Like most games in Facebook, Cafe World is very easy to understand. The game starts with you being given a cafe to manage. You start out with a stove, a counter, a few tables, and an employee. When you click the stove, a cookbook will open indicating the dishes that you can cook at the level you are in. Once you decide on a dish, you continue to click the stove until the image indicates the amount of time it will take until the dish is cooked. Afterwards, you will be asked to click on the stove to serve the food. This will trigger your character, the cook, to bring it to the counter so that your waiter can start serving the dish. To be able to find out how many servings you have left, you place the mouse pointer on the counter. Those are the basic things you need to know to be able to serve a dish.

I like this game because you can design the cafe any way you want. You can go crazy with the decoration you can use. A friend of mine designed his cafe with a Moroccan theme. Let your creativity flow. The only thing that will limit you is the cash you have which you also use for buying a dish before you can cook it. It is fairly easy to earn money in Cafe World so this should not be a problem.

Another thing why I like Cafe World is because I imagine cooking, and eating, some of these dishes that sound so appetizing. Just thinking of dishes like Lemon Butter Lobster, Atomic Buffalo Wings, and Triple Berry Cheesecake makes my mouth water.

So if you haven’t yet, try out Cafe World and start cooking.

Cheers!

Time flies by when you’re having fun.

I didn’t realize it, but it’s already the 7th of January. I was supposed to make a year-end post but instead I will welcome 2010 with my new set of resolutions.

1. Make new friends.
2. Learn something new.
3. Look for the silver lining.
4. Take more pictures.
5. Make a conscious effort to smile.

Oh, and of course, I resolve to blog more often. I’m targetting at least 1 post each month. It is pretty low, but I just want to be more realistic. So anyway…

Here’s to more experiences, more learnings, and more blessings. Hopefully the events of the previous year will help us make better choices. May each and everyone of us feel more loved and more blessed every day.

Cheers!

I also thought of how lucky I was that I work at home since I just read a Plurk saying that they are forced to go to work despite the typhoon.

At noon, Jay Leno was on tv when suddenly the cable went out. I remembered feeling relieved that I was able to watch Hugh Laurie before the cable lost its signal. After a few minutes, I received a text from my sister in California asking how I was. It was then that I learned that Marikina has been in the news because of the quick rise of flood water in several areas. I felt lucky that this part of Barangay Fortune is safe from flood. Just then I received a call from my sister at my mom’s (they live a few steps away from UERM) asking how I was. I told her that Fortune is located on high ground. She told me that the flood has almost reached the steps going up to the first floor. Luckily, they live on the 3rd floor.

At this point, I just received a somewhat-harsh evaluation from a client about my work performance for the past two weeks. I was busy trying to come up with a proper response. It took almost an hour of checking data from the project and going back and forth to Thesaurus.com for more appropriate words. All of a sudden my screen went blank. Dang! My laptop has no battery. I felt very frustrated because I have been working on that response and I wasn’t sure if it was saved as a draft. (The next day I found out that it wasn’t.) After a few minutes I got a text from my mom asking me how I was. She also said that Aurora Boulevard is now under 10 feet of water. The flood has reached the first 3 steps of the 1st floor and they were fearful that the water level will keep rising. The rain has not let up and it seemed that it will not stop anytime soon. All the while, I had no idea that many houses in Marikina are already being swept away in the river and that the situation was quickly becoming alarming. I was busy with work and the tv was already turned off by this time.

So there I was, no tv, no computer, my phone’s battery low signal blinking every 2 seconds. I learned from people who live nearby that villages in Marikina and Cainta are already under several feet of water. People were already on their rooftops waiting to be rescued. A relative who lives in Greenland said that they just parked the car a few minutes as they fetched their children in their home, a few minutes later they realized that the car has been dragged by the heavy water current and they had no idea where it went. It was only at this point that I learned the typhoon’s name, Ondoy.

Like a flash, Ondoy was wreaking havoc all over the Philippines. It’s a good thing that I have this tiny battery-operated radio where I listened to updates about the storm, stranded people asking for help, anxious people waiting for news about their loved ones. I was becoming more and more concerned as I heard news reports on the status of the flood in UERM. When I heard that the water level has reached the 3rd floor, I became more tense knowing that the hospital’s 3rd floor is in level with our 2nd floor. I kept texting my mom, my sister, my brother and my cousins asking how they were, but to no avail.

I made french toast to release the tension building up inside me. But I had no appetite at that time. A few minutes later, I made grilled cheese sandwiches.

Time passed by slowly. It was only 6 in the evening and I had nothing to do. I decided to go to bed to sleep but I kept waking up. My cell phone’s battery has finally given up. I had no idea what time it was. I remember waking up several times in the night and every time I looked outside all I could see was darkness. I just forced myself to sleep although my mind kept forming horror stories on its own. That’s the problem with having a wild imagination.

Morning finally came. Still no news from my mom. I decided to go to SM Marikina since I really needed to put in at least a couple of hours of work, and charge my cell phone’s battery. As I traveled to the mall, I surveyed the damage Ondoy left the city (and people) of Marikina.

After getting stuck on the road for two hours, I finally arrived at SM and found their basement parking muddy and closed for cleaning. When I got to Figaro, I was finally able to contact my sisters in California to let them know I’m okay. I was also able to get in touch with my mom. Gratefully, the water only reached their first floor. Our vehicles though were submerged in water but it is still a good thing that they were not dragged by the strong water current.

As of this writing, the death toll has gone up to 240.  All I could do right now is pray for those who lost their loved ones.  Thankfully the spirit of brotherhood is alive and well, as we provide to those who need food, shelter, and clothing. International organizations have been sending aid to the Philippines in whatever way they can.

There is hope for humanity yet.

One of the problems I have with this borrowed camera is that when it is too bright, tiny dots appear on the lens which also appear on the pictures.  The reason for this has actually been explained to me but right now I can’t remember what it was.  Anyway, my problem was how to fix the pictures.

I just started using GIMP, so don’t laugh when I tell you that the image editor I used before was Paint.  I don’t really know what terms like saturate, color balance and layers mean.  For me Paint is enough to modify the image attributes like when I need to resize a photo.

After asking an expert, I learned that it’s actually very easy “fix” photos in GIMP.  All I needed to use is the Heal Tool (Tools > Paint Tools > Heal).

In this example, I was working on a photo in Grayscale mode.

Notice the encircled black dot? There are also several noticeable dots on the picture. So what I need to do is to look for a part of the photo that I can use to overlap those dots. I pressed the CTRL key while clicking on that part that I want to use to cover the dot with. Then, I clicked on the dot, this time without pressing the CTRL key to erase the dot. It is simple, just like Copy – Paste, right?!

So there you go. Here’s the finished product.

P.S.
I also learned how to create a custom brush. Check out my signature on that finished photo. I’ll provide the tutorial link later.

The series finale already aired a few days ago, so if you start watching now you’ll be able to watch Quantum Leap’s first season. The series is about a man who travels back in time to change history for the better. Dr. Sam Beckett is a medical doctor who built the Quantum Leap project to help people. He designed the machine that will bring him back in time but only within his lifetime. On the first episode, he leaped into an Air Force test-pilot to save him from dying during a test flight. To be able to leap back in his own time, he must “put right what once went wrong”.

It was said that the season five finale was just supposed to be a cliff-hanger but since the show was not renewed for the sixth season, the last episode of season five became the series finale. So after five seasons and changing the lives of the people he leaps into, Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.

Personally, I love happy endings. When I first found out that the series ended with Sam not being able to return home, I was very disappointed. In fact, I did not even want to watch the next episodes after that. Eventually, I realized that he might not have needed a happy ending for himself. After all the project Quantum Leap was created to help others. So with that, he succeeded.

Since May 2008 Plurk has been giving internet users a way of updating their friends (and fans) with a minute-by-minute account of their lives. It is instant messaging, blogging, and social networking all rolled into one. Just like Yahoo Messenger, AIM, or Windows Messenger you will be able to send instant messages (with cute new emoticons) to your friends. Similar to blogging, you will be able to send short messages containing links, photos, and even YouTube videos. Social networking comes into play because you can add a number of fans who can follow your timeline, and a set of friends who you can follow and who can follow your timeline as well. So long as the plurks (which are actually the messages) are viewable to the world, people in the plurkiverse (who may or may not be your friends) can post replies to them.

As the A-Team puts it, you are a celebrity! So no matter what you do, or how boring you think your life is, there will be people who will tune in to your social journal.

There are features in Plurk that are not available on their (considered-to-be) rival, Twitter. In Plurk, the plurkers (or subscribers) can post new messages with a given set of qualifiers. These are one-word verbs that can be used to represent a thought (ex. hopes, wonders, wants, etc.). Also, there is a list of supported languages for qualifiers that you can opt to use: Filipino, Italiano, and Bahasa Indonesia are just some of them. You can also suggest your native language if it’s not on the current list yet.

Karma is another feature. Every plurker has a Karma value that is recalculated everyday. The Karma value depends on several things: updating the profile, the number of plurks, friends and fans, and inviting more friends to Plurk. It is very important to know the difference of quality plurking from spamming. A high Karma value rewards you with exclusive features. For instance, a Karma value of more than 10 will earn you the ability to give a title to your own timeline. A Karma value of more than 50 will give you access to exclusive emoticons.

Because of the increasing number of members, along with their demands, add-ons and widgets have been created for its users that would quickly post the plurks without having to visit their own user profile. In the Philippines, PhPlurk has provided Plurk users with a way of updating their timeline just by sending a message from a mobile phone to PhPlurk’s gateway. They have created a gateway for the following mobile network provider:Globe, Smart and Sun Cellular.

Plurk is just one of the many tools in the internet that gives you a chance to connect with people, be it with family, friends, and even strangers. What are you waiting for? Start plurking.