Aja Lapus

Tag: extra-curriculars

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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. 🙂

  • On Freelancing

    Everyone has to start somewhere, right? I know I started markup programming since I was 14 years old. Now, I think I have the skills and knowledge to make money from it. Well, actually, I knew months back that I could start making money with my work but I really do not know where to start. One major thing that stopped me was my lack of skills in image manipulation and design — I just do my XHTML really good. And since I thought possible customers were more into design than markup, I stopped a while until I have the skills — the skills that I still do not have that much even right now.

    Then I have encountered XHTMLized. There I saw an opportunity that I could just make the XHTML out of the customers’ designs that they can’t turn into beautiful markup. I have done this for a volunteer work with TomWeb on the UST Nursing website and with my friends’ blogs, and now I know I could do this for a fee.

    XHTMLized starts their service at $149 — that is PhP7600 on the average! Wow! I can not make that money even with my 4 months’ allowance! Now I am definitely starting my career!

    Well, I still won’t stop volunteer work for my school [TomWeb] and for my college [ESC WebTeam] and for my close friends, but for other people that need me: I am going to think about how much it would cost first. 🙂

    I know I’ve done free service a lot in the past few years but please consider that I am in dire need of finances right now. And, if I am not going to start making this as a career, I may not be able to start making this as one in the future. I need support for this from you [my friends and readers], maybe you could refer me to anyone who wants to build a business out of a website [those are usually the ones willing to pay for good design and markup] or someone who has just a lot of money and wants a good XHTML+CSS design.

    Here are my specifications about my work that may be of interest to those who are thinking of availing my services:

    • I use XHTML 1.0 Strict, unless the design restricts me to do so then I’d use the Transitional DTD.
    • I use XHTML purely for content, using CSS for design.
    • I would accept designs in almost any image format [JPEG, GIF, PNG, preferably PSD for Adobe Photoshop].
    • I would also accept designs in HTML or XHTML that the owner wants to be cleaned up for better Search Engine Optimization and accessibility [for text-only browsers and screen readers].
    • I would make the XHTML look similar [there is no same in rendering between different browsers] in major browsers — Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Mozilla Suite, Netscape Browser; and if possible, Camino and Safari.

    I do not intend to compete with those people at XHTMLized. I just want to start my career. Besides, I’ve linked them twice already — my thank-you’s for giving me the idea.

    Here are my details if ever you wanted to contact me privately; or just post a comment below if you don’t mind telling it in public.

    Thank you!
    — Aja Lorenzo Lapus, freelance programmer.

  • The long wait is finally over

    I anxiously went to UST early this morning for our clearance report. It wasn’t easy especially that I was expecting a failing grade in Phys 205 as I have told in my earlier entries. Fortunately, though my head is aching [with fear, anxiety and because of the heat of the sun], I arrived there early because of vacation-induced lightness of traffic. 😛

    The fifth year students and the ESC were the ones who distributed the clearance reports. But classrooms were still closed even when hundreds of students are waiting outside in the corridors. Fortunately, we were first in line when they actually came to start the distribution.

    My clearance report Then the moment finally came. Like both of the paragraphs before this, this paragraph’s last sentence would start with “fortunately”. Fortunately, I passed all of my subjects!

    Well … Let’s go to a side-story after being blissful for ten minutes when I’ve received my clearance report. The fifth year distributor of the reports owned a Pilot ball-point pen but she lost it due to some students feeling it was theirs—or at least because someone forgot they were still holding it. 😛 Being the happiest person in the room, I gave her my Panda pen, which is much cheaper than a Pilot, telling her that she should be using those [Panda and the likes] kinds because those events really happen especially when students could be extremely happy or extremely sad that they forgot what they’re holding. 😆

    Now, leaving the room, I bumped into and talked to Kuya Bert—the ESC President. He asked me why I didn’t go to the last meeting of the committee applicants. Well, I just told him the truth that I haven’t received a memo from one of the officers. After he asked that, I expected that I was not the one they picked, but I, being the inquisitive being that I am, asked him if I was chosen. Well this is really a post of “fortunately’s”. Fortunately, he said I was.

    I went to the Main Building with my classmates to get to see my grades. There were so many people lined up, and again, fortunately, the line wasn’t to long when we lined up—it was doubled when we finally got our turn for the computer.

    It wasn’t good but I still am happy. I got home and computed for my weighted average. It is, fortunately :lol:, higher than the one I’ve had last semester though I haven’t got a 3.0 then and I have 2 of it now.

    Happy? Not really … I’ve got no money for summer! LOLx

    CSS Naked Day

    Btw, you may ask what is this CSS Naked Day. It is a celebration of semantic and purely structural markup that signifies the separation of style from content—the separation of presentational markup [e.g., <b>, <i>, <u>] from XHTML to make way for CSS as the presentational element in a web page. It showcases a bunch of web sites [including my web site] that participates in showing a page that is clear and not confusing even without stylesheets included. Please go to Dustin Diaz’s original entry for comments about the CSS Naked Day.