Category: Brain Dumps

Don’t upgrade your drinks!

When I was in high school, buying a large Coke from McDonald’s was the most cost-effective way to get your soda fix. Sure, about a third of the cup would be ice, it’s better than shelling out 20 for a 12oz can from a vending machine.

Nowadays, however, it seems that most restaurants get their profit from their drinks, with Jolibee and McDonald’s being the worst offenders:

  • 7/11 Big Gulp (22oz) – PhP 25
  • Big soda (16oz) at Sbarro – PhP 28
  • Coke Light 500ml PET (17oz) at Mini Stop – PhP 30
  • Coke Light 1.5l PET (~51oz) at Mini Stop – PhP 43
  • Large soda (16oz) at Jolibee and McDonald’s – PhP 45 ಠ_ಠ

Think about it next time you order fast food.

Development PC build for August 2011

Since I’ve been too busy recently to think thoughtful articles, I just thought “What the hell…” and came up with this one.

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Last time I looked at computer parts was two years ago. Since then, a lot of things have changed in the market.

Basically, it’s just Moore’s Law: prices go down, performance goes up.

Thinking up of a gaming rig, however, isn’t that all exciting. There are literally hundreds of websites out there with people discussing (and debating) which combination of parts will give you the best gaming experience on the PC.

So to shake things up, I’ve decided to think of a PC build for software developers. Of course, if you’re developing for iOS, this article isn’t for you. But for the rest of us, having a good set of parts can really make a difference, especially since you’re going to be working in front of that machine for 40+ hours a week.

Continue reading “Development PC build for August 2011”

Customize Ubuntu Lock Screen Background

Changing your desktop background in Ubuntu (and practically any desktop OS) is trivially easy.

Changing your login background picture in Ubuntu will take a bit of Google-ing, but it’s still pretty easy to do.

Changing the background of the lock screen, however, is a different thing altogether.

original lockscreen

If you do some digging around, you’ll find out that this lock screen is defined in /usr/share/gnome-screensaver/lock-dialog-default.ui. In other words, it uses Glade for its design. On one hand, that means you could design funky lock screens like the NSA Lock Screen. On the other hand, simple tasks like changing the background can be a pain to do.

To spare you the effort in studying Glade just to change your lock screen’s background, I’ve created a Github project to point you at the right direction.

As shown in the relevant commit, changing the background requires 3 things present in your /usr/share/gnome-screensaver/:

  • a background image (the source of the quote should be pretty obvious),
  • a gtkrc file to add theming to the UI, and
  • the updated .ui file

This customization assumes you’re using a 1366×768 monitor. Modifying it to suit your monitor resolution shouldn’t be hard to do.

And the finished product:

customized lockscreen

How not to respond to criticism

Internet Drama: I like it for the cheap amusement and trolling opportunities it provides, but I don’t like risking getting emotionally involved to trivial matters.

Anyway, I just had to make a post about the recent gaming drama due to this quote from a halfhearted “my side of the story” article:

Hardworking people, including myself, spent thousands of hours away from family and friends working on Duke Nukem Forever. The game is what it is, but we poured our hearts into bringing the game back from video game purgatory. That single story hurt and I acted rashly, vented my frustration and I am paying for my actions, more so than you know. Shouldn’t the journalist have to pay for his? Should I continue to support him?

So you poured your heart/money/time/whatever to something and it turns out that it sucks. Then someone calls you out on it.

Asking for pity is the worst thing you can do in this situation.

For one, it’s illogical. If you worked hard for something should it automatically mean that your product is worthy of praise?

Also, if the criticism is indeed irrational and unfounded, then why the hell aren’t you taking taking it seriously? Shouldn’t you just ignore it, or just provide a clear and simple rebuttal on why it’s wrong? Why go the “victim” route?

I’ve seen this happen so many times ever since I got on the internet and it would’ve been amusing if it’s limited to deluded kids who think the traces they post to DeviantArt are the best thing since sliced bread.

But it’s not; as we see above, even a PR firm for a multimillion dollar production was stupid enough to do this.

Moral of the story: If sometime in the future I give a scathing review to you, your company, your product, your event, etc. and you respond by saying “we worked hard on this, you have no right to say that”, or worse, play the crab mentality card on me, I will seriously fuck you up.

My intro to freelancing talk

Was invited to talk at today’s Freelancing for WebGeeks event. I may not be your usual freelancer, given that the venue’s not a hassle for me (Exist TechBar Manila, my current gig’s with Exist) so I obliged.

Anyway, here are my slides. As usual, they don’t make sense without me talking.

before you leap

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