Geocities ending free FTP

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Bad news, Geocities-bloggers: Geocities is ending free FTP service on April 2. If you want to continue using Blogger with your Geocities page, you’ll need to upgrade to their paid service. (MetaTalk thread)

Time to start looking? Give me a few hours, and I’ll post links to other free FTP-capable services you Geocities-bloggers can move to.

Update: Check it out. I’m not sure how authoritative or updated the list is, but it’s a good starting point. Also take a look at the free webspace forum for leads.

“Busy Week?” But…

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I quit Pinoyexchange yesterday. I really wish I didn’t have to, but I need the time, and things are just moving so fast. It’s just been too busy to see to the work of moderating two forums. I would like to moderate again in the future, but not till things are more stable.

How can he be “busy” when he’s been unemployed since January? some of you may be wondering. Well, I’ve been preparing… things. I’ll update you all when my plans are more sure (i.e. When the tickets are in my hand, as I’ve told some of you).

In the meantime, I started playing the XMEN game again, and am logging it via my wireless journal.

EDSA 1986

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Update, Feb 2006: For my thoughts and links on the events of EDSA’s 20th year, please go to EDSA 1986+20 and EDSA 1986 History.

Yesterday was a nonworking holiday, to celebrate the 16th Anniversary of the famous People Power Revolution at EDSA, which ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos from power in 1986.

I’m quite glad that Edsa.com.ph (local web directory) maintains a brief and informative history page, but it ends with a somewhat outdated promotional announcement. Disappointing, to see that there are so few comprehensive pages to commemorate that shining moment in Filipino history. (Although we do have pages to remind us of the days we scraped the bottom of the barrel.)

Anyone else have links worth clicking about the history of Ninoy Aquino and EDSA 1986? Or Philippine History in general? I’d love to see some.

UPDATE: Amazingly detailed chronology of the EDSA Revolution, link via Lia. (Americans may wish to note Ronald Reagan’s involvement: Day 3 and Day 4. He and Marcos were friends. ;)

On Baby Worship

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Jim’s post on “Baby Worship” brings to mind a quote I read from Chuck Swindoll’s Growing Deep in the Christian Life:

“Every baby starts life as a little savage. He wants what he wants when he wants it. His bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toy, his uncle’s watch. Deny these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless.”

-Minnesota Crime Commission

What does it all mean? It means that Maggie Simpson really did premeditate shooting Mr. Burns with that gun.

free RSS parser?

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Anyone know where I can download a free, RSS-XML parser in Perl/CGI or PHP? I’m a Scripting Dummy, so minimum setup fuss is a must. The reason I ask this is because I dream of having my own personal RSS gateway, just like BrownTrout’s.

One cannot go wrong linking up a Bach fan. If you’re a Bach fan too, I have two names that you absolutely MUST remember: Trevor Pinnock, Christopher Hogwood. Got that? Pinnock. Hogwood. Don’t forget.

Oh, and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin plays the absolute BEST Brandenburg Concerti I’ve ever heard. (They can actually make Concerto 6 sound exciting, which is a real feat.)

Pore Strips

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Check this out: microscopic closeups of a freshly used nose-strip, extracted blackheads and all.

Speaking of which, it’s a sad fact that pore strips are very hard to find in Manila these days. I’ve looked around, and most personal care shops no longer carry any brand of nose strips; Pond’s, Biore, or otherwise. If you’re like me, and miss the joyful catharsis of peeling blackheads from your face, go to Bench. They still have pore strips in individual packs (P15 each) at the counter. You can also check Mercury Drug for “Fruits Land Nose Pack,” but that’s more of an exfoliating cream that you spread on and peel off, so it gets a bit messy.

Anyone else know where we can buy them? I miss the Pond’s strips; they worked best for me.

XHTML and Validation

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Better Living with XHTML. The web is in a time of transition (when is it ever not?), what with standards and XML seizing the spotlight. We’re seeing a web design revolution of sorts, and the designer’s world in 2002 is going to be a very different one from the days of the late-90’s Netscape 4.x and table hacks.

As for me, having finished the arduous transition to XHTML on all my pages, I will soon commence the equally painful task of validating each and every blog-index. I will not rest till all my markup is valid. But it’ll take a few months/centuries.

(Those of you using random blog-indexes — Raffy and Josh, right? — I advise you to validate your pages before making any more of them public. I made a big mistake not validating mine, and now I have over 51 pages of markup to toil over. Wah.)

Chinook Crash

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Happy Birthday Mom! After worship service this morning, I spent the day at lunch with my family at home (home in Greenhills, I mean, not my apartment in the South), plus uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, and nephews on Dad’s side of the clan.

I’ve been a bit out of touch with current events here in the Philippines lately, so I only noticed this morning: a Chinook helicopter carrying ten American soldiers crashed into the sea last Friday. The waters there are shark-infested, and it doesn’t look like any of the soldiers survived. Oh, dear.