My Intermittent Fasting Update

After watching "Hungy for Change", it reminded me of how I had that 'click' moment that I had to take care of my body. They talk of "Visualization" where you see yourself as how you want to be. The opposite kinda happened to me when I really saw the picture on the left around 2009. I said the two words that has driven me to change: "Never Again!"
Since then I've been reading up and trying out strategies to change my lifestyle. The recent ones that seemed to work well are: Blood type diet, Brown Rice and the best so far 'Intermittent Fasting'. Although IF is working wonders, I'd like to take the next step and go for juicing veg&fruits :D

Healthy and Fun Gulaman

I recently encountered Super Gulaman(Agar) while doing my grocery at Parco. It makes 1.4Liters and costs under 11php. I didn't think much of it until I started reading about it and its health benefits.

It is easy to prepare and fun to eat. It is 80% fiber and absorbs lots of water so it is filling and aids digestion.

The only drawback I found with this brand is Pulverized Sugar which accounts for the 80 Calories per serving. I might look in to the pure Gulaman Bars sold in wet markets, as those are unsweetened. But in terms of its compact/powdered nature, this one might become a mainstay in my diet and can supplement my IF(Intermittent Fasting).

TCL L24D12 LCD TV Review

The TCL L24D12 is available at Abenson's for Php 9,995. My brother Xtian  got it as the grand prize in their office Christmas raffle and I'll give my review below.

[update] It seems its monitor native/optimal resolution is 1360x768, where it is sharp. Unfortunately even in this setting, it's slightly bright for my eyes, even at lowered brightness/backlight/contrast settings. The difference in brightness between a browser's background and photos is too great for it to be comfortable for programming or photo editing. I might have to relegate it to the second computer as movie display.

Pros:

• USB slot can play movies/media. This includes recent x264-LOL encoded mp4 files available for download.
• Sound in media player mode is acceptable.

Cons:

• The prize included wall mounting stuff. This is probably because the stand assembly is super wobbly and unstable. A breeze from an electric fan can probably bring it crashing down.
  [update] In the last page of the thin manual, it shows that you need to use 3 screws to stabilize the stand. duh! :P
• PC (1920x1080) resolution currently sucks big time. At the highest resolution, the entire picture is dark and dreary. Will try again soon with another 1080p device.
• At other resolutions, fonts and lines look fuzzy. (I get better sharpness from the older LG L1719S monitor and from a Sony Bravia)

I'll keep this post updated as I keep using it as a computer monitor.

[update] At wee hours in the morning, the startup sound is annoyingly loud, so I googled and found this:
http://www.fixya.com/support/t18690027-turn_off_startup_sound_tcl_lcd_tv_menu
which states this:

You can go service mode of your TV by menu>picture>contrast press 1950 within 3 seconds. 
When the menu appears, you choose Service Menu>Config>Pwon_music >> OFF
And exit.
Turn off and turn on TV to enjoy

and it works! Just be careful about changing the other settings. Unintentionally changed some setting and the display ended up weird and upside down. I reset enough settings to get things back to normal.

Multiply Starts to Roll Out Tools, As Promised

Multiply previously announced that they are chopping off some features by December 1, 2012. As promised, they started to release methods and tools to get/migrate your content from your account.

The "Download media" option would have been the bomb, but it requires installing plugins for your browser for easier downloading. It also doesn't include Folder/Album information, so the photos are all mixed up :(

I'll try and review the Blogger and Tumblr exports soon.

Update 1: Chrome + Download Master works, but it keeps displaying "Allow" "Deny" buttons for multiple downloads. Some occasional "Kill Task" and "Wait" prompts show up too. Maybe Firefox would to this better :(

Prepaid DSL?

In a strange move, Bayan Telecommunications adjusted their "billing period" and "period covered" which will reflect on their bills this month. In my understanding, this means that they're billing me for DSL and landline even before I've actually used it. That sounds very similar to Prepaid :(

GPS and the iPad 3G

I'm taking a trip to Kalibo, Aklan soon and I was thinking of borrowing a handheld GPS device for some task. I was about to post the request online when I remembered that the iPad had some location capability. So after some google searches, I ended up surprised at what this device can do. It does have GPS and A-GPS. Note: GPS is only available on models with 3G/4G chips.

After enabling most of the Location Settings and downloading the "WhereAmIAt?" app, I think I'm ready to track GPS coordinates.

(Numbers and street names intentionally mosaic'ed for my safety :P

With the default Maps App, the accelerometers and such show what direction I'm facing:

Problematic Yahoo Pingbox [Solved]

A friend of mine was having problems with her Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox since it's Flash(swf) file only loads if the user has visited other yahoo! sites. Yahoo! failed on this one by requiring a cookie that is not guaranteed to be there.

Looking around the interwebz, I found a couple of suggestions, but the best one only worked after loading the page again. This solution requires jQuery to be included. Using some jQuery fu, I cooked up some code to:

1. Load yahoo! terms page in an iFrame. This will load the cookie that pingbox requires.
2. After that page completes, writes the Pingbox code.

<script type="text/javascript">
   $(document.body).append('<iframe id="myId" style="visiblity:hidden;display:none;" src="http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/"></iframe>');
   $('iframe#myId').load(function(){
      $('#pingboxhere').append('<object data="http://wgweb.msg.yahoo.com/badge/Pingbox.swf" height="420" id="ZZZZZZZ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="240"><param name="movie" value="http://wgweb.msg.yahoo.com/badge/Pingbox.swf" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="flashvars" value="YYYYYYY" /></object>');
   });
</script>
<div id="pingboxhere"></div>

I'm not sure if this solution is the best practice, but it works for me. Any thoughts?

Best Combo Jutsu... Evar

Neji + Rock Lee = Jet Lee!