Katagman Festival - Oton, Iloilo

KATAGMAN FESTIVAL is unique for its great variety of special events.

Celebrating 436th Foundation Day celebration.

Oton, under the dynamic leadership of their municipal mayor, Hon. Vicente FLORES, welcomes everyone to their KATAGMAN FESTIVAL that will formally open Salvo Parade on April 28, 2008.

The event begins with an Exhibition on Ogtong History and Culture at the SB Session Hall alongside the Unveiling of the Replica of the Golden Mask at the town Plaza on April 28, 2008

Inspired by ancient Oton’s folk pageant and custom, the extraordinary golden mask, forms part of the fundamental characteristic incorporated during the celebration of KATAGMAN FESTIVAL.

The wearing of the mask during tribe competition delivers the dramatic impact of the celebration.

April 29 is set for the Opening of Agri-Fair, Garden Show and Plant Sale at the Municipal Hall

And the Search for Ginoong Erpat and Ginang Ermat at the Municipal Plaza;

The Search for Oton Foundation Queen and the Opening of Food Festival highlights the 30th of April

May 1 is all rush for the Porma Baras and Motorboat Race at the Poblacion South alongside the 1st Oton Mountain Bike Race at the town plaza;

Bomborador, On-the-Spot-Painting Contest is scheduled on May 2;

And the much-anticipated Street Dancing and the Musical, Dance and Theater Competition caps the celebration on May 3, 2008.The Tribes Contest is a unique combination of street dancing and street theater. Tribes representing a cluster of the 37 barangays in the municipality participate in the contest. The tribes are: Tribu Kanipaan, Tribu Nakatundan, Tribu Katamnan, Tribu Parayan, Tribu Paraw, Tribu Mandaragat and Tribu Malaca.

Because of its location and environmental influence, Oton has been one of the main focuses of human settlement in the province. Its history would test to the previous existence of having one of the earliest civilizations in Panay. It is one of the more developed towns in the province.

It has eight flourishing subdivisions mostly concentrated in the main urban barangays.

It also has beach resorts and numerous workshops engaging in handloom weaving, high quality home furnishings, blacksmithing, hat-making, candy production, rice milling and swine raising.

Oton is 10.2 kilometers or a 30-minute jeepney ride from downtown Iloilo. It is the first town (2nd Class) in the southern part of the province and is blessed with beautiful beaches and resorts that provide basic and modern amenities from simple cottages to swimming pools.

In Oton, there is always good food. The town is known for its mouth-watering talaba (oyster) and fresh seafoods served in restaurants such as Nes and Tat’s, Allan’s Talabahan and Anhawan Resort. It also has the best buco pie in Iloilo, the Nang Palang’s Buco Pie in Barangay Trapiche.

Today, KATAGMAN FESTIVAL has evolved from a local event centered on a particular community into something approaching a provincial celebration, representing the identity of Oton as a whole.

Useful Yahoo Commands

/help calls up the help file
/cls clears the screen
/save saves the current chat session transcript
/leave exits current room
/join roomname joins roomname
/goto username joins the chat room that username is currently in
/follow username user will follows username whenever the user changes rooms
/think text posts text in this format “oO(text)”
/tell username text — allows you to send a text to username with opening a window
/invite username invites username to the current room
/webcam starts your webcam
/version displays the program version
/version username sends the program version to username
/time shows the time
/roll number rolls the number of dice
/logoff closes the client
/ignore add username will add username to your ignore list
/ignore remove username will remove username from your ignore list

Increase Your Hard Disk Speed

To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a special buffer in the computer’s memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk.
This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher.
Follow these steps:

Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.

Expand the system.ini file window.

Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].

Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type

Irq14=4096

Note: This line IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!

Click on the File menu, then choose Save.

Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer.

Done. Speed improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots.
Update: The most speed improvement is visible with IDE drives, however there are reports that this tweak also does good for SCSI disks. In any case, it won’t harm your system, so why not try it yourself.

Jollibee WAP Delivery

You can now order a Chicken Joy meal over your mobile phone’s Smart WAP site. Was just informed last week that the new Jollibee Delivery service is available on the Smart 3G.

If you’re on Smart GPRS, you should be able to see the link on the front page of the portal. Accessing/browsing the Jollibee WAP Delivery site is free and you can order any of the listed meals right on your phone.

Here’s a short guide to go about it:

1) Visit the Smart 3G Portal (wap.smart.com.ph) and click on the Jollibee Delivery link.

2) Register your complete name, address and landline (in applicable).

3) Select your meals on the order form.

4) Select the “Checkout” link if you’re done. Running total will be displayed.

You will receive an SMS alert from 2929 informing you of the order confirmation. Minimum order is Php165 and can be availed between 7am to 9pm daily. Payment is COD (cash-on-delivery) so prepare for exact change. You can edit your profile to add as many as 10 addresses so you can opt to have the food delivered to your home (by default), your office, or wherever you are. The system will prompt you which address you want it delivered before confirmation.

 

Are Internet Cafes still a Good Business?

most from OFWs asking if there’s still some good business to be made with internet cafes in the Philippines.

Just like any other brick and mortar businesses, there are so many extraneous factors that’ll affect your likelihood of success in the internet cafe industry:

• Location. Pick a good spot and you’ll hit a gold mine. Pick the wrong one and kiss your money goodbye.
• Competition. Most business-minded people think of competition as a race to charge the lowest prices in order to win customers. While it’s good for the customers, exceeding the lower boundaries can drive you and your competitors to bankruptcy. One cannot expect to recover a Php500,000 investment if hourly rentals go down to as low as Php10. It goes without saying that in this industry, there are no customer loyalty; just cheaper rentals.
• Quality/Consistency of Broadband Connectivity. For places that don’t have many options for bandwidth providers, this could spell trouble if your only source of connectivity conks out more frequently than you get brown-outs in your area. A backup DSL might be a good solution but many consider the extra cost to be not worth it.
• Software Licensing. Many people who go into the net cafe business don’t factor in the cost of software licensing in their capital. Either they think they can get away with a few pirated copies or go open-source full-time. Still, there’s the class of ever-popular network games like Starcraft, WoW and CS which cost an arm and a leg to get a per-PC license. Maybe that’s why MMPORG pay-to-play model is more popular in this side of the globe.
• Expected ROI. While previous half-decade old records saw a return-of-investment in just over a year, lower rentals due to fierce competition and over-saturation of net cafes have driven the ROI further back to as long as 3 years (that’s if you’re lucky enough). To sustain a business that long and derive your income from that sole business could easily drain you of energy and personal savings.

There’s also the question of how many PC units should a net cafe operate in order to realize profit. A friend, who runs a net cafe for about 3 years now, says you need at least 15 units to survive and get decent income. Does that mean others operating below that number are doomed to fail in the long run?

However, the growth and expansion of Netopia’s franchise around the country says there’s still good money to be made from the internet cafe business. Does that mean people wanting to venture into that industry should look into franchising? What do you think — given the opportunity and capital, do you feel a net cafe business in the Philippines is still a lucrative one?

Share

Welcome to a preview of Adobe’s latest online offering codenamed “Share”, a free web-based service that allows you to easily share, publish and organize your documents.

With Share you can:

• Convert 5 documents to Adobe PDF.
• Send documents without email attachments.
• Access your documents from anywhere.
• View all the documents you have shared or received in one place.
• Post a link to your document on a wiki or blog.
• Embed a Flash® preview of your document on any website.
• Limit access to a document to a list of recipients.

Follow these steps to get started with Share:

1. Note: You may be asked to join the waiting list if no beta invitations are available at this time.

2. Sign in the site with your Adobe ID.Access to Share requires an Adobe ID. This is the same ID used throughout Adobe.com and here on Adobe Labs—it is typically your email address (e.g. janesmith@email.com). If you need to create one, click on the “Create Adobe ID” link on the Share sign up page.
3. Read and agree to the Share Beta Services Agreement and the Adobe Online Privacy Policy.

   Note: This is a technology preview, not a final release. Neither the quality nor the features are complete yet. We want to show you our direction and get your feedback so that we can incorporate it into future releases.

4. Verify your e-mail address by clicking on the link in the e-mail message you receive from the Share service.
5. Sign in and start sharing!
6. Ask questions and share your feedback in the Labs forum for Share.

   Please note that your submission of comments, ideas, feature requests and techniques on this and other Adobe maintained forums, as well as Adobe’s right to use such materials, is governed by the Terms of Use.

7. If you are a developer interested in building applications and mashups using the Share APIs, you can learn more within the Share API wiki.

IT/WAD Achievement sy2008

The Explore Team know as the IT I-A and I-B take the lead and got the most award and achievements in recent school year…

The Team Chairman (Mr. Helord Nicolasora) …. and its members ..under the advisory of Sir Angelo Granada… has always take the prizes and tropies in all events and contest…

And take the first ever Cheer Dance Competation Champion Award ..

(July2007)

1 Sports

a. Over all Champion in Basket Ball (Women)

b. Over all Champion in Volleyball (Women)

c. 1rst Placer in Over Sports Category

2.Cultural and Musical

a. Champion GroupDance Category

b. Champion Solo Vocal

c. 2nd Duet

d. 2nd DobleKara

3.Grand Champion in Cheer Dance Contest

4.1rst Placer in Over all Sport Fest Competition sy2007

______________________

Miss AMA beauty Contest..(Dec2007)

Again IT people give honor and proud to their team and adviser as a “team of beautiful people” and grab the most corporate award in this beauty Contest.

Miss Divine Argus.. IT-IA .. awarded as the most beautiful(Miss Photogenic) contestant and also won some corporate award and take the 2nd Placer

Miss Roxanne IT-IA award as the 1rst runner up and take some Major and corporate awards

Photoshop Online

Photoshop Express, the long-awaited free online image editor from Photoshop maker Adobe, will be released as a public beta on Thursday. Unlike Adobe’s more powerful image editing tools for the desktop, Photoshop Express is aimed not at the professional photographer, but at the casual snapshot fan looking to polish up images before sharing them online .

Photoshop Express, is tailored toward the casual user with easy-to-use, one-click editing tools.

Adobe’s name recognition and status as a long-time leader in pro photography technology should be enough to attract the crowds.

The service also integrates with a number of photo-sharing websites,

Photoshop Express offers two gigabytes of online storage space and requires Flash Player 9. The interface should be familiar to anyone who’s used Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and offers tools like cropping, red eye correction, sharpening, touchup and more, including a set of advanced effects for changing colors, distorting images and converting photos to black and white.

All editing is non-destructive, meaning you can add and remove changes on a whim using the checkboxes beside each tool, which allow you to easily turn edits and effects on and off.

Express eschews photo-editing jargon in favor of more obvious names that amateur users will recognize — for instance, what is called the Healing Brush in Photoshop becomes the Auto Correct tool in Express.

The interface is well done and intuitive with a list of editing tools on the left and your currently selected image in the main windows to the right.

The site does take a minute to load, but the load times aren’t excessively slow given the complexity of the application.

Once you have the images loaded in Express you can create albums to organize and share your photos from the Adobe-provided URL, and double clicking any image will bring up the image editing interface. Once you’re happy with your edits just hit save and, if it came from an online site, it will automatically be added back to the site.

And of course the rise of much better cameras in mobile devices and wifi enabled memory cards capable of posting photos straight from the camera mean that for many in Photoshop Express’ target demographic, editing really isn’t a concern.

The Redistricting of Iloilo City

Iloilo City Congressman Raul Gonzalez, Jr. filed House Bill No. 3672 which seeks to divide the current Lone District of Iloilo City into two congressional districts. Under the proposed bill, the First Congressional District will be comprised of all areas north of Iloilo River (i.e. Jaro, Mandurriao, Lapaz and Lapuz) while the Second Congressional District will be composed of Arevalo, Molo and City Proper located south of the river. Aside from adding another legislative district, the bill will also increase the number of City Councilors from twelve (12) to sixteen (16), to be elected by district.

Although it was already a thriving urban center during the Spanish period, it was only in 1936 that Iloilo City was formally declared a city by virtue of Commonwealth Act 57 (more commonly known as the “Charter of Iloilo City”). Visitors may have noted that each of Iloilo City’s sub-districts, namely Arevalo, Molo, City Proper, Jaro, Lapaz and Mandurriao, has its own church, plaza and even its own fiesta (a more perceptive person will even observe subtle but distinct peculiarities between the said areas). This is because during the Spanish period, Arevalo, Molo, Jaro, Lapaz and Mandurriao were all municipalities and Iloilo City then was only the area known today as “City Proper.” Commonwealth Act No. 57 “collapsed” the towns of Molo, Arevalo, Mandurriao and Lapaz and joined it with City Proper to constitute what is known as the City of Iloilo today.

Since its enactment in 1936, the Iloilo City Charter has been amended at least four times. In 1940, the municipality of Jaro was also “collapsed” and included as part of Iloilo City by virtue of Commonwealth Act 604 which some say was President Manuel Quezon’s way of punishing Jaro Mayor Delfin Gonzalez (the father of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez) for not supporting the Nacionalista candidate for governor in Iloilo. Under the old Charter, the mayor, vice mayor and the department heads of Iloilo City were all appointed by the President of the Philippines. Congress later amended the Charter to make these positions elective. Rodolfo “Roding” Ganzon holds the distinction of being the city’s first elected mayor.

According to Congressman Gonzalez, redistricting Iloilo City will allow our Representatives to be more responsive to the peculiarities and unique needs of their constituents. It would also mean additional PDAF which could be used for more infrastructure projects that would spur more economic development in the city. For example, Jaro, Mandurriao, Lapaz and Lapuz (which will comprise the First District) have different problems than Arevalo, Molo and City Proper (the Second District). Since the Second District is comprised of the city’s “old quarter,” he says that the congressman of that district should be concerned more with legislation concerning the preservation of Calle Real, restoration of Muelle Loney, how to revitalize commerce in that area, relocating the squatters and beautifying the area, etc. The representative of the First District on the other hand should be focused more on addressing the rapid economic growth in that part which is considered the city’s “new” quarter. Mandurriao, for example, is touted to be the next center of economic development after Megaworld purchased the old Iloilo Airport and announced plans to develop the area into another “Libis.” Also, most of the new housing developments are centered in the Mandurriao-Jaro-Lapaz area and traffic, garbage and flooding are among the perennial problems in that part of the city.


Iloilo City today is the most densely-populated city in Region 6. It is also one of the fastest growing cities in the Philippines. Iloilo City is the seat of the Archdiocese of Jaro, one of the oldest and biggest archdioceses in the country. There are seven (7) major universities and dozen s of other reputable schools in Iloilo City make it the center of higher learning in the region. All the major shopping malls, banking institutions and other business establishments can be found in the city as well as the regional offices of national government agencies. In terms of income, population and land area, Iloilo City I believe is more than qualified to merit another legislative district.