The Bangus Ultimatum

These are my links for October 9th through October 30th:

• The 10 Nextiest “Next Michael Jordans” – None of MJ´s one-time successors have been able to fill his sweatshop sneakers, but ESPN TrueHoop´s Henry Abbott tells us which have come closest.
• Step By Step: Punch Up a Photo in Under 60 Seconds – Using a couple of basic tools in Photoshop and other image editing programs, you can take a flat image and make it pop with just a little bit of effort and no experience in the finer arts of exposure and color correction
• Finance: Credit Crisis Explained as an Antarctic Expedition – At American Public Media's Marketplace, Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch has been using a whiteboard and understandable analogies to explain it to his reporters. It's a bit longer than 8 minutes, but Hirsch doesn't get bogged down in wonky terms or over-simplify things—and visualizing banks as wayward explorers is oddly satisfying.
• Welcome (Android Open Source Project) – Android is the first free, open source, and fully customizable mobile platform. Android offers a full stack: an operating system, middleware, and key mobile applications. It also contains a rich set of APIs that allows third-party developers to develop great applications.
• 7Breaths: GTD with OneNote: Set Up – been struggling to find a use for this program. this could be it. or not.
• Ask Lifehacker: Rescue My Music from Windows Media Player WMA to MP3? – Ding, Dong, DRM is Dead
• Free Anarchomic Released – Time Management for Anarchists, released as a free PDF download
• Against Proposition 8 (Lessig Blog) – lawrence lessig, my idol, speaks simply yet eloquently AGAINST california's proposition 8.
• How To: Roll Your Own Lightning at Sunset Desktop – this looks like my next desktop project

I’m sick. I deem it official not just because of the fact that parts of my respiratory system has been converted to mucus and phlegm machines. Just like before, the fevers are accompanied by weird-ass dreams. The current batch (or at least, those I can remember right now):

1. Bar results were released early (January?). Went to the Supreme Court, saw my surname on the Big Board of Results, but got jostled out before I could determine whether or not my first name was there. And then I woke up.

2. Accepted some arnis combat challenge, only to realize that I don’t have proper pants for said fight. Ended up wearing black formal pants, because hey, those were the only ones I had at the time.  And then I woke up.

3. Something about a ship. Made of pasta.

I better hit the sack.

These are my links for July 29th through October 6th:

• Featured Windows Download: SpeedRead Increases Your Reading Pace, Retention – Free application SpeedRead is designed to improve your reading speed and retention by quickly flashing a few words at a time on your screen in quick succession.
• Quarkbase : Everything about a Website – Web site Quarkbase offers an organized and detailed overview of any web site, complete with summary, popularity, ownership, traffic information, and even recent blog posts and tweets about the site. In a nutshell, it's sort of like Whois.net on steroids. Quarkbase's accuracy and wealth of information varies based on the popularity of a site, but if you want to know more about a web site, it's a great place to start your search.
• how the current financial crisis came to be – in simple language and stick figures
• Know Your Stuff Home Inventory Software – could be useful. someday.
• What We Use: The Lifehacker Editors’ Favorite Software and Hardware – for my future post-bar project
• Tip Testers: Turn Six Floppy Disks into a Latched Box – a complete box with a latched lid, made from the disk's metal slider

And all of you can re-evaluate any information concerning my demise

I had originally hoped for a lightweight, “agile” bar review that will help me prepare for the basics as well as help me keep my life (on- and off-line). My fellow barristers will probably agree that the bar just doesn’t do lightweight. The bar examinations are so bloated and ponderous that preparing for it acquires its own gravitational pull.  Soon enough the whole thing implodes into itself, and what you have is a hungry maw sucking in time and space and sleep and lots and lots of paper.

I’m done with reading law books (for now). I am far away on my first real vacation since April, and I’ll just blurt out all the acknowledgments I can think of.

I’d like to thank Ruby, my girlfriend, for bearing with me during this difficult time. I could not have made it through the whole thing without her. I don’t say that merely as a turn of phrase. It is the truth in the most forensic sense of the word.

I’d like to thank my family for supporting me through it all.

I’d like to thank Julius and Teya, my fellow inmates in Cell 4-D, for helping me slog through all the work. I’d like to thank Mon and Remir for all the useful tips and encouraging words. Thank you to U.P. Barops 2008.

I would like to thank the academy – the U.P. College of Law and all our teachers for shaping us up all these years. Thank you Florin for finishing the Consti outlines (even if it very nearly killed us all). Thank you Professor Te and Dean Leonen for being there for us during the bar exam month.

I would like to thank (and say sorry) to all my friends. I will see you guys soon, and I promise to answer all your email and accept your facebook invitations.

Well, there’s sleep debt I still have to pay. Good night, guys!