Mike’s Personal Blog

Ei! I’m not really into this halloween thing but I’ll say it nonetheless - HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Bwahahahaha!

What are my plans for the day? Nothing much really. Perhaps, I’ll watch a few horror films and make sure that my kids enjoy their trick and treat tour safely.

For you horror film lovers, I say that you check this out…

I will be watching a few of the horror movies in this collection myself.

Other than that, I will also be watching the following within the next few days…

Ha! I’m sure my wife will start rambling all around the house as I gleefully waste spend my time watching these movies.

Are you into buying stuff — more specifically into playing around with bidding for certain stuff on eBay? If so, then you might want to take a good look at this cool must have auction sniper tool for eBay bidders like you - the Bidnapper.

Bidnapper gives the eBay bidder the edge through a process they call sniping which basically does a few tricks here and there to let the bidder win more auctions. It also boasts the capability to protect your username from searches made by your competition effectively making the competition think that you’re not doing anything. Then, through Bidnapper, you may also change or delete your bids without having to go through all the eBay hassle that the normal bidder would.

The best part of this tool however is that it allows you to hold prices down by not bidding throughout the auction. Imagine how much you can save through this simple and nifty feature.

Not sure if you want to use Bidnapper? Well, just give it a try by signing-up for a 15-day trial period. Now, that doesn’t sound bad, does it?

If you’re into building businesses than you might have already heard the saying “It’s all in the system” meaning that the success of a business is dependent on how well developed its system is. Oftentimes, stories of Henry Ford and Ray Kroc are set as examples especially on how well they have developed a system that pretty much works on its own.

The idea of building a good system is further expanded by the idea of franchising. Most books would refer to how successful Ray Kroc is in his McDonald’s business. Through franchising, we are assured that McDonald’s hamburgers and french fries will always taste the same no matter where we buy it in the country eventhough Mr. Kroc is no longer directly involved with the production and cooking. Put simply, we can define franchising as creating an exact replica of a system thus assuring the same output from it.

One more good side of franchising is that it allows other businessmen to venture into other people’s business simply by buying a franchise. If I therefore decided to buy a McDonald’s franchise, I will be soon running the business of selling hamburgers and fries without having to go through all the trouble that Ray Kroc had to go through. McDonald’s will handle the training of the crew as well as setting up almost everything and all I need to do is pay them the amount they require to buy a franchise.

Good as it is, to the eyes of the aspiring lower and middle class, there is one weakness to franchises and that is the price. Yes, buying a franchise is expensive. Though a franchise’s proven system assures a fast ROI, most lower and middle class people would not find enough money to buy the franchise. This is where microfranchising comes to play.

The concept remains the same. An aspiring businessman purchases a system (a franchise) and the main company setups almost everything that is needed to get Mr. Businessman started. This includes finding the right location to put up the business, training the staff, setting up the store / shop, as well as providing uniforms. The main difference however is the price. A normal franchise would most probably go in the order of tens of thousands of dollars while a microfranchise would suffice for $2,000 at most. Though a microfranchise would not earn as much as the typical expensive franchise, it does get the job done by allowing lower and middle class people to start their own business almost hassle free.

So, could microfranchising pave the way to riches for most of us? Probably. In fact, it looks promising that I will be purchasing my first microfranchise this coming Friday. For a mere $1,000 I will be able to start my own little food business.

Lastly, I think that no matter how good a system / franchise is, it still boils down to the attitude of the franchisee.

I will try my best to keep you updated with whatever happens to this relatively new venture of mine so keep coming back to this blog. You may want to grab this site’s RSS feed so you can stay updated easily.

Before, blogs were nothing more than personal websites where the author can post his / her thoughts much like in an ordinary diary. But ever since the first blog emerged, blogs have morphed into something more diverse that even corporate entities took notice of its power.

Now, blogs exist for different purposes - making money, search engine optimization, company promotion, news, and others. Of course, blogs still exist for rambling purposes as they have always been. Since blogs are now more diverse than ever, I think it’s about time for some disclosure policy to emerge to at least give a blog’s reader the idea of what the blog is all about, who it’s author is, and what manner of content it might contain.

You can view this blogs disclosure policy here (also accessible through this blog’s sidebar under “Pages”) which was generated quickly and easily through this free Disclosure Policy Generator. I think you must do the same.

It’s been quite a while since the buzz about a new sleek and cool cellphone from Nokia Research and Development came up. Though the cellphone is still in the process of being developed (or perhaps even fully conceptualized), it’s already starting to make major ripples in the sea of cellphone users around the globe. It’s called the Nokia Aeon.

The general idea is to get rid of the keypad at all and make the whole front side of the cellphone one big touch screen LCD. When the moment comes for you to use a keypad, the lower section of the LCD screen turns into a touch screen keypad which you could use much like an ordinary keypad.

Take a look at each photo below (click to enlarge in a separate browser window)

The advantages? Well, lesser parts. The disadvantage? A bigger LCD which could be more susceptible to breaking. Well, I’m sure Nokia and its avid clients (including myself) will find a way to handle the upcoming cellphone with care.

Now, if they can only get the Nokia Aeon fully off the drawing board and into the stores.

It’s been a while since I first signed up as a blogger with Payperpost and I have to admit that my experience as a PPP blogger has been very pleasurable. I know for sure that while I get paid to blog, the guys at PPP are doing their best to provide it’s advertisers and bloggers the best service they can provide. It was only until recently that I found out the reality behind all the good service that they extend to both advertisers and bloggers - when they encouraged their employees to create video confessionals and make these confessionals public.

One such confessional was made by Flaming Tamale and oh dear she was really in flames when she made the video. Within the short 9-minute+ video, she expressed her depression and boldy told the world how she felt working within the walls of Payperpost. Take a look at the video for yourself.

Now I know that behind Payperpost the business that allows bloggers to monetize their sites and advertisers to get good quality links is Payperpost the workforce who painstakingly work daily just to make sure that everything is on track.

For some reason, I felt so special after watching the video.

It’s been a few days since I started experiencing sudden abnormal termination of my Firefox browser.  My Firefox installation is downloaded straight from Debian Testing.  I’ve never experienced this before and now that I am, it’s starting to annoy me.  Geez!

I think Firefox is suffering from some memory management problem (if that’s the right term for it).  The bug happens when there are too many tabs open or when the CPU load is high.

Well anyway, I hope this gets fixed soon.  No pressure to the guys at Mozilla - just rambling here.

I recently came across a cool Flash implementation of the MSN API lovingly called Miss Dewey through this blog post.

What do I think about Miss Dewey? Actually, aside from the cool flashy interface and the apparent interactivity presented by Miss Dewey, I don’t see anything about Miss Dewey that will revolutionize the search engine industry anytime soon.  Why?  Here are a few reasons… First, flash websites always load longer than plain HTML websites.  Worst, Miss Dewey preloads a set of videos that it than loads to create a cool interactive interface.  Third, the search results are no better than Miss Dewey’s API so why go for Miss Dewey if you can just search direct at MSN?

On the other hand, I have to say that Miss Dewey did get the attention of a lot of people (including myself) since it’s something new.  Then Miss Dewey herself is pretty cool when interacting with the users.  A friend of mine even said that she was hot - LOL.

Well, to the developers of Miss Dewey - congratulations.  You did a job well done though I personally don’t find any good use of your work as of now.

October 31 is drawing near and the Halloween spirit is prowling the streets.  Soon you will see little kids turn into vampires as they haunt you for candies.  What if vampires were real and those little kids weren’t haunting you for candies but for blood?  What would happen to the entire human race?  Answer, we’d long be gone of the face of planet Earth.

Good news though is that vampires are mathematically impossible according to one scientist named Costas Efthimiou.  His logic goes like this…

On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600.  A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.

It’s actually simple Math.  Try keep on doubling a number and you’ll easily find out how his logic makes sense.  But what if vampires also eat other creatures and not just humans?  Well, that’s another story…

Read more about the Mathematical Impossibility of Vampires at LiveScience.com

My sister-in-law recently rented the movie “Emperor’s Club” from the local video-rental shop and I have one thing to say about this movie. It’s awesome. Only a handful of movies have moved me as this one. Here’s a short editorial review about the movie which best describes it.

Comparisons to Dead Poets Society are inevitable, but The Emperor’s Club achieves a rich identity all its own. In the honorable tradition of great teacher dramas like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Kevin Kline is well cast as Mr. Hundert, longtime teacher of classics and assistant headmaster of St. Benedict’s Academy for Boys. There he encounters a defiant student and senator’s son (Emile Hirsch) who desperately needs–but ultimately rejects–Hundert’s lessons on leadership, integrity, and the shaping of character. Adapted from Ethan Canin’s short story “The Palace Thief,” the film is conventional to a fault, its flashback structure unfolding in Hollywood shorthand. But its noble sentiments remain potently intact, allowing Kline a performance of great emotional nuance while imparting lessons of universal value. “This is a story with no surprises,” as Hundert says, but The Emperor’s Club may surprise you with its admirable portrait of a life well lived. –Jeff Shannon

The movie was so good I watched it twice. In fact it was so so good that I couldn’t get it off my head for days. I even told friends about it. The story touched me so much that I’m applying most of it’s lessons in my very own life. It deals with decision making, cheating, and your contribution to society among others.

If you haven’t watched it yet, I suggest that you do. Get your copy of the DVD and watch it to your heart’s desire. It’s best for all ages - from the youth to the aspiring adults.