Category: School

WordCamp Philippines 2008

This was the first ever WordCamp in the Philippines, thanks to the Mindanao Bloggers who organized it. I wasn’t able to resist going even when I have classes on a Saturday especially since Matt was coming.

Midnight before the event, after I’ve finished making a presentation for an oral group report for school, I hurriedly composed a letter I wished Matt Mullenweg would sign. I slept through the night, but woke up a little later than I hoped for.

I was actually thankful the event was held on a place easily accessible from Las Piñas. Arriving at the De La Salle College of Saint Benilde, I immediately saw Shari on her black WordCamp volunteer shirt. We entered the auditorium and looked for Lexie. With her red hair I haven’t seen before, we walked past her and Dre looking like idiots searching for someone in front of everybody. Heh.

I brought Azusa with me, and blogged right after I’ve sat beside Lexie. She convinced me into signing up with Plurk. And so far, I’ve enjoyed Plurking that I wish you guys would join, too. 😀

After the introduction, breakaway sessions took place. I was with Lexie and Dre all those times, and we ate a bountiful lunch from Chowking together afterwards.

That’s when we ambushed Matt for autographs. I remember he laughed when I told him, “I didn’t come to school today. Will you sign my excuse letter?” Haha! It was great! The geek in me became happy. 🙂

Plenary sessions came, and Matt talked about the future of WordPress. That reminds me, I still haven’t upgraded my installation yet! Uh, anyway, I consider WordPress 2.7 be Matt’s birthday gift for me on November. 😆 Upgrades are promising as always, and I’m looking forward to the new version.

The topic of Web standards was a part of the plenary sessions, all thanks to Shari and Sir Regnard. The geek in me was even happier. 😉

After the event, I’ve met up with fellow standardistas Ia and Mae to talk with Shari and Lexie how we’d start the group Web Standards Philippines again. Let’s set the meetings already! 😀

Some more picture-taking took place afterwards. I’ve posted them on my Flickr. 🙂

It was fun. See everyone at the next WordCamp Philippines! 2009 maybe? 😛

8 September 2008
Blog’s Not Dead
I’m just too damn busy with everything—organizing my life, school matters, a little bit of work, and, of course, play. Heh.

For the past month, I’ve been back playing Ragnarok Online since my cousins told me LUG–pRO already has a free-to-play server. I remember the last time I played, Comodo is still new—and that was years ago. While I leave my merchant vending at Payon Town (170, 83), I chat, surf, check my mail, get updates on my online earnings, and download and watch the latest HD fansubbed episode of MS Gundam 00.

I don’t know if I should blame this to my About page, but my professor in ECE 206, and the coach of UST ECE‘s GIQC team knows I have experience regarding quiz bees. He picked me as one of the team members. Help me God—I’m a bit rusty after 4 years without such mental pressure. And, now, it isn’t only about IT we’ll be dealing with like the last time I entered such contests.

School itself has been tough, too. I’m just glad even though I couldn’t help but sleep on some—OK, almost all—of my lectures, I could still catch up on the lessons. I currently have a favorite major subject, which is rarely the situation as they are usually hardly fathomable. Guess what subject it is—yep, it’s Computer (Comp 304). Thanks to whoever taught me logic gates during high school. Now, I understand why 1 + 1 = 1 is true—you go figure. n_n

I think I have one more month to go until I buy my first product of blogging. Earnings are coming steady at around US$200 per month. Should I call myself a problogger now? Not yet still, IMO. I believe I have to improve on my update frequency. Heh. Well, I’m planning to buy an ASUS Eee PC. I know two friends who already have their 4G version. I’m still waiting for the 8G’s release.

Now, that’s the roundup of the last 1~2 months of my life. I hope I could get back to blogging more frequently. I haven’t even checked my bookmarks in about a month already. T_T

Partial list of things to do:
- Read updates within the last month from Engadget, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Slashdot, XKCD, etc.
- Update my WordPress theme; minimize AdSense clutter—they don’t sell much anyway.
- Update my WordPress installation—2.4 is coming soon and I’m still not on 2.3. o_O
30 January 2008
Christmas Vacation Starts

I guess you never know the importance of education until the day you were deprived of it. Yes, I go to school to learn, but I usually do not pay much attention unless I really am interested in the topics discussed. Moreover, I sometimes sleep during the length of the discussion especially when it’s freezing inside the classroom and, of course, when I lack having some the night before.

This second semester, however, made me realize I really like school.

For one, we haven’t had a week of complete and continuous classes since just a couple of weeks after the start of the semester, the Electronics Engineering Department held the NECES week. Then, the week after that came the devastating storm whose path thankfully did not include Metro Manila, but suspension of classes prevailed for three of my school days. Then some university-wide event took place the week after the storm. I can clearly remember telling myself and my friends with a certain tone of frustration, Magklase naman tayo. (English: Let us have our classes [back].)

What I really hate is the change to fast-paced lectures when you couldn’t even comprehend with slow-paced discussions. Also, I hate the make-up classes that would most probably take up my Monday weekends. And, of course, the fact that I still haven’t learned anything yet. Imagine taking 12 hours of MECH 301 during what supposed to be is your day off from school. Ugh. I could even sleep in two hours of lecture, what more with twelve?

I just somehow fall in irony for whenever I listen to an uninteresting discussion, I could float again in endless thoughts thinking about the nearing vacation that has already come a day early.

20 December 2006
Back to School
It isn’t the start of the semester or the academic year, but it sure feels like it as numerous school activities, weather mis-forecasts, and just the regular weekends got packed into one hell of a vacation I might as well call a weekendless. Our class of 3ECEA wouldn’t even have our laboratory instructor for tomorrow—though lectures still would take place. But, counting the days since the suspension of classes, it totals to six days of no classes all in all.

But, I guess I just have to rant some things that I have to get out of my system:
- The first one would be the devastating effect of the Super Typhoon Reming especially in the provinces. While I was busy having fun because of little rainfall with the suspension of classes, I sadly realized many have been hardly hit by the raging typhoon resulting to many casualties. Let us pray for them.
- I still haven’t learned much this late in the semester! All those class suspensions and school activities—with examples including but are not limited to the recollection early this morning and NECES week last, last week, with activities almost every morning conflicting with our schedule—consumed class time.
- All these absent professors/instructors keep me justifying myself for lack of self-discipline finishing certain school work.
Anyway, I still can’t feel the Christmas spirit. When I was a kid we used to setup the tree within the range of October-November (whenever there’s semester break or before the All Souls’ Day vacation ends), but it’s now December and not even one decoration is up yet. But, hey: For those thinking about what to give me this coming Holidays, I wouldn’t give you much of a hard time trying to find out what to give me—even if you didn’t even greet me on My Birthday Entry. *tee-hee*
- Computer case: white, ATX form factor, HDD bays in front of a 120-mm noiseless intake fan, and front-panel USB ports as minimum specs 😉
- Digital SLR camera
- Apple iPod USB power adapter
- Better-sounding earphones [or maybe even better-sounding lanyard earphones for 1st gen nano]
- Internal DVDÂ±R/RW drive, white; and
- Maybe some original Evanescence CDs 😛
Yes, yes … I know I could keep on dreaming. LOL

BTW, I have migrated the formerly Blogger-platformed quote log located at /special, to a WordPress installation in this server. Please visit: x22. The Qlog will be updated soon. 🙂
5 December 2006
Scrap Metal

One day, I thought I heard a distant explosionâ€”one you could think of as a failing transformer on an outdoor electrical post. My computer’s power flickered but It came back just nanoseconds later. But I was wrong. My computer wouldn’t turn on anymore. I realized what I heard was a discreet boom from the power supply.

My whitebox computer exploded Monday last week as I was about to print a document for our Electronics I report. It felt like the sky fell on top of my head. Panic struck me, though I came up with a way to retrieve the data. Besides, only the power supply really blew up. I just removed the hard disk drive from the system unit and plugged it into the external hard disk enclosure bought with our 250-gigabyte hard disk. But, I wasn’t able to print it right away as our notebook doesn’t have a parallel port. Oh well, at least the data wasn’t lost.

My uncle gave [or lent] me a spare power supply unit from an unused computer to replace that scrap metal I had been using since 2002. I’ve just finished replacing it yesterday along with a busted floppy disk drive and the much larger hard disk drive [the one bought with the enclosure]. I could really describe my computer as katay, which is Tagalog for butcheredâ€”a rather exaggerated term for something taken apart [then replaced] piece by piece.

If you could remember my past article, my desktop computer had its motherboard and CPU replaced. Now, I’ve just replaced the power supply, hard disk drive and floppy disk drive. Hmmm â€¦ I wonder when I could build my own computer from scratch with new parts.

Easy answer: Not today. *tee-hee*

22 October 2006