The Websolace

I don’t write a lot of these days; I don’t write at all.

There has to be a spark and from that a flame until a fire starts, then I get typing –this is that part.

No matter how profound the topic is, I believe I’m of credible source. You see I’m almost never sad and with that, I oppose the popularly said phrase.. I do.. I do have a smile behind every frown. So let me share, please, give this post a few minutes. I guarantee once the ideas settle, you will come back and agree.

1. Do what you wanna do

If smoking and drinking make you happy, then flourish on that. Criminal life sounds nice? Go on a murderous rampage or rob a bank. I don’t believe that we’re all destined to be locked under society’s norm to dictate what we’re supposed to be and how we should act. If you wanna be emo, then.. go sit in a corner and be happy.

2. Remove all negavity

This is simple as it gets, remove all bad elements from your life; specifically, what you perceive as wrong. You don’t like people who don’t like smokers? Don’t hang out with them. Flock with your own kind and see who you really are. This applies to everything really. If you’re practicing being manly and feel uncomfortable being around the color pink then redesign your room and burn the Barbies. Sometimes we just live life with these things that pull us down which we don’t notice at all.

3. Find your passion

It could be an obessesion or it could be a fetish, it doesn’t matter. Some have recently discovered their love of photography with the recent price cuts and development of prosumer DSLRs. Everyone has a passion, there’s potential in all of us waiting to be unleashed in a form of activity or love for something.

4. Have one real friend

Truth be told, we humans are just predictable. We’re all liars and we connive. How do you find that real friend? Easy. Know one friend you can’t lose and whom you know who can’t lose you either. How do you find that kind of friend? You know too much about each other, be dangerously close, enough to realize how important the other one is. In a better view of things; have someone who’s not a lover you can share everything to. We need that.

5. Reflect

Not necessarily regret. Just ponder on the things you have done. This way, you create paths and routes for self progression. You may have been proud of yourself and may have things to redeem for, but you know what you did and there’s a long road ahead for correction and salvation.

6. Stop worrying

Of all the possible secrets, this one will hit you the most. STOP WORRYING. Always keep in mind that life is temporary and the worst possible thing that could happen is death. Yes, I’m subtlely talking about ignorance and somewhat, a refresh of number 2 (which is Remove all negativity). Remember what the Dalai Lama said in Seven Years in Tibet? Whether or not he said it for real, it makes too much sense. We have a saying in Tibet: If a problem can be solved there is no use worrying about it. If it can’t be solved, worrying will do no good. No more truth to it than that.

7. Watch Seven Years in Tibet

(with no real relation to the movie) Speak your mind. I know of no words coming out sharper than from an untangled mind. Yes they can be harsh and brute, but they are pure. Speak from your mind, heart and soul. A lover is easily won by the unadulterated words of the heart and no opposition is cut worse from sentences than from a furious mind and lastly, no truer from the soul itself.

8. Mix a little ignorance to what other people think of you

Whether or not you’re in or out of society, particularly for those who are in.. make it known. Nothing more that pains us regularly than what people regard us as. Learn to accept the things people throw at you in a matter that you filter out what you don’t wanna hear. Accept imperfectness for absolution to take place; guard your ego and be self righteously knowing of who you are.

9. Be yourself

There’s not much happiness in roleplaying throughout your whole life. Come out of the closet. We’re all vulnerable, we’re all idiots and we’re all in it together. There’s no one better in the whole world to know you but yourself. Don’t deny who you really are. I know you’ve read or heard this a million times from a million others, but have you really paid attention and meditated on it? Who are you? Do others perceive you different than you see yourself? You can’t truly be happy under a mask.

10. Know that you’re happy

Happiness… is a choice. Just by delcaring your happiness you have won over sorrow. Be proactive and smile, there should be more of that to go around. JUST BE HAPPY.

Lastly, there’s one that’s too important to mention but shouldn’t be from the list. The quintesence of happiness; the epitome of smile and by popular saying, it makes the world revolve.

Love, find love, know love, be in love.

The list is originally meant to complemented, it’s important that you have someone to be happy with.

You’ll have your Disney ending; a happily ever after.

You will.

By the way, this post will be very frank.

Let me introduce the beast..

It runs Windows Vista Ultimate x64..

What is it? It’s a Sager NP9262. Big deal right?

It’s a quadcore laptop.

Before specifics or should I say specifications, please review the next picture; yes, that is it’s power adapter.

Alright, what does the monster of a power adapter really power? An Intel Q9450 which runs at 2.66GHz per core with a 1333 FSB to start.. Graphics? GeForce 8800M GTX, 512MB. Four gigabytes of 800 MHz memory to be upgraded to eight in the future. Storage? Two 200GB 7200RPM drives in a RAID 0 (stripping) configuration. Not convinced how awesome this thing is? It’s native resolution is 1920×1200 on a 17″ screen. Four onboard speakers, four bottom fans to keep it from meltng.

Still not convinced? 3Dmark06 gave it a score of over 10,000…. out of the box.

I didn’t get it SLi’d because the cost was.. obsenely high at my configuration already. Of course..because of the modularity of it’s chassis (the Clevo 900 series) I can swap out parts easily. The processor (easily because it’s a desktop processor), RAM and hard drives (up to three 2.5″) of course.. and.. (this is where the modularity comes in) the graphics card too! YES, that means in the coming months I can swap my 8800 GTX for a 9800 GT! Awesome, real awesome.

Other pictures..

Oh yeah, you need a pro mouse too if you’re going to survive in the battlegrounds.. with that, here is my Logitech G9 and additionally, my UPEK Fingerprint scanner (which by the way, is the only fingerprint scanner that fully works with Vista and more importantly, 64-bit drivers!).

Lastly.. it weighs around eleven kilos including the power adapter, so goodluck to me.

A friend of mine just lost an important file on his USB drive and since he didn’t have a backup, I was quick to recommend file recovery programs. Prevention is always better than treat me so I was thinking if there were any programs that backed up whole USB drives. I came to a conclusion that for most end users its probably impractical. So instead of giving him a program that would chop his space capacity in half in no time (a graphic artist, those huge PSDs) I went with a solution that’s already in Windows.. none other than Briefcase!

I’ve never used it since Windows 98 or was that 95? It’s always there for anyone to use but sadly just highlighted by in the New context menu. Some probably use it, I would starting right now!

There’s no point in making another step-by-step since Symplebyte.com has a fantastic tutorial in the following link. Read about it here:

http://www.symplebyte.com/microsoft_windows/the_basics/synch_files_using_briefcase

Wow, what a title and yes this is real.

You see (you can skip this part if you’re eager to make that call fast) I have a sister and a brother who are both living somewhere else now; Japan and America respectively. I have a G-Flex 3500 Globe subscription and that’s not even enough for my local calls not to mention when the international fees are added! Globe and Smart (not sure with other networks) both charge forty cents ($.40 USD) a minute for calls to the US which is roughly sixteen pesos ($1 USD = 40 PHP conversion), it may not look expensive but when you pill up all the five-ten minute calls you’d come up with a four digit to a five digit bill for international alone.

For so long I’ve been wanting to cut that in half without cutting them out.

I have a solution!

How do you make five peso calls to the US?

Okay, the five peso calls are only for Globe subscribers but Smart subscribers get to save too.

What do you need?

• 3G phone (explained later)
• Globe SIM (preferred)
• Skype account with Skypeout
• Fring
• Credit card

1. Get yourself a Skype account if you didn’t already have one here.

2. Top up that Skype account with Skypeout which enables your Skype account to call outside (PC to landline/cellphone) anywhere in the world. It costs $10 which is awesome partnered with their cheap rates, take note that countries differ (Calls to the US are $0.02 per minute which gives you more than 600 minutes worth of calls to the US with $10 and 100+ to Japan which is $0.154). From this point on you’re actually able to make eight centavos per minute calls to the US. You can also check their other promos here.

3. Install Fring on your 3G mobile phone. Alternatively, you can use any other Skype client which works for you. I chose Fring because it’s feature rich as it can also run as a background process (even main) on my phone.

4. For Globe subscribers, if you haven’t already, text TIME to 1111 to activate time based mobile internet access. What this does basically is change how you’re billed for acccessing the internet through your mobile. By default you pay per kilobyte you download, by texting this you’re requesting that you be billed five pesos per fifteen minutes you surf or access the internet wirelessly regardless of how much bandwidth you use. You should receive a confirmation text within an hour.

4. Login to Fring on your mobile using Globe 3G which now costs only five pesos per fifteen minutes compared to Smart’s ten pesos per thirty minutes. This is where the five peso calls really come in; you see through Globe 3G and your Skypeout account. You pay five pesos for mobile internet access for fifteen minutes which in most cases is even more than enough for one call, you maybe using up your Skypeout account but with $0.02 USD or 0.8 PHP rates it’s disregardable. That $10 will last you a very long time not unless you really religiously call the US, either way I still saved you a ton of money!

You can still do this with Smart but it costs double as their time bracket is allocated at thirty minutes. I suggest getting a Globe SIM specifically for this, prepaid will do anyway at 50-100 PHP per sim pack.

What makes this cheap? I’d like to thank two technologies at work. VOIP and 3G.

VOIP - It stands for Voice over Internet Protocol which is fancy talk for a technology that allows digital phonecalls ergo it uses the internet to route calls anywhere in the world whether its destination is another computer, an analog phone or a mobile.

Don’t be confused, Skype is company that delivers VOIP solutions like Skypeout. It’s cheap because rather than travelling through analog phonelines, Skype uses peer to peer technology (research that on your on!) which lets Skype use it’s great big pool of users (their bandwidth, not actual phones!) to help hop phonecalls to their destination. Read more about Skype’s VOIP technology here.

3G - The third generation of mobile phone standards and technology. It is NOT synonymous to video calling as it is only a feature, be it, one of the most popular uses though. You can actually relate it somehow to it’s cousin WiFi who basically is a faster 3G network (bandwidth!) but with shorter range. First developed and implemented in Japan to say the least! 3G mixes in data transmission for uses such as surfing with broadband like speed on your phone, video calls, calling through the internet to make cheaper calls of course and more.

Yep, again, I saved you a ton of money didn’t I?!

This is not a Livejournal but let me do a whiny post.

I’ve become lazy. It’s not something I hate, but feeling like a sloth again is just different now. I used to exercise, do actual chores and was well on the way to slimness. Aha, one slip and I’m back on the fat train.

Notice how I slipstreamed lazy into fat? I guess there’s a connection after all.