One of the gifts I got from my wife this Christmas is the Ceiva LF4008. This 8 inch digital frame is a thing of beauty. It has a built in external memory card reader and can display 500 pictures at a time.

The optimum size of the image that you can use for this digital frame is 800 x 600. It does have the capability to crop and fit your pictures in the event that it is vertical and not horizontal.

I really love how this frame renders its pictures , you won’t even notice that this is a digital frame, the non-glossy surface of the LCD screen makes it look like its one of those static frames.

This device has the uncanny feature of self updating its pictures but you’d have to shell out $7.95 per month for a premium service. For you to be able to do that, you would have to either connect via a phone line (are you kidding me?) or buy a couple of their adapters so you can either connect via Ethernet or through a Wi-Fi connection. The fact that they didn’t include those in the box, makes me kind of peeved as a consumer.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the quality of the product and very happy that I got this for Christmas. I would highly recommend this to give to Family especially if you are willing to pay for the premium features. Thanks Mahal!

Related Links: Ceiva LF4008 Product Page

I got this e-mail today from our local friendly bookstore

Coupon Code: X8X9X3K
Catch: Use Mastercard at Checkout

So Perze bought me the new JS Thalia Bootie for Christmas.

It’s a beautiful scarlet red somewhat broken pattern patent ankle boot w/ 3.75-4 inch heels and vintage round toe (round toes are in) and tulip lapels (it’s VERY hard to find these).  To date, these are my favorite boots to wear because despite the crazy heel, they are pretty comfortable. i even stood for an hour, while conducting the christmas cantata choir.  i also received tons of compliments, not from the older women, but the younger…and not just from the women, but from the men ;-), and not just from men, but from my husband! hahaha…that’s when you know they’re nice…cuz normally, my husband can’t distinguish which shoes he’d prefer me to wear.  but they were a big hit, with people asking me where i bought them.  so if you’re planning to buy holiday boots, stay simple and buy red not sliver…and patent red, not glitter red. 

ps- even my mom tried them on…hahah

store: amazon.com
retail: $79
status: own

numbers
so zem has mastered counting to 10 without help…
actually 11…i don’t quite know how she learned 11…but she does, now.

reading
she can read up from A to I, but she knows 75% of her letters when she sings her ABC’s. but i’d rather she can read them because she can make sense of them when she sees them in books or signs. plus it gives her a good start w/ reading in general.

she also knows how to read her own name, as well as words like “YES” and “OK”.

songs
she knows how to sing some songs.  in their order:
1. I’ve Got Love in My Heart
2. Read the Bible, Pray Everyday
3. ABC
4. The Itsy Bitsy Spider
5. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
6. Glorious Impossible
7. Happy Birthday
8. Jesus Loves Me This I Know
9. See Saw

animals
she can also identify a number of animals like:
dog, cat, mouse, bee, shark, tiger, giraffe, elephant, chicken, duck, lion, gorilla, monkey, bird, polar bear, alligator, fish, penguin, pachyderm, jaguar, butterfly, pig, cow, moose, snake, dinosaur, etc…

shapes
she’s also mastered these shapes, knowing how to point them out as well as say their names:
1. diamond
2. circle
3. square
4. rectangle
5. triangle
6. oval
7. star
8. heart

colors
she can distinguish and say these colors: red, blue, pink, green, orange, yellow

size
em learned big and small around the time she started learning shapes, so she knows the different sizes. but she says “big” and “baby”.

praying
often times she comes up to me to pray with some valid requests and not so valid…they range from praying to tatay, to hong hong, lolo, baby ball, and pucca. but the important thing is that she likes to pray. we also started asking her to pray for our dinners, so usually, she says, “jesus, thank you for the food, in Jesus name, amen.”  but it ends up sounding like, “Ista, tank yoo, po ma pood. Ista, amen.”

archaeology will tell you that Jesus wasn’t born on the 25th of december, try april. When he was born, there were no christmas trees, or candy canes nor traffic at the malls.

some may say that the reason we celebrate christmas is because when the romans were converted by the sun worshipper/emperor constantine into christianity they wanted to keep partying during the winter solstice.

in this humano-existentialist society, most christians have been complacent. were are called to be truth seekers but we have been satisfied in just taking in what everyone else says. as humans the most powerful question we can ask is ‘why?’.

even so, there are basic truths in life that we can never deny. we all want to be longed, we want to be loved and we all want to know that everything is going to be all right.

it doesn’t really matter when Jesus was born, or if we were decieved to celebrate a pagan festival. These facts remain to be self evident, He came, he lived as a man, and he conquered death. there is no better reason that can satisfy those three statements earlier.

- he longs for us (John 14:2-3)
- he loves us (John 3:16)
- he knows that everything will be alright (Matt. 28:18)

repent. believe. everything will be all right.

It’s been 5 years since I told her that I loved her. I also did it in the most unromantic way. As a response, she didn’t even say anything she just handed me a three page, back-to-back handwritten note.

I looked at her quizzicaly, she told me that she wrote it a week before. Mustering all my powers of speed reading, my eyes were in a hunt for 3 words. I should have known better and started in the end, but I didn’t. Page after page I was pouring through those clumps of letters. I was only looking for a 3 word sequence that I knew would somewhat define why I’m here.

6 years before that fateful day I was faced with a decision on whether to go to the US or stay in the motherland. This was supposed to be a temporary stint … until now.

What seemed eternity while ruffling through those pages, it felt like I was in some sort of a micro limbo attached to a mini roller coaster. As I was ’skimming’ through that letter I realize that she was feeling the same way, but I still wasn’t seeing those three words!

I remember a couple months before that she asked me to go rollerblading, I declined because I don’t know how to rollerblade. I told her that I should just take her out to lunch on her birthday because I wouldn’t make this one. We ended up Rollerblading on her birthday and I guess she saw the reason why I didn’t go the first time.

When I got to the last paragraph, there they were’ those 3 words. I looked up with a grin. To think if I didn’t tell her that I loved her, she would have told me first.

That is the original twelvesixteen, as if it happened just moments ago.

elephant shoes mama.

there’s too many things going on right now in the interweb. ask al gore, he invented it. he’ll probably tell you that there are evil lurkers that are trying to get into your brain from your computer through the interwebmation sumaperhighway.

hackers they call these people, because they can hack through your security system like a hot red samurai during tsujigiri testing. these people are so vile that they’ll make your red status led lights turn purple.

a new breed of detectives are rising. the nerdy ones to counter these hackers. ones armed with a +255 innate ability for sniffing where these hackers are. whether you are a 12 year old kid from iceland trying to call the president, or a l33t member of a crack keygen squad, they are on to you like filipinos on white rice.

there might be some posers who’d claim they are uber cyber forensicists but the real ones, you won’t even know that they were there. like a cyber ninja ready to strike when the next hackermurai passes along unstealthily.