Interestingly no real account of cyber bullying has ever made headlines in the Philippines yet (this is probably because of the socio-economic reasons as majority of the nation’s population accesses the internet through Internet-Cafes). Though there is no precedence, Mirriam isn’t really taking any chances with there are many reports of children committing suicide in other countries due to cyber bullying.

There might not be any real accounted precedence for this but I can attest that it has happened to me before, I just probably have thicker digital-skin than other people but then again I’ve never experienced getting videos of my personal-sexual-relations getting leaked online or having the entire 4chan community flame me.

The quest for equality among persons and the advancement of human rights start from basic education, where children learn the values of cura personalis [the Jesuit principle of caring for the whole person] and being men and women for others from their teachers and apply what they’ve learned to their classmates and friends,- Sen. Mirriam Santiago

Though it doesn’t seem like a big deal right now but with the latest trends in technology, children will only get more and more exposed to the internet and will use it more and more making this more and more probable in the country.

I’ve gone through Netscape Mail, Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird (my favorite PC mail client so far) and now I use Mail (the pre-installed mail application in mac os x). One thing I can conclude so far is that I cannot live without an email client application.

Though the trend in technology is switching to doing everything on the web (including email accessed from browsers we know as webmail ex. Gmail). I still find the usefulness of email clients to be undeniable specially when you live in the Philippines where wifi access isn’t always possible. This is even more useful if your in school doing a lot of org work/ group work or you work in a field that needs fast information decimation.

For those of you who have ignored email clients for the longest time. Email clients such as Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird and Mail use either a POP or IMAP protocol to get and copy email from your email accounts to your local hard drive. In the old days of the internet this was the only way to check email but now we have email client’s biggest competitor webmail which allows us to access our inboxes from any computer with just the use of a browser.

Most people would think, why should I use an email client when it would use local space on my hard drive not to mention I’d need a whole other application just to check mail as compared to using webmail which is readily accessible through browsers that are pre-installed in our operating systems?

Though this is a huge drawback to using an email client it still doesn’t lessen the utility value of having a local copy of your email. This is specifically even more highlighted when you are an extremely mobile person and may sometimes find yourself without internet access.

Here are a couple of my experiences that can show the notable use of my email client

1. During an EBAM (Editorial Board Aspirants Meeting) the executive aspirants we’re trying to take note of the suggestions of some of the absent aspirants that we’re sent via mail the night before. Most people with a laptop would go to their browsers and log on to gmail to access the previous nights set of emails but the problem was the campus network group was having trouble with the WiFi in our building at the time. Luckily I use Apple Mail and had a copy of their mail already downloaded.
2. Normally checking mail would be a chore that you had to go through periodically (students normally doing it in the evening) opening a separate tab and then logging on to their email accounts. During the different hellweeks in my semesters specially during Marketing and Leadership and Strategy class, I found it really easy as I received and downloaded attachments with probably only a 1-second delay to the time the person sent it. I got updates as they we’re updated and news as it was being written. Did I mention it doesn’t feel like a chore? Thats because I can leave Mail running constantly (with it checking for new mail every 5-10 minutes) while I just browse along facebook or finish my design comissions, I don’t have to open a new tab just for email.

Case number 2 is specifically important to me as a student and as a member of the school newspaper where the rule is to ALWAYS ALWAYS reply ASAP to every email and text message.

But with those big reasons alone why aren’t most students making full use (specially as macs are becoming more and more popular in school and macs have pre-installed email clients) of their laptops and using email clients?

Well one big hurdle so far (within the ateneo) is that the our incampus Wireless Internet security prevents downloading email to clients. This however does not hinder reason 1 as there are multiple wireless hotspots in Katipunan that allow POP and IMAP access.

People usually think of it as hard simply because they have to actually do something before recieving email. For many of you who think this is the case (specially you mac users who never get to use your mail application) below is an image at how idiotically simple for the internet generation it is to set up their Mail applications (the process is actually quite similar in other email clients)

Most email providers with pop or IMAP access will have more detailed instructions. A good email provider that does this that I know about is gMail so check out their website for more info.

If your asking what email clients you should use? For PC users, I highly recommend Thunderbird over Outlook but either is still quite good. For Macs, the preinstalled Mail client is already there so why not use it?

I haven’t clicked the update link on my wordpress admin panel yet (I’m waiting for a compatibility check with my plugins) but a lot of the new features are really worth being excited about.

1. Global Trash/ Undo – I actually have mixed feelings about this. I’ve always wanted an undo feature in wordpress but I never thought it could be implemented in the same way as a trash bin. It does go hand-in-hand with the trend of doing everything on the web.
2. Image editor – This is something really big specially if you work with wordpress as much as I do (and if you use it with newspaper/magazine sites the way I use it with the GUIDON and G).
3. Easy Video embedding – This would be a great help to those who like sharing youtube posts a lot but I wonder if the code will be xhtml valid afterwards?

I’ll probably try this out on my offline installation of wordpress tonight before I upgrade any of the wordpress blog installations I have . If you wanna know more about wordpress 2.9 check WordPress.org.

The GUIDON EB race started a few weeks back which prompted me to put training into a hiatus while focusing more on webdesign and press rather than dancing. I still love dancing but I really have to put it on hold, graphics and web design are still of course my first love.

Speaking of graphics on the web, Tata made a post about this a while back. In the good old days when PHP was just starting to creep its ways to the regular filipino web designer as a helpful tool and WordPress was still called b2. Back then we seem to all worship and adore sites like Aethereality.net, Blinding-light.com and Daydreamgraphics.com. I wanted to reminisce and take a look at them and well I sort of saw that many of them have become stuck in the past.

All three of the sites mention above have not been updated in more than a month. Two are still using the sort of fan-girlish anime type layouts we all used to use when we started out. Daydream graphics has embraced wordpress as a CMS and let go of its home grown database of tutorials and layouts but well I no longer worship the layouts that are posted there. On the sidenote, the only premade layout I did and submitted to aethereality is still the last updated pop-up layout available.

For some reason everything seems to be going so well lately. I’m tired alot and I get sleepy a lot during statistics class but I’m getting through everything pretty well. I dunno I’m just in such a happy mood this semester! Everything is just going so well.

I also got back in the GUIDON! Finally after re-applying 4 times I got my job back! The GUIDON sure has changed though, not in a bad way but in a good way. A lot of the things I wish we’re there specially for the webteam is actually being done now and my co-staffers are all so brilliant! I haven’t felt surrounded by colleagues who can actually speak my geek language for a very long time!

Tomorrow’s gonna be a party day, I have the ACTM 1st GA from 430-6 then from 6pm onwards the G online magazine launch! Can’t wait!

I have to agree with Kevjumba on this. I really didn’t like how the media portrayed Michael Jackson so much and it’s so irritating how even years after going on oprah to explain his skin, people still think he willingly bleached his skin.

Salute to the king

my new design for flavor of life

After seeing that I’ve been featured on vector tuts, I decided I’d try and get back on my feet on graphic design again. Having lots of time, boredom and anger also helps a lot when your trying to make art. To the left you’ll find the next design that I’ll be using for Flavor of Life (I got sick of this plain design quite quickly). It sort of looks like Avatar meets the Beijing Olympics with Japanese kana. The koi in the header is from this koi art I made that can be seen on my deviant art website (which I haven’t posted anything on for a year).

Speaking of designs, multiply recently revamped its main page. So far, I actually like the functionality that the new dashboard inbox brings to multiply but the design is hideous. I’ll start with the color of the top bar which really is just to strong and bold of a blue for my taste, something that is going to take that much space in a design should at least have a more subtle or more pastel color. The scroll-bars are also quite irritating specially if your a mac user like me who doesn’t like hiding his dock. I seriously think multiply should rethink the design part of this revamp a bit because right now it just looks like some unprofessional 2nd rate social network service.

I was vain yesterday and I googled my name and somewhere around the first two pages I came across this website which pointed me to this article at Vector tuts.

Seems like people are actually starting to enjoy my old (I mean really old) art! It does feel good to finally feel recognized.

Recently actually I’ve been noticing a lot of things wrong with WP which I suspect is coming from the rapid growth it has gone through (its not exactly as light weight as it used to take pride in). I’ve been taking a look at other blogging tools to study and I’m seriously thinking of moving from wordpress to another blogging platform, would anyone have any suggestion? Im currently studying up Expression Engine but I would like to learn of a few more.

With what I have seen with Expression Engine, its more versatile when it comes to site design and structure as it doesn’t exactly use the normal header content footer hierarchy that most of us recognize from other blogging software. It is a lot like Textpattern and Moveable type in a sense that you create template and use their codebases. However I find (being used to the header footer thing) that this is what makes it a little bit more difficult as well but it does give you more freedom and it wouldn’t give you too much of a problem I guess.

comments galore

As for wordpress, unlike most reviews I actually find designing for it still very easy but it is easy to mess up as well since the php code is completely out in the open. While I was troubleshooting my theme this afternoon I decided to end my misery and create a basic wordpress structure php file with comments so I won’t get lost again when I’m trouble shooting or creating a new theme. It’s completely filled with comments its laughable but I think it might be useful to others out there who are struggling with creating their first theme since Im really trying to make it idiot proof just incase I forget something. I might share it on this blog later on but I gotta clean it up a bit first.

Flavor of Life's new look

Since school finally ended I found myself sometime to actually get this layout which was created three months ago online! YAY! It isn’t entirely old as I spent most of the morning changing the original design I created three weeks ago cause it just didn’t suit my taste anymore.

I have to thank an old colleague Aislin Kee for the idea on the Fs though, I saw her do some of these great typography artworks and I wanted to be a copy cat and do some crazy art with font. If you noticed as well I added two new things on the bottom, though most of my offline friends already know me from these networks but yeah I added a follow me on twitter and plurk.

I’m signing out pretty quick I have to take a bath and accompany my grandmother at her house tonight cause her maid bailed out on her again. See yeah