Jay Lagare – Page 140

Buying Starcraft II

By Jay Lagare on Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Since I’m almost done with Red Dead Redemption on the PS3, I decided to finally get Starcraft II. Everything went smoothly at first. I logged on to the Blizzard store and picked a version. I decided on the US version since it is less expensive at around P2600 compared to P3600 for the Asian version. I paid and started downloading.

Then I hit a snag: Downloading the Blizzard Downloader was so slow using my Sun Wireless Broadband connection. After finally completing the download, the Blizzard download site won’t recognize the downloader as authorized anymore. I tried it several times with the same result.

I needed a faster connection. So now it looks like my US version savings is going down the drain. Since Globe’s unlimited surfing promo doesn’t work for postpaid, I borrowed Michelle’s phone, sent “SUPERSURF50” to 8888 and tried downloading again. Success! I was able to get the downloader and start the download of the game client.

After a few hours, I hit another snag: Globe SuperSurf “unlimited” surfing stops after you have downloaded 1GB of data. It not just slows your connection, it completely stops you from connecting. Fail! And you can’t even register for another day of SUPERSURF 50 because the previous one has to expire first! Double fail by Globe.

I guess it will be a few days before I can play.

General

Quitting While You’re Ahead

By Jay Lagare on Sunday, November 14, 2010

Today, Manny Pacquiao will be fighting Antonio Margarito. Some people think that Pacquiao should just quit while he’s ahead. Now there’s something wrong with that. One, quit is not in the dictionary of a winner. Two, there is always someone, some place, some achievement ahead of you. So why quit when you can blaze trails and earn more, learn more, BE more? To paraphrase Thomas Edison: If you don’t fail, you’re not trying hard enough. Good luck Manny! Win or lose, you will always be a champion. But preferably win, of course.

UPDATE: Win he did!

General

Swype For Symbian

By Jay Lagare on Saturday, November 13, 2010

The other day, Leslie told me about Swype for Symbian. Swype is an alternative input method for touchscreen devices where you swipe your finger from letter to letter onthe virtual keyboard without taking your finger off to spell a word. It’s all the rage in Android virtual keyboards.

Unfortunately, it’s only available for the Nokia 5230, 5800, N97, N97 Mini, X6, and C6-00. I tried it on Michelle’s 5800 and it was great. The nicest thing is that it provides a new keyboard for both portrait and landscape orientations. The new keyboards are way better-looking than the built-in keyboards. The portrait qwerty keyboard even shows the interface of the app you are working with instead of taking up the whole screen. As a bonus, regular key tap input still works.

UPDATE: Today, I found out it’s now available at the Ovi store for the N8. Does it fix one of the N8’s biggest problems? Not quite. The portrait qwerty keyboard is not available on the N8 version so you’re still stuck with the regular phone keypad. Still, you get Swype and that already quite an improvement.

General

Manual Mode

By Jay Lagare on Thursday, November 11, 2010

The car was banned from the road yesterday because of the Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program (UVVRP) aka number coding. Since I was attending my grand aunt’s funeral, I figured I’ll ride with James. But he turned out to be sick and couldn’t attend. So I had to borrow and drive his car which is a stick. It’s not that I don’t drive stick but it’s been quite long time since I have driven one. Interestingly, I’ve driven a whole bunch of other cars and they’re ALL sticks. The only auto I’ve ever driven was my car. But fortunately, it seems I haven’t forgotten the basics and I was able to drive around albeit with some jerkiness and quite a few engine stalls. At the end of the day, though my left leg was aching, I was glad I can still do manual mode.

General

A Visit To The Cemetery

By Jay Lagare on Wednesday, November 10, 2010

My grand aunt passed away after a long battle with cancer. She was 80 years old. Although my knowledge of her life is far from comprehensive, from the eulogy of the Mother General, she has no doubt lived it to the fullest serving God. She was a nun for 56 years and, as my uncle said in his eulogy, was impeccably holy. That’s something many of us can only hope for come time to go.

And so just over a week after the day in the year when cemeteries become a crowded mess, I found myself in one. You wouldn’t have believed it had been crowded just a few days previously. It was reasonably clean and there was a quiet and peaceful atmosphere. The way it should be.

The funeral itself was a solemn occasion. Because of the wide dispersion of the family, there was only about a dozen of us representing but her sisters of the cloth were in force. Interestingly, they seemed to be used to these things. Everything was well planned and went along quite smoothly. It was as if it was just business as usual. And maybe it is. Maybe to them, passing away from this life is just going into another better life. And I do agree.

RIP Lola Danday. You’re in a better place.