Day: March 30, 2012

MIAS 2012: Hyundai Elantra named Car of the Year

ajay Leave a comment

Hyundai Elantra

On the second day of the 2012 Manila International Auto Show, Hyundai’s Elantra ran away with the top plum in the much-coveted 2011-2011 Car of the Year title handed out by the Car Awards Group Inc.

The other Category Winners:

Basic Subcompact Car Kia Picanto 1.0 M/T
Subcompact Car Suzuki Swift 1.4 A/T
Compact Car Hyundai Elantra 1.8 GLS A/T
Crossover Kia Sportage 2.0
Luxury Mid sized Car Volvo S60 T4
Luxury Compact Crossover MINI Countryman S
Midsize SUV 4×2 Mitsubishi Montero Sport 4×2 MT
Midsize SUV 4×4 Mitsubishi Montero Sport GTV 4×4 A/T
Luxury SUV Ford Explorer V6 AWD
Pickup 4×2 Mitsubishi Strada 4×2 A/T
Pickup 4×4 Mitsubishi Strada 4×4 A/T

This is the first time that a Korean automaker has won Car of the Year in Philippines, and is the Elantra’s fourth Car of the Year worldwide, winning the same title previously in Canada, North America, and South Africa.

The Hyundai Elantra stood out not only amongst the vehicles in its class, but also above the rest of the entries for this year’s COTY-P. It ranked high in the Qualitative tests, where it was scored based on criteria such as aesthetics, comfort, and drivability, and was one of the top performers in the Technical test that evaluated the acceleration, braking, and handling characteristics of each vehicle, while offering great value for money. Presenting the award to the Hyundai Elantra once again proves that the title of Car of the Year Philippines is not for the fastest, cheapest, or most popular car in the market. Rather, it is an award for the car that offers best value to the consumers.

For eight years running, CAGI has recognized the best vehicles in the market, awarding the coveted title of Car of the Year Philippines (COTY-P) to the car with the best value for money for consumers. The COTY-P awards is an annual consumer-oriented event organized by CAGI, a non-stock, non-profit organization composed of more than 50 motoring journalists from various print, broadcast, and online media outlets.

Indulgence by Irene quezo de bola cheesecake

ajay Leave a comment

While selling at the annual bazaar Best Food Forward, a nice little red box took my breath away. Just a look at the little logo and I knew that this was the quezo de bola cheesecake other bloggers had been talking about: Indulgence by Irene.

Indulgence by Irene

The name is sweet, but the taste is even sweeter. This is a really good cheesecake: dense and with the rich texture of indulgent quezo de bola (probably where it got its name from). The last quezo de bola I tasted was really cakey, like mamon, sponge cake or (gasp!) bibingka. It’s pretty obvious that Irene knows how to make this cheesecake shine, otherwise she won’t be appending her precious name to it (okay, am waxing pilosopo :)

Quezo de Bola cheesecake

I got the 4 1/2 inch cheesecake for only P200 and I can tell you how the dessert fiends in my family were fighting over this … down to the last crumb.I liked the fact that it wasn’t too sweet and I can taste the luxurious quezo de bola (our holiday cheese) without being overpowered by it. For once, I forget about this quezo being partnered with hot pan de sal on a Christmas morning. My fondest memory of quezo de bola is now reincarnated in this cheesecake with a delicious brown crust.

I guess Irene chooses to be home-based so she can be hands on in preparing her product. So yes, she’s just a mobile phone call or text away -

Indulgence by Irene

P.S. The bigger, 9-inch cheesecake costs P900. We tell you: it’s worth it! ;)

Running the Mosaic Browser on a Modern Linux

mparaz Leave a comment

Yesterday I got inspired by the 18th Anniversary of Philippine Internet and Netscape running on an old computer. I decided to try Mosaic on my Linux box. Mosaic, the predecessor of Netscape and so many other browsers.

Here is how I built it on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.10) beta 64-bit:

  • Downloaded the modernized Mosaic source code. The PNG patch is no longer available.
  • Installed dependencies: sudo apt-get install libmotif-dev libxmu-dev libjpeg-dev libgd2-xpm-dev
  • Manually downloaded and compiled lpng1058.tar.bz2from http://libpng.sourceforge.net . Good thing the old PNG libraries compatible with old source are still being maintained.
  • Renamed the definitions ofgetline in ./libnut/url-utils.h ./libnut/url-utils.c ./libwww2/HTInit.c . It is already present in the standard C library.
  • Compiled with make linux.
  • The compile will have warnings about assigning pointers (64-bit) to int. While this is dangerous, it doesn’t stop this Mosaic from running – but it does segfault for some pages. It might be better on a 32-bit machine.
  • The link will fail because the current libpng does not have the deprecated function png_read_init. Instead, copy paste the gcc -o Mosaic line and replace the -lpng with the compiled libpng.a. Also include the system’s libm.a (in my case, /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.a) since libpng.a is statically compiled. Otherwise, the link will fail with undefined reference to `pow’.

Then, run ./Mosaic. It will have errors like Warning: Cannot convert string “-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1″ to type FontStruct which don’t seem to prevent it from running.

On some sites, I get a core dump. I think it’s because the code was linked against the current libpng.h, but I don’t have time to investigate it. Take a look!

libpng warning: Application was compiled with png.h from libpng-1.0.6 or earlier
libpng warning: Application  is  running with png.c from libpng-1.0.58
libpng error: The png struct allocated by the application for reading is too small.