Where's That Bowl Of Water?

All my advocacy about promoting FOSS and veering away from proprietary systems, as it turned out,  I happened to have inherited an icon of Steve Jobs' legacy not once BUT TWICE!! 

I immediately tried to liquidate the first one and found that I couldn't— or more accurately: it would have been utterly foolish for me to. So for ten days I felt like Nixau desperately trying to figure out what to do with the coke bottle. 

Finally coming to the stoic conclusion that I'm stuck with it, I had to re-learn— against my will, with a learning curve made even steeper by my bias against the oppressive eco-system. 

Then less than two weeks later, another one lands on my lap!?! This now ups the ante to further immerse myself in the suffocating fish bowl.   

Alas, justify— yes, indeed I will— but it terribly feels like a sell- out. 

Hmmmm ...accepta aqua lavit manus coram populo ...

Tikling

Tikling

Ako'y nanlulumo na nawala na ang pagmamalaki natin sa ating katutubong kabihasnan.

Hihiramin ko ang sinulat ni Augusto F. Villalon na nagsabi na:

"The Philippine cultural scene is as tumultuous as its politics so it is no surprise that for the Filipino, getting a grip on his own culture may be alienating.

The cultural scene today is such a mixed bag, including “beautification” of heritage town plazas with monstrous “multipurpose” structures where barrio beauty contests are held as the main cultural event of the annual fiesta. Usually crowned as Miss Barrio Beauty is the most Caucasian-looking among the contestants.

Noontime television shows entertain the entire nation, inspiring inmates of provincial jails to form their own dance troupes which out-dance the best Western pop dancers."

Nakakalungkot malaman na sadyang iyan nga ang katotohanan.

Ang nakakadagdag pa ng kalamsi sa sugat ay ito: panoorin nyo itong mga kabataan na buong sigla at galing na sinasayaw ang Tinikling— isang tunay na Pilipinong sayaw.

Buong yabang mong maipagmamalaki na ito ay katangi-tanging "Pilipino".

Ngunit kung mapag-isip ka ng mas malalim ay imbis na lumuwag ang dibdib sa pagmamayabang ng kulturang Pilipino, ay lalo ka dapat malungkot. Kinailangan pa na itong mga banyaga ang magpakita ng ganda at galing ng ating sariling kabihasnan, at hindi mo makikita itong galing at sigla dito sa ating bansa.

Baka naman pagkatapos kong isulat ito ay magbago din ...

Of Mice and FireFox QuickTime Plugin bugs

I happened to be yet again without a mouse.

Several months ago, my IBM mouse which has survived three laptops: a Thinkpad, a Lenovo and a Toshiba finally declared it quits. I count a service life of six years for that rodent... not bad.

There was nothing wrong with the mouse itself, its really just wear from the cable at the point where it leaves the USB connector. uhmmmm... the "better half" has only belatedly learnt of the wonders of using a computer (mostly Facebook and Farmville) and was spared of the ravages of the have-nots and was blissfully unaware that the "usage pattern" she was subjecting the human input device to was beyond "acceptable tolerances" Ahhh... we still love them don't we? :)

Alas, the days when I'd quickly whip out my scalpel, pincers, soldering iron, eutectic lead, heat-shrink tubes, VOM and other electronic doodads are in the realm of Camelot, ahhh... These days, Genghis Khan has encroached on Camelot's sunny meadows and brought wares from the Middle Kingdom with him which are priced exceedingly... how to say--  a Bob Barker sobriquet?  

Resistance is futile -- you will be assimilated...

Mouse for ₱99 (roughly US$ 2 as I write this) ey, what the heck. Its not like it was, back in the day that they went for US$ 35. In fact some still do. So here I go, lining the purses of our compatriots which have curious surnames of three letters or less.

I suppose all would be well, except that the better half's usage patterns remain the same and the Middle Kingdom's wares are living up to their reputation. So, guess what? Fast forward to now- I have a small herd of mice which I keep in a neat little sack. Perhaps someday I can sell these by the kilo ...

Which brings me to today-- having to fit my not-so-petite hands and fingers into the rigmarole of this tiny touchpad is such a challenge.

Mousing with a touchpad is really for the birds. Can't get the keyboard to ignore the touchpad when you inadvertently skate on it and can't get the touchpad to zero in where you want it to without "consciously" and deliberately mousing to it with much effort.

Yeah, yeah... I heard it before... Old dogs ... new tricks. However, you can bet your bottom dollar that I still do as old dogs do ... (Thanks Judd!)

This arrangement will have to do until the next time I enrich the Middle Kingdom.

For now, in the mean time, the cursor is all over the place and for some reason it has called up FireFox's Add-on Manager and it landed squarely on the link to [Check to see if your plugins are up to date] Guess what? My thumb brushed the touchpad and clicked the link. 

It brought me a page where a fox in the garb and magnifying glass of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective told me that QuickTime along with Java, Shockwave and Silverlight and a bunch of other add-ins and plugins are out of date and proffered buttons and links to initiate updates for each one thereto.

Hey, ok. I click the links to open new tabs and it dutifully opens the pages for the vendor pages which lead me to the download of the appropriate updates. I dutifully download and install each one in turn including turn off all the browser sessions (I have all if IE, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari and Opera -- don't ask). before each update. The updates get applied uneventfully.

Except for the Quicktime plug-in on Firefox. Grrrrrrrr!

I'm certain I downloaded and installed Quicktime 7.7.1 successfully (I'm oneof those that watch install progress screens), yet Firefox  tells me I still had the old  7.x.x plug-in. What the ...?

Grrrrrr! You know what that means-- Support pages or Google exercises. Grrrrr! I was all set up for a relaxing weekend, not this.  :(

Oh well-- I turn up a year and a half-old archived thread on apple support that describes a similar problem and describes the procedure to fix it. Unfortunately the procedure was for MacOS. Double Grrrrrr!

After I've calmed down with my Earl Grey, however, I do the Windows analog of the same-- and here it is:

• Close Firefox down. 
• Move the files in C:\Program Files\QuickTime\Plugins to somewhere else. 
• Open Firefox and go to [Tools]->[Add Ons] and verify that Quicktime is no longer on the list of Add-ons. 
• Close Firefox down again. 
• Move the Quicktime files back .
• Open FireFox again

At this point FireFox now dutifully recognizes the updated version of QuickTime.

Ahhh.... again, there is harmony in the universe. :)

Now on to trivial pursuits and a crumpet for my Ceylon blend ...

How foregtful

How foregtful have we become? Aquino (the second one) tried to put the despot strongman and his cohorts in jail. It has been a full 25 years since she was in the highest office in the land (as of this writing) and yet, I do not see any of them behind bars, do you?

Tatooine Tuskan Raider

Now, Aquino (the third one), is trying to put a greedy little Tuskan raider of the Sand People on Tatooine that has gotten her hands caught in the cookie jar more than once.

Will she end up behind bars now that Aquino has made his first jabs at doing so? Will he have learned anything from his history, nay, his own legacy?

I wait to see— but I'm not holding my breath ...

C'est la vie!

Life is like the Bible-- it has a beginning and it has an end. 

You must remember that when a chapter ends, a new one begins. 

Time to turn the page ...