Tatay's birthday

Today is my father's 64th birthday.

The bird still sings true
As its feathers turn to gray.
Today, it caught deer.

;-)

Happy birthday, Tatay!
 

more > | full >>

< less | full >>

Nanay's book

We received the first 10 copies of my mother's book, Orations, Poems, and Other Writings. The rest will roll off the presses tomorrow. Congratulations, Nanay!

more > | full >>

< less | full >>

Pipin' Not!

Hmmm. It seems the Yahoo! Pipes engine is down. All I'm getting for any pipe (not just mine) is:

Pipes encountered a problem while running this pipe: The Pipes engine request failed (-1)

I guess success does have its price. ;-)

Update 1: It's on and off. Mostly off at this time...
Update 2: Looks fine now.

more > | full >>

< less | full >>

Pipin' Hot!

I'm obviously a big fan of Google (except for a few things here and there), and there are some projects of theirs, such as GoogleMashups and Jaiku, whose public launches I eagerly await. [ Hey Google, how about some dev accounts, huh? ;-) ] **

Meanwhile, I'm not one for thumb-twiddling, so I look around. Thus, I'm on Twitter and Yahoo! Pipes.

Yahoo! Pipes is simply fascinating, and I regret that I only started playing around with it over a year after its launch. If Google ever considered purchasing Yahoo!, Pipes was likely on its list of Pros.

The concept behind Yahoo! Pipes is simple: you stitch together various elements and transform data as it travels from one end to another. All this is done via a neat AJAX interface.

From the site:

Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.

Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs.

I started on Pipes by combining Twitter JSON feeds and RSS from Prologue-themed WordPress sites, e.g. psyku.tk. It was a pretty interesting exercise, and you can see the results in my "Twitter + psy//ku" widget box.

Here's a snapshot of one of my pipes in the editor:



I'm sure I'll be working on more pipes as time allows. Check them out at pipes.yahoo.com/ibrado.

** Feb 26. I now have Mashups access.

more > | full >>

< less | full >>

Twitter for Google Apps, plus restoring SMS updates

I had two problems with Twitter:

1. I wanted to be able to receive IMs via my own Google Apps domain (instead of my account at gmail.com).

I found the solution over at kavinda.net. To summarize,

a. Add the following entries to your domain's DNS (replacing example.com with your domain name, of course):

_xmpp-client._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 5 0 5222 talk.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-client._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5222 talk4.l.google.com.

_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

_jabber._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.example.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

b. Give your changes time to propagate, e.g 24 hours;

c. Login to Twitter and add your Google Apps IM account to your device (I chose Jabber, IIRC). Take note of the generated password;

d. Add twitter@twitter.com to your buddies. If it doesn't immediately show up as a visible user, your DNS changes haven't propagated enough (i.e. the old version is still cached at Twitter's nameservers);

e. Send it the password from c above. That's it!


2. Perhaps due to my diddling of the notification settings, I was no longer receiving any SMS updates. While IM is great, I'm not always at the computer (rigggghhhttt...).

Here's how to fix it (YMMV):

a. Make sure that "phone" is selected under Notifications at http://twitter.com/home;

b. Double-check that notifications for your mobile phone is set to "On" at http://twitter.com/devices;

c. Add a PIN (most likely not required, but useful anyway to prevent spoofing);

d. Send "on" to Twitter's mobile number.

That should do the trick! (Thanks to Gari for the test twitters, hehe.)

more > | full >>

< less | full >>

Heart's Cry, circa 1993

From the dusty recesses of my brain comes this poem written almost exactly 15 years ago, IIRC (i.e. post-Valentine's). I don't remember having counted syllables (10-8-10-8) and rhyming every other line, but there you go... Maximum mush! :-D

Heart's Cry

I lay without sleep, yet not without pain
For pain I did feel in my heart
Pain caused by love and a hope held in vain
That I of your life become part.

I once really thought that you loved me too
For your deeds were with thought for me
But alas it seems that I am to you
But brother, not lover-to-be.

And so, my love, I must let the dream go
For though it hurts, I know it's right.
Forgive me, I ask, for loving you so,
And for crying to sleep tonight.

... then this haiku came rushing out of nowhere:

The words of years gone
Open up my calloused heart;
Once more do I bleed.

Shrug.

more > | full >>

< less | full >>