Aja Lapus

Tag: Rants

  • I’m Getting Naked

    It’s already summertime and most people are stripping down to their trunks and bikinis to get wet with friends or their families on the beach or on a pool. Me? I’m here stuck inside my room stripping … and this is not an April Fool’s joke … stripping my website buck naked off of its stylesheets. *tee-hee* Well, anyway, I’ve done this before and I’m doing it again. Last year was good, and I hope this time is better. Dustin Diaz is finally proving the annual in Annual CSS Naked Day.[1]

    To anyone who isn’t familiar, CSS Naked Day was made to promote standards. During the 1990s, HTML has grown to become a more presentational language than what it was really meant to be. With browser implementations varying from each other,[2] and the bulk of maintenance work that HTML has become to present aesthetics, proposals were made to have a presentational language that later became what is now CSS. CSS has already replaced every presentational bit of HTML 3.2 and has even added more, and with the advent of better support to the standard since late last year, it is really worth advocating for better and wider Web designer adoption.

    The reason for stripping CSS off for a day has been acknowledged by the creator of CSS himself, Håkon Wium Lie—saving HTML from becoming a presentational language. I’ve seen many sites that produce good aesthetics, but the perceived quality just stops there. As I turn off the styles on my browser,[3] the layout remains the same, but now with garbled images and incomprehensible text. And they say they’re standardistas.[4]

    I hope everyone who have read this participates in the upcoming second year of the celebration of semantic markup. It’s very nice to see that two, Shari and Mr. J, out of currently four links from the official page that are talking about the event are of Filipino blogs. If you think your site doesn’t qualify to having semantic markup, you still have four days to this year’s deadline. Registration is now open [and automated] at the Official CSS Naked Day site.

    Oh, and for those WordPress users that are too lazy to edit themes, I’ve made a plugin that strips every piece of stylesheet in your pages without a single tweak on your templates—configurable to follow the recommended 48-hour period or just your local 24-hour April 5.

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ I really do not know why they call the first time, annual, already.
    2. ^ As a result of the first browser war.
    3. ^ The way everyone, humans and bots alike, are to understand the page.
    4. ^ I would have told them privately that all but one of the sites in their gallery wasn’t compliant, but it seems that their feedback link isn’t operational. So, just consider this as feedback. Oh, I do hope the site submissions be screened better as it would be a good starting point for showcasing great Pinoy designs.

  • Apparently, The Philippines Does Not Exist

    As reported on the so-called—or better yet, the self-proclaimed—best daily newspaper on the world wide web, Kenya have set a world first with mobile money transfers. As far as I know, mobile remittance and money transfers are old technology here in the Philippines[1] even if I still haven’t been able to use the system.

    As ignorant as they may be, Guardian Unlimited’s Xan Rice and Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph expressed with enthusiasm their belief that the mobile money transfer concept is the next big thing in mobile telephony.[2] They haven’t acknowledged the fact that this concept was originally from the Philippines with millions of workers abroad using the services of local Philippine mobile providers. I could safely say that this kind of service is an old big thing for Filipinos. I guess they think they would attract more people into believing in their services as a breakthrough this way—making its worldwide market adoption much quicker—than telling the concept came from a poor and less known country.

    The report said that this new technology is being piloted by Vodaphone with the implementation on its partially owned corporation in Kenya—claiming to be the first country in the world to use this service. As the story shows, this M-PESA service from Safaricom is still being developed by Vodaphone, but it happens to be that Globe G-Cash™ and Smart Padala was already out of beta testing several years ago.[1]

    I guess no one could deny the fact that Filipinos are not technologically lagging. We are leading with highest numbers on SMS usage, and I believe we are leading with the most services using it. So I guess we deserve some credit[3] as well, for this is so evident it would not pass even a little bit as an Agapito Flores claim to technological advances.

    I guess I only have one explanation left that many other Filipinos would hately agree with: The Philippines does not exist.

    Footnotes:

  • An Appeal to Globe Subscribers

    Globe Telecom has raised the UNLIMITXT service charges they require of their subscribers since today. From PHP 10[1] to PHP 20 per day, the rebranded service UNLITXT with the doubled rates frustrated a lot of subscribers given the fact that they weren’t warned even a couple of days before the implementation of such scheme.

    I was one of those frustrated, surprised customers.

    My girlfriend and I have always been registering for the service at almost the same time. Yesterday was the end of our five-day registration last time. Since it was almost midnight, we put off registering for another five days to today. But when we did register during noontime earlier, we were surprised to have received a different response from the service. It wasn’t the type that postpones the registration for later because of server overload. The message so long it could not be contained in a single message looked like the spam they always send us. But, I read it anyway….

    They’ve changed a lot about their service—from UNLIMITXT to just UNLITXT; from 50 Pesos for five days to 80 for just four. And, they added time-based unlimited texting packages such as UNLITXTD or UNLITXTN corresponding to day and night, respectively.

    Now, who the hell is so trustworthy enough that just pops out without warning and tells you to pay more than what you used to? No one. Even Globe shouldn’t be an exception.

    People thought they received just rumors about Globe’s increased rates. But, they weren’t rumors as I told my friends. Please take note that many people changed their numbers to Globe since they put their UNLIMITXT promo to a regular service—count me and my girlfriend in. But we’re dusting our old Sun SIM cards for tomorrow since Globe’s shitful of services are robbing us off of our money.

    I ask of you to do the same. Not only for two to three weeks just like what’s spreading through SMS—they would just wait that off until people start registering again. We should hold them back until they lower their prices again.

    Globe has better signal, thus, better service than Sun. That doesn’t mean they should increase their pricing so surprisingly exorbitant—their prices weren’t even at par with Sun in the first place. Why can’t they keep their prices where they were? I know they know its easier to get a lot more customers with better pricing. But, now that they did with the former prices of their service, they shouldn’t think we’d stay with them now that they increased them so suddenly.

    Now, if you feel the same way, please let people know by posting similar entries to your blogs and commenting on each other’s posts. Petitions could go a long way as long as there are lots of support and publicity.

    Update: I have finally found a petition site for the rollback of Globe’s UNLIMITXT rates. Sign the petition to roll back Globe UNLIMITXT pricing!

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ with the five-day plan worth PHP 50

  • Ituloy Angsulong Spam

    I’m sorry, I just have to rant about this.

    Don’t get me wrong—I have nothing against Marc Macalua‘s Philippine SEO Contest dubbed Ituloy Angsulong, even though I really do not know the purpose of having a certain key-phrase pointing to your Web site where that phrase isn’t even about what you passionately blog. But the prize money is so good, I have even thought of joining the first contest (Isulong SEOPH), though I was ineligible for they do not accept the participation of those using old domain names.

    From my understanding, the goal of the contest is to produce the top ranking page on the SERPs of Google, Yahoo! and MSN search engines with the term Ituloy Angsulong. Sounds easy, right? I thought about ways to win it for no reason at all [since I am not participating]. Then it came to me that with WordPress, one of the most used blogging platforms to date, automatically including rel="nofollow" on comment links, and the fact that I don’t participate in public forums makes it really hard [at least] for me to win it. Another thing is my hatred for spam that I most probably won’t comment with the key-phrase unless it is on topic.

    Now, why would someone comment on one of my non-SEO related entries with the term Ituloy Angsulong linking to their contest entry URI? I guess it’s someone who’s so desperate to win. It seems to me that no one else hates spam more than I do. I’m thankful Akismet really knows spam—even if it is made by real people. Aren’t there rules about the contest not to spam anyone? Just a thought. I hope Marc Macalua could answer me with this. Please note that I check my Akismet spam list at least five times a day. Oh, I’m so glad it caught yours! Yes, I’m talking to you, Marhgil Macuha.

    If you still can’t figure how Akismet knew what to block then you’re really a dumb ass. It’s spam—not the one I love to eat.

  • Christmas Vacation Starts

    I guess you never know the importance of education until the day you were deprived of it. Yes, I go to school to learn, but I usually do not pay much attention unless I really am interested in the topics discussed. Moreover, I sometimes sleep during the length of the discussion especially when it’s freezing inside the classroom and, of course, when I lack having some the night before.

    This second semester, however, made me realize I really like school.

    For one, we haven’t had a week of complete and continuous classes since just a couple of weeks after the start of the semester, the Electronics Engineering Department held the NECES week. Then, the week after that came the devastating storm whose path thankfully did not include Metro Manila, but suspension of classes prevailed for three of my school days. Then some university-wide event took place the week after the storm. I can clearly remember telling myself and my friends with a certain tone of frustration, Magklase naman tayo. (English: Let us have our classes [back].)

    What I really hate is the change to fast-paced lectures when you couldn’t even comprehend with slow-paced discussions. Also, I hate the make-up classes that would most probably take up my Monday weekends. And, of course, the fact that I still haven’t learned anything yet. Imagine taking 12 hours of MECH 301 during what supposed to be is your day off from school. Ugh. I could even sleep in two hours of lecture, what more with twelve?

    I just somehow fall in irony for whenever I listen to an uninteresting discussion, I could float again in endless thoughts thinking about the nearing vacation that has already come a day early.