One Pride

Manila bay
One of our beautiful nature.
Manila Bay is a natural harbor which serves the Port of Manila (on Luzon), in the Philippines. The entrance is 19 km wide and expands to a width of 48 km. Mariveles, in the province of Bataan, is an anchorage just inside the northern entrance and Sangley Point is the former location of Cavite Naval Base.

On either side of the bay are volcanic peaks topped with tropical foliage: 40 km to the north is the Bataan Peninsula and to the south is the province of Cavite.

Across the entrance to Manila Bay are several islands. The largest is Corregidor, which is 3 kilometers from Bataan and, along with the island of Caballo, separates the mouth of the bay into the North and South Channels. In the south channel is El Fraile Island and outside the entrance, and to the south, is Carabao Island. El Fraile, a rocky island some 4 acres (16,000 m²) in area, supports the massive concrete and steel ruins of Fort Drum, an island fortress constructed by the United States Army to defend the southern entrance of the bay. To the immediate north and south are additional harbors.

The bay was the setting for the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898 and the siege of Corregidor Island by invading Japanese forces in 1942.

Today, Manila Bay still remains important for commerce and industry, including fishing, and is know for being heavily polluted. It also serves a focus for recreation for Manila and is a popular destination for walks and for viewing the sunset. Much of the land fronting the bay along Manila is landfill which now includes important sites such as the Philippine Senate and the Mall of Asia.

But we need to save it!

Online Gamers

On-Line Gamers Anonymous is a twelve-step, self-help fellowship sharing our experience, strengths and hope to help each other recover and heal from the problems caused by excessive game playing, be it computer, video, console, or on-line games. Our community includes the recovering gamer and the family member, loved ones, friends, and concerned others. We all know how powerful, cunning, baffling and destructive excessive gaming can be, because we have seen it happen, with our own eyes. It can be devastating to the real-world lives of gamers, their relationships and those individuals close to them. Through the encouragement of open discussion, support, and referrals, we heal ourselves, by helping each other through this.

"Excessive game playing can be a symptom of serious underlying mental/emotional problems. This board is not intended as a crusade against any particular game, but to alert people that excessive playing should be evaluated in context with any other symptoms a person may be displaying. Then, if there is still concern about the individual's state of mind, we recommend that he or she seek a professional evaluation." (Used by permission from Leucol)

Participating in OLGA/OLG-Anon is a healing journey for all of us. Please respect each other's privacy. Everyone who participates in ANY OLGA or OLG-Anon affairs agrees to this:
WHO YOU SEE HERE, WHAT YOU HEAR HERE, WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE, LET IT STAY HERE! Thank you for your courtesy.

Know That We Are Here to Offer Support

Our community is open to all who are seeking support. We are not an activists group, nor do we sponsor such organizations. Our message forums are available to all, regardless of bias or opinion. We are here to share our experience, strength and hope among recovering gamers, in hope of an encouraging environment of peer to peer support. Family and friends are also invited to share their experiences, compassion, and wisdom.

Every day we accumulate and add to our collection of new information about excessive gaming issues. Sharing this information with our visitors is one of our primary goals, and will be viewable within this web site as it becomes available.

As our knowledge and experience with professionals develops, we offer referrals to those in need of additional help. Professional help is sometimes needed when excessive gaming has been left unchecked for a long time and is too powerful to address within this community. If you need more support, than we offer here, PLEASE seek out help from a professional who views that EXCESSIVE GAMING CAN BE PART OF THE PROBLEM (many do not, and will encourage the continued use of games).

Which ever game contributes to you or your loved ones problem, we are here to help. Please choose the tab that closely matches your relationship to games, so that we may offer you information specific to your needs.

The 2008 Philippine Blog Awards

The 2008 Philippine Blog Awards was concluded Saturday evening with the awarding ceremonies at the Esplanade in Pasay City, Metro Manila. Finalists in the 23 categories were narrowed down from hundreds of nominees, with winners selected by judges from various fields, mostly in the new media industry.

With the aim of recognizing notable Filipino-owned blogs in different niches, the Philippine Blog Awards was launched in 2007 to showcase notable blogs with quality content that engages readers from around the globe. This second year of the event marked the inclusion of network blogs written by Filipinos, blogs written by mainstream media practitioners as well as local corporations that use blogs are effective communication tools.

Two of our folks from Splashpress Media (which also owns the Blog Herald) were also finalists: Sophia Lucero’s Stellify.net was a finalist for Best Blog Design, and this writer for Best Network Blogger.

A list of winners can be found at itot54joni.com. Update: The official list has been published.

Postscript: Read organizer Jayvee Fernandez’ closing remarks, which talks about the three head fakes of blogging.

Are You a Lazy Blogger? Pwes, wag kana gumawa.

Millions of users of Blogger are being lazy, and a spam.
Gees, we bloggers have gotten lazy.
Blogging Yesterday

from Blogherald
When I first started blogging, over 10 years before the word “blogging” was even invented, all coding was manual. I had to type in every HTML tag and link from scratch in Windows Notepad. Later, I used a semi-WYSIWYG HTML coding program which eventually became a better WYSIWYG HTML program, but it was still a lot of manual effort with little return.

Yahoo! was pretty much the only search engine game in town, though there were hundreds of search engine wannabes and directories. All submissions were manually done, and to some extent, approval for those submissions was also done manually by the search engines and directories personnel. It took months to even be considered, let alone listed.

There were few web pages on the web, and very little, and often inaccurate, information. To find anything online, I had to dig through several search engines. What I needed was often on page 4 instead of on page 1, since page ranking was not available for sifting the more appropriate results to the top of the list.

Search results were based upon Boolean word combinations, adding or removing a word from your search terms increased or decreased the possibilities. The hardest part was coming up with the right combination(s) of words to get any kind of good result.

In 1996, I remember the thrill of encountering an access speed of 4800 baud. That was race car Internet access for me. We were on the road traveling, connecting to the Internet with Compuserve access numbers through an acoustic coupler strapped to a pay phone receiver at the amazing speed of 300-1200 baud. We went through a lot of quarters to keep the connection open. Occasionally, people would allow us to hook up via their phone connections, and we’d dance around with joy of watching email arrive faster than one character at a time.

Stories for my site didn’t come from the web. There was no “echo chamber” for me to echo. My stories came from my life, my experiences, my lessons, and basically from my head. There were few sites worth linking to, and almost no one around to inspire my writing online. I had to go out looking for stories - away from my computer and office on the road.
Blogging Today

Today, CMS and blogging programs like WordPress allow us to blog without ever interacting with code. Search engines are pinged whenever a post is published, so site submissions are really unnecessary. Search engines come to call after an invisible invitation is issued, no effort from me. Information is everywhere, accessible within a few keystrokes. Internet access through WIFI, cable, DSL, cell phone, and satellite is almost everywhere.

Look, ma! No wires! No pay phones!

Search engines now have patented algorithms to guess at what I’m really searching for better than I know myself. The sites at the top of the list usually have the information I need, without turning a page, so my hunting time is definitely reduced.

Through feeds, news and updates come to me, I don’t have to go to them to find out what is going on anywhere and everywhere around the web and the world.

More importantly, I don’t have to leave my computer to find stories to write about.

SCREEEEEECCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHH!

What was that?

That’s right. I don’t have to leave my computer or my comfortable chair to find stories to write about.

This is where I think bloggers are falling down lazy.
Blogging is Easy for Lazy Bloggers

We have all the hard work done for us now. Blogging is easy. The hardest, and sometimes most boring, part of the work is done for us automatically. The only thing we really have to work on is finding content for our blogs. And we don’t even have to leave our chairs to find it.

With all the resources and information on the computer screen in front of us, then why is everyone blogging about the same 10 subjects? Whole weeks go by when I see the same 10 subjects talked about on 1000 different blogs?

I find a lot of people blogging about topics destined to bring in big crowds of traffic, but they really are only offering the tips they’ve picked off other blogger’s articles rather than honestly contributing to the conversation based upon expertise. They just want the traffic, and not the real work it takes to build an audience based upon your skills and talents.

Sometimes, I think the web has become an old fashioned dial radio. Just twist the knob at the top of the hour and hear the same news with different voices as you cycle through the channels.

What are you doing to not be a lazy blogger?

Are you taking advantage of the billions of bits of information and stories out there just begging to be told? Or are you simply rebroadcasting the same old news, just like everyone else?

When was the last time you set a blogging assignment for yourself to go out and find a story. You don’t have to leave your computer and step outside, though it might be a great change, but you do need to set a goal, work out a plan and strategy, research the material, and write the story.

Don’t just sit on your comfortable feeds ready to jump on a story that everyone will be echoing through the blogosphere in their race to be the first with the news. Create your own story that others will jump on and rebroadcast for you.

So, tell the truth. Are you a lazy blogger? Have you got anything new to say?

iCeeAe: "you.. and iCeeAe"

you and iCeeAe means "you and i" im CeeAe, and i blog! and you! read. Any relevant topics including to my blogs are insights.