Flowers For Ye
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 8th, 2007
This shot was taken using 2 Cokin filters on top of one another. The first layer was a center spot filter with a second pastel 86 layer to create the dreamy effect throughout.
When blog posts get counterproductive
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 5th, 2007There have been two things that I’ve found to be recently disturbing.
The first was the seeming misinterpretation of my post about PWIT and Pinoy Tech Blog - as if there really was some controversy going on. My intent was to help promote PWIT as the cast and crew involves people whom I have worked with in the past – people who have helped me in my career (Howard and Adel come to mind as they taught me almost everything I know) and personal life in various ways. That was it. Help promote PWIT. And thanks to the person too who cited that the original post I made was not controversial compared to the PTB post that was picked up.
The second post hits closer to home as it involves a small misunderstanding of a post I recently deleted out of frustration. One of my closest ever friends drew plans of building a blog network composed of all-Pinoy talent. I remember we were sitting down for coffee when he was narrating his plans to me. The only question I could ask him at that time was “are you doing this for profit or for amor?” My purpose for writing that post was to help promote the network for him. Again – help promote the network. Sadly, I received comments that led to a questioning of who really founded it in the first place. Why do we have to argue about this? Aren’t we all glad that we finally have a local blog network? Why do we have to celebrate it with a debate on who owns it?
Sometimes I wonder if spreading the link love is still worth it. I know that people are entitled to their own opinions but I just hate it when things get out of hand when all you wanted to do was help.
I do apologize, really, if misunderstanding was caused – maybe it had something to do with my post “spin” and not the point of the post at all that made a difference.
Sigh. At least the traffic peaked for everyone. That’s a good thing.
Just Bought: Canon Speedlite 580EX
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at January 26th, 2007You know I would really like to thank all my photographer friends who have been encouraging me to shoot more and more – and thus invest a little bit more into this hobby. To mind come friends like Elber, Anton, Jed and Markku.
And so yesterday I got myself a Canon Speedlite 580EX from Mayer (Hidalgo) delivered to the house.
I posted some shots taken with this with some help from Elber (behind model) and Knox (model).
Two Book Recommendations
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at January 20th, 2007I’m currently reading the following books and would like to recommend them to you. There’s a sale at PowerBooks for those of you who have been putting off book buying. The sale is 20% off on all foreign titles.
Jasper Fforde | The Fourth Bear
Fforde is a literary genius, combining the absurd with well thought out plots. You can visit his site for more details. In this book, investigative reporter Goldilocks is led through a murder case involving the gruesome Gingerbread Man. The trail leads to the Three Bears who live in the solitude of the woods. But all is not what it seems when the bears’ porridge are at disparate temperatures given that they were all poured simultaneously.
Chris Anderson | The Long Tail
WIRED Mag’s EIC writes about the trendy phenomenon that is taking over blogging, communities, and business: niched markets. You’ve probably heard of this book before, but anyone who’s anybody in the business world should read this work. It also further proves that people from WIRED Magazine can write really really long pieces.
What the Publishing Industry Has Taught Me” # 57
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at January 19th, 2007
I learned to flaunt certain strengths and go with the flow when it comes to certain “talents” that I have. Take this particular talent for instance.
Discuss.
Will blog advertising ever get saturated?
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at January 14th, 2007This was the question posed to me in an interview for Filipinas Magazine by Yvette Tan.
My short answer was no it won’t – just look at the magazine industry. In fact, advertising in the print industry is a bit trickier with viewed ads because consumers have to buy or subscribe to the magazine first before ad placements are viewed. With online ads, all you need to do is type in the URL and voila! Instant product placement.
I’m not one to claim that print is dead or even dying (although I did blurt this out during a strategy planning session which caused the room to laugh out loud) but in the same way that magazines are becoming more and more niched, the demographic becomes more targeted – same thing with blogs and online forums.
So there. It’s not about blog advertising being saturated. It is about consumers evolving into smaller and more concentrated groups, thus allowing advertisers to pinpoint where the conversation is going on.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade on January 16 2007
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at January 13th, 2007January 16 2007 will be the biggest date for 8 million PC gamers worldwide.
Thus marks the end of gamer social life for the next few months. For the next several weeks, more 8 million players around the world will be engaged in getting from level 60 – 70, training skills, doing the Eye of the Storm battleground and increasing reputation with the different factions.
I remember the first few weeks after buying World of Warcraft. It was February 2005 and I had a consultancy status with another company. This allowed me to come in at any time for work – and you guessed it. I spent most, if not all of my time exploring the huge expanse of Azeroth with several dozen other players from around the world.
Now I am back to being a consultant, and timely as it is I started playing again thanks to Kiven who got me a 60 day game card last Christmas. And so after a long hiatus, I’m farming honor, reputation and getting my skills up to 300 in time for the expansion. And the best thing about this new development is that everybody basically starts from scratch in terms of equipment since the current “purple” (epic) gear are crap compared to the standard level 65 weapons and armor you’ll find all over the place. My god, I can’t wait to do 10 more levels!
I’m obviously babbling. It’s due to the excitement of being a kid again with his video games. From a financial perspective, spending PHP 800.00 a month versus several thousand pesos on dinners and clubbing makes much more sense too 
Here are some screen shots of the expansion.
Losing My Memory!
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at January 1st, 2007Literally actually! I’ve been shooting at Medium to Large format lately with my 350D. And it has come to the point where I’m losing hard disk space.
I’m in the market for an external drive in the 100GB++ range. Right now I’m thinking of a LaCie brand external HD mainly because it sounds cool and also because I seem to have a bad affinity with Seagate throughout my geeky years – they always break down.
For the budget, I am also considering a generic desktop HD with an external casing. The drawback is that it doesn’t look as cool.
I will be filling the drive mostly with all my media – songs, pictures, movies — all of these are really cool (the best of Kenny Loggins — what could be cooler that that??? 
) so the drive must look cool too!
Ideas That Spread, Win.
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at December 29th, 2006In today’s age of information diffusion, people still do not understand that good marketing can always sell a crap product.
Ideas that spread, win. Ideas that spread, win. Ideas that spread, win. Ideas that spread, win.
Take it away, Seth!
Ideas that spread, win.
And the Crocs go wild!
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at December 20th, 2006
I’m jealous of lifestyle journalists. This is because they get invited to soft openings of retail stores that can afford to give away something to everyone, as compared to tech journalists who need to go through a raffle to being home something really nice. I guess this is because lifestyle products are generally cheaper – clothes, shoes, accessories, CDs … as compared to tech products – laptops, mobile phones, a legitimate copy of Windows Vista …
Lifestyle events = everyone takes home something
Tech events = raffle off one really nice prize
Pre-Vacation Load: The Sad Part of ProBlogging
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at December 8th, 2006If you are in the loop regarding the current payment schemes of network bloggers, you will know that there are around three basic types of payment:
- the revenue share scheme where you earn a cut from network advertising
- the blogger salary scheme where you are paid a fixed rate per month
- the pay per post scheme where you are paid based on the number of posts you make
If you are being paid on a pay per post basis this will definitely spell trouble when you want to go on a vacation. You can’t simply stop your routine – because that will lessen your earnings for the next month (if you’re working on a profit share basis, then this is not a problem).
To remedy this, you will need to do some double time scheduled posting. So let’s assume you do five posts per day. If you are going to be away for one whole week, that would amount to at least 25 to 35 scheduled posts which you need to do several days before you actually leave. I guess it is the same for corporate folk that try to file a leave but need to finish work that they were supposed to offset.
Unless you are a content magician, it will be really tough to try to pull off posting this amount in one go. Some tips that I have learned include:
- do listings (new year resolution list, Christmas gadget list)
- highlight previous posts and build on them
- highlight the top posts you made in a certain category
- do a top 10 of something – where each item is one post and another post for the intro and another post for the summary
- greet your readers during the holidays in the form of a post
Do you have other ideas on how to ease the ProBlogger posting marathon?
