Oh what a week it was. It all started off last Thursday with a trip to El Nido, one of the most beautiful and serene honeymoon destinations in the world. Situated in Palawan, it has the most unbelievable sights and a pleasure to just sit back and enjoy nature at its best. Unfortunately, nature wouldn’t cooperate and I ended up being part of the worst flights EVER. Imagine riding on a 19-seater chartered plane (see below) with what seems like smoke but is actually air conditioning coming from the bottom of the plane. Then part of that joyous 1 hour and 45 minutes are 6 very considerable drops on air pockets in that flimsy plane. When I got down, I was stone cold and could barely move. And that’s considering I rarely ever get dizzy, and it was only drizzling!

Then Monday came, and I actually had an audition to join Wheel of Fortune. My fiancee had recently joined this and won around 160k Php, and I was lucky enough to have been called to try. So I was there at around 830am lined up along with a hundred plus other hopefuls. While I was minding my own business reading my book, some girl came up to me and asked me to come with her to the studio. Apparently, she wanted me to be part of a morning show, so I said why not right? I ended up in the front row, doing really insane exercise routines to the tune of the “Locomotion.” That was just really embarrassing and it didn’t help that some friends saw the show live and started texting me about it. Pffft.

Good news was that, I passed the written test (which was actually pretty hard) and the oral test, so I will be back next Monday for the trial game to determine if I will be part of the actual screening for the real show

And lastly, I got a really great job offer from a very well known IT company in the country. It’s been driving me nuts because I love what I’m doing now, but I’m being driven to take the offer because it would be idiotic for me to say no. Still confused and have absolutely no idea what to do.

And that rounds up a very trying, happy, fortunate, embarrassing, wet, confusing, and thankful week for me. Can’t wait to see what the week ahead brings

With one game remaining to determine the Final 4, it has been all home teams winning their home games except for I believe about 2 of them. One being the Lakers beating the Jazz in Game 6 to close out the series and move on to the Conference Finals where they will be favorites to move to the championship. And the other being Detroit’s Game 4 squeaker 1-point escape in Orlando. Detroit was the first to advance, amidst Jameer Nelson’s prediction that the Magic will surely win Game 5. Not that anyone believed him anyway.

And after another Game 7 for the Celtics, they finally beat Lebron’s Cavs on a nail-biter a few hours ago. The Celtics were up 89-88 with about a minute remaining and the Cavs had the ball! But instead of driving to the hoop, Lebron lobbed up a three which of course missed, and there went the Cavs season. It would have been great to see LBJ at least try to get to the hoop to get a foul or kick out to his teammates, but he chose the worst possible shot. Beating the Celtics would have been testament to Lebron’s overall greatness (afterall he scored 45 points in a Game 7) but I guess he still has a lot to learn. Too bad. A lot of people from Boston would have probably lost cars and houses if the Cavs came out with the win hehe

In terms of predictions, as of the moment all my picks have been correct pending the Spurs-Hornets game tomorrow. It’s do-or-die and I will bet my money on the Spurs against the Hornets there. Lakers are 2-2 against either team though, but I think they will have a harder time dealing with the Spurs. Celtics and Pistons should be a great series to watch! In-depth looks at the Conference Finals for East and West should be up in a few days.

*Update: Spurs beat the Hornets at the Hive to snatch Game 7 and set up a Conference Finals duel with the Lakers

The NY Times reported that Advanced Micro Devices plans to release processors with 12 cores, which changes its product road map and kills earlier plans to release 8-core chips. The 12-core processor, code-named Magny-Cours, will be targeted at servers and is due for release in the first half of 2010. The chip will include 12MB of L3 cache and support DDR3 RAM. AMD is jumping from a 6-core chip code-named Istanbul, due for release in the second half of 2009, straight to a 12-core chip the following year. Until last month, AMD officials repeated plans to ship the 8-core server chip, code-named Barcelona, in 2009.

AMD is also planning to release a 6-core chip code-named Sao Paulo in 2010. The chip will include 6MB of L3 cache and support for DDR3 RAM. Sao Paulo chips could meet the need of systems that don’t require 12 cores, Allen said. The new chips will be more power efficient as they will be manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, an upgrade from the 65-nm process currently used to manufacture Barcelona (architecture in the picture below).

Even with AMD’s altered road map, Intel will remain formidable. Intel shipped 78.5 percent of chips in the first quarter of 2008, while AMD held a 20.6 percent market share, a slight gain from the 18.7 percent market share it held in the first quarter of 2007.

I guess jumping the gun would pretty much term what AMD has done here as they talk about technology they will roll out in 2010 while we’re still in 2008. Seemingly befuddled by how they can’t seem to gain more solid share in the race against Intel, this seems like a marketing “ploy” by AMD to bring people into the hype of a very future-based 12-core technology. Currently, at the 4-socket, quad core level, which equates to a 16-core server today, companies (at least here in the Philippines) are just realizing the potential of the 16-core platform. Virtualization has really not taken off just yet, and it may be a year more before the market here matures to move into that realm. If we talk about worldwide though, a lot of corporations have already matured in this space, and that outlook for a 32-core system would be very significant. But again, that is technology 2 years down the line.

While AMD has just recently launched Barcelona, it seems to me that this is quite a distraction to that announcement. And in the end, I’m sure the guys at AMD realize that even with Barcelona, they are still not at par with Intel as their competitors had come out with their 4-core processors on Nehalem quite a bit before this recent AMD release. So the logic of exciting everyone with a potential 12-core processor down the line is understandable, but I’m pretty sure Intel also has this in the works and are not as excited to talk about it just yet as they do not need to.

If we take a look at how it has been in the past years, Intel will probably come out with theirs even earlier, and with a better architecture as they look to incorporate the main advantages AMD has over them currently. Nehalem for Intel has already been announced for the 4-core front quite a few long months before AMD’s current equivalent in Barcelona, and it is going to be 8-cores for a single processor die in 2009 for their second phase. Let’s see how all this goes as AMD tries to grab more share from Intel in the up and coming months.

I have been hearing a lot of rave reviews about how good the original soundtrack of the first Chronicles of Narnia movie was. Unfortunately, I don’t have the release of that, but I do have the release of the second one There are two links below for the torrents, just in case one link is down.

Honestly, I have never watched this movie because I think it’s another one of those trilogies again. But I have always loved the OST’s of these movie types (such as Beowulf and the like) and I would like to think this one would also be as good.

I should be watching the first movie real soon, as the second one is coming out in a month or so. I should also be listening to that first OST! But for now, here’s the original soundtrack for Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, for all the Narnia fans out there. I’ve heard pretty good things about this one, but I’ll judge it after I’ve listened to it. Enjoy!

Tracks:
1. Prince Caspian Flees – 4:33
2. The Kings And Queens of Old – 3:26
3. Journey To The How – 4:39
4. Arrival At Aslan’s How – 2:53
5. Raid On The Castle – 7:00
6. Miraz Crowned – 4:42
7. Sorcery And Sudden Vengeance – 6:15
8. The Duel – 5:51
9. The Armies Assemble – 2:17
10. Battle At Aslan’s How – 5:14
11. Return Of The Lion – 4:10
12. The Door In The Air – 7:50
13. Regina Spektor – The Call 3:07
14. Oren Lavie – A Dance ‘Round the Memory Tree 3:38
15. Switchfoot – This Is Home 3:58
16. Hanne Hukkelberg – Lucy 4:31

Artist: Various Artists
Title: The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian (OST)
Time: 75:10
Size: 100.4 MB
Torrent: Rapidshare / Deposit Files

I was surfing through some sites earlier and came upon this spectacular engineering marvel. Talk about the new wonders of the modern world. It is the world’s largest swimming pool, acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records early this year.

It lies in Chile’s Southern coast and measures 1,013 meters in length and covers an area of eight hectares! It is more than 1,000 yards long covering 20 acres and has a deep end of 115 feet and holds 66 million gallons of water! It took 5 years to build and cost nearly £1billion and the annual maintenance bill will be £2million!

This man-made saltwater lagoon has been attracting huge crowds at the San Alfonso del Mar Resort at Algarrobo, on Chile’s southern coast. The resort’s large pool utilizes a technology developed by the Chilean company Crystal Lagoons, which uses water pumped from the Pacific Ocean, that is then filtered and treated for supply to the pool. The sun warms the water to 26c, nine degrees warmer than the adjoining sea.

Talk about paradise on earth! Look at that view above and imagine that you have just woken up in the morning and opened your curtains and this is what you see! Wow. Its turquoise waters are crystal clear that you can see the bottom even in the deep end.

It dwarfs the world’s second largest pool in Morocco, the Orthlieb, nicknamed the Big Splash, which is a mere 150 yards long and 100 yards wide. Just to give you a comparison to what normal is, an Olympic size pool measures around 50 yards by 25 yards. The Orthlieb is 3 times that length, but the pool at San Alfonso is 20 times the length of an Olympic size pool!

I’m curious enough to want to go to Chile just to stay in this resort and soak in this pool. Hmm, starting to sound like a good honeymoon spot hehe! The water is so unbelievably clear you just want to jump in it. I wonder if there are fishes though, and how many people have actually gone here. I haven’t seen any reviews from tourists who have been here though so I’ll be looking around for that. Oh, and for such a great wonder of a pool, they could have at least named it something right??

The 2nd Round matchups for this year’s playoffs are now set. In the East, the Celtics had the hardest time getting to this point by beating the Hawks in 7 games. They will face Lebron’s Cavs tomorrow night at Boston. The Pistons are already up 2 games by virtue of winning both their home games against the Magic. That series shifts to Orlando in 2 days.

In the West, the Lakers swept the Nuggets on their way to this round. They are up 1-0, as they pounded Utah 2 days ago. Kobe (this year’s MVP, finally!) scored 38 points and was unstoppable. The Spurs are now down 0-2 against the darkhorse Hornets and will be looking to grab their first win of the series back home, also in 2 days time.

Click on the links below for an in-depth look at the 2nd Round matchups. All top 4 teams in both East and West advanced. No upsets as of the First Round

EAST
Boston Celtics (1) v Cleveland Cavaliers (4)
Detroit Pistons (2) v Orlando Magic (3)

WEST
Los Angeles Lakers (1) v Utah Jazz (4)
New Orleans Hornets (2) v San Antonio Spurs (3)