Tarballs of Ion! — zakame’s blog

I’m now back here in Daet since Sunday, and its only today after almost a week that I can blog without the hassle of reading my 500 plus mails (and an incoming 150 more), and having finished that FOSS assignment and taught swimming and math (and both at the same time) to youngsters. While it’s nice to be back, I can’t help but miss a lot of things in Manila, like decent cable TV (with Animax) and meeting new friends

I haven’t blogged during my entire stay in Manila ‘coz it was quite difficult for me to find a connection; of course there are Internet cafés around, but with me moving so fast it was hard for me to take a seat in one of those shops. So let me remember those days:

April 21, Thursday

I woke up early to catch the opening trains, and went to the National Computer Center at UP Diliman to register myself to the UP Open University’s Associate in Arts program. I came early, registered early, but got out late, as I needed to confirm from there about the receipt of my Transcript of Records from Ateneo de Manila, forcing me to go to Ateneo’s Registrar’s Office myself to ask whether they have sent it. They told me they’ve sent it, but it will take two to three weeks before UP Los Baños (where the OU headquarters is) gets it.

After that, I still had time to check out the bookstores and magazine stands, found back issues of Linux Magazine, and dined out at Tokyo-Tokyo. Got back home late, watched the animes at the boob tube (Samurai 7’s cool), slept very late.

April 22, Friday

A free day for me. My cousin who I came with here in Manila went out to survey the routes for his college, so I slept some more, only to get up around lunchtime.

At the same day, the package sent by my Tita in Canada (who was in Florida before her husband was moved up) arrived. It had a lot of goodies in it: clothes for everyone, used mags for my grandfather to read, bags for my other Titas, etc. I was fortunate enough to get a new pair of sandals. Thanks, Tita!

I spent the rest of the day mulling over whether to get a Philtranco ticket back to Daet or not, as my cousin wasn’t sure if he was going to leave on the next day or on Sunday (April 24). I decided to get the ticket anyway, so even if he does leave I’ll still have a ride back.

After grabbing the ticket, I mulled going over to my high school friend who is now in UP, but I went back home instead as my cousins were going to Robinsons Place to watch a movie. Tragedy struck, as I was nearing the home, when my right rubber shoe mutated and gained a mouth. The sole flapped so hard you could mistake it as talking :P. But those sandals are fortuitous, so I went to put them on for the outing…

April 23, Saturday

Went to the PLUG Technical Seminar at Asia Pacific College, where I met up with Clair Ching and Mario Carreon, the two who I met last time I was here. I also got to meet Sacha Chua, Dominique Cimafranca, Diane Lazaro, Carl Sia, and JM Ibañez. We all made a rowdy crowd at the back of the hall where the seminar was conducted, and occasionally raving and shouting `Emacs, Emacs!‘ whenever there’s a slightest hint on text editing :P. Sacha and Clair brought their laptops, and that doubled the fun, as both were running Emacs (and not to mention Debian GNU/Linux) with PlannerMode and RememberMode (of course!).

While we were all taking about FOSS and misc stuff at the back, I tried not to forget what the presentations were all about (after all, this was what I’m here for ;). Charlton Lopez started the seminar by talking about PostgreSQL, followed by William Yu who went on with Nagios (The Application Formely Known As NetSaint). I found both very interesting, and I’ve installed them on my homebox to further my learning on them. I only wish that the presentations were more well-prepared (meaning that they’ve set up a working system of whatever they’re presenting beforehand, possibly having a Fedora or Debian mirror at hand so as to allow on-the-spot installation) and more `meaty’ (giving a whole survey of the topic while not letting down on the details).

After the TS the guys decided to hang around Sacha’s place at Makati. We took the taxis, and little did I know that we were going to my old neighborhood at Palanan, the same place where I used to bike as a kid and grew up in. I was really, really surprised: all 14 years here and I never even noticed that there was another geek nearby, of all places :P.

We thought we would be able to have dinner here by ordering a pizza via phone, but since the time to make and deliver is soooo damn long we decided to move to Cash & Carry (another memorable place of mine and eat there. Between Jolibee and Luk Yuen (they though there was Chowking here, but even I remembered that only Luk Yuen was here even before Jolibee) we ate at the Chinese restaurant.

It was getting late, and Dom needed to go as he bought a big box full of vitamins and he needed to bring it back to his hotel. The rest of us went back to Sacha’s, and I got to meet Lucas and Patch, her dogs, as well as Neko and Ollie, the cats. Diane borrowed Sacha’s yukata and zori sandals for Basic I Japanese class graduation (too bad I wouldn’t be here to witness that :-().

Then we had to say goodbye. Clair, Mario, and Diane had to take the Buendia jeeps, while I had to make a long trek down to Taft to get my jeep to Pedro Gil in Malate.

I’ll definitely miss this night. I wish that I’ll be able to get back soon, maybe soon enough so that I can see the guys at Greenbelt for the UGG Cosplay. That’ll be fun :)…

…

Oh well, back to the saltmines for me here in Daet. I thank $DEITY a lot for allowing me to come and go by safely, as well as helping me to get into UPOU.

I should thank Emacs too for that :-)…

Tomorrow I’m going to UP Diliman to enrol on my AA…

I’ve a lot to thank for today

• New video card - An Inno3D Tornado GeForce4 MX-440B I bought from the local Internet café replaced my dead GeForce2 MX-400. I know it isn’t very state-of-the-art by today’s standards (but it would have been, say, 3 years ago ;), but at least I’ve managed to upgrade. I was actually counting on getting a DVD/CDRW combo drive had the video not borked, but anyway, it happened, and there’s no helping it. At least I now have 128 MB of video memory, twice the last time, and a faster GPU to boot…
• Received UPOU admission pack - As I’ve written earlier about this, I have received formal notice that I am to be admitted into the Open University, from snail mail, which was a bit delayed as Daet celebrated its first ever Bantayog Festival last week. According to it, I still need to confirm if the university Registrar has received my transcript of records from Ateneo de Manila for processing. At any rate, I’ll be bound for Manila this Wednesday, so…
• … I can attend the PLUG Technical Seminar - I’ve signed up, and I will be enrolled and ok even before that. See you there!

Tonight, my video card died.

It was a geForce2 MX-400, probably the most common card available for multimedia desktops. And for gaming, too . I’d probably be able to buy a new card, but not too soon, as I’m saving for my UPOU enrolment, which is scheduled sometime next week.

Would anyone compassionate be willing to part with their old, probably-used-but-no-takers-for-now video card for gratis so I can continue my studies on programming and FOSS, not to mention to help me in maintaining a package for Debian GNU/Linux? I really would appreciate this. Thanks in advance!

Clair and I just chatted today over YM, and from her personal blog I saw her contemplating on learning a programming language. I suggested that she learns either Python, or (Emacs) Lisp. On the other hand, I could also suggest (judging from the comments on her post) that she could also dig in to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Hal Abelson and Gerald Sussman, just as I’m doing now.

The book, in itself, doesn’t teach Lisp (actually it’s smaller, leaner brother, Scheme) per se: rather, it focuses on the actual process of programming, including the study of computational processes, visualizing its local evolution through abracadabra programming, and general hints on abstraction and programming paradigms. I know, it sounds heavy (even more so with a bit of (lambda) Calculus included but there is actually a great lot of concepts to be found in this book, I myself even wonder why I didn’t read this, at the first place (judging from my past Net wanderings, I’ve already passed SICP at least thrice, on different occasions).

What even makes me wonder more is that I wasn’t even being aware of learning Lisp, as it subtly inserts itself at every place it needs to be, when you need a procedure definition handy, or when the book illustrates the concepts. I don’t even need to pay attention to syntax (as far as Lisp goes, Scheme’s the most intuitive, especially in its treatment of procedures as `first-class’ objects), so it rather goes into fine-tuning the inner workings of crafting really great computational processes that follow nice shapes, and in turn flows into the actual implementation of the process as a written program.

Oh, I could go on and on praising this book… but, well, you’ve got eyes, right (and if by chance you don’t, there are text-to-speech readers available), so go get a copy and read it! And if you can afford downloading large files, you can get the video lectures too…

I’m admitted into UPOU! I’m now just waiting for the snail mail to arrive, then off I go to Manila! =)

Just in time for PLUG’s quarterly Tech Seminar See you there!

Clair: Yep, (I think) I do. I used to play Magic during grade school when it was hot off the press. Back then I remembered building the first strategy decks from scratch, along with my friend Ronel Romarate (I dunno if what the link’s taking to is the same guy, but I think he looks like it). We had some blasts with these cards: I reckon that Black Lotus was selling at P20 to a P100 at the time (even P2 if you’re lucky to find one in the streets).

The past three days have been really tiring. I’ve been hacking and painting as Paul Graham writes. I wouldn’t be holding an exhibit anytime soon, except if you want to visit my place. Because that’s exactly what I painted: my own house.

From light blue and off-white to very light green and pale orange.

I’m almost finished with the preliminary Tagalog localization of gtklp. I’m gonna upload the package(s) ASAP, for evaluation.

After that, I’m gonna ping the bugreporters and see which bugs have been (seem to be) fixed in the new release, to narrow down the working list of bugs, and upload a final version of 1.0c, hopefully before 1.0d is out.

Yes, I’m quite a lazy Debian maintainer, *sigh*. I wish I just have more time.

Pax vobiscum, Iohannes Paulus PP. II. It seems you have only waited for the Feast of the Divine Mercy, as a fitting and final blessing for all of us. May you be always at peace, now that you are in God’s loving abode. Happy Birthday!

Today I spent some time reflecting on this event. Though unescapable the tinge of sadness is, I also saw a bit of hope. There were many people who were affected, some not even of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, who saw him for what he is: a man capable of endearing himself to all, regardless of race or creed, a man capable of loving all and forgiving all. A man who strived to be truly like God, not in the powerful, all-seeing, almighty sense, but as God as He truly is: a loving Father.

I think that says a lot about the human world today: even though we are divided, whether by long-standing traditions or petty arguments, we all still manage to find some way to get back to each other and do things together, to hope for the world to get better. And that, I think, is what God’s counting on.

Paalam, Santo Papa.