Aja Lapus

Category: Social Issues

  • Deprecated HTML Still Taught in High Schools

    I was asked for help by my good friend to assist her nephew on his Web page design project. I first asked him what lessons they have discussed in school, so I could match the level of what the teacher taught to what we would be doing. As usual, it included <html>, <head>, and <body> elements, as well as the tables, anchors, images and lists. I was just disappointed when he said they still use <font> tags for changing the size and color of text, and use the <body> attributes background and bgcolor for placing background images and color on the page.

    Of course, as a standardista, I hated the fact that I am forced to use deprecated elements and attributes on Web pages. So, I decided to make a statement on this blog hoping to be heard (or read) by computer, web design, and web development teachers in any level of education.

    Please, please update yourself on what you know and teach about Web design. HTML 3.2, which you are teaching your depolama students, has been replaced by HTML 4.01 almost 9 years ago. That, in turn, has evden eve nakliyat been reformulated to become XHTML 1.0 in 2000. You should also know that HTML should only be used for structure and CSS be used as its presentational layer.

    Web design and development education standardization is one of the things I’d be pushing for in my Web standards advocacy. Education starts in the school. And, if teachers do not know what to teach their students, no advancement would ever happen. In my humble opinion, this principle of educational advancement doesn’t only apply in Web education.

    We are still in the process of talking about forming a formal Web standards organization in the Philippines. If you feel the same way as I do in this blog entry, and love to fight for Web standards compliance, join us in our discussions to help save the Web and its users—for interoperability, accessibility, validity, and semantics.

  • Calamities Bring Up Broadband Speeds

    Who would have thought that I’d get speed ups whenever there is a calamity? I know I shouldn’t be happy,[1] but who wouldn’t? I’ve been downloading at a semi-steady rate of ±100 kiB/s, and have been getting boosts of up to 175 kiB/s on BitTorrent and above 200 kiB/s on linear HTTP downloads.

    I’ve posted about this certain speed up last December after the Pacific earthquake that destroyed international underwater communication lines connecting South East Asia. The test result from that entry was already gone, but I have another bookmarked result dating around that time, which probably is just below to what speed I’ve had back then:

    TestMy.Net Test Score: 775 kbps or 95 kB/s

    And now, during the rage of Egay in this storm season, I get this:

    SpeedTest.Net DL: 2275 kb/s UL: 508 kb/s

    Amazing, isn’t it? Thinking that I still have that cheapest old myDSL plan, which isn’t NGN yet, advertised at 384 kbps. I think I’ve currently downloaded 2.5 GiB of data within the last 24 hours, not including what my father had on our desktop. Any more ideas on what to leech? I have to get the most out of this before the Sun comes. Heh.

    Anyway, are you experiencing this as well? One friend of mine have had comparable results, but not everyone on the same ISP. I really don’t think PLDT has had my connection upgraded yet, for they required me to pass a speed increase application form for old subscribers that I still haven’t done yet.[2]

    Test your speed now, and comment below to tell me I’m not the only one who should be happy. ^^

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ well, about the calamities
    2. ^ I know, what the hell, right? It should be automatic!

  • Now Showing: Naked <body>

    As you may notice, this site has been stripped off of its stylesheets. Don’t worry, nothing is broken—and it will last only until the end of the 5th of April 2007 in the whole world.[1] I’m just participating in this year’s CSS Naked Day like what I did last year. Cheers to Dustin Diaz—More than 1200 sites are currently signed up! I never actually thought it’d pass the 763 sites signed up last year as it was only 500+ or so when I last checked the list before my site got naked.

    Now, onto the topic …

    I’m somehow surprised to have been getting a lot more visitors this April compared to any other month since this site has started tracking hits. The first and obvious reason is that my CSS Naked Day WordPress plugin has been featured on the Official event page—that I’m not surprised about. The second, more surprising reason? Keywords. Dustin sure has a knack for naming something—in his case, the event he founded—as he’s also famous for the Topless Cameron Diaz photo. 😛

    SERPs referring to this site indicate more searches with the keywords naked and some about stripping getting to my site lately. No wonder Shari‘s been getting thousands of unique visitors a month![2] All she talks about is sex, and even more of it—oh, and sex toys [she dubs them acsexsories], as well—even if the blog awards[3] was the topic.

    Another thing more surprising is that, according to Pinoy Money Talk, Filipinos are more interested in sex than money.[4] Now I really think poverty and overpopulation are not because of lack of good governance—but that would be better for another entry.

    Oh—just so you guys know—I will never, and I mean never, be turning this blog to be about sex just as Shari did to hers. 😆

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ 6 April 2007, 00:00 GMT-12 or 20:00 PhT
    2. ^ As disclosed in her recent article.
    3. ^ Or anything else unrelated.
    4. ^ As reported by Google Trends.

  • Internet Connection Problem Resolved?

    I would have blogged the buggy Internet connection I was experiencing since December 26 after I heard from my father news about the Taiwan earthquake that damaged undersea communication lines, but it was all over the Philippine Blogosphere with news from Jhay, Yuga, et al. that I decided to stay quiet instead—its no use blogging the same entry all over again.

    The early times during the lowered bandwidth period, I ,as well as my friend Jayson, noticed that we could still connect to our ISP, but it cannot resolve host names. I immediately turned my PC on and searched my browsing history for IP addresses. Alas! I found a Google cache URI of my site where Google used its IP address instead of its domain name. Great Google! Since it is a search engine in itself, I immediately searched for a Google cache of OpenDNS—I could not open its homepage in itself as my ISP currently could not resolve its domain name to the IP address—thus a cache is more than sufficient. My [and Jayson’s] DNS issues are resolved.

    Though I sometimes experience the reduced bandwidth and intermittent disconnections, I guess it’s still enough to say that it could have gotten worse than that, and I still feel somehow satisfied. But after reading Euri’s recent rant about crappy Internet connections from a café, I decided to test my own connection.

    Results from testmy.net

    I was shocked with the results considering I was downloading bittorrent files at 30-40 kBps, I’m on PLDT‘s slowest myDSL, plan 999, and test results from testmy.net prior to this one never reached 400 kbps! I even tried the Speakeasy Speed Test but got these lower but similar results from its Seattle, WA server:

    Last Result:
    Download Speed: 502 kbps (62.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
    Upload Speed: 114 kbps (14.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

    I really can’t tell whether or not I am the only one experiencing this, but I know the intermittent connections would likely last for several weeks. Was it really resolved so fast this time?

  • 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 DVD±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. 🙂