GCHS Batch 87 Reunion

Hard to believe it has been 25 years since we left the gates of Grace Christian High School!  But thanks to the selfless efforts of a few batchmates, several of us got together last night at Chivz in Greenhills for a night of fun and memories.

From GCHS Batch 87 Reunion

It was fun trying to figure who is who after all these years.  Some classmates still looked exactly the same, while others, err..., have "matured" more.  hehehe.  Section 3 (my section) was the most represented (thanks, classmates).  Lets hope the next reunion will not take another 25 years!

Importing and Exporting Data across Firebird Databases

In the past couple of weeks, I've encountered a few problems with the Firebird databases that I maintain.  In both cases, I had to retrieve data from a backup and restore it to the one running in production.

Firebird does not come with any built-in utility to do that function.  Thankfully, as with majority of open source projects, there are 3rd party solutions that seem to do what you want.  In this case, I found FBExport:

http://fbexport.sourceforge.net/

The command-line syntax is very straightforward.  First, you extract:

fbexport -S -H hostname -D database1.gdb -U username -P password -F file.fbx -Q "select * from sometable"

Then, you import:

fbexport -I -H hostname -D database2.gdb -U username -P password -F file.fbx -Q "INSERT INTO sometable(field1, field2, field3)"

It works great!

Trick Art

I took the kids and my nephew to Seri Fantasy World this afternoon.  The group-buying sites have been promoting them in various deals and lots of people have been buying, so I've been curious as to what is in there.

Seri Fantasy World is located at the second floor of the Manila Ocean Park.  My first impression when I saw the place was that of disappointment.  It looked like a ran-down, low-end version of Active Fun.  Our P198 voucher was good for unlimited viewing of their 3D movie and the Trick Art Museum.  The kids seem to have enjoyed the 3D movie although the quality was pretty lame compared to our Samsung 3D tv at home.

The Trick Art Museum was the highlight of the trip.  The place was actually very small and very unimpressive to look at.  All the images on the wall look very flat and 2D-ish.  But interestingly, when you take a picture, they look very 3D-like.  Check out our shots.

From Seri Fantasy World Trick Art Museum

Koshi Noodles at Moshi Koshi

When along Shaw Boulevard, pass by and try Moshi Koshi Noodle Boss.  Its a modern Japanese diner which specializes on koshi noodles, a term used to refer to the "chewiness" property of freshly prepared Japanese noodles.  The udon is the specialty although I also love the soba.  They serve zaru soba (cold soba) even though it is officially not in the menu.

Moshi Koshi also serves toppings (donburi) and salads.  No sushi or sashimi on the menu.  Pricing is affordable (mostly below PHP200).  Moshi Koshi is the brainchild of one of the founders of Yellow Cab Pizza.

Tracking Images via GPS

Here's a very interesting story.  A hacker was recently apprehended by the FBI based on the photo of the, ahermm... "assets" of his girlfriend.  As it turned out, he took the photo using his iPhone which embeds GPS information in the metadata section of the image file.  Not being aware of it, he posted the image to taunt the authorities.  I guess you can say he committed a "boo-boo".

PLDT's Lousy DNS Servers

Looking for free and reliable DNS service?  Try out Comodo's free Secure DNS service.  Just configure your router or your PC to use the following DNS servers:

Primary DNS : 156.154.70.22
Secondary DNS : 156.154.71.22

It works soooo much better than PLDT's DNS server that comes with their MyDSL service.  PLDT's DNS server often fails in resolving hostnames.  So even if the DSL link is up, you can't surf.  The problem does not seem to be unique to me as postings in public forums from other PLDT subscribers also describe the same problem.

Manually Updating Comodo Anti-Virus Database

I've been using Comodo's free Internet Security Suite for a couple of years and I have not had any problems with it.  However, when I recently bought a couple of new notebooks for the new office and tried installing it, I realized how inefficient it was.  The Comodo installer itself is about 80MB in size and you can download it from Comodo's site or at CNet.  The problem is Comodo does not provide a site where you can download the latest virus signatures as a single file.  You have to download it using the Comodo software itself.

The anti-virus database (CAV file) from a fresh install is so large (about 129MB).  The download process keeps failing due to time out.  Comodo does not seem to have a partial download/update or a resumable download capability.  If the entire download does not work, the whole thing aborts.  Also, if you have several PC's or notebooks, you have to download that same file on each PC.  It would be so much more efficient to just download a single large database update file and install it on each individual PC's.

Reading through several forums, I found out that there is an unofficial way of doing this.  One can copy the scanners subfolder (specifically, the bases.cav file) of an up-to-date installation under the c:\program files\COMODO\Comodo Internet Security folder to the new PC.  But since its a special folder, you have to switch to Windows safe mode first (http://www.pchell.com/support/safemode.shtml) before you can overwrite your copy.  I tried it and it worked!