I write. I code. I photograph.
When work consumes you and inspiration escapes you, what do you do?
I post photos.
Just blogging with imagery, or what–not.
This time just blurred imagery, or blurred what–not.
Just doing what comes easy at the moment, like how blogging should be.
And maybe just doing how I’ve always written on this blog?
Today is 31310, which happens to be our 31st month anniversary, on the same month I turned 31.
This entry is brought by the number 31.
Last Friday would have been a nice twist to my “Five on Friday” series that I’ve been doing regularly irregular. I was gonna title my post “March 5 on Friday” as a reference to my birthday, and it would have been one of my better birthday entries. I guess this will do as my belated birthday entry for myself.
As you see, it all started with a surprise: Luigi. It took a while for Luigi to come, but now he’s here to join big brother Mario in making my bed just a little bit more crowded. But the surprise doesn’t stop there:
Hana knows exactly the things I want! But knowing my pangga, any special day wouldn’t be complete without a craft project for a gift. I just wasn’t sure there’s one for me.
To take my mind off it, and because the afternoon light was quite beautiful that day, I decided we should take some portraits:
Before we left the office though, there it was! My uber–special gift!
It was a tiny photo album (one that M+K could be proud of), a collection of photos we’ve had since we’ve been together (mostly cliquebooth photos), along with photos of nice little things special to us:
It even includes one cliquebooth photo we’ve had before we were together!
My pangga surely made my day very special with all the surprises. Friends and family also sent their greetings through SMS and Facebook and some even called—just about everything kept me smiling all day! So that was it, that was last Friday.
Yellow is my color of hope. What’s yours?
(I know I should’ve posted this on the 25th but I was away for work. And who would rather blog while in Boracay?)
I was planning to blog today when my plans suddenly changed the minute I started playing Plants vs. Zombies. I’ve been holding off on this craze for a few months but finally gave in to the temptation after watching my sister play through most of it. But before the zombies eat my brain, I think I’d use it first and write this blog entry. (I had to stop, I just lost the game at an embarrasingly early level.)
As you may already know, the microblogging zombies have been abuzz with the latest craze: Google Buzz. Basically, it’s twitter without the hype and with better functionality. For starters, it has comments. And you can upload photos. Things that would have made twitter better if they integrated such features into it.
Buzz also has something that doesn’t come with twitter: connected sites. Utilizing their Social Graph API, it allows you to connect your identities from across the web to your Google Buzz profile, essentially pushing whatever content you generate to all your fans and followers. I was initially dumbfounded though when I noticed that this blog (rebelpixel.com) wasn’t listed under my profile though my other sites were. The solution was much simpler than I thought.
Signing into Google Webmaster Tools, you can add your site to your profile and after verifying ownership through a <meta> tag or a hash–named html file uploaded to your server, it will be listed for use on Buzz’s connected sites:
Don’t forget to save your changes to your profile, the button’s positioned not quite intuitively at the bottom of the page. Now everytime you write something on your blog, your Buzz followers will hear about it.
Now I’m back to waging war against the zombies.
If you’re still reading this blog you must be a real fan. Or just plain bored. So I’ll indulge you with some entertainment.
You would’ve noticed by now how rebelpixel.com looks very different to how it has always been for some years now. I always liked it grey. Now though, it’s in boring white that I think is quite a refreshing change. (You wouldn’t know that though if you’re reading this in an RSS reader.) But I guess “fresh” wouldn’t be staying for long.
If you’re reading this on a Mac with a fairly recent browser, you’d think the new minimalistic look blends well with the @font-face embedded font I’m using: Museo Sans. This works in Firefox 3.5 (and the recently released 3.6), Safari, and Google Chrome. Unfortunately, if you’re on Linux or Windows, @font-face rendering can go bad. In my current case, really bad. Look:
Firefox/Mac text rendering just blows aways its Firefox/Windows counterpart, though I honestly feel it’s more of the operating system’s fault. Google Chrome shows us the same trend:
Note how Chrome (and Safari as shown below) renders the text inside <blockquote> tag. It’s supposed to be in italic as defined in CSS though I did not declare an italic sub–font for Museo Sans. Firefox tries to make italics out of the single embedded font file while it’s ignored in Webkit–based browsers. What should be the right behavior? I honestly have no clue.
Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 paints a different picture: it ignored my EOT–encoded fonts and simply rendered text using the next available typeface in the CSS font stack. It’s broken and familiar; silently I think I’d rather take that compared to the rendering inconsistencies in embedded fonts.
Welcome to web design in 2010—it’s almost just like a decade ago.
Now I should really fix this design.
Last week, Conan O’Brien’s run with NBC’s “The Tonight Show” abruptly came to a halt after what many consider a wrong move by the network’s top executives. It was a sweet seven–month run, and I don’t think the show will ever be as fun again. Not with Leno doing it. But you’ve got to give it to Coco for saying the right thing as everything ends:
I hate cynicism. It’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
Now what’s left for me to watch with Conan off the air until at least September 1? I firmly believe Conan’s coming back big with a show worthy of all this drama. He’s always been known for his weird brand of comedy, and I’ll be looking forward to it. And it will somehow feel like this commencement address he gave to the Harvard class of 2000:
I’ve dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you’re desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.
I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of The Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet, every failure was freeing, and today I’m as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good.
So, that’s what I wish for all of you: the bad as well as the good. Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over. If it’s all right, I’d like to read a little something from just this year: “Somehow, Conan O’Brien has transformed himself into the brightest star in the Late Night firmament. His comedy is the gold standard and Conan himself is not only the quickest and most inventive wit of his generation, but quite possible the greatest host ever.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, Class of 2000, I wrote that this morning, as proof that, when all else fails, there’s always delusion.
I’ll go now, to make bigger mistakes and to embarrass this fine institution even more. But let me leave you with one last thought: If you can laugh at yourself loud and hard every time you fall, people will think you’re drunk.
Surely, amazing things will happen.
… the weblog of Markku Seguerra—a photographer and web developer who happens to write a lot on just about anything. You can also find him on twitter, facebook,
and plurk, where he desperately tries to write more often than he blogs.