General – Page 106

Betting On Northern Mindanao

By Jay Lagare on Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Northern Mindanao, aka Region X, is a cluster of 5 provinces including the island province of Camiguin and two highly-urbanized areas Cagayan de Oro City (CDO) and Iligan City. The economy of Northern Mindanao is primarily agricultural but also industrial mainly in CDO and Iligan. It is the largest economy in Mindanao. As of 2009, it had the second highest per capita Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) of P91,453 just behind the National Capital Region (NCR) (P246,753). It had the fourth fastest growth of 7.6%, just behind the Bicol (12.7%), Davao (9.2%), and Western Visayas (8.4%) regions.

Focusing on the two urbanized and industrialized areas, CDO and Iligan, the two host several industrial plants along with the supporting economy. The power generation plants in Iligan actually provide 65% (as of 2010) of the power for ALL of Mindanao so electricity for plants is not a problem. Aside from both being port cities, there is also a container terminal, Mindanao Container Terminal (MCT), near CDO which addresses bulk shipping of raw materials and finished goods. Telecommunications is also now well-developed and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies are now operating out of CDO but also some in Iligan. Tourism is also being developed especially in Camiguin.

Providing manpower to the local economies of both cities is the urban population. There is also two major universities Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) and Xavier University (part of the Ateneo group) . There is also the bigger MSU Main an hour away from Iligan. Together, these universities produce thousands of graduates every year, making available a well-educated and well-trained manpower pool.

One latest development is that Laguindingan International Airport is due for completion next year. The new airport, strategically situated between CDO and Iligan, is just about an hour away from either. The new airport is also a driver for plans of a wider highway between the two cities and even a high-speed railway system. This increases the potential for an influx of more tourists, investments, and business opportunities.

General

(Re)Bonding and Baby’s Afternoon Out

By Jay Lagare on Saturday, September 3, 2011

Michelle decided to get a rebond. So at 2PM, I dropped her off along with Gretchen at Galleria while Jeanne and I went off to the Podium. Since we’re not sure what time she will be done, we agreed Jeanne and I can go home ahead when I’m done.

Jeanne and I had snacks at Cinnabon, we strolled across all the floors, visited Toys ‘R Us (always a good stop for her), occasionally rested in the very convenient and comfortable lounging area (if there’s only one reason I’d opt to go to the Podium, this is it), went to MegaMall (for Cyberzone), back to the Podium again, and then dinner at Burgoo (where she had fun coloring the table cover and eating the finger food). After dinner we went back the the lounging area and waited.

At around 9PM, I decided to head home. Unfortunately, the iPhone had run out of power by then. Good thing there’s free WiFi at the Podium and I was able to use the iPad to YM some friends to please text Michelle that Jeanne and I were going. We then packed up and headed for the parking. On the way, we encountered Michelle with her new hair (to be fair, she looks good but then the hair is just a small part) and then Gretchen. All together now, we headed home.

General

Restoring an iPad

By Jay Lagare on Saturday, September 3, 2011

When I got home yesterday afternoon, Gretchen told me the iPad wouldn’t start. I figured the battery self-drained and I left it charging while Jeanne and I went to the playground to play for a bit. When I got back, the iPad still wouldn’t start. I tried the home button and the power button. No luck. I was about to give up and resigned to returning it to the shop. As one last effort, I searched for “ipad won’t start” and I saw this YouTube link. I followed the instructions: I connected the iPad to the MacBook, started iTunes, pressed the home and power button at the same time for 10 seconds, released the power button, and continued pressing the home buttons for 10 more seconds. Then I clicked the restore button on iTunes. The iPad finally started up, restored, and synced.

Whew again!

UPDATE: Looks like there’s a whole procedure from Apple for reviving an iPad that is not responding.

General

Rolling Back a WordPress Upgrade

By Jay Lagare on Friday, September 2, 2011

This blog site crashed yesterday night. I tried upgrading WordPress to the latest version and it wouldn’t start because of an old version of PHP. A few weeks ago, I had also tried upgrading and there was a compatibility check which indicated I need a newer version of PHP. Soon after that, my hosting service informed me that they will be updating PHP among others.

So last night, I tried upgrading again and it seem to have passed the compatibility check as there was no error message or anything. Success, I thought. Then I tried accessing the site and was greeted by “”Your server is running PHP version 4.4.9 but WordPress 3.2.1 requires at least 5.2.4.”

Obviously the compatibility check didn’t even run and my hosting service has not yet updated PHP. Looked like I have to roll back. No problem, I thought, since the upgrade procedure made backups of the old WordPress database and files. I used PHPMyAdmin to delete the new database. Then I ran the SQL script to restore the old database. Quick and easy.

Next step is to restore the old files. It was then that Murphy’s Law reared its ugly head. Since I had no real shell access (sucks!), I had to rely on WebShell (yech!) and for some reason I couldn’t copy the backup files. After tinkering around for an hour or so, I eventually called it a night and requested tech support to copy the files.

This morning, I saw that the files have been copied but WordPress needs to be configured. Good thing there’s a quick script for that. Bad things is it’s not working. It seems I didn’t have the right settings. It took me an hour or so of digging around the files in server before I found the proper settings. That done, the site finally started started up.

And then I saw the broken images. Apparently, while tinkering around with WebShell, I had accidentally deleted the old wp-content folder which holds uploads among others. I dug around my files for a backup but couldn’t find any. Giving up, I asked tech support if they have a backup and, if so, to restore it. As luck would have it, they did have a backup and in literally just a matter of minutes, the wp-content folder was restored and the images were fixed.

Whew!

General

Tinago Falls

By Jay Lagare on Sunday, August 28, 2011

We visited Tinago Falls today. Tinago Falls is another waterfall in Iligan City, which is nicknamed the City of Majestic Waterfalls, because of the presence of more than 20 waterfalls around it. Tinago means hidden. And it is: To reach it, you have to go off the highway, to a gravel road, and finally walk the rest of the way down 444 steps. Definitely hidden. Visiting the falls is said to bring you luck since you climb down then up a total of 888 steps. Inventing my own luck. Haha.