i've taken to reading e-books off my Clié - whle i haven't started reading them all, these books may be interesting.
- "The Action Principles" - can supposedly "bring peace and prosperity into your life." who knows?
- "The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms - a classic Chinese novel. taken from the website, "[w]ritten 600 years ago, it tells the epic of Han Dynasty in China during the 2nd and 3rd century."

okay, i don't have _that_ many right now, but i do intend to keep reading books as long as i could find time to. =)

i've also taken to playing old games - check this site out.

my choir had a really nice bowling game today - my group won! (i forgot the scores, but i'll put it in someday.) and then i also played a little billiards too - i can really say that, playing Virtual Pool 3 on my PC really made a difference with my actual billiards playing experience. maybe i should look for my copy and play with it again on my PC...

darn, i still don't have an article for the choir's newsletter... better come up with one real soon.

talk about a rough night.

the moment i stepped in our home, i had to do a quick double take back out, because something was up with our choir - messy business, but someone has to step up to do something, if possible...

we'll see tomorrow how things pan out.

on another note, an officemate of mine has finally started talking with me again, after a month of silent treatment... you can say i'm very much pleased that things are looking like they'll be normal again... really wish i knew how it all really started though, but the details are only a nice-to-have... i'll always remember her when i go buy macapuno from now on... =P

my close friend at work didn't report for work today - i do hope she's alright...

reminder to self: do not spend on items that are considered unnecessary anymore.

rationale? i've been spending so much of my money, i'm actually finding my savings barely moving... and that's not good for an employee who's been working for over a year already. i gotta shape up my spending habits and make my expenses more strictly monitored from now on.

that being said, i might be selling my Palm m505 away, complete a 16MB SD card, the foldable keyboard and the Bluetooth module. assuming anyone who reads this is interested, post me and i'll consider it.

i see the Sandman coming to get me now... i better get ready before it hits me unexpectedly.

i've been away so long, i can't even remember when i last posted...

anyway, i've finally got that darned PDA working - only in Japanese, but it's liveable.

what has happened for the past few days to me?

well, last Monday (if i'm not mistaken), i unknowingly brought down a particular service in the company, crippling operations for everyone for at least 5 hours. and honestly, i feel really stupid having done that. but mistakes are there for learning. so i fall, and i pick myself up, and learn from the mistake.. i sure hope i don't commit any more of those mistakes.

things i'm looking forward to this Holy Week:
- sleep!
- reinstallation of my video editing OS / partition
- installation of Clié apps, and preparation of large databases / apps for installation into a Memory Stick (once i get around to getting one)
- finishing my MIDI transcriptions for choir use
- more sleep!

this should do for now...

after being away from posts for the past few days, i have finally finished reflashing my Clié. and it still doesn't work! the entire silkscreen still refuses to accept any input.

so i have decided to go and reflash it back to Japanese. i have been very disappointed, but not unfazed, by this.

of course, my disappointments would have stopped there had this computer store understood what i was asking from them from the start.

it all started with my fascination to purchase a Creative SurroundStation for my speaker setup. i had asked from one of their Makati branches about how much it would cost, and they told me that it was going for P2.5k. i was excited at the thought - it would be rather cheap for the purpose... and then when i decided to try to actually get it from another branch, they mistook my query for some other product. the reason? they didn't understand my query for the SurroundStation, and assumed it for speaker stands. and it'll cost me P5.8k.

pfft. now i'm thinking of just getting it online.

as for the Clié - i think there's still hope for it.

i've been away for quite a while, and for good reason - i'm mad at work finishing flashing this PDA of mine even as i type right now - i just can't wait to have it up and running already.

expect me to be non-exist with posts for some more time...

on another note, i will be getting a
Creative Surroundstation for my 4.1 speaker setup, to clean up our oh-so messy room on Saturday... will talk about that when i have that set up already. all i'm worried about with it right now is how i'll exactly carry it home, since according to the specs i've read, it'll weigh in at a whopping 10kg.

anyway, i still have 10+ sectors to go... woohoo!

new toys seem to be coming into our hands these days - first my brother's DVD writer, then my new PDA, and now, my sister got an ECS Desknote A907 notebook today - i'm actually composing my blog on it right now running a bootable CD of Slackware Linux. we'll be setting it up for M$ software as soon as my brother finishes flashing the Clié.

speaking of which, we're still working on it owing to a boo-boo i did last night - my brother wanted to teach me to do the flashing myself, but i goofed it up, so i just had him do it again, to be on the safe side. things are looking good, but it's still a long way to go to finish this flashing - we do plan to finish it by the end of the day though, so in due time we'll get it up and running. i hope. of course my brother wants to take the unit as his own after all this is done, which, of course, i won't agree to. finders keepers.

my dad also got an old Phillips Savvy mobile phone fixed, and i'm now using that to keep my Smart SIM active. the only complaint i have with it is that its keypad can be a little stiff, and the UI really needs some getting used to.

adventures with the Clié - day 3

with some coaching from my brother, we now know where the OS (or Big ROM, in technical terms) is in the device - it's at 0x10010000, just in case you're like us who has a Clié NR70 for reflashing, as we really couldn't find this info anywhere.

i honestly thought that it was a done deal once we had that address. well, apparently not. according to information we got off this site, we'll have to perform the flashing on a per sector basis. and since we're talking about some 8MB of flash ROM currently occupied, we're in for a lot of work. still, i do presume that once this tedious task is finally done, we'll have this device up and running again.

word to the wise: never try to reflash your device using a ROM image intended for another device. i believe this device was flashed by its previous owner with an NR70V ROM image - he believed that there shouldn't be any problem flashing this into the device. i guess he was wrong, but who knows? until i can get this thing up and running, i can't really say if he made a mistake in the first place. for all we know, the darn thing's busted. for good. in which case i have a wonderful paperweight for my use. i'm very hopeful that it isn't the case...

right now we've dumped the ROM currently residing in the device, and we're trying to figure out how much needs to be changed in memory - i have a feeling it wouldn't, but i'm sort of doubtful. let's hope for the best...

i am now the proud owner of a slightly irregular Sony Clié PEG-NR70.

what i mean by "slightly irregular" is that it needs a little work to get it up and running.

it's not simple, though how i wish it were - it involves reflashing the OS of the device, and for the past two days, we've pretty much narrowed it down to the point where we need to find where the OS actually resides in flash memory, so that we can direct the ROM image we have into that place. any help from anyone would be highly appreciated. (FYI: we're connected to the Clié via serial, and using gdb over Linux to fix the device.)

i'll stop my post on that note for now - gotta get some rest, unless i want to miss work tomorrow.

i completed encoding two-thirds of the choral arrangement we have of Billy Joel's "The Longest Time" into MIDI last Monday, and it sounds really cool - really hoping to get the solo part for this, though i'm a bit doubtful, since this song hits a note i can't reach with my natural singing voice, and it's always a better option to have someone comfy with the range to sing the particular parts.

my friend let me accompany her home last night, and i stayed there for a bit, mingling with her homemates. it's a nice feeling, getting to know more of her world, and i hope this trend keeps on keeping on (a phrase she coined some time back). of course, some officemates of ours saw me on my way home in the vicinity, and since they sort of know who she is and where she lives, i guess they have an assumption on why i was there that they can't go wrong on. but i'm not worried.

oh, and i've been itching to get this posted - this morning i saw a replay of GMA 7's Saksi and saw a news segment of the many guys and girls (okay, emphasis on guys here) saw the premiere of Maui Taylor and Katya Santos' "Sex Drive" at the UP Film Center. there was this part when the two were asked to comment on the movie as being pornographic, and while Maui's comment (something along the lines of "it's not that pornographic compared to other movies") was quite acceptable to me, Katya's comment surely made my head (and ears and all) turn - while i can't quote her exact lines, she did say something that pretty much went like, "at least sa movie lang, hindi sa flesh".

what the heck?

IMHO, pornography is pornography, regardless of its form. no one should justify the tolerance of pornography by its mode of delivery. but with the proliferation of such movies (being labeled as art by their producers), i'm beginning to wonder whether the whole notion of sexuality here in the country has finally broken free of its supposedly conservative chains. we are a country that, on the one hand, speaks of chastity, conservativeness, and other such "unliberated" circles of thought; and on the other, has a throbbing mass (pun intended) of single teenagers and young adults acting like liberated Westerners, who, generally speaking, treat their sexuality as just another form of feeling that they can enjoy and exploit.

an officemate of ours here succinctly said, "who knows who will define morality and ethics, five to ten years down the road?"

it looks like i'll have to share his view on this matter.