Blogie Blog

78%

Got this from reading Aileen’s and Abe’s posts. Puñemas, I think it’s infectious and contagious!!

78%… well, that doesn’t sound so bad, right? I suppose I still have a chance to fight this addiction. Yeah. But wait… I–I’m blogging right now, aren’t I?… Noooooooooo!!

Tagged: meme

Last night’s blogger and SEO get-together at 51 Coffee Shop with Aileen Apolo (Google country consultant) gave us a chance to meet up with a few new faces in the Davao blogosphere. We were hoping to get more people to show up, but I guess the rain was one culprit why many didn’t make it. Hmmm… why is it that each time we hold a bloggers’ meet-up here, it rains…. But Andrew, Jun, Marc, Migs and Ria were present, of course — The Usual Suspects are always where the action is, come hell or high water. ••• Read on»

Tagged: bloggers, Google

Sorry, Aileen, it took me so long to reply to your latest meme game.

So, this one’s about my funniest childhood memory. I don’t know if this is really my funniest, or if it’s even funny to other people… but when I sat down to write this post, this was what came to mind. ••• Read on»

Tagged: childhood memories, tag games

The last time I was in Cagayan de Oro was almost a year ago (July 2006), when I went there with two friends for a short vacation. This time, I took the trip with another good friend, Rodney Jao, who had a speaking engagement at the Northern Mindanao ICT Summit. I just tagged along actually, although it was a perfect excuse for me to go and meet up with Kagay-anon bloggers. ••• Read on»

Tagged: Cagayan de Oro, sabbatical, Visit the Philippines

‘Punctuation marks? Those pesky little squiggles that make writing so complicated?’ Well, if you aren’t in the habit of using them, this is probably how you’d feel about punctuation marks. Most people get away with using just 3 kinds: the period, the comma and the question mark. But if you’re serious about writing, knowing how to use more of these written symbols will help you get your message across much more clearly.

Punctuation marks are used to help you organize your thoughts, so that you can convey them in the way that you intend. Conversely, misuse — and especially abuse — of punctuation can result in misunderstanding, in your failure to communicate properly. Or worse: your inability to properly use colons, apostrophes, dashes, etc. could make you look, well, rather lacking in intellectual acuity. ••• Read on»

Tagged: punctuation marks, writing style

It’s one of those things on the Web that, when you see it, makes you ask, ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ My blog-friend Migs pointed me to this cool site, Lakbayan: How much of the Philippines have you visited? It presents you with a list of Philippine destinations, and you get to tick each one according to whether you’ve been there or not, etc. Why don’t you just head on over and get your own Philippine map, like the one I have here? It’s a nice representation of just how much of the country you’ve ever visited. ••• Read on»

Tagged: Philippine map, Travel, Visit the Philippines

In whatever language, when you write, it’s always sound practice to do it well. This has been the case in ‘traditional’ media, where we’ve been treated to titillating and immensely gratifying written works of art. Consider the Inquirer column of Conrado de Quiros, for example: he has a way with words that leaves you panting for more. In blogging, on the other hand, the proper use of language is not exactly prevalent. Perhaps it’s due to the nature of blogging that grammatical discipline, for one, is rather lax in this particular medium. Just the same — even though there’s no such thing as a language police in the blogosphere — I believe that being conscious of good writing style goes a long way. Especially if you intend to be a problogger. ••• Read on»

Tagged: English proficiency, proper language usage, writing style

For succeeding updates on the upcoming Mindanao Bloggers Summit — and for future community-building activities for bloggers in Mindanao — please head on to MindanaoBloggers.com. The site’s content is still being mapped out, the design is still being discussed… but it’ll be finished soon enough!

Any blogger in Mindanao who’d like to contribute to this project, please step up! Just gimme a holler and I’ll let you know how you might be able to participate.

Tagged: Mindanao Bloggers Summit

Yesterday I met up with my two closest Japanese friends, Ichi and Shin. Ichi had gone back to Japan for a month-long vacation and yesterday was my first time to see him back. And Shin, he’d been gone for years, having already transferred to Bulgaria after living in Davao for more than 3 years. Sadly, he’ll be gone again before the month is out.

Ever since I started having up-close-and-personal contacts with the Japanese, Ichi and Shin have guided me along the intricate and occasionally confusing pathways of Japanese interpersonal relations. Be it in friendships, business affiliations, temporary liaisons — the Japanese have patterns of accepted behavior, probably codified in their genes. For a non-Japanese, it can be a struggle comprehending those complex and unwritten rules of conduct. ••• Read on»

Tagged: interpersonal relations, social deviants

One of my readers recently asked me about my inclination to use accented vowels in my posts. Stuff like ‘vis-à-vis’, ‘über’, ‘résumé’. It’s not really necessary, but to me it looks pretty. So there. She did ask me to teach her how to get these accented vowels (and consonants) to display on web pages. I think I’ll share it with everyone who’ll care to read through. ••• Read on»

Tagged: HTML, special characters