When the songbird sings

The web developer for the current site I’m running is leaving soon and we haven’t found a replacement yet. If you would like to earn extra moohlas for a project or would like to work with us permanently, please leave a message with your contact info or email: winsia@mrmstudios.com.

Web Designer/Developer Job Description:

• Responsibility over layout, design and visual production of the company’s core websites, as well as specialized projects, undertaken by the eCommerce department.
• Development of web style guides and templates.
• Design and development of user interfaces for web applications.
• Scanning and cataloguing of images from a variety of formats.
• Advising the web team on issues of design and usability.
• Ensuring cross-browser compatibility of all websites, as well as adherence to W3C web standards and 508 (ADA) compliance.

Qualifications:

• At least 2 years experience in a highly intense and demanding web development environment.
• Excellent web design and web development skills; Demonstrated experience in original graphic design, and illustration with a variety of media. Must have experience with Web development languages including HTML/XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
• Ability to use multimedia and web page development software packages including Dreamweaver, PhotoShop, Flash, and Visio is highly desirable.
• Must be familiar with Search Engine Optimization strategies, and must be aware of web standards, 508 standards and cross browser compatibility issues when developing pages.
• Expertise in website usability concepts.

Requirements: Please bring updated resume’ and portfolio of previous works and projects.

I have been very busy lately, what with trying to update this blog if I can and working on the affiliate program which I hope to launch by early next month. The program is not for this blog but for another site which basically constitutes my bread and butter.

I got this meme off The Pink Cafe about BBC’s The Big Read. I am a big fan of books. I love reading. I read whenever and wherever I can and I buy books whenever my budget allows it. If you are reading this entry and have the time, follow the drill:

1. Bold the books you have read.
2. Italicize the books you own and that you intend to read.
3. Underline the book which you started reading but didn’t finish, or which you finished but bored you to tears.
4. *Mark* the book which is in your reading list or you intend adding to your wishlist.
5. Add five more titles of your choice.

The top 100:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller*
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy*
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell*
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck*
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl*
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert*
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald*
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck*
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy*
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer*
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky*
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens*
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (I wouldn’t recommend this one)
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez*
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie*

the top 200:

101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde*
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt (One of my very favorites!)
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George’s Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walke* (Got a copy sitting in my bookshelf)
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby*
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O’Brian*
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan*
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov*
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh*
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. LawrenceLife of Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera*
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews

My additions:

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Rome was invited by his contact at MTV Philippines to attend Tim Yap’s birthday last Wednesday at Embassy bar at The Fort. And so we went there to hob-nob (I, mostly observing people) with anybody we personally knew. We met the staff of MANual mag and were greeted by the EIC, RJ Ledesma. The event was organized by MTV.

Tim Yap

The birthday party also became an occasion for the soft-launch of Yap’s new reality program to be aired starting next month on MTV. The program will feature, I believe, the lives of the country’s rich and famous and most important of all, cool (Lucio Tan is rich and famous but he’s not considered cool. There has to be that “cool” factor to make it to the new MTV show.).

Attendees at the party were treated to a ride-all-you-can fare at the nearby EuroStar Carnival. By the time we arrived at the venue, a few people were already waiting at a ride called “flipper” which resembled the Octopus of older days. Rome and I joined them. It was one heck of a ride but I had too much beer and no solid food at the party so it was only too lucky of me to survive it with my dignity intact. Next time, I’ll take a dose of Bonamine before getting aboard flipper.

When the session ended, Tim Yap was already outside the platform being televised greeting his well-wishers. This was where the funny bit happened. I didn’t know that there were TV crew outside Flipper recording the proceedings, so as we we were stepping off the platform we had no choice but to act as if we knew him personally. I still have a vivid picture of his facial expression in my mind, LOL! He was probably thinking, “who the ARE these people???” Happy birthday anyways. We could assure him that we did not gatecrash.

As it was an event for who’s who among the cool crowd (models, models and more models everywhere!), there were lots of people whose faces regularly graced the lifestyle sections of newspapers–VJs, commercial models (Amanda Griffin, Derek Ramsey, etc.), magazine editors (MANual, Mega and Cosmo editors were present), socialites (Celine Lopez, Jacques Dupasquier and co.), fashion designers (Rajo Laurel, for one), etc.

It wasn’t my crowd, my dear palanggas, but I had a fabulous time.

It’s the 1st Philippine International Jazz and Ethnic Arts Festival from January 20 to 23 at various venues in Metro Manila.

Kevyn Lettau and Eumir Diodato will perform at Casino Filipino Amphitheatre on January 21 and 22 while a pre-festival street party will be held at the Podium in Ortigas Center on Friday, January 20.

The Harbor Square in CCP Complex will be the heart of the festival where most of the festival artists will showcase their music to the jazz-loving public from January 21 to 22 (Saturday and Sunday). On January 23, Monday, the public can watch post-festival highlights at Greenbelt 3 in Makati.

Check Pinoy Urban Blog for more details.

Affirmation
Savage Garden

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument
I believe we place our happiness in other people’s hands
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it’s bad for you
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do
I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem
I believe I’m loved when I’m completely by myself alone

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can’t appreciate real love until you’ve been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don’t know what you’ve got until you say goodbye

I believe you can’t control or choose your sexuality
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold

I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair
I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can’t appreciate real love until you’ve been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don’t know what you’ve got until you say goodbye

I believe forgiveness is the key to your unhappiness
I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed
I believe that God does not endorse T.V evangelists
I believe in love surviving death into eternity

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can’t appreciate real love until you’ve been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don’t know what you’ve got until you say goodbye.

Having cancelled another gimmick at Hard Rock last night, I met Jane, Fat, JayJay and newly-weds Jermaine and Sisel at Shangri-La mall in Ortigas last night. Jane and I did not make it to the couple’s wedding in Palawan last month, so we thought it better to meet them instead to listen to their matrimonial stories (or the about the funny-slash-exasperating ones) that the two shared to us with passion.

I was the last to arrive. They were already finishing their dinner at Prio Mixx situated at the mall’s 5th level. Unfortunately, the restaurant had already closed and so I was not able to order dinner for myself. What made up for dinner was a photo-op with the group.

The newly-weds

Jane wanted to take a photo of my attire–including the sequined black flip-flops.

Caffeinated attorney has just won her first case. Congratulations!

After dinner, we proceeded to the nearby Starbucks which was located at level 6. We stayed at the rooftop section, where I had my chicken empanada-and-latte dinner and the others, their favorite starbucks concoctions. The party broke up around 11.

Me and my Starbucks

Yipeeee! Matapos ang masugid na pag-iipon, I purchased a red Starbucks tumbler this afternoon. I luurve it! Now I’m back to Nescafe 3-in-1, LOL!

Just a few observations from leading IT and advertising industry panelists at an on-going web marketing summit in New York:

“…the pace of change in our society, hastened by the Web and technology, has created a kind of social schizophrenia that spawns multiple personalities. Too, people are continually transitioning in their personal and professional lives. The pace of change has led to people continually trying on and wearing many different roles, often simultaneously.

“Then, there are the non-carbon life forms. The avatars. The digital friends….in the next decade, these will evolve to such an extent that we’ll have to manage and communicate with them.”

— Edie Weiner, President, Weiner, Edrich Brown, Inc., author of Insider’s Guide to the Future and FutureThink: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change

“We think people are motivated by their self-interest. The Internet is a social medium. It’s a medium of connecting people.”

–Ted Leonsis, AOL’s vice chairman

“We need to think about people. We need to think about iteration.You have to iterate rapidly. Most of us have to fight for every single dollar every single day.”

–Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Innovation Officer, Publicis Groupe