No, it is not official. It just seems that way.

Let’s see…

1. October 18, 2006 - Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
2. October 24, 2006 - Mozilla Firefox 2
3. October 24, 2006 - Fedora Core 6 (code named Zod)
4. October 26, 2006 - Ubuntu 6.10 (code named Edgy Eft)
5. October 27, 2006 - Wordpress 2.0.5 (code named Ronan)
6. October 30, 2006 - Micorosoft Windows Media Player 11 (thanks Vance!)

I’m pretty sure a whole bunch of other people reviewed them. I have some feedback. Like on IE7, what’s the point with the new tab icon not visible when the mouse pointer isn’t hovering above it? On Firefox, the tabs don’t shrink too small anymore but I liked it when it shrunk (I like the idea that I could scroll through the bar though). I prefer that a caption of the page’s title to pop out instead.

Here’s a small piece of information, check out ie7.com. Tell me what you see. Me thinks it’s pure ownage.

The most notable out of FC6’s release notes is that it now ships with Compiz. Ubuntu 6.10 now ships with upstart, an event-based init daemon (read: asynchronous init). I wonder if there’s a similar project for Red Hat-based distros.

Since I mentioned Compiz here. I just read about Beryl, a fork of Compiz. There’s also an installable live CD project called SabayonLinux.

Here’s a video demo (note: this is not Windows Vista or Mac OS)…

I’m sure that the recording where PLDT myDSL’s customer support representative cussed a cussing customer was heard all over (even on TV). But I bet that you haven’t seen the video!

Do you have 1337 skillz? Make a difference and join Project Halal! What is it?

Halalang Marangal is an election monitoring group in the Philippines that will conduct a citizens’ tally of the 2007 elections.

I can’t explain how it’ll work but here’s a snippet from the NoCHEATS Primer…

How will it help keep election tallies honest and transparent?
By building a database of precinct-level election results right after voting places close. The database will provide municipal, provincial and national summaries but will remain disaggregated by precinct. Anyone can request any precinct return or all the summaries by text/SMS or thru the Internet.

You can get started by joining the project’s Google group. There will also be a Technical Roundtable…

Technical Roundtable on the HALAL Election Tally System
14.00-18.00, Saturday, November 4, 2006
2nd Floor Conference Rm., PRRM Bldg.
56 Mother Ignacia Avenue
Quezon City
(near Capitol Medical Center)

You may confirm your attendace to Robert Verzola by email, rverzola-at-gn-dot-apc-dot-org, or by SMS, +63212505520.

I will try to pitch in and try to go to this roundtable. Will this project make elections more transparent? I don’t know. Maybe by contributing to the project, you and I would be able to tell.

I’ve been back since ~15.15. Everything’s back to normal. I’m just glad to be back in front of a computer. I spent 2 more hours sleeping besides the extra sleep I had this morning. I’ll post pictures as soon as I get copies from those who brought cameras.

• Qnext
  "The Swiss Army Knife of Internet Communication Tools" - PC Magazine
  Tags: instant messaging im voip messenger

I am threatened by my school to go on a “spiritual” retreat or else I won’t graduate. I have a feeling I won’t graduate this school year though. I don’t want to go because that would mean more than a day without a computer and Internet access. I’d rather stay at home and sleep the weekend off.

As an experiment, I was planning on packing extremely light bringing nothing but my iPod and the charger but I guess it won’t turn out so good if I did. I’m expecting that we’ll be riding a real bus than our school’s shuttle so I could sleep on the road and that I could just sleep the whole thing off like an ordinary weekend.

Hopefully, we’d get back before Sunday noon. I know this retreat will not have any effect. Oh and yeah, the food better be good.

Let me share this strip from User Friendly. It actually helps to be a hot chick when working with me. You get a special treatment, because you’re instantly given priority, sincerity and importance. Nice and smart people get that too but not as much as hot chicks.

The trick to getting a job done from me is by bribing me with a hot chick. It almost works 100% of the time.

• Oracle 11g Database in Beta Testing
  What’s in store for us?
  Tags: oracle db dbms rdbms databases programming sql

I took a different route to work yesterday…

1. Passed by Tower Records/M1 and bought Jerome Rico’s debut album “Guitar Shop” and Tuck & Patti’s “Chocolate Moment”.
2. Then I headed to CD-R King to buy a couple of blank discs.
3. Took a short window-shopping at the Telecom Centre at ATC.
4. After that, I took off to Rising Sun for a replacement to my desktop’s power supply.
5. Also got an 80GB hard disk for my development server and thumb screws then went to the office.

To be fair to Jerome, I listened to his CD before T&P’s. That way, my judgement won’t be biased. His first record is satisfactory but I’d prefer that he had his own compositions.

He’s good but the mixing was a bit bad, the bass got too much in the way. Some of the tracks were murdered like it was recorded in a Hip Hop setting. Also, I don’t like k’hons on studio recordings but that’s just me.

Although this doesn’t matter at all, the album artwork was okay but it could’ve been better. Rivermaya’s second to the last record had a nice packaging and it was done by Kawayan.

I couldn’t ask the saleslady if they hat T&P’s new album because I didn’t know it’s title so I just bought the old one.

Jup gave me a tip of an O2 Xda IIs so I decided to check it out. I just checked it out and I’m still on my personal boycott. In fact, if I bought it and I got a bigger build and shorter hair, I could be mistaken as Jup himself.

I had to buy a new power supply unit because the old one’s already failing and giving me problems since the other day. I think it’s under-rated for my current setup. I had only 1GB left on my development server so I really needed to get that one too.

There are still a couple of hiccups to my desktop and I’m blaming it on the video card. I’m still waiting for it to completely give up before I start looking out for a new piece. I’m actually tempted to buy a new video card.

• Fedora Core 6 Release Summary
  Compiz and X.org 7.1 included.
  Tags: linux red had fedora core fc fc6 open source rhel