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Laguindingan International Airport

After so many delays, the Laguindingan International Airport finally opened last June 15, 2013. And today I was finally able to see it. It was quite impressive. Definitely better than the old Lumbia Airport (which is a pretty low bar admittedly).

As I previously mentioned, the airport strategically situated between CDO and Iligan. It is just about an hour away from either cities. Soon we can expect a wider highway between the two cities and maybe even a high-speed railway system. This increases the potential for an influx of more tourists, investments, business opportunities, and general benefit to the region’s economy.

For example, the airport is far from densely populated urban areas (as it should be) but I can already see there will be a level of development in the surrounding areas as a direct result of the airport opening. That in itself is already an big economic benefit to the local economy.

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MacBook Pro Memory Upgrade

Last week, I decided to upgrade the memory of my MacBook Pro from 4GB to 8GB. I did my research and then went to Villman which is my usual go to place for hardware components. Ever since their humble beginnings with Boyet at the People’s Park, I’ve almost always gone for Villman. Lucky for me, they got the modules that I asked for.

When I got home, I excitedly swapped the old memory modules with the new ones. It won’t boot! I  rechecked my research and it turned out that I was wrong. I got PC3-12800 (DDR3 1600 MHz) modules when I should have gotten PC3-8500 (DDR3 1066 MHz). Bummer.

So I went back to Villman and returned the memory modules. They didn’t have PC3-8500 modules but they told me they can order replacements which should be available in 5-15 days. It was quick and painless. And that is why I always come back to Villman.

So today, eight days after ordering, Villman called me that my memory has been delivered to the store. I had no plans of going out but I just had to go and pick them up. Michelle and Jeanne went with me to get snacks. As soon as we got home, I (still) excitedly swapped the old memory modules with the news ones. And this time, it booted up perfectly. And performed whoa so much faster. Memory is definitely the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade!

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iOS 7 beta 4

Apple has released iOS 7 beta 4. This one took 3 weeks. Either the developer site hacking incident disrupted the release or they’ve shifted to a longer release cycle as the beta stabilizes. It certainly looks like the latter to me. Stability and battery life were already good with the previous beta 3 and didn’t look like it changed much with beta 4. Most of the obvious changes were UI tweaks. Unfortunately they still haven’t fixed the Safari and Settings icons :P

At this rate, there’s probably going to be one or two more betas before the golden master and then the final around September or October… Along with the new iPhone. Or iPhones since a budget iPhone is rumored to be in the works.

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The Wolverine

thewolverineWell, what do you know? Logan (the Wolverine) is a comedian. After sleeping with the very-much-engaged Mariko he confronted Noburu, Mariko’s fiancé, and chastised the latter for being engaged and cavorting with two working ladies. Now that’s real tongue-in-cheek humor from the normally grumpy Logan :P

Overall, I like the movie. It follows the trend of more real-world superheroes. Or superhumans. Or mutants. The mutants here look like normal people and wear regular clothes. No fancy skin-tight costumes. Except maybe Viper’s but it was still within the realm of normal wear. Even the action scenes are almost realistic. Except for the one on top of a speeding bullet train. That was simply preposterous. Logan himself is pretty mortal, almost human, for most of the running time so he toned down his heroics. A bit.

Instead of the action, the movie focuses more on the story, Logan’s story. After an invitation from a Japanese mutant, he travels to Japan to say goodbye to a dying acquaintance, Yashida, whose life he had saved and had built up one of the world’s biggest conglomerates. But all is not what it seemed with Yashida, his son, and his grandaughter (Mariko). And the mystery quickly thickens as Yashida dies and the funeral is attacked.

But instead of leaving it all behind, Logan, decides to stick around and untangle the web of deceit. Or maybe it’s because of the ethereal Mariko. If Logan wasn’t a comic book with a need to show off some comic book action, it could have been a suspense thriller. And a would have been good one, too.

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Educazione Siberiana (Siberian Education)

There’s something interesting about crime family dramas. People usually think about the epic Godfather series. But there are many more films with variations of the theme. In this case, a Russian special forces team is tracking a gang of drug smugglers. And it appears one of the soldiers, Kolyma, is tracking one of the smugglers specifically. As the team gets closer to their prey, Kolyma’s past is gradually revealed: growing up with friends in one of the remote Siberian towns where Stalin resettled various ethnic groups during his ethnic deportations. While growing up in a generally tough environment, the friends are involved in and quite a bit of petty crime. Stereotypical for bad ass special forces types, I guess. But of course, it’s got more story to the drama than that.

Following the mold of the Godfather series, there’s John Malkovich is the godfather figure. He has always been one of those quirky, harmless-looking but pretty scary characters and he fits the role perfectly. Aside from him and Eleanor Tomlinson, I don’t know the other actors. Which is fine, even good. One thing that seems a bit off is the use of English while retaining the hard ethnic Russian accent. Trying to retain a bit of realism, I guess. But personally I’d rather have Russian (or even the particular ethnic language) with subtitles. If you can get past the faked accent, then it’s no problem.