The buzz surrounding the upcoming “Transformers the Movie” is heating up!

I admit that I’m a Transformers junkie. I practically grew up watching the darned cartoon (and G.I. Joe).

Here’s a clip of Optimus Prime transforming to his robot self:

Another one that looks that of the Autobot Jazz, but as a beetle:

Cool huh? But they’re not officially from the movie, which is still in its pre-production stage. Michael Bay directs with Steven Spielberg in tow as producer. Shia LaBeouf (of Even Stevens, Charlie’s Angels) is rumored to play Spike Witwicky. This is already a blockbuster right from the beginning.

Thanks to 3dblasphemy and Michael Smith for whetting my appetite.
Join the countdown to July 4, 2007.

Here’s a little kinda un-funny story:

My mom was visiting me in New York one summer for my graduation. So we had the usual catching up to do and her fussing me to clean my apartment more often, find a job and basically get a life. After a few weeks she left and we went on with our lives. To my horror, I discovered that my $250 mint condition Optimus Prime (that I bought on Ebay) was missing!! I practically lost half of my hair looking for it until she called to say that she made it safe back to Manila. Being the mother that she is, she sensed in the tone of my voice that something was wrong. I said that I lost my very expensive Optimus Prime robot. She asked, albeit nonchalantly, “Oh, is that the toy truck I found in your closet?” I said “Yeah!??” “I brought it along with me. I’m going to give it to your baby cousin Marc.” To make the story short, I went nuts. And I did get it back.

Related Link: Download Transformers movie (iPod, DVD, DivX, Mpeg4) - a long time ago, far away on the planet of Cybertron, a war was being waged between the noble Autobots and the devious Decepticons…

In an article published in the Christian Science Monitor, my name popped up somewhere in the 10th paragraph. Yes, that’s me, Andrew de la Serna, of Davao City.

Just to clarify a few things. I did buy a Nokia 6600 with my earnings and I had since sold that to buy another one, a Sony Ericsson W800i. My friends were giving me a hard time while we were reading the article because, of all things, the cellphone had to be mentioned first before the part that said that I was develop(ing) new websites. I guess a cellphone is thought to be such a novelty that only a privileged few in a third world country like ours are perceived to own it? Probably.

For me, Adsense is just the icing on the cake. For the majority, it is the cake. But don’t get me wrong … either way Adsense is a good thing. Because suddenly struggling webmasters are finding themselves in a very profitable position — a position that makes it possible for them to think of new ideas and pursue them without much monetary barriers. It may be pure conjecture, but just looking at the sheer number of blogs that spring up every minute (about 12), it could not be further from the truth. In a matter of hours, these sites are already carrying ads served by Google. Voila… a new cash calf is born.

I can’t really give an official stance on how the Philippines is gaining ground in the blogosphere. But looking at Pinoy Top Blogs, there are just over 1,100 blogs registered. That represents only .0013% of the 8 million Internet users in the country. I suppose that these bloggers are actively updating their content regularly, so that figure could be much higher. That means that there are more who have blogs but don’t update them at all — case in point: Friendster and Myspace members. By the numbers, Filipinos have yet to get out of their comfort zones and do something out of the ordinary: blog.

And while they’re at it, join the hidden payroll