Hurrah for Paypal!

Good news for all Philippine based online citizen. You can now create you account in Paypal using your Philippine address. Although a Philippine-based account is still limited in terms of functionality, it still is a good start. All hard work of those fellow filipinos who strived to make Paypal notice us is now bearing fruit, especially Paypal4PH.com.

Just created my Home-based Paypal account now. Hope we can tie-up our local paypal account with our local bank very soon.

Python and .NET

Python is a dynamic object-oriented programming language which runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Amiga, Palm OS etc. It is becoming a favorite language by programmers due to it's portability and fast performance. It doesn't matter if your a seasoned programmer, or just started creating your first "Hello World!" program. You can learn the language in just a few days. It's really very easy to install and offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools.

I started dabbling with Python a few years ago, creating quick solutions and a few libraries for my personal software needs. I was then given an opportunity to be a part of a web-based software development using C# and .NET Framework. Although I still tried creating small and quick solutions in Python, the .NET project I am working on prevented me from fully integrating Python into my application. Don't get me wrong, I really love C#. But Python has somehow captured my fancy.

Then came Google. I was amazed to learn that the Python was a major powerhouse behind the company's powerful applications. I was more amazed in learning that Python played an important role in the development of MMORPG's like Eve Online, my favorite Civilization 4, and even Star Wars: Episode II.

Acting on the excitement building up in me, I started looking back again at Python and started researching on ways how I may be able to implement it on the .NET Framework and be able to have it interoperate with my existing C# applications.

My research narrowed down to two solutions, IronPython and Python for .NET. It is really a good thing to know .NET programmers and even Microsoft people are now taking notice of the Python language's capability.

Unlike the Python for .NET package which "does not produce managed code (IL) from Python code", IronPython does enable you to compile your program into bytecode (IL). It makes .NET libraries available to your Python program, and even extend your existing Python applications by importing libraries and assemblies in .NET.

In terms of execution speed, benchmarks conducted on IronPython produced positive results.

The future of running Python on CLR looks promising. Can't wait to try my hands on this new found toy.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0... What is it? What's up with all the hype. Why is it that almost everyone I talked to online (at least the geeks, hehe) are talking bout it?

Social-networking(Friendster, myspace, etc.) , blogging, phlogging, wikis. These are just some of the samples that fall under Web 2.0.

The use of the world wide web is drastically moving towards online interaction and social networking, in which contents are dynamically created and contributed by it's users. Traditional static websites is slowly getting less attention if not becoming extinct. User-dependent web portals are generating more traffic, thus making Google Adsense a common buzzword by bloggers.

People always wants to interact. Thats probably the main reason why interactive learning is more successful than reading static, and boring texts on a book. People wants to be able to speak and be heard, to contribute and be part of a social circle. To collaborate and work with other people. To be in control of particular online project and owning data. These are some (if not all) of the qualities of a Web 2.0 application.

It seems that this time, the web is has been given a new life. Web 2.0 is on the brink of becoming a gigantic tidal wave (or so I hope).

Time to bring out the old surfboard and start riding the wave. Hang loose brah!

Paypal for PH

I am letting everyone know that as of now, I am fully supporting Paypal for the Philippines. I have signed up and have given my digital signature in hopes that the initiative will bring paypal to our country.

There are a lot of untapped potentials and opportunities for our local manpower waiting to be unleased if this pushes through (and hopefully, it will).

I have been waiting for Paypal to be available here in our country for the last 3 years. I have a paypal account but am using a US address of one of my friends in Florida. Problem is, my account got frozen when I tried to access it a couple of times (the IP was tracked and blocked my account when it was traced to be coming from outside the US)... sigh!

Well, the sooner the better. There will be a lot of grounds to cover I know, such as the finance and banking sector plus the current state of our government. But this movement will hopefully this will be a good start.

More updates on the petition later. Ciao!

Flash webcam app

Been trying to make the artist cam work and finally succeded after 3 days, whew. Trouble shooting something that you never developed in the first place is really a pain in the arse. Literally, since I have to sit in from of my glowing monitor the whole day. Ouch! my eyes hurt. Not to mention the growing spare tire around my waist. Hardiharhar!

Krugle.com

Developer? Programmer? A technical person? I think you will find Krugle.com a valuable addition to your growing list of online resources. I recommend checking it out. They claim they are not an affiliate of Google.

I like the way they tabbed the results that you get when searching for codes, technotes and projects. Another one to add to my favorite link.

TipidPC.com

Been trying for days to get in my account but to no avail. Darn yahoo is blocking any emails coming from the site (i guess a lot of spams or maybe a violation has been done using that domain, reason for it to be listed on the blocked domains).

Sigh... I have to create a new account using hotmail.

The Wayback Machine

Say hello to old favorite websites that you thought went down permanently.

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

A friend showed me this website and I immediately typed in URL(s) of long lost websites I can think of... Whoa!!!

This is really cool! Even old websites I created from way back 1999 was there. Really cool. Can't really express how happy I am, since now I can really prove that these sites that I developed before (and is now extinct as I say) used to exist.

Thanks to my friend Steven. :)

Country of Fraud

I came upon a website that has lots of DNS tools. A very handy site when testing your server. http://www.dnsstuff.com

I tried the tools and was happy with the results it was giving, until I tested the "City from IP" tool that uses IP to find city and location. I was curious whether the results would give me my location so I used my static IP and got this result:

IP: 210.213.xxx.xx
Country: Philippines
City: Unknown
Country Code: PH
Merchant Note: Country may have high rate of fraud [1]
Currency: PHP [Philippines Pesos]
Private IP? No
Known Proxy? No

What??? high rate of fraud? Darn! and to think I live in this country. I cannot believe what I saw so I tested another one of the tools the site have, "IP Information". Got this result:
------------------
IP address: 210.213.xxx.xx
Reverse DNS: 210.213.xxx.xx.pldt.net.
Reverse DNS authenticity: [Could be forged: hostname 210.213.xxx.xx.pldt.net. does not exist]
ASN: 9299
ASN Name: IPG-AS-AP (Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company)IP range connectivity: 1
Registrar (per ASN): APNIC
Country (per IP registrar): PH [Philippines]
Country Currency: PHP [Philippines Pesos]
Country IP Range: 210.213.64.0 to 210.213.127.255
Country fraud profile: High
City (per outside source): Unknown
Private (internal) IP? NoIP address registrar: whois.apnic.net
Known Proxy? No
Link for WHOIS: 210.213.122.74

DANG! Fraud profile on all time "High". Saddening, very saddening to see that the country I live in is considered a place where fraud is rampant.

Tell me, how about the US??? I bet not...