random stuff for bored geeks

Seen on Facebook: Chris Medina

Dur­ing his brief time as an Amer­i­can Idol cast mem­ber in 2011, Chris Med­ina attracted atten­tion not only with his strong tenor voice, but also his heart­break­ing back-story.

Chris Med­ina is a for­mer Amer­i­can Idol cast mem­ber dur­ing the tenth sea­son. He was known for his voice and per­for­mance, but more impor­tantly, his heart­break­ing back-story.

Medina’s fiancée had been involved in a car acci­dent sev­eral months before his audi­tion, suf­fer­ing a trau­matic brain injury as well as severe frac­tures to her skull and face. He became one of her main care­tak­ers, indef­i­nitely post­pon­ing the pair’s engage­ment in order to help her recover. He also tried out for Amer­i­can Idol at the insis­tence of his fiancée, who accom­pa­nied him in a wheelchair.

Med­ina passed his ini­tial audi­tion and entered the Idol semi­fi­nals, where he was even­tu­ally cut from the com­pe­ti­tion by a teary-eyed Jen­nifer Lopez. Days later, he was con­tacted by Rod­ney Jerkins, the Grammy-winning song­writer behind Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” and Lady Gaga’s “Telephone.”

Talk about dedication.

(via @bnissechua, YouTube)

Feb 02, 2012 at 01:29 pm | No Comments » | , , ,

Wong Fu Productions is coming to Manila!

Wong Fu Pro­duc­tions, the trio that brought us some of the most awe­some videos, is com­ing to Manila for a meet and great! What’s good about this is that it is going to be held in the Music Museum in Green­hills so it’s quite near.

This is a great time for aspir­ing YouTu­bers to meet one of the best and most sub­scribed guys in the world! I’m still think­ing if I should go!

(via Tick­et­World Manila)

Jan 31, 2012 at 04:19 pm | No Comments » | , ,

Firefox 10 released

Still using Fire­fox? Well, Fire­fox 10 is already released to Beta Chan­nel users with improve­ments on a lot of things, most notable to reg­u­lar users of which is the auto­mat­i­cally hid­ing For­ward but­ton. Among some are the following:

Anti-Aliasing for WebGL is now imple­mented
Full Screen APIs allow you to build a web appli­ca­tion that runs full screen
CSS3 3D-Transforms are now supported

If you can recall, nine months ago, Mozilla moved to a rapid release cycle. Mozilla’s chair­man Mitchell Baker has defended it’s move with the fol­low­ing statement:

If we want the browser to be the inter­face for the Inter­net, we need to make it more like the Inter­net. That means deliv­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties when they are ready. That means a rapid release process. If we don’t do some­thing like this the browser becomes a lim­it­ing fac­tor in what the Inter­net can do.

(via mozilla.org, mash­able) (down­load here)

Jan 31, 2012 at 10:05 am | No Comments » | , ,

No new Xbox for 2012

There were rumors float­ing around about the next gen­er­a­tion Xbox con­sole dubbed “Xbox 720″ or “Xbox Loop” — both said to be released this year. How­ever, Microsoft France mar­ket­ing direc­tor Cedrick Del­mas has reported oth­er­wise, as trans­lated by Eurogamer.

We’re in an indus­try that talks a lot, that likes telling sto­ries. I am not con­vinced that things will hap­pen this year. The Xbox 360’s cycle is not over at all. The proof is that we haven’t price cut this year.

If this is the case, then I won’t be dis­ap­pointed with our recent pur­chase of the 360 which I’ve been recently abus­ing. (via @theverge)

Jan 31, 2012 at 09:32 am | No Comments » | ,

Writing what’s on my head right now

I’m start­ing this new blog to try a new writ­ing style from Jason Kot­tke. I found out about him from a five-minute inter­view by The Verge. Here’s a short descrip­tion of the writ­ing style:

a one or two line intro­duc­tion fol­lowed by an excerpt, video, or inter­est­ing link — that’s shown remark­able stay­ing power over the past fif­teen years.

Any­way, I’m doing this to prac­tice my writ­ing even more. Hope every­one enjoys and ben­e­fits from my new blog!

Jan 30, 2012 at 06:05 pm | No Comments » | ,