Hello, all! The summer has been incredibly lazy so far. I’ve been spending it either plurking, eating or sleeping. I’ve been going to bed at around three or four AM and waking up just in time for lunch.

To take a quick reprieve from the boredom and heat, I and a few friends decided to catch Knowing (Alex Proyas) at the local mall’s cinema. (They have a propensity for showing films weeks or even months after they launch. It would’ve been easier to use my torrential powers to acquire a copy of the movie, but the cinema has some damn good airconditioning and I miss popcorn.)

*SKIP THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON’T WANT TO FIND OUT HOW KNOWING ENDS.*

Here’s the skinny: Knowing sucked. The plot was roughly this: Nicolas Cage’s character obtains a sheet of paper with numbers scribbled all over it. The numbers indicate the dates and locations of major catastrophes but do nothing to help prevent them from happening. The Earth eventually becomes nothing more than a ball of fire, but not before Cage’s character’s son and Cage’s character’s neighbor’s daughter are taken someplace else by weird beings to “start everything over” (read: fornicate like bunny rabbits).

The plane crash and train derailing scenes were exciting and “whoa”-inducing, as was the fiery finale, but other than that, it was a waste of Php50 plus money for one large cheese popcorn and iced tea. I knew we should’ve seen Monsters vs. Aliens instead.

***

The local cinema’s got a big poster with Tom Hanks’s face…which can only mean one thing: Angels vs. Demons. The movie adaptation of the prequel to The Da Vinci Code is set to come out next month and I will be lining up to catch it. Hopefully, the MTRCB and its OA, kulang sa pansin panel will not question the ethics, beliefs, values and whatnot involved in the movie and delay its release as they did with TDVC. (Seriously, the hags over there reacted waaaay too much to The Da Vinci Code. They made it R-18 pa. Neknek nyo, dahil sa inyo I had to wait for the movie to hit HBO. It kinda sucked—wasn’t as faithful to the book as I expected—but still, neknek nyo! Rated 18?! Talaga lang ha?!)

In other news, I have two reviewer booklets for college entrance examinations sitting here untouched. At the beginning of the week, I promised to myself to devote two or three hours a day to going over the booklets. So far, that promise hasn’t been kept. I am, however, still dead serious when I say that I want to devote two or three hours of my day everyday to going over the reviewer booklets. To hell with Plurk Karma (heh, see what I did there?), to hell with Google Reader’s unread count!

*breathes in and out*

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve written like this. (Freewriting, I believe it’s called?) I like it when my thoughts just spill out, and although spilled thoughts are often relegated to the care of my Moleskine, my fingers just move faster on a keyboard than with a pen. I’m as tempted as hell to go over what I just typed above and correct any awkward wording, phrasing or punctuation. I must fight the power.

*edits then facepalms*

Keep life Deantastic.

Last Sunday, I had the distinct honor of guesting on the podcast of the Pakbet crew, the non-leaders of opinion, together with Inay Jenny. The recording’s been edited, mixed down and uploaded by podcast meister Rain, so please to listen to Pakbet Podcasts Episode 4: The Jenijenjen Song, nao na!

On this episode (where I repeatedly make sabat, giggle and speak too fast), we talked about:

• The Plurkfiesta at Banchetto
• Update on the Bebigerls
• The Failon Incident
• The boy who killed the cat
• And the world debut of the Jenijenjen Song

The voices on the podcast are those of Pakbet Boys Rain Contreras, J, and Gilbz, as well as “Trainee” Crushie Di, along with me and Jenny.

I haven’t been able to post to the blog this week, and for that I apologize. I’ve been swamped with schoolwork this week despite the fact that there were no classes from Monday to Wednesday. The Science Investigatory Projects are due really, really soon, and while we’re nearly done with our manuscripts, there’s a lot of work to be done yet.

So, anyway, there are some stuff I want to talk about. Let me yap now.

Sarah Palin is McCain’s veep

Sarah Palin, a single-term governor of Alaska for two years now, has been chosen as John McCain’s running mate. I watched Gov. Palin’s speech after McCain introduced him, and right then and there I figured their camp was getting panicky. Here’s what she said in her speech (full transcript found here):

“I think as well today of two other women who came before me in national elections. I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and, of course, Senator Hillary Clinton, who showed such determination and grace in her presidential campaign.

“It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.”

This was clearly an attempt to pander to Clintonians who were disappointed at the fact that Hillary’s name isn’t on the Democratic ticket—a clever attempt, in all fairness. This is how I interpreted the speech, though:

Hey, Hillary Clinton didn’t win the primaries, which only means that I’m the right person for Veep and Grandpa Johnny’s the right one for Prez.

Photo credits: http://blog.cleveland.com

It underestimates the logic of American women everywhere. It seems like the McCain campaign has assumed that people will vote for Palin (and maybe even her running mate) simply because she has a vagina. This election was supposed to transcend all boundaries. After all, a charismatic African-American by the name of Barack Obama is the first black to be nominated for the presidency by a major political party, and by golly, Hillary Clinton would’ve made history were she the nominee. Why then have the Republicans assumed that people would decide who the next vice president will be by virtue of sex?

This article from Jon Soltz explains why Palin is a bad choice, and strengthens my initial reaction about it being more of a political pick than concern for the nation. Palin is simply less experienced than what Republicans say. She has been governing Alaska since 2006. Let’s not forget that Alaska has a sizeable amount of money in its coffers thanks to the fact that it’s bursting with natural resources and has a smaller population to spend its money on. Translation: no fiscal quandaries, which at least partly explains why she is well thought of in her home sate. As for foreign policy? “Alaska’s close to Russia, so she’s gotta have some experience” is all they’ve got. Surely, Barack Obama, who legislates and therefore knows about the issues and concerns of the John and Jane Does of America (and not just the John and Jane Does of one sparsely populated state), has more experience to boot. Alas, the hypocrisy of John McCain and gang (regarding Obama’s “inexperience”), is revealed.

(She looks like Tina Fey, though.)

In other news

Things are finally looking up for me in the love department. (OK, teenage stuff ahead—brace yourselves.) The wounds of the past look like they’ve finally healed and new doors are opening up. I couldn’t be happier.

However, school’s been nothing but a load of shit. The first quarter of the school year has come to a close, and our grades (for which I expressed my indifference in an earlier post) are starting to pour in. The long wait to find out how high (or low) our marks are is nerve-wracking, and I can only hope it all goes well. I’m in deep trouble with my Statistics and Physics grades, though. I’ll update you on my fate as soon as I get information.

I’ve also decided to go ahead and participate in Blog Action Day 2008, where bloggers will write about one common topic to try to raise awareness for it. This year, the issue in focus is poverty, something I’m not alien to because I have encounters with it everyday. I’ve been struggling to write as of late though, but I’ll try my very best to get a post ready for the event. (Mark it on your calendars—October 15′s the date.)

Jaiku is back from the dead. Well, sorta. Google, in an attempt to revive its entry in the microblogging arena, has opened Jaiku up to the public. No more “give us your email and we’ll see what we can do” nonsense—just sign up (or sign in), agree to the new Terms of Service, and you’re off jaikuing (or whatever the appropriate verb is). Whatevs. My microblogging platform of choice is still Plurk, with a little tweeting thanks to TwitterFox, and a sprinkle of Tumblr to complete the recipe.

Lastly, but not the least, I want to mention a great blog I discovered recently—Putting Blogs First, which is written by Muhammad Siyab. There’s a whole load of great content in there, like Thursday Link Roundups and Top X lists for your perusal. Check it out! (The author of the blog did not approach me asking for a plug. No compensation was provided for this mention. I don’t even know if Muhammad knows I’ve linked to his website, lol.)

I’ll catch up with you in a bit, and hopefully next time I’ll have more good news to report. Toodles.

Twitter‘s been down in the dumps for a long time now. Downed servers, features being disabled (as of this writing, IM still hasn’t been restored). Twitter blog posts are never about new features, but instead about what has gone wrong with their system (and about how they’re “working to fix it”). Nobody knows why our favorite microblogging application’s so buggy—it might be because they use MacBook Airs, it might be because they use Vista—it could be anything!

Enter Plurk. Apparently using the wtf-is-wrong-with-Twitter buzz to generate buzz for their service, Plurk opened up to users only very recently and was (unsurprisingly) met with cheery welcome. Personal observations reveal that Twitter has become quiet of late, while Plurk is always busy.

Which can only mean more people are Plurking than Twittering! Countless people have “converted” to Plurk from Twitter—author included—and for good reason: Plurk. Kicks. Twitter’s. Ass. Why? Here’s why.

Timelined updates

Twitter shows you a boring old list of updates—observe my timeline, for example. It’s nothing but a vertical pile of words. My Plurk timeline is a much more enjoyable place—a draggable horizontal list that makes pagination obsolete, and the page more visual instead of textual.

Threaded Plurk replies

Granted, Twitter basically allows you to reply to tweets (updates) made by other people by doing this:

But it doesn’t foster discussion (because of the fact that a reply to a tweet cannot be readily viewed by another user). Plurk encourages discussion because you can reply to a plurk (Plurk version of tweet) by clicking on it and then typing in your reply, like so:

I don’t know about you, but I’d choose the service that encourages replies. This puts the blogging in microblogging. Comments are the life of every blog—the same goes for microblogs, and as you know, people on the Interwebs are a busy bunch who don’t like having to go through a lot of work just to find conversation.

Bolden, italicize, underline, and hyperlinkify your text

Say for example I want people to check out my blog. On Twitter, I do that by typing “Hey fellas! Visit my blog at www.deanlozarie.com!” Whereas on Plurk, I just type in “Hey fellas! Visit my http://www.deantastic.com/ (blog)!” and the plurk would come out as “Hey fellas! Visit my blog!”

If you want to italicize the word stinky in “boogers are stinky”, just Plurk in “boogers are *stinky*” (asterisks before and after the word), and Plurk processes it and outputs it as “boogers are *stinky*” (yes, asterisks are retained). Four asterisks—two on each side of the word—make it boldface. Two underscores (“__stinky__”) will underline the word.

To the best of my knowledge, Twitter has no such formatting options. Twitter=Phail.

Karma and Smilies

To encourage user activity, Plurk employs a point system called “Karma”. Basically, the more you plurk, the more Karma you get; the less you plurk, your karma is decreased. More Karma gives you access to more features, like the ability to name your timeline, change the creature on your timeline background, change your display name, and get more smilies.

Onto smilies. Know how when you type “: – )” into your favorite instant messaging client, it turns into a ? Twitter, very much like the French, refuses to do that for you, instead choosing to leave the semicolon, hyphen and closing parenthesis alone. Granted, : – ) and mean pretty much the same thing, but looks a helluva lot cooler, don’t you think?

Plurk has a whole array of animated smilies for you to use. Some of the cooler ones can only be accessed by plurkers above a certain karma threshold. Still, many websites such as this one have lots of smilies available for embedding into your plurks. Which brings me to my next point:

Ability to embed images and video onto plurks

Twitter folks type something like this: “Check out this YouTube vid: [enter URL here]“. Plurkers needn’t go through such tiresome work, thanks to the ability to embed images and video into your post. How, you ask? Simple! Say for example I want to insert this video into my plurk. All I need to do is type in some text (e.g. “check out this video”) and then the clip’s URL. Heck, I could even plurk only the video. So, I type “testing image/video insertion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk9QGZUYcEE” and here’s what appears:

Look closely, to the left of the “Plurk v Twitter: A First Look” mini-window, and you’ll see the plurk containing the video.

No downtime!

Now, in fairness to Twitter, saying that Plurk suffers from zero downtime would be preposterous. However, one thing’s fo sho: Twitter not suffering any problems is an uncommon occurence, while the reverse is true for Plurk. Right now, Twitter replies are disabled. Replies have been restored, IM functionality still down. Plurk’s all good and well. Plurk even automatically checks for new plurks and new replies for you without refreshing the page (contrary to Twitter, where if you want to check if there are any new tweets, you have to hit F5).

Conclusion

Overall, it’s Plurk FTW. Don’t get me wrong—Twitter used to be good, until the database crashes and server downtimes came. Plurk took over, and although the great exodus from Twitter (to Plurk) hasn’t quite happened yet, it’s bound to soon. Still, all hope is not lost for Twitter. What they have to do, IMO, is get their act together, fix their database crashes, earn some money (plaster one or two AdSense units on our pages if you have to), and then invest that money on more servers, developing more features, etc. It’s a microblogging-platform-eat-microblogging-platform world out there, and Twitter’s down for the count. Can it get back up in time?

Twitter’s been down lately. Anyone with an account at the service will know that. The Web’s been abuzz with rants about the downtime, and while Pownce and Jaiku users have taken this opportunity to invite people to switch, Twitterers still can’t find a better service.

Until Plurk came along.

Yes, Plurk. It’s taking the Interwebs by storm and becoming a serious alternative to Twitter. How can it not be, what with its name (Plurk! Plurk! Plurk! I could say it all day), the funny headless pig cartoon, and the cool features that come with it. Many Plurkers (I guess that’s what we’re called) have been asking the questions: Is Plurk a viable alternative to Twitter and are you going back to Twitter or leaving it for good? In this post, I’ll explore the answers to those questions, so follow along!

Continue Reading »