Toto Gamboa | Philippine Football Images
Just compiled my shots of in Facebook of football games in the country. This includes games of Azkals and UFL (United Football League Philippines).
The Reckoning: The ‘Sword’ Just Got Bigger
January 3, three days after I lost my topwater lure to some biggie, I went back for some reckoning … this time with Dennis, my bird photography buddy. I went to Ternate, Cavite, he went to Mt. Palay Palay for bird photography. I settled in a small riverbank adjacent to a lagoon where I lost my P322 topwater lure from some fish that I failed to identify and land. The fish must have been huge to snap a 16 pounder braid and took off my one and only topwater lure.
Without my topwater lure, I decided to fish for some kansusuwit (Feathered River-garfish) as live bait. This species seem to be a perfect live topwater lure. It was actually my first time to intentionally go for live baitfish and here trying out these kansusuwits. I rigged my first rod to catch some kasusuwits with a size 10 hook and laced it with some diced shrimp. As soon as the bait landed on the water, a few of the river-garfish nearby raced for the shrimp and in no time, I reeled in one. Immediately, I carefully unhooked the fish and transfered it on my 2nd rod which is rigged with a size 6 hook.
As soon as I tossed the baitfish by some 10 meters on the deep end of the riverbank, I got a strike and I instantly set the hook. Then whaaaam … something very strong is pulling down the line. It fought strongly for some 30 seconds, then the line went loose. I thought it got away but as I reel in some line, it pulled down my line again and showed it’s silvery body near the surface. This time, I reeled it fast as excitement rush through me. As I reeled it out of the water, it was some needlefish. Then I realized it wasn’t hooked but it got itself entangled with the line and it has not swallowed the baitfish. Just as I was about to grab it, it was able to free itself. Luckily, it fell on the sandbar and I was able to prevent it from getting back to the water.
Here it is, a 15.5 incher Spottail Needlefish (Strongylura strongylura):
With its not so large mouth, I figured the needlefish must have rolled itself after it snatched the bait entangling itself with the line in the process.
Live-baiting for the rest of the day proved futile. I got not even a single strike after the needlefish.
Thinking my luck has ran out, I shifted my focus on the wild ‘saltwater’ tilapias that is so plenty nearby. With some worms, I was able to land a few. This is also my first time to catch this ‘saltwater’ variety.
Then I called up Dennis to see how he is doing, he got something that eventually was identified as a rare migrant, an Asian Brown Flycatcher.
We went home very much contented with our catch.
As for me, it was a reckoning day indeed and I was able to land a bigger “sword”.
On The Last Day of 2011, I landed 13 ‘swordfish’!
Few days prior, been contemplating to find some new fishing site for some wild fish species near my place. I tried those in the CCP Complex and snagging Tilapias was not for me. I thought of Valenzuela’s but its stressful traffic and crazy motorcyclists turned me off and Subic’s just too far and expensive.
I thought of trying Cavite as the next best place so I found myself raring to go to Ternate. I used to go here for bird photography so the place should be quite easy to navigate. I thought going to either Puerto Azul or Caylabne would be a treat.
I went to Puerto Azul to check out their pier that has been unused for quite a long time but security personnel barred me from fishing saying their policy now prohibits recreational fishing due to some recent accidents involving foreign nationals. As fishing in Puerto is now prohibited, I thought of going to Caylabne but the thought of paying P500 for entrance scared me away.
So I just roamed around Ternate and found myself in some mangrove laden lagoon teeming with wild Tilapias. As soon as I was able to deploy, I had my first cast using a topwater lure. As I retrieve it .. it was like whaaam! A huge strike, then a snap. As I retrieve, only a few inches of my 16 lbs braided terminal and a swivel were left. “@#$*&%^&%@#$%^ Sayang!” I told myself.
Then I realize that it was already past 2pm and I still haven’t landed any after the big one that got away. I have deployed 2 rods, alternating various baits. I tried doughbait, peeled shrimp, artificial ones but nada! Changed hook sizes to the smallest and still no takers. Around 3pm as the tide is rushing in, I switched back to #6 with some peeled shrimp when some river garfish took it. Then another, then another til I landed a baker’s dozen. Maybe their bellies were full early in the day, or was it the size of my hook? Or was it the bait? Was it because of the rushing tide? I am not sure but that will be charged to experience.
I went home with a handful of river garfish that looks very delicious and vowed to return to do some reckoning with the one that took my P322 topwater lure.
Here are my 13 ‘swordfishes’!
Feathered river-garfish (Zenarchopterus dispar). Locally called ‘kansusuwit’. Did I say feathered? Look at the long beaks! I am in familiar territory!
And here is what I did to some feathered friends with long beaks the next morning! 
Some Major Changes to SQL Server Licensing in 2012 Version
Last month, Microsoft has published changes to SQL Server’s licensing model when the 2012 version hits gold. A number of major changes will likely catch everyone’s attention. Here are those that caught my while:
- Editions now are streamlined to just three (3) flavors:
- Enterprise
- Business Intelligence (new)
- Standard
- Enterprise Edition will now be licensed per CPU core instead of the usual per CPU Socket (processor).
- Server + CAL Licensing will only be available in the Standard and Business Intelligence flavors.
- Core licenses will be sold in Packs of 2 cores.
- Cost of per core license will be 1/4 the price of current SQL Server 2008R2′s per processor cost license
- Cost of Server CAL Licensing has increased by more or less 25%
- To license your server based on cores, Microsoft requires you to buy a minimum of 4 core licenses per CPU socket.
These changes will definitely impact your upgrading plans. To carefully plot your licensing strategies, you can visit SQL Server 2012 Licensing Overview.
Where I See These Changes Have An Impact
- Scenario 1: Upgrading from Servers with dual cores or less. If you are upgrading to a very old server with 2 CPUs with single core for each, you need to buy 4 core licenses for each CPU. That means you have to buy 8 core licenses. It would be rather logical that when doing this, you might as well upgrade your hardware. Besides, your hardware upgrade seems to be long overdue.
- Scenario 2: Upgrading from Servers with more than 4 cores. In the past, If one experiences the need to have more CPU power for SQL Server, one only has to buy a new server with as many cores per processor that money can get, reinstall your SQL Server and you are good to go … all without minding licensing issues and cost. With SQL Server 2012, you will be spending more as you go beyond 4 cores. Going 6 cores, you need 2 more core licenses. Going 8 and 10 core, you need to buy additional 4 and 6 core licenses respectively.
- Scenario 3: Upgrading from Servers with Server + CAL Licensing. There is a 25% increase in cost for CALs.
For those of you who are still using versions 2000 and 2005 and are planning to upgrade but find these 2012 changes unpalatable, you may want to rush upgrading to SQL Server 2008 R2 instead and get stuck in that version’s perks and licensing model before your resellers remove the older SKUs with older licensing models from their sales portfolios and force you to buy SQL Server 2012.
Of course, SQL Server 2012 Express will still be FREE!
Juneau That You Are On Steroids With Denali?
Supporting multiple versions of SQL Server for a single application typically means headache. And that is what I have been in since I started making commercial applications (banking mostly on the benefits provided by T-SQL). We have not abstracted our databases with non-TSQL objects in the mid-tier for very valid and interesting reasons. In my current situation, I am dealing with SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008/R2 supporting bits of features from each version. Thank heavens all our clients have upgraded already from version 2000. My world though is still 80% SQL Server 2005, and being still a very formidable version, I don’t think I will be able to part ways with this build anytime soon. Case in point, clients cannot just easily upgrade to higher versions every time one comes out.
As a result, I am mired in managing our SQL Server development assets using various tools. Anything that can help tract and manage everything. Ever since, I had always wished for a tool that will address most of my SQL Server development concerns if not all. All these years, I have heavily relied on SSMS and supported by various other tools. When Database Projects arrive with Visual Studio, it got me interested but it tanks out every time I load it up with what I have. The last one was with Visual Studio 2010. With the sheer number of objects that we have, capacity and performance was always the issue and each time, I had to resort back to SSMS without exploring further those tools.
When Juneau, now officially called SQL Server Developer Tools, or SSDT, was announced as one of the touted tool in the next version of SQL Server codenamed “Denali”, I was pretty excited about the possibilities it will bring to my situation. After getting my hands on it with Denali CTP3, I say it really got me excited. Though I haven’t tried steroids, based on the effects that I have seen, SSDT (sounds like drug testing haha) gets my nod despite some issues that I have encountered. I am aware that what I got is preview build and for sure Microsoft will eventually iron out those. The benefits far outweigh the quirks that I have seen. It would be worth to upgrade even with SSDT alone.
So what is in SQL Server Developer Tools?
I barely scraped the surface yet but here is what I have found that will a big impact with my situation:
- It is a unified environment/tool for SQL Server, Business Intelligence, SSIS. Everything I need is provided for within the SSDT shell. I dont have to switch back and forth between Visual Studio, SSMS, and BIDS. Creation of new reports and SQL Server objects such as tables, views, stored procedures, file groups, full text catalogs, indexes … all can be done within SSDT. Existing ones can be added too. When I had the chance to explore MySQL Workbench, I find it cool to have objects that I create scripted first before it is created physically. This capability is now available in SSDT.
- “Intellisense support for TSQL” for SQL Server 2005. With SSDT, it has not actually upgraded SQL Server 2005 then gave it TSQL Intellisense. TSQL Intellisense is outright available within SSDT regardless of your targetted SQL Server platform. With SSDT, you model your database schema/objects without the tool actually being connected to a targetted version 2005 live database. This way, you work with your TSQL with Intellisense provided by SSDT, and you can publish your project to an SQL Server 2005 database by choosing 2005 as your target platform. Build/error checks are done prior to the publishing of the database project.
- SQL Server Platform Targetting. SSDT supports versions 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, Denali and SQL Azure. You do your thing and just select your target platform when you are done. During the build, you will be prompted for platform violations.
- Refactoring (Rename, wildcard expansion, Fully qualified naming). While in TSQL writing mode, you can rename a field and SSDT does the rest to all affected objects (tables, stored procedures, etc). Neat. No more 3rd party stuff to achieve this.
- Supports Incremental Project Publishing. You can keep a development version of your database and upgrade your live version incrementally either via script or while connected to the database. It can even prompt you when your changes/upgrades causes a data loss. Very cool.
- SSDT detects changes done outside of SSDT. It prompts you during publishing of a database project when it detects objects created outside of the tool. This is necessary so you know if somebody is messing up with your databases. I do wish though that SSDT would have the capability to reverse engineer these detected objects when it is determined to be legit as sometimes, you get to tweak directly the database using other tools like SSMS.
- Importing of Existing Database Schema (from 2005 to Denali) into a database development project. One need not start from an empty project, existing databases can be dealt with.
- Scalability. I am glad SSDT successfully imported the more than 20,000 objects in our current database. The previous attempts I had using Visual Studios’ Database Project (both 2008 and 2010) just hanged midstream after hours of importing all the objects. Took SSDT more than 20 minutes to import our database using a lowly test Denali test machine.
This is all for now folks! Regardless of some unwanted quirks I have encountered when using SSDT, I can still say, it is worth looking at. I am just waiting for some decent Denali machine to use so I get to load up my projects in SSDT and take the next level from there.
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Toto Gamboa is a consultant specializing on databases, Microsoft SQL Server and software development operating in the Philippines. He is currently a member and one of the leaders of Philippine SQL Server Users Group (PHISSUG), a Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) chapter and is one of Microsoft’s MVP for SQL Server in the Philippines. You may reach him by sending an email to totogamboa@gmail.com
Tomorrow, Microsoft Will Bet Its Farm On Apple!!!
Will the next version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS be codenamed blackberry? or apple? 
Should Ballmer call it Microsoft apple, it will be my first time to own an apple. Hehehe. And one can imagine a news headline saying, millions and millions of Microsoft users now use apple! That would be bedlam. Then we probably hear Mac fanatics or Steve Jobs saying apple sucks! Ahh … that would surely perk up my day!
Expertise Bug Leads to Major Database Design Blunder
Often, we hear software developers (myself included) say, “yeah … we can definitely do that!” or “yeah … you have come to the right place, anything you want .. we can build it for you”! Then often, we too hear stories of software projects fail here and there. And now I begin to wonder how things could be worked out properly so problems, or worst case, failures can be avoided.
What happened to me recently could probably be one of the reasons why software projects fail. For the past several months, I have been working on a system that concerns the health of people. The system is intended for use by doctors, dentists, physical therapists, nurses, or any practice or profession that deals with people’s health, etc. The system, when done, will handle quite an extensive amount of data gathered from a good number of processes and sources that are realized every minute of the day.
For the past several months, there was a good amount of communication between my group and those potential users of the system. A lot of time were spent in requirements discovery and gathering, analysis, and everybody even subject a lot of items to questions just to sort things out clearly so things come out fine. A near functional prototype has been established for several months and it looks like everybody is happy of everyone’s progress … including the state of the system. Beta testing was conducted, had 6 major beta builds in the last few months, and seemed not a thing was amiss. In fact, it is almost done that the potential users are so eager to have the system deployed already and pioneered as soon as possible (that would have been like last month). I was into the finishing touches and was like in the process of putting icing on the cake.
Then … it was KABLAAAAAAMMMMMM!!! As the project’s database designer, I thought of something that hurled everything back into the drawing board. I miss identifying one piece of information that should have been in the database design from the very start. With the set of people contributing to make this happen … this one thing never had any manifestation of being thought out. The medical guys involved in the project never thought of the item. The software development guys never had any clue. I never had any clue. And I have contemplated so deeply to analyze how I could miss something this important. People who played the analyst role came short in thinking about this (I am one of those). But I, being the database designer, am blaming of missing something so important.
After gathering myself, I came to a conclusion that the only time that I’d be able to easily identify or come across such piece of information, is probably when I am a doctor, a practicing one, and at the same time a database designer who had lots of databases and experience tucked under my belt. I caught the missing piece from a totally unrelated event, not even related to what I am doing.
To cut the story short, what happened thereafter was 1 table was added to the database structure with 1 new column that would serve as a reference for 70% of other tables. With the change, 70% of sql code were re-written, 50% of critical UI got revamped and lots of time lost and gained lots of sleepless nights.
The moral of my story, though completely lacking of juicy technical details as I cannot divulge those for fear of legal ramifications and of ridicule (ano ako hilo? hahahha), software development / technical expertise can only bring us to certain extents and domain expertise is clearly a desirable attribute one can have, especially if you are a database designer. The reality and funny thing though is that, I can’t picture myself as a doctor and a database person so I can eliminate this problem in the future and this is probably the reason why there are just too many software project that have failed. And I can still hear myself saying “yeah … of course, anything you want, I can build it for you!”.
The system I talked about here is almost done and is looking really good! And I don’t think I have missed some more that would screw up my day. How about you? Do you say, being considered as an expert, can do of anything that is asked of you?
1.5Terabytes of Photography Gone and Back, and How Windows 7 Installs and Fixes Itself!
Last Thursday morning, Windows 7 popped an ugly message … cannot read Drive S: and after I closed the message, I immediately opened Windows Explorer and there was no more drive S:. Suddenly, a rush of panic engulfed my senses. It was in that drive that I recently consolidated all my photos, and yeah …. 1.35TB of RAW files since I got into the digital photography madness. I load up event viewer and one item says, “The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, has a bad block.”. Loaded up Disk Management and Drive S just wasn’t there. I rebooted and my PC’s BIOS telling me I had a bad disk.
After a fresh restart, I immediately opened Windows Explorer to check on drive S:. Thankfully it was there but it cannot be opened and accessed. I immediately went on recovery mode. First thing I did was to test if my chances for recovery is high. I ran an old Sandisk tool RescuePro and recovered files without subjecting the faulty hard disk of any write operation. Though very effective, RescuePro just went on and dumped every file it can recover in a single folder with the recovered files named as 00001.cr2, 00002.cr2 …. xxxxx.cr2. After a few files recovered, I realize it would be a nightmare trying to check each file for its content. I cancelled RescuePro and run TestDisk which I had used with my faulty CF and SD cards before. This tool is very advanced in terms of disk/file recovery but its UI is as old as those character based DOS apps of the 80s. Running TestDisk, I was able to peer into the folder structure of the faulty hard drive, and have each recovered to another disk 1.5TB disk. It took me almost 24 hours to have everything recovered. Yeah … ALL files were recovered.
Just as I thought my woes are over, while verifying each folder if it indeed been recovered, Windows 7 PC blue screened. If you are just a street away from me that time, you could have been deaf by the curses you have heard from me. I restarted the PC and it says something about a missing BootMgr. What the !@#$!!!!! Upon further scrutiny, I realized the problem started some couple of years ago when I had this PC freshly formatted when I added some new hard drives. I remember when I had the first HDD upgrade, I set the BIOS to boot on the new 1.5TB HD instead of the switching cables so that boot order would match corresponding disk ports. What happened was I had the following setup:
- BIOS Boot Order on Device 1
- Device 0, 320GB, Active Primary D:\, …
- Device 1, 1.5TB, System, Boot, C:\, ….
Earlier this year, I replaced the old 320GB with another 1.5TB and forgot to reset what was in the BIOS all these times. So I had the following setup:
- BIOS Boot Order on Device 1
- Device 0, 1.5TB (new)
- Device 1, 1.5TB (old)
Without this HDD crash incident, I could not have known that Windows 7 did the following when I had it reformatted right after installing the new 1.5TB HDD some months back.
- BIOS Boot Order on Device 1
- Device 0, 1.5TB (System, C:\, C:\Windows)
- Device 1, 1.5TB (Boot)
As you can see, BIOS tells the PC to boot from Device 1. Since it has crashed, it could NOT find the necessary boot info, thus I got the “BOOTMGR is missing” message. I attempted to BCDEdit, but the app hangs as it accessed the faulty drive. I have tried Windows repair and all to no avail. Windows repair only managed to fix the partition issue but it does not repair BOOT miscue. All these until I got Hanselman’s blog on BCDBoot where he happen to be in a similar situation.
I immediately ran BCDBoot and restarted the PC, changed BOOT Order to Device 0 and it just wont boot properly.
Thinking, BCDBoot had already corrected the BOOT miscue, I thought Windows Repair could do things differently this time. I popped the Windows 7 installer and went on Repair mode and voila … the PC booted normally. Checking on Disk Management, my rig now says:
- BIOS Boot Order on Device 0
- Device 0, 1.5TB (System, Boot, Primary Partition, C:\, C:\Windows)
- Device 1, 1.5TB (Active, Primary Partition)
I then physically removed the faulty hard drive for one last reboot … and everything just are back, all 1.35terabytes of RAW files and some new knowledge on how Windows 7 installs and fixes itself!
Google+ … And What It Means For Photographers Like Me
First of all, BIG thanks to my friend Rhamille for sending me a Google+ invite.
I started with Flickr, using a Canon A40 point and shoot and remained a paying customer for years to publish my photos when I realize I want more. At first I thought Flickr was all that I wanted. Hi-resolution, un-tampered photo quality, album management, peer feedback, specialized photo groups, and Explore!!. Then I realize my friends, the people that I also want my photos shown, were not there.
Then Facebook came. I am actually a late Facebook adopter as it has been quite sometime before people were able to convince me to take the social networking plunge. I resisted Facebook for some time but as soon as I experienced the power of the “Like”, I never looked back. I still have my Flickr account, which I don’t update anymore since August 2010 and it says, “Hey Toto Gamboa (Not Uploading Pics Here Anymore)! Your Flickr Pro account has expired. Don’t panic! You can only see 200 photos, but the others are safe & sound. You can see them if you renew.”. As if I care if I don’t renew!
I have used Facebook’s photos for my photographs since last year but there is so much to be desired from Facebook’s Photos. And there are lots of negative things a photographer can say regarding Facebook’s photos. And you will always hear from everybody that Facebook is, first and foremost, a social networking site and not to be compared with against photography centric sites such as Flickr and the likes. And, did I say that the first note I wrote in Facebook was on how I was so disgusted with its photos? Lols! I had sworn that the moment there is another social networking site that will give photos some importance, I wont hesitate to quickly adapt to it.
And voila! G+! seem to be the answer to my prayers. Not to bore you with what Google+ is, but as a photographer, it’s like Facebook and Flickr rolled into one and then some and A LOT MORE! Here is my quick experience with Google+ Photos:
- (UPDATE As of Aug 02 2011) Hi-resolution. Great implementation I must say. Documentation says one can upload as large as a 2048 x 2048 image. Though true, you can only view “as is” this size in your browser if your monitor is large enough to contain this big of an image. But since most monitors are way smaller, you cannot. G+ adjusts the size of the display of your image to the size of your browser. The rationale is that, you must be able to view a photo in its entirety without forcing you to scroll horizontally and vertically. However, you can still get the 2048 x 2048 photo by downloading this. There is one quirk with this design though, since most monitors are orientated to landscape, vertically cropped/framed photos are re-sized on display that the result makes them really small. This is done so you can still view the photo in its entirety. Wish G+ have an option to turn resizing off on vertically framed photos.
- (UPDATE As of July 14 2011) No compression, No Re-sizing. I uploaded a 1280 x 720, 782KB photo, and Google+ retained all its gory and glory. It seems that when you upload photo that is within the limits of Google+ (as long as your browser size is capable of displaying your photo’s full resolution), no compression and resizing is done. Woooohooo!+1.
- Image linking is HTTPS-based which assures me that my photo won’t be further degraded by any other means. You can check out my other blog on this very issue.
- Linking with Picasaweb. This means that I can now reach another set of audience for my photos. The photography-centric ones, which I lost, when I stopped using Flickr.
- EXIF. I don’t have any issues showing the shooting info of my photos to everybody so this can be a plus to me.
- (UPDATE As of July 20 2011) Auto Language Translation. Ever wonder how to understand when someone post some comments in your photo in Italian or French? Google+ does the translation for you!
- It’s FREE. No limits. You can upload as many photos as you like as long as you upload via the Google+ interface. If you upload via PicasaWeb, you are only limited to 1GB of space.
- And my friends, other than those photography-centric folks I interact with, can see and appreciate like they are in Facebook.
Google+ is just 2 weeks old since invites were started. And a lot of things remain to be seen. However, despite being in beta, it looks very promising and most of the things I wanted from Facebook are there.
Of course, for things to get better. All my friends in Facebook need to join Google+ first!
Now it’s for you to find out what is in store with Google+ photos! … check out my Google+ albums!
Check if your Internet Service Provider Degrades Photo Quality
Below are two photos linked to a single file in my server. The first one you see should be in its highest quality while the second one should be exactly the same as the first IF YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER DOES NOT DEGRADE IMAGE QUALITY by routing the image to a bandwidth optimization server. If you happen to see the second image to be inferior in quality, then the ISP you are using is doing something to save on bandwidth.
You should see this image in its highest quality!
You should see this image exactly as the one above if your ISP is not doing something to save on bandwidth.
Here is another test reference:
via https (non-degradable)
via http (degradable)
Pay attention to details like the edges of the tree and the bird, also my signature. Check if you can see some pixelized portions and discolorations.
To resolve this issue, host your photos on services that offer Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for your site. This way, your photos will be encrypted while it goes from your host server to your viewer’s browser. This way, ISPs won’t be able to ‘touch’ or degrade your images so they can save on badwidth. So far, this is the only way I can think to circumvent this issue.
Hope this helps!
