January 2006
To Whom More is Given, More is Expected
Filed Under Personal
Last Friday, January 27, I was officially informed of my new position. I got a step promotion and yes, I’m happy about it. Actually, I’m not happy about the promotion per se
Browse Safer
Filed Under Technology
You might have heard or read about countless attacks on the supposed vulnerability of Internet Explorer. I’m not going to add to that but I would like to share my experience with the browser. First, I would say that IE is a good enough browser for a casual and average netizen like me. During the height of the browser war between IE and Navigator, I stuck with IE because I find it lighter and didn’t need me to install yet another program on my slow PC. So IE4, at that time, fits me because I’m not concerned with security. I’m afraid of buying anything over the internet that time ’cause I was paranoid with all the warnings posted everywhere. I don’t give personal information over the net. I only wanted to read news and occasionally download freewares and sharewares I used on my job. Oh, I’m a member of a online forum for VB programmers, too. So most of my time in the I spend in the internet is for reading posts and replies and of course, emails. Well, that was 5 years ago.
With the number of netizens growing by enormous numbers by the hour, the number of hackers grow too. Malicious programs started coming out everyday, maybe every hour or maybe every minute and they are all attacking your PC through one browser… that’s IE. People seems to be very fond of searching for vulnerability of IE because it is undoubtly the most popular browser after the demise of Netscape. And not only that, I think more than anything else, it is because it came from Microsoft… the company a lot of people call EVIL. I’m not sure about them but for sure, one time in their lives, they used Microsoft product and may have actually helped them in one way or another.
But that’s not the point here. We are talking about browsers. With so may vulnerabilities to exploit, IE has also been the most unsecured browser. Unprotected machines find themselves installed with spywares and adwares. With every download and install of freewares, you find your machines going slower and slower. And that’s just what has happened to me. I don’t download and install internet utilities and programs like napster and other surf accelerator programs but I found myself closing those pesky popups that comes out of the screen every 5 minutes. After surfing for about an hour, my computer starts to hang and then I need to restart again.
That was before I downloaded and installed FireFox. I’m probably one of the first million users of FireFox 1.0. There are a number of updates already since the first release came out. It is absolutely beautiful and functional and yet it leaves a small footprint. The download file is just about 4 MB and everything you’ll need in a browser is already there. This browser is very light, really fast and amazingly secure that I asked myself, “Why the hell Microsoft didn’t think about whatever FireFox developers did?” After several hours of searching, I found the answer. I learned that FireFox is actually a reincarnation of Netscape Navigator. This time, it was better.
At the left bottom screen, you’ll see a link to FireFox. You can download the browser from there. Firefox is highly recommended and guaranteed to give you a safer internet environment as well as faster browsing. I still use Internet Explorer here in the office, though. But our network is more secure with multiple firewall and with highest security settings in placed, I feel safer. But of course, there’s a lot of restrictions here. If that’s for security, that’s fine with me.
The Last Resort
Filed Under HobbyAfter a couple of weeks off, I was again able to play my new favorite sport — AIRSOFT! Of all the games I played, I would say that this is the one that I enjoyed most. I may have more exciting games in the future but for now, that’s the best!
I used the gun of my Cobra brother, MajorVP, who is by the way is one of the VPs in our office. That’s the reason why we called him that in the first place. He has several guns in his mini-armory, if you call that, and he lent me his MP5A5. I actually don’t want to use that gun because that was clocking at 480fps. That’s way above the limit we set for the game which is 400fps and the average rate of the airsoft guns of my friends is 350fps. Also, that would mean that I would be playing as a sniper. But since I do not enjoy sniping( especially in a jungle-type scenario), I set it to semi-automatic mode. At least with that, the damage will be less and I’ll be sure that I’m not gonna accidentally hurt my friends.
The game was held at one of SOE’s gamesite called “The Last Resort”. Actually, it was a resort that was never finished with at least two large swimming pools. Basically, it is an idle place now grass as tall as 7 feet. The vegetation is too thick one can actually crawl under the bushes and crawl I did. That allowed me to knife-kill some of the opponents. I just felt bad because I think I hurt one of them when I didn’t notice that I’m already in automatic mode. But overall, it was fun!!! Lots of fun!!! I went home at around 1200hrs because the heat of the sun is so intense already I think we’ll have heat stroke. I can’t wait for the next game!
Viva Las Vegas!!!
Filed Under UncategorizedI just visited Subnixus today and I was surprised when I saw Eric’s Las Vegas Giveaway contest. Subnixus is offering a free trip to Vegas or a cash equivalent plus a 24-hour control of his blogsite.
So if you have your own blog. I would suggest that you visit his site and read about it. I’m not interested with the Las Vegas trip but I’m very much interested with the cash equivalent.
Link Connector
Filed Under UncategorizedI’ve read one of the posts in Subnixus few days ago and Eric(the owner of the blog) said that he’ll be adding Picture Title for his blog entries using his brand new Nikon camera. Actually, there’s nothing so special there for me but when he said that he bought that camera using his link connector revenues, I felt excited.
I reviewed the terms and conditions of the affiliate program and immediately signed up. I think there’s more opportunity here than in Google Adsense.
So if you want to join, too. Just click this button.
Actually, I’m not expecting to get a lot of revenues from these money-making ad schemes like affiliate programs and adsense but as I have said, it is better than not making anything at all. A few dollar is a damn few dollars and even if I walk several kilometers, I’m sure I’ll never get a dollar for free.
If I’ll be able to receive small amount of money good enough to pay my hosting, I’ll be very much happy! Of course, I’ll be happier if I receive more.
The Awakening
Filed Under PersonalI know that blogs have been around for quite some time now. Actually, I’ve been reading blogs of other people more than a year already. Mostly, I look at technical blogs posted on some online fora or mailing list. I simply enjoyed reading because they are very informative and then lately, I thought I want to write my own, too. I was just too amazed with the blogs by other people and was inspired to post my own. Though I know that I can’t publish any technical blogs yet, I’m pretty sure that we’ll come to that. Well, that’s a wishful thinking.
That’s the reason why I’ve been looking around for a nice code for blogging. I always see PHP codes for blogging but I ain’t a PHP coder. But after a few months of searching, I found WordPress which is unbelievably easy to setup and maintain. I really thank my good friend, Melvin, for sharing me this wonderful program. It’s also written in PHP, though. But I’m learning.
Actually, the main reason why I’m writing blogs is not for the sake of telling the whole world what I’m doing or what I feel for the day. More than that, I’, studying how WordPress was coded. I want to learn how to setup and maintain MySQL databases, how to program with PHP and all other stuffs that’s related to setting up a website. I just feel that I am already left behind. I honestly admit that internet programming is not my area of expertise. So this is a good opportunity for me to practice and as we all know, practice makes perfect! Another reason is because of the revenue I can receive through ads program like Adsense, Clicksor, Contera and others. With that, I got to learn tweaking wordpress and at the same time, have the possibility of earning some money from my ad programs. Yes, that’s just a possibility but that’s better than nothing, right?
On the next few days (or weeks and months depending on my availability), you’ll see that this blog site will change little by little. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that in next few days…. hopefully!!!!
