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Showing posts from 2018

Updates For Gnucash

gnome-terminal-pacman-Syu Last July 2018 gnucash updated from 3.2 -->> 3.3. Today Archlinux repos made available gnucash 3.4. Yay!

Adaptations

Eleven weeks into my plan to lose weight, I need to assess where I stand. Do I need to change some things? When you make plans, it bumps into reality. You look at your goals and improvise. You adapt. I haven't eaten rice since Week 1. Haven't changed that. I feel that is the most basic thing to do. It solves the problem of eating too much carbohydrates and helps in lowering my caloric intake. I sought to replace my starch-based breads with home-baked coconut flour made ones. Yes, I made it myself. I had to go back to a skill I haven't used since twenty years ago. Baking. I am trying to do a 16-hours continuous fast, then break the fast with a solid nutritious low carb high fat, moderate protein meal. Then reset the timer for another 16-hours fast. I watch my electrolytes, I drink water and black coffee. When your urine is growing darker from light yellow to darker, you need to increase water intake. How much protein to eat daily? The rule of thumb is 1 to 1.5 times per kilo

Blogging: Old School

I do it old school. When I blog, I go to my email application and open my editor. I have my email application open anyway because it's the second application I start when I open my desktop. The first application I open is my browser - mozilla firefox. For the rest of my desktop session, these two apps remain open with the browser taking most of the system resource. I don't use my smartphone for blogging. I avoid using my smartphone for blogging even if I can use the app in it. I really need the keyboard for typing and composing text. While it is very easy to take a picture and send it to my blog as a blog post, text is a different matter. My hands and fingers prefer the physical keyboard. My brain is also wired to work the traditional keyboard. The smartphone has made it convenient to snap a picture, modify the picture and upload the image to my blog as a stand alone post. If you're traveling and you have a travel blog, this is just perfect. I want to tell a story and I can

Shadows

The Shape I Am In

A belly fat around your waist, overweight, elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels all indicate fatty liver and insulin resistance. Individuals could be walking around with fatty liver for a long period of time without any outside symptoms. Even the belly fat I could attribute to me reaching fifty and still eating as if I am twenty. My daily diet mostly consisted of 5-6 cups of rice, meat and poultry, fruit and 2 cups of coffee with cream and sugar. I need to lose weight and become healthy. Dr. Eric Berg 's mantra is "First become healthy and then you lose weight". Dr. Berg is talking about the problem of insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas in response to food we eat. We must differentiate between the three food macro nutrients. The macros are carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Our insulin levels peak an hour or two after eating food. Most foods contain these macros in various ratios. But in a controlled tests, it has been shown that

These Three Are Connected

My uric acid level is at greater than 400 ummol/L without medication. After starting with my medication, the levels went down. Uric acid levels are associated with increased risks of having diabetes and kidney disease. But you have to understand that as long as I am not experiencing symptoms of pain for arthritis who cares about uncontrolled uric acid levels? But it turns out they're a good indicator of developing diabetes and kidney disease. At my initial tests, my SGPT levels are still normal, so nothing to connect yet to my high uric acid results. But soon enough, around 4th quarter 2017, my liver enzymes are showing up in my blood. A liver in trouble won't show up in tests until it is damaged but a high uric acid might be telling me I have a fatty liver. The fatty liver produces a lot of uric acid from damaged cells. Uric acid is the waste product of cell metabolism. High uric acid also inhibits nitric oxide. Nitric oxide relaxes the blood vessels. Lack of nitric oxide acti

My Plan To Lower My Weight

After Imee's leg amputation , I started to find some answers on how I could improve my health. So it is with a little bit of self-interest that I dove deep into diabetes and dieting. The Internet isn't just for porn or downloading music. I began with looking for what the terms mean - what is and what is that. I feel that things are somehow connected. That one thing happening again and again must be telling me something. The Internet is also full of trash and lies. So if I'm not making sense now, forgive me, but I want to tell my journey before I learn it all. I'm excited and maybe naive but I don't want to be dishonest. My weight is 200 lbs, that's 90.7 kilograms in metric. I'm 51 years old, male. The only physical exertion I do was my bike - when I ride it to buy stuff 500 meters away. I thought it safe to assume I do this everyday for our purpose here. The earliest symptoms that I am in trouble came in 2015. I experienced dizziness and increased palpitat

Update Mozilla Firefox 63 -->> 64

The new Firefox offers tab management improvements and extension recommendations. I downloaded the new version, 64, today from the Archlinux repos.

Asus Zenfone 5 System Update

ZenUI notification got fixed. Yay.

Re-post: Fedora 29 Released

Fedora 29 is now available for download. Good job guys! No problem installing a fresh one and no problem upgrading from fedora 28.

Creating A GIF Using GIMP

GIMP is the image manipulation tool of choice in the Linux world. I took some photos of myself using cheese. Cheese is the camera app on my desktop. I took 4 and do move or change pose or position for this to work. Then open the first image in GIMP by starting GIMP then Cntrl-O, select the first image. Then type Cntrl-Alt-O, select the second image. This will create a second layer with the second image on it. Do this for the rest of the images. You can view the animation with Alt-R (filter) then choose Animation (I), then Play(P). You can adjust the fps and the speed of play. Save your work by going to File>Export then choose Animation in the next window. Cheese took the original photos in 640x380 px. I prefer the gif image smaller so I had to use the Tool Transform tool and the Crop Tool in GIMP to adjust the images to my liking. The gif is running in 30 fps.

Major Updates For Libreoffice, Gnucash, Calibre, Firefox, qt5 libraries, webkit2gtk, Scribus

Major updates are available for Archlinux users. Updates include Libreoffice, Gnucash, Calibre and Scribus. Almost all the productivity apps I use. qt5 libraries and webkit2gtk are included in these patches too. A download of just under 400 MB with the usual pacman command.

Update Mozilla Firefox 62 -->> 63

Archlinux repos released firefox 63 today. This version of the browser offers improved protection against ad trackers. The ones that follow you from site to site are specially annoying.

Trying Out A Virtual Private Network

I started subscribing to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) recently. I took a premium service, which means they take your money, at PrivateVPN . I want a secure and anonymous service provider and also linux friendly. It should also include my android phone in the umbrella of devices to be protected. PrivateVPN Initially, there's a glitch. It won't let me connect to their servers. I'm using openvpn on my archlinux gnome desktop. I checked if I got all the required installation and configuration done. PrivateVPN on their website mentioned support for openvpn and linux. So I went to my logs next. The logs are mentioning error in authentication so I checked if I'm using the right credentials. After another try at connecting to their server, my logs now mention an authentication failure. I included this in my report to their support. After 24 hours, an email prompted me to try a test password. This test password connected me to the service. There is a speed hit when using a VP

GNOME 3.30 is Out For Regular Repos Yay!

Gnome 3.30 has been in Testing repo for 4 days now. I've been checking back in Archlinux.org/Packages ever since. I am in the regular repos so I have been waiting for this. Included in this upgrade is linux kernel 4.18.8 so it's going to be a wild ride today. $ sudo pacman -Syu [sudo] password for:  :: Synchronizing package databases...  core                                      134.3 KiB   391K/s 00:00 [#####################################] 100%  extra                                    1637.4 KiB   141K/s 00:12 [#####################################] 100%  community                                   4.6 MiB   118K/s 00:40 [#####################################] 100%  DEB_Arch_Extra                              4.2 KiB  0.00B/s 00:00 [#####################################] 100%  DEB_Arch_Extra.sig                        280.0   B  0.00B/s 00:00 [#####################################] 100% :: Starting full system upgrade... resolving dependencies... looking for conflicting p

A Factory Reset For A Solution

This is the second time the SIM cards failed to show up on my Asus phone. I thought at first that the problem is a mechanical one but I've tried to reposition the nano sims in the tray to no avail. If it's not mechanical, it must be software. I did add a lot of my old apps and what have you from my old phone to this phone without checking for compatibility. I might be paying for that mistake now. I don't have a choice but to reset to factory specs. After restarting, my main sim card picked up the wifi and the network data connection. So my hunch was right, it is software collision. I reposition my secondary sim and it also picked up the network signal. I'm a happy camper now. My asus zenfone has a backup. I can just pick the most crucial apps from before, and install one at a time.

GS connect Connects Your Android Device And GNOME Desktop

Do you want to get message notifications from your smartphone to your desktop? Do you want to control your music player in the desktop while away from it and you have your smartphone in hand? andyholmes contributions to this github code is what I have been looking for since getting my new android device. Hello to the wonderful world of open source and thank you to the developers who worked on this.  The link above is a list of questions frequently asked about GS connect. My device is an Asus Zenfone 5 with android 8.0. My computer uses linux kernel 4.18.5 on Arch linux. I have Gnome 3.28 as my desktop environment.  I found out about GS connect during a search about a totally different thing. But the first thing you should ask yourself is if you really want to connect your android device to your desktop or laptop. If the answer is yes, then you should download and install the gnome-shell-extension for G S connect. You have to enable the plugins for each feature you want.  You will ha

Update Asus Zenfone 5 System Update

This is a 438+ MB download of patches from Asus. On my mobile now

Imee's 2nd Trip To The Hospital

This time Imee and I spent 2 days at Padre Pio Hospital. Her doctor was worried about her too low a hemoglobin count. Among the medical professionals a hemoglobin count of 7 gm/dl is a "trigger" for blood transfusion. Dr. Ivan Imee's doctor went out of his office and flew the length of the corridor to the emergency room of Padre Pio. He was probably asking if Imee can get a blood transfusion "right away". Well, Imee is feeling fine except for quickly getting tired after a physical activity nothing to worry about, I guess. After 10 minutes, Dr. Ivan informed us we should go to the hospital laboratory and forward his request of 3 packs of red blood cells for transfusion. He is being optimistic of course. I went up the flight of stairs to the laboratory. They have 1 pack of RBC. So I gave them Dr. Ivan's request and my cellphone number. They can send me a message once 3 packs are ready for Imee. This was Thursday. Saturday, the laboratory informed me there are

So What Are You Listening To Now?

It's been an energy zapping two weeks ( or three) what with Imee's spending a week in the hospital and mom's insomnia. My brother suggested we pray in the phone. I was not in that mood enough though. I wanted to get angry but I'm more concerned about being helpful. So I just stayed strong for everyone. I missed my PC and the playlist building I left behind. So when I got back it was the first thing for me. Here's the list for me: 1. Morrissey - The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get 2. Amy Winehouse - Addicted 3. Sly & The Family Stone - You Can Make It If You Try 4. The Notorious BIG - Me & My Bitch 5. The Jam - Billy Hunt 6. Tori Amos - Girl 7. The Mars Volta - Televators 8. The Jesus And Mary Chain - Cut Dead 9. Eels - Last Stop: This Town 10. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out 11. Marillon - Waterhole 12. Yo La Tengo - Little Honda 13. Faith No More - Kindergarten 14. The Microphones - The Gleam pt 2 15. Alt-J - Breezeblocks I want to get back. Like Tigerw

Blogger Since 2007

I've been clicking on a keyboard to get my thoughts out in the Internet since 2007. My first post was on blogspot/blogger August 14th 2007. I was thinking about racism and how free speech had emboldened racists to sell their hate. Today, 2018, we have a US President who is ambivalent to hate speech and seems to many friendly to racists. Conservatives and ultra right political parties are winning elections in Europe, not Eastern but Western Europe. The promising start of the Internet has now led us to this. Our democracy is being manipulated by lies. History rewritten and revised. When you flatten what is formerly a hierarchichal structure of information distributor, you give free reign to lies and political operators. On my mobile now

Update Zenfone 5

Just checked for system updates available for this phone.

Imee

Imee was diagnosed with diabetes four years ago. Last month she had to show us a blackened toe on her left foot. Because diabetic sufferers are unable to control the sugar level in their blood, a minor infection can turn into an amputation. She didn't monitor her sugar level well but was taking oral medication. She lost her left leg. The amputation was below the knee, fortunately, this will enhance her ability to use prosthesis later on. It also opened my eyes to how expensive this disease is especially if or when a surgery is involved. Imee was hospitalized for 8 days and it costs us 194,000.00. This is the gross amount on the bill broken down as follows: laboratory, supplies and medicines 130,000.00 63%, doctor's fee 60,000.00 30% and the rest are for the emergency room, operating room, room and board 7%. Post-hospital health care includes monitoring kits, insulin and maintenance medicines. Follow on or continuing doctor visits to heart specialists and endocrine specialists

Bird On The Window

I have a very curious bird this bright morning. He is perched on steel grilling outside and looking in the room.

Update for Asus Zenfone 5

FOTA or firmware over the air wirelee update again notified my phone of a fix available for this device.

Upgrade For Asus Zenfone 5 ZE620KL

Using Gmail to post this as the update finished. I was looking at the notification s right then saw a download of about 479MB. But the screenshot below is of the process as it turned towards the last part of it.

Update #2 For The Asus Zenfone 5

I'm updating the software on my Asus Zenfone 5 ZE620KL. This is the 2nd and 3rd time in 2 days that Asus servers have pushed updates on the phone. What I understand is that these updates come in waves for different groups. So, no, the updates don't arrive at the same time for everyone. The first batch of updates today are worth 293 MB of downloads. It finished installing with this message.

Update For Asus Zenfone 5 Firmware

What is FOTA? Firmware Over The Air update is wirelessly updating a device's operating firmware. The manufacturer of the device should be responsible for updating a device firmware. I've been using the Zenfone 5 ZE620KL for 10 days and this is the first such FOTA I got from Asus. This is a 409+ MB download from the Asus servers. Well done.

Upgrade Mozilla Firefox 60 -->> 61

Upgrades for Mozilla Firefox browser to the version 61.0 now available via pacman in Arch.

Two-Headed Boy: A Song Review

Two-Headed Boy (song) by Neutral Milk Hotel Two headed boy All floating in glass The sun it has passed Now it's blacker than black I can hear as you tap on your jar I am listening to hear where you are I am listening to hear where you are Two headed boy Put on sunday shoes And dance round the room to accordion keys With the needle that sings in your heart Catching signals that sound in the dark Catching signals that sound in the dark We will take off our clothes And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine And when all is breaking Everything that you could keep inside Now your eyes ain't moving Now they just lay there in their climb Two headed boy With pulleys and weights Creating a radio played just for two In the parlor with a moon across her face And through the music he sweetly displays Silver speakers that sparkle all day Made for his lover who's floating and choking with her hands across her

Orchids and Ilang-ilang

Discovery of blooming orchids. Ilang-ilang close up.

More On Using the Asus Zenfone 5 - The First Week

I was able to do a backup and restore of my call logs and contacts. Get the old Android device and the new Android device paired. Using bluetooth to transfer the backup file. In the old device open the app - Contacts and Phone apps. Go to Settings. Find and click Backup and Send Out to device. Then choose Bluetooth and then choose the new device as it is detected. On the new device, the backup file is automatically restored to its respective app. If not, open the particular app on the new device then navigate to the bluetooth download directory. Choose the backup file. I was able to set up, enable and test face recognition on the Asus Zenfone 5 ZE620KL. Go to Settings, just click the wheel icon on the top right of the panel. Go to Security And Lock Screen, click on Face Recognition. Make sure you're in a well lighted location. Just hold the device at arms length to your face. My test result is 8 out 10 successes. Certainly fingerprint login is more consistent and faster. I like Zen

Using The Zenfone 5: The First Week

I had a big problem with migrating to the new phone. The Zenfone 5 ZE620KL uses a nano sim. I figured I can cut the micro sim which I used with the old Zenfone 2. I think I might have overestimated my skill at trimming it. So I had to go to a cellphone repair shop for it. The repair guy salvaged the globe sim but the smart sim is damaged. I had to make a trip to the official Smart shop at Sta. Lucia annex. They had to ask some questions about my sim and account but I passed. I own this sim and number. They provided an upgraded LTE (4G) sim with the same number for me. Thank you Smart staff. At the end of the day I have the Smart sim 4G ready that my contacts already know and the Globe sim as backup for contacts with globe sims too. I use the smart sim for data connections. I have the wifi in the house for most browsing and downloads. It took about two days for all the apps to migrate and update for the new phone. Some apps like the Asus email app isn't as good as it was in the old

Asus Zenfone 5 Delivered

The Asus Zenfone 5 ZE620KL dark version (blue), it also comes in a light version of silver. The specs in this one is Qualcomm snapdragon 636, 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM.  It has excellent build quality, a front gorilla glass, aluminum glass covered back. The display is 6.2 inches full HD, a resolution of 1080 by 2246 pixels. Now I'm migrating my apps and data to the new device. Hopefully I don't lose my data.

MyPaint

My version of MyPaint is 1.2.1+ My Wacom tablet CTL471 plays well with MyPaint. Downloaded from the arch repositories.

Path June 2018

​ 1500 x 1000 pixels drawn with Mypaint.

Upgrade Firefox 59.0 -->> 60.0

I failed to mention that firefox updated to version 60 several weeks back. With firefox 60 comes the first browser with Web Authentication API, passwordless login to websites. This version of Firefox adds Quantum for Enterprise. It allows Group Policy in Windows machines.

Flower On the Wire

paccache And Cleaning the Pacman Cache

I'm trying to clean the cache with paccache but i get a not found error. Suddenly I've lost my paccache? what? Pacman stores packages in /var/cache/pacman/pkg. So to keep this directory from growing indefinitely we need to shed some of the oldest packages. By default paccache -r will leave 3 versions of the packages. Yesterday's pacman upgrade left out pacman-contrib package. So I had to download it today with: # pacman -S pacman-contrib ##to download these tools. # paccache -ruk0 && paccache -rk 2 ##to remove unneeded package cache and leave 2 versions of each package cache This also solves my GNOME extension Arch update indicator error.

Upgrade Pacman 5.0 -->> 5.1

Upgraded pacman from 5.0 to 5.1. Pacman is the distinguishing characteristic of the Arch linux distro. It updates the system and synchronize the local package list with the main servers. So if you are an Arch user you should know Pacman.

Upgrade Calibre 3.23 -->> 3.24

New features for this version of Calibre are here. You can download the newest Calibre here.

Update Gimp from 2.8 -->> 2.10

I just updated GIMP 2.8 to 2.10. Hey, dark theme!

Plant

drawn using Wacom pen and tablet CTL471 and MyPaint v 1.2.1

Drawn With Wacom Bamboo Pen and Tablet

Wacom Bamboo CTL 471 is a USB cable connected graphics pen and tablet that works with Windows 10. Does it work with linux? I'm using Arch linux with GNOME and Wayland. That last bit of information is important because Wacom doesn't work well with wayland but it does work well with Xorg. Fortunately, GNOME can still be run on xorg and you can login to another session using xorg. I ordered this from Lazada today. It came with 10 extra nibs and a screen cover.

Update for Calibre 3.22 -->> 3.23

Calibre is a multi platform e-book management software. I use it because it makes reading and managing my e-books easy and convenient plus it has a mobile app.

Full Page Ad For The Journalists That Matters

This ad came out in The New York Times. May, 2018

The Good Samaritan: A Bible Story For Our Times

My favorite all time Bible story is The Good Samaritan. You can find this in Luke Chapter 10 Verse 35 to 37. I like to spell it out when referencing the bible because people who are new to the bible might not know what I'm talking about. I'll hate myself for that. But if you want to "get" this parable, I recommend you start reading from Luke Chapter 10 Verse 25, for the context. Context is everything. If you have been travelling and talking about spiritual things like Jesus was doing, you are bound to attract people who know about the subject matter you are talking about. So at this time an expert about the law, meaning somebody who have read the books on the law of the Jews, asked Jesus "how do I inherit eternal life". Meaning: How do I get into God's good side? This question, of course, assumes God divides us into his good side and his bad side. So Jesus replied: What does the law say? The coyness here is that Jesus knows the law and he knows that t

A Review Of Star Trek Voyager Episode 39 The Thaw

The crew of Voyager discovered a planet recovering from a catastrophic climate disaster. They found survivors who tried to wait out the natural disaster in stasis connected to an adaptive computer simulation. An adaptive computer environment is created within the link by monitoring the subjects' minds and in turn they collectively create the environment while their physical bodies are sleeping. The survivors were hoping that after the planet had sufficiently recovered from the extreme temperature, the computer would simply wake them up and the simulation terminated. The computer detected the survivors' fears and manifested such fears within the simulation. After years of running the simulation, the computer simulated characters developed self-awareness. When the Voyager crew found the survivors they were "alive" along with these computer simulated characters. "The Clown" played by actor Michael McKean "The Thaw" was originally broadcast 29th Apri

Human Rights For Filipinos

it is important that we have human rights so we MAY NOT BE COMPELLED to resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression. Our constitution provides legal framework for human rights, that's why we have Article III, Bill Of Rights and among other things the Commission of Human Rights, Article XIII.  Our current president made pronouncements in conflict of these principles. He and the party he belongs to is subverting the checks and balances within the constitution by removing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and weakening the Judiciary.  He has failed to protect our sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea. He continues to implement the brutal war against drug users, in complete disregard of their legal rights. He has issued statements encouraging the killings of suspects in the drug war. 

Indian Mangoes

indian mangoes 2-3 weeks before ripened

Update dnscrypt-proxy 1.9.5 -->> 2.0.8

This one blindsided me when it came up. It was a week full of dns news too. Cloudflare is offering dns server 1.1.1.1 active last 1st of April. The last update for dnscrypt-proxy left the old config file in the dust. The new configuration is in /etc/dnscrypt-proxy/dnscrypt-proxy.toml and the dnscrypt website explains how it works here. Forget the static server entry and use the server sources list.

Update Gnucash 2.19.x -->> 3.0.x

Gnucash devs released version 3.0 at the beginning of the week but I waited a few days more to try and install via AUR. The end of the week and a whole 6 days of monitoring early adopters feedback I finally install Gnucash version 3.0-4 on my computer. It works and the data migration is seamless. Some packages were installed along with gnucash-3.0. [2018-04-07 08:06] [ALPM] installed boost (1.66.0-2) [2018-04-07 08:06] [ALPM] installed gtest (1.8.0-1) [2018-04-07 08:06] [ALPM] installed gmock (1.8.0-1) [2018-04-07 08:06] [ALPM] installed jsoncpp (1.8.4-2) [2018-04-07 08:06] [ALPM] installed libuv (1.20.0-1) [2018-04-07 08:06] [ALPM] installed rhash (1.3.6-1) [2018-04-07 08:06] [ALPM] installed cmake (3.10.3-1) This version no longer requires webkitgtk.

Good Friday March 2018 Philippines

Crowd waiting for the Good Friday procession. March 2018 Philippines

Updates For GNOME 3.26 -->>3.28, Linux kernel and gcc

GNOME 3.28 was released a few days back by its developers. I am using Arch Linux and I don't have Testing in Pacman active. I wait for the Gnome packages to be released to the regular (main, extra, community) channels. I am hoping that show-stopping bugs are caught in Testing so users like me don't have to deal with them.  Release of GNOME 3.28 packages come with it the possibility of collisions. When updating a big number of packages you expect these things to happen. My 'checkupdates' returned 151 packages ready for upgrades including the linux kernel, gcc and major apps for the GNOME group. It's a total of 480 MB of downloads. The GNOME 3.28 Release Notes are here. You can star files and directories for easier access in the file browser also called nautilus/Files. You can also do this with your contacts, Favorite them,  so they appear to be pinned on top of your contact list.  You can also try the improved look of the Gnome default font, Cantarell.  I'm going

Update for Spectre And Meltdown, A Script for Checking Your System

I found a very nice program to run and check if my computer is vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown. It is now March 2018. Two months after the initial reports of the vulnerabilities against computer processors, what is the state of security with regard to these two vulnerabilities? Thank you to this script by Stephen Lesimple . The link is a git clone link. It will download everything in its directory. Inspect the script before running it as root. There are no options. It will check your system against 3 CVE's made for the "speculative execution" vulnerability. This is my output. Spectre and Meltdown mitigation detection tool v0.35 Checking for vulnerabilities on current system Kernel is Linux 4.15.5-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Feb 22 22:15:20 UTC 2018 x86_64 CPU is Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz Hardware check * Hardware support (CPU microcode) for mitigation techniques   * Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS)     * SPEC_CTRL MSR is available:  YES      *

Nuestra Senora de Aranzazu San Mateo, Rizal Philippines c. 1930's

undated photo scan of Nuestra Senora de Aranzazu church San Mateo, Rizal, Philippines