I’ll be posting my Globelines Broadband speed test results here everyday (hopefully I have the time). This is out of my frustrations with this broadband after several months of usage. FYI, I live in San Pedro Laguna so if you are experiencing the same problem, feel free to comment. I applied for this package:

Expected speed: 1mbps (for download)

Extras: Phone line + printer + headset

(I received the printer and headset several weeks after the agree date. Very unprofessional of Globe/Globelines)

As a subscriber, here are my expectations:

- I will get the promised speed of 1mbps any time of the day

- Phone should work all the time

- Connection should not be intermittent

- My bandwidth should not be shared with other internet subscribers

To test my daily speed, I will be using Speedtest.net’s services. Without further ado, here are my results:

07/19/2009 5:23PM
Verdict: Failed as always, grrrrr

06/20/2009 1:38pm
Verdict: Failed. Slow connection.

06/14/2009 11:44am
Verdict: Passed. Another illusion? Or for real?

06/13/2009 3:01pm
Verdict: Passed. Not bad connection today.

06/09/2009 10:19pm
Verdict: Failed. False hope…

06/07/2009 12:19pm
Verdict: Passed. I am giving an unbiased report on my Globelines speed so expect it to pass from time to time . Well in this case it really did. Globelines turning over a new leaf? Let’s see…

06/05/2009 2:19pm
Verdict: Passed (once in a blue moon…). I guess most are asleep due to the gloomy weather (thus not much bandwidth sharing…)?

06/04/2009 11:27pm
Verdict: Failed. Worst failure ever. Why? Because my speed test did not even start due to the very slow connection. Come on…I am stuck here, see below:

06/03/2009 11:47pm
Verdict: Failed. Does not meet my expectations of 1mbps speed.

06/02/2009 11:13pm
Verdict: Failed

05/31/2009 11:46am
Verdict: Failed. Globelines is not giving its worth. Globelines is not worth my money.

05/30/2009 1:12pm
Verdict: Failed. Very slow internet connection. Takes a long time to load pages.

05/30/2009 1:00am
Verdict: Somewhat passed but still have bad ping

05/27/2009
Verdict: Failed

05/26/2009
Verdict: Failed yet again hay…

05/25/2009 11:11pm
Verdict: Failed again

05/24/2009 11:22am
Verdict: Failed

05/23/2009 Saturday 11:26pm
Verdict: Failed

I absolutely have to blog about this. Lebron’s crazy last second shot (that overtakes Jordans ‘The Shot’ as the best shot taken by Air Jordan against Ehlo) that brought them their much needed win in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Watch it here:

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

When you hear of the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein would most probably come to your mind. No theory of relativity is complete without the utter mention of his name. But I won’t be talking about his Theory of Relativity. I’ll be talking about mine.

When I was much much younger, probably during elementary, I heard the theory of relativity from somewhere or someone. Being the inquisitive kid that I was, I researched more about it and came to the phrase – everything is relative. In terms of the real theory of relativity, this refers to how an observers sees things around him/her depending on his speed and displacement (or his point of reference). However, I brought this phrase to another level. I took the word ‘everything’ to literally mean everything.

So how is everything relative? How does my theory of relativity work? Let us take an example. We need to take two of anything for this to work. Say playing basketball and writing a blog post. How are they relative? I see a lot of relativities between the two. For one, when shooting a basketball, you need focus, strength and accuracy. The same can be said about writing blog posts, you need focus, strength and accuracy to be able to ‘shoot’ and reach your audiences’ attention and heart.

Let’s go into detail. For a basketball low post move to be successful and to be able to shoot the ball, a player needs good footwork and body strength. A player can back down on his opponent to get nearer the rim, do a dream shake move to trick his opponent and lose him, drop step as a power move to accelerate and dunk to put the ball in. The same can be said with writing a blog post. Your audience is the ‘oppenent’ as they won’t believe a word you say unless you convince them. You could ‘back down’ on your audiences by tackling each and every problem and desire they have. You do a ‘dream shake’ by writing something that is too hard not to believe in and ignore. You ‘drop step for acceleration’ by presenting more convincing arguments that they cannot refute and at last you ‘dunk the ball’ by hard-selling your point into your audiences’ minds and hearts that would leave them nodding their heads in agreement.

So you see basically, my theory of relativity is another way of creating illustrations. In short, you can create illustrations of any two objects for comparison.

This begs the question, how useful is my theory of relativity? Does it solve scientific questions like Einstein’s theory of relativity did? No, mine does not. But it does help you think out of the box when you are stuck with a problem. It might give you creative ways of solving a problem (as it did for me many times past…).

Let’s take an example of a simple problem and relate it to anything I could think of. Let us use the problem of being stuck in a traffic jam and the game of chess. Being stuck in a traffic jam is a problem (at least for me) since you won’t be able to get to your point of destination in the amount of time you normally would. So how do you relate this to chess and solve your problem? In chess, there are numerous ways of removing ‘traffic jams’. One is by simplifying using your pawns. You can eat the opponent’s pawns by equal exchanges. You could also go sideways if the middle of the chess board is ‘jammed’ (too equalized control of the center). So if that is the case, you could go sideways by channeling your pieces via the sideboard (not outside LOL).

The same can be said with traffic jams. You could ‘simplify’ or power your way out by ‘eating’ or going forward as quickly as possible, beating other cars to empty spots every time the flow of traffic moves to create small empty spaces. This is clearly seen in the Philippines. Another way is by going ‘sideways’. Instead of going forward, you could go ‘sideways’ by taking other roads which is probably a longcut but nevertheless free of traffic jams.

These are just simple ways to use my theory of relativity. It would sound very geeky to those of you who think mainstream but for those who think outside the box, here is another way for you to think, another paradigm shift your could try out for yourselves.

Are you having a hard time wondering what to eat to lose weight? Maybe you have heard how Daisy stayed slim by nibbling on foods and no you can’t do that yourself. Don’t worry, that’s fine. Such weight loss regimen does not work for most people anyway!

You can still eat normally and should not affect the quality and quantity of food you eat. What is going to change between before and now is that you are trying to reduce the amount of calories you eat. So what you need to know is what type of foods can you eat in quantities that would satisfy your cravings without adding unwanted calories. Two of the most notorious foods that contain high amount of calories is fatty foods and sugary stuff.

On the other hand, chicken and fish are excellent sources of lean protein and should definitely be in your diet. The same is true with all forms of white meat that has very little amounts of cholesterol. Let us take an example. Eating large quantities of fish should not impact your weight loss program in a negative way. However, you need to ensure that you do not use too much fatty oil in cooking it (remember what we said just now about fatty foods…). Some suggest that eating the skin is not advisable.

From now on, fruits are going to be your best friend. Fruits help increase metabolism and would thus help in burning up excess energy. Do not eat fruits alone as this would cause iron deficiency anemia. The best time to eat fruits is on an empty stomach before eating meals.

Another friend that weight watchers would want to have are beans. Why? Because beans contains lots of protein. But they also have a high amount of carbohydrate so do not eat too much of it at a time.

In terms of dairy food, there is a lot of low sugar and fat milk that can be found in the stores. If you really are serious on losing weight, then prepare to go all out in losing a reasonable amount of fat regularly every month.

In the end, it is your healthy eating habits that matter the most. Combined with regular exercise and fat binders, there is no excuse in not losing weight! Though the I have provided some foods above that are good to eat during your weight loss regimen, it is good that you do your own research to find other harmless foods to add to your weight loss regimen. Your diet should be widely varied so as to not get bored with what you eat. If you enjoy what you eat, you will lose weight happily with minimal effort.

Do you play chess online? If you do, you probably play at famous sites like Yahoo (Yahoo chess). But if not, I am going to a suggest a very good site – Red Hot Pawn.

What I like about this site is you can make one move now and leave your PC and do whatever you want and come back later to see if your opponent has already moved or not. In other words, your games are saved even if you leave the website. Red Hot Pawn sends you a notification email when it is your turn to move.

What’s more, you can play simultaneous games at once! For the free version, you get to play 6 games at once. But for the paid version you get to play a million games at once . The free version would show non-obstrusive ads while the paid won’t. But hey, the free version works pretty well to me.

So, if you want to play chess online but do not want to get hooked for long straight hours at the computer, try out Red Hot Pawn and you won’t regret it.

Do you know the best way to solve a maze? You probably do. But what is its relation to our goals in life? Let us find out.

When I was young, I solved maze puzzles beginning from the START. If I was fortunate, I get to solve the maze in one shot. But more often than not, I do not. I have to try several times to be able to find the correct and only way out of the maze, to get to the END.

And then I got the idea of starting the maze from the END (I assume most of us did…). And of course, I was able to solve the maze quicker! Though sometimes I do not solve it once due to the complexity of the maze, the probability of me solving the puzzle is much much higher than starting from the START! I felt like was a maze expert.

So now how do you relate this to your goals in life? I’m going to tell you a short story. When I was in college, I took up computer science. This course had a lot of subjects that dealt with mathematics and topics that would pop your brains out. Nonetheless, I had to study them to pass the course. Since I had to study them, I might as well study it good and hard. Make proper use of the time spent studying.

Now, I had a classmate who studies just as hard. This classmate of mine was good. However, I was really surprised when she said that she had no idea what and how to use the things we learned in computer science in real life. She knew how to solve the test, exams and problems in paper but she had no idea how to relate them to the things in life. My point is (this is just a side point…), we have to learn to relate the things we learn in one aspect to another aspect of life.

So back to my main point, what is the relationship between a maze and goals? It is how we solve and achieve them. Just as it is much better and mathematically correct to start from the END to solve a maze, the best way to achieve our goals is starting from the goal itself and work our way backwards.

Let us take an example. Let us say you want to make money online. You want to earn passive income thru the power of the internet. You heard that there is a growing number of people doing this and they are doing so by Adsense and affiliate marketing. So you say to yourself, “Ah! All I have to do is put up a site, splash some Adsense and affiliate code and that’s it! I’ll be living the DOT COM lifestyle”.

Days, weeks and months go by and all you are earning is just measly cents and you give up. You ‘discern’ that the DOT COM lifestyle is just a dream. But what if you started from your goal and worked backwards? What if you started with a goal of say earning $10/month (let’s fix 1 month to be equal 28 days). That is small, but for the sake of an example, let us take that. Say you know that the average CTR(Click Thru Rate) in Adsense is 3%, meaning for every 100 visitors, you get 3 clicks. Say again that each click is worth $0.50 (I am using fixed values here for the sake of simplicity…).

Let us break this down to small simple steps. To earn $10/month means earning around $0.37/day. To get $0.50, you need at least 33 visitors (given the 3% CTR – Click Through Rate). If you do some math, we would come up with 24 visitors. Yes, we need 24 visitors to our site per day to be able to earn $10/month. And all you have to do is bring in 24 visitors to your site. The quality of your visitors coming to your site is another story and another goal to achieve.

This mini lesson does not just relate to making money, it can and should be used in every way possible especially when setting goals. Learn from it and stop shooting arrows blindly at your target.

Don’t start from the START but start from the END to get to the END.