not too different from Quake 2, although admittedly I had more fun playing this game because in fact it came out much later and featured more fun things (like the killer alien pikachus you can throw at your enemies for maximized humiliation) as well as more interaction with the environment. Half-Life marked the first time the First Person Shooter Genre decided to grow the fuck up and throw away the morbid emo-goth themes of Quake/Heretic/Doom and just go with bright sunny outdoors shootouts. Suddenly even people who had low tolerances for huge contrasts of bright and dark found themselves hooked into LAN games.

Why Quake 2 and Half-Life though? I can simply answer it based on the idea that those two games started requiring computers to have videocards installed. See, once upon a time, we didn't have to spend half a month's salary to get a videocard that eats more power than a vacuum cleaner sucking water out of a pool. Half-Life and Quake2, unlike Starcraft actually ran much FASTER with a videocard on, and of course, the graphics was significantly enhanced, making the gaming experience much much better (and getting humiliated by a backstabbing crowbar much much more evident)

Overtime, net cafes that didn't have any videocards on their computers became old hat and the race to provide the best vidcards started, never unding up until this present day.

While the introduction of videocards was both eventual and inevitable, it's the requiring force of the two games that made shop owners wise up and actually start focusing on the quality of the game machines instead of just the quantity of units.

Because of that force, I put Quake2 and Half-Life in this list.

Coffee Shops = New Age Homeless Shelters

Full capacity. Really.

Last night, I went to Coffee Bean And Tea Leaf in Robinson's Place with my girlfriend for a short chat. Looking from the outside, we found vacant seats inside the shop so we entered the place. When we got to the tables though, we were surprised to see that three tables covering about a third of the shop was empty, but filled with open books, bags and various beverages at various states of consumption.

My mind basically went:

1. Either I'm in the movie The Langoliers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Langoliers
2. A radiation scare had forced people to evacuate the premises while leaving behind their stuff.
3. Mugs and books have finally gained enough sentience, dexterity, and cash to purchase and consume coffee.
3. Some people thought it was a fucking wise move to leave their things to reserve the seats so they can conveniently go somewhere else in the mall to have cheap dinner and then go back to their seats and resume studying wihtout having to order food again, and actually look like regular customers, all the while disregarding petty things like etiquette and human decency.

Seeing that the rest of the shop was filled with normal people that didn't look like they were dying of rad poisoning, I figured it must be the third option. So we sat outside and waited to see if people would indeed return to their seats.

TWenty minutes later they did, carrying around takeout food from McDonalds and Joe Pepperoni. The people resumed studying, surfing the internet (for free) and just lounging around. Nobody ordered anything afterwards, despite the fact that some of the cups of coffee have been empty since the Cory Administration.

As a demonstration of how amazingly crass things got, one of the finer (read: hambeast) ladies found an unoccupied leather seat across the shop, dragged it to her place and used the seat, while keeping her existing seat for her bag. (apparently bags can drink now too)

Call me conservative, but I thought it was simply ridiculous. Coffeeshops are for good for reading books, but they're for reading books AND drinking coffee. Buying one coffee or having a friend who bought coffee three hours ago does not constitute you as an eternal customer, and even an overpriced badly tasting joe can only go so far.

During the time the bags were left unattended, I was thinking of the many ways to force management to get the unattended items thrown out.

- Make angry faces at management for allowing second-class books to occupy chairs while you're left to stand. Bring up the topic of book-human discrimination.
- Leave a large card note saying "Free stuff"
- Stash drugs in the bag pockets and call in the K9 units
- Tell management the people who stayed in the empty tables asked you to tell management that they wont be returning because one of their friends had a heart attack
- Call security and tell them one of the bags is filled with explosives. Use a deep, persuasive voice with accompanying maniacal laughter.

I would've, but my gf is a frequent visitor and I wouldn't want her in trouble, so I just put my ideas here instead of in practice, where they belong.

On hindsight, we should stop calling the place CBTL and call it CBTG: Coffee Bean and Taong Grasa

Dead Stop

I want to be selfish for this post. I want to talk about myself for just a few hundred words. I don't feel like cracking jokes at the moment, so if your visit to this site is for that purpose, sorry. Come back in a couple of days and we'll continue our laughs.


When I was in gradeschool, I forced myself to stay at the top section so I can make sure I stay in the same school in highschool. When I was in highschool I forced myself to get decent grades so I can enter a good college. When I was in college I tried hard to graduate on time so I can get myself into a decent company with a decent salary to support a future family. When I entered a decent company I worked hard so I can get myself a higher position. And a higher position. And a higher position. All the while, I felt like I have my life on track and I'm smoothly moving along.


Last month, I finally got the position that I've only dreamed about as early as college. I got the goal I've been looking at for a very long time now. I should be happy, really. It's just that one of the mornings after, I woke up realizing I've nothing else to do. And quite frankly, in terms of career, I feel like I've hit a pretty solid dead end.

Yes, there are still higher positions out there. And yes, I think there's a remote possibility I may go higher, but you know, somewhere along the way, I just realized that ascending the corporate ladder is like climbing a mountain. The higher you go up, the harder it gets to breathe. I'm starting to think if I get any higher I'll just choke and die.

Literally, a dead end.

Work's gotten twice as heavy compared to as recent as three months ago and looking at things, I'm now doing more work than when I was still in my previous company (which I left for reasons of overwork). Despite doing exactly what I visualized I would be doing, I suddenly don't feel like I'm enthusiastic about it. My new line of work changes my appearance to a lot of people, and moreover, it changes me.

I used to think if I were presented with the opportunity, I'd grab it because I wanted it. Somehow, things didn't turn out to be that way. In the end, I got to where I am now not because I wanted it, but because I can and I should, for many reasons I cannot discount.

There's a silver lining to every cloud, and I should be thankful that I even got as far as I did at my age. It's quite an achievement, and yes, I feel blessed to have what I have now. However, as far as fulfillment goes, I couldn't find it where I thought it would be.

We can't always get what we want.

But sometimes, even if we do have what we want, we still don't get it.

At least right now, I don't.

Starcraft : Top 5 Influential PC Multiplayer Games In The Philippines

Starcraft wasn't exactly a groundbreaker in many things. By the time it got released locally in 1998, people in my school were already playing real-time strategy games like Total Annihilation and Red Alert, both of which already had a relatively loyal fanbase. Selected internet cafes were already offering head-to-head local area gameplay for these games as well.

More after the jump.

Thinking about it, despite its hype overseas, the reception of the relatively small PC gaming community of this game locally was far from impressive. Of course, not many people had internet connections at the time so we didn't know what the world thought about it, and game magazines were imported and reserved for our rich pompous asshole classmates who had relatives overseas. We were left to our own devices to find out about Starcraft, but like many good things like porn and torrent, it was more of an inevitable discovery than a lucky break.

Gameplaywise, Starcraft featured three distinct races that basically had zero common units that played differently, which made games like Red Alert and Total Annhiliation look like boring chess variants. Starcraft also limited the number of maximum units that could be created in the game, forcing players to manage resources and construction time better. Suddenly, multiplayer games were no longer about who could click the fastest alone (although rushfags will always exist). Personally, I'd like to believe this was the turnkey feature that enabled RTS to be turned into an electronic sport. Strategy was brought into the limelight, where it would stay up to this day.

As another revolution to gaming locally, Starcraft featured a dial-up connectivity mode, enabling anybody with at least a 28kbps baud modem and an unguarded phoneline to connect to a friend from miles away for some head-to-head/co-op games. Considering prepaid internet would not be introduced until a year later, and would not become mainstream for at least 2 more years, the dialup function gave local players a taste of what it felt like to rape somebody ingame, at the comfort of their own home. On a lighter sidenote, Starcraft also introduced the first time parents got angry over the overusage of telephone lines for a reason other than "telebabad".

With its amazing sprite graphics, flexible multiplayer-for-poor-people capabilities, fluid gameplay, and robust support for abusive zerg players, Starcraft invaded local networking haunts and served as the standard way of settling disputes about who has the bigger e-penis among the select few network gamers for a veeeeeeeeery long time.


Runner up : Warcraft 2
Warcraft 2 is the direct prerunner of Starcraft and had many of the features that made Starcraft a staple game for many of us. However, it was a game well ahead of its time, and could only be enjoyed by the select few who already had computers capable of running the game, which wasn't a lot. (I got my first pentium around mid '96, but didn't start playing games on it until the following year, when Red Alert already existed)

5 Games That Changed The Philippine PC Multiplayer Gaming Landscape

Nowadays, one of the biggest subsets of the video gaming culture in the Philippines is that of the Multiplayer PC Games category. With games like World of Warcraft, Counter Strike: Source, and Defense of The Ancients (DoTA), pc multiplay has permeated so deeply into the culture of youth that not knowing anything about these games could actually make you feel "weird".

This has not always been the case, of course, and as somebody who grew up during the coming of age of multiplayer video gaming in general, I can tell you that the road to the current state of things has been long and detailed, filled with games that tried, failed and succeeded, revolutionizing gaming as we see it today.

In a series of 5 articles, we will discuss the 5 games that actually contributed to the evolution of the local PC gaming landscape, so that future generations can savor the unique double-edged experience of "total pwnage".

#5: Starcraft

Bear Politics

Spice and Wolf Economics Explanation

Okay, normally I don't really take too much time writing about the anime I watch because one, it highlights how much of a nerd I am and two, anime is supposed to be readily digestible cartoons made for hyperactive children and needs no further elaboration.

Spice and Wolf has continually proven itself as an exception. Set somewhere in a medieval world, the story follows the exploits of a merchant named Craft Lawrence as he moves from city to city to earn money through trade. Joining him is a wolf goddess who wants to go back to her home town in the far north, livening up Lawrence's life along the way.

While the premise is simple enough, the concepts of the anime uses to keep things keep on surprising me, as complex ideas like short selling, marginal profitting, and psychological price resistances are routinely presented to what I can only imagine as a core audience of 14-18 (the likely age where nearnaked cartoon characters should sell the most)

(spoilers and actual explanation begin after jump)

After looking around the internet for some existing explanation for the last few episodes (Season 2, ep 1-6), I couldn't find any. Granted I've been studying the very same things in a more localized scenario lately, I've decided to write down and share what I've been able to make of the show.

The climax of the arc is about Lawrence selling off his partnership with Horo (the wolf girl) to that other merchant Amati (guy with crush on Horo). Amati strangely reminds me of Quatre Winner of the Gundam Wing franchise, actually.

Anyway, all the while a festival is going on in town. In the middle of it, a strange commodity called Pyrite is accumulating demand for the hype brought by a travelling fortuneteller. Hype usually increases the price of a commodity more than its actual production value, the same way trendfags pay wads of cash for iPods that pretty much do whatever other cheaper products do.

Amati, being the trader that he is, planned to gain the amount he needs to pawn off Horo by accumulating a large amount of pyrite early on and waiting for the demand to push the price higher up to a target price that will enable him to sell his stash at a value equal or greater than 1000.

The price Amati is waiting for is called the Target Price or Target Exit Price, and this sort of baseline can be seen even in our modern commodity/stock markets. The behavior exhibited by Amati is called the Target Price Oriented Action Strategy (PAOS)

The town's market in Spice and Wolf has its own primitive commodities/stock market control, similar to our country's Philippine Stock Exchange. The primitive board is actually a display board of the number of people willing to buy/sell a commodity at a certain price.

In case you're wondering what the big board does, here's a breakdown:

One row on the board represents one commodity whose symbol is indicated in the middle. The roman numerals basically display the current price of a commodity if you sell it (highest buying price) on the left and the current price of a commodity if you buy it (lowest selling price) on the right. The wooden bars show the current stocks of merchants willing to sell/buy at that certain price.


Not too different from what we have.


If the stock gets exhausted from buying and nobody is willing to sell at that price anymore, the price goes up to a price where people are willing to sell again. If the buyers are all given what they want and nobody wants to buy anymore, the price lowers until people want to buy again.

For the case of Pyrite, the demand is so high, nobody who holds pyrite wants to let go of their stash. The stock exhaustion kept on happening and the price of pyrite skyrockets. Meanwhile, Amati, having lots of stash at hand, is a happy sunnovabitch.

Craft Lawrence, realizing he's going to get screwed if the trend continues, then devices a plan to "jockey" the pyrite price. To jockey a stock means to artificially introduce stimuli into a market to influence the people, and consequently the price, to behave in a certain way. This concept is widely used even in our existing markets, specially in smaller commodities/company stocks.

His plan is to incite panic to the Pyrite market by making it look like the price is going to crash. While it looks devious, it's perfectly legal in most situations, as long as nobody loses an eye, dies, or gets pregnant.

See, the Pyrite market is already at an "overbought" condition, which is basically what happens when the demand is so high that the price is driven up waaaay beyond the actual price (pryite is just a rock but is currently being sold as a talisman, so we can just imagine how much overpriced this is). When a commodity is already overbought, current holders of the item tend to get antsy to let go of their stashes, because they start to think the price may no longer go any higher (and what doesn't come up will most certainly go down)

The jockeying idea of Craft is to become the first few people to start cashing in at the highest price. When somebody sells, the other merchants may take it as a cue that the price is no longer going up and the second market condition (no more buyers) will drive the price down. Volume helps support this idea, which is why Craft needs a lot of pyrite from Deanna - to make his action more psychologically significant.

Another idea he had as a supplement is to let a kid say something about now being the right time to buy wheat, while in a public area. The logic behind this is that the antsy merchants who are already earning good profits may suddenly think that the underpriced commodity of wheat to be the next place where profit can be made. This commodity exodus can also drive a selling spree which will drive the prices of pyrite down due to overstock.

In the end, Horo helped Lawrence out by dumping her share at the same moment as Lawrence, triggering the price crash that he actually needed.

As for the deal that Lawrence did with Amati where he bought some pyrite on credit, this is what the modern stock world calls Short Selling, which is basically selling somebody a computer you don't have and promise to deliver it after 3 days, and then buying at the last day when a stock is already at a lower price. In effect, you bought stocks today cheaply and sold it yesterday at a higher price, which is kinda like timetravel trading.

For Lawrence's case, he sold pyrite to Amati 2 days before he crashed the market, and then bought pyrite after he crashed the market and gave Amati the stash, telling everybody how to earn even from a market that's already tumbling down. This activity is not contributary to the main story, but it's the author's way of saying LOL I LOVE TRADING

Short selling drives the market even lower, but helps maintain a healthy price movement range. It's illegal in some countries including here in the Philippines.

Alright. That's basically it.

Questions?