Five websites I love visiting

Save for my usual technology and movie haunts, here are five websites I always make a point of visiting at least once a week.  You might find my favourites interesting too!

TED (http://www.ted.com/)
Inspiring talks and ideas. One could spend hours trawling through the website and listening to short but informative and inspiring talks. Never fails to make me smile and wonder.

A robot that flies like a bird

I'm always fascinated by robots.  This one, from TED Talks, is simply amazing, and I would like to share it with you.

Are you a Permanent Resident / Citizen? Then register to vote

When we became Permanent Residents, one question I had was if we needed to register as votes, of if we already had the right to vote at all. It did not seem important at that time, so I sort of forgot about it. And then I received a letter from Elections NZ indicating that it is a legal requirement to be a registered voter, and that I should enrol.

Baby in one hand, remote in the other

Multitasking?

My LinkedIn Profile, as told through business cards

Spanning 17 years working in Information Technology.

Started out as a Sales Engineer.
Spent time outside of office hours chatting via the BBS (Bulletin Board System).  Quite happy that management, who were only a couple of tables from me, permitted this.

Moved to Systems Engineering, in charge of the Network General Sniffer System and designed Local Area Networks.  At that time, it mattered that you know what an Ethernet frame was and what's inside it.  Token Ring and FDDI were touted as more reliable than Ethernet (10Mbps at that time).  Guess where these are now.  Less than a year later, became Supervisor.  We also maintained the company email system running on Linux.  I was thrilled at the prospect of running a Unix system.

A weekend trek

Last Sunday was turning out to be a fine day, one of the rare sunny afternoons in this winter season.  Russell's Dad (Russell is Jo-Lo's classmate) phoned and wondered if we were interested to go on an afternoon tramp. It's been a while since we climbed the mountain in our "backyard" and it's either that or a video game afternoon; we needed the exercise anyway so off we went to Mt KauKau!

The first stop after a 20-minute walk to the trek entrance

And our beloved Astromech Droid is number one!

Newsarama.com counted down the 10 coolest robots in pop culture history, and no other than R2-D2 topped the list!  Being a huge fan of the astromech droid myself, this comes as no surprise.  My personal list would change in the 2-9 ranking compared with theirs, but their top choice is without contest.

In celebration of this news, I am showing here my collection of R2-D2 figures, all of which are back in the Philippines (save for a small R2-D2 Lego figure).

A PostSecret Wedding

The email below is part of this week's PostSecret.  It's a very nice story, and I would like to share it with you. Oh, and the Dominic mentioned therein is not me!

My name is Ashley. Four years ago this coming October I discovered the PostSecret Community. It was a safe haven, a place to share my deepest thoughts and feelings, it was a place to be one hundred percent myself.

I had no idea or intention to pursue any sort of romance through PSC, my closest friends and family had no idea I even participated in online forums... PSC was my secret. Then I met Dominic.