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Boracay in OpenStreetMap

2009-11-02T09:28:00Z

[ Map of Boracay in OpenStreetMap]

Here’s one thing that I’d like to claim: OpenStreetMap has currently the best freely-available online map of the island resort of Boracay. Period. You can go see for yourself. It’s way ahead of the others like Google Map Maker and MapCentral.

Google Map Maker’s problem is the fact that Google emphasizes tracing over high-resolution satellite imagery of which Boracay has none in Google Maps. OpenStreetMap, on the other hand, emphasizes mapping using GPS-based surveying and so there is not so much dependence needed on high-resolution satellite imagery (though it would be nice). Users can actually map Boracay in Google Map Maker using GPS via the Overlay feature, but so far, no one has bothered to do it. Certainly, people go to Boracay to relax and have a vacation and not really to go around mapping so the island won’t be mapped as much unless one is motivated enough (and OpenStreetMappers are quite motivated).

OSM mapping in Boracay has a pretty interesting history. The island’s major roads and many of its POIs (points of interests, like hotels and resorts) have been mapped by Mike Collinson back in 2007. Mike is a British national who has stayed for quite a while in the Philippines and has been mapping the country even before there was an active Philippine OSM community. Some other details on the island have been added by Bill Mitchell, an American who retired to Boracay and who also contributes to Wikipedia.

Then earlier this year, the guys at Enthropia, who run Boracay.com.ph, decided to sponsor a 25,000-peso mapping trip to the island. (See my Plurk announcement.) The lucky guy was Jim Morgan, a British expat and OpenStreetMapper whom I’ve met back in March. He flew to the island and basically filled in the details and verified the work started by Mike. He also added some visual aids by approximating the area of each hotel and resort so that the map will not look empty.

[ OSM map of Boracay’s Station 3]

Shown above is how the area around Boracay’s Station 3 looks like in OSM. The one to the left is the default Mapnik map layer while to the right is the Osmarender layer. Mapnik is the more aesthetic layer but it doesn’t show all the labels to prevent text and icon overlapping. Osmarender, on the other hand, shows all labels (for debugging purposes) and easily shows how much data OSM has on the island.

To be clear, the Boracay map on OpenStreetMap definitely needs more mapping. There are plenty of walkways, paths, and more detail that could be added and the approximated shapes could use a lot more refinement. In addition, new resorts and hotels need to be added as well. But because this is OpenStreetMap, anyone can do it!

The nice thing about the map data being in OpenStreetMap is that anyone can now create their own maps of Boracay and even load it into their GPS devices or GPS-enabled phones. You don’t have to become lost looking for that budget hotel in Boracay that don’t have transportation services from the airport. Now ain’t that cool? [ :-)]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

QuickBASIC, SEAV Softwares, and GeoCities

2009-10-28T10:10:00Z

Back in the early to mid 1990s, I was already a geeky young man having taught myself how to program BASIC from several books borrowed from the school library. While I enjoyed playing games on the PC (Sid Meier’s Civilization rocks!) and the Nintendo Family Computer (Super Mario Brothers 3 is still the best), I eventually realized that it was more enjoyable creating programs and with it, the ability to create my own (simple) games. I eventually discovered the QBasic and QuickBASIC variants of BASIC that have their own IDEs and it was such a powerful feeling having the power to create your own EXE files. When the World Wide Web came to the Philippines, I quickly discovered that there was a worldwide community of QuickBASIC enthusiasts with plenty of websites containing tutorials, programs, and discussion forums.

It was in this environment that I decided to create my own website to showcase my QuickBASIC/QBasic creations and to provide a resource for the community. So a little more than 12 years ago, on October 20, 1997, I registered for some free web space on GeoCities and selected the Horizon/2586 address under the Silicon Valley category. I still remember liking that particular address number because 586 or 80586 is the code number of the original Intel Pentium processor, and I thought that it was quite appropriate. GeoCities was an easy choice. It was, by far, the most popular service for free web hosting, more so than Angelfire or Tripod, which are two of the popular alternatives.

The website I had on GeoCities was named SEAV Softwares and it was basically my corner of the QuickBASIC online community as well as being my personal homepage. With the website, I was able to build a pretty good reputation as a QB and QB+assembly programmer and it was with it that I learned much of the skills that I use to this day. I learned how to code in HTML 3.2, taught myself some graphic design, studied some rudimentary Perl in order to create a simple discussion board, and learned a tiny bit of CSS and JavaScript. I eventually grew tired of programming in QuickBASIC as college life became quite hectic. My online life eventually drifted to PinoyExchange, then Wikipedia, and then to blogging and social networking.

I feel a bit of nostalgic sadness when I learned that Yahoo! decided earlier this year to close down GeoCities. I practically owe my online life to the experiences and lessons I’ve learned coming from that GeoCities website of mine. So, in order to preserve a large part of my early web history, I placed a copy of my website on my CodedGraphic web space. Go visit it at seavsoftwares.codedgraphic.com. Too bad I can do little regarding the broken links to the old GeoCities site.

I’m also proud to say that my site does not look like your typical GeoCities website that contains animated GIFs and blinking text. I do think that my site had a pretty good design though it used tons of nested tables for layout, <FONT> tags, and spacer GIFs, which were state-of-the-art in web design back then. And take note, everything in that site was hand-coded. Now I try to code in semantic (X)HTML for structure, with CSS for presentation and unobtrusive JavaScript for behavior. [ :-)]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

The Last Journey of Ninoy

2009-10-26T03:05:08Z

[IMG]

I wasn’t able to watch the TV screening of The Last Journey of Ninoy on ABS-CBN but I heard many good things about the film from those who’ve seen it. So when I learned that it was being screened at Glorietta 4 during the last week of August, I really went out of my way to see it.

The Last Journey of Ninoy chronicles the last days of Ninoy, from his departure in Boston, Massachusetts to his arrival and assassination at the Manila International Airport. Interspersed in between are scenes and stories from his journalistic and political life, mostly told through the recorded words of his wife, Cory. These flashbacks includes snippets from his speech addressed to the Filipino people given while he was in exile, and heartbreaking stories of his family life while he was detained.

Being a late Martial Law baby, I have no recollections of Marcos’ final years or even of Ninoy’s assassination. Even my memories of the People Power Revolution were very hazy. And since those events were quite recent, their historical perspective wasn’t really included in my formative education. So watching The Last Journey of Ninoy was quite an eye-opener for me. The revelations contained in the film were definitely things I haven’t learned about nor have read from boring old history books.†

Ninoy definitely had charisma. I would even dare say that he is like Obama (or that Obama is like Ninoy, except Obama successfully became President and was never imprisoned). Yes, Ninoy was politically ambitious and his love for politics had a negative effect on his family life, but his spiritual reawakening during his detention (I guess that’s one positive thing about Marcos’ dictatorship) convinced me that he would’ve been the greatest Filipino leader had he not been assassinated. So if I was utterly happy when Barack Obama won the U.S. Presidency, I guess I felt an equal amount of disappointment for Ninoy’s unfulfilled legacy. I actually got teary-eyed in the movie house when I look at how low the Philippines have come since the assassination and the People Power Revolution.

This movie is a must-see for every Filipino. I was quite surprised that the movie house was a bit packed when I saw it and it was probably the only time I ever saw a movie audience give an enthusiastic applause during the film’s ending credits, something that is definitely not part of the Filipino psyche. I guess I’m lucky I saw the film together with other people in the cinema because watching it on TV would not have the same emotional impact.

† I generally don’t like history as a subject, not as much as science or mathematics. So it was actually a surprise that I got the highest grade in my Senior High School batch for Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies), which covered World History.

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

In the Market for a Notebook II

2009-10-24T05:40:37Z

After three and a half years, I was forced to retire my ASUS A6500R laptop. The main problem was that it wouldn’t boot up properly anymore. The symptoms started a few months before but it managed to eventually start up after some combination of jiggling around with the battery, the master reset button, and the power cord.

Then about two weeks ago, those workarounds wouldn’t work anymore and so I had it looked at at the ASUS service center in Kapitolyo, Pasig. The initial assessment of the technician was that there is a fundamental problem with the motherboard. Weighing my options of having it fully diagnosed (with a service fee) and with replacement parts being really scarce (the laptop is 3+ years old after all), I decided to go for a new laptop instead. I’m in the notebook market once more!

I’m holding off buying a new laptop until November so that it would go into December’s credit card cycle for better cash flow management (the 13th month bonus would come in handy there). So until then, I’m going to do research to select the best laptop for my needs. Since I’m not a gamer nor a video editor, my needs are not for the cutting edge technology (unlike Lola Techie [ :-)]). My knowledgeable colleague at work said that I could make do with the Intel Core-Duo Atom processors. One requirement I need however is that if the laptop comes with Windows Vista, then there must be a free upgrade to Windows 7 which just came out last Thursday. Hopefully, the local retailers have that Microsoft-announced upgrade option available from the PC manufacturers.

Since I’m not using the even older desktop PC due to a crashed hard drive (I was lazy to buy a new one), I currently using my ASUS Eee PC as my main computer. The small screen is getting to be a real bother, but I’m managing quite well so far. (In fact, I’m typing this entry on the Eee PC.) I also managed to salvage the dead laptop’s hard disk and converted it to an external drive. It’s a really, really good thing that Octagon Computer Store had some IDE hard disk enclosures available because these are apparently quite rare due to most hard disks nowadays being SATA. It’s also quite fortunate that the Eee PC was able to have at least read-only access to the drive’s NTFS partition and read-write access to the FAT32 portion so I still have access to all my files.

Expect a blog post in November where I will reveal my laptop choice. [ :-D]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

mod_gzip, mod_include, and mod_rewrite Don’t Mix

2009-10-21T09:28:00Z

Warning: This is a an ultra-geeky article that I am writing down for reference, and also so that others having the same—maybe rare—problem can find it online. You can stop reading now if you want to. [ :-)]

The Apache web server modules mod_gzip (or mod_deflate), mod_rewrite, and mod_include apparently don’t interact very well. Specifically, mod_gzip returns to the web browser an incorrectly compressed file when that file is constructed using includes (via mod_include) with virtual URLs rewritten using mod_rewrite. The apparent workaround is to avoid rewriting include URLs or to disable mod_gzip.

As a background, mod_gzip is the Apache web server module (i.e. plugin) that handles gzip compression so that text and HTML files can be served to the browser compressed, saving network bandwidth (at the cost of processing time on both the server and browser sides). mod_include is a popular module for including common, changing, or conditional content into served documents. This enables such things like a common footer in all HTML pages that can be changed by just modifying one file. mod_rewrite is a must if you want to have pretty (and SEO-friendly) URLs—it maps the URL namespace to the filesystem using various powerful options.

In mod_include, the recommended way to include files is via the “virtual” element. Whenever the server encounters this element in a document to be served, the server issues a “subrequest”, as if it were the browser, using the specified URL in the element. The file returned by that subrequest is then inserted into the original document in place of the virtual element and then the whole thing is then served to the actual web browser. Since these included files are retrieved via an Apache subrequest, the specified URL can theoretically be rewritten using mod_rewrite. This actually works—except when mod_gzip is enabled. What happens is that the served document is compressed wrongly, leading to mysterious “Content Encoding Error” messages in browsers.

I am currently developing a website and ran into this problem that confounded me for a span of two days. I thought the problem had to do with my forcing all HTML content to be served as UTF-8, but disabling that did not solve the problem. I next tried disabling gzip compression on the browser side (in both Firefox and a web app) and the pages were retrieved correctly. However, I didn’t want to disable gzip on the server side so I looked for another solution. I tried removing the URL rewriting for included files and the problem disappeared! Since I consider the loss of rewriting (for included files only) a very minor cost compared to losing compression (and since mod_gzip is enabled by default on my host Dreamhost and I trust that it means they prefer bandwidth savings to CPU time savings), include URL rewriting had to go. I only encountered this problem on the live web server and not on my development setup (using XAMPP) because mod_gzip apparently wasn’t enabled there.

I tried researching my problem on the web but I failed to find information on my exact problem. However, I found forum postings and bug reports surrounding Apache subrequest handling and mod_gzip. It turns out that Apache’s subrequest mechanism is quite intricate and so it shouldn’t be surprising that various modules can have problems in this way. It’s like the Apache equivalent of unforseen multiple drug interactions. Since I couldn’t be bothered to file a bug report (and rewriting include URLs seem counterproductive on hindsight), I just went with my workaround.

Hopefully this blog posting can help other poor web developers confounded with the same problem. [ :-)]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Mozilla in the Philippines

2009-10-19T11:35:52Z

Last October 10, I and bunch of bloggers met Gen Kanai, who is Mozilla Foundation’s Director of Asia Business Development. Gen was in town to attend the 2009 Philippine Blog Awards after being in the country last September for WordCamp Philippines 2009. Over dinner at Cafe Juanita (which, by the way, has great food in a really quirky ambiance), Gen talked with the bloggers regarding our thoughts and ideas on how to make Mozilla’s products more useful and relevant in the Philippines.

The country caught the attention of Mozilla since it was one of the top five countries in the world in terms of adoption of Mozilla Firefox since last year and Mozilla wants to sustain that growth. Well, I can somewhat confirm the widespread adoption because the two Internet cafes that I go to near the office now sport Firefox as their default browsers. (This is interesting because one of those cafes used to have Internet Explorer as the default and I surreptitiously downloaded and ran Firefox there each time just so that I could have a comfortable browsing experience. [ ;-)])

Anyway, Gen started the Mozilla Philippines Community mailing list so that Filipinos can talk about Mozilla and their products. If you’re a fan or a user of Mozilla software, then you should go join the list. [ :-)] (Regnard Raquedan has also blogged about this list.)

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Tropical Storm Ondoy and Park 9

2009-09-26T19:01:00Z

First of all, please go to this blog post by Manolo Quezon to see the destruction of Tropical Storm Ondoy and to learn how to help those in need.

Our house and immediate vicinity was pretty much spared from all the flooding that beset the metropolis and the surrounding areas. Aside from the fact that our terrace completely flooded due to inadequate drainage and which almost brought some rainwater into the house, it was a pretty much run-of-the-mill stormy day for us in our household. So I was pretty much oblivious to the widespread calamity and record-breaking rainfall. It was only a few hours ago when I decided to browse around that I freaked out with what I saw.

[IMG]

The picture above of Park 9 alley in Loyola Heights/Katipunan (and this YouTube video) hit a particular nerve in me. You see, I used to live along that street back in college and it was there that I had my worst flooding experience. Park 9 alley is right beside the Diliman Creek and it notoriously floods during heavy rain. I and my housemates have seen the street flood but it was generally pretty shallow, only up to the knees in the middle of the lowest part of the street. Well, that was until one particular storm.

I can’t remember which storm it was or what year it happened but I woke up one Saturday morning and was surprised to find that the whole floor of the apartment unit was wet though there was no water anymore (it had subsided by then). I checked and was thankful that the water apparently only reached around the ankles. The main casualty inside the apartment were the tons of soggy school papers that were stacked on the floor.

Unfortunately, I was left alone in the apartment since my three housemates (batchmates from high school) went home for the weekend (I stayed because I had to do something in UP, though it was canceled). So I was left with the unenviable task of cleaning up the apartment. I called my housemates and appealed them to come to help with the cleaning but they couldn’t come. Thankfully, my next door neighbors (and incidentally, schoolmates as well, though from a different batch) were there and they helped me clean up (after they tidied up theirs). They had this nifty sponge mop that I was able to borrow.

I thought that was the worst of it until I checked the Tamaraw FX which I had with me and was parked along the street. Well, it turned out that the flood inundated the vehicle and its engine wouldn’t start. I had to resort to calling my dad. He came later that night we towed the Tamaraw using our other vehicle all the way home to Las Piñas.

Seeing that photo above brought back those memories. I have never seen the Katipunan end of Park 9 get flooded and so seeing the photo above with raging flood waters really freaked me out. I’m guessing that the flood water would have reached chest-high (!!!) inside my old apartment. I have also seen some parts of Katipunan under water (notably the low area near National Bookstore), but I wasn’t prepared to see portions of the avenue near Ateneo Gate 3 and Miriam looking like a river as seen from various photos online. Aside from the Katipunan area, the photos of the submerged Makati pedestrian underpass and flooded Bonifacio Global City were also pretty scary.

People are asking which is worse, Typhoon Milenyo (which happened almost exactly three years ago) or Tropical Storm Ondoy? Well, one brought too much wind while the other too much rain. Personally, Milenyo was much worse for me because we lost electricity and running water. I actually went to the gym just so that I could take a bath!

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Up in 3D!

2009-09-19T15:20:17Z

[IMG]

I have to say that with the release of Up, Pixar shows that it still has the magic of turning good family stories into full-blown CGI masterpieces. Also, I think that Up is Pixar’s best film to date. It has a lot more heart in it than Monsters, Inc., action that can almost rival The Incredibles, and lovable characters like in WALL-E and Finding Nemo.

What I liked best about Up is the exposition intro establishing the love story between Carl and Ellie. It was a really poignant part of the film and, in my opinion, what pushed Up to be the best Pixar film to date for me. The succeeding parts of the film are filled with laughter, action, and touching moments that one expects from Pixar.

The usual animated short that precedes most Pixar films was Partly Cloudy for Up and this was a riot, and also has heart. Though not as funny as Lifted, it’s still a good watch.

I managed to watch the Disney Digital 3D version of Up in Greenbelt 3 and I must say that the 300-peso ticket is just a bit too steep. It’s a good thing that the film (and the attached 3D trailers and short film) was that good or I’d have preferred to see it in plain 2D at a much affordable price.

My friend and I had fun debating and analyzing the mechanics of the supplied 3D glasses. I guessed that the mechanism involved linearly-polarized filters but he insisted it wasn’t because it didn’t filter cellphone LCD light which is linearly polarized. It turns out that actual mechanism is via circularly-polarized filters. This explains why I did not observed any darkening of the screen when I tilted my head. [ :-D]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Adding Parking Aisles in OpenStreetMap

2009-09-18T12:31:00Z

As far as I know, aside from OpenStreetMap, there is no other online mapping service that would extensively show parking aisles in parking lots. (You know, those lanes where you drive around hoping to catch an empty parking spot?) In OSM, parking aisles (tagged in the OSM database as “service=parking_aisle”) are simply specialized types of service roads ("highway=service”). So I’ve been quite crazy the past several weeks adding parking aisles to some parking lots. See the results below showing SM Southmall and Alabang Town Center with parking aisles in their parking lots marked.

[ Map]

I’m sure that some would find such trivialities quite useless but hey, anyone can add almost any level of detail to OpenStreetMap if one deems it useful. Some people even suggest to mark out all the individual stores inside shopping centers (and then adding opening hours and telephone numbers) but that’s one line I’m not willing to cross because it makes the data a maintenance nightmare. At least parking aisles don’t change as much and make for pretty-looking maps! [ :-P]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

LazerXtreme and Serendra

2009-09-16T14:18:45Z

Late last month, I went to Bonifacio Global City to meet up with my college barkada. One of us would be migrating to the States (where her family already is) in October and the gang decided to have an early despedida. I came a bit late since I was in Nasugbu and caught up with them having dinner at Gerry’s Grill in Market! Market! Afterwards we had a game of laser tag at the popular LazerXtreme before crashing at Serendra where one of us has a unit. That was the first time I tried LazerXtreme and also the first time I stepped inside the condo proper of Serendra.

LazerXtreme

First things first: I managed a respectable 5th place out of 24 players. Woot! And I did that without racking up points standing near a “base” and shooting the hell out of it. I was able to tag other players 90 times while only getting tagged 36 times. My final score was 9600 (which is much less than the #1 player at 18950) with a shooting accuracy of only 15.87% (that’s what you get when you have unlimited ammo). This is fun! [ :-D]

This isn’t actually the first time I played a laser tag game. The last time was many, many years ago at the old Q-Zone in Shangri-La Plaza Mall (or was it SM Megamall?). I still have the scoresheet from that game tucked somewhere in my closet. [ :-)]

I have to agree with the observation of other people that have tried LazerXtreme before that you will really sweat even if the game lasts for only 15 minutes. It might be the adrenaline pumping, but I think that the air conditioning was not supplied for the game arena or it wasn’t strong enough.

Serendra

I’m a big fan of Ayala Land and stepping inside the residences at Serendra just affirms my admiration of this company. The gardens between the buildings are really, really nice and we even heard frogs croaking in the ponds somewhere.

The unit my friend got is a one-bedroom unit on the fifth floor at Serendra Two. What I particularly liked about the unit is its corner floor-to-ceiling glass windowed nook. They placed their glass computer table there (to match the glass windows) and it overlooks one of the swimming pools. I envy their computer setup for having such a nice, nice view. [ :-)]

(Seeing the condo just strengthens my resolve to get a condo unit someday. heck, my dream/goal is still pretty much unchanged.)

We also had lots of laughter and loads of fun playing Nintendo Wii. We took turns at the standard Wii Sports and also at the addicting Game Party. A friend even showed us how he gets outrageous scores at the hoop shot subgame by exploiting a “bug” of the game. Hehehe. It’s too bad that we all had to leave at midnight or otherwise we’d be staying up all night playing. [ :-D]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.