Crimson Crux

Last week, we launched one of our more ambitious blogs / web projects to date — Komiks.ph, a website created to showcase everything related to Filipino-created comics.

The Komiks portal is envisioned to serve as three things:

1. a blog featuring the Pinoy Komiks industry, from news and events to reviews and editorials, with a few foreign comic features thrown in;
2. a directory of Pinoy comic creators, from artists to writers to animators; and
3. a free blog host and subdomain service for comic creators, producers, and historians.

The first item is fully up and running, while the second’s still in the works. The last service is the one we are actively informing people about right now.

If you’re a Filipino comic creator (artist, inker, writer, etc.), an animator, or someone with a strong interest in chronicling Komiks industry news and events, we are offering you a free Komiks.ph blog, along with a matching subdomain (e.g. you.komiks.ph). Newbies and amateurs to the industry are highly encouraged! You can read our FAQ to learn more.

On the other hand, if you’ve already released a comic book/booklet/webcomic, bigtime or indie, we would be happy to feature your talents on Komiks.ph. Feel free to fill up our contact form and we’ll get back at you right away.

That said, we’d be eternally grateful to people who can help us spread the word, either through their blogs, forums, or mailing groups. (Many, many thanks to sir Gerry Alanguilan, who gave us a much-needed and much-treasured shot in the arm!)

One of our goals is to help inject more life and vigor (as well as draw more creators) into the Pinoy Komiks industry, in every little way we can. We’re only three people (yours truly, Ia Lucero, and Garro Garrovillo) running this project, so we’ll need every bit of help!

Visit Komiks.ph, the portal for Pinoy Komiks!

In a few hours time I’ll be leaving for Kalibo, Aklan to attend the wake and funeral of my uncle, who passed away last Monday. (More in my birthday post.)

This will be my first trip to our home province since August 2006 (when I asked if it was safe to let my laptop pass through the X-ray machine). Though I’ll be bringing Corsarify (as well as Mol-eh-skin-ah), I’ll be out of touch for several days and won’t be able to think of blogging or work.

See you in a week!

Shortly after accepting the problogging job at Performancing.com, I was approached by Pinoy problogger extraordinaire J Angelo Racoma to write for four more Splashpress Media blogs. To make a long story short, I accepted two and kindly declined the others (too much food to chew on already!).

Hence, I’m announcing on this good ol’ pseudo-tech blog that I’m now writing for Gadzooki, home to all things gadgetry, software, gaming, and cars, and Blog Tutorials, where you’ll get to pick up some tips for creating a successful blog.

I’ll be blogging alongside some real-life friends — Ia, Mia, Ariel, and my older cousin, Anne. To find out which blogs they’re writing for, you’d have to drop by Gadzooki and Blog Tutorials, as well as their sister sites Travelogger and Froodee.

To send you off, here are my first four entries on both blogs:

• Gadzooks! New Writers!
• Three Games to Watch Out For
• New Blog Tutor, Signing On
• Use Image Attributes to Boost Your Blog’s SEO

Friends, I’m now writing at Performancing.com, one of the Net’s best information sites for professional and non-pro bloggers alike.

I started reading Performancing a year ago, and the tips and pieces of advice I found there helped me a lot in my early blogging days. So when I was approached by J Angelo to regularly write for the site, I grabbed the chance without second thought. (Thanks for the trust and vote of confidence, J!) Performancing.com is now my biggest problogging gig, both in terms of reader reach and compensation.

Performancing carries the tagline “Helping Bloggers Succeed”, and I’ll be dishing out writing, problogging, SEO, and website monetization tips. I’m also thinking of sharing tips for niche-blogs (e.g. literary, health, sports) based on experience.

Check out my first two entries: the perfunctory intro post, and Images: Another Problogging Ace Up Your Sleeve.

See you at Performancing.com!

Article Crux, our “free high-quality article directory” has been around for more than a month already, but I’ve been too busy with the site that I forgot to ‘formally launch’ it here on my blog!

Borrowing from the directory’s About page:

Article Crux is a free online article directory where writers can share their knowledge and publishers can obtain free web content. With ArticleCrux.com, authors can easily post their articles and ezine publishers or webmasters can effortlessly search through the collection of knowledge either through our search engine or by browsing through the many categories.

The directory’s elegant design is the work of Ia (read her design anecdotes on her portfolio). Together, we maintain the site, and are planning to open another one in the near future (this time niche-oriented).

Article Directories: A Primer

Article directories have always been popular with internet marketers, writers, and search engine optimizers. The basic reason: free links. Not just any ordinary free links, but free links from sites trusted by search engines (in this case, article directories). And you know what’s next when you’ve got good, free links — free traffic, TrustRank, and PageRank.

(more…)

I’m feeling a bit unwell today (which is becoming more and more frequent), but I just snuck in to blog that I’m now writing at Mobile Exchange Philippines. In my first post, I take a look back at the stylish but aging Nokia 7610.

An excerpt:

So, how does the 7610 stand up to other phones after a year? Is it still worth buying today?

The quick answer — probably no, but it also depends on your taste. Capability-wise, it’s still a great phone for its current price, but you might be better off with low-end 3G units that are near the 7610’s price tag.

Head over to Mobile Exchange to read the entire post.

Want to glean the latest views and news from some of the best CS minds in the Philippines? (Or at the very least, peek into what makes the brains of these guys tick?) Then visit the newly launched UP DCS Blog Network, an aggregator for the blog posts of the students, faculty, and alumni of the University of the Philippines Department of Computer Science.

(more…)

First off, let me greet the blogosphere a happy New Year! I hope you and your loved ones will have a prosperous and safe 2007.

Last December 29, I officially became a two-year old blogger (quite young, eh?). Due to a fit of madness, I was able to plough through a slew of blogs (my own, group, and professional) and count my entries since December 29, 2004. I arrived at 1055 blog posts, excluding this one.

Of course, blogging is much more than publishing posts. Blogging is about building friendships, bridging gaps across differing opinions (even if it sounds too idealistic), trying to find your own identity (from writing style to personal discipline and everything in between), and showing the world what you can offer, just to name a few.

(more…)

A week after overhauling the design of this blog, I’m raising the curtains on my latest web project — Aircraft Models Crux, the place where I document my newfound addiction passion for miniature model aircraft.

As a child, I’ve always been intrigued by how airplanes work, how their sleek bodies slice through the winds, how they soar above the grudgery of the human mess below. Yep, the kid who’s afraid of heights is actually amazed by these cloud-conquerors.

(more…)

I’ve said goodbye to the ol’ reliable Kubrick Wordpress theme, and embraced this sleek-looking Jim Feist theme. I didn’t want a total overhaul of the blog — I wanted to stick to a simple layout that’s still based on red-and-white.

One of my priorities was to pick a theme that can easily accomodate Google Adsense advertisements. The Jim Feist WP theme was a good choice, though we (see below) still had to tweak the width of the main entries column and the sidebar.

I’d like to extend my deep gratitude to Ia for helping me with my CSS troubles; she’s also the one who customized the new blog header. If you have the time, drop by her post on Gravatar’s outage and suckage, you’ll enjoy it.