StarMars Online

the last episode of Wowowee

StarMars — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:21:05 +0000

The last episode of Wowowee was shown yesterday, July 30 2010.

The noontime show started normally but at the end, a short tribute to Willie Revillame was shown. A teary-eyed Mariel Rodriguez thanked everyone who made Wowowee possible including her co-hosts, the director, the whole staff and of course Kuya Willie. A short presentation of happy pictures of Willie hosting the show was played on the big screen at the back of the hosts, to the tune of Willie’s own song “Ikaw na nga”.

Wowowee had been running for more than five years since its first airing on February 25, 2005. For the last few months of its airtime, the show had been without a face lacking the main host Willie Revillame. It started when main host Willie left the show after expressing his dismay over a writer from the same channel. Wowowee had since struggled to find a new host to replace Willie, looking for suitable guest hosts. We saw its end coming, probably to detach the noontime slot from the the Wowowee-Willie tandem and the controversy following it.

Wowowee will be replaced by a new variety game show called “Pilipinas, Win na Win.” The new noontime show will be hosted by Kris Aquino and Robin Padilla, with returning co-hosts Mariel Rodriguez, Pokwang and Valerie Concepcion.

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Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Clash of 2010 Big Winner

StarMars — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:35:01 +0000

Pinoy Big Brother PBB: Teen Clash of 2010 Big Winner and the Big Six

BIG WINNER: JAMES Reid
Dashing Dude of Australia

2nd Place: RYAN Bang
Simpatikong Lider ng South Korea

18.7% | 169,797 votes
Prize: P500,000 | Sony Vaio laptop

3rd Place: FRETZIE Bercede
Charming Angel ng Cebu

15.99% | 145,176 votes
Prize: P300,000 | SonyVaio laptop

4th Place: DEVON Seron
Bubbly Promdi ng Cebu

15.74% | 142,876 votes
Prize: P200,000 | Sony Vaio laptop

5th Place: IVAN Dorschner
Striking Stud ng Rizal

15.14% | 137,402 votes
Prize: P100,000 | Sony Vaio laptop

6th Place: BRET Jackson II
Indie Singer of the US

14.68% | 133,239 votes
Prize: P100,000 | Sony Vaio laptop

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CALA BOCA GALVAO – the truth

StarMars — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:33:30 +0000

Cala boca Galvao – Save the Birds Twitter campaign

What is Cala Boca Galvao?

If you came here looking for a short and accurate answer, here it is.

Short answer: “Cala boca Galvao” is a Portuguese phrase that translates to “Shut up, Galvao” in English, addressed to Brazilian sports commentator Galvão Bueno.

If you’re like me who became curious after seeing the phrase become extremely popular on Twitter and did some Google search, here’s my explanation.

Long answer: “Cala boca Galvao” became the top worldwide trending topic on Twitter with tremendous amounts of related tweets coming in every minute. Reading the tweets, I got confused with its real meaning. Some tweets mention Lady Gaga; others, that of a bird. I already know that it’s a foreign language but didn’t know that it was Portuguese. So I did some searching, and found a series of internet pranks directed at Galvao Bueno, a Brazilian football commentator.

Prank 1: that “Cala boca Galvao” is an endangered species of bird

This is probably what drove droves of people tweeting the phrase. It supposedly refers to a rare breed of bird in Brazil and to save it, you only need to make one tweet. “One second to tweet. One second to save a life.” Just watch this video and you’ll see.

Prank 2: that “Cala boca Galvao” is the new Lady Gaga song

Honestly speaking, this one is believable. The song makes use of GaGa-Galvao alliteration, which has a nice catchy tune to it. The song is entirely about the bird though. One plus factor for this prank is how people say that this and that artist will be in Lady Gaga’s Cala boca Galvao music video. Funny!

Lady Gaga’s Cala boca Galvao music video, song

I have some online Brazilian friends so I asked them. “Cala boca Galvao” is indeed popular in Brazil, and it pertains to Galvão Bueno. In light of the 2010 World Cup in which Galvao was a commentator, the phrase got extremely popular when some pranks telling him to shut up sprang up. When I asked my friends why people want the sports caster to shut up, they said that “he was annoying” and that he was “dumb.” I say “aouhiauehou.”

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I won an exclusive G9 Logitech Dragon Age Mouse… NOT!!!

StarMars — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:46:54 +0000

Last March 30, GreyWardens.com held a contest for its readers. The mechanics was simple:

Explain in 100 words or less why you should win the mouse. You can tell us through Twitter, Facebook, or the comments section below but make sure you keep it to 100 words or less!

The top 2 winners were to receive exclusive Dragon Age items, in cooperation with EA, the game’s publisher. The winning entry was supposed to receive an exclusive G9 Logitech Dragon Age Laser Mouse; the second, a rare Dragon Age: Origins t-shirt unavailable in stores and whose copies were given out only in a special BioWare event.

The contest sounded simple enough so I decided to join. My contest entry, which I wrote and thought of very carefully read:

Dear GreyWardens,

I desperately need your help with my plight(not the blight). When I’m not slaying darkspawn, I play mostly RTS (Warcraft III) and oh boy, I’m very competitive at that. Just imagine all the keyboard mashing and mouse clicking (high apm, actions per minute) and you’ll picture the state of my mouse and keyboard. Their age do not help either — my keyboard is turning three and my mouse about two. The left click button of my mouse has started to deteriorate recently, requiring me to click harder before it responds. I need a new mouse.

StarMars,
desperate gamer

Several days after I posted that on the comments section of the contest page, I received an e-mail from the post author. Guess what! I won the first prize. So I sent them my postal address and additional details and what-not.

Two weeks had passed and I still had not received my prize. I was beginning to think that the contest was one big April Fool’s joke since the contest was posted on March 29. I contacted GreyWardens.com on Twitter but all they said was “finalizing everything…”.

I haven’t received anything up to now. The contest post still reads: “Finished! Win An Exclusive G9 Logitech Dragon Age Laser Mouse. Update: The contest is over. Thanks everybody for participating. We will announce the winner very soon.” Where the prizes went and whether there was a real contest or not — I have no idea.

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Flame the Web | Burn websites as you please

StarMars — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 17:58:48 +0000

The website of the How to Train Your Dragon movie lets you Flame the Web. Flame as in fire. Burn your own websites or make fun of others’. No one’s gonna stop you.

This little trick adds some burn patterns to a screenshot of any website. There are four dragons to choose from, each with a different way of burning a website resulting in different burn patterns.

There are three ways of doing this.

Go to the official site http://flameit.howtotrainyourdragon.com/, click the “Flame the Web” at the right and enter the URL of the site. This may not work on some sites.
Use the bookmarklet. Drag the “Drag Me” button to your bookmarks bar. Go to any website and press the bookmarklet.
Just type the direct URL on the address bar. The URL is http://flameit.howtotrainyourdragon.com/?p={full site URL}. For example to burn this blog enter this on the address bar: http://flameit.howtotrainyourdragon.com/?p=http://www.starmarsonline.com/

After playing around, this is how my blog looked like:

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Kevin Butler’s PS3 advertisements

StarMars — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:10:46 +0000

While reading about Sony’s upcoming motion-controller PlayStation Move, I came across a hilarious video featuring Kevin Butler. It is the latest in a series of advertisements in Sony PlayStation’s “It Only Does Everything” PS3 marketing campaign.

ModNation Racers, artist spotlight

Kevin Butler, the PlayStation Move ad

Kevin Butler is a fictional character portrayed by Jerry Lambert. He holds different positions in SCEI depending on the advertisement, all of them funny.

compilation of Kevin Butler ads

Kevin Butler’s titles:

VP, Inspiration and Perspiration – ModNation Racers
Director of Game Accuracy — MLB 09: The Show commercial
Family Activities Director — Desperate Dad
VP, First Person Shooter Relations — MAG commercial
VP of Epic Footage — Montage
VP, Blu-ray Superiority — Grandma
VP, Enough is Enough — Candle
VP, PS3 Softball Team — MLB 10: The Show commercial
Regional Manager of War — God of War III commercial
Chief Weaponologist — Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time commercial
VP, Big Deal Deal Making — Sony HD Bundle
Director of Rumor Confirmation — Rumor PS3 $299
VP, Big Action Moments — Uncharted 2: Among Thieves commercial
VP, Realistic Movements — PlayStation Move
VP, Artistic Modification — ModNation Racers

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My Desktop Wallpapers

StarMars — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:34:36 +0000

My current desktop wallpaper and the old ones I have used before.

The design is simple but elegant. The images are soothing and not distracting.

The theme of my computer is dark and black. It is more pleasing to the eye specially when the light is off.

I usually have a lot of icons on my desktop. When I download stuff from the internet I save them on my desktop and oftentimes I forget to move them. These icons occupy a lot of space on the left side of my screen so in choosing my desktop I always look at the design of its left side. I want the icons and text clearly visible so I almost always pick those wallpapers with dark mono color on the left part.

The wallpapers I use may depend on the game I am currently playing or something I am very interested in.

My old wallpapers

I tried taking a screenshot of my desktop with the icons on it but “cleaning it up” before taking a screenie takes a lot of time so I decided to just post the wallpaper. I guess I got a lot of crap on my desktop that I don’t want others to see.

This has been my wallpaper for years. The four races in Warcraft III are represented at the mid with Thrall overlooking them. The icon at the lower right portion is the mascot of WCG. I got this wallpaper from the hard drive I bought from Villman with the gift certificate from WCG.

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Translator widget using country flags

StarMars — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:10:11 +0000

If you’re receiving traffic from search engine searches, you’ll notice that not all of your visitors come from English-speaking countries. This is specially true for image searches. One of the most popular pages in my Warcraft blog receives a bulk of its traffic from Google image search. Having a means to translate your blog into the reader’s native language is very handy. It promotes readability and encourages the reader to explore more of your site.

For me, having an on-page translator is necessary. There are many ways of translating your blog but I like using the visible flags the most. They are easily noticeable and recognizable and you can readily tell that it’s a translator. What’s the use of having a translator if the reader can’t even understand its text?

This is the exact code I used on my Warcraft blog. It’s a modification of a widget I found somewhere.

Chinese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish translation
images in 24×24 PNG format and hosted by Google on Picasa web albums
background color is transparent
opens in a new window

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Follow me on Twitter

StarMars — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:31:58 +0000

I recently added the official Twitter widget on my sidebar. Twitter is the social network I am most active in so not having it here kinda makes my blog incomplete.

I started using Twitter on October 11, 2008 with my first Tweet “I’m starting my twitter.” At first, I was just curious about how this service worked. It was rapidly growing in popularity back then and I just had to try it.

I use Twitter mainly for short messages. So-called microblogging, these posts are too short for a full blog post. It suits me well because I do not like writing wrong sentences and paragraphs. Oh, I do love one-word tweets.

I love sharing links I find on the web. Twitter is like a bookmark. There are times when I go back to my past tweets to find an interesting link I shared before but have forgotten.

Twitter is my online diary. When I want to remember a particular event, I make a tweet — same purpose as marking a calendar with special events.

Lastly, I do answer the question “What are you doing?”. I may tweet the food I am currently eating, my current mood and the website I am reading.

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20 Rules in any Office

StarMars — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:57:45 +0000

20 Rules In Any Office:

The Boss is always right.
If the Boss is wrong, see rule 1.
Those who work get more work. Others get pay, perks, and promotions.
Ph.D. stands for “Pull Him Down”. The more intelligent, hardworking and committed a person is, the bigger the number of people willing to pull him down.
If you are good, you will get all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
When the Bosses are talking about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
It doesn’t matter what you do. What matters is what you say you’ve done and what you are going to do.
A pat on the back is only a few centimeters away from a kick in the butt.
Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it…
When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
Following the rules will not get the job done.
If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.
Everything can be filed under “Miscellaneous” .
No matter how much you do, you can never do enough.
You can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work you are supposed to be doing.
In order to get a promotion, you need not necessarily know your job.
In order to get a promotion, you only need to pretend that you know your job.
The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.

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