Chasing Daydreams

Last week, we went swimming but we weren’t able to take videos. Today, we were able to take videos using James’ waterproof Sanyo Xacti videocam.

Back to Makati after a few months at Alabang.  Makati is nearer but it takes about the same time or even longer to get from home to work. Going to Makati is a traffic-congested snail-paced affair. Going to Alabang is a leisurely drive with a enough traffic just to make it interesting. Plus it’s at highway speeds so the fuel consumption ends up around the same. There is no toll fee to Makati but you pay the same amount for parking. I’m actually missing Alabang. Damn!

I read from TopGear and MotionCars that Nissan Philippines has launched their competing entry into the top-range compact car arena. It’s a crowded place: There’s the Honda Civic 2.0, the Mazda 3 2.0,  the Altis 2.0, the Lancer EX, the Ford Focus 2.0, and the Subaru 2.0RS (AWD!). With such competitors, you would expect Nissan to have brought something new to the table.

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We were developing a Chinese language localization for an application at work. And I here’s a few things that might help if you’re doing something similar.

Step 1. Download a Unicode Font

First, you need to a Unicode-capable font. Normally you would have Arial Unicode MS.

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Uncharted is an interactive movie. That’s how I can most accurately describe it. The label interactive movies has been used often but I’ve seen nothing close to how Uncharted seamlessly integrates the elements of a game and movie into one.  The gameplay, acting, cinematography, and direction is superb. It’s not perfect but it’s about the best there is.

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I finally finished Bioshock today. It took some time because of two things. First, Michelle gave me Batman: Arkham Asylum for my birthday just as I was about to start. I’m a Batman fan. So it was no contest.

The other reason is that the game is so frustratingly difficult. And it has no checkpoint system common to newer games. There’s a resurrection mechanism called “vita-chambers” but it leaves you with less than what you started with. I had to resort to save-play-die-reload cycle so many times. In the more difficult sections, I was seeing the load screen more than actually playing. It didn’t help that the saved games take so long to load!

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Michelle’s mom, who has been taking care of Jeanne when Michelle and I are off to work, had to attend another granddaughter’s graduation rites. Unfortunately, Michelle couldn’t take a day off. So it was up to me, the intrepid dad, to take on the daunting task of babysitting for the day.

It started off quite early, Jeanne woke up at around 6 and started talking to us in her baby language. We couldn’t really understand a single thing, of course, but at least we’re communing, if not directly communicating, with her.

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I finally watched Avatar. And since everyone has watched it already… twice even, I won’t get into too much detail. Due to scheduling issues, I wasn’t able to watch it in 3D and after watching, I was like what’s the big deal?!? It seems the big deal is the 3D and that’s about it.

The acting is so-so. The story is… well if you’ve read or seen Pocahontas then you know the story. Good but definitely not fresh. The action is probably good if you have been good if you enjoy military-industrial military going against stone age military. I don’t.

No surprise, in the end the stone age military won. Mainly due to the aid a whole bunch of animals some of whom are invulnerable to lead or even depleted uranium anti-armor shells. The last one wasn’t stated explicitly but you would expect mecha to be carrying those.

Overall, a reasonably enjoyable movie but not really great.

Rating: 3/5 (could have earned a extra point if I watched in 3D)

So I just completed downloading the demo of Just Cause 2. I excitedly installed then started it. Directions said to press the Start button. I did and I got to another screen. Directions said to press O button. I did and… it didn’t work! I tried restarting the demo. Still didn’t work. I tried rebooting the PS3. Still didn’t work. I accidentally found the solution: Press O and X buttons at the same time. It worked! The same goes while inside the game, you need to press both together. What the heck?!? Definitely not a good sign for this title.

Summer is upon us and during these hot sweltering nights, air conditioning, which didn’t seem to make sense before all so suddenly does. And of course there’s the baby to consider. If you’re confronted with an irritable baby in the wee hours of the morning, you’ll know what I mean. So we decided to get ourselves a window-type room air conditioner.

Unfortunately, the appliance store won’t install it so we decided to do it ourselves. The Carrier unit we got came with pretty good instructions but there are some things you need to figure out yourself so I thought I’d put them up here and add some helpful notes of my own.

1. Remove the front panel from the air conditioner.

2. Unscrew the locking screw. It is in the lower left or lower right side of the unit.

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