I got tipped that rumors are spreading that I know who Mary Jane (the person behind the dancedroop Multiply account) is. Wow. I am flattered. People think that we, Pat and I, traced the real person behind all the scandalous blog entries.

Unfortunately, I am not like the computer hackers that you would see in the movies. During weekdays [and nights], I am nothing but a corporate slave where I am forced to randomly type gibberish on the keyboard.

Weekends are also spent in front of the computer but chatting with friends that I met on the Internet and waiting for content to be cached by Google. I have no real social life and no girlfriend.

I do not crack into servers during my free time. I can’t. I can’t because I do not know how. I am not even close to becoming a script kiddie. What more with tracing the person behind the content cached by Google?

I can’t see the world where Japanese characters stream down like Neo does in The Matrix but if the lights in your room start flickering while you read this, I may have found a way how to do it.

Who the hell are you? I want to meet you in person! I’m your newest fan!!

You resisted the brainwashing waves of the La Sallian force by writing these interesting blog entries. You are not another moist robot produced by the La Sallian enterprise! You stand out among the crowd. Bold. Very bold.

I used to write my frustrations with DLS-C on this blog, too. Sir Joel gave me wise advise to avoid these kind of things. It’s a lot of trouble and there are ways to resolve the conflicts that you have. Well, sort of. If you can’t, just let it slide dahil ang pikon ay talo.

I love the fact that DLS-C students Canlubangers are very proficient in Filipino.

“The Internet never forgets”, as Sir Joel always said. I’m mirroring your obra maestra. Many thanks to Pat for the lead.

• Diskriminasyon na Kung Diskriminasyon
• Gaham sa Kapangyarihan
• Iba Talaga ang Ugali
• Maliit ang Perpektong Mundo Kung Saan Bilib Sa Kanya Ang Mga Tao
• Ningas Kugon
• Parang Asong Sunudsunuran

This is me amused with little things.

On a side-note, I think it’s about time to get a new laptop. It’s not that my current laptop needs more juice. It works just fine for my needs and brought me great fortune in the past 4 years from college requirements to enterprise software.

Fedora 7 just reached its end of life and I get this OCD that I have outdated software. With the urge to upgrade but no place to backup my files (strange, all of my drives are full), I think a new laptop is the answer.

An extra hard disk would be a lot cheaper but I’m weighing the extra convenience that I’ll get with a more modern laptop. For instance, if I had a newer wireless card with 802.11g (yes, my laptop is 802.11b!), I’ll be using drivers with WPA support and higher transfer rates. With a DVD combo drive (vs a CD-ROM drive), better RAM, graphics card, and processor, makes me convinced that it’s, err, about time.

I’ll be getting an HP/Compaq because all of our laptops at home that carry the same brand are still alive. Also, it won’t be anything fancy. Just a boring normal laptop and it won’t be a tablet like I wished before. The TX2000 and TX2500 are available locally though.

There will be one busy weekend soon.

I was supposed to blog about this earlier but I was too busy the past few days to post it. Besides, that entry was a bit negative. For me, the thought of a programming contest is very lame. A member of a team that got in a previous world finals gave a talk and he pointed out that the contest does not promote efficient code (sorry, forgot his name). I agree with him.

But the contest is not that bad at all. It still challenges one’s capacity and performance when it comes to logic. Maybe someday the contest can also have another category for efficiency.

The contest was a success. It didn’t go smoothly though. I found it very ironic that, as people in the field of computer science, the organizers were announcing the computers assigned to the teams. They could’ve at least used the nearby computer that was connected to the projector. I think an hour was wasted just by doing that. Or they could’ve called all the team coaches and gave the assignments.

Also, the school wasn’t that prepared too. Some computers didn’t compile and most had hardware problems. It’s good that the school decided to make yabang and hosted the event. The students get new computers this school year, yay (I hope)!

Now that the contest is over, we now have a benchmark of l33t skillz from 24 schools with a total of 50 teams. The last time I saw the scoreboard, the top three are teams from UP Diliman, AdMU and UPLB. The first team I found from DLSU was at 6th. The team from DLS-C that scored the most was at 19th.

There you have it. If your kid wants to take computer science, send him to UP or the Ateneo. But coming from a La Sallian school, it makes me feel guilty not to be defensive about it <snicker snicker>. That doesn’t mean that most students in the respective schools are as good or as bad as those in the contest. Go UP! Op course, I have to side with the lesser of two evils.

It was also great to see Doc Mana in person (I’ve been following his blog). He does make a good point that contests like these should be treated with glamour and prestige like the varsity teams get in UAAP. It doesn’t have to be televised (us geeks are shy people), just better funding. This should also increase geek culture in the country. Healthy competition is good.

Good luck to the teams that will be going to the regionals! Here’s to hoping for better ICPCs in the next years.

By the way, it’s really De La Salle-Canlubang, not DLSU-Canlubang. I have to be anal about it.

In celebration of 109 years of freedom, we modified the theme for our Independence Day at !people and named it 2007 Kalayaan.

click to embiggen

By the way, you might’ve noticed that I’ve been posting less frequent here. I didn’t stop blogging, I’ve been posting there more instead. So if you miss my posts (fat chance), join there. Everybody’s welcome.

Mabuhay ang Pilippinas!

Just finished people@dls-c’s revamp (see below). It looks more web-two-point-oh shiny now.

We dropped the “Your” prefix. Don’t worry, you’re still numero uno no matter what. We just needed space. It looks a lot like Technorati only cuddlier (the new Technorati design is crappy). All references to resources and friends should be diverted to feeds and people respectfully.

Just a short introduction about this website. It’s a social networking website targetted, but not limited, to the De La Salle-Canlubang community. Feel free to sign up and join the fun. We have orgies once a month!

A couple of weeks ago, I saw two guys testing for WiFi signal strength all over the building. It was a bit funny because one guy was holding the laptop with Notepad open and the other holding an external WiFi antenna. Wouldn’t that give different results compared to laptops with internal WiFi antennae? They were checking behind the supporting columns of the building and didn’t check for signal strength inside the rooms as well.

Then this week, I saw the engineer installing an outlet inside an enclosure on the walls outside the lobby (that face each hallway). I was hoping that they were going to install access points but it turns out to be surveillance cameras as reported by Dwek.

The next best area to install an AP is at the student center. It’s the next area most suitable for lounging next to the Computer Lab (aka DotA/MoFunZone Hub). You can try the library but smiling and giggling isn’t allowed there.

Last Wednesday, we implemented our NSTP project. It’s a dental mission for the nearby public school. This was my second choice because my parents are both orthodontists. My siblings and I even had “My Mom and Dad is a Dentist” shirt. My first choice was the Book-for-a-Cause because that group had a high grade for NSTPONE. I didn’t bother asking if I could start from scratch and organize a new project.

If it was allowed, I would’ve organized a computer literacy seminar. It’s easier, cheaper (because I can use the schoo’s facilities) and more interesting.

I got my mom to volunteer. It’s good for her. I think that it’s psychological therapy for her. She gets to interact with another dentist, make dentist jokes and talk about the new dental equipment/technology that’s coming out.

I think our campus is labelled as the Information Technology and Technopreneurship campus. We also have the integrated school (primary and secondary school). It doesn’t seem to be that integrated though. It feels like that they [the IS] have their own world.

DLS-C should act as a Center of Excellence as described by Ulysses from Bangladesh.

First, don’t call it Integrated school for nothing. Start from within. Graduating high school students should be given some sort of specialization class. For example, if they want to take the IT path, they should be introduced to some industry concepts.

This worked very well for me when I was in my last two years in high school. Daniel, another geek, and I were exempted from attending regular computer classes. Our teacher gave us a project to work on. We hacked Pascal code, got to play with Fox Pro for a bit and even ventured into VB .net.

I’d like to raise two more points but this post is taking me too long to finish. I’ll continue this some time later this week.

Today was the election for the next batch of Student Council members. I didn’t vote. I got to check out the tallying before I went home.

I wonder why they never thought of using computerized voting machines. It would be just like the real thing. Specially if the losing party claims that they were cheated.

They could’ve tried Halalan, an open source voting system maintained by UnPLUG (UP Linux Users’ Group).

The slow counting is probably more appealling because it’s more exciting. Not to mention that it’s so much fun to watch your opponent experience a slow and painful loss. Imagine every strike at your chart as an individual stab to his/her gut. Then after the results are announced, you shake your opponent’s hand with a grin on your face.

First off, it’s Ms. Diane’s birthday (or was it during the weekend?). The sushi was great!

This morning was the Miting de Avance for next year’s student council. I wasn’t planning on attending but I didn’t have anything else to do that time. There are two parties, LACAd (La Sallian Leaders something Academic Advancement) and MOVE (I forgot what it stood for).

LACAd came in prepared with matching green shirts. They distributed the outline of their presentation (including a list of their planned/proposed projects) and accompanied their speeches with slides. MOVE, on the other hand, didn’t look prepared at all. Their slogan seems to be “actions speak louder than words.”

LACAd is composed of soon-to-be ex-SC members and student organization leaders. MOVE has Lauren, Ken (played futbol with him) and the daughter of the owner of the nearby beauty salon. I sound biased right now but this is a reaction similar to the research on the two-second interview.

LACAd’s projects includes seminars for all enrolled students, a revamped sports programme (why is it that this always sound like the first priority?), two cork boards to be used as a feedback collection system, “university” break and a revision of the school’s shuttle service.

I like the seminars and the fact that they mentioned, “empowering the students.” During the forum, I asked if they have a contingency plan for the cork board (like vandalism). The answer was that they’ll impose rules. But vandals are breaking the rules already, more rules won’t prevent them from doing those. I also aired that a campus-wide break will not work –ever.

MOVE didn’t name specific projects that they planned but I got to take notes of some of their ideas. Two are worth mentioning here.

First is their monthly newsletter. In the forum, I told them that it’s a waste of resources. They could tap our official paper, The Catalyst, and Pluma, a Filipino class project. Their response was like The Catalyst releases only once a year (read: near-useless) so they’ll make their own publication. They also said that they can’t tap into Pluma because it’s an academic project. So what if it’s an academic project? They can leave all that work to those two publications.

Second is the “Racquet Club”, proposed by the satyromaniac candidate running for Sports Commissioner. It’s a bad idea too. From what I understood, it’s supposed to be a group for those that do not do well in sports. The sportsfest is supposed to take care of that. In fact, there’s a shortage of players. It’s just that majority, if not enough, of the population is not interested. You don’t need a special olympics.

Only one guy won my vote. I think his last name is Sevilla His name is Cedrick Viguilla. He said there are two kinds of people in the campus (this is not the binary joke). Those who are the wala lang type and the deep thinkers. He delivered it well. I wish that he ran for president instead. To be honest, the rest are only hard working, good communicators and probably smart. They fit perfectly for PR and all-around utusan.

I really don’t like the “I’ll be your servant” or “excellent service” speech. That’s already overused. I can still remember how my speech went when I ran for student rep.

I don’t have anything to say. But I only need fifty percent plus one of the population to win. That means I only need four of you to vote for me.

Forgot about BA week. More on it sometime later this week.