ABOUT PARENTS' WISH
Last updated: August 2,
2009
Last August 2005, a friend of mine
sent me an email with a PowerPoint attachment entitled "Tribute to Dad". The slideshow
author was listed in the PowerPoint file as Ricardo Venegas Ortega. My
subsequent research about the slideshow showed that it has been
published in several websites and in different languages. Whether
Ricardo is the original author or he is just one of
the many forwarders of this slideshow can not be determined from my
research.
The slideshow touched
me so much that I decided to publish it in a website that I was
maintaining at www.paete.org after
modifying the texts of the slideshow to make it suitable for both the
father and the mother and changing the title to Parents' Wish. In
addition, I reformatted it into Windows Media Format so that it can be played
by people who do not have the Powerpoint program or viewer. Finally I
added the background music "You Raise Me Up" (by Josh
Groban) as I find it most
suitable for the theme of the presentation. I announced this
modified slideshow to our group mailing list last August 10, 2005 and
the word quickly gets around.
Seven months after
releasing the modified slideshow, it became so heavily downloaded that
it put too much stress on the server of my web hosting provider.
They suspended my account last March 19, 2006 and reactivated it only
after I agreed to remove the slideshow from their server. I put-up a
note in the website notifying visitors to the page that I will try to
find a new web hosting provider for this very touching and poignant
slideshow. I received close to 6,000 emails requesting that they be
notified when it becomes available for online viewing again.
In order to make it
faster to download the movie for the benefit of people on slower
internet dial-up access, I requested my good friend
Rolando Celestino Malinis to convert the slideshow into a Macromedia
Flash format. He did an excellent job and the appearance
of the slideshow as you view it now is a big improvement from its
original format. By converting it into Flash, we were able to
reduce the file size from 10Mb to just a little below 1Mb and thus
save on bandwidth consumption. Hopefully this will reduce the load on
our web server.
In order not to
burden our web hosting account at
www.paete.org, I decided to open a separate account just for this
slideshow as well as its own internet domain: parentswish.com.
This new page opens to the public on Mother's Day, May 14, 2006.
The slideshow was
taken offline on August 2, 2009 due to a copyright claim by Getty
Images on the pictures that were used in the slideshow which were
taken from the original powerpoint slideshow created by an anonymous
source.
For a daily update on
the status of this website, please visit our NEWS
section.
The Webmaster
Email:
webmaster@parentswish.com
Credits and Acknowledgments
I would like to express
my gratitude to the following people who helped me put up this
slideshow:
-
Rolando Celestino
Malinis, a very talented web artist and designer who converted the
slideshow into a Flash format presentation.
-
Tito Basa for giving
us permission to use his beautiful photograph of our town, Paete,
Laguna, Philippines, in the opening frame of the slideshow.
-
My wife, Cristina,
and my children, Ryan and Christian, who provided us with significant
inputs in the design and layout of the slideshow.
-
Mr. Josh Groban (the wonderful
voice behind the background music, YOU RAISE ME UP)
-
The songwriters of
YOU RAISE ME UP:
Secret Garden's
Rolf Løvland and
Brendan Graham.
-
Adrian Foo for
providing us with an alternative viewing site from his server in
Singapore.
-
A viewer who
prefers to be anonymous for acting us one of our mirror sites in
Massachusetts for a certain period.
-
Angels That Care and
LADYRIA DOT US for providing us
with a mirror site for a short period.
-
Bong Layumas, Pamela Hart, Carol
Keene and other viewers who helped us edit the wordings of the
slideshow.
-
An anonymous viewer
who helped us edit the sound at the end of the slideshow.
-
Michael and
Terra Peterson of
Mike's Maze
for providing us with a mirror site in Arizona.
-
www.WhySpirit.com for
providing us with a mirror site in South Africa.
-
www.InspirationLine.com for
providing us with a mirror site in California.
-
Narendra
Lakshminarasimha and all the people who sent me financial
contributions for the maintenance of the Parents' Wish website.
-
www.sandeepraval.com for
providing us with a mirror site in Europe.
-
And last but not
least, the ANONYMOUS person who composed the original text of the
TRIBUTE TO DAD Powerpoint presentation for touching us with his or her
message.
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