Shake Yer Head…

I feel that I should write something about what has happened recently.

See, normally I wouldn’t really care. I just don’t. Which was funny, coz I even had a streak of activism in me back in college. And while most of that idealism is gone, there are just some things that, no matter how you look at it, are completely, totally wrong.

Yesterday, there was a standoff between Senator Trillanes’ people (who dug out a foxhole for themselves at the Manila Peninsula Hotel in Makati), and the government.

Apparently upset over the proceedings of yesterday morning’s hearings, Sen. Trillanes and his military escorts walked out of his trial (for the Oakwood Mutiny back in 2003), headed straight for Manila Pen, demanded that GMA (President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) step down, and enjoined other Filipinos to come join his cause.

Naturally, the government wasted no time flexing some muscle by surrounding the hotel with troops. The result was a 6-hour standoff, that pretty much got everybody glued to their TVs, radios and internet as the drama unfolded.

I for one, am not a supporter of Trillanes. But I believe that, for him to feel this way, he must have gone through so much. I feel for the guy. I’m just saying that he’s fighting for what he believes in, and I respect that.

I believe, however, that he has overestimated the support the military and the civilian populace would give him. It would have been an entirely different matter altogether if, after his public call to arms, the military and everyday people would come rallying to his side.

But that did not happen at all.

I know for a fact that a lot of people are unhappy with the Arroyo administration. I’m not a big fan, either. In my opinion, however, he failed to consider one important thing.

Public apathy.

Most people just don’t care anymore. All we want to do, really, is just keep on working, making some cash so we can pay the bills and put some food on the table.

Yes we’d watch TV, listen to the radio, get updates via SMS and the internet. There would be those who agreed with Trillanes, and those that disagreed. But only a few have really taken to the streets to stand up for what they believed in.

So here was the government, lobbing tear gas cannisters to force out Trillanes and his crew, who stood their ground as long as they could with their makeshift gas-masks.

Now here’s a kicker- what really struck me was an image of a military APC attempting to crash right into the lobby of Manila Pen through the front door. Wow, what were these idiots thinking? Clearly, I don’t see any reason why you should drive a perfectly good (well, obsolete-ish) V150 right smack into a hotel? Man, these guys have been watching too many B-movie action flicks.

Seriously.

So anyway, everybody files out, including Trillanes and his crew, who essentially said something to the effect of, “so that there would be no bloodshed, let’s end this”, media and journalists included.

I expected to see Trillanes get hauled off by the military. But the media? Wow, what kind of fascist regime is the Philippines turning into? They were only doing their jobs; I see no reason for them to be “processed” just like the rest. Heck, go “process” the hotel staff. Or anyone in Makati for that matter.

Later on, a curfew was declared. A curfew. At a time when more people earn their livelihood working at night: call center people, taxi drivers, night shift employees. That night, some 450 people were arrested because of the curfew.

Ridiculous. Do you actually think they’d actually catch some seditious elements that way? Patrolling Emerald Ave. and Ayala Ave. for a few wayward call center employees? Please.

What kind of message is this giving us? It’s buffoonery like this that makes people lose so much hope, shake their heads and walk away.

Or eventually riot. Eventually.

PC Woes at Work

I hate slow PCs. Or laptops.

It’s just that, with so many things I have to get done right away, it would be great to have (at the very least) your PCs cooperating with you.

Twice this year, I’ve managed to find myself some form of regular employment- which therefore means two different workstations assigned to me.

Which were so…incredibly…slooowwww.

Instead of completely relying on tech guys, I’ve always thought it was best to be self-sufficient when it comes to at least running your own PC.

In both cases, it was really just a matter of emptying the hard disks of non-essential files (which can be anything from the previous user’s personal junk to music you don’t like and porn you don’t dig).

Ok, here are some essential things you need to clean your PC. Even if you don’t have to reformat your hard disk, using these babies can dramatically improve your PC’s performance:

1. Mozilla Firefox. Don’t use IE if you can help it at all. A lot of malware specifically target IE. Besides, Firefox is so much cooler.
2. Anti-virus. The free edition of AVG is alright; you can download this straight out of their website.
3. An adequate firewall. For this, use ZoneLabs free firewall, which you can also get from their website.
4. Anti-malware. Get Spybot-SD or Lavasoft Ad-Aware. Or both. You’ll need these two to get rid of unwanted little files that tend to slow down your PC.
5. A secure shredder program, like CleanUp40 or CCleaner to clear out your cookies, caches and temporary internet files.

And there you have it. Unless you have some deep-rooted virii in the system, that should just about cover most your bases.

Sure worked for me.

One important thing worth noting is that, especially on the topic of taking care of your PC, an ounce of prevention is definitely worth more than a pound of cure.

Your firewall, anti-virus, and anti-malware programs should take care of a lot of your day-to-day issues. The rest is up to you: don’t use dubious (or pirated!) programs on your PC, don’t open strange-looking emails, don’t let just anyone use your PC.

Raised on Radio!

I was an avid radio listener when I was a kid- as early as 8 or 9 years old, if I could remember it right.

For me, it was a great way to connect with the chicks! Of course we all had childhood crushes back then (man, I couldn’t even remember their names…), and well, if you wanted to have some common ground for interaction, there was always music on the radio.

High school was no different. The ladies also loved getting their tunes on the radio. And dudes get points if they can play guitar to whatever song was hot back then. Yeah, so I also got into playing guitar for the chicks, big deal :).

By mid-high school, I remember having the radio on while I studied in the early hours of the morning (yes, I actually studied when I felt like it). 24-hour radio stations were new back then- which was how I discovered 99.5RT- and it was the coolest thing for me since sliced bread.

For the most part, I was a Top40 dude. I think it started earlier on back when it was on 93.9 WKC. After casey Kasem left and Shadoe Stevens took over, it was still alright, but WKC was already starting to play less of the pop that I wanted, and more of the designer music that wasn’t at all cool.

Hahaha- Viktor Laszlo? Silver Pozzoli? Modern Talking? Yikes.

Soirees and dance parties were the hugest thing then. So if you wanted the cool chicks, you have to be into New Order, or The Cure, or even Depeche Mode. For the more pop-oriented? There was Rick Astley, Expose and Paula Abdul.

Heck, I even tried to join a radio station back in my third year of high school- coz I thought it was probably the coolest thing to do so. Haha it didn’t work out then. (Sidenote: It did work out many years later, when I finally got in 99.5RT in 1994.)

I had the radio tuned in day in, day out back then. RT was my station at night, and the radio was on even while I was sleeping, so you get the morning show on while you were getting ready for school. Not knowing what 24K was back then (RT’s trademark oldies show on Fridays, playing nothing but RT classics)- I tuned out, and switched to another station. Usually it would be Magic 89.9, NU107, or WLS-FM.

LS was the coolest on weekends with its Great Music Jam- that was 1988 til 1990 I think- and they were playing songs from the early part of the decade. Lots of Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Wham!, Madonna and Spandau Ballet back there.

My appreciation for new wave, punk and rock in general, I got from NU107 (aw man, remember Ethnic Faces’ Golden Boy? Man, I gotta find that song) and Power 105 (the frequency is owned by 105.1 Crossover now). The Smiths? Flesh for Lulu? The Clash? R.E.M.? Man, those were the days.

College was a little different. You meet all kinds of people- and I remembered this one dude who had this massive collection of casettes and CDs of (what I could remember) Crossover music- he had Spyro Gyra, Kalapana, Stephen Bishop, Mike Francis, Yutaka, Angela Bofill- looking back, it was one of the coolest collections I have ever seen.

No, I didn’t quite appreciate it for what it was back then. I was still a pop-boy parading as a new-wave chong. Easy listening and smooth jazz wouldn’t be my thing until much much later.

Monster Radio was the new Magic 89.9. Grunge was the new new wave & punk. Everyone had a Mellow Touch 94.7 or a 96.3 WRock love song collection on mixed tapes, and the hopeless romantics tuned in to Lovenotes (sappy sometimes, but it made for great listening!).

I remembered discovering 105.1 Crossover in ‘93 or ‘94. If everyone was into love songs, the cooler kids were into a more sophisticated kind of love songs. The ladies then were a little classier, a little more emotional, and sometimes, a little angstier (high school was rough, I imagine…). There were those who were into Julia Fordham, Swing Out Sister, or Lisa Stansfield, or Everything But The Girl.

I joined 99.5 RT as a DJ in 1994, and I distinctly remember my roommate was very much into Crossover. He’d have it on while he was studying. I forgot his name though, but I’m sure he’s a doctor by now.

Thirteen years later, I’m still in the radio industry. I’ve gone from DJ, to dude in charge of audio production, to events guy, to dude in charge of sales and marketing, and finally Program Director.

So as a radio executive, what can we learn from all that?

A lot. Radio appeals very much to the young- even as young as pre-teen. While your friends and peers have a strong influence on what you listen to, ultimately your personal taste dictates your choice of music.

Radio can be a declaration of independence, but at the same time, it’s also an instrument for socialization. Also, pop culture influences radio, in the same way radio influences pop culture.

Radio has a very personal connection, and therefore a strong association with parts of your life. Your musical preferences generally persist throughout, which is why most people you know are “stuck” in a certain decade or era- nothing’s wrong with that- it’s really just a matter of personal preference.

Make an effort to learn more from your market- listen to their stories, observe them in their natural environment, take notice of how they use other media, and how it affects their interaction with their peers.

Used with other research available to you, what you glean from your observations are key to the kinds of strategies you form for your marketing plans.

Woohoo! Battlestar Galactica!

I fondly look back earlier this year when I discovered Battlestar Galactica. Well, more like re-discovered. I remember getting interested in the show when it first hit local Cinemax in 2005, but never got to follow it enough to get a good grasp of the story.

When I took my retirement from the last radio station I worked for (which was Mellow 94.7), I found myself with, interestingly enough, a lot of spare time on my hands. And it was this one particular Veronica Mars episode which sort of inspired me to ‘acquire’ a copy of the re-imagined BSG from the very start.

After the four-hour mini-series/pilot, I immediately fell in love with it- it was sci-fi, but not campy, it had chicks, a compelling storyline, interesting characters, and enough action to keep you locked in.

And locked in I was, indeed. I was able to finish all 40 episodes- the first 2 seasons + the webisodes + the first few episodes of season 3- within a month of watching the pilot, thus bringing me up to speed and current with what’s showing in the US/UK. I wasn’t just locked in, I was incredibly hooked.

Season 3 wrapped up by the end of March (with a killer season-ender, I might add!), leaving a gaping hole in my chest where the Galactica should be.

So you could imagine my surprise when I found out- just today- that the prelude to BSG Season 4 already came out!

The prelude is called Battlestar Galactica: Razor. Why it’s called “Razor”, I have no idea just yet, but I intend to find out. It currently has seven (7) 2-minute Flashback episodes + two (2) full episodes thus far.

I’ve already seen the Flashback episodes and -well- it’s like my obsession for BSG all of a sudden came back to the fore.

Man, I can’t wait to watch the other two episodes…

How Many Blogs Can You Maintain?

The following post originally came out in one of my other blogs, “Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!”. Check out the rest of that blog for more insights on the world of blogs and blogging. Particularly useful for you who are just starting to blog, and those wanting to build better blogs. Enjoy!

Indeed, how many blogs can you realistically maintain?

This was one of the questions that came up in that nice little workshop of ours with Abe Olandres last 24 November 2007.

I got into blogging in March 2007. I knew nothing about how to start a blog, or what it was for, or what good it was to your everyday life.

Shortly after starting out with my first blog, I suddenly realized that I wanted to have a blog for
each of my various interests. Soon enough you had one for music, another for TV and movie reviews, and then another on PC gaming, then one came up on business and marketing, followed by one on cats, another on writing, and it just went on and on.

Which was cool, in a way, since it let me toy around with different kinds of layouts and plug all sorts of widgets, and try out different blog services.

But I soon found out that, at the rate I was blogging- which at the time was only once or twice a week- there was absolutely no way I could put any decent amount of content into any of them.

Which was why I have just recently made an effort to scrap some blogs, or merge others into larger ones in favor of a more streamlined blogging operation on my part.

The question really, is not “How Many Blogs Can You Maintain?” but rather “How Much Time Can You Put In Maintaining Your Blogs?”

Assuming you have a regular eight-hour job, plus a regular enough life (where you have to have meals, take a shower, do some other day-to-day homestuff, have a social life AND sleep for six hours), you realistically only have time to churn out one, maybe two decent entries a day. And that includes a little bit of adding links, putting in some images, tweaking the layout a little and even reviewing it some.

One or two articles a day, if you have a regular enough life. And that’s probably a good day.

So given a regular enough life, you might be able to maintain- comfortably enough- anywhere from maybe two to three blogs. Five is pushing the limits of your human ability and sanity.

If you want to maintain more the aforementioned suggested human limit, well, you can always consider going professional blogging- which might possibly mean forgoing all forms of regular employment in favor of a life dedicated to blogs and blogging.

And while there are many successful professional bloggers- or pro-bloggers- out there, there is (more realistically) a far larger number of aspiring pro-bloggers that have achieved varying degrees of blogging success: from “moderately successful” to “absolute failure”.

We go back to our question: “How Many Blogs Can You Maintain?”

The answer: As many as you want to, as long as you make time for it.

Make time for it, man. Starting a blog is easy. But making time for it? It’s what separates the serious bloggers from the everybody else.

How Serious Is Your Blog?

The following post originally came out in one of my other blogs,