Alex Ibrado

Aztec words in Filipino

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:08:00 +0800

Did you know Filipino has quite a number of Aztec Nahuatl loanwords? Astig!

Piracy crackdown in Makati, March 29

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:50:38 +0800

Hey, businesses in Makati… you only have 15 days left to convert to free/opensource software! ;-) Go, Pilipinas Anti-Piracy Team!

Facebook login fiasco -- still going strong

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:21:00 +0800

I just stumbled upon Chin’s article, The great Facebook login fiasco. Basically, people were typing “facebook login” into the address bar, getting the Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login article on ReadWriteWeb instead of the login page they expected, and becoming confused and angry as hell at the “new” Facebook. The comments thread is epic, but I rather feel more sad than amused. Sigh.

My Magic Mouse on Old Manila’s fancy placemats —...

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:13:00 +0800

My Magic Mouse on Old Manila’s fancy placemats — still tracking perfectly! Love it!

Bleeeeh! :-P

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:34:00 +0800

We had diwal (literally “to stick out the tongue”) clams at my Tatay’s birthday, both in regular and run-for-your-life varieties:

Pholas orientalis? Cyrtopleura costata?, Oriental Angel wings, “Diwal”

Giant diwal, probably some type of geoduck (“gooey duck”). Personally, I call them dila sang buang nga aswang (tongues of crazy witches).

Spaces spacing out

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:08:00 +0800

I’ve been experiencing a really irritating problem with Spaces. I set up 9x9 workspaces, and occasionally, the selector overlay (translucent gray squares) seems to capture keyboard input even after it auto-hides. I haven’t found a reliable method to reset it — even turning Spaces off and on again doesn’t release the keyboard. Does anyone have a fix?

TipidCP.com | Nokia N900 - Bnew

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:54:51 +0800

TipidCP.com | Nokia N900 - Bnew:

Something to look forward to :-)

Happy Birthday, Tatay!

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 07:46:15 +0800

My Tatay turns 66 today. Happy Birthday! :-)

Microsoft uses law to cripple hacker spam network

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 07:21:12 +0800

Microsoft uses law to cripple hacker spam network:

Hmmm. So basically, MS turns hero for cleaning up a mess that wouldn’t have existed without Windows’ security issues..?

What's in a name?

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:15:39 +0800

Spring Design Alex
e-reader with LCD panel
BCC Alex
Linux broadband notebook (Thanks Ariel!)
???

Tagalog keyboard layout for Mac OS X

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:34:00 +0800

Here’s a layout for the Tagalog (Baybayin/Alibata) keyboard. Extract and move the two files to ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/, then go to System Preferences/Language & Text/Input Sources and check “Tagalog”.

I tried to follow Paul Morrow’s font convention as closely as possible, but I kept the punctuation marks and digits and moved the Spanish kudlit/virama consonants under Alt/Option (you can still hit Alt-= to get the virama separately).

Update, 23 Feb: Newer version, with Ra as U+170D (per Paul Morrow fonts) and Shift-Ra as U+172D (per current Baybayin Modern Fonts). Alt-, maps to the single vertical bar, and Alt-. to the double bar. Default X maps to “k₊s”.

Enjoy!

Screenshots (original version) from Ukelele. Font is Tagalog Stylized by Paul Morrow.

Default

Shift

Alt

ShiftAlt

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world..."

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:54:24 +0800

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

- Howard Thurman quotes (via bluechameleon)

Missing Disqus comments

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:43:00 +0800

I seem to be missing some Disqus comments on the WOL post. The comments are still in the Discus comment moderation page, with the correct URL, but the comments refuse to show up. Perhaps something has gone horribly wrong with Disqus’ new cache feature..?

Fonera 2.0n notes

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:41:00 +0800

My current router is a Fonera 2.0n. I’m probably one of only a handful owners [ if not the only one ;-) ] in the Philippines. Here are some notes for things that were not immediately obvious.

My “desk rack”, left to right: Helium and Hydrogen (1.5TB and 1.0TB WD Elements), Orion 7-port powered USB hub with CDR King USB sound card, Encore ENDSL-R4 DSL modem, Fonera 2.0n. The USB hub is connected to the Fonera.

1. Latest RC2 dev firmware is here (info) — despite some bugs, it still worked better for me (until I compile custom firmware).

2. Set the timezone to PHT (GMT+8) and sync with NTP:

echo "PHT-8" > /etc/TZ
ntpclient -h asia.pool.ntp.org -c 1 -s

Add a script in /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ to automatically call ntpclient when the WAN connection goes up.

3. Enable crond:

mkdir /etc/crontabs
vi /etc/crontabs/root
crond

Do not use crontab -e as the visual editor will mess up your screen. Add crond to an /etc/init.d script to launch at boot.

4. Get new stuff

mkdir /usr/lib/opkg

cat >> /etc/opkg.conf <http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/8.09.2/rb532/package
option force_space
END

opkg update

5. Use the USB hard disk for new installations:

mkdir /tmp/mounts/Disc-A1/opt
ln -s /tmp/mounts/Disc-A1/opt /opt

cat >> /etc/opkg.conf <
Install new packages with opkg -d opt install package_name. The new files will go into /opt.
6. Run files in /opt with the least hassle:
alias opt="LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/lib:/opt/usr/lib \
 PATH=/opt/bin:/opt/usr/bin:/opt/sbin:/opt/usr/sbin:$PATH"

e.g. opt vim
You may want to add the above alias to /etc/profile.

HipHop for PHP: Move Fast

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 03:19:00 +0800

HipHop for PHP: Move Fast:

Facebook creates PHP “compiler” (PHP → C++ | g++)

Happy Birthdays!

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:01:00 +0800

Happy Birthday, Jay and Charlie!

Gimp on OS X

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:29:00 +0800

Gimp on OS X, for some reason, starts up with windows that extend far beyond the lower edge of the screen, with no way to reach the resize handles. This drove me nuts! I didn’t have this problem in Linux! :-D

Simple fix: Just maximize the windows and resize accordingly. Gimp will remember the window sizes the next time you run it.

Ballad for a Rose, http://coolclint.tk/ (Poetry)

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:21:00 +0800

Ballad for a Rose, http://coolclint.tk/ (Poetry)

Interesting short URLs

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:04:00 +0800

http://♒.ws/䬼 → ibrado.org, c/o txtn.us. Browser behavior doesn’t seem to be consistent, though.

Not too sure I like the meaning of 䬼, hehe… I guess the nearest Tagalog word would be “umay”.

Update: ibrado.org is now AKA ᜁ.com :-) … is that the first Tagalog IDN?

Detect insertion of USB device in Mac OS X

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:07:00 +0800

1. Use Lingon or something similar to create a launchd plist:





  Label
  org.ibrado.DevWatcher
  ProgramArguments
  
    /path/to/your/script
  
  WatchPaths
  
     /dev

2. In your script, put something like

#!/bin/bash

function detect_usb () {  
  return $(system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep -C 1 -i $1 | grep -i $2 | wc -l)
}

# USB vendor and product ID

detect_usb 0x01d0 0x0421

if [ $? == 1 ]; then
  # Do some stuff
  echo Nokia E52 found
else
  echo Nokia E52 not found
fi

Of course, since the script will trigger every time any sort of device is added or removed, it should perform additional checks.

There must be a better way to do this…