Finally a correct reportage of the weather from AccuWeather for Makati Today

Finally!!! A correct report of the current weather in Makati. Unfortunately, it's not really that sunny anymore. At 5:57pm, the Sun's already setting.

Better late than never though.

Before-and-After Pictures of my old niche

I'm moving to a new niche in the same office. But can't help but reminisce the times I spent burning the midnight old on my old work area when I finally stripped bare my old desk off my things. What a lonely image when juxtaposed with the chaotic but very active picture it was once before.





BEFORE MOVING OUT (taken a few months ago)













AFTER MOVING OUT (taken 21 July 2006)






Just to add some philosophical tone to the moment... is not the world like this? Chaos makes our human life exciting and adventurous... and happy. And the simple, non-complex life... yeah cleaner... but utterly dull and boring and lonely. Thus, by putting into consideration the second law of thermodynamics stating that the overall disorder of the universe (entrophy) increases over time... is it then implying that the universe is tending towards ultimate happiness?

So wars are as wonderful thing? --> hehe just pushing it too far I guess.

The World's Blunder

When North Korea fired seven (7) Taepodong-2 missiles to an uninhabited area in the South China Sea called the Sea of Japan (albeit near Japan, Philippines, South Korea, etc... and that these long-range missiles are capable of dropping to Alaska), the powers-that-be from the West including their Asian allies were quick to put pressure on North Korea to stop that "provocative" testings.

But when Israel bombarded Lebanon for an action which does not directly involve the official Lebanese government (the Hezbullah is not associated with the Lebanon government and is considered a violent insurgent anti-Israel group although Israel's pulled a hat trick by sending a complaint to the UN that the Lebanese government has not done its part of the deal to disarm the militant Hezbullah in there 1983 US-sponsored agreement just after a day they started bombing suspected Hezbullah outposts), the Western world and it's mass communication outfits are mum on the War preferring to cover the flight of foreigners from Lebanon. Where are the political analaysts which are nothing more but field reporters tagged as "Iraq Experts?"

Rubbing it in, the US government through Sec. of State Rice said they respect Israel's action and see it as in line with the need to defend itself. Defend itself? They're not defending their state... they're already usurped the sovereignty of another country. How about Lebanon's right for their sovereignty... where did that go? In fact, Israel and Hezbullah has been exchanging wars after the Lebanese-Israeli pact in 1983. Israel had two decades to denounce Lebanon's inaction. The Israel government's claim that Lebanon had not done its part to defuse the military powers of Hezbullah as agreed upon in the UN is merely hogwash. If that were the case then they have to bring it back to the UN SC before they started their war. They could have at least shown that they have exhausted all diplomatic routes before taking on the road to war.

This is an act of war which is unilateral and should be condemned. But since US has already got off the hook by proceeding with a unilateral invasion on Iraq without UN support, I see this as a far possibility.

The cost for the war... 2 Israeli soldiers for 1000 injured CIVILIAN Lebanese (and which may include foreign nationals caught in the line of gunfire) and 300 casualties (not qualified as to MILITIA or CIVILIAN)... it's a far costly wager.

I'm ashamed of the magnitude of SILENCE from the world. And we wonder why "terrorism" proliferates?

Essential Firefox Extensions for Developers

Since my last post had something bad to say for my favourite browser Firefox, I deem it necessary to boost it up with some positive feedback.

Firefox has become my favourite ever since it came out circa 2004. It's lightweight (keeps the essential features of the browser and cleaning up the non-essentials) but flexible (you can add on the non-essentials as plug-ins). Oh, not to mention the tabbed-browsing which is an import from the Opera browser... something I do not miss from the old M$ IE browser.

Branding the non-essential features as such might be a mis-nomer. It's non-essential in the sense that some people find it useless while others find it quite useful. The following plugins, for instance, are quite useful for me as a developer, while they might not be as useful for ordinary desktop users. So keep in mind that this is just my humble list of essential Firefox extensions.

• IE Tab - Sometimes some web programmers are too lazy to write HTML codes that work for the standard (although, it is to be noted that there's a narrow gap between browser standards and browser implementation). And since they know IE still has 80% of the market of browser usage, they readily code HTML for IE browsers. They do this knowing that of the three prominent browers today (IE, Firefox, and Safari), IE is the most non-complient with the standards (see here). So when Firefox browsers attempt to access a IE-centric site, Firefox "degrades smoothly," that is, it humbly declines to show the page. For these sites, this Firefox extension becomes very useful. However, this only works on Windows platform (sorry for the Tux fanatics... I'm still trying experiment though if WINE can solve this problem for the Linux platform). Nonetheless, an essential platform for developers who continuously hit against an IE-centric pages.
  
• SpiderZilla - Are you the type of developer who likes looking up freely available books/references online but hates the chaining-of-pages-by-links format of these materials? Then you'll like this Firefox extension. It's a spider program that saves a local copy of a web page you're viewing and underlying pages linked to that page (so long as they're from the same site though). Thus, this is good for offline browsing. It does not compile the pages to one super-page but it's something next to that.
• SessionSaver .2 - I'm not sure what the ".2" is about. This extension saves the current pages viewed by the viewer as a session. Thus, when Firefox is closed (either by a crash--more likely a M$ Windoze system crash) you'll recover the pages readily. PLUS, the cookies are still available and active... so you don't need to re-log into websites... unless they're HTTPS sites what need to re-do the handshake I guess (not sure about this, this is just a guess).
  
• UrlParams - If you're testing a web application, this is an essential extension to Firefox. It lets you change parameters you pass via the GET and POST methods easily. Fantastic. (If you don't get what I said then you don't need this extension.)
• FasterFox - Speed up loading of pages either by tweaking the connection settings or by anticipating user's interaction with the page and thus increasing the user-perception of speed. The latter is the most controversial part since it involves what the developers of the extension calls "prefetching." What the term denotes is the activity of the browser in the background of loading static pages which the users might choose to view. It does not improve the speed of the connection but it has a different feel for the user... making the browser more snappy like soldiers in a marching file. (This is a great extension if you know how to use it well).
  

Forecastfox and AccuWeather Misforecast for Makati, Philippines

My Forecastfox Firefox browser extension reported that it's raining here at Makati. It's damn sunny here, FREAK!!!!

This is Makati now (21 July 2006 13:58:00.0)