Random thoughts in building my blog!
Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology got its wish from Google and Youtube. Traces of the offensive video have been removed, however, the issue sparked a number of protest and triggered an onset of attack on the Thai monarchy online.
So, brace for a prolonged battle of videos online. But nobody’s retaliating against the offensive video, but how are they going to hit back? This is just like Thailand’s battle down south–they don’t know who the enemies are.
(JIM’s Notes: Italicized are additional edits for this post timestamp: 9.00pm, Bangkok time.)
If you happen to be in Thailand and try to access your Youtube account, you’ll be welcomed by this page.
The Bangkok Post reports that the Thai government blocked access to the popular website after Youtube turned down request to remove a clip about King Bhumibol that it deemed offensive.
Here’s an excerpt of the article:
Internet users reported on Wednesday that Thai authorities had blocked the popular website YouTube, over an insulting video of His Majesty the King.
Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the minister of information and communication technology, told the Reuters news agency he personally ordered a block of the entire site from Thailand after the ministry’s attempts to block the offending page last week failed.
“Since Google (which owns YouTube) has rejected our repeated requests to withdraw the clip, we can’t help blocking the entire site in Thailand,” said Mr Sitthichai. “When they decide to withdraw the clip, we will withdraw the ban,” he said.
So, it’s a wait and see situation for us here. My kids have to settle for their regular Thai soap operas for now instead of their usual Philippine movies and Eat Bulaga excerpts.
CNN posted a report at around 0827 GMT (1527 Bangkok Time) today that the Offensive YouTube clip ‘removed by user’. While there are news that the ban might be lifted, Thai media, ironically, reported a way around the ban. They reported early this evening that users can still view Youtube via http://www.proxxxy.org.
I think Google has been very insensitive on this issue and to compare Thailand’s King to George Bush is simply illogical (I won’t elaborate on this). I think Google might have reacted differently had it been a different group. Enough said.
It was impossible for me to attend the awards night but followed the event online (well, waited fro the result this morning 🙂 And the winners are…
Best Personal Blog: Misteryosa
Best Home & Living Blog: Wifely Steps
Best Socio-Political Blog: Philippine Commentary
Best News & Media Blog: Inside PCIJ
Best Fashion & Lifestyle Blog: Bryanboy: Le Superstar Fabuleux
Podcast of the Year: HappySlip
Best Technology Blog: Leon Kilat: The Cybercafe Experiments
Best Business/Entrepreneur Blog: Reflections of a BizDrivenLife
Best Entertainment Blog: Retzwerx
Best Sports & Recreation Blog: Who rides a Vespa?
Best Travel Blog: Ivan About Town
PhotoBlog of the Year: Señor Enrique: Wish You Were Here
For the Special Awards winners, we have…
Best Blog Design: Far from Neutral Notions
Best Free Custom Theme: Blu3zin3
Best Plugin/Extension: iPap
Best OFW Blog: Kwentong Tambay
Bloggers’ Choice Awards: MarketManila
And last but not the least, the Globe Broadband Awards winners…
Blog Achievement Award: The Mommy Journals
Pinoy Ako Blog Award: ederic@cyberspace
Family Blog Award: About My Recovery
Blogirl Award: Well Whatever
Deliblog Award: Dessert Comes First
To the winners (also to the nominees and finalists) and organizers (great job!), congratulations!
Mabuhay kayong lahat!
The election for bloggers’ choice award is on!
My gut feeling was right all along my nominees were winners! well, not quite yet. Anyway, I already revealed that I nominated three blogs for the Philippine Blog Awards, two made it to the finalist list on the main awards category. Well, glad to see that the other blog that I nominated was nominated for the 2007 Philippine Bloggers’ Choice Award… yipeee!!! I think I’m also a winner as all of my nominees made it to the elite list.
Congratulations to fruityoaty and all the other nominees of the Bloggers’ Choice Award. To Filipino bloggers around the world, you still have until the awards ceremony to vote.
As they say, it isn’t over till it’s over!
The list of finalists of the 2007 Philippine Blog Awards has been released. I was a bit disappointed that only two of three nominations I submitted made it to the finals–but ei! still good. Anyway, voting for the blogger’s choice awards is on this week. I think one has to choose from the finalist list??? Anyway, here’s the list of the finalist for the main awards:
Personal:
Technology:
Travel:
Entertainment:
Home & Living:
Socio-Political:
News & Media:
Business & Entrepreneur:
Sports & Recreation:
Fashion & Lifestyle:
Photo Blog:
Podcast:
Special Awards finalists are as follows:
Best Blog Design:
Best OFW Blog:
Best Free Custom Theme:
Best Plugin / Extension:
To all the finalists, congratulations! Awards night is on 31 March 2007, 5pm at Podium 4, RCBC Plaza Auditorium in Makati City.
Engtech, one of the most popular tech bloggers on Wordpress if not the whole blogosphere, is looking for Guest Bloggers. He’s actually running a contest on it. So, if you’re one of who those who wants to have a decent spike in your stats, here’s your chance. Here’s an excerpt of his blog.
… I’ve only had one guest-blogged post so far and it did around 10,000 hits. This can be a great opportunity to reach a wider audience, and to help me out. Read more about why you should guestblog and how to be a good guestblogger at problogger.net.
Stats from the guestblogger post:
WordPress.com stats place //engtech at around 900 RSS subscribers and has between 6,000 and 9,000 page views a day. “It is a PR6 site (Technorati ranking: ~2,000) and usually does very well in search rankings, engtech further explains.
Subject matter should be able something I’d normally write about: how-tos, lifehacks, blogging, programming, development, geeky stuff… of course, I’m pretty much all over the place so it isn’t as limited as you might think.
Older posts are fine if you’re okay with having it republished here.
If you are interested then please contact me with a 3-5 sentence pitch for your post at this email address
.
You will get
- a byline/bio-paragraph at the top of the post and
- a link to your blog at the beginning/ending of your post along with
- any relevant links to other posts on your blog you include in the article.
The deadline was extended until the end of this month, so you still have a few days to write those posts! Who knows you could end up having a stat for the day of over 10,000 hits! Whooa!!!
If I’m lucky (or not too tired) I wake up early in the morning, go to the office and catch monks collecting offerings from Buddhist around Bangkok.
I got lucky this morning and caught one monk around our neighborhood carrying a pot for offerings. A lady rushed out of her house to greet the monk with her offering. She removes her slippers before approaching the monk. With heads bowed down, her hands joined together in prayer in front of her face, the lady prayed to the Monk.
She then offered her the offering walked backwards to retrieve her slippers and waited for the monk to go his way. It was an awesome sight.
On the way to the office, I got luckier and yes good thing I have my camera with me. I caught five to seven novice monks following an elder monk, they, too, have just completed collecting offerings around the district.
As you can see they don’t have any slippers on whenever they are doing this duty. They started early.
On an ordinary day, though, these monks have slippers on, rides the bus for free (with a dedicated seat reserved for them–so when you’re sitting on it, you are required to vacate it and give it to them regardless of your age or gender), rides the taxi (I think they pay when they ride luxurious mode of transport) and yes, they rest.
There might be no comparison between Australia and the Philippines in terms of crime rate. To do so, will be like comparing apples and oranges as the usual cliche goes. However, our police do receive some training from the Australian Federal Police but when I read a news article about a shooting incident between police and criminals, I guess I felt a little proud of the training our policemen get in real life.
Last night, I told my wife that this was one of the best weekend–I was really rested. It was an ironic statement given that my eldest daughter got sick early this week and just as she was recovering by the end of the week, the second one followed suit. My second daughter was quite healthy so she easily shrugged off the symptoms before it became a full-blown flu but then my youngest daughter started to show some symptoms. However, they all recovered by Sunday evening–thank God.
So, our usual routine of going to the mall was skipped for this week, which I welcomed as all of us had a good rest, except for my wife who got to do her regular weekend chores. This morning as I was reading the 11 March entry of Our Daily Bread the title aptly says what I should be doing regularly–slow down.
Sometimes we take task after tasks without thinking if we can do it or not–which is true for me most of the time (blame it on wrong judgement). It was bad a bit on a professional side as I do miss deadlines (while there are legit reasons for some other delays) but the fact remains that my hands are always full. My wife longs for the day that I come home and tell her that this task is finished for today or this week–but that seldom happens.
God . . . rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. —Genesis 2:2
If God rested, why shouldn’t we? We’re just humans anyway. 🙂 Take it easy..
Captain America felled by sniper fire. Read details here.
I used to watch the cartoon series when I was in elementary, he would definitely be missed but Superman died in 1993–well he was resurrected. So, there would definitely be a resurrection for this superhero!
Thanks Captain America! (so are you going to beat the hell out of Iraqi insurgents or the man at the White House when you return???) 🙂
Blogbastic! 