Blog with Ric

Happy 70th Birthday, Nanay

2009-12-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

It's my mother's birthday today. It's 70 years of a great productive life. My mother finished only elementary but mind you, she's alot smarter than me when it comes to living life. In the real world, it's not how much money you earned that counts, but how useful you made out of your life. And for that, my mother has no equal. Cheers!

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Hotel for Sale Near Iloilo International Airport

2009-12-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

Today Donna and Bob, my long time clients at Initial R Computer Services introduce me to their friends Linda and Keilesh. Linda and Keilesh own a hotel in Cabatuan, Iloilo and they're selling it since they plan to move to Europe.

The hotel is ideally located near Iloilo International Airport and has a steady flow of clients that needed a cool and quite place to relax after a long and tiring journey. The hotel is just a 5 minute drive via a by-pass road from the airport.

The hotel has these key features:

1. Comfortable lobby areas.
2. 20 large size bedrooms, each with own comfort room and air conditioner. Room types are executive and family. Family rooms have two large matrimonial beds while executive rooms have one large matrimonial bed.
3. Conference room can accommodate 50 people.
4. Swimming pool.
5. Spacious parking area.
6. Canteen.
7. Roof top provides a good view of the surrounding area.

The main advantage over other hotels is the scope of the family bed room. To have a good idea of what I mean, click on the link above and view the slide show.

Interested? Contact me and lets have a deal.

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Philippines a Hundred Years From Now

2009-12-05T18:56:00.000-08:00

What does the Philippines look like a decade after. One thing I'm sure, you won't like it. Here's a glimpse of it according to an article in Phil News. I won't argue with the findings, especially if we consider the current government we're in.

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Powerful Online Photo Editor

2009-12-01T06:44:00.000-08:00

I came across this very wonderful online photo editor. Pho.to offers a wide range of photo editing services such as photo makeup, enhancement and very special ways of converting your photo into funny, cartoon and avatar versions. It also has an editor that pretty much allows you to do anything with your photo.

Photo makeup transforms the person in the photo as if its like a model in a glossy magazine. The photo will have eye and skin makeup, white teeth, imperfections removed, and adds a dreamy soft focus effect to it. All this enhancements are made automatically once you upload a photo.

Photo enhancements corrects color and saturation, performs denoising and sharpening, and removes red eye in photos.

The photo editor is equipped with the basic editing tools such as: rotate, crop, resize, deblur, color enhancement, adjust saturation, denoise, fix red eye, glamour effect, add text and watermarks and many more.

The web service uploads photos very fast and applies the changes immediately. Go ahead try it, I'm sure you'll like it.

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TxtNinja

2009-11-27T06:46:00.000-08:00

Found this very innovative service that generates an image based on inputted text. How useful is this? Well for example, we normally don't write our email address as it is, on our articles as it can be read by email crawlers. Email crawlers are programs that scour web pages for email addresses which will be used for sending spam. To prevent spam, what we do is write something like this: email at yahoo dot com. Which is by the way cumbersome. With TxtNinja it can be like this:

This email address is non readable by email crawlers and will less likely end up in a spammer's list. The image is hosted in the website, though you can download the image by right clicking and saving it in your desktop. The service has a lot of uses. Check out the about page and you'll be surprised it can help you a lot.

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Internetevade

2009-11-26T06:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a very powerful proxy service that really connects you to websites like MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube or any website blocked by your organization. Internetevade lives up to its name, its pretty fast too. Try it and be convinced.

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Have A Strong Password

2009-11-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

Having lots of online account and remembering all those passwords is one heck of a task. I found this very useful article that provides you a tip on how to create a difficult to hack password but at the same time easy to remember. Sounds conflicting? Well it isn't that hard, read on.

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Out of the Box

2009-11-15T07:12:00.000-08:00

Finally, I'm out of the box. The box I'm talking about is my former company, the call center that I worked with for almost 5 years. I resigned as Senior Software Developer effective Nov. 15.

I'm very happy as this last 3 weeks has been hell for me. I felt like an orange with all juices being squeezed out. I'm being pressured by all, from my snack house business in Bacolod to the new company that hired me. I have very less sleep and it dawned on me, I have to give-up the one that occupy my time the most.

Working at the call center has became a hassle as I'm not really comfortable working in the night shift. That too, I'm spending a hefty 9 hours of my day with very rigid schedule. I can do a lot of other things with those hours and be more productive. Like I can use the time to focus on my businesses.

Also its my long time dream to have a work at home job. You know, just allocate a certain amount of time each day and focus on the tasks assigned without any concern when I have to start and end work. The company I'm working with now offered a higher salary package with a hefty 13th month bonus with no deductions. So I guess, I got a better deal.

By the way, it wasn't an easy thing to let go of the call center company. I have lots of good experience with it and met a lot of nice people most of which became my friends and business associates. Before I left, we had a despidida party at Annie's in Villa. I'm very grateful to Reynan, JM, Bernadette and Wenelyn for making it a very memorable occasion. They sang my favorite song "Way Back Into Love" and the sentimental "Thank You". I was teary eyed actually. To you guys I'm saying my big Thank You and good luck!

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EntreCard Warning!

2009-11-14T07:03:00.000-08:00

Today, I was very surprise to receive an email from EntreCard warning me of account deletion. Here's the content:

"Your account 'Blog with Ric' on entrecard.com has been warned. The administrator provided the following message:

Remove the redirect popup from your blog within 48 hours to avoid deletion from the Entrecard system. Thank you.

Please contact support@entrecard.com if you have any questions regarding this warning.

PLEASE NOTE: You are expected to resolve this issue promptly. Failure to do so will result in the removal of your Entrecard account.

Please include the following:
User ID: XXX"

The redirect pop-up this message is referring to must be the interstitial ads from AdBrite. Too bad I already garnered earnings from it, but I have no choice. So I modified the AdBrite code to remove the interstitial ads.

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Dora And The Masters

2009-11-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

My business partner at BSquare Snack House, Dora Fe left on the last week of October to proceed with her Master of Science degree in Environmental Science at UP Los Banos. Her masters is a two year course with scholarship grant. I will definitely miss her but she promised to come back to Bacolod during semester's break, holidays and summer vacation. Carl and I will have our hands full in taking care of the business. She has helped a lot bringing many customers to our shop.

To Dora, I wish you all the best. I know you are really happy to do this and you have our full support.

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MBT Church Theme Blogger Template

2009-11-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

Asif Iqbal is one visitor who aside from praising my blog, also shared a very useful information.

He shared me a new Blogger template called MBT Church Theme. The template has a neat look with advanced layout and features. It has RSS subscription, video, popular posts, recent posts and recent comments sections. It also has a "Read More" link per post. The template is free courtesy of My Blogger Tricks.

I'm planning to use it for this blog once I have my own domain. I'll just modify the color combination as I'm not a fan of dark backgrounds. If you like it, you can download from My Blogger Tricks.

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Free Phone Services On The Web

2009-10-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

Like free voip? Here's a gargantuan list of free voip services for you.

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Are You Scam Prone?

2009-10-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

Are you willing to invest your money on a very promising product? McWhortle Enterprises is an established and well-known manufacturer of biological defense mechanisms. Lately they have a product called "Bio-Hazard Alert Detector". As its name implies, its very revolutionary and has lots of potential. If you find this interesting, head on their website.

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Opera 10 Web Browser

2009-10-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

You must be pretty impressed with Mozilla FireFox or Google's Chrome browser, but are you familiar with Opera? Opera browser is another award winning browser, best described as "fast, powerful and efficient". Consider the following features embedded in version 10:

- It has a Turbo feature that boosts slow connections
- The visual tabs display web site thumbnails
- Very good and intuitive design
- It has speed dial visual bookmarks
- Everything is built-in there is no need for extensions.

Best of all, it's free. Its new Presto 2.2 engine is said to be 40% faster on applications such as Gmail and Facebook. It also scored 100/100 on Acid3 test. Personally, I find Opera the fastest when loading pages. My desktop has actually the three browsers mentioned in this post, but my favorite is Opera. Download Opera 10 and be more amazed with the speed and features.

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I'm Hired

2009-10-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I was interviewed for the position of DB administrator/PHP programmer via Skype by Mr. Jefferey who owns several websites. It's my second interview through online means.

The interview started at 12:30 PM Philippine time and lasted until 2:30 PM. Jefferey showed me the details of the project and introduced me to some of the problems he needs to be resolved. The initial phase of the project will take 6 weeks and involves the optimization of the DB so that reports generation will be significantly faster and get the application interface working. The second phase will also take 6 weeks and involves the addition of more features. The conversation is light and is only marred by the choppy line.

After two hours of discussion, he decided to hire me for a regular position and offered a competitive salary. I'll be reporting for 40 hours per week with flexible time schedule.

And guess what, I'll start this week Monday. Whoa! I'll be very busy, so don't be surprised if I'll have fewer posts. This could have a negative impact on my traffic. But, I guess I can tolerate that, as long as I'm earning extra bucks.

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Linkbee Bad

2009-10-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

It was about 3 months ago that I reviewed Linkbee and I'm very impressed. Lately they started showing links to porn sites in their interstitial ads, which really turned me off. I sent them an email requesting that they replace the ads with more friendly ones. I didn't received a single reply. The final straw that broke my patience was when one of my visitors complained about it. The next day I decided to remove all their links in my blog. Imagine, I replaced all the links with the original ones, which took me a good 4 hours. Never will I avail of their service. Goodbye Linkbee!

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Update on Our Second Crop in Tilapia Culture

2009-10-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

Last August 29, my partners and I, stocked our remaining two ponds at a stocking density of 10 pcs/sq. m. We went lower density as last time's 15 pcs/sq. m. gave us slow growth.

For this culture, we hired a very skilled technician with an extensive experience in prawn, bangus and tilapia culture. He was a former staff of Roy in a prawn farm in Negros Occidental. He made a lot of farm owners rich but not himself. Anyway, we are using high quality feed in B-meg. In fact the fingerlings came from their hatchery in Luzon. The fingerlings released were very active, unlike the first crop where it is noticeably sluggish.

If things go well, we expect to harvest the two ponds by December and the large pond by January. These two months could give us a good price as it is Chrismas and Dinagyang season.

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US Top Philantropists

2009-10-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

If you think this world is just about making money and everyone is just as selfish as the person sitting next to you, you're gravely wrong. I found out the rich is also very giving. Here's the US top philanthropists, mind you they're giving out billions of dollars.

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Cheap Quad Core

2009-10-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for a cheap PC configuration and I stumbled on this article about AMD's cheap quad core processor. How much do you think it costs? Click the link to find out.

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My Dream Gaming Rig

2009-10-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

I was thinking of putting up an internet and gaming cafe, maybe around 10-15 units early next year. However I'm still not sure of what computer unit to buy. One site that I'm thinking of buying these is BuyQube. BuyQube have 2 years replacement warranty. One thing that bothers me though is they're located in Cebu. Distance will be a problem especially for support and replacement. They also have this very nice customizer application which allows you to modify the specs of your rig. I customized mine to my hearts delight and got the the following:

Processor: AMD Athlon II 240 (2.8G) X2 Dual Core AM3
Motherboard:Foxconn A76ML-K AMD® 760G Chipset
Graphic Display: 512MB nVidia GeForce 9400GT TV-OUT DVI DDR2 128bit
Memory: 2GB DDR2 800MHz
Hard Drive: 160GB 7200RPM Hard Drive SATA2
Monitor: 17" Qube Non-Wide 1280x1024 I-Cafe LCD
Power: Automatic Voltage Regulator
Mouse: QUBE Gaming Mouse
Keyboard: QUBE Gaming Keyboard
Speakers: Headset with Mic
Casing: Qube Platinum A Chassis - Silver w/ 700w PSU & Hi Def. Sound Support
Power Supply: Foxconn XL OverSize CPU FAN

No need for the optical drive as I intend to install programs through the network. Also got rid of the internal card reader as a USB based one will be sufficient. I think this spec is already top of the line, one that can suffice for 2 to 3 years of operation. How about you? What do you think of my "dream" gaming rig?

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Copyscape

2009-10-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

Nowadays a lot of lazy bloggers just simply copy and paste contents. How do you check if your posts has been copied? I came across Copyscape, which offers a service that checks whether your whole article or portion of it has been copied else where. If you're concerned with plagiarism, better check it out.

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Microsoft Security Essentials

2009-10-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

Once in a while Microsoft would announce it is launching a free software. Like SyncToy for example. This time it is Microsoft Security Essentials which is now ready for download. Its free, but it will check for an authentic windows license.

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Typhoon Ondoy

2009-10-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

Typhoon Ondoy devastated unprepared Manila like never experience for more than five decades. Found these pictures on typhoon Ondoy which shows it literally.

I'm expecting that this event has inculcated in us all the importance of the lessons learned. I'm also fervently hoping that you don't have to think what those lessons are.

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Floyd Mayweather No. 1 Boxer?

2009-09-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

I've recently watch Floyd Mayweather trounced great Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez. To tell you frankly I'm impressed with Floyd's performance. He's too quick and fast for Marquez. But that's all about it. What irks me is the resulting lists from some sports writer immediately restoring Mayweather as the no. 1 boxer in the world. What?

There's no way Mayweather could outrank Manny Pacquiao based on his fight. Manny fought bigger guys and beat them convincingly. Floyd was fighting a smaller guy and couldn't even knockout him out. And the very thing that matters here is Floyd Mayweather for all his greatness cheated on the scales. The fight for all I know is at a catch weight of 144 lbs. Juan Manuel a former lightweight, came in at 142 lbs, while Floyd a naturally bigger guy came in at 146 lbs. Four pounds advantage a day before a fight is a very very big advantage. By fight night Floyd refused to be weighted.

Floyd Mayweather, a welterweight had chosen a lightweight for his comeback fight and still dared to cheat on the scales. Now do you consider that a trait of a pound for pound best boxer in the world? A cheater for the no. 1 spot? Tsk, tsk!

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PageRank 3 in 3 Months

2009-09-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

One of the major hurdle a new blog may encounter is the build-up of Google's PageRank. PageRank is very important as it determines how popular your blog is. PageRank score ranges from 0 to 10 with 10 as the highest. A high PageRank means advertisers pay premium to display their ads and links in your blog. PageRank determines your score through a complicated and patented algorithm.

To gain a PageRank of 3 takes a long time as you need to build links. If you have a new blog and you want it to zoom from rank 0 to 3 fast without sweat, I'm offering you my service. I guarantee you a PageRank of 3 within 3 months or your money back. Remember your PageRank prior to taking this service should be 0, otherwise there's no real measure to the effectiveness of my service. If interested you can contact me and lets have deal.

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