V.A.N.Q.

Vandal Alliance of Nexus Quantum
This symbol best represents my qualities, traits and attitude to be exact. These are one of my dreams, to make my own blog with my symbol in it.

The Vandals were best known in East Germany. They ruled over many nations in discreet especially the Romans. Vandals are expressive in terms of art (vandalism) and were strong in will.

The Nexus serves as the connection to my Quantum. A connection to the energy in me and of my alter-ego.

V.A.N.Q. is the acronym that I'll carry on. I've made my own letters which I called the V.A.N.Q. code.

"Deus, vita et amor"..."God, life, love"

She deserves a Big CLAP!

Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco, who is better known by her screen name Charice Pempengco (born May 10, 1993 in Cabuyao, Laguna, Philippines), is a Filipina singer who became a singing sensation throughout the world through YouTube. She started joining singing contests at the age of seven but became widely known in her native Philippines when she placed third in Little Big Star.

Pempengco first attracted attention in the cyberworld when the FalseVoice channel of YouTube posted her Little Big Star performance of Whitney Houston's hit, "I Will Always Love You." Many viewers thought her singing was fake, and that she was only lip synching because of her unbelievable vocals. Another popular video was a face-off between Pempengco and America's Got Talent winner, Bianca Ryan. These videos brought Pempengco to the attention of Ten Songs Productions, a record company based in Sweden. She then traveled to Stockholm in June 2007 and recorded seven songs, which inluded three cover songs, namely Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You," Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill," and the Shakespeare Sisters's "Stay" plus four original songs, "Amazing," "All The Money in the World," "It Can Only Get Better," and "Born to Love You Forever." There is no news about when an album will be released.

A few months later, FalseVoice released a video of Pempengco singing the Dreamgirls anthem, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." This earned her an invitation from one of the four national television networks in South Korea, Seoul Broadcasting System, on October 13, 2007 to perform on a talent show called Star King. The Korean audience was wowed by her rendition of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." She also sang a duet, "A Whole New World", with Cho Kyu Hyun of Super Junior. Many viewers reposted her Star King performance on YouTube, and Pempengco found her way into American television. TV network E!'s The Daily Ten featured her Star King performance with the headline, "A Star Is Born" on November 14, 2007 and then titled her "Queen of the Week" on the Hollywood Royalty segment, this time with the headline, "A Queen Is Born" on November 16, 2007.

Martin Nievera invited Charice Pempengco also to one of his concerts on December 5, 2007, where she sang a duet "The Prayer" with him and solo the song "One Moment in Time".

Pempengco's performance on Star King was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on its November 28, 2007 episode, in which Ellen showed web videos of different people she would like to have as guests on the show. After showing the video, DeGeneres did a standing ovation and imitated Pempengco's gestures. She later personally invited the young singer to perform on the show.

On December 19, 2007, Charice sang her already popular "And I Am Telling You, I'm Not Going" and "I Will Always Love You" on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She also met with David Foster and her lawyer Ed Shapiro.

Right after coming back from the USA, Charice flew to Korea in order to tape her performance once again for the popular show Star King, where she sang "I will survive" and a duet with the popular Korean singer Lena Park. The song they chose was "I will always love you". SBS aired the show then on December 29, 2007.

On January 4, 2008 Charice Pempengco paid a courtesy call with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

From these facts, does she deserve a big clap?
If you're a Filipino, stand up!
Be heard!
This lady just started a massive Pinoy Upgrade for our country, an opening (opportunity) we must grab!

Bib: Wiki

Movie Review: National Treasure

Thanks for checking out my National Treasure 2 review. When the first National Treasure film came out, my first reaction to it was mild. It wasn’t a “bad” film, as a matter of fact it had same very enjoyable qualities to it and I ended up being modestly entertained by it. Having said that the film also had its weaknesses, not the least of which was a nagging sense that the movie was just a cheap capitalization of the motif of The Da Vinci Code. Still, Sean Bean was in it and it certainly had it’s share of fun… so not too bad overall.

I must admit that I was surprised when I heard that a sequel was in the works. First of all the first one wasn’t really good enough to warrant one, nor did I think the box office returns were hight enough to coax studio executives into loosening up the purse strings. But for whatever reason the whole gang is back for National Treasure: Book of Secrets (not to be confused with Blair Witch 2’s Book of Shadows).

THE GENERAL IDEA

Nicolas Cage’s character is now quite famous for his discovery in National Treasure. On giving a lecture about the heroic efforts of his great great grandfather to prevent the South from winning the civil war, a new piece of evidence is brought to light by Ed Harris which implicates Cage’s great great grandfather as one of the conspirators in the assassination of President Lincon. This event begins the adventure for Cage and his father (again played by Jon Voight) to clear their family name. This adventure will take them to England, France and around the US discovering the secrets to the lost City of Gold that will ultimately vindicate their ancestor’s name.

THE GOOD

The movie is fun. The key to any sort of adventure film is to make the audience feel engaged in the character’s adventure on screen. I found National Treasure 2 did that. There is a good mix throughout the film of not only intellectual puzzle solving, but also of Indiana Jones type danger and action (not to mention a pretty good little car chase in it as well). Yes, some of these elements were a little too easy and a touch far fetched, but still… it’s the movies. The film did a fine job of making you feel like you were along for the ride, and on that level it really worked.

The characters are ultimately likable. Quirks and all, you LIKE Nicolas Cage’s character. You LIKE Voight. You even end up liking the sidekick quite a bit, and in a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is a little tongue in cheek, that’s REALLY important. It’s a silly little movie, and thus you need to like and feel invested a little in the people who are taking you for the ride. I especially liked Cage’s sidekick (played by Justin Bartha) who did play the stereotypical adventurers sidekick (doing the menial tasks, being a little bumbling, able to hack all the computers), but was also a little more substantial than that as well. He was a more well rounded character than the usual sidekick roles which was nice.

Solid supporting cast in the movie. Helen Mirren, Jon Voight, Ed Harris, Harvey Keitel and one of my absolute favorite character actors Bruce Greenwood fill out their roles very nicely. No Oscar nominations forthcoming… but you certainly feel like you’re getting your $10 worth when that sort of a cast is put together.

THE BAD

As much as the adventure in the film was well played out on the screen, some of the HUGE leaps in reasoning were a little hard to swallow and thus speed bumped the movie for me. There are several parts in the movie where a cryptic clue is revealed, and Nicolas Cage just makes the most wild, out of no where connections that ultimately are always correct and lead him exactly to where he needs to be next. These types of films (like “who done its”) are always more satisfying when the audience member has the potential of figuring out the mystery along the way (not that they have to figure it out… but when the mystery is revealed they could slap their heads because they COULD have figured it out), the answers Cage comes up with are so out of left field that it makes the audience feel like a sideline spectator, instead of being on the adventure as well. This was a problem throughout the whole movie.

I’ve already mentioned the supporting cast and how seeing them all up there alone makes you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth… HOWEVER… if you’re going to amass that calibre of talent… GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO! You’ve got these Oscar winners walking around on screen playing characters that do next to nothing in the film, and what little there was to do for them, it was so shallow that they didn’t even really need to act the scenes out. Especially wasted were Helen Mirren and Keitel. I’m not saying change the story to give them more meat per se… but why put Keitel in there in the first place if some newbie actor could have played the same role just as well?

I like Diane Kruger… but she was just painful to watch in this film. I have no idea why she came off the way she did in it… but every line she had to deliver, and every facial expression she had to make made me feel like I was watching some half assed high school play that wasn’t rehearsed very well. I realize that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. It was like I was watching the dreadful Thawndie Newton. I’ve seen her do better, and I trust we won’t see her this bad again… but she did drop the ball in this one.

OVERALL
Wasted major league talent and unrealistic puzzle solving aside, National Treasure: Book of Secrets does what it seems to set out to be, a light, easy, fun little adventure movie with some laughs along the way. The characters are likable, the adventure wasn’t too grand scale, and the ending satisfying. Certainly not a cinematic classic, and certainly no Indiana Jones, but in the end a more than serviceable Saturday afternoon movie. Overall I give National Treasure 2 an 8 out of 10.

-Biblio: Google

Keyword Cytography

I learned this from National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
Ciphers are codes used to conceal messages not meant for public viewing.
A classified information that once you break it, you'll feel happiness and satisfaction.

Try decrypting this:
"All lies form real excellent decoding."

DEAQ MN EVGJ.

Try decoding this using the key phrase above.

Analytic Geometry

At first, I thought it was just a review about the lessons in 3rd and 4th year in High School but I was wrong.
It's more complicated and amusing.
Simple terms used in the earlier years are expanded, derived and used at many things.
Every lesson is a part of another. It's like a chain, if one joint breaks it will be very difficult to recover.

I really like how our teacher teaches our lesson, he emphasizes and elaborates simple terms and conditions especially of the "what" and "where" it came from.

-Thanks for reading!

My IP

How will I know my IP address?

Open a terminal window, and type "/sbin/ifconfig" and press "Enter."
Your IP address will be displayed.

- faster connection (internet)
Go to the Start menu on your PC and find Run..
then type [ ping -t ]

Whalla! Your IP will be monitored and will be faster.

Proxies- Stealth and Masking

Proxies as defined by Google are:
-easily developed substitutes for more precise forms of measurement; proxies are frequently used in Rapid Rural Assessment to provide data quickly and inexpensively in place of indicators that take longer to develop and test for validity and reliability; example, the size or construction
-A computer and associated software that provides clients behind a firewall with a trusted agent that can access the Web on their behalf, while not revealing their IP addresses.

It will mask your IP when surfing, you can log on to MULTIPLE accounts without the hassle of having your IP getting revealed.
This has been legal since 2000. The freedom of anonymity or being ANONYMOUS when surfing.
The sites can be seen on My link lists on the top left!

Enjoy Surfing!

Firefox Tweak Guide

A guide for easy usage in Mozilla Firefox:
Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts

Power users (lazy people) love keyboard shortcuts and we have a semi exhaustive list of the common ones here. The most important ones (in our opinion) are near the top while the more benign ones are closer to the bottom. If we have missed anything that you think is important be sure to let us know.

To use the keyboard shortcuts hold down CTRL and press one of the following:

T	Opens a new tab and takes the focus to the new tab
O	Open Local File. This is one of the biggest changes from IE where both Ctrl-O and Ctrl-L opened a dialogue box for a URL.
L	Changes focus to the Address bar
Tab	Scrolls through the tabs from current window towards the right. Loops back to the first tab when rightmost tab is reached
1..0	The numbers 1 to 0 takes the focus to Tab 1 to 10
N	Opens a new window like IE
W	a tab or if there are no tabs, close the window
B	Open bookmark sidepanel
D	Bookmark current page
H	Brings up the history dialogue box on the right. Useful if you closed a page accidentally and forgot the URL. Or to make sure your kids are not looking at pr0n
U	Show page source
Y	Open downloads window
K	Focus goes to search bar

Some of the more common shortcuts just for the heck of it.

R	Refresh current page
F	Find in page
G	Find Again (used in conjunction with Ctrl F)
J	Page Info (same as properties in IE)
-	Decrease font size
+	Increase font size
S	Save current page to disk
P	Print current page
A	Select All

A note about copy and pasting in Firefox; it is not integrated as closely as IE and the Office Suite for better or worse. For example copying the contents of a page directly in IE and pasting into Word for example keeps the formatting most of the time. Doing the same thing with Firefox results in plain text being copied over.

A more specific version of the incremental search is "'" which only finds links with the string entered.

F5 - refresh page
F6 - Same as CTRL-L, focus is taken to the address bar
CTRL Y - Open up the downloads window
CTRL K - Focus is taken to search bar

Speeding up Firefox

Ever wondered why Mozilla is the best web browser?
'Cause it's fast! Damn fast! It loads pages faster than IE and it automatically asks for download (plug.ins) if needed. No installation hassles, it's ease and comfort into one.

Here are tips on speeding up Firefox:
(From Sir Darrell Norton)

Speeding up Firefox seems to be a meme going around the blogsphere lately. Most of the tips I’ve seen, though, are only for broadband connections with the latest hardware and only include some of the settings that would affect performance.

The Firefox Tweak Guide has the full details on how to speed up Firefox regardless of your connection or hardware, reprinted in part below. Don’t forget that the easiest way to tweak user files is with chromEdit extension.

Common to all configurations

These are the settings that seem to be common to all configuration files regardless of connection speed or computer speed with a couple of additions - plugin paths can be found with about:plugins and the bookmark menu delay is turned off.

user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);

Fast Computer Fast Connection

user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

A couple settings of note - Firefox is allocated 4096 KB of memory by default and in this configuration we give it roughly 65MB as denoted by the last line. This can be changed according to what is used.

Fast Computer, Slower Connection

This configuration is more suited to people without ultra fast connections. We are not talking about dial up connections but slower DSL / Cable connections.

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Fast Computer, Slow Connection

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 8191);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Slow Computer, Fast Connection

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 1000000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 1000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 4095);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 1000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);

One of the changes made for this particular configuration is the final line where the status bar is disabled for changing web pages to save processor time.

Slow Computer, Slow Connection

We have entered the doldrums of the dial-up user

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 750);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);