Friday, September 26, 2008

Tayabas In Perspective

When I was a young child Tayabas was a place I rarely visit. This was because during that time the roads from Lucena to Tayabas was not paved well. I only frequented the Baranggay of Wakas because firstly our protestant church was situated there (UCCP) and my music teacher lived there at that time.

Trips to the Tayabas market to get carabao meat (a family favorite) were an adventure and were relished by myself. This one done using our family owner-type jeep and the only other means was to either take the large jeepneys or take the minibus up to Tayabas.

Times have indeed change from those days Tayabas now is an easily accessible City and has even an FX taxi service. The ever famous 7-11 exist and so do other franchise establishment. Even with all this the City still maintains the rustic and secluded aura that makes for a town in between the past and the future.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Where does the best Lambanog come from?

There is an ongoing debate that still rages today among the Lambanog drinkers of Southern Tagalog. This has waged on since the invention of the drink and probably will keep on going till all the coconut trees are cut in the region. Where does the best Lambanog come from?

Many proponents would support the premise that Lambanog from San Juan, Batangas is the best and they would stake their lives and honor to prove this point.

Personally I prefer the Wakas, Tayabas variety of Lambanog. It has a less bitter taste than the batangueno drink which is due to the milder clime of Wakas, Tayabas compared to the hot and harsh environment of San Juan, Batangas. It is colloquially known as "Chivas Wakas".

I believe my townsfolk and clansmen of San Juan, Batangas wil disown me after they read this post but hey I will stand up for what I think is right. :)

For more information click on http://tayabas.ph/.

City of Tayabas turns a new Page (web)

If you find wikipedia’s entry of the City of Tayabas sparse a for you needs you can aptly go to the City’s web page located at http://tayabas.ph/. It contains information such travel destinations, hotels, restaurants, food & drinks, events and other pertinent information about the City of Tayabas.

It has more detailed information than the entry in wikipedia and has a less wikish look. Try and visit it sometime if ever you need to find information about the City of Tayabas

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Runescape sets a record

Guinness World Book of Records officially recognizes Runescape as the largest free MMO and the second largest MMO. There are about a million paying members and about five million free account users and since Runescape those not separate players per server it is possible though not plausible to meet them all.
Many changes were applied since I started playing but IMO these changes are for the best in order to avoid an imbalance game economy and discourage cheater though the said same changes have eliminated some of the features that I hated and loved (hated: PVP ambushes, loved: pricing way too low or high).
Runescape does not require the latest CPU or is not a memory hog but having a good PC does help in game play and factor in a fast internet connection however these are not necessary unless you are an ultracompetitive player.
This is not a game for eye candy or jump-whilst-I-chop-your-head-with-a-twisting-slash lovers but this is for people who likes to plan ahead and live in a semi real world.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/runescape-recognised-as-world-s-largest-free-mmorpg

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Cuisine of Quezon


Cuisine of Quezon is not as rich as say the other provinces but it can hold its own it taste of rather than in quantity of dishes.

The most famous amongst Quezon’s dishes are pancit habhab (the act of eating directly from a plate or leaf without using one’s hands or utensils) also know as pancit Lucban, longganisang lucban and the colorful yet tasteless kiping which is basically rice flour colored and formed using a leaf as a mold.

Lucena and Tayabas (there isa a debated who started which first) has its lechong lugaw which is a lugaw topped with lechon and adobong lechon.

Then there is Lambanog which is common in coconut growing provinces such as Batangas and Quezon and another beverage is Nipa wine aka tuba ng sasa which is basically fermented nipa sap.

Lucena also has its love affair with noodles like Lomi and its famous Chami which right now I am missing terribly.

Lucban’s Sausage aka Longganisang Lucban

Longganisang Lucban is a sausage native to the Quezon Province in the Philippines and as it is named probably originated in Lucban, Quezon. The recipe is designed for a long shelf life and basically the sausage is self contatined since you don’t need oil to cook it.

The commonly this sausage is manufactured lovingly in the towns of Sariaya, Tayabas, Lucena and Lucban in either backyard industries or large scale operations.

The usual recipe would be like this , do keep in mind recipe varies from household to household

1 kg of cubed (as opposed to chopped or ground) pork with fat.

¼ cup of oregano extract (can be more or less depending on taste)

1 teaspoon of paprika

1 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of chopped garlic (acts as the preservative)

Sausage casing (pork intestines preferred)

How to cook

Get a pan place the sausages in it and add water till the sausages are half covered. Boil the sausages and prick them so that the casings won’t explode. Cook till the water is all evaporated and what remains is the oil from the sausage.

Longganisang Lucban is best eaten hot either in itself as a viand or part of the infamous longsilog(longganisa, sinangag at itlog). Some prefer to dip it in vinegar with garlic though my personal preference is to dip it in brown sugar.

Personal memories of 9/11

It was between 8 PM and 9Pm then Philippine time and I just came from teaching a class and was walking home when a friend texted me to look at the TV and I was thinking it could just be another one of those useless show in the Philippines.

When I reached home my mother was watching TV and I saw a view of the twin towers from the water. One of the towers was burning and I was in shocked. I’ve always dreamed of going to the World Trade Center since I was a small boy and this bastion of my aspiration was burning. I keep my cool since I remembered that the tower had survived a bomb attack during the 90’s and I did not expect anything worse than a couple of burned floors.

I asked the people in my house what happened and they replied that a plane collided with the building and before that statement was finished another airplane collided with the building. As shocked as I was I watched the entire proceeding until one of the buildings collapsed.

I knew then that the world we live in would never be the same again.

Dreaming of Lucena’s Chami

The reason I hate travel is because of noodles. Don’t get me wrong I love noodles (pancit) but I want it cooked the Lucena way.

Chami is like lomi with less broth and it is cooked stirred fried and has become a signature dish of areas near Lucena city such as Tayabas, Sariaya and Pagbilao.The noodles used are fresh egg noodles and usually pork or chicken stock is used to flavor it during cooking.

I won’t get into its origin and how it is cooked because there are hundreds way to cook just like Adobo, every household have their own way of cooking it.

It is a shame that wikipedia has an entry for Lomi but none for Chami. Hope somebody updates wikipedia soon :)

Lipstick on a Pig

I am not an American citizen so I can’t understand why people are reacting to what Obama said about a putting lipstick on a pig won’t affect the pigness of the pig.

People read too much meaning into it. However if Obama was implying that Palin was a pig then that is indeed offensive to Palin but if he was referring to to some Republican poltician aside from Palin then I believe that is an insult to the PIG

Internet woes in Lucena City

WTF has happened to Lucena City’s Internet after sales service? This question right now is ringing in my mind on how and why it is easy to buy DSL connection in Lucena City but after it is sold where is the fucking service?

Let me try to make a brief of the problem that giving me the fits. Lucena City is located in the Province of Quezon and currently its capital. Since the age of dial up it was there were many ISPs in Lucena that were homegrown (franchises or independents). When DSL came these homegrown players died off since they could not compete with the giants PLDT and Digetel.

Now a lot homes in Lucena either have DSL, dial-up :( and/or wireless internet connection. So a couple of enterprising persons decided to try and create several outsourcing business which required a STEADY and CONSTANT connection. Examples of them are a defunct medical transcription service , Qtech a Business Process Outsourcing, and several small call centers.

Realizing that I would be spending most of my time going around the world on errands I asked my mother to get a DSL line from PLDT for the house so I can email or message all my concerns to them. So they did just that. It got installed and lo and behold it sort of worked. The hitch however is that they have not activated so I waited for several days but still no activation.

One day I needed to have a message sent to the house and knowing that PLDT has not activated the DSL over there I decided to contact my friends at Quezon-tech aka Qtech and then I saw that they were all offline which puzzled me since I knew that they were subscribing to Digitel DSL so in the end I had to use other means to contact them. This scenario was repeated for two days.

When the Qtech people got online again I asked why they were offline and they said that their ISP did had a slow tech support. :( .

So PLDT has slow tech support in Lucena and Digitel has slow tech support too. OMG. How does an outsourcing business survive in Lucena? Most outsourcing business start with a small bandwidth usage but later they require more and more bandwidth which is used to do their day to day business activities. Most outsourcing business depends on the reputation they build up. A delay on delivery can affect one’s image and I doubt that majority of the contracted parties will take “my ISP is down” as an excuse.

Can I conclude that these companies are not really interested in the welfare of their customers?

links of mentioned companies are :

http://www.qtechbpo.com/

http://www.scribetech-ph.com

Bem Ermii is not MacDonald’s

I am writing this post to show my indignation at another blogger’s comment comparing Bem Ermii to MacDonald’s.

Before I get further into the subject I would divulge that I am not Palauan and I don’t have any stake in this.

Bem Ermii’s burgers are way better than the fast food burgers MacDonald’s serve at their stores. I am horrified at the thought that Bem Ermii’s burgers are being compared to MacDonald’s. Unless somebody can show me a MacDonald’s burger that has the same quality as that of Bem Ermii’s then I will retract my statement otherwise my opinion will stand.



Bem Ermii’s burger is very much superior to that of MacDonald’s IMO.

Bem Ermii is a gem in the Palauan food scene

WTF is an Interface?

A lot of people are confused on WTF an interface or what is its usability.

An interface is basically a reference type that has abstract (or only has names but no implementation) members that must be implemented by the inheriting class. In simpler words you just make and interface and all its members (methods) must have names, accessor, return/parameters but you don’t write any code for it AND the first concrete class that implements it must write the method’s content for it if it is not implemented already.

WTF is it good for? Ok imagine you and a team is working on a very large project so each member makes his/her own component. Even if they are able to implement and follow a naming convention chances are there will still be some problems in creating a generic ode that can handle or the coding. Here is an example

public class noInterface {

/* rest of code omitted for clarity */

public printThis(Object toBePrinted) {

toBePrinted.Print();

}

}

Problem solved? Not really since you cannot call the Print method from an object. You can go about this another way such overload the printThis method but if you have to create all the methods for each type you pass this beats the reuse concept of OOP. Another possibility is to use reflection on the object but this is not the way since this is against the KISS approach. A smart ass answer would be “why not find a language that allows reflection etc etc etc” well I must admit there are languages out there that complies with this but still there is no way of knowing whether the object passed has the print method without checking for it explicitly

WTF are we supposed to do? use an interface. Here is what I mean

create an interface e.g

public interface printInterface {

void print();

}

create classes that implement that interface e.g.

public class Test1 implements printInterface{

public void print() {

System.out.println(”test1″);

}

}

//

public class Test2 implements printInterface {

public void print() {

System.out.println(”test2″);

}

}

and an example run is

public class Main {

public static void main(String[] args) {

Test1 xxx = new Test1();

Test2 xxxx = new Test2();

/* an alternative will be

printInterface xxx = new Test1() ; // this is allowed since Test1 implemented printInterface

printInterface xxxx = new Test2() ; // this is allowed since Test2 implemented printInterface

end of alternative

*/

Main yyy = new Main();

yyy.doPrintInterface(xxx);

yyy.doPrintInterface(xxxx);

}

public void doPrintInterface(printInterface z){

z.print();

}

}

Now if the object passed to the doPrinterInterface method did not implement the printinterface interface then a compile time error will be detected, you can pass any object to the method and be assured that it will have the print method.

Why not use an abstract call instead? There are many reasons but one of them is that several languages don’t allow multiple inheritance from classes but allows it from interfaces. Yes you can implement multiple interfaces in Java and C#.

Note: I used java

for a C# example kindly see http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_syntax/interfaces/article.php/c7563

The Gem of the Pacific

Sometimes when you get some information on how good some food items or recipes are more likely or not it is either hype designed to make an initial sale or a local preference that your traveler’s palate might not take into liking or just plain BS.

However all this stuff is not true when you talk about a burger stand here in Palau which I would say is one of the best burgers I’ve tasted. Another Filipino introduced me to a hamburger stand here in Palau and I can say I am hooked.

I don’t know what the secret is since the contents seems just the same old patty, veggies, tomatoes and sauces. This burger is so good that even after being in the fridge does not affect its taste and its flavor. Words won’t do justice to how it taste and I believe I don’t have the eloquence to describe the taste and flavor and juiciness.

Anyway when you’re in Palau look for a Bem Ermii stand and you will know what a real burger is.

Runescape Evolution

I am an avid Runescape (http://www.runescape.com) player though I’ve stop for two year or probably more and one day decided to play again. I was surprised by the new features added on to it. This game evolves somewhat faster than most MMORPG and has been there since 2001 which is very old for an MMORPG.

Unlike other MMORPGs Runescape does not require you to download a CD or DVD worth of installer bytes and you don’t have the hassle of trying to configure your video card. The only things need are a JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and a web browser.

The game also is not a hack-and-slash type it requires you to deal with a world economics and level all or some selected skill up in order for the player to produce commodities of value.

Of course those used to high end graphics will find the game primitive but this game is not suited for superficial play.

The game is free but a subscriber can have access to other features of the game that makes it more interesting to play though this requires a credit card.

All in all Runescape will continue to evolve and get new members. IMO the business model must be working

WTF is a software Framework?

Let me start this by saying that I am no expert in the subject and have no pretension as such. I am just a regular Jose (Joe) writing my understanding of the subject from a dumb down point of view.

What is a Framework

A framework is basically a frame that a developer will add functionality to solve a certain problem. A framework contains the little bits that need not be handled by “plumbing code” such as page navigation, database insertion and the like depending on the framework being used.

Unlike a library where the functions are called by the application, in the case of a framework it is the application that is called by the framework. A good example of a framework is Ruby on Rails aka RoR aka Rails. Rails will handle most database transactions and view transactions leaving the developer to concentrate on the business processes.

IoC

To further distinguish a library, which usually requires the usage or inclusion or importation of certain package or header, from a framework there is this term the is called Inversion of Control or IoC which means that the control structure is reversed. To simply put it in a library the developer writes code to control the functionality of the library in a framework the developer writes code that will be controlled and used by the framework.

Frameworks Frameworks Frameworks

There are so many frameworks out there both “free” and non-free that can be utilized to solve a particular problem. There are frameworks that tackle only a a certain area such as display or database interaction while others are complete packages. It would be up to the developer to select which tool would be most fitting.

Advantage of a Framework

The advantage of a framework is that generally the developer is insulated from the tedious coding of some plumbing code such as page navigation, session handling or data handling and manipulation. The developer can now concentrate on business rules and the like.

Disadvantage of a framework

Two words “learning curve”

Juan Dela Cruz can code?

Sometimes I really have to shake my head when I encounter somebody who claims that they can code in the language I ask them to code in. Not because you can code the infamous “hello world” in that language does not mean you can program in that language.

In the Philippines this is a common occurrence and you really have to sift out the wheat from the chaff. These are not your everyday fresh graduates because if you look at their school records they did very well in other subject but the thing is they just can’t code.

Where does the root of the problem lie? I don’t really know but I do have my opinions on the matter.

One of which is that the graduates just coded to have high grades, the grade not the learning was the motivation and once the subject/course requirements was met they did not proceed to learn the nuances of the language.

Another is probably that as a student they did not use the resources available to them or rather misused it. A classic example is when students misuse their internet time, many schools have this resource available to enrollees, to prettify their networking pages with CSS rather than research for materials that me enhance their skill. Trust me I’ve encountered people who can create beautiful to dastard layouts of Friendster using customized CSS and yet can’t use the same principle when they do their web pages.

And IMO the saddest of them all is the instructor did not have sufficient mastery of the language or was not able to motivate the student to learn the language and the even worst part is that once these graduates start teaching the vicious cycle continues.

Pointing out the problem will not solve anything as the adage goes so in turn I would like to invite those who want to learn or learn with us to join http://www.qtechbpo.com/forum/ and post their questions or answers. We will try and assist you in the right way meaning we will help you but will not do your assignments for you.