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ShutterBlog: A travel photo blog workshop with Ms. Jojie Alcantara

I can’t hide my excitement for this event not only because I’m one of Ms. Jojie’s fan but also because she was instrumental in teaching me the basics of photojournalism.

Ms. Jojie Alcantara is an engaging writer who dabbles in the arts- painting, photography to name a few and travels incessantly around the country “to promote her hometown to the world”. She is a lifestyle and travel writer for national dailies like Manila Bulletin and local newspaper Sunstar Davao. She writes about her travels at Dabawenya.me.  She has this penchant for funny signs she encounters during travels and blogs about it on her now defunct but very lively website witerary.com. Her travel photos and photography portfolio is astounding to say at least and some of her photos are published in known travel magazines like Mabuhay (of Phil. Airlines). You can view here photos in flickr or in her pbase galleries.

Of course we had our past with dabawenya Jojie Alcantara. She was our  resource speaker in previous photojournalism workshop with the SOX Bloggers at The Farm in Carpenter Hill Koronadal City last 2009. I still use a legendary and prehistoric Powershot A20 point and shoot camera  that time but I really enjoyed the workshop so much I got hooked in photography since then.

So on Tuesday, June 12, 2012, about 25 active members of the Soccsksargen Bloggers Mindanao’s Funnest Blogging Circlewill be converging at GenSan View Resort, one of the city’s famed inland resorts for another travel photo blog workshop- The ShutterBlog. This is an exclusive workshop for the Sox Bloggers by Project O! Consultants together with CameraHaus, the #1 dealer of cameras and camera accessories in the city located inside KCC Mall of GenSan, and GenSan View Resort, the Official Venue.

Ms. Jojie Alcantara will have a meet and greet event at the Camera Haus inside KCC Mall, this June 11, 2012 at around 5:30PM.

For those who were invited to attend this workshop, here’s a driving direction I made out of Google Map, from GenSan Rotunda to Gensan View Port. Click the picture for a larger view..

Driving directions to Nursery Road, Lagao, General Santos City, South Cotabato, Philippines (Gensan View Resort)
Starting from National Hwy/Pan-Philippine Hwy

  1. Head east on National Hwy/Pan-Philippine Hwy
  2. Continue to follow Pan-Philippine Hwy
  3. Turn Left on the Asian Highway with Soccsargen Hospital as landmark
  4. Take the 2nd left onto Nursery Rd
  5. Continue straight to stay on Nursery Rd
  6. Turn Right at an Unknown Road to Gensan View resort

Total: 9.7 km – about 16 mins

Comment here for the kml file should you want it “loaded” in your smartphones with GPS capability.

 

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Best place for travel…

The best place to travel is your own place. If you haven’t done that yet, you won’t find it in any other place.

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How I got a “new” MacBook Pro at no cost

[dropcap1]A[/dropcap1]bout two weeks ago, my old Macbook Pro (a 15 inch Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 Ghz unibody circa 2008) suddenly heaved signs of distress. The LCD screen showed color distortions on boot up.  The hard drive is warm to touch. Shutting down the unit and then restarting allowed me to boot and then log in. After about 4 cycles of restarting, my mac screen went blank and I couldn’t boot anymore, even if my hard drive is churning active! What the? All of a sudden?

I felt stunned. I was a firm believer Macs are indestructible breed of PCs. Thus, I never searched  for “bugs” on my model of Mac when I bought it. A universally stupid presumption!

I searched  the net  for a diagnosis to this kind of mac problem. An Apple article implied that a defective GPU packaging possibly toasted my MBP’s logic board.  The culprit is a batch of  NVIDIA 8600GM GPU soldered to the logic board of an MBP similar to and  manufactured at the same time as my MBP.

Allegedly, such “defective” GPU melts on average, warm temperatures  (other non-defective GPUs do not) and possibly short circuit the MBP’s logic board. If an MBP shows video distortion like what’s described in this article, manufactured around this year (late 2007-2008), and has this specific GPU, Apple offers an extended replacement program.

I called up Apple support (thru their toll free hotline) and the personnel instructed me to bring my MBP to the nearest apple authorized service provider (AASP). Should my MBP “pass” the diagnostic tests made by the techs at this AASP, my MBP would be repaired at no cost. Heaven knows how stringent these diagnostic criteria could be. But I don’t have any other choice either. The outlook of me shelling some 20-30K for logic board repairs is out of the equation.

The tech at this AASP performed a series of tests on my MBP as per instruction of Apple. His preliminary diagnosis was lethal, something that might not be just limited to my MBP’s GPU. It’s a logic board problem. Logic board repair or replacement outside of its warranty period is expensive, not to mention impractical. You might be better off buying a new, faster and higher valued mac than replace a an old MBP’s logic board. Worst, logic board replacement will not be covered by the GPU recall’s extended warranty or trade in. The GPU recall extended warranty and trade in program covers only up to 3 years from the date of purchase. My MBP is 4 years old. Bad news, but I’m not giving up just yet.

I called back the tech at AASP and explained  why the logic board possibly got affected. I’m no better techie than the tech at the AASP but you don’t need to be a genius to understand the logic behind this logic board problem.  If the GPU is soldered  to the logic board, and is defective , melts at high temperatures, chances are, it short circuited and destroyed the logic board too.

If this is the case, my MBP qualifies for Apple’s Extended Warranty program because the defective GPU toasted the logic board. The tech was helpful enough to refer back again my “case” to Apple. He gave case number and asked me to call Apple support and talk about my concern. After several discussions with Apple’s customer support and them interviewing me several times, plus the shuffling between me and the tech at AASP, Apple made me one surprising decision.

They’re going to make an exception in my case and replace my logic board with a new one. They’ll send a new logic board to the AASP and then the AASP will do the repairs, all at no cost to me.

I was speechless. Replacement at no cost. A new logic board meant an almost new MBP. Hence, I have a “new” Mac Book now. 🙂

 

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RAWR! Lion in my iDesktop!

After four, sleepless days of “hackintoshing” I’ve been able to mount a “tamed” Lion. One that works 99% of a time. I never thought installing Mac OS X 10.7.2 (Lion) of my desktop would much difficult than installing a Snow Leopard. Thanks to Time machine back ups.

OS X 10.7.2 known as Lion installed on my hackintosh

So far its running good and fast. Didn’t have kernel panics or boot problems. All my hardware peripherals worked out of the box, and I’m slowly adding up some more gadgets. Some of my apps don’t work with this version of OSX though. The icloud bug is also hounding me. I know a fix is coming right up.

I’d be posting my install method next time. For now, I’m just getting myself oriented by this beast. Or is it the other way around???

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