6 posts tagged “ufo catcher”
Took this pic last week, the week the San Beda Red Lions won the NCAA
seniors basketball championships. The banner on the entry arch of San
Beda reads: Home of the San Beda Red
Lions.
Oh, and I have another Hello Kitty ufo catcher catch to add to my sister's collection. Got it in SM South Mall, Tom's World.
Finally got myself well-balanced poi from JR. They come with free lessons, too.
With that I found my way to the UP CHK last Saturday for a poi session with JR. Philip of FlipSpin and Clair joined me there for the poi spinning. Two girls who had previous poi lessons joined us. I think their names were Jane and Arlene, I'm not sure though, O_o;; forgetful me (sorry ladies...). Oh, and it was like a reunion of sorts since JR, Clair and I all come from the UP School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS, formerly ILIS, formerly ILS).
The poi I bought and the practice poi we all used were different from the poi we were used to. We use balls on ends of rope at home for practice and though soft they still hurt when they hit us. The pratice poi was of the beanbag-type so the force is dissipated. Of course hitting yourself in the nuts (beanbags hitting beanbags :p) still hurts a lot but we can manage.
JR said that the more the merrier. So if anyone is interested, why not join us every Saturday? Just message me and I'll text you the details.
Anyway, Philip and I think this is a nice way of cross-training for those like us involved in skill toys / arts. The move set and basic actions are similar to 2A (double yoyos) style of yoyo play so we were a bit familiar with the movements. Can't wait to learn more and try it out on the fire poi. :D (Jeez, this despite JR showing us his burns for moves gone awry.) But heck, we all only live once so I'm definitely going for the fire play!
It was tiring, ngalay we call it. Arms hurt like hell. But I found my way to Greenhills after that. My old Questor officemate Tak (Takako Takimoto) is in town. Her husband Joel Gammad (now Atty. Gammad) shuttles back and forth between Japan and the Philippines, but for the first birthday of their daughter Maya the whole family took the trip to the Philippines. Maya looks so much like a mini-Tak. The birthday party was held near our old office along Ortigas, near Roosvelt St. Some of our old kendo clubmates were also there. It was nice to see Ralph, Patrick, JM and Joan. Patrick's bigger than all of us now since he's 2nd year high school. He used to be the smallest at 3-ft tall when he was just in grade school. Now he could beat the crap out of all of us.
Tak and Baby
Maya
Ralph and
Patrick
Ralph getting a
Tekken tattoo from the face painters
Jolibee...
without the scandal...
Tak, Joel and
Maya
Tak and Baby
Maya
Ralph with Baby
Maya
Ohhh... And I got this cute Hello Kitty plushie from the UFO Catcher at Time Zone in Glorietta on my way to the regular Saturday yoyo training camp meet of FlipSpin.
Crossposted: gokitomo.com, gorilla.multiply.com, gorilla.vox.com.
Before I start, here's a pink sleepy pig with an outie belly button I got at Tom's World SM South Mall Las Pinas.
Anyway, I wanted to set up my second hard disk with different Linux distributions. SO I did the usual formating, partitioning and adding an OS loader. In this case it was GRUB. Things were going great, I had WinXP, Nimblex, Ubuntu, Damn Small Linux and Geexbox up and running then WHAM! Blue Screen of Death... WinXP or Linux. Seems my PC was overheating, the processor temperature was reaching the auto-shutdown point set at 60 degrees celsius. I suspected that the culprit was the lack of cooling air reaching the processor or lack of contact between the processor and the heatsink. I was right. I replaced the power supply a couple of months ago and had to remove the processor fan to get at it. Back then the grease was already drying up. The PC is a year old so I was half-expecting it to dry up already.
I took the fan and heatsink apart and I was right. Damn things were dirty and air wasn't reaching the processor. Plus the thermal grease was already dry. I didn't have any thermal grease around. The stores in SM Southmall didn't have any in stock as well. So I had to make my own. The grease is important since it allows contact between the heatsink and processor so heat is conducted from the processor and makes for easier cooling by the fan and heatsink. So I googled for alternatives. I found Homemade Thermal Grease! at overclockers.com and Thermal Transfer Compound Comparison at dansdata.com very helpful. Hmmm... Seems toothpaste plus grease could do the trick, so could Brylcreem, but I couldn't find that particular page again since the PC hung before I could bookmark
I cleaned the dirt off the fan and heatsink with alcohol so they would dry fast (couldn't use water, WATER BAD!) Ditto for getting the dried thermal gunk off the processor. There were different recipes for homemade thermal grease, one suggestion was 75% toothpaste and 25% grease. I experimented and came up with a 50%-50% mixture using toothpaste and joint grease. The green gunk I lathered on the processor and slapped on the fan and heatsink. Well... So far so good. It's been a week now and no trouble yet. The processor temperature is down to 48 to 51 degrees. it's been a week and it's still going strong.With the PC in fighting form, I was able to finish the updates on FlipSpin.org (the Summer Swimming Party) and TeatroSanJose.org (Salubong)
Crossposted: gokitomo.com, gorilla.multiply.com, gorilla.vox.com.
My cousin Neil got married to his beautiful bride Cielo last Friday, December 8 at the San Sebastian Church. They met in UST where they got their college degrees. They also became co-teachers there because they taught right out of college. Neil didn't have any problems in the NCAA and UAAP since both UST and San Beda College (where he finished grade school and high school like me) won the basketball titles. Cielo was in a quandary in the UAAP when Ateneo and UST were duking it out since she studied in both schools. Speaking of basketball, Cielo worked for Vintage and also became a courtside reporter at one point. The reception was sort of like coming home for Neil since it was held in San Beda at the Jubilee Garden. The couple wanted to have the ceremonies (officiated by Fr. Tarsi, our principal in high school) held at San Beda. But that wasn't possible after the ruling that only parishes can hold weddings. My sister and brother-in-law, both bedans, were one of the lucky last couples to be married in San Beda. (Multiply Photo Album Link)
I dropped by Meowok and Olan's office last week for some manga updates. I dread going there. :D Hehehe. Like I said in previous posts, it seems I end up buying new stuff for my PC to be able to keep up with the increasing computing demands of graphics work associated with manga retouch and lettering. I wanted to buy Bambi's extra motherboard for upgrade purposes, but it turned out to be basically the same as my current motherboard (ECS Elite Group ). On Olan's suggestion, I bought a Wacom Graphire 4 4x5 pen tablet from Octagon Computer store in SM southmall to replace my now obsolete low-end Creatis graphics tablet. Took me some time to find out how to limit it to work in just one of my two monitors (dual monitor set up). It works like a charm! Plus I could change the tablet backing with photos and magazine cutouts. :D And of course, a trip to SM wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Tom's World UFO Catcher. There I got this ugly Tweety bird. :D
crossposted: gokitomo.com, gorilla.multiply.com, gorilla.vox.com
Found my way to SM South Mall last Sunday, November 12. I was there for kitchen utensils and retro PC purposes but I just couldn't resist passing by the UFO Catchers again after my rounds.
There were two little girls and one little boy there with their yaya and they were trying their hand at the Hello Kitty-filled UFO Catcher which I frequent but with no luck at all. What drew my attention was they were talking to each other in English. Not colegiala English, they spoke in halting (but correct) English. I don't know, but I was so amused that I got these three kitten while they were making the rounds of the other UFO Catchers. They were exclaiming. "Look! He got one!" And then "He got another! And another!"
After I was finished with the machine they were already lined up behind me to try their luck. I just grabbed the three kittens from the top of the machine (that's where I put them when I'm on a roll) and handed it to the three of them saying "Merry Christmas." I think they were too shocked to reply because I just turned around and headed for the car. Sigh. I just felt so good after that, I always do... Putting smiles on other people's faces...
I made the trip to SM because we had this old, heavy, broken-down Compaq Presario 1070 (Series 900D) lying around the house. Its specs: Intel 266Mhz, 16Mb RAM, 1GB HDD, CD-ROM, FDD, 12-inch screen and touchpad. It's obsolete, no more spare parts anywhere except for other broken models which I can't seem to find.
My mother and sister used it for for their school papers when it was working. About two years ago it started to deteriorate. I've opened it up, had to have the floppy disk drive replaced as well as reformat a couple of times. Then the "102 - System Board Failure" error appeared. That meant the main board was dead, no bios tweaks, no Linux and rescue live-cd booting possible, only board replacement could save it.
All the shops I went to exhausted all their contacts (even Compaq and HP calls but no dice). Even asked my brother-in-law George to ask his brother-in-law Erwin who owns a computer business to look at it. No dice. Bye-bye Compaq Presario 1070.
There are some PhP12,000+ replacement boards out there, but I personally think it would be better to just buy a new laptop. So now we're left with a very big "brick" (useless piece of hardware). But it's salvageable for parts. Only thing I knew which could be salvaged was the Toshiba 1Gb hard disk. So after loosening a few screws I was able to open up the wrist rest to expose the hard disk at the lower left side of the bottom portion of the laptop.
A few more loosened screws later and I was able to remove the hard disk. All that was needed was to detach the ribbon connector. Done.
My "brilliant" plan was to encase the hard disk in a cheap 2.5-inch laptop hard disk enclosure, they cost only PhP500+. The HD enclosure connects via USB 2.0 to any computer, which means I could have a 1Gb portable HD (okay, so it's big and clunky and only 1GB, but PhP500 is way cheaper than a PhP1,000+ 1Gb or PhP2,000+ 2Gb USB flash disk).
To my dismay, after making the rounds of all the PC shops, the 2.5-inch Toshiba 1Gb laptop hard disk was so thick and obsolete that it won't fit into the newer 2.5-inch laptop hard disk enclosures. Sigh. I trodded home but not before buying kitchen spoons and forks my mom asked for and doing the UFO Catcher routine.
I think all I could do now is probably buy one of those enclosures and "mod" / modify it to fit (read that as wreck the casing or just use the connector and make a new casing). That would probably be my project for next week.
It seems I still haven't lost my touch. A week ago I passed by the 3-pronged Fantasy World arcade unit at Tom's World in SM South Mall and I couldn't resist. The kitten on the left came home with me stuck to my car window. A week later, her siblings were still there. First try I got two, then second try I got three. Now I've got half a dozen kittens stuck to my car window. :D
Anyway, I said last post that I would continue the dual monitor story. Actually, my home PC went dead yesterday due to RAM problems. The RAM was hot to the touch. Cost me a bundle to get better Kingston 512Mb RAM than the generic 512Mb. Tech guy really tried to revive the RAM module but no dice. Oh well, the generic 512Mb served me well for some months, considering what I put my system through. But deep inside I'm still a quality Korean / 2nd-hand / bargain bin PC hardware shopper. It's the quick fix solution for me, I get good and sturdy hardware at a tenth of the price of brand new units. It's all a ma tter of smart shopping on my part. My choice of stores? Hiko-Tech, S.O.S. (Save on Surplus) and Aseanic.
Okay, now for some stuff which were stuck in my camphone for some time.
Here are two jeeps. The one on the left is a Coke jeepney I saw on the way to SM Southmall. The one on the right I think is the smallest jeep down south. It's even smaller than a tricycle! Check out the van beside it for a comparison. Heck, the guy driving has his knees and head sticking out of the vehicle. I've seen it around the Paranaque area for some time now. You know what, it's hard to drive and take pics at the same time. :D
Last three pics... At left is a pic of Mom when I accompanied her for an x-ray. She had been complaining of back and side pains. Docs suggested an x-ray just to be safe. Nothing was wrong, turns out she was just too tired from always carrying my nephew Enzo. Middle pic is of two beautiful girls. That's Nats and Harriet who I bumped into at the bookfair (yup, it's been that long). Last pic is of the parking lot booth near our building. It toppled during Milenyo. Bad thing was the caretaker was inside and he sustained very deep cuts on his arm from the broken glass. He's okay now, and all of the parking lot booths in our area in Ortigas are now welded to metal beams cemented deep into the ground.
That's all for today. :D
