The election is taking way too long, but truth is, I’m happy to know more people today care about the Philippines to vote and be heard. I also believe that when one doesn’t pay for government taxes and refuse to vote, then he/she should have no say when expectations of the government are not met. I am so proud of my fellow Filipinos! Especially those who carefully thought out the candidates they’re going to vote and didn’t succumb to vote-buying (or ‘eeny meeny miny moe’).

While we’re waiting for our volunteer-friend at the precint to text us when our numbers are up (estimated waiting time up to 4 hours) my cousins and I are singing along to KTV and sipping buko juice. It doesn’t get any more “Filipino” than this. Haha.

God bless the Philippines!

(Let’s see if this post goes through.)

FYI, Kapampangans love to eat as much as they love to cook. Yes, I’m half-Kapampangan. But, unfortunately, I only love to eat.

Sheena with the Archbishop.

The statue outside Sto. Tomas Parrish Church in Sto. Tomas, Pampanga.

With mama, aunties, uncle and cousins at Nathaniel’s in San Fernando, Pampanga.

Hey. I’ve updated the “Forever Autumn” theme. Sorry it took a while, I’ve been really busy. A special thank you to everyone who’s using this theme!

:: Download Forever Autumn ::.

I like Teacher Julie‘s weekly Weekend Snapshots idea. So much that I think it’s something I want to do from now on. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get it going every week as good as she does, though. But let me try. Hehe.

Baguio Visit

A friend who’s having some personal problems requested our company last week, so Deej and I hopped onto a bus bound for Baguio Friday night to take a short 2-day vacation with him. I’ve been to Baguio twice before but I didn’t stay there long enough to enjoy the place. Fortunately, we have two generous friends residing there whose doors are always open to us, bwisitas from Manila. They took us to the best sights to see and the good places to dine. It was a fun time. Nothing beats the cool, fresh mountain air!

Originally, we wanted to go there in time for the Panagbenga parade (February 23-24), but we were told the city is usually packed and the bus terminals crazy during those dates so we decided we’d rather visit the place pre-Panagbenga. Here are some pictures:

With Van at Burnham Park

View of SM Baguio from the lake

With Paolo Santos at Chill Out

..and some “Friendster shots” (Lol)

Family picture: Deej, me, Geh, Van, Jep

Baguio City is such a lovely, peaceful place. I definitely won’t mind living there someday.

More photos here →

The Google Adsense team is aiming to decrease the number of check payments they send out to publishers every month in order for them to do business in a more enviroment-friendly way. So today, they are asking publishers to support this cause by signing up to receive Adsense payments via Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT).

Advantages of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT):

EFT payments eliminate the paper required to print and send you your check, since they’re deposited directly in your bank account just days after they’re posted to your Payment History page. There’s another advantage: you’ll have access to your payments sooner. EFT is the fastest and greenest payment option available, and signing up is simple. Get your banking details ready and simply follow the steps in our Help Center.

I would’ve instantly signed up for the Electronic Fund Transfer (the charge for Secured Payment is killing me!) but unfortunately, this service is not yet available in the Philippines. Here’s the list of countries that have Electronic Fund Transfer supported:

Maybe Google Adsense can do something about getting EFT available in the Philippines too in the near future.

The StatsPRO allows you to view the number of site visitors who have viewed or clicked the specific items in your feed.

What does “Reach” tell us?

Subscribers is a measure of how many people are subscribed to your feed. At any given time, you can expect that a certain percentage of this subscriber base is actively engaging with your content and this “Reach” measurement provides this additional insight.

Additionally, there may be people viewing your content beyond your known subscriber base. For example, they may view your content on a feed search engine or news filter site.

Reach aggregates both of these groups, providing an accurate and useful measurement of your true audience.

Now we can see the daily number of subscribers who interacted with our feed content. I’ve activated mine and so far I’m liking what I see.

How do you activate “Reach”?

You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the “Item Views” checkbox to activate these PRO features.

MyBrand on the other hand allows you to use a feed address that bears your domain name. So instead of using http://feeds.feedburner.com/joniang, the feed URL for this blog can be something like http://feeds.joniang.com/myfeed. But don’t try that one, that’s just an example.

With MyBrand, you can have not only the feed but all-related resources such as stats tracking, ads, stylesheets, etc. located at your own domain. I wanted to try it but apparently I have to send an e-mail to FeedBurner first to request its activation. Hmm, I can try that some other time.

Where is MyBrand located?

The MyBrand service is located under the “My Account” tab after you’ve signed in.

When I first heard the news about Google acquiring FeedBurner, I thought it didn’t matter much. But now that they made the then paid services at Feedburner free for everyone to use, then I say I hope they acquire more sites soon. Lol.