PNP contingent in Earthquake stricken Haiti are all OK!

Photo by ABC news

All 15 members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping Forces are okay in Haiti after they have experienced a 7 magnitude earthquake at around 5PM EST. This has been confirmed by PNP Spokesman Leonardo Espina in a press conference held in Camp Crame.

Espina said that Senior Superintendent Rodolfo Fuentes headed the PNP Contingent and among them are 5 officials and 10 Police Non-Commissioned Officers. There was a huge difficulty in getting information even on satellite phones on that day.
They have re established contact through e-mail around 3:30PM that confirmed all 15 policemen are fine in the midst of that strong earthquake which is the strongest they have felt in around 200 years.

Espina also added that with his talk with Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr. of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Public Affairs Office that out of the 155 soldiers that were there, nobody was hurt.

Earlier this day, there were reports that they were trapped under the rubble of the United Nations office in the said country.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on the other hand is finding it difficult to have information on Filipino conditions in Haiti. DFA Spokesman Attorney Ed Malaya said that the primary lines of communication on the said island have totally been disabled by this catastrophe.
Even the Philippine Mission to the United Nations in New York, USA, could not contact the Philippine Peacekeeping Contingent in Haiti.

Aside from the Philippine troops, there are around 447 Pinoys that have not been still contacted.
Malaya said that the DFA and their people from the Philippine Embassy in Cuba have been sent to check on the conditions of the Filipinos there. I wish they and the people in the island are safe.

A New Discovery!

Ha-ha! I know what you are thinking! I am a PHOTOSHOP fanatic; and if you see most of my work I have been painstakingly doing it for hours just for a single photo. Today however, I have taken my photos for a spin and got funny pictures effects on it. How easy was it to do these pictures you ask?! What if I told you that it only took a few seconds to get this effect? Yes ladies and gentlemen, it is as easy as that. There are more online funny photo effects out there that you have not discovered yet. You will be the envy of your friends if they see that you have different profile pictures on social networks.

If you want to make your own, try to visit PICJOKE that makes fun photoshop effects in just a few seconds. There are other sites that also do this but they force you to register and use email addresses then spam you for a lifetime with ads that you do not want. They however are different and do this for free. Your friends will never find out that it took you a few clicks to get that old photo jazzed up. Make sure you try it out and visit it everyday for a different version of you. Tell your closest friends how easy it is and I'm sure you will have lots of fun cracking jokes everyday!

Philippine Government Websites Hacked Again

Defacing a website is a form of hacking and it seems that people have done it again. Malacañang is up to it again because there are several government websites that have been defaced just a couple of days ago.

Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas Chua III of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) was tasked by the palace to investigate this incident in the 5 government institutions that were affected.

The first one was the Department of Health (DOH), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the last one was the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). All of them were defaced and there are still no leads of who had done these activities.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said that the palace only wanted to know how these hackers were able to infiltrate the government institutions website and put an end to this mess that happened also a couple of months ago. There must be a permanent solution but no one knows why this is still done on the sites.

Malacañang wants CICT to issue recommendations as soon as possible so this would not happen again. They say that the next world war will be in cyber space and we must be ready for it. Oh my oh my let’s put up our firewalls and encrypt them! =)

Dad's New Toy!

There are tons of files in the Internet that can be easily accessed by simple downloading programs like TORRENT. I know you may have used this application once or twice so you could get music torrents, movie or free software applications gradually or easily seeded and leeched as their terms for sharing. It has proven beneficial for people who could not download things in a single sitting. I was trying to do the same for games on my PSP console and it is taking me quite a bit of time since I like titles from way back.

Now I have to also download music files for our media adapters so I can play and hookup my songs from a server and broadcast them wireless to any place in your house. It is a pretty neat gadget from a networking company and I tried it out just for kicks in the laboratory. I liked what it had so I also bought one for my Dad. I am setting it up so all the hardships normal people encounter while installing this media adapter also was on my list throughout the weekend. It was nice when I finished though because the only thing that I had to attach on the unit is just the speakers and power chord. Imagine all the music on my laptop is playing everything in the house. Dad was impressed and that is important. After all I bought this for him.

Maybe next time I will have to purchase the one with videos. Then a media server for GAS (Gadget Acquisition Syndrome) affected people like me!