http://stellify.net/hinabing-pakpak-ng-a ting-mga-anak/
“Enjoy the show—if you can,” the director himself warned the audience. Hinabing Pakpak ng Ating mga Anak is a painful storytelling of the lives of the most vulnerable yet most abused members of society. Through children’s stories penned by the late Rene Villanueva, Anton Juan Jr. conceptualizes, writes, and directs the very first play of Dulaang UP on its 33rd season and UP’s centennial year.
I love how this play transformed innocent tales into a woven blanket of tragedies. But I also appreciate all the careful details. Like the simple game of making a plastic bag float in mid-air by blowing under it, which became a ritual of children trying to make dreams take flight. Or the use of tiny flashlights, which danced like stars in the darkness that children fear. Or the minimalist stage design composed only of two things: a round platform on the left and a ramp on the right, which the children spring from and sink into.
Most of all, I love the exchange of questions between the dark (Earl Ignacio) and the light (Joel Saracho) writer personas. How heavy is metal? Is it as heavy as a baby floating dead in the river? Where can we find hope? Is it in continuing to do what we are doing? If we write to give hope and fight for change, is it enough? Is it ever enough?
Hinabing Pakpak ng Ating mga Anak opened on July 16 and will run until August 10. Watch the lovely trailer here.
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http://stellify.net/wordcamp-philippines -on-september-6-register-now/
The very first WordCamp in Southeast Asia is happening right here in the Philippines. Organized by the Mindanao Bloggers, WordCamp Philippines 2008 will take place on September 6, at the Augusto-Rosario Gonzalez Theater, 5/F Mutien Building, College of St. Benilde, Taft Ave., Manila.
(Edit: I believe that the event date was moved from October 25 to September 6 to fit Matt Mullenweg’s schedule. Believe it, he’s coming!)
The event will have 2 simultaneous tracks: deployment and development. I wish they didn’t happen at the same time though. Tentative topics are listed here.
Registration is free of charge, but the catch is you have to blog about it. That’s a pretty good deal, if you ask me. And you don’t even have to be a WordPress user to be eligible. Sign up here now!
This event is brought to you by:
- i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
- Free Online Flash Games
- Wazzup Manila Philippines
- Real Estate CRM
- Real Estate Website Designers
- Orange County Real Estate
- Auto Insurance Quotes
- Lane Systems Inc.
- RedMedia
- Orange County Business Lawyer
- Cebu Pacific Air
- Buddy Gancenia Reality TV
- SmartBro Wireless Broadband
- SPOT.ph
- Make Money with Performancing Ads
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http://stellify.net/new-yahoo-logo-purpl e-and-sans-serifed/
It seems there’s a new Yahoo! logo that is popping up, though only so rarely:
Source: Mysterious New Logo for Yahoo!, Noel Perlas
I normally hate it when big brands redesign their logos. Often the rebranding just doesn’t make sense. But I must say, there’s reason enough behind the new Yahoo! logo—flaunt the purple and make the name more readable, while still making sure it has that outlandish feel.
I’m crossing my fingers, because after all Yahoo’s been through, I want them to survive.
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http://stellify.net/mtv-engine-room/
The Engine Room is a reality show by MTV and HP that is open to digital artists all over the world. Casting is still open at the website until June 30.
16 people will be flown to New York City commencing on or about July 18, 2008 through on or about August 16, 2008 (collectively, the “Filming Dates”). They will compete in teams of 4 participants each for prizes by creating animations, websites, short films, sound mixes and more in the “Engine Room”.
The last reality show I’ve seen that involved website creation was The Next Internet Millionaire, hosted by Joel Comm and shown online. But it was more about marketing, of course.
Here, when Engine Room says “websites”, it’s probably referring to bandwidth-heavy, music-blaring, special effects “skip intro” screens leading into arbitrary interfaces with crazy navigations. Purely made in Flash. No space for web standards, image optimization, or accessibility here.
I’m not too happy whenever web design gets included into the category of motion design. Moving pictures and sound have an entirely different interactivity compared to websites. Do they even understand what user experience is?
And reality shows tend to make the brain rot. Nevertheless, showing off one’s skills under extreme pressure is always interesting, admirable even.
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On Urduja, the first full-length Filipino animated film about a legendary warrior princess from Pangasinan:
Maybe our culture is so enmeshed with foreign culture that we can no longer distinguish one from the other. The story is ours; the animation isn’t. It would have been better if we handed our history and mythology over to Disney; I bet they would have created something more Filipino.
To be fair, the “Disney look” is a rehashed anime look, but what makes Disney great is superb storytelling, and the eternal belief that dreams do come true. Secondly, it’s practically expected of every animation outfit today to try the Disney formula for their productions. Third, we might as well give up on trying to draw lines in the sand to define where our Filipino-ness begins.
Someone once asked me that, and I meant to answer it was our consciousness, our kamalayan, that mattered. (Unfortunately he interpreted it to be something else.) We are Filipinos, and therefore what we create is Filipino.
I don’t want to put this film down, especially by pointing out our penchant for emulating foreign ways, but I really don’t like how this was dubbed. Come on, they should’ve gotten Lea Salonga instead! The song playing in the trailer is an unremarkable Tagalog love song cliche. And it definitely looks like the character designs are a bad combination of Mulan and Pocahontas. Overall, the quality seems years away even from the older Disney animated features we’ve grown out of. Considering this was 11 years in the making.
Urduja will be showing on June 18, 2008. Watch the trailer here.
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http://stellify.net/adobe-photoshop-expr ess-is-not-the-web-based-photoshop/
It’s been a long time since we first heard Adobe would release an online version of Photoshop. It launched word processor acquisition Buzzword first, but hasn’t been as buzzworthy (pun intended) as major the players, Zoho Writer and Google Docs. How does Photoshop Express fare?
Photoshop Express is more of a photo-sharing site with several image editing features than it is an online port of the image editing heavyweight. It’s a far cry from Splashup (which I drooled over when it was still named Fauxto) and the extensive design suite that is Aviary. Many consider this a disappointment, because why would Adobe let itself get beaten at its own game?
Why release Photoshop Express like this? Maybe Adobe’s not looking to web-ify as many Photoshop features as possible, but instead hook the average user with the retouching tools and of course the social sharing angle, just like Picnik. But could Photoshop Express become both feature-packed and social in the future? Why not?
Photoshop Express, Splashup, Aviary, Picnik, and Buzzword all use Flash. It’s amazing to see how far Macromedia’s former star player has come—from creating the new standard in online video to possibly rendering PDF documents obsolete. If Google Docs or Zoho Writer ran on Flash, would they be as popular? Could the Web have embraced rich internet applications as easily if we depended on Sun (Java) or Microsoft (Silverlight) to deliver the job?
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http://stellify.net/html5-b-and-i-tags-a re-going-to-be-useful-read-semantic-agai n/
One of the best examples of the shift towards designing with web standards is the use of semantic HTML tags, rather than purely presentational ones (since we have CSS for that). Tags like <b> and <i> have gotten a lot of flak for doing nothing but make things bold or italic. They’re condemned semantically incorrect, even deprecated.
WordPress, among others, has since used <strong> and <em> their place. (Try writing a post and clicking on the “b” and “i” buttons.) Lots of people, including myself, have also adopted that same mindset. But <strong> and <em> only provide emphasis, and will not suffice for cases that require seemingly superficial formatting like boldface and italic.
You probably remember that in writing class, you had to follow certain style guides for your papers. For example, the APA style guide outlines which words and phrases should be italicized:
Italicize or underline the titles of books and articles, species names, introduction of new terms and labels (the first time only), words and phrases used as linguistic examples, letters used as statistical symbols, and volume numbers in reference lists.
That’s just the APA, and many other style guides exist (I grew up on MLA), but you get a general idea. While people can argue that the <cite> tag can handle titles and other items that can be cited, that isn’t enough. It seems the W3C has spoken in its working draft of HTML5.
The
belement now represents a span of text to be stylistically offset from the normal prose without conveying any extra importance, such as key words in a document abstract, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical typographic presentation is emboldened.The
ielement now represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose, such as a taxonomic designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, a thought, a ship name, or some other prose whose typical typographic presentation is italicized. Usage varies widely by language.
But it must be noted that in their detailed specifications, the <b> and <i> elements must be used as a last resort, and the HTML document author must know when to choose them over <strong> and <em>, as well as the <cite> element.
This is only a tiny part of the changes from HTML4 to HTML5, but I’m glad HTML is becoming more and more capable of handling truly meaningful documents. A large part of the web is written word; HTML needs to be more sensitive to how that written word, as well as other content like multimedia, is displayed.
Now, if only all browsers were as reliable in rendering markup as the W3C intended.
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http://stellify.net/wikileaks-exposing-u nethical-behavior-in-governments-and-cor porations/
Lately we’ve had several whistleblowers risking their lives so that Filipinos may know the truth. Those who are outraged have upgraded their means of communication from texting to blogging; they’ve even come up with a backronym for it: Electronic Data Swarm Against Arroyo (EDSA).
But that addresses only the current political crisis, and not the greater illness plaguing the whole government. How do you moderate greed and corruption? Could it be through a specialized wiki-turned-watchdog like Wikileaks?
Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
I doubt the Philippine-based WikiPilipinas would be able to defend themselves against the powers that be if they ever start an initiative like this, so does anybody want to fill in the Philippine category in Wikileaks instead?
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http://stellify.net/orosman-at-zafira/
Watch Orosman at Zafira. It’s beautiful, powerful, moving, inspiring. And it shows how a classic by the great Francisco Baltazar can remain so vibrant with today’s modern sensibilities. It’s perhaps the best play I’ve ever seen, considering every single play performed by the Dulaang UP is spectacular. More importantly, you will enjoy it. You will be struck by it.
I am not an expert in theater, but somehow the love I’ve had for it for almost all of my life burst with joy within me last night. Perhaps the only thing missing then was for us, the audience, to break free and join in the half-delirious, half-triumphant glory with which the komedya ended.
If the devil is in the details, this was perfect hell. Just look at the photographs—that was just the beginning. The battle scenes will always be my favorite—there’s just something about a symbolic war dance. That there were pretty boys who knew how to act, dance, and sing is only icing on the cake—though there’s a reason serenades have won girls over for decades.
Please, watch it. If you have to be proud of something—something Filipino, something UP, something artful, something poetic, something wonderful, something great—this is it.
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