The MP3 can be found here: http://www.muziboo.com/patopop007/music/barnyard-farmville-theme-song

The snapshot is automatically stored in one’s FaceBook album provided that the proper permission is given.  Snapshots can then be downloaded and edited using the proper software.  Below are some of the snapshots I’ve taken and edited to look like cartoons.  The software I used here is TechSmith’s SnagIt.

I currently have two penguins in the farm, adopted from neighbors which posted them lost.  A certain number of unique animals collected this way can earn one the Noah’s Ark ribbon.  I put the penguins in a frame together with the geese I have which resulted in the following cartoon.

Some days ago I received a black sheep.  When it is placed together with the sheep and the goat, an interesting scene happens.

A grey tabby cat which I received as a gift from a neighbor is the animal I put beside the picnic basket which I put beside my rest tent in the corner of the farmer.  Here, a calf shows its interest in the contents of the picnic basket.

I have a fruit stand in the farm, one of those decoration sets from FarmVille which I purchased with the coins I saved from harvests. 

I recently adopted a bull from one of the neighbors.  Since only one bull is allowed in FarmVille’s dairy farm, I let this one roam the land, so to speak.  In this scene, the bull finds himself being talked about by a calf (one I sheltered some days ago) and three lambs.

FarmVille is a virtual farm where you can grow plants and trees and raise animals.  As you go from one level to another, opportunities are opened up to you by way of vegetables, fruits, grains and other products to grow on your farm.  Neighbors help by fertilizing your crop and giving you gifts as you move up in the FarmVille’s virtual society of crop whisperers, zoologists, compost kings and queens, vegetable virtuosos, green thumbs and many more.

When you first start out in your farm, you will find six plots, two of which are already planted and another two ready for harvesting.  Harvest immediately by pointing your mouse on the crop.  As you harvest, you will find your financial assets (top bar towards the left) growing and your XP (experience) level rising.  Accumulation of XP points help you to move up from Level 0 upwards.  Coins/Cash assets increase each time you harvest and decrease each time you cultivate a plot of land and plant.  Your financial assets allow you to buy the things you need for your farm.

There is a toolbox to the lower right corner of your screen; use it often.  Tools on the top layer allow you to see your farm full screen, zoom in or out and take photos of your progress.  The tools on the second level allow you to perform various tasks on your farm: 

• the multi-select tool:  allows you to harvest or plant or move trees and animals around
• the plow-tool:  allows you to cultivate a plot of land
• the delete tool:  allows you to delete a plot of land and create space in your land

The tools on the third level are fun apart from helping you with your farm tasks:

the ribbon viewer will tell you how you are doing as a farmer; it also shows you the goals you have to achieve

the market viewer allows you to see what’s being sold at the market and also informs you of the products you need.

the gift box is the place where you store the FarmVille Gift Requests you receive from your friends and neighbors.  Gifts may come in the form of trees, animals (that you can’t buy from the market), farm decorations and fuel refills for your tractor (once you’ve reach a certain financial level to own one)

In other words, for one starting at FarmVille, the screen toolbox is a very handy tool to use.

Lastly, you can’t go anywhere in FarmVille without good neighbors to help you along.  You’ve got to have a lot of them.  Remember, they can visit your farm and drive away foxes, gophers and rake leaves and most importantly fertilize your crop and give you gifts. 

Sourced from: The Mystical Geek

Sourced from: The Mystical Geek

Sourced from: The Mystical Geek

Features I Like

Friendly Interface. LeaderTask has a friendly interface. I am given to graphic interfaces and LeaderTask is an eye candy. I like the fact that it fills up my screen and even allows me to change its colors. The interface is very different from that of Outlook, but is similar to some other freeware PIMs I have tried in the past. And so it took me only a few minutes to figure out — without the support of a Help manual — what the buttons are for and how to make the software do what it should.

Integration of Components. Another feature I like about LeaderTask is the integration of its components. It has a Project, Categories, Contacts and Calendar panels which are programmed so that that they can also show particular perspectives of the data I type into the database. I may type in my data through the Projects panel and my contacts through the Contacts panel, but when I click on a date in the Calendar panel, all tasks, events, assignments for people and notes associated with that date are shown to me in the Calendar Day-view. I don’t have to worry about losing my data; I just make sure that I associate them with the proper date, category, project or contact and I can find them with the click of a button.

Hierarchical Tree. I like the hierarchical tree feature for tasks. That way I can enumerate several smaller tasks under one big task. I mentioned above that I am in charge of publishing a monthly newsletter for our community. The creation of a monthly issue itself involves several steps. LeaderTask allows me to enumerate these tasks and to associate each with an assigned contact. The feature really helps the monitoring of such multiple tasks.

Contacts. One of the better features I like about LeaderTask is the Contacts panel. One can associate pictures with each contact and some notes. There are all sorts of possible data that one can associate with each contact. If you are an employer and also would like to write your observations about a particular employee, LeaderTask’s contacts panel can provide the necessary functionality for an Employees’ database.

Notes. The feature I really like about LeaderTask is its Note editor. It is an RTF editor that supports the pasting of Images and file attachment. I had tasks during the past weeks that had me writing different kinds of documents. What I did was simply to attach them to the notes of a particular tasks and I found it easy to retrieve them without the use of my Windows Explorer which is quite slow on folders with a lot of content. The File-attachment feature works on any kind of document it seems, even those of MSOffice and PDFs. Clicking them opens them up in the associated application (e.g. HTML in a browser) so I don’t need to make an extra click whenever I need to edit or read a document I have stored into LeaderTask.

Autosave. Finally, I like the auto-save feature. LeaderTask just allows me to work and not worry about whether I have saved my work or not.

Features I’d Like To See

The version of LeaderTask I am using is 6.6.01. From the looks of it, it has been frequently updated and still, the makers of LeaderTask encourage their users to suggest features. This emboldens me to make the following observations.

Flexible Tabs. Right now, LeaderTask’s tabbed interface is dependent on the kind of panel one opens. When one opens up the Projects panel, for example, only the contents of that panel appears. I would like to open the tabs I choose from the panels. That way I could have tabs from Projects and Categories, for example, combined.

More Buttons for the Notes Editors. As it is now, the Notes editor of LeaderTask is quite advanced, but I would like to see a feature that would allow me to insert an image — not just paste — into the document. I also would like to see a button that says “Insert Content from a File.”

I like the Note Editor of LeaderTask so much that I have been using it for typing articles and documents these past few weeks. I really would appreciate an Export/Import feature for the Note Editor.

The Notes of LeaderTask can be associated not only with a task but also with a date. This latter gives LeaderTask its diary feature. What I’d like to see is a Notes-view that will allow me to see the notes I’ve typed for a date appearing like a continuous page of diary entries with their particular dates and/or tasks.

Repeated Tasks. I do not know whether this is a bug but each time I edit a task to indicate that it is repeated, LeaderTask automatically creates a copy of the edited task as a sub-task.

Conclusion

LeaderTask is an excellent Personal Information Manager. It not only reminds one of the tasks one has to perform but also allows one the opportunity of reviewing one’s tasks and evaluating the people who work on them. No wonder it is called "LeaderTask" — it helps one work and think like a Leader. Whatever "imperfections" it may have right now is not due to bad programming but to the limitations of time and resources that unfortunately impose itself on any excellent work in the making.

LeaderTask is available at this website.

BEC in the MGCP: Milestones in a Journey

(March 2009). This is a history of our BEC project in the Mother of Good Counsel Parish. When I posted the article, we already established a foothold in the Homes-Along-the-Railway (HAR) areas of the parish, with two cell communities from the subdivisions providing me help. Just a month before posting this article, I started tying up the BEC project with the PREX which by this time was already the recognized formation program.

Link to Milestones

My Interest in the BEC

(April 2008) A follow-up to the article in March 2008 entitled “Milestones in a Journey”. I wrote the article after remembering what I told one of the friars after he asked me why I wanted to move from school apostolate to parish apostolate back in 2004. I said simply that I still had some things that I haven’t yet worked on. I was referring to a paper I wrote for a degree in Bachelor of Theology: The Militant Reading of the Scriptures.

Link to My Interest

When Was the First Bible Cell Meeting?

(July 2008). I like this piece. I was going through the site statistics of the Mystical Geek and found a search query that said “When was the first cell meeting”? Realizing that the question was really “When is the first cell meeting in the Bible?”, I gave my response. And it is biblical too, with some links to articles already existing in the web.

Link to My Interest

Rebuilding the Church via Cell Groups

(September 2005). The article was written just after I and a member of the New Jerusalem Community started some seminars on BEC-buildiing. The seminars were carried out in “experimental” areas of the parish. We hoped that by holding the seminars, we can open up the understanding of the faithful to the reality of BECs. The seminars produced some cell groups.

Link to Rebuilding

The Tools of a BEC Leader

(August 2008) This is an article I wrote for our emerging cell leaders. Here, I discuss seven tools that a BEC cell leader should have. The article actually became one of my materials for the PREX-BEC Modules I have prepared for the parish.

Link to The Tools

A Bible Cell Group In Every Street

(April 2008). This is the first time I wrote about what would be the objective of the BEC program we are carrying out at the Mother of Good Counsel Parish today. About this time, my experiences with two cell groups helped me realize that we were doing something new — establishing the BEC in an urban area.

Link to A Bible Cell Group

From Bible Study to Prayer and Contemplation

(May 2008) One of the modules of “The Intelligent Reading of Scriptures” rewritten for the web. This is how we make our BEC cell meetings launchpads for prayer and meditation. The inspiration is a quote from Ambrose one finds in Dei Verbum: “When you read, God speaks to you; when you pray, you speak to God”

Link to From Bible Study

Sentence Flows: Towards a More Objective Study of the Sacred Text

(September 2008) The “Sentence Flow” was something I saw in one of the handouts of our theology students studying at Maryhill School of Theology back in 1993-94. I was using it for the ACUP seminars in the University of San Agustin when I was still working there in the late 90’s. I introduced it to our parish in conjunction with the modules I prepared for “The Intelligent Reading of Scriptures.”

Link to Sentence Flows

Reading Scriptures Intelligently

(March 2008) “Reading Scriptures Intelligently” is the title of an article I submitted to Suite101.COM (May 1, 2000). I developed it into a series of modules for aspiring cell leaders in our parish.

Link to Reading Scriptures