Burnham Park Redevelopment Project

The University of the Cordilleras formed a design team tasked to redevelop Baguio City's Burnham Park.  The plans are available online at http://www.uc-bcf.edu.ph/Community/About?Page=BurnhamPark

I am wondering though if Baguio City is able to raise the funds for the entire project, which amounts to over a billion pesos.  The park, though, is showing signs of disrepair especially since it has become a major stopover (and even temporary accommodations) for visitors to the Flower Festival (locally known as Panagbenga).  It'll be great to have a rejuvenated Burnham Park.

I am yet to view the accompanying videos of the plan and will share my comments at a later post.

Technorati tags: Baguio

Coraline 3D DVD

Last weekend I bought a Coraline DVD.  I read the book and liked it, and thought that I would be able to watch the movie version as well but wasn't able to.  So the DVD was the next option.  It was also out of curiosity for the DVD version that I bought this.

The DVD comes with 4 glasses.  This one's the red and green type, not the hi-tech 3D glasses which is currently the rage in both home and cinema viewing.  The intro stated our eyes will adjust in 5 minutes' time, and that we had to increase the brightness of our TV.

There were moments where the 3D illusion worked quite well, but for most of the time it didn't look 3D at all.  My son enjoyed the novelty of it all nonetheless, although there were many instances where we saw him covering his eyes.  Perhaps the 3D effect was more real to him than it was to us!

Good thing the DVD had a 2D version as well so it's still good value.  The movie itself is, of course, an excellent adaptation of the book.

I remember the 3D TV demo we saw at a department store one time.  It was really amazing.  It wouldn't compare with this traditional 3D effect but it's a good addition to my DVD collection nonetheless.


Technorati tags: movie

Remembering the July 16, 1990 Baguio City earthquake

Wow, has it been 20 years since that fateful day?

July 16, 1990 is one unforgettable day for the people of Baguio (and for Dagupan and Manila too, for the shock was felt all the way there), for on that day our lives were turned upside down, and for 45 seconds we were harshly reminded that no matter how technologically advanced we become, no matter how rich we get, no matter who we become in society, everything can change in the blink of an eye.

The magnitude 7.7 earthquake levelled many buildings in Baguio City. May perished, and the city was cut off from the rest of the country as roads were severely damaged. My personal account of the earthquake is documented in a 2007 post in my other blog.

In the days following the earthquake, people set-up tents in Burnham Park and on roads. We lived near Camp 8 at Kennon Road at that time, and the road to the city was literally gone due to a massive landslide. If we needed to stock up on canned goods and rice, we had to hike through the mud. I remember going to Sunshine Grocery near Burnham Park, which had one window open and that was where people crowded to buy food.

I remember meeting up with my good friend Leo and together we hiked from Camp 8 all the way to San Roque (near Lourdes Grotto) to see how our friend Sonny is. Sonny was studying in UB at that time and we saw a floor of the building where he had classes in had collapsed. We were glad to see he was well, but his experience in the earthquake was traumatizing. In their classroom, students were doused with bottles of formaldehyde. Sonny remembered running through the stairs. There was blood on his shoes and pants. And then he couldn't remember how he got home.


Many thanks to Eddie Tanguilig for giving me permission to post the photos below.

When I was in Second year high school, we had friends who had a sari-sari store near Hyatt Hotel.  We used to hike from the city all the way here and spend the afternoon.  Now, the area is a bare field.  It has been on sale for a long time but nobody's buying.  Might be because of rumors of ghosts roaming the area.  The sister of a colleague in SLU died here.

Skyworld Condominium.  On that floor that's level with the ground was a huge toy store.  They sold boxes of Macross toys and I used to windowshop here every so often back in grade school because we lived very near here before.  A Shakey's restaurant was also located here.  I still remember another store near the Session Road entrance selling lots of ET merchandise.

This was the road we took when we went to see Sonny.  Across the street from St. Vincent Church is a funeral parlor.  There were so many dead that they could not cope with the demand.  They had to cordon off part of the street and enclose this area with sack, but we still saw feet sticking out of the blankets from within.

After 20 years, people would have learned much from this. But construction in Baguio City has accelerated much recently. This is of grave concern, especially since we have seen how landslides can topple everything in its path, and a lot of roads in Baguio were simply carved off hillsides.

Other photos can be found at the City of Pines website.

Technorati tags: Baguio

How to make 3D images

Actually, calling these 3D images is a misnomer, because 3D means three-dimensional; it is an object with height, width, and depth. A truly 3D image means you can go around the image (or rotate it) because it has these dimensions. A more appropriate name for these images is stereograph/stereogram, stereophonic images, or anaglyphs.

I learned something new today.

I have not actually tried making 3D images yet, but I have been looking around for some tutorials and I am listing down 2 resources which I feel are among the more comprehensive sites around (and I can go back to this post at a later time!)

3D Journal
Engadget

Technorati tags: DIY

Invitations done the Internet way

I've been using evite for the past couple of Jo-Lo's past birthday invitations. The one thing I like about using such online services is that it helps you keep track of who confirmed, who's not going to make it, and who's coming along with others. Really huge time-saver as well if you need to remind the invitees about the party or things to bring... you don't need to sort through the confirmed and declined email addresses.

Plus there's the added benefit of being environment-friendly. Paperless invites!

However when I was trying to use evite again for Jo-Lo's recently-concluded 5th birthday party, I noticed that evite was no longer as enticing to use as before. There's just too much clutter and even the sent invitation does not look as appealing as before. And so for this round of invitations I used MyInvites. It served the purpose, although I missed the evite functionality of guests being able to say how many of them are coming so instead my wife and I made mental notes of how many they are in the family and made allowances accordingly (it just feels awkward to phone the guests and ask how many are coming).

I was supposed to go to a discussion of the merits of using myinvites versus evite, but as I looked around for more options I found another highly probable online invitation service: Socializr. And the fact that Socializr was founded by Jonathan Abrams of Friendster fame puts some weight on the possibilities for this service.

I do not have anything yet on my calendar though to warrant a test of Socializr. Perhaps you will have the opportunity to try out this service for one of your events. Let me know how it goes!

[cross-posted at blogkadahan]
Technorati tags: internet