This is really odd.

I just had a sudden influx of new user registrations on my blog – in fact I had 8 over the past week, and all of them are email addresses with derivations from ****@gawab.com.  I checkout out the domain, and it turned out to be a free email hosting site (particularly for middle eastern identities, as the on-site ad betrays.)

I wonder who they are, and what they want from me and my blog?

HWEIRD.

After spending hours and hours on end copying and pasting album art and information off Amazon.com, I’ve finally found that special something I needed to feed by OCD concerning my engorged music digital library!

iTunes and the iPod have clearly revolutionized the way I consume music, but there is always room for improvement. When I search your iPod for a favorite band, I want to see album cover art and I don’t want their songs to show up under 10 variations of its name.

But one thing is – organizing songs with the correct track, artist and cover art can be such a bitch.

Today, as I was surfing the interwebs for random stuff I came across a catch-all solution.

TuneUpMedia!

The following common problems can be fixed automatically, making the overall music management experience even better:

Problem 1) Mislabeled song information
Do you find you have songs labeled Track_01 instead of by their proper names, tracks by “Various Artists”, or three different names for a band — “Beatles” versus “The Beetles” versus “Beatles, The”? Clean up the mess and get the right info in seconds.

TuneUp uses an “audio fingerprint” of mislabeled tracks in a user’s library and automatically fills in the missing information using Gracenote’s database of more than 90 million songs. Simply drag tracks on to the “clean” tab in iTunes and it fetches the right song information in about a second.

Problem 2) Missing album cover art
Having the album cover art for your music makes a song and artist come alive and music browsing more fun. Many people have iPods full of albums with missing cover art and finding them on the Internet is time consuming and frustrating.

Besides fixing mislabeled tracks, the program will seek out and find missing cover art for any album in your music library. In just a few minutes TuneUp, turns your music collection into an art gallery, the way artists meant it to be.

Once a user’s library has been cleaned, TuneUp provides other valuable content. It provides automatic local concert alerts for every artist in a collection, and fetches related YouTube videos, Google news and Wikipedia bios related to any playing track.  Best of all, it’s done by design, without the need to fill out extra forms or create lists of favorite artists and albums from scratch.

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooot! What a lifesaver!

Some writers need a while to charge their batteries, and then write their books very rapidly. Some writers write a page or so every day, rain or shine. Some writers run out of steam, and need to do whatever it is they happen to do until they’re ready to write again. Sometimes writers haven’t quite got the next piece of work ready in their heads, but they have something else all ready instead, so they write the thing that’s ready to go, prompting cries of outrage from people who want to know why the writer could possibly write content X while the boss was waiting for content Y.

I remember hearing an upset editor telling a roomful of other editors about an artist who had taken a few weeks off to paint his house. The editor pointed out, repeatedly, that for the money the artist would have been paid for those weeks’ work he could easily have afforded to hire someone to paint his house, and made money too. And I thought, but did not say, “But what if he wanted to paint his house?”

Sometimes what happens just happens. Just like that. You don’t choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good stuff will be created.

And sometimes, and it’s as true of writers and artists as it is of readers, you have a life. People in your world get sick or die. You fall in love, or out of love. You move house. Your aunt comes to stay. You agreed to help a friend out by creating a website or write an email half a year ago, only to realize that the day he needs it was yesterday. Your cat learns to levitate and the matter must be properly documented and investigated. There are eagles laying eggs in your shoe. A thunderstorm fries your hard disk and fries the backup drive as well…

And life is a good thing for writers and artists. It’s where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

Here in the office. It’s 1:00PM, Hong Kong lunchtime.

I’m sitting at my desk with a hot bowl of Wei Wei Premium Saday instant noodles, hungrily sipping the soup while I haplessly look at my computer monitor and its schfifty-five open browser tabs. I’m feeling a tad bit shitty today, but then again I realize, no one ought to give a damn but me.

So at what state of affairs is my life in?

These days, I manage to consistently shirk away from things I really want to do, settling down into a routine which I have been in for the past year:

• Wake up at 730-8AM
• Take a bath, dress up, drink coffee
• Walk to work
• Prepare a breakfast of oatmeal
• Answer customer service tickets while eating oatmeal
• Get down to real writing work + make new layouts for an online parenting community
• Have lunch
• Work some more
• Walk home
• Have dinner
• Watch TV
• Go to sleep

Though I do engage in some routine breakers, they’re few and far between.  A good example would be that time I found out about Restaurant City (facebook app), in which case, just take my whole schedule as written above and insert “check restaurant” in every other line.

I feel an overwhelming sense of paranoia and ennui. At this exact moment, I am as exciting as a bowl of half-eaten noodles.

Thinking about the lives of the people around me, I can’t help but be a little jealous. My friends in this country are mostly young, carefree and quite unaffected by realities and responsibilities (needless to say they aren’t married) and at every week they have a new story to tell: of a lunatic colleague who runs away and gets herself lost within 4 days of flying in and starting work, partying the dawn away in an island with a french unemployed young boules player, and an invitation by a mysterious stranger into a secret opium den.

I have no such stories to tell, and I am burdened by no changes and challenges. My life is more like molasses crawling down a wall – inch by inch – falling inevitably into a predictable future.

What does it mean to manage my time (and life) better?

Simply put, it means to live my life in such a way that I am able to accomplish more, so that at the end of each day I can see tangible results and enjoy a sense of fulfillment. This often involves learning to do things differently so that the outcomes are more efficient and effective (and even less time-consuming) than before – a reality which I contend with at my current job, and even all the past companies I have worked with.

In my 9 years of professional experience, I have come up with a simple truth. Learning to manage my life and my time isn’t rocket science.  I feel that ANYONE can do it – if only we choose to see that it’s often the simple things we do that make profound differences.

Here’s an exercise I have in my head:

Grab a pencil and paper. Think back to the time you started school, all the way back to kindergarten. One of the first things you learned was how to identify shapes. Next you learned to draw them. On that sheet of paper, do something very simple. Draw one triangle.

Simple, yeah?

Now, draw as many triangles as you can in twenty seconds. Stop. Count how many you were able to draw. Write down that number.

Do you think there might be another way to complete this activity and draw more in less time?

Start at one side of the paper and draw connected Ws all the way across the page. Now put a line across the top and the bottom. See how many you can draw in twenty seconds using this method.

You have just drawn loads of triangles!

In only a few seconds you have learned to do this activity more efficiently and effectively in a much shorter amount of time. A seemingly insignificant change can make a significant difference in what can be accomplished in a given amount of time. In fact, you most likely made up to four or five times as many triangles the second time around.

What if we could get four or five times as much done each day by making a simple change?

We should always be on the lookout for “new” ways to do “old” things, and keep our minds open to using alternative methods and plans of action.

Why is it so hard
to let myself be washed away
by the tide of your world.

Life could be so simple
with you if only
you straightened the road
on which you walk on.

Tell me all the secrets you
would never even admit to yourself
and I will lock them away.

Lean all the weight of your problems
on my shoulders
and I promise I won’t falter
with the burden.

With closed eyes I offer
the moon and sun
even the very shoes
on my feet.

Questioning
how simple life would be
if only
you choose to walk away.

In the sweetest moment
in your darkest hour
through the pain
even until death.

I will be with you.

Okay. I had to repost this, since it’s about my little cousin.

“They wouldn’t stop us from running laps until I started to sweat. I don’t know why, but I could never sweat, even if my teammates were begging me to. Sige na Please!’

Okay, Stop. Just–stop.

Hold the phone.

Do you realize what this means? Miakka Lim will always be a girl. In any given situation she will always retain her girl-ness, as it were. Even in the story she relates about her high school volleyball team. I’m serious. I’m also not trying to be sexist here; I’m well aware of the myth that says girls don’t fart, go number 2 or sweat. But she’s living proof. Unnatural? Maybe. Endearing? Definitely.

But 100 odd words probably aren’t enough to convince you. Heck, I haven’t told you how she looks like yet (you probably know already, but you want me to tell you how she looks just for kicks). Fair enough.

As I wait for her outside a coffee shop, a girl with short cropped hair comes into my periphery. She’s wearing heels, a white blouse and what appears to be an office skirt. Cute enough, but she doesn’t fit the bill of whom I’m interviewing. She goes in to order coffee. I linger in her direction for a bit.

When she tells you that, “Yeah I’d like to be knee deep in a violent situation reporting things first hand,” you’ll believe her. When she stares straight at you with a half-smile, half-smirk and gently parts her hair as she tells you this, you’ll believe her.

The girl I’m waiting for is a courtside reporter, coming from a reporting gig. To my non-sportswatching mind, that means she’ll be running from one end of the court to another in some sort of track suit, breaking into circles of players trying to find any news to report. She will be haggard, she will be tired, she will be sweat-my phone rings. She asks where I am and I look around. The girl who just walked in is holding the phone. Stupidly, it takes and embarrasing amount of time for me to make the connection. My synapses resume their normal firing speed and besides answering her question all I can think of is ‘No way that’s a courtside reporter.’

Convinced yet? Damn. Didn’t think so. Was it the lack of sports knowledge?

Talking to Miakka for an extended period of time will reveal (besides the ‘will always be a girl’ postulate) is that her cheek muscles have comfortable developed themselves into a state where she always smiles. And this is not always a smile smile mind you. It can be a half smile, a one cheeked grin or possibly even a smirk. This is interesting to note, because she’s smiling as she says she’d be game to cover a violent situation for the sake of news. Like a war or something.

Even with the off-putting nature of her answer, you know she’s serious. ‘In high school, I was always at home. I wouldn’t dream of cutting a class. When I got to college it was like. “Cut Class? Go Lang!” She tells me that during her college years she became a lot more outgoing. She just wants to get out there and try and experience new things. That’s why she wants to transition from courstide to field reporter in the near future. When she tells you that, “Yeah I’d like to be knee deep in a violent situation reporting things first hand,” you’ll believe her. When she stares straight at you with a half-smile, half-smirk and gently parts her hair as she tells you this, you’ll believe her.

Okay, Stop.

Sorry for the interruption again, but bear with me here.

The girl just said she’d report from a place with civil strife, likely going on as she gives her spiel. We know for sure that she won’t be sweating. Even if (and believe me I asked) her cameraman gets shot and has to seek medical attention, she’ll continue reporting as she stares straight at you with a half smile half smirk and gently parts her hair. And guess what? Despite all that she’ll retain her girl-ness.

You believe me now, right? Crap. Figures.

Miakka shares anecdotes where she gets restless just being at home and has to go out just to be less restless. One such anecdote involves her going to Bonifacio High Street on a Friday night, sticking out like a sore thumb because she didn’t dress up just to hang out. This is a girl who can’t sit still. During games, she recounts that she’s the one, with no script, who has to go out and dig for dirt to report to the commentators. When it’s game four and you’re digging dirt on the same team you’ve been reporting on for the past few days, this is an admirable thing. Or at least, I think it is because I have no idea what she meant by that. (Non-sports fan remember?) All I know is that it’s testament to her, dare I say it, adventurous nature, for a girl who looks none too adventurous at all.

You’re probably still not convinced. That’s okay. When you watch her on TV, mute the picture, and look real hard. Go ahead. She’s not sweating is she? Even if all signs are saying she is. Unnatural? Maybe. Endearing? Definitely.

Words by Mihk Vergara
Photos by J.A. Tadena for Fotomojo
Makeup by Ria Gamboa
Hair by Marie Tan

If you’re building a web site which has tabs within the design, why not spice it up with a little Javascript magic?

jQuery Coda Slider – The sliding effect is what the Coda-Slider is all about nice, slick content presentation

Perspective Tabs – Perspective tabs (formerly Sliding Tabs) is a simple mootools plug-in that allow for a lagre number of tabs to fit into a small space

jQuery ID Tabs – idTabs is a plugin for jQuery – It makes adding tabs into a website super simple, but it can also open the door to endless possiblities

Tab Accordion – Tabbed style accordion script written with Moo.FX

XP Style Tab Panes - It’s easy to configure this script. You put your content into separate DIVs and then call a javascript function which creates the tabs dynamically

Ajax Tabs – The purpose of doing Tabs in Ajax is not just to do something in Ajax. The context for which this is used is not for novelty

Tabbed Page Interface – There are quite a few Javascript implementations of tabbed interfaces out there on the web. How much better, though, to be able to change from pagetab to pagetab without a page refresh

jQuery Nested Tab Set with Demo – Ok, there have been some changes, but I’ll try to keep it easy, with an example, and there will be an included .zip file. First, you’ll need the latest JQuery build, as well as the latest version of the Tabs Plugin. Pay attention to the pathing I have created in my code snippets here

Ajax Tabs Reloaded – From time to time you run across a cool site or test code and think that you may use it somewhere. I thought that about the HavocStudios Ajax tab system so I went back to the site to check it out

Tabs in Scriptaculous – This script will allow you to create interactive tabs for use in an application

Well it’s one thing to fall in love
But another to make it last
I thought that we were just beginning
And now you say we’re in the past
Look me in the eye
and tell me we are really through

You know it’s one thing to say you love me
but another to mean it from the heart
And if you don’t intend to see it through
why did we ever start?
I wanna hear you tell me
you don’t want my love

Put your hand on your heart and tell me
it’s all over
I won’t believe it till you
put your hand on your heart and tell me
that we’re through
Put your hand on your heart

They like to talk about for ever
Most people never get the chance
Do you wanna lose our love together
Do you find a new romance
I wanna hear you tell me
you don’t want my love

Put your hand on your heart and tell me
it’s all over
I won’t believe it till you
put your hand on your heart and tell me
that we’re through
Put your hand on your heart
hand on your heart

My tribute to my sister and her perfect, lovely daughter – Bella.