The sign said "DANGER WEAK BRIDGE"--not a particularly reassuring line to someone about to drive across the said bridge.

As I slowed down to take the picture, a mid-sized truck went past me and right over the bridge, completely disregarding the "TRUCKS/BUSES NO ENTRY" sign.

I took a deep breath and stepped on the gas.

Okay, I'm being overly dramatic here, but I do feel bad for the poor bastard who will get the biggest (and last) surprise of his life when the weak bridge finally gives way. I just hope that it won't be me.

Yoghurt Treatment Shampoo and Beer Treatment Shampoo? Yay, tasty treats!

Seriously? Yogurt? Beer? Why would you possibly want your hair to smell like beer or spoiled milk after washing?

Last Thursday, Philos and I went to Smart's Sandbox launch party. According to the press release, "With the launch of Sandbox, the latest web platform that unites social networking, online media content sharing and downloading, as well as web services, the future of digital connection for Filipinos comes with a new breakthrough interactive experience." That's a very long sentence, and I'm not sure what it means. All I know is that Sandbox is something like Multiply meets iTunes Store. But hey, impressive buzzwords!

This is what Sandbox is like. You understand now? No?

The event was held in a nightclub during daytime. Because it was a workday, I expected it to be a nice cozy affair with very few people showing up. I couldn't have been more wrong. The place was packed, the music was loud, and most of the partygoers were very well dressed. Well, duh, it was a party in a nightclub. What did I expect? I felt so underdressed that I covered up my chickenmafia.com T-shirt in shame.

Of course, Philos and I wasted no time. We squeezed through the crowd and went straight for the buffet table to stuff our faces with food. After that, we parked ourselves in front of a row of notebook computers, because we're losers who don't like to socialize. I logged into Sandbox and started blogging there as the program started.

If you have a Sandbox account, you can read my live blog entry here. If not, go sign up. I'll wait.

Also, please add me as a friend, because having lots of friends I don't really know or care about is supposedly a cool thing on online social networks. Look me up--my user name there is "angrychicken." I'm angry because they require all user names to be between 8 and 12 characters, and "joyfulchicken" has 13.

 

I always feel uncomfortable in loud crowded settings, so my live blog entry was mostly a whiny rant. Halfway through the program, as I was just about to take a break from blogging, a scary old woman beside me jabbed my shoulder and said, "Keep typing." I turned my head and saw a big TV camera pointed right at my screen. I suddenly got very guilty about the harsh words I had been spewing, and I tried to cover them up by scrolling up and down very quickly to hide them from the camera. The scary old woman looked annoyed, but she instructed the cameraman to shift the focus to Philos, who proceeded to perform for her like a good blog monkey. (See Philos's blog entry for some photos of the event.)

But despite all the things I said in my live blog entry, I did have a reasonably good time. The food was good, and... uh... I had a good time. I swear. Smart can really throw a good party thanks to their bottomless PR and marketing budget. And if their development budget ever catches up, Sandbox has a shot at becoming the dominant social networking site in the Philippines.

I hope they come up with better ads than this though:

Real Sandbox users aren't that annoying. Well, okay, many of them are, but you can say the same thing about all popular social networking sites overrun by dumb teenagers. At least Sandbox has a few cool and intelligent users like me. Sign up now and watch out for all the cool and intelligent stuff I'm planning to post there.

Saw this in ShopWise a few months ago:

Captain Obvious says, "Our ice cream is cold!"

Is there such a thing as non-frozen ice cream? Is melted ice cream still ice cream? Wouldn't that just be plain milkshake?

Stupid Frenchies.

Most of us have, at one time or another, had the evil desire to take over the world. But the hard question is, how?

A recent trip to the Philippine Science Centrum showed me how science and technology can be the answer. Unfortunately, I forgot to take down notes, so I have to rely on my fuzzy memory as I show you some cool science stuff from the PSC that should be in the toolkit of every evil mad scientist with plans of world domination. Pay attention.

1. The Kamehameha

Thanks to super science, you don't have to be a Super Saiyan to knock out your enemies with this powerful attack.

2. The Jack Bauer Interrogation Device

As seen on the hit show 24, this device is very easy to use. Just attach the two cables to your victim's nipples, turn on the power, and shout, "Who are you working for?"

3. The Electrocution Chamber

Turn your nemesis to crispy bits of bacon with 10,000,000 trillion godzillon volts of electricity! Fun!

4. The Make-Children-Sad Contraption

With the help of this contraption, you can take innocent children on an emotional roller coaster by first promising big colorful bubbles then failing to deliver. If used correctly, the joy on the children's faces would quickly be replaced by tears and droplets of possibly toxic soap water.

5. The Instant Penis Enlargement Tool

Aside from boosting your already over-sized ego, a large penis will help you become the biggest dick that you can be--and that's what being a villain is all about.

Are you excited yet? If you want to learn more, head down to the Philippine Science Centrum at the Riverbanks Center in Marikina anytime between 8 AM and 5 PM from Monday to Saturday. The place has over a hundred interactive science exhibits that you can play (and possibly injure yourself) with, and tickets cost only 100 pesos each. It's fun for the whole family.

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I stole the pictures in this post from Lizz and Philos, because stealing, like science, is fun.

I'm not usually interested in bags, but this one caught my eye.

For when you want your fashion statement to be a fascist statement....

Yes, yes, I know that the much maligned swastika is a religious symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, but come on, if you see someone walking down the street carrying that bag, your first thought wouldn't be, "Oh look, a Buddhist." It would be more like, "Heil Hitler!"

Then again, there aren't that many Jews in this part of the world, so I guess having a Nazi backpack is more or less socially acceptable. Carry on.

I've decided to sell the shiny new Asus X58LE that I won in a raffle last week.

Summary of specs:

- Intel T5850 2.16 GHz
- 2 GB DDR2 667 MHz SDRAM
- 160 GB SATA HDD
- 15.6" HD screen
- 1.3 megapixel camera
- DVD/CD writer
- 5-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS-Pro, xD)
- 4 USB 2.0 slots
- WiFi/LAN ready
- Looks really cool*

The machine comes with Red Flag Linux, which is the semi-official Linux distro of the authoritarian Chinese government. I have no idea why the Asus people chose it, but if you have trouble accessing porn political sites, you can always wipe it and install Ubuntu or Windows XP/Vista.

I'm selling it for 32,000 pesos, which is around 5,000 pesos below the normal retail price. If you live in Metro Manila and are interested, please contact me.

UPDATE (20-Jun-2009): Finally sold it for 26,000 pesos. I'm just glad to be rid of it.

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*Will not necessarily make you look cool.

I'm at The Block in SM City North Edsa for a WiFi testing event that started at 1 PM (I got here just before 3--yay for punctuality). We bloggers are supposed to "stress test" the new free WiFi hotspot by liveblogging. Now, two dozen bloggers typing random text doesn't sound like much of a stress test to me, so instead of liveblogging, I've been fooling around. I surfed a bit, watched some YouTube videos, and even tried downloading from BitTorrent. The connection speed is decent--I was pulling around 40 KB/s from a torrent that may or may not be legal. Hey, I could have been downloading the latest Ubuntu release. It's possible.

I don't see many familiar faces around here, probably because it's a workday and most of my blogger friends are at work. I did chat briefly with Carl, who has an interesting new site that I spent quite a few minutes looking at. It has pictures of pretty girls. No boobies though. Boo.

This reminds me... SM is known to have a family-friendly image. They don't even show R-rated movies in their cinemas. So I wonder if their new free WiFi would have filters that prevents people from accessing porn and other good stuff. I'm tempted to load up some porn sites and find out, but there are too many people around, and I don't want to look like a total perv.

Anyway, it's past 5 PM now, and the testing period has officially ended, so my "live blog" wasn't actually live. Yay for procrastination.

NON-LIVE UPDATE: Holy shit! I won a laptop!

I heard that the SM people would be raffling off an Asus laptop after the event. To be honest, that was the only reason I participated. I've never won anything in a raffle before, but I figured that my odds would be good in this one considering the small number of participants (around 30). And I got lucky. Yay!

I'm not sure what I want to do with my shiny new Asus X58Le. The specs look pretty good, but it's big (with the 15.6" screen and all). I have the arms of an 9-year-old girl, and my tiny Asus Eee PC is about the heaviest machine that I can lug around without having to stop and rest every five minutes, so I'm inclined to sell this new one. Anyone interested?

For the few Trek geeks who can't shut up about how the old Star Trek was so much better than the new movie, here's a scene from the original series.

Oh wow, awesome special effects and fight choreography.

Also, enough already about how the new movie isn't canon. No one gives a shit.

I don't know much about Star Trek, but I enjoyed the movie a lot. Fast-paced action and lots of laughs--that's my kind of movie. It didn't have the deep philosophical musings that I expected to find, but hey, J. J. Abrams is the same guy who gave us the retarded Rambaldi plotline in Alias, so I'm glad he didn't try.

In a few hours, I'll be going on a three-day trip to Subic, which, according to every weather forecast I can find, will be rain-drenched until November. Crap. Oh well, at least I wouldn't have to bring sunblock.

Anyway, iBlog5 is happening this Saturday, and as much as I want to, I won't make it back in time to attend. I went to iBlog3 and iBlog4, and both boosted this website's traffic (at least temporarily). I think that's thanks to the open mic sessions during iBlog's breaks when anyone can go up to the mic and promote a blog.

I was hoping that Philos or ArsenaL can go and plug chickenmafia.com, but they both can't make it. I need someone else to do the shameless plugging. Can that someone else be you? Yes, you.

Of course, I don't think any of you love us enough to do it for free. So here's my offer: the first person to go up to the mic and mention chickenmafia.com will get a cool and possibly low-quality Chicken Mafia T-shirt from me. The winner can pick any design (perhaps from one of our lovely chicken cartoons) as long as it's not too hard to draw and can fit into a 8"x10" rectangle.

So do it. Embarrass yourself in front of two hundred people in the name of the Chicken Mafia. You don't even have to be a fan of this site. I don't care if you're just doing it to score a free shirt. Do it! And if you manage to do it before anyone else does, send me a private message and claim your prize.

I'll see you kids at iBlog6.