I saw Forgotten Island last night. It was my second time watching it, and it still got me.

The movie is about a pair of best friends, Jo and Raissa, who meet at school shortly after Jo transfers over from another school. Their friendship quickly builds up, told through flashbacks, each one earning a trinket on their friendship bracelet. Jo's lola is also heavily involved, as she serves as Jo's adoptive parent while her dad is in the US. Lola's tales of Nakali island and its magical creatures entrance the two youngsters, and they make it their goal to explore it someday.

Fast forward to now: lola has passed, and the two are at a crossroads. Raissa is off to Caltech, while Jo is stuck working at a fried chicken joint called Chicken Yum Yum. Jo hates the idea of Raissa flying off to California. They have a quick argument by the beach, a portal key appears, and suddenly they find themselves in Nakali. There they make friends (and fiends) of a cast of wacky mythical creatures: the Askal (street dog, okay maybe not mythical), Sarimanok (a colourful bird), Duwende (dwarf), Kapre (tree-dwelling giant), Batibat (the spirit behind bangungot), Kataw (merfolk), Tiyanak (a very scary baby) and the Manananggal (a flying vampire that splits its upper torso from the rest of its body at will).

I won't spoil the rest of story, but I'll say it was a wild, funny and emotional ride I thoroughly enjoyed. My only gripe was a few details being slightly off. Like, who even dances tinikling at parties? Who says "Tayo na" these days? "Tara na" would have been more apt. And if my ears didn't deceive me, tiyanak was pronounced "chonok". The kapre, in my head, was always a giant humanoid smoking a cigar. But I guess like any Hollywood movie, things get embellished at the risk of bending some facts.

The reviews for Forgotten Island have been nothing short of amazing. It hit 100% on its first 54 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, until an outlier gave it one star and pulled it down to 94%. Still, the movie managed a Fresh stamp of approval. I don't have high hopes it'll make a killing at the box office, just because Pinoy culture in mainstream film still has a long way to go. It may end up one of the lowest earners in DreamWorks history, but I'm glad it was made. It's high time the world knew more about Filipino culture and folklore, even if only for a couple of hours.

I still hope it does well and every Pinoy or Pinoy at heart around the world supports it. If it's any sign, people around me (including myself) were clapping and cheering loudly as the end credits were rolling.

What was the point?

The stated reason was "children". The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) had given Discord and Reddit 24 hours to set up a local presence, after the shooting at Banga National High School in South Cotabato. The concerns they named were "nihilistic violent extremism", grooming, and the radicalization of minors. DICT Secretary Henry Aguda put it plainly: "Encrypted communication is valid — we use it for cybersecurity. But why do minors need encrypted communication?

Who got actually cut off

There are roughly 67.7 million gamers in the Philippines (source), or close to 60% of the total population. People aged 18 to 34 make up around 69% of that. And here's a surprising tidbit: the 35-to-44 age group has the highest daily gaming rate in the country at 46%, higher than teenagers and higher than twenty-somethings.

Gaming here isn't a kids' thing, and it hasn't been for years. It's a mainstream adult habit, mostly on mobile phones, played daily by people with jobs and bills to pay.

Discord sits on top of a lot of that, but what our government agencies didn't realize is that it's not just for gaming. Study groups, freelancers, remote teams, hobby clubs, local dev communities, church groups use it too. All of that went kaput on Wednesday evening.

The concern was about minors, and the remedy was to switch off a platform used overwhelmingly by adults. If the specific worry is what minors are doing over encrypted chat, blocking the whole thing for everyone is a very strange way to go about it.

It didn't even work

The block was merely DNS-level. Anyone who knew how to change their DNS settings was back on Discord in under a minute. Which means the people you'd most want to stop, the techies running the servers you're worried about, were the least inconvenienced. The people who genuinely lost access were the ones who don't know what DNS is (ie the church groups, no shade intended).

It wasn't even applied evenly. Globe and DITO blocked it, while Smart and Converge apparently never did. So whether you lost Discord on Wednesday night came down to which telco you happen to be subscribed to.

A few other things didn’t sit well with me. Twenty-four hours is not a realistic deadline to establish a legal presence in a foreign country. Any company would need time and loads of attorney’s fees to get that done. Reddit got an extension but Discord didn't, which from the outside just looks arbitrary. And there was no court order, no hearing, nor a published standard anyone could have met in advance.

Then again, some folks will say it worked. Discord committed in a day to things it hadn't committed to in a week: a named representative here in the country, so Philippine authorities will have an actual person to serve requests on instead of emailing an office in California, or what the CICC refers to as a "green lane".

The wake-up call

The truth is that teenagers got hold of guns and walked into their schools with them. Somebody owned those guns before they did, and this is why we need to talk seriously about who gets to own firearms and how they're stored.

Banning Discord, Reddit or any other app, was never the right move. The real work takes time, discussion, and sustained effort from government before anyone sees results.

Pokémon turned 30 this year!

Their original Gameboy games Red and Green (or you may know it as Red and Blue) came out in Japan back in February 1996, and to celebrate, The Pokémon Company put out a special card set called 30th Celebration. The trading card game didn't come until later in October the same year.

Anyway, the card sets dropped last September 16, and yes, it's been CHAOS.

A few things make this set different:

• Every single card is foil.
• There are 30 Pikachu cards, each drawn by a different artist. You get one in every pack, so completing the Pikachu run is a hobby in itself.
• A Classic Collection of 30 reprints of the most iconic cards from the past three decades, with the anniversary logo.
• A new rarity called Futuristic Rare, starting with Mew and Mewtwo, illustrated by the Japanese artist YOSHIROTTEN.

It's also the first Pokémon set ever to launch worldwide on the same day. Usually Japan gets it first and everyone else waits.

How much is it here?

Toy Kingdom is selling the Elite Trainer Box for ₱4,799. Yes, I've seen receipts!

The ETB's have been spotted at Toy Kingdom in SM Mall of Asia in Manila, and SM Lanang here in Davao City. Folks I know also snagged theirs from Toys R Us in Abreeza. My guess is that any mall with a Toy Kingdom and Toys R Us carries it too.

The catch: from what I've heard, they only release a limited number per day, so it's first come, first served. Toy Kingdom sells them when the mall opens, but Toys R Us sell them at randomly selected times in the afternoon.

If you're hunting, it may help to ask their respective staff when they put out new stock.

Meanwhile, resellers online are asking ₱11,000 for the exact same box. That's more than double. Jeez.

But it's the same story in other countries. The official price in the US is US$49.99, and resellers there were asking around US$150-200 on launch week. Even GameStop listed it at triple the price and got a lot of heat for it.

My Advice: Don't panic buy

Here's the part scalpers don't want you to hear. This is supposedly the largest print run of any Pokémon set to date, and it will keep being printed for months. The pull rates are also a lot friendlier than recent sets. So the prices you're seeing right now are the hype talking, not the actual supply.

More products are coming too. The rest of the lineup rolls out in waves on October 2, October 30, November 6 and December 4.

Some advice if you're just starting to look:

• Check Toy Kingdom and Toys R Us first before paying reseller prices.
• Local hobby and card shops also get stock, but usually through pre-order allocations, so get on their lists.
• If you're buying on Lazada, Shopee or Facebook, check who the seller is. Plenty of listings are resellers with a hefty markup.
• There's no official booster box for the English version of this set. Packs only come inside the Elite Trainer Box, bundles and tins. The Japanese version does come in a sealed booster box though, so if you see one sold online, check which language it is before you buy.
• If you just want packs, wait for the Booster Bundle on October 2. It's six packs with no extras, and it's the cheapest per pack of anything in this set.

Whether you're collecting for nostalgia or for your kids, just don't let the hype make the decision for you. ₱4,799 is already steep. ₱11,000 is just silly. :)

The iPhone Duo is already up on the Apple Philippines site, and the pricing is official. ₱159,990 for the 256GB, going all the way up to ₱254,990 for the top tier. Oof :)

Right now though, the page just says "Currently Unavailable." No Add to Cart, no preorder button, nothing. Globally, preorders open October 16 and it ships October 23 in around 70 countries. The Philippines isn't on that first list, so we're most likely in the second batch on October 30.

If you'd rather hold the thing before handing over that much cash, your best bet is one of the authorized resellers. They have actual stores in the malls in major cities such as Manila, Cebu and Davao, and they're usually where the launch day queues form:

• Power Mac Center
• Beyond the Box
• Digital Walker
• Digimap
• iStudio
• The Loop

We keep that list updated in the directory under Mobile Phone Retailers, along with a few others.

Pro tip: if a shop isn't an authorized reseller, please check Apple's own store locator before buying. Units bought outside the authorized resellers often come without a local warranty, which means no service at the official centers here. Apple's store locator will tell you who's actually authorized.

I'd also check the resellers before going straight to Apple. They usually throw in freebies -- cases, power banks, sometimes a Marshall speaker -- and they do the credit card installment deals with BPI, UnionBank, EastWest and the rest. Apple doesn't do any of that.

Stocks are supposed to be very limited at launch, so if you really want one, be ready the moment it opens.

Me? IMHO, it looks a bit thick and awkward for my taste.

For now, my 13 Pro Max is still holding up fine. When it finally gives out, I'll probably just go for the iPhone 18 Pro.

We started off as a Filipino search engine and directory in 2001. Today, after 25 years, we're switching our primary focus a bit. Being at countless flea markets, I saw the need for small Pinoy businesses to have a home on the internet and an easy way to carve their own mark in the online e-commerce space. Our product will make it easy and cost-effective for folks to showcase their products, sell them online and thrive.

That's not to say we're forgetting our roots -- in fact the search engine and web directory are well and alive right here. I don't want all that SEO to go to waste. :)

I've weeded out thousands of dead links, mainly from Geocities and Tripod, and added new, fresh links that are highly relevant to everyone wanting to learn more about the Philippines, its people and culture. There's also an Ask feature, where you can ask stuff about our country, and receive quick responses with links to boot. Hint: it is pretty cool!

While we're doing our homework, feel free to browse Alleba.com and enjoy the ride. Thank you.

Don't you wish that the Jetpack Debugger tool was more accessible in wp-admin?

Right now, it's tucked away in a link in the footer areas of the Jetpack sections.

To add this as a submenu item of Jetpack, add this snippet:

function add_jetpack_debug_menu_(){
if ( class_exists( 'Jetpack' ) ) {
  add_submenu_page( 'jetpack', 'Jetpack Debug', 'Jetpack Debug', 'manage_options', '?page=jetpack-debugger' );
}
}
add_action('jetpack_admin_menu', 'add_jetpack_debug_menu_');

You can add this to the functions.php file of your active theme, but to be on the safe side, I highly recommend adding the snippet using the Code Snippets plugin.

After activating the snippet, the link will appear this way:

Enjoy! :)

Well, sorry for the loooong absence. I am planning to blog again, mostly about WordPress and tech. Thanks for sticking around!