This week for my father

Our family thanks you. The show of support, prayers and kind thoughts sent to my family has made all the difference. My father would be very happy to see and hear all this. I've shown everyone in my family the overwhelming response on this site and through emails. My father's surviving sisters and brother will be reading all your well wishes this week.

Send flowers to :
6300 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068. Rogelio "Roger" del Carmen.

Visitation Thursday & Friday, March 30-31, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Service on Saturday, April 1st, 11 a.m. at the Church of the Hills, Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills.

Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills

Rogelio del Carmen (1934-2006)

He played softball in High School. And he had the most exquisite handwriting script a man has a right to brandish. He wanted to be a doctor but his father's fortunes and inclinations were so that this was never to be. He joined the U.S. Navy and was processed through to ship out when it was uncovered that he had a family already and was released back into Cavite City, the town around Sangley Point that was my birthplace.

My father had his share of good luck but not enough for anyone who knows his history to volunteer that he was a lucky man. He did, however, struggle with the fates to provide for his family and let me tell you, it was a struggle.

Life in the U.S. eventually found us all reunited to be a family again, although it was only going to be five years later that the first of many health challenges would rear its ugly head. Fifteen years later it was much worse. We wished him a release from it many times. Many times we'd blink that thought back because he'd get better and shame on us for even grazing the notion.

Why, just these past months it was the best we've seen him in so long. Perhaps this is that place where there's no way but up. But maybe it was just to show us how strong he is and what kind of fight he can still muster. This past Saturday, at 3 a.m. in the morning, my father slipped away quietly.

Even though I'll never be half the man he was in life, he has given me more than I'll ever need for mine. Good-bye, dad. You're my hero. Forever.


I try to sketch my dad when I visit him. I did a sketch when his kidney failed not knowing that in the coming years those hospital sketches will be the only drawings of my father I'll ever do. These are the last three I've done of him from last year. The first one was after he had recovered from a very serious infection. The next two shows him as he gained weight and a lot of his old self was visible again.

Flipbook Pegs

Handmade and quick. Continuing in our proclivity to doodle online I present to you a way to do silly scribbly animation online. Like our Oekaki boards, Flipbook! (an interactive Flash/PHP application) allows you to animate as much or as little as you want and watch it in all it's glory right away and inflict them on friends. If that ain't democracy, I don't know what is.


Peg flying
Peg Lazer eye

You get what you put into it, like most things in life. Most of the posts barely get out of doing one frame. Check out the frame count of a post to see if something actually animates. And if your disdain is such that you need to show the world what for then get to schoolin' the rest by doing yer own leetol animation. Don't forget to let people know about it by email. No one's got that kind of patience to look for you in there.

How to post your marvelous OK-BBS drawings

Easy. First off, for those of you wondering what OK-BBS is, check out this entry on Wikipedia. Then take a look at the side bar where I have a banner that says, "Oekaki BBS/Paper Biscuit." Click that and you're at my Oekaki board.

Some of you are having trouble posting. It may be a glitch somewhere but before we hunt around for those let's eliminate the possibility that it may just be a procedure confusion. It's not difficult, really, but the Java applet UI labels may confuse some.

After the masterpiece is done and ready to post on the board take a look at the three buttons on the top left that says, "SAVE." It's written above "AUTO," "PNG" and "JPG." I use either of the last two since those formats are browser friendly. I don't know what happens with "AUTO" so write me if you find out. After that a box appears asking you, "Save OK?" and buttons to choose. And after that it just confirms that you've saved. Then viola! Go back to the main board and check out your drawing. Reload if you used the "Back" button on your browser.



Write me if the problem of not being able to post persists. I'll try my best to ask the kind folks from Japan who run these boards for a fix. Happy drawing and posting.


Update: Found a tutorial for Oekaki BBS here.

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UPDATE on posting trouble. Soraya Saga investigated the trouble for me and found out what is causing it.

According to Oekaki FAQ, following versions of JAVA seem to cause problems of painting/uploading.

JAVA1.4.1Update 1 (Mac)
JAVA1.4.2Update 2 (Mac)
JAVAUpDatefor10.3.9 (Mac)

SunJAVA1.4.2_6 (XP)
SunJAVA1.4.2_7 (XP)

Also it says that posting via proxy server is likely be denied occasionally.
I hope it works. :)

Those of you having trouble check your Java versions. Like most updates it can wreak havoc with programs in the far flung edges. Knowing is good but I don't have a solution--other than reverting to an earlier version of Java. I hope this helps and I'm hoping that OK BBS releases an update themselves that puts all this to rest.

Meantime, here's a list of configurations of operating systems, browsers and Java versions that have managed to post on the board.

Mozilla/4.0 (Mac OS X 10.4.5) Java/1.4.2_09 (lagging response)
Mozilla/4.0 (Mac OS X 10.3.9) Java/1.4.2_09
Java 1.3.1_16
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.50
Mozilla/4.0 (Windows XP 5.1) Java/1.4.2_03
Opera/8.51 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
Mozilla/4.0 (Windows XP 5.1) Java/1.5.0
Mozilla/4.0 (Mac OS X 10.4.4) Java/1.4.2_09 (lagging response)
Mozilla/4.0 (Windows XP 5.1) Java/1.5.0_06
Java 1.1
Mozilla/4.0 (Windows XP 5.1) Java/1.5.0_04
Opera/8.5 (Macintosh; PPC Mac OS X; U; en)
Mozilla/4.0 (Windows XP 5.1) Java/1.4.2


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Soraya Saga is an illustrator, designer and a video game story writer. After years of working as an employee of Squaresoft (Square Enix Co., Ltd.). She started working as a writer/designer on freelance basis to manage work and motherhood. Soraya Saga is a pen name. Also known as Kaori Tanaka (birth name. Unrelated to any other Tanaka artists in the production of Final Fantasy V, VI and Xenogears). Family: Spouse (Tetsuya, married in 1995) and two kids. Currently living in Tokyo, Japan.

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UPDATE March 11, 2005. The awesome Soraya Saga trolled the OK-BBS faqs and sent us some that address the posting problem (it's in the comments to this post and I'm posting it up front here).

This problem has been frequently reported among technical support boards, some are caused by PC environments, some are caused by server error of the OK BBS itself.

Shown below are most recent questions picked up from the oekaki FAQ board.

Q: The drawing window doesn't work.
A: Try a proper version of JAVA.

Q: It freezed up after I clicked the save button.
A: Some security softwares and pop-up blockers conflict with the OK BBS.

Q: A transfer error occurred after clicking the save button.
A: It could be a) the internet connection error. b) the OK BBS server error.

Q: The drawing was successfully saved but not appeared.
A: Clear the browser's cache and reload the board.

I'll continue to search for a good solution for the problem. :)

A tremendous thank you to Sora. This helps us troubleshoot on our end. Hopefully these new clues correct some of the problems some of you are having with posting. Heck, I hope it's an OK BBS server problem to begin with and that they've fixed it. And if not, I hope that all the above posted fixes and clues fix the rest.