Interesting Business Idea Framework

I always liked the style of the Fizzle.co guys.

They really give the feel that they're always organized and systematized in attacking business questions. I like Corbett Barr among the four as he seems to be deep into the processes more than anyone else in the team.

What I got out of this video is the 9 Essential Questions to Choose a Business Idea. If you are interested in business or online business in particular, you need to watch this video.

Dirt Poor Gamer

Not sure if I want to revive this blog you are reading right now. But I don't want to say it's dead.

That said, visit my new hobby blog - Dirt Poor Gamer.

If you don't have much time and disposable income to game, this site is for you.

Revamped Home Jobs PH Website

We are still alive and kicking. Though we have been busy and seemingly have abandoned this site, we are hard at work to experience more online businesses and profitable online trends. We are trying an experiment in the next few days. I can't say what it is yet, but if successful, this site will be completely revamped and relaunched.

We hope to launch this experiment so that we can share the experience with you. I hope you can join us for the wild ride ahead. 

Head on over to Home Jobs PH, my other hobby site and see how you can make money online. It is not easy to make money online, but it is definitely worth the time and effort.

Here's to your online success!

Screenshot of My Trusty Netbook

I stole this idea from Ben Brooks of the Brooks Review. The concept is basically about what your desktop looks like. So here is the desktop of my main netbook in all of its glory.

That's it. I will explain in as little detail as possible.

1. I have the taskbar in XP on auto hide in order to maximize screen space.

2. I almost have no use for the taskbar because I use a program launcher called Find and Run Robot.

Now, this is my text editor. It is called Focus Writer.

This is basically where I earn my living - desktop and text editor. So that's pretty much my workspace. More on this crap soon.

My New Squidoo Lenses for 2011

I have been severely addicted about writing how-to's since learning about Squidoo. I've earned about $5.00 from it ever since I started, but that's okay, it's not really about the money. It's all about helping people with some tech guides and tutorials.

I recently had a Squidoo kick and made a few more lenses. So without further ado, here are my new Squidoo lenses for 2011:

1. How to Play Playstation Games Using Your USB Flash Drive

2. Puppeee Linux For eeePC 701 Review

3. Dingoo A320 Retro Games Handheld System

4. How to Play Gameboy Games in Ubuntu or Jolicloud

I hope you find my lenses fun and useful. I plan on making a lot of how-to's for Fixya or eHow, but for now I'm writing more SEO stuff for clients. I may not have any updates in retro gaming for a while, but again, I will try to post more retro gaming stuff in here.

Writer's Block & Writing About Writing

This will be a short post just to have an update.

When I experience writer's block, I never ever fight it or force myself to write. I read incessantly a lot of articles on how to combat writer's block, but I never really apply them. Well, I have writer's block right now. Not because I can't write anything, what I mean is that I can't write on topic in this blog today. So I will just write about writing.

I never considered myself to be a good writer even though I worked for print. Without my trusty grammar checker, Grammatica, I will be lost in grammar hell. Thank goodness for spell checkers, too. My inspiration in writing comes from a short article in Byte magazine authored by Jerry Pournelle. His article entitled, "How To Get My Job" was published more than a decade ago, but it is still 100% relevant today. Pournelle is a great writer and knows what he is talking about when it comes to writing. He has authored a number of best-selling sci-fi books that are not only well-written, but also well imagined.

If you are a writer (or if you want to be), check out the link below to the article.

Chaos Manor - How To Get My Job

I will not run this post through Grammatica, so please nitpick on my grammar on the comments section.

I don't write for Google

I never write for machines to be able to spider this website. I never ever optimize this site for any keywords or what bullshit SEO term you can think of. This hobby site is just that - a hobby site. Now, I usually get 99% of my traffic from Google, but after the almighty search engine dictatorship changed their algorithm a few days ago, my traffic dipped tremendously.

Why? This site might have been flagged as a "content farm" or whatever the hell it's called. How the hell can this blog with barely any content for the last couple of years be a content farm? Now, I don't earn any money from this blog, not one cent. I recently, and by recently I mean yesterday, tried to place one ad from an advertising company to get a few dollars. Needless to say, I got approved by the company, but the kicker is, with my traffic so low now, I will probably get kicked out of the program in a couple of days.

Thanks a lot, Google. Do no evil, indeed.

My 2011 Retrogaming Line Up

Since getting the Dingoo a320 I've been consuming a lot of retro games from the SNES to the GBC. The a320 really makes it easy for me to play games because it's portable. With this thing, I don't need to risk buying a DS and modding it, or something similar that will jeopardize the system. The a320 is cheap at merely $100 (now it's just $88, I think), it's also very durable and the battery life is about 10 to 12 hours in my case.

Since it's already 2011, it's time again for my annual retrogaming line up. And without further ado, here is my list of games that I will play (maybe) for 2011:

1. Dragon Warrior III - GBC
2. Dragon Warrior IV - NES
3. Phantasy Star - SMS
4. Phantasy Star II - Genesis
5. Phantasy Star IV - Genesis
6. Shining Force III: Final Conflict - Game Gear
7. Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel - GBC

That's the magic seven line up for this year. Now, I will be busy this next few months, so I can't promise to write reviews for all of these. But, if I finish one or two of these games, I will surely write at least a capsule review.

My Addiction to Civilization (Snes) Continues

No post for the past couple of weeks due to my addiction to Civilization for the Snes. I know that it's not the best version of Civ 1, but I like it nonetheless. Once Civilization V for the PC goes out, life as I know it will be over for sure.

My own play-through with the game has not been that successful 'cause my civ was constantly behind on tech even though I'm just playing in Warlord difficulty. The damn Aztecs and Germans gang up on me with their riflemen and tanks, while I only have primitive cannons. I'm still learning to be good at this game, what can I say...

Anyway, enjoy this Let's Play series of Civilization 1 for the Snes. The LPer chose to play on Earth under the easiest setting as the Aztecs, I believe. He will teach you the basics of the game and some other technique like creating "canals" for easy access for your sea faring units.

New Year Gaming - Ironically Old School

Here is my playlist for the new year:

1. Final Fantasy 1 & 2: Dawn of Souls - Classics that should be played at least once.

2. Final Fantasy 4 - My favorite old Final Fantasy. The best being FF6.

3. Swordcraft Story 2 - A GBA exclusive. Plays fun and looks great.

That's all for the year. I'll play the games when I have time.

You can get the ROMs for these games on www.Freeroms.com

For the 3d graphics whores out there, there is a Final Fantasy 1 & 2 on the Playstation one. It's harder than the GBA version, though.

Happy New Year!

Final Fantasy Adventure - Sword of Mana

I was playing the original Gameboy Final Fantasy Advenutre a.k.a. Mystic Quest a.k.a. Secret of Mana (GBA version). I was going to raid the castle of Dark Lord when I realized (too late) that I am 1 key short. In effect, I was not able to open a crucial door that I needed to open just to advance in the game.

Suffice it to say, I screwed up. I did not even have a save game to a safe spot that I can back track to. So I decided to just play the GBA remake of the game.

Sword of Mana is gorgeous. The graphics are definitely top notch compared to the old Gameboy game. Yet Sword of Mana disappointed me. The controls are not as refined as the original. The interface is also clunky, especially when changing weapons. And believe me there are a lot of weapon changing in this game.

The thing is, I can't go back to the old Final Fantasy Adventure and repeat the game from the start. Hence, I have to trudge on with Sword of Mana. Good thing Sword of Mana is easier than the original.

Hurray For Less Ads!

I took off one adsense unit on this site. The truth is, I'm not making any money from this site. I have not seen a dollar or much less a cent from this blog. This is my hobby blog. The ads are just like a small delusion for my brain. It makes me feel like I'm a professional blogger making actual money off this site.

I don't want to play the SEO game. I feel like if the content of this site is inferior so be it. Screw you, this is my site regardless of the quality. I don't want to target keywords or to play keyword zombie for the mighty Google.

I remember blogging to be something better than just playing match the keywords for search engines. Right now, blogging is dying. Not because of Twitter, but because of SEO assholes and Social Media douchebags. Content and voice should be enough. But no, you had to game the system, don't you?

This site will still have some ads, not because I need the money, but again, it's something psychologically pleasing for me to think about. Call me a hypocrite or what have you. I don't give a damn. I stopped giving a damn a long time ago.

BastichOS is still my pet project. I blogged here January 1, 2005, and I will blog here until I can't write anymore.

Image credit: Pearsonified

Not much geekery going on

Image Credit: Kevin

Not a lot of geekery going on this past couple of months. A lot of changes are going on in meat space, and I can hardly cope up. 

This post will be a wish list of the games that I want to play, the books I want to read, and some of the geekery that I miss.

1. Play the SNES translated rom Dragon Quest V.

2. Finish Townsmen 2 gold.

3. Finish reading Watchmen.

4. Finish reading Preacher.

5. Play Dragon Quest 1, 2, 3, 4 for the NES.

As you can see, I have a lot of things to finish. I just don't have the time to do it. Plus, I seem to be multi-tasking like a crazy person. I never believed in multi-tasking. Makes me wonder why I do it. 

Crazy world.

Review of Mafia Wars 2 and Gangstar Crime City

I made some capsule reviews of Mafia Wars 2: Scarlottis and Gangstar: Crime City on my Tumblr. I don't know why I still post here. Ah, maybe because I'm sentimental and this is my most visited website. Heh, whatever.

1. Mafia Wars 2: Scarlottis

2. Gangstar: Crime City

I think I'll review Might and Magic mobile on this site. Maybe. 

Enjoy playing, bitches!

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Nokia S40 - 128x128 games

Batman - Gotham Knights DVD

This DVD is awesome! Six Batman stories by six different directors. Basically, the concept is borrowed from the Animatrix collection, but with the Batman kick-butt, awesomeness.

Kevin Conroy reprises his role as Batman / Bruce Wayne. Need I say more? I suggest that you don't go over to Wikipedia to look this one up for possible spoilers.

That said, I loved the Animatrix better than this one, but this is The Batman, damn it! Go order your copy now!

Newspapers are dead - Dvorak

As a blogger and someone who used to write for the print media, it saddens me to read analysis like this. Sad to say, I think Dvorak is correct on this one.

Many of the pundits say the biggest hurdle the newspapers have is the transition from print to online. In fact, most already have made the transition, and most cannot make the online model work well enough to make up for the downslide in print. They never will.

The reason is simple: In an online world, there are too many bloated newspapers.

As a third world country, I give newspapers in the Philippines 20 more years before most of them fold. Just look at the show of force of PDI in the net. Their homepage is one of the most updated and most extensive newspaper sites.

But Dvorak has a solution (kinda) on how a newspaper can survive online:

The only papers or news organizations that can expect to survive will be those with lots of original content available only at their individual sites. The operations that rely more on universally available news feeds will be at the mercy of a fickle public -- one that doesn't care where they read a particular story, especially if it is the exact same story with the exact same headline.

What do you think? Will print media die or will it somehow survive the online onslaught?

Shmups hate me

Shmups or shoot 'em ups for the uninitiated is one of the oldest video game genres there is. Examples of Shmups are Space Invaders, Gradius, R-type, Galaga, etc..

This type of game tests not only your hand-eye coordination but also your reflexes. It's like driving a car (but in this case a spaceship or a plane) while avoiding obstacles and projectiles along the way.

I suck at Shmups. I've never been really good with Shmups, but I did finish Gradius 3 (Snes) and R-type 1 & 2 (Gameboy Color). But this game I'm playing just now, Alpha Wing, for mobile phones--I just can't get past the second level. Considering that autofire is on and the controls do not really suck that much than a GBC, I can't get past the second level.

I'll try to play it again after work. Man, work just gets in the way of everything fun.

I suck at video games

I recently had a talk with Cusineroge about video games and I determined that I suck at video games.  I always wondered why I was never any good with any genre of video game--and that's it, that's the conclusion--I'm not really very good at them.

The only genre that I find not so difficult to beat is the traditional console RPG. Just console RPG's, not CRPG's--I also suck at CRPG's.  I'm not very good with strategy games either, nor am I very good at twitchy action games.  I just remembered the adventure genre.  I can say that I'm a decent adventure player (like those classic Lucas arts games) but I still stand by what I said that I'm not very good at them.

I think I only play video games because I enjoy it not necessarily that I'm good at it.  How about you, why do you play video games?

RSS makes me surf less

Google reader has me surfing the web less and less--for news that is.  Why surf the web for news if you can consolidate everything in one page?  RSS has really revolutionized the way I read stuff on the web.

I currently have a ton of blogs and websites on Google reader, with one or two sites being added each day.  I don't know if all this information is good or bad, but I'm becoming a news junky of sorts.  My day's not complete when I don't have my Google reader open.  And not only do I subscribe to blogs, I also made it a point to subscribe to Twitter feeds of Tech people, just to stay on the loop--for what purpose?  I have no idea.

Do you have any RSS stories?

My top 10 favorite podcasts

I've been there since the start of podcasting.  Even before I had an MP3 player I would listen to podcasts from my PC.  I actually stopped watching TV because I only watch or listen to podcasts all day.  Over the years I have my share of podcast hit and misses.  Here's a list of my most favorite podcasts in the net.

1.    TWIT 
2.    Buzz Out Loud
3.    Digital Life TV
4.    PCgamer Podcast
5.    Geeknights
6.    Game theory
7.    Comicology
8.    East meets West
9.    Net at Nite
10.  MP3 insider

Do you have your own favorite podcast?  Please share it with us if it's any good.