Books I've Written

Thoughts By Thirty-Three is my first attempt at e-book publishing. It is available on Amazon. I don't know if I have what it takes to be a writer so I guess this work will be a test of sorts.

If you've read it, I would appreciate any feedback. If I'm no good, I'd appreciate any pointers. But if you like any part of it, I'd also be interested in knowing which portions of the book you enjoyed. Thanks.

Electricity Generating Clothing

I can still remember having a discussion with one of my classmates a few years ago about the advent of clothing that could power mobile devices. Back then, we theorized that the clothing should be able to harness kinetic energy from human motion, in a similar way that kinetic watches are powered by the pendulum like motion of the wearer's arm while walking.

Now, electricity generating clothing is almost a reality. David Carroll of Wake Forest University along with his students have developed a material dubbed as Power Felt. It is a material which they synthesized using carbon nanotechnology. It uses the principle of thermo-electricity instead. It converts body heat into electricity. In the video, a 1 inch by 1 inch Power Felt material was able to generate roughly 2 mV of voltage after being held between the thumb and index finger for sometime. While the voltage levels were erratic, I'm sure that with the use of suitable electronics, the varying voltage can be converted to a stable DC supply which is important for mobile devices.

From money.cnn.com 

It is not clear from the video if more area, and hence more Power Felt, is necessary to generate more electricity. One might initially think in terms of solar panels, stating that the more panels there are, the more electrical energy one will be able to generate. I would think that trying to cover as much surface area of your body as possible will generate more electricity, Patients with a fever would probably be more productive than those who are out cold (pun intended).

One could probably envision a wetsuit with a mesh of power felts in a grid-like arrangement becoming an ideal mobile power source. The U.S. military is probably working with this technology to enhance the arsenal of soldiers on the field.

Perhaps, later on, the idea of humans as being part of the electric grid, seen in the Matrix, may not be far fetched. People would be wearing electric generating suits for most part of their days, and even in their sleep, only removing it to take a bath. The scenario would probably stink.

You could even think of spans of this material being placed near heat sources like ovens, refrigerators, furnaces, etc. to act as an additional means of generating electric power. This would at least augment the electric bill.

As for drawbacks, the first thing that comes to mind would be the suit being a source of electric shock. The person wearing it might get fatally electrocuted.Engineers would probably come up with safeguards against these but it would bring a whole new meaning to phrases like "dressed to kill".

These are the types of technologies we, as members of the human race, should be investing in especially as the sources of energy in the world are gradually waning. Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists, and private research agencies would be better off placing their money in this type of research instead of "the next fun thing". The next internet application or video game will not even run if global power eventually goes out. We should be preparing for the future right now. We know that the world's oil supply will run out before century's end. Coal deposits might follow suit. And unless a new means of energy can be harnessed to meet the global demand, anarchy and chaos awaits once people experience the energy shortage. Can we survive a world without power? Perhaps power felt will allow us to avoid this question.

Posts About Travel

Below are some posts about places for travel or tour:

• La Luz Beach Resort 2012
• Corregidor 2012
• Boracay 2012

Guitar Related Posts

From musicwalls.org

Below are some of the posts I've written about guitars.

• Guitar Chords for Love Song by The Cure
• John Mayer's Something's Missing Guitar Chords
• Guitar Chords for Rocketeer by Jayesslee
• Guitar Chords for John Mayer's Edge of Desire
• Guitar Chords: All That I Am by Roxanne Emery

• Guitar Chord Finder
• Guitar Tab Creator
• Carly Smithson Here You Come Again Chords
• Jack Savoretti One Day Chords
• Cross My Heart Chords by EBTG

• Chords for Apo Hiking Society's Kumot at Unan
• Chords for Let Me Love You (Until You Learn to Love Yourself)
• Chords for Regine Velasquez' Never Give Up
• Chords for Still by Hillsong
• Chords for Steady My Heart by Kari Jobe

• Chords for Mighty To Save by Hillsong United
• Chords for John Mayer's In Your Atmosphere

Posts on TV Shows

Below are some of the posts I've written about TV shows I'm watching:

• Person of Interest
• Elementary 2012
• Last Resort TV Series 2012
• Arrow TV Series 2012

• Revolution TV Series 2012
• Alphas Season 2 Episode 7
• The Newsroom 2012

Posts I've Written on Ikariam

Below are some of the posts I've written on Ikariam:

• Ikariam version 0.5: Renaming a Town
• Ikariam Workshop Level For New Ships
• Ikariam: Can You Own 12 Towns?
• Ikariam v0.4.5 New Ships!!!

Posts I've Written on Alteil

Below are some of the posts I've written about Alteil:

• Alteil EX 11: Lost Guardians - Violet General
• Alteil EX 11: Gregory

• Alteil is Back!!!
• Alteil Set 11: Mermaid Harpist
• Alteil Set 11: Beast Emperor / Rivera
• Alteil Set 11: King of Mankind / Verlaat
• Alteil: Defender of Seasons / Sakon

Post's I've Written on Computers

Below are some of the posts I've written about computers:

Hardware Related Posts:

• TP-Link TF-3239DL LAN Card
• Error 651
• ECS P4M900T-M2 No Sound

Software Related Posts:

• AVG 2012 Not Able To Recognize License Number
• Cleaning Out The Recycler Virus
• Installling Tiny Core OS on USB Drive
• YouTube Full Screen Does Not Work
• AVG .bin file missing

TP-Link TF-3239DL LAN Card

My internet connection went down a few days ago. Checked all the connections and realized that my LAN Card wasn't even being recognized. Tried re-installing the drivers via Device Manager but still no luck. Fortunately, my motherboard has a built in network port. Plugged my internet connection via that port and everything was working again. It was time to replace the LAN card.

Checked the price list at my favorite computer shop and saw the cheapest LAN card available, TP-Link's TF-3239DL. At a price somewhere between 5 and 6 U.S. dollars, I thought I'd give it a try.

Took out the old LAN card and plugged in the TF-3239DL network card into the same PCI slot. Booted up, and Windows 7 automatically installed the drivers. Blogged this post!!! ^_^

Cool Web Apps: Grooveshark

One of the websites I'm enjoying right now is Grooveshark.com. In a nutshell, it is a Winamp-like web application, allowing you to listen to your favorite music hits and you don't even need to register. Just search for your favorite song, and if it is in their database, you will be able to enjoy the tunes on the fly. You don't even need to download or install anything for their app to work. I guess this is all thanks to HTML 5.

"Why would I use my browser to listen to music?", you might ask. Well, the main reason I can think of is exchanging storage space for available bandwidth. If you are low on hard disk space, but you have an internet connection that is idle, then you can opt to search for your favorite songs on Grooveshark and stream it. Some say that it affects your torrent downloads significantly when you are streaming, so this might not be the right app for computers assigned as heavy down-loaders.

Another reason I can think of is that if the song isn't on your storage device, a new hit perhaps, there is a higher probability that that particular song is on Grooveshark. If you like a song, but want to hear an acoustic version, you can probably find one on Grooveshark. Indie artists are probably using this site as a platform for marketing their music. I'm not sure if this is also part of Grooveshark's revenue model, but who knows - in the future, if you're a music artist that wants exposure, you might pay Grooveshark to showcase your songs.

Speaking of earning money, Grooveshark does that by displaying three banner ads on their web application. These ads refresh fairly frequently as an individual song plays along. But even if you shift tabs on your browser, you should be able to enjoy the tunes without the ads. But for those who want an ad-less service, Grooveshark offers premium accounts that disable these ads. I'm not sure if the ads are part of Google's adsense program, or if the advertisers approach Grooveshark and pay them directly for the ads to be displayed on the app. It's a pretty cool business model and will outright beat the blogging model since the people who want to listen to a particular song will probably outnumber the number of people who want to read a certain article or post. (There may be exceptions, like the time that big virus hit and a lot of people on the web were affected, and started looking for online solutions, but again... exception).

In terms of piracy issues, I'm not sure where the songs on Grooveshark come from. Perhaps some have been uploaded by their own users, while others may have been uploaded by the artists (or their representatives) themselves - again for exposure. If you can already enjoy the song freely by streaming it legally, then I don't see any reason why you should try to "gain" the song furthur, I would encourage listeners to respect the rights of the music artists.

Grooveshark also helps streamline your playlist. Ever play an album and wish you didn't have to re-program your playlist every time to skip particular songs? If you have an account on Grooveshark, then your favorite arrangement of songs should be set to go anywhere you have internet access.

Hats off to the developers of Grooveshark - a web app that's highly recommended.

Last Resort TV Series 2012

Warning: Possible spoilers ahead. Watch the TV show before reading on.

From wpengine

Last Resort is a TV show about a U.S. submarine crew gone rogue after the U.S. government tries to frame them for the nuking Pakistan and tries to destroy their sub. In retaliation, the captain of the sub launches a nuclear missile set for Washington D.C., but detonates it in an uninhabited location. This show of force is their gambit to prevent the U.S. from pursuing them further.

The crew commandeers an island where a NATO owned missile monitoring station has been established and treats it as their own territory, establishing a DMZ, with the threat of launching the remaining nukes on board the submarine in case any government tries to go after them.

There are numerous characters to explore in the show (ala LOST) like the captain and how he deals with the death of his son, his ex-o (executive officer) and how his wife deals with pressure from the U.S. government, a female lieutenant (daughter of an admiral) who is third in command, and struggling with issues about being respected, a female scientist (ala Tony Stark) who is responsible for the submarine's cloaking technology, a stowaway Navy Seal who is dealing with guilt, a crime lord on the island, manipulating the sub's crew, etc.

So many characters to explore, and I'm not sure all the players have been introduced.

If you like military type shows, where there exists both internal and external conflict, then the Last Resort is the current show for you. As my friend would put it, the show makes you realize that there are a lot of evil men in the world (which may sound depressing) but there are a few characters on the show that try to prove that there are still some individuals with redeeming qualities and even those who are evil are trying to atone for their past mistakes.

Try the show out and share your thoughts and opinions about it. Thanks.

Recycler Virus

My friend's USB drive got infected with the Recycler Virus despite being vaccinated with PANDA security software. This virus has hidden all folders in the USB drive in a subfolder named "_" (underscore, without the quotes). It also creates a bunch of "~" (tilde) or "~$" (tilde-dollar) prefixed files with sizes between 1 kB and 10 kB. The USB drive was also made almost full, with only a few MB of free space remaining. And upon scanning the drive with AVG Anti-virus, there were about 2000 plus threats found.

The first thing we should do is to show all hidden files and folders in the drive. If you're using Windows 7, then this guide by Lawrence Abrams should be helpful.

Once you can see the hidden files and folders, you can follow these steps:

• Scan, using AVG, the files you want to recover, (making sure these are threat free) and transfer these files to your hard-drive. Make sure you check the "_" folder and its subfolders for any of your files which the virus might have hidden.
• Format the USB drive
• Transfer the files you've recovered back to the USB drive.

The above steps are simple compared to manually deleting all unwanted files, since you're not sure you've deleted every infected file. But here's a list of unwanted files I've seen this virus create

• RECYCLER.exe
• "_" folder
• RECYCLER subfolder within the "_" folder
• a lot of .chk files

So another option is to delete these unwanted files and folders (again, make sure you transfer your files out of the "_" folder before deleting it, and make sure the files you are transferring are uninfected by checking them with AVG).

I hope this guide has helped you recover from a Recycler viral infection. Feel free to share your comments and thoughts on how to improve this guide. Thanks.

Arrow TV Series 2012

Spoiler Alert: Watch the TV Show first before reading on.

Remember Oliver Queen from the Smallville TV Series? Well, the Green Arrow is back on television, and this time, he is the main man. The series is titled Arrow.

From IGN

This new show features actor Stephen Amell as the new Green Arrow and will most likely explore how he becomes a hero and not a super hero. He's just like Batman. In fact, there are so many similarities. His father dies and is one of the reasons why he is on a quest to rid Starling City (his Gotham) of crooks and bad guys while Bruce Wayne took up crime fighting to avenge the death of his parents. 

They are both billionaires (Seems like that's the only way to become a crime-fighting hero - and looks like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg are the only ones who can afford to do so in real life). Wonder what type of comic book character they would imitate. Bill Gates could be Iron Man. Both Queen and Wayne act like douche bags when they are under their billionaire playboy guise, but become super serious under their heroic identity.

They both use gadgets. One favors arrows while the other favors bat-shaped stuff. They travel using cable mechanisms. But Wayne has a more plausible source of tech gadgets in Lucius Fox - head of Wayne Enterprises R&D Division. Queen's tech gadget source? Still unknown. How do you learn to create an arrow that can steal money from computer accounts on an island you are ship wrecked on in five years time?

They both have extensive physical training. Arrow gained his training on the mysterious island he was trapped in. Wayne, as the Nolan movies tell us, gained his training from Raz Al Ghul's ninja camp. We see a lot of parkour from Arrow.

They both give up their love interests and focus on a life of crime-fighting instead. Seems logical since your enemies can get to you by hurting the ones you love the most. I'd give up Katie Holmes but not Katie Cassidy. Rawr. Hubba hubba. (And does having both love interests named Katie count as another similarity?)

But if there was one distinction, and one that I admire the most from Batman, it is his decision not to kill. Arrow shows no hesitation in taking a life - which is really the more practical route. Bad guys are dead. They can no longer come after you. Batman takes the harder path making him more heroic (stupid, but heroic).

I don't know if this show will be as successful as Smallville, having 10 seasons under its belt. There aren't any super powers to explore (which was what made Smallville fun). So unless he got trapped in the island in LOST, and fights various interesting villains (instead of your typical mob bosses and crime lords), this show might not have a second season. But the first episode was interesting enough to make me want to watch the next. 

Green Arrow had a sidekick named Speedy, and this is also the nick name of the kid sister of Arrow on the show. Will she become his sidekick later on? Stay tuned and find out.

Arrow TV Series 2012

Spoiler Alert: Watch the TV Show first before reading on.

Remember Oliver Queen from the Smallville TV Series? Well, the Green Arrow is back on television, and this time, he is the main man. The series is titled Arrow.

From IGN

This new show features actor Stephen Amell as the new Green Arrow and will most likely explore how he becomes a hero and not a super hero. He's just like Batman. In fact, there are so many similarities. His father dies and is one of the reasons why he is on a quest to rid Starling City (his Gotham) of crooks and bad guys while Bruce Wayne took up crime fighting to avenge the death of his parents. 

They are both billionaires (Seems like that's the only way to become a crime-fighting hero - and looks like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg are the only ones who can afford to do so in real life). Wonder what type of comic book character they would imitate. Bill Gates could be Iron Man. Both Queen and Wayne act like douche bags when they are under their billionaire playboy guise, but become super serious under their heroic identity.

They both use gadgets. One favors arrows while the other favors bat-shaped stuff. They travel using cable mechanisms. But Wayne has a more plausible source of tech gadgets in Lucius Fox - head of Wayne Enterprises R&D Division. Queen's tech gadget source? Still unknown. How do you learn to create an arrow that can steal money from computer accounts on an island you are ship wrecked on in five years time?

They both have extensive physical training. Arrow gained his training on the mysterious island he was trapped in. Wayne, as the Nolan movies tell us, gained his training from Raz Al Ghul's ninja camp. We see a lot of parkour from Arrow.

They both give up their love interests and focus on a life of crime-fighting instead. Seems logical since your enemies can get to you by hurting the ones you love the most. I'd give up Katie Holmes but not Katie Cassidy. Rawr. Hubba hubba. (And does having both love interests named Katie count as another similarity?)

But if there was one distinction, and one that I admire the most from Batman, it is his decision not to kill. Arrow shows no hesitation in taking a life - which is really the more practical route. Bad guys are dead. They can no longer come after you. Batman takes the harder path making him more heroic (stupid, but heroic).

I don't know if this show will be as successful as Smallville, having 10 seasons under its belt. There aren't any super powers to explore (which was what made Smallville fun). So unless he got trapped in the island in LOST, and fights various interesting villains (instead of your typical mob bosses and crime lords), this show might not have a second season. But the first episode was interesting enough to make me want to watch the next. 

Green Arrow had a sidekick named Speedy, and this is also the nick name of the kid sister of Arrow on the show. Will she become his sidekick later on? Stay tuned and find out.

Alteil Is Back!!!

Below is Logress' write-up about the return of the game. I also tried logging in and was able to do so. So for those who have been waiting and hoping that the game would be back online, you're wish has been granted.

Pre-Release Opening -- Game Is Open

Written by Logress

Sunday, 07 October 2012 00:20

Pre-release Welcome Announcement Welcome everyone, to the Apocoplay (that’s the name of my our company) Alteil Pre-Release.  In two weeks we’ll have a big release (after you guinea pigs… er, honored Iczers have found any remaining bugs), with events and ads and a mass mail and hopefully a little press.  But for now, we’re turning the game on and letting our loyal forum-ites, and regulars, and Iczers who come back and check on us every now and then for the heck of it… all log on and run rampant! We’ve already made some big improvements, like the monetization system is totally fixed. By that I mean, the Cashier has been completely removed. You know, judging by how worked up everyone was about the whole topic, I thought it was going to be harder to work out. But, whatever, problem solved!  Seriously, though, The Cashier isn’t on because this is technically a beta period.  Also, you might notice the Google/Facebook/Twitter login functionality. And that won’t be the last of improvements, bug fixes and evolutions. Apocoplay is basically a software company with me added to manage the game, and it’s run like one.  So, if you end up talking with one of my esteemed colleges on the forum you might find yourself having to Google the word ‘SCRUM.’  And to prove we’re in it to improve it… I just nerfed Emana (and Chaos Anna and Harpist). There’s so much to say, plans, hopes dreams, etc.  A few policy changes… IE a general up-frontness about the good and the bad…  But this is supposed to be a welcome post and not a ramble.  Besides I gotta save some stuff for the general release announcements.  So for now, log in, and get dueling!