My fan also sent me the list for Body Jam 51. Yes, I am also a jammer with a hesitation of dancing on Sundays due to _________ classmates. I noticed that there are few unique songs and some are remixes of the same track. Reminds me of BJ 38 (Ran Kan Kan) and BJ 47 with Waters of March.

1. Scared Of Me -  Fedde le Grand feat. Mitch Crown
2. Freeze -  T-Pain feat. Chris Brown
3. Shut Up And Let Me Go – The Ting Tings
4. Da Latin Bomb – Filip Le Frick
5. Oye Gloria – Estefan
6. Oye Como Va (Filip Le Frick Remix) – Tito Puente Jnr feat. India
7. Oye Como Va (Love Assassins Remix) – Tito Puente Jnr feat. India
8. Oye (Pablo Flores 12″ Mix) – Gloria Estefan
9. One Minute Man – feat. Ludacris Elliot, Missy “Misdemeanor”
10. Bucci Bag – Vandalism
11. My House -  Kids Of 88
12. Leave The World Behind (Dabruck & Klein Remix)  -  Axwell, Ingrosso, Angello, Laidback Luke feat. Deborah Cox
13. Leave The World Behind -  Axwell, Ingrosso, Angello, Laidback Luke feat. Deborah Cox
14. I’ll Do Anything For You (Original Mix) -  Lee McDonald
15. Breathe Into Me (D.O.N.S & Menck Club Mix) -  D.O.N.S. feat. Luke Parkin & Moira

And to answer my “fan”’s request, how about the music? LOL!

Zephyr transformed to “your fan”. Ha ha ha. He/she caught me up again with the upcoming Les Mills RPM 45 – at the least on the Manila perspective.

1. Life Is A Highway – Milan Roscoe
2. Miles Away  -  CJ Murray
3. True Faith (CK Kaine Remix) -  Liz Kay
4. All On Our Own -  Midnight Youth
5. Piranha -  The Prodigy
6. Bruised Water – Chicane feat. Natasha Bedingfield
7. Burn It To The Ground – Swade
8. The Man Who Can’t Be Moved  – The Script
9. Chasing Pavements  – Adele

One of my instructors in college asked me if it’s possible to use MySQL as a storage engine with ASP.NET and likewise use it with membership. I was a bit surprised since I haven’t touched MySQL for quite a long time and while it is possible, I never thought I would be encountering a situation like this.

I already have a WAMP system set-up in my machine, thanks to the XAMPP package for Windows but I only use Mercury in that package for testing sending out of e-mails in my web applications. Further, I have downloaded the latest MySQL connector for .NET applications and so I went.

Firing up Visual Studio 2008, created a .NET 2.0 website and followed this – it worked until step #15. I am not sure if it’s because the version but by default, the MySQL role provider didn’t appear in the website configuration tool. Since the content might change, I got a page print of the current version (as of this writing).

Here are some tips that I will provide:

1. If you want to use the MySqlMembership Provider as well as overriding the default password complexity of ASP.NET membership provider, use this:

 <membership defaultProvider="MySQLSqlMembershipProvider">
 <providers>
 <add connectionStringName="LocalMySqlServer" enablePasswordRetrieval="false"
 autogenerateschema="true" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true"
 applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="true" passwordFormat="Hashed"
 maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="5"
 minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="5"
 passwordStrengthRegularExpression="" name="MySQLSqlMembershipProvider"
 type="MySql.Web.Security.MySQLMembershipProvider, MySql.Web, Version=6.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" />
 </providers>
 </membership>

2. Notice the connection string name. The connection string, that you have to use, once you have set-up your MySQL references (see step #3) is this:

<connectionStrings>
 <remove name="LocalMySqlServer"/>
 <add name="LocalMySqlServer"
 connectionString="Datasource=SERVER;Database=YOURDB;uid=YOURUSER;pwd=YOURPASSWORD;"
 providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/>
 </connectionStrings>

The role provider don’t appear by default and I don’t know why. But that won’t stop you from using the MySQL DB setup with membership with the Role service. Just add these lines to your web.config file and you’re off to it:

<roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="MySQLRoleProvider">
 <providers>
 <add applicationName="/" connectionStringName="LocalMySqlServer"
 autogenerateschema="true" name="MySQLRoleProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySQLRoleProvider" />
 </providers>
 </roleManager>

I now got my application up and running. Now more tests to do.

Today is my blog’s “3rd Anniversary”. Not really the date I started blogging but the time I realized that my old blogsite won’t last that long and I need to locate to a new blog host where I can continue blogging.

Blogging is something that I have been missing doing for the past months because of extreme busyness in various workload. No, I don’t hate my work, I love it really but it’s just that the moment when something pops out of my head and wishes to write something about it, I just can’t because of some office policies that prevents me from writing anything. I hope I can really get back into writing sometime. For a social animal like me, I find it difficult when I am unable to express or tell something what goes in my head that is worth discussing.

At any rate, this “thirst”/”hunger” might come to a near end. What’s 6 months anyway?

If you are a team of independent web developers that build web applications and websites for others, Microsoft has a new program targetting you.  Scott Guthrie, Microsoft Corporation’s VP for the Developer Division has announced the WebSiteSpark program, on top of the two existing start-up programs BizSpark and DreamSpark (for students). This program enables you to get software, support, and business resources from Microsoft at no cost for three years.

In a nutshell, the programs that you can immediately use upon confirmation of enrollment are the following:

• 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
• 2 licenses of Expression Web 3
• 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
• 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
• DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)

For more information, you can check the official announcement of the program here.

It’s been a year since I started to participate in running races. In that period, I joined 14 races totaling to 159.625km (excluding the High Intensity Interval Trainings – HIIT), and 2 of which are half-marathons which I never thought I would be participating especially for a then huge guy like me. My running history was sparked by a simple idea of running for a cause by a colleague that eventually rolled on as a healthy habit that I hope others would find inspiration from. More than just participating in a physically and exhaustive activity, you have helped others in a healthy way.

Since my running has started, I lost an additional 20lbs off my weight (based from my weight featured in the Belly-Off club feature in Men’s Health Philippines September 2008 issue) without starving myself nor following a super strict diet. Synthesis of running + gym + balanced combination of carbs and high protein diet did the trick for me.

This coming year, I hope to complete at least 200km in the races, participate in at least 1 full marathon (42km) and if time and resources permit, 1 triathlon event. My swimming went to a hiatus due to work, stress, and scheduling problems. Hope that I can clear things to get back on track.

Happy Running!

So surprising my number 1 fan didn’t inform me of this. Ha ha ha! Zephyr, where are thou?

1. The Right Life – Seal
2. Sober (Bimbo Jones Radio Edit) – Pink
3. Show Me Heaven – Arms Of Dub
4. Real - The Cranials
5. How Far We’ve Come – Matchbox Twenty
6. Alone In The Dark (Tiesto Radio Edit) – Tiesto Presents Edward Carnby
7. Jump That Rock (Whatever You Want) (Jorg Schmid Mix) - Scooter vs Status Quo
8. Spotlight - Jennifer Hudson
9. You Found Me – The Fray

Good choice of cool down and stretching tracks. The previous release’s stretching is so tander-song. (If you’re a Pinoy, you know what tander is. Ha ha ha!).

Ride on!

BodyJam just keeps getting better. Here in Manila, Body Jam 49 has just been launched weeks ago and we’re yet to see the “advanced” options which I think was introduced in Body Jam 47. Now that I enjoy Body Jam 49, I think this one looks exciting as well.

1: Saturday (Fedde Le Grand Vocal Mix Main) – Cunnie Williams feat. Monie Love
2: Love, Sex, Magic – Ciara feat. Justin Timberlake
3: 75, Brazil Street (Original Club Vocal Mix) – Nicola Fasano vs Pat-Rich
4: I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) – Pitbull
5: 75, Brazil Street (Steve Forest & Paul Simon Mix) – Nicola Fasano vs Pat-Rich
6: I Wanna Rock – DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
7: Voice of Freedom – Freedom Williams
8: Set it Off – J. Williams
9: Blame It – Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain
10: Pictures (Tonite Only Remix) – Sneaky Sound System
11: Suburban Knights (Steve Angello & Sebastian Ingrosso Mix) – Hard-Fi
12: Finally 2008 (Kam Denny & Paul Zala Remix) – Denzal Park
13: Spotlight – Jennifer Hudson

With the recent changes SM North EDSA has done with its structure, they got my attention once more. I gave up on SM since the arrival of TriNoma – not that I no longer visit them but I spend more time roaming around in TriNoma because of the newer facilities and better malling experience. SM somehow got me back upon the addition of certain structures such as the Skygarden and the improvement made on SM Annex.

Upon learning that a new IMAX theater is being constructed in the mall, I got to excited to learn about the details. Later on, they announced that the theater’s opening will coincide on the opening day of Harry Potter 6. I immediately made a note on my Facebook account and invited people to watch with me of course on their own pockets. It’s just that I’ll make an advanced reservation for them.

Last night, when I attended the 2025H showing of the movie, I am so excited since I wonder how were they able to fit an IMAX theater on such a small area. To my surprise, the cinema is good and the steepness of the moviehouse is not as bad as Mall of Asia’s. Fast forward in the movie, the first 12 minutes of Harry Potter 6 is only the 3D part. Sad to say that that 12 minutes include the opening sequence of Warner Brothers. The movie played on well even after the 3D effects. My companion that night was my former boss and we noticed that during the 45-50 minutes of the movie, the scene became a bit blurry. It is as if the scene have glows which at first we thought as an effect of the film – an effect which is familiar with shots taken at broad daylight. Not until the next hour of the movie from it first appeared, the rest of the scenes are blurry/hazy spoiling the “crisp” cinema experience promised by IMAX theaters. I glance once in a while to check if there’s really a problem with the projector since once in a while the scene becomes “clean” but only after some shadows of black moving across the screen. Then we said, there’s something wrong with the projector. I didn’t enjoy the movie afterwards since it’s annoying to watch the movie with black shadows moving in the screen which you don’t know if it’s a movie effect (perhaps a Death Eater) or the shadows are indeed live. We ended the movie frustrated, annoyed, and literally pissed off. We paid 400 pesos for a crappy movie experience. Perhaps, it would be better if we watched it in a regular cinema – saving us 230 pesos which we could use for food or could have treated for another seat.

On our way out, I saw my friend Mike Y. and we share the same sentiment. I think we were both bitchin out the spoiled experience at IMAX. After the talk, we went on our own ways going home. I chanced again on Mike on the other side of the cinema (5-8) upon going home and I asked him why he’s there and he said he’ll complain about the IMAX incident. As a pissed off customer, I waited for the manager as well to come out to air my concerns as well. When the theater manager went out, I joined Mike explaining our issues and experiences. We explained that the whole IMAX experience was spoiled and it was unacceptable that they weren’t able to foresee the incident that happened to us. According to the theater manager (Miss Liza D.), the 2025H showing was the only affected screening – the previous ones doesn’t have (okay, fine. We wouldn’t care too because we weren’t there). She reasoned out that the temperature was the cause of the moist. Upon mentioning that I debunked her statement and told her the cinema isn’t that cold enough to think I am one of the first people who went inside the cinema. The reason would be unrealistic because the temperature inside is not that cold – sad to say – as compared to the much larger regular cinema of TriNoma.

After airing our concerns, she apologized for the spoiled experience and as a consolation, she offered us tickets again to the same movie, still in IMAX – with popcorns at a schedule comfortable with us – depending on the number of seats available. We don’t know how will this hold but as an assurance, we got her number and will inform her when a schedule is “good” enough to watch again.

Thing is, as the saying goes – first impressions last.  I’ll avail of the next screening passes (provided she keeps her promise) and hope this impression will be a positive change. 

I am a bit excited with the release of Silverlight 3.0 and while searching the pages of Silverlight, a download link has been made available for the public to get the Released To Web (RTW) version. Likewise, developers can also take advantage of the Silverlight 3.0 SDK though you need to remove any beta pre-RTW Silverlight 3.0 SDK. Aside from that, Silverlight 3.0 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 is also available for download.

Here are some useful links that you can check out (links open in a new window):

• Silverlight 3.0 RTW Download Page
• Silverlight 3.0 SDK
• Silverlight 3.0 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Key improvements for the release are grouped into 4 categories:

• Media: GPU hardware acceleration, new codec support (H.264, AAC, MPEG-4), raw bitstream Audio/Video API, and improved logging for media analytics
• Graphics: GPU Acceleration and hardware compositing, perspective 3D, bitmap and pixel API, pixel shader effects, and Deep Zoom improvements
• Application development: Deep linking, navigation and SEO, improved text quality, multi-touch support, 60+ controls available, and library caching support
• Data: Data-binding improvements, validation error templates, server data push improvements, binary XML networking support, and multi-tier REST data support

Still, I am waiting for the launch of the site See The Light (www.seethelight.com). It is already 10 July 2009 here in Manila but perhaps the launch of the site would be the time in the US.