In our time when information and news from all over the world is readily available to everyone, a clash of cultures and practices is unavoidable. This usually leads to misinformation. Storm strength and warning levels is one of those always misunderstood by many people.

Here in the Philippines, we have what we call the Public Storm Warning Signal which is only up to Signal No. 4. In the US, they use the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Category Scale which reaches up to Category 5. These two are totally different, and for this post, I will try to clear the difference between the two to avoid another misunderstanding.

The July 22, 2009 Total Solar Eclipse was an experience to treasure - yes, even though from where I am it was only partial, about 49.5% here in Megapolitan Manila.

This is technically the first Solar Eclipse I was able to observe, the previous solar eclipses that occured here in the Philippines were, sadly, covered by clouds (and even raining). One of it was the Total Solar Eclipse that was visible in Cebu (Manila got up to 96% at that time if I remember correctly).

Here are my select photos of today’s record-breaking eclipse - longest Total Solar Eclipse at its maximum - 6 minutes and 39 seconds. Oh, you’re in for a treat, 5 video coverage of the Total Solar Eclipse in India, China, and Japan, you’ll even see the firey fires of the sun ;)

In my previous post I talked about “Baybayin - the Forgotten Pre-Hispanic Writing of the Filipino”. It was added in version 5.0 of the Unicode Standard together with Buhid, Hanunoo, and Tagbanwa under the “Philippine Scripts” group. But how should we properly write or mark our content written in another language and script?

For this post, I will talk about how to correctly declare the language of your content, this way you are being friendly with translation software and helper applications, and other technologies that rely on this often taken-for-granted HTML attribute. As is shown in our image, everyone can see the writing script used, but in the digital world there are people who do not have the fonts you are using. There are also people who do not use the same browser as you and me use - it could be a text-only browser, a speech browser, or a Braille browser.

It is then only appropriate that we properly and correctly tag our content with the language and script we are using. Get ready to use the LANG attribute a lot.

Last night, I searched if there were fonts updated to include the Philippine Peso currency sign which has been added in Unicode since version 3.2 release. The Unicode position of the Peso sign is at point 20B1 if you want to check it out for yourself.

I was planning on creating a Peso font if I can not find one, this was after the availability of the Peso sign was discussed during the [Event] Philippine Ubuntu 9.04 release party. My search turned-out positive, there’s not just one but countless of fonts with the Peso sign already included.

Today was the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Release Party for the Philippine Local Community (LoCo).  The Filipino Linux and Ubuntu enthusiasts gathered together for three hours and discussed different topics about Ubuntu and Linux!

It was fun and a memorable one for me since this was my first Ubuntu Release Party.  I met interesting people, from KDE lovers (I’m a GNOME, yes, a Gnome! :p ) to programmers (developing Ruby-on-Rails applications using Ubuntu not Mac) to writers (we might show up in a major publication, watch out for it).

Maybe you have read my HOW TO: Add DISQUS Manually on Blogger/BlogSpot but found it is for XML-based templates. Fret not, in this how-to, we are going to integrate DISQUS on your Blogger/BlogSpot Classic/Custom Template!

If like me you are using DISQUS for your blog or site comments system, then maybe you’ve encountered a problem with integrating it to your custom theme/template. In this simple tutorial, I will show you which code bits to edit to successfully integrate Disqus into your Google Blogger/BlogSpot XML-based template. (Basically it is the same with any theme/template regardless of your blog platform or CMS.)

But if you have a Classic Template, then read my HOW TO: Integrate DISQUS on Blogger/BlogSpot Classic Template instead.

Finally someone took the job in establishing a group in the Philippines to be “web standard” compliant. With the sudden influx of Filipino sites (thanks to blogging), many Filipinos are venturing into website creation. However, most learned from the not-so-good resources, usually from other people who also are not knowledgeable enough about the importance of being compliant to current web standards.