March 2003

- I don’t have a CD drive.
- I don’t have infrared, either.
- Serial port? Parallel port? What are those?

Ballroom dancing steps?

- School: I would definitely like to have a device that could correlate images and phone numbers while someone is calling. I would like a device that can help me take attendance. I would like a device that allows me to quickly query my computer for someone’s grades/projects/whatever.
- Misc: It would be nice to have ballroom dancing animations (feet, maybe even streaming video), allowing music download,
- Wireless Java would definitely be nice, but with new capabilities rolling out fairly quickly and old firmware not upgradable…

It’s very important for you to follow these guidelines for Nokia Ok testing…
key codes and game actions
MIDlet localization
user interface texts should be isolated from the program source and put into separate text files.
Developers responsibility.
Game views
- games logo: 2 seconds, full mode.
- startup: offers the user access to all game specific functions
- high scores
- settings view
- playing view
- instructions view
- about view

contact re: class and contests

http://cng.ateneo.net/cng/wyu/misc/rants/sacha.php

An interesting piece by the PLUG mailing list’s resident Linux .NET winner. Congratulations! This email was taken from the PLUG mailing after a discussion on the Ateneo’s winning of the Microsoft .NET challenge. Sacha was one of the winning team’s members. This email was in response to a posting made that concluded “Microsoft is more user friendly than Linux.”

User friendly? by Sacha Chua

Let’s see. This is the .NET contest, right? .NET was beta when we were working on our project. Documentation was patchy and had placeholders all over the place. Our systems would lock up every so often. Oh, and let’s not forget the huge hardware and software requirements that the development environment had… We’d get Heisenbugs, too – bugs that seemed completely random.

Big deal. I’ve worked with patchy open source projects before – barely documented things that need a lot of work before they’re ready to get off the ground. I’ve changed languages several times. I was working with a very good team. We managed.

Yet even after being wowed by .NET’s drag-and-drop database-backed websites (it’s seriously cool), I find myself going back to my Emacs and my PHP and my Perl. Why?

Because these are the tools that work for me. Because I love being able to download and run anything just to experiment with it and learn how it works. Because I love being able to hack on something in order to make it work even more effectively. Because I love being able to learn from anything I run across. Because I love belonging to a community that freely shares knowledge. For me, it’s not just about the technology – it’s about the people, the culture, the openness.

Microsoft does have a developer community, sure. There are nice tutorials, sample apps, things like that. There are newsgroups and sites, and of course there’s MSDN. MSDN is pretty nice. Still – will I be able to get the source code of anything at all that strikes my fancy? Take, for example, my recent explorations of Emacs. I don’t think I’d be able to get the source code of the Microsoft IDEs and try to see how _they_ do stuff!

And try to find a way to fit a complete dev environment onto my 300 MMX laptop with 64 MB RAM… =)

That’s why I don’t see myself getting into Microsoft stuff any time soon. The culture practically discourages hobbyists. High hardware and software requirements present a barrier to entry. Closed source means I can’t learn from stuff that’s already out there. When there’s no good documentation yet – for example, when I’m working with new or obscure technology – I find the source incredibly helpful. I don’t get that with Microsoft, but I get that with Linux and the open source tools I use.

This is why I find Linux to be much more _me_-friendly right now. I don’t need some company telling me what I, as the user, should find “user-friendly.” Microsoft is _fantastic_ as long as you’re behaving like a ‘typical’ user, but once you try to do something they didn’t think of, Microsoft can get rather difficult. (Again a hasty generalization, but it really does seem that way, yes? They’re doing a pretty good job of predicting what typical users want, though.)

Don’t get me wrong – Microsoft is nice. I like some of the things that Microsoft has worked on. For example, I think task-based user interfaces are a good thing – much better than cluttered icons and whatnot. I think they’ve achieved a lot of success in making their office suite friendly enough so that non-technical people don’t need that much handholding. That’s a good thing.

But their idea of “user friendly” doesn’t include what I find to be user friendly. I certainly don’t think that proprietary formats are “user friendly” to people on other OSes, but I guess Microsoft can be excused – after all, I’m not one of their customers. Why should they have to make it easy for people to communicate with people who are not using Microsoft software?

I feel that Microsoft believes that everyone should be using Microsoft software – and not just any Microsoft software, but the latest and greatest. I find their practice of constant upgrading and planned obsolescence quite user _un_friendly. At least under Linux, I have a choice. =)

Those are some of the reasons why I still prefer Linux over Microsoft. I believe that whatever’s missing in Linux can be filled in, and the freedom of Linux allows me to help push it past anything some company dreamed of. A hasty conclusion, perhaps, but one that can be reconsidered when new thoughts come up.

Microsoft has its place in the world, undoubtedly. But maybe we should stop identifying ourselves by the operating systems we use. We’re _people_, not “MS users” or “Linux users”. We have different tastes, different interests, different inclinations. I identify myself with Linux and Emacs and other things now as a statement of fact – that’s what I use, after all. But I am above all committed to computer science and to helping people through computers, and this transcends operating systems, programming languages and paradigms. =)

I am not a “Linux gal” or an “Emacs gal”. I am a _person_ first and foremost. And if, having tried out .NET (although admittedly not as deeply as I might have), I still choose Linux and Java – what does that say about my choices?

Nothing. It says nothing about the inherent superiority of one operating system or language over another. It says, however, that I find Linux and Java more suited to _my_ needs for now. =) If you believe that your needs are similar to mine, you are free to use that as a recommendation. But it is not a universal truth. I do not hold that Microsoft is inferior to Linux in every way possible, nor that everyone should shift over to Linux right now.

Does that prevent me from advocating Linux? After all, how can I advocate Linux if I don’t think it’s better than Windows? =)

I think most people don’t know they have a choice, or they don’t know that the alternatives are less intimidating than they think. That’s why I love sharing stories about what works for me – maybe other people will recognize a bit of themselves and try out this strange alternative based on that recommendation. I like helping people who are getting into it. It’s not a rabid Linux vs Microsoft thing – it’s discovering ways to work more effectively.

We are testing my resolve to provide neat time-stamped and summarized
journal entries. It’s hard to do so – I feel the temptation to go on
the wildest of tangents, like those Doc Mana is so fond of
making…

First, that splash page has got to go.

Darn Photoshop file confuses the heck out of GIMP, so I had to work on
the Mac downstairs. Still, I discovered to my great joy that the Zip
USB 250 drive works flawlessly on Linux. The last time I read the ZIP
mini-HOWTO, it said that the 250 MB Zip drive was not supported. Now
it is! I love Linux. I’ve been using the Zip drive to transfer files
between the Mac (photo editing in Photoshop) and my Linux laptop (HTML
editing in Emacs). Whee!

Finished reading through JM Ibanez‘s blog. Interesting stuff.

Since the Sony Vaio U1 doesn’t have an external floppy drive or CDROM
drive, I’ve decided to figure out how to do network booting. I got a
little bit confused with pxelinux.0, setting up TFTPd and DHCPd, but I
think I’m on the right track.

Okay, time to get back to work on the website. We don’t have enough
patch cables in the Internet room for me to hook up my laptop
(DHCP/Tftp server), the Vaio, and the Mac (Mom’s e-mail) at the same
time. Pfft.

Okay, got CVS Emacs running on my Vaio. Look; I’m referring to it as “my Vaio” now. =) The website’s been uploaded. Obligatory plug: Adphoto, Inc. – the best digital photography and imaging company in the Philippines. Don’t mind the design; turns out this wasn’t the one my mom approved, so it’ll probably get overhauled soon.

Another free service bites the dust. I will no longer be reachable via sachac@subdimension.com, and I hope whoever sends me stuff there will think of Googling to find out my current address – sacha@free.net.ph, as of 2003.03.13. Here’s the text from their website at http://www.subdimension.com/ :

subDIMENSION.com falling apart????

You got that straight . . .

Our ISP (DSL.net) cut our line on 3/3/03 due to a “violation of
contract” or more to the point a violation of their “acceptable use
policy”. There were too many spam complaints about the
subDIMENSION.com domain for them to handle. We were not the
originating party in any of the spam complaints (aside from a brief
open relay problem), but I gather we are still ultimately responsible
for your behavior with the email accounts that you obtain from us. How
the hell do people like YAHOO, HOTMAIL, and any other free email
provider deal with spammer complaints from their ISP’s? Do they own
their own ISP? How do they govern their user community? How deep do
your pockets have to be to offer a free-email service?

subDIMENSION will be reborn somewhere else in the near future . . . as
soon as we can find a place to put it . . . please stay tuned . . .
and check back often . . . we hope to have something available
shortly.

subDIMENSION will NOT be offering FREE or PAY email accounts anymore .
. . thanks to the spammers who brought us to this point . . . and our
apologies to anyone that has mail still residing on our servers . . .
BUT . . . the mail servers have been TURNED OFF as an attempt to be in
compliance with the “acceptable use policy”.

subDIMENSION will be offering a prorated refund to our premium pay and
pro-hosting users.

Make sure you read your contracts . . . and then read them sideways.

JX
-out

Fleshed out my wiki node OnLove, adding a guide to going after or making friends with me.

I’m resurrecting my GeekPoetry archives as a wiki node.

Added some more notes on faking emacs21. Local wiki node EmacsCvsAndDebian, canonical location http://www.emacswiki.org

Destiny down again. Problems with cable signal. Of course, I forgot to take down their number…

I tried calling the office number again. Not picking up. I guess she’ll e-mail or text me details for the radio interview.

orlando, florida
886 3100
style 2×2 20H?

gnome-session majorly locks up my keyboard. Double plus ungood.

The Internet: due March 31
Computer Science Education: due April 14.
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/doc/participation.html

HTML http://www.acm.org/crossroads/submit
Between 1500 to 6000 words for a feature article, and

800 to 3000 words for an opinion column.

In the beginning of your article, tell the reader—in a captivating
way—what your article is all about. Be sure to place your article
into a broader context. Remember, our audience is composed of
informed, multidisciplinary students. Readers must first learn the
context of your subject before they can understand how your work
changes the field or affects their decision making process.
Anecdotes are entirely appropriate.

Acronyms do not take articles. Active voice replaces passive voice
whenever possible. Systems, programs, commands, routines, and so on,
however, appear in small capital letters. Use he/she, not he or she
alone. If possible, rewrite sentence to use ‘they’. Use the singular
pronoun I (not we) for a singular author. Use that in restrictive
clauses (those without a comma) and which in nonrestrictive clauses
(those with a comma). Use while to mean “at the same time” and
although to mean “in spite of the fact.”

ACM Writing Guide

Well, I’m done with the website redesign, so I’ll go and upload it now.

emacs-wiki-contents tag cannot be put in the header, because it gets evaluated after the headers have been expanded.

Maybe I can “publish” to an intermediate file format (replace BBDB and
Gnus links, for example), and then use PHP’s file-reading to handle
it. What do I want? I want to be able to have a table of contents
floating on the right, to give people an overview. I want to be able
to offer easy Previous Day / Next Day navigation.

Bah. Perl script to update links. Foo.

To get software suspend under Linux on the Sony Vaio U1, I followed
the instructions at http://www.spic.net/u1/linux/dl/ . I also copied
the ac adaptor scripts so that the Vaio changes power settings
accordingly.

Update: 2003.12.26: Hmmm, Forbidden.

I’d like emacsclient as my mail composer in Mozilla. I wonder how to associate it… From http://www.geocities.com/pratiksolanki/ :

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailto", true);
user_pref("applications.mailto", "emacsclient");

Nearly done! =D

I came across http://uselesspython.com/hostilehackers.html while
searching for more information on Guido van Rossum’s mythical time
machine. Funny read, and worth sending to the python freenet list. =)

Here’s an ad that came out in today’s “The Philippine Star”.

GAME OVER
If you wish to “CONTINUE” register your shop with the Philippine Network Gaming Alliance (P.N.G.A.) and obtain a Commercial Site License for your Network Gaming Center. Otherwise, we will PULL THE PLUG on your business. Call the hotline (02) 911-AMDG and register only with authorized agents. Agent profiles are available at www.amdg.net.ph. Only check payments are allowed. Make checks payable to Asian Media Development Group.

(logos of Blizzard, Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, Counterstrike, Aliens versus Predator 2, Empire Earth, Sierra)

Violators will be subject to civil and criminal sanctions such as closure, imprisonment of up to 9 years and fines of up to Php1,500,000.00.

Are they legitimate? Doubt it. Will be very annoyed if they aren’t
legitimate, and will definitely mention it when I talk about ethics
and computer science. According to Eric, Counterstrike is free. Hence
there is something very fishy about this whole deal. I may not be able
to do anything about the people who will fall for this, but at least I
can help students realize that this is important.

UPDATE 2003.09.25: Looks like they check out, but they’re still using
strong-arm tactics and I don’t think they’re telling people about
alternatives like Linux or WINE.

w00t! I just got a (5, Interesting) on a post I made to the Ultra-Cool Wireless Wearables post on Slashdot.

Despite all the efforts of my English literature teachers (and a
number of friends), I refuse to profess any ability to distinguish
good poetry from bad poetry, and indeed good art from bad art.
Because those crazy cubists can draw weird stuff and still be called
masters, I conclude that it is next to impossible for me to
distinguish between an intentionally bad poem (a brilliant satire of
the affectations of lesser writers! a shining example of subtle wit
and humor!) and a simply horrible piece of junk. I suspect that most
art critics make it up, anyway.

You can probably see how this kind of attitude got me two Ds in
freshman English. I have neither patience nor desire to sit around in
a circle discussing the irony in the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Give me a program instead.

A student doing a research paper on open source asked me if I could be interviewed. I said yes, of course, since I love doing whatever I can to advocate Linux. She sent me a questionnaire by e-mail.

A Word document attachment.

I politely wrote her back and suggested the use of non-proprietary
formats in the future, especially when sending out an open source
questionnaire – I was nice, though, and told her I’d extracted the
text already. To this, she replied that she didn’t have any
non-proprietary software on her system, but that she was working on
it.

Ah, such is the insidious power of Microsoft! It causes people to
forget that plain text and HTML files are eminently more open than the
native Microsoft Word document, and much smaller too. Pffft. Not only
that, people have gotten far too used to saving plain, unformatted
text files as a Microsoft Word document, unaware of the other document
types and the fact that they can produce such…

Richard Stallman indents his quoted text. Not that I’m knocking it,
but I should figure out how to get Gnus to treat it as quoted
text… (Advanced happy birthday, RMS!)

From an emacs-devel message

John Wiegley has a tool called initsplit.el on his web-site for
breaking customizations into multiple files. The issue (I believe) is
why load all the customization information for a package into Emacs if
you’re not going to load the package (at least during this particular
session)? Also, it would allow you to keep the customizations for a
package close to (in the sense of your .emacs files) everything else
associated with the package. Different people (I guess) have
different levels of what they consider to be a “tidy” .emacs file.

I love Emacs.

Something is seriously screwing up some of my pages. NOTE: Make backup of correct plans! Must do damage control immediately.

Not one of my most coherent responses, but it must be done.

How do you/does your organization support and advocate Open Source
Software? What activities have you spearheaded or joined in?

I maintain or contribute source code and time to a few open source
projects like the Emacs Planner module. I’ve given several talks at
local Linux events such as the UP Open Source Day held on February 20,
2003, and the Ateneo I.T. Forum held on March 7, 2003. I am also the
current vice president of the Philippine Linux Users Group and I am
active in a couple of mailing lists like plug and ph-linux-newbie.

Why do you support the use of Open Source Software?

Because it’s fun. Because it helps me practice my skills. Because it
gives me bucketloads of free software that I can use, customize, debug
and develop. Because it helps me make a difference.

What are the advantages of using Open Source Software over

Proprietary Software generally and specifically for the Philippines?
From a techie’s point of view? From a layman’s point of view (such
as a student or an office secretary or clerk)?

Speaking as a techie, I find open source to be absolutely wonderful. I
can learn as much as I want from whatever software program I choose. I
can tweak, experiment, and rewrite to my heart’s content. For me, free
and open source software is about freedom – the freedom to learn, the
freedom to improve.

You might also be interested in an essay of mine. http://www.inq7.net/inf/2002/sep/26/inf_27-1.htm

What is the current state of Open Source Software in the Philippines?

You might want to check out the openminds_ph archives for a lot of
discussion on that. http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/openminds_ph

In your opinion, will the use of Open Source Software spread and
gain more popularity? What factors will help the spread of use?

I don’t see why not. Open source software just makes a lot of sense to
me. There are a lot of companies and schools looking into open
source, and even our government is slowly exploring open source.

What factors will hinder the spread of the use of Open Source
Software in the Philippines?

Many businesses are locked into proprietary solutions because they’d
come to rely on a single vendor, and big software companies try to
make sure that people don’t know they have alternatives. For example,
if you didn’t know that you could save files in other formats simply
by using the File -> Save As command in Microsoft Word, you’d end up
saving in the closed Microsoft Word format. If you’re using something
like Microsoft Word 2002 and your friends only have Microsoft Word 98,
they’ll have to buy new software just to open your file. People buy
Microsoft Office because “everyone else uses it.”

There’s also the impression that open source is intimidating and that
it’s only for geeks. A lot of work is being done to improve it on the desktop,
and companies are springing up to provide Linux support.

In your opinion, does Open Source Software have a future in the
Philippine IT industry?

Definitely.

Someone updated my wiki page! Yay. People actually care about getting to my website. I really should check the access logs…

Like almost all newbies, I started out with pico, the editor that
comes with pine. pico was friendly. pico was easy to use. pico also
kept wrapping my lines, which is a Very Bad Idea when you’re
programming. I discovered that pico -w would turn such
undesirable behavior off, and alias pico="pico -w "
became part of my .bashrc everywhere.

However, I felt mildly ashamed of pico. All the Unix books said I
should learn how to use vi, so I did. vi was fun, too – vim,
especially. I had my funky one-line ex commands, like :s%/foo/bar/g. I
could go to any line with :linenumber. I regularly used :! to invoke
shell commands. I liked the way it syntax-colored practically all the
files I edited – even the more obscure ones – and I was even thinking
of writing my own syntax files for the things it didn’t handle yet.

I suppose it was sheer curiosity that made me try out Emacs. Emacs was
an intellectual challenge. I found myself attracted to its
intimidating complexity. I wanted to see if I could get the hang of it.

Emacs was surprisingly easy to use. I read through the tutorial. I
even browsed through the info node in my spare time. I used the menu
bar and the tool bar until I learned the different shortcuts and
extended commands. It was pretty cool.

Then one summer, I opened the Emacs LISP intro manual. I got hooked.
I started reading Emacs source code. I traced through functions. I
wrote my own. I did more and more stuff in Emacs and I realized how
much I had missed by using other editors.

Emacs is cool. =)

I’m still getting
Notice: Certificate failure for localhost: self signed certificate: /C=PH/ST=Metro Manila/L=Makati/O=Adphoto, Inc./CN=192.168.1.41/Email=sacha@localhost (errflg=2) in Unknown on line 0 – I wonder what’s wrong…

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Postfix-Cyrus-Web-cyradm-HOWTO/ looks useful. Unfortunately, my aunt wants to get on the Internet so that she can chat, so I can’t test it out right now. I definitely need an extra patch cable or two…

http://www.wienand.org/files/debian_imap.html also looks useful.

Started putting together a SongLyrics wiki node for the songs I like singing.

zeDek from #emacs needs info on PlannerAndRemind, so I guess it’s time to make a wikinode about it.

emacs-wiki-edit-link-at-point works again. It can be found in ../emacs/emacs-wiki-config.el

The article written by Rizal Raoul Reyes in the 2003.03.18 issue of
Today is okay, except for one factual error. My parents never told me
computers were a ‘guy’ thing. In fact, they encouraged us to get into
whatever fields we wanted. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without
their support. I hope that the article doesn’t give parents or kids
the impression that computers are a guy thing, or that parental
support isn’t important.

but I’m having problems with horde2 – I can’t seem to log in…

Ion’s pretty okay, but you need to tweak the default configuration a bit. More info in the IonWindowManager node

I need to understand precisely what rss feeds are for, and why I should get around to publishing at least my daily pages as one. =)

Some thoughts have been added to the PlannerMode wikinode on parsing it as a tree, and transforming it to XML.

I have no idea why the login refuses to do anything. It just sits
there. Perhaps it’s because it’s trying to do a plaintext login? I’ve
confirmed that Cyrus IMAPd works…

I’ll use twig for the webmail interface. We’re almost good to go!

Finally! I hit upon the magic combination of twig and cyrus-admin, and now the mail system works on the IntranetServer.

brilliant idea: instead of parsing wiki pages to generate the RSS
feed, why don’t I just add a function to allow remember.el to save to
rss feeds? That seems like a much better way to do it, because I can
get more accurate timestamp information. Harder to edit and I’ll need
to remember to absolutize links, but it seems like a pretty decent
workaround.

Finished talking to Jerome around an hour ago. I think we cleared up
one of the misunderstandings we were having and are back to being
friends. I shouldn’t have to worry about inappropriate TLA-ness for
now…

Kevin Koyner (kevin@rustybear.com) writes:
I’ve been using Eryxma.com recently and have been happy with them. The
thing I like the best is the plan that I have — it’s called “Private
Webhosting” — and while it is on a shared server, I get my own,
virtually complete OS. So it’s more like having your own machine. Cost
— various plans, but even the low end at $52/year gets you 100 MB of
space.

Richi Plana sends in a link to a Salon article on Dani Bunten, game designer and
cool geekette. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/18/bunten/index.html?x

Incidentally, Eric S. Raymond’s site is now at http://www.catb.org/~esr/ – noted here because I keep forgetting where it is.

Maybe this is something that can be handled by (gasp) Outlook or some iCal thing?

http://nexist.sourceforge.net/groupware.html has a good list of available software.

I’ve looked at phpgroupware, and I suspect that I’ll have to do a fair bit of hackery in order to get what I want. Chances are that I’ll end up writing a custom app instead. Let me quickly read the phpgroupware docs; maybe I can use those…

filetype:foo, inurl:foo, “Parent Directory” /foo/ ?

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ is an interesting blog that gives you a feel of what it’s like in Iraq.

Probably won’t accept invitation. Feel completely lazy and am thinking of staying home and playing Scrabble. Besides, shouldn’t make other people feel awkward, as do not work for Trend and have no intentions of ever doing so.

I use this nifty LISP snippet to automatically publish my pages whenever I save.

(add-hook 'emacs-wiki-mode-hook (lambda () (add-hook 'after-save-hook (lambda () (unless emacs-wiki-publishing-p (emacs-wiki-publish-this-page))) nil t)))

This used to be a fairly big hassle back when emacs-wiki tried to do multiline parsing for =,
but now it’s acceptably fast.
Next up: I wonder if http://lufs.sourceforge.net can help me publish to http://richip.dhs.org/~sachac/ automatically…

Just finished two games of Scrabble. The first I played with Mom and my sister Kathy. Mom nearly outscored me despite having come in halfway through the game. She couldn’t join us for the second game, though, so it was just Kathy and me. I managed to get a 7-letter word on the board – “RAISINS” – which helped me get a total score of 343 to Kathy’s 246. I love Scrabble.

chrisb wrote in with a tip about Hugo’s
http://larve.net/people/hugo/2003/scratchpad/RssForEmacsWiki.html .
emacs-wiki-rss.el makes very nice lists of the wiki pages I have, but
I was thinking more of publishing each journal entry (like this one!)
as an RSS item.

One way to do it is to parse all the day planner pages. I’d need to
extract the timestamp, but that shouldn’t be too hard because I’ve
already been keeping track of that. I can call this after
emacs-wiki-publish, or make it part of a wikipage without header or
footer. Hmmm. I’ll probably want to force absolute links, then. How
do I do that? And I’ll want to find out how RSS feeds deal with edits.

Another way to do it is to modify remember.el so that it remembers to
an RSS file as well. This seems to make a lot of sense, too, and has
the benefit of being able to publish in chronological order. However,
if you edit the planner page, your changes won’t show up in the RSS
feed – which may or may not be a bad thing, after all.

I think hooking into remember.el might be fun.

- I need to have a “template”, because I’m just going to insert text.
- I need to update the timestamp of the RSS feed.
- I need to compose the RSS item.
- I need to insert it somewhere.

I wonder what RSS feed etiquette is. Should I make one huge RSS feed? Should I split it up by year?

“If you wait long enough, someone will write/build/design what you were thinking about.” http://iawiki.net/LazyWeb

How did I get there?
Google:RSS+blog+etiquette (such a strange query!) led me to http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/01/07/lazyweb.html, which links to http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/mt/archives/000190.html, which wasn’t very useful. Google:lazyweb got me http://www.lazyweb.org, though, which seemed to be the definitive resource, except it’s somewhat broken and it looks like a not-quite-popular version of http://www.halfbakery.com. However, it did link to http://iawiki.net/LazyWeb, which is good enough to link to.

I should also think about trackbacks or some other way to let people who link to me let me know that they’re linking to me…

Note: Do not edit /etc/lilo.conf, make the Linux image something else (/boot/bzImage instead of /vmlinuz) and still expect a kernel-image installation to do the right thing.

Diane mentions the Nintendo Generation. Should be interesting – teaching tips?

Must find out how to debug…

Hmm. I got fairly distracted back there. Started reading up on
QuickBooks and trying to figure out how I can work with the cost
estimates. I think, however, that I _don’t_ have to worry about that
right now. The problem that needs to be solved is this: it’s hard to
keep track of schedules. So that’s what I need to solve first, before
I start thinking about funky integrated intranet systems.

Aadisht, you are for some inexplicable reason the top search query that leads to my site, according to http://richip.dhs.org/usage/usage_200303.html . Most strange.

Fascinating. 479 hits for ~sachac/ ! Cool. I shall try my best to be somewhat interesting, then… ;)

“Jello’s the jock, Jove’s the lawyer. Joyce does architecture, Jaclyn does psych. And I’m Jay-jay.”

Ateneo Scholarship Foundation
Escaler Hall, 3:30 Mass, followed by the program. Semi-formal. Bring a small gift.

What can I give back to an institution that has supported me,
formed me, taught me, and challenged me to realize my potential?

Thanks to Ateneo, I learned:

• That it’s about people, not programs.
• That what I learn and do outside the classroom can matter more than what I learn and do inside it.
• That it’s not enough to know just _how_ to do something, but I also need to consider _why_.
• That I’ll start college wondering why the heck I take up philosophy and theology, and graduate realizing I wouldn’t be the same without them.
• That I should never stop learning,
• That I should never stop doing,
• That I should never stop teaching, and
• That I can make a difference.

I give you my gratitude and my thanks. But most of all, I would like to be able to give you, at the end of the day, a life well-lived.

On #emacs today:

solaries: is it still advantageous to learn elisp? I tried to do it, but if you always compare it to Python you don’t find much incentive…
sachac: solaries: Incentive: you can’t program Emacs in Python. ;)
resolve: , pymacs
fsbot: resolve, PyMacs is at http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PyMacs
resolve: but yeah, learn lisp, it’s fun :-)

I should stop making statements like that. “You can’t program Emacs in Python.” is like “You can’t play Tetris in Emacs.” Chances are, someone’s implemented the most obscure or outlandish of features… ;)

Well, off to play Scrabble by myself. Or something.

I can ping www.i-manila.com.ph, but I can’t initiate any TCP
connections to it. longword says I’m not the only .ph who’s mentioned
having connection difficulties with something everyone else can reach,
so maybe the local net has issues.

I was somewhat apologetic about the lack of delete-after-N-days
features in Linux mail clients, since my mom relies on that to keep
mail volumes manageable and yet still be able to share mail with other people.
Then a message on debian-user@lists.debian.org alerts me to the fact that
some people use something like this in their crontab:

» #  m   h  dom mon dow command
» # auto archive debian-user messages over 14 days old
»    40  8   *   *   *  archivemail -q -d 14 —delete imap://mrroach:password@okmaybe.com/INBOX.debian-user

I’ll install archivemail on the Lifebook and see if it does the work…

I have bound keycode 131 to ( and keycode 129 to ) on my jp106 keyboard. 131 is the muhenkan key to the left of my spacebar; 129 is the henkan key to the right. I’ve also bound keycode 120, which is normally supposed to toggle between katakana and hiragana, to F30. I might use this to toggle between dvorak and qwerty in the future. Stock dvorak or qwerty misplaces some useful punctuation…

My mom wants to make sure her friends find her e-mail and our website. Harvey Chua

Elbert T. Or writes in telling me that Marcelle had been “gushing
about” OnLove, of all things. Elbert is into comics. His sig says
that he’s a freelance writer and illustrator, loves his palm m515 and
palm keyboard, and has interests in history, literature, comics, and
pop culture. He also happens to be Marcelle‘s history classmate.

In a thread on debian-user@lists.debian.org about disabling the
annoying “Download Flash Plugin?” prompt, Karsten M. Self links to
http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/UserContentCSS, which not
only gets rid of all plugins but also “fixes a number of other web
annoyances.”

Apparently, i-manila doesn’t take -k very well. fetchmail kept
fetching old mail again and again and again… Ooops, my bad. That’s
it; I’m flushing.

You can also delete libnullplugin.so in the mozilla plugins directory.

On the debian-user@lists.debian.org mailing list, Jerome Acks
Jr. thinks that http://trace.wisc.edu/linux/index.htm is about the
best Linux accessibility resource.

Add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list

# For daily Gnus snapshots
deb http://people.debian.org/~srivasta ./packages/

Source: EmacsWiki:GnusCvsForDebian

On the open-source-now-list@redhat.com, Dan Kegel links to his
essay on the industry’s need for graduates with Linux/OSS experience,
and how universities can address that. The draft can be found at
http://www.kegel.com/linux/edu/curriculum.html .

The 2003.03.18 edition of Freshmeat news lists dvorakng, a GPL Dvorak
typing tutor based on dvorak7min but with extra features.
URL: http://freshmeat.net/projects/dvorakng/

I wonder if there’s any way of getting dasher to work with the Sony
jogdial. That might be a nice input method I can use when I’ve got my
left thumb on the mouse buttons and my right thumb on the mouse or jog
dial…

http://freshmeat.net/projects/pointless/ is a text-source presentation
package that might be worth looking into, although it’s just on its
first public release.

Google:gnus+freshmeat leads me to nntp://news.freshmeat.net, an NNTP server
that provides Freshmeat news with the right subjects! Yay. I am
definitely going to use this instead of the mailed digests, which have
a nasty habit of piling up in my archives and are much less fun to
browse through than a newsgroup…

ACM TechNews links to
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030304/4914082s.htm, an article
about how small things are getting. Americans seem to not like the
idea of tiny devices, but I certainly do! I’m typing this now on a
Sony PCG-U1, which is among the smallest notebooks in the market. I’ve
adapted to its keyboard, and am starting to find the P1110 keyboard a
little too large. True, I’m still typing in QWERTY – have to do some
tests to see whether QWERTY actually suits this computer better than
Dvorak. I need both hands on the keyboard in order to type Dvorak – a
consequence of having done Proper Training – but can cheerfully
two-finger type QWERTY.

I’d love to have the ring-phone they described – “a receiver on one
finger, a speaker on another and a wireless transmitter on the belt.”
As long as I never lose it, of course, and as long as the rings are
_thin_. I don’t wear rings because my fingers are small, and most
rings tend to be fairly bulky. A bracelet, on the other hand – one
that doesn’t unclasp easily – or a watch… That’d be fun.

In a really old post on debian-user@lists.debian.org“>debian-user@lists.debian.org (Jan 27 2003),
Mark Zimmerman suggests the use of metapost to generate pretty finite
state automata in LaTeX. Peter Jenke suggests xypic, which Nori
Heikkinen likes.

The link for remote X terminals is
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/kaszeta.html

On the help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org mailing list, Hans Larsen says that
session.el replaced recentf.el a long time ago. I used to use
recentf.el. Maybe I should check session.el out…

According to fsbot on freenode#emacs, , wheel is

- http://koala.ilog.fr/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/
- Put (mwheel-install) in .emacs

Useful Emacs documentation thing. See Info-goto-emacs-command-mode, normally bound to C-h F in CVS Emacs.

Jeffery B. Rancier’s March 12 post on help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org has
this useful LISP snippet for Windows Emacs users:

(defun jbr-w32-simulate-Alt-tap ()

(interactive)
(w32-send-sys-command 61696))
(global-set-key [C-tab] 'jbr-w32-simulate-Alt-tap)

I wonder if there’s a similar way to do that under GTK…

Le Wang mentions icomplete and mcomplete in reference to substring
completion in a March 4 post on the help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org mailing
list. Hmmmm. mcomplete doesn’t seem to be built-in, but icomplete’s
there, and it’s nifty. It’s like ido handling of buffers and files. I
like.

Charles Muller figured out how to add to the kana-kanji conversion dictionary – modify ja-dic.el and recompile.

In a March 6 post to the help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org mailing list, Romain Francoise mentions
em-last.el, an eshell module that lets you cycle backwards through the argument list.
http://orebokech.com/tmp/em-last.el

On debian-user@lists.debian.org, David Z Maze thinks Prosper is great
for making PDF presentations from LaTeX. xpdf -fullscreen
-papercolor black to actually run the slides.

Chris Beggy writes in with another tip
(thanks!). Chris thinks that Magicpoint is an
excellent PowerPoint replacement. I like Magicpoint’s text-based
presentation files and its nice gallery of styles I can choose, but
I’m thinking of going for prosper+latex instead. I hear that prosper
has pretty nice output.

Cross-reference: CoastLog#1

I suspect that URLs need to be verbatim; stray equal signs and
underscores can be their undoing! Maybe I should just blank out the
markup-word thing…

I use (defun emacs-wiki-markup-word ()) to squelch all the bad markup I’m getting lately.

On the blindprogramming@yahoogroups.com mailing list, Yvon Provencher mentions the useful tutorial at
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/notenemeth.asp .

Tech mailing lists without a home might want to check out http://www.freelists.org .

http://www.math.utah.edu/~alfeld/math/polya.html Local copy: PolyaHowToSolveIt

Finished encoding the ComputerScienceCurriculum2002-2003. Whew!

Miguel Paraz, python@lists.free.net.ph:

http://www.chinesepython.org/cgi_bin/cgb.cgi/english/english.html

The author claims that Python is easy to translate to Chinese.
This could be useful to the Chinese-literate people here. :)

Robert Anderson has some testing scripts at http://rwa.homelinux.net/emacs

python@lists.free.net.ph, Andy Sy:
http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/WebProgramming

nabs-l@nfbnet.org, Wade Hemmelrick:

This is a free listing of all the computer braille code symbols.
Computer Braille Code Card in Grade 2 braille
ftp://ftp.nbp.org/rodeodrive/nbp/nmccs.brf

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~alphonce/OOPSLA2002/KillerExamples/

I think I need one of those extended batteries. The specs of my
computer can be found at
http://www.transmetazone.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1056 . In
comparison, the Fujitsu Lifebook P1110 has around 4.8 hours of battery
life, according to
http://www1.dealtime.com/xPN-Fujitsu_LifeBook_P1110_(MPN_FPCM20082)_PC_Notebooks~FD-9007~PD-20254909/features.html
. Hmmm. However, the Vaio PCG-U1 is 70 grams lighter than the P1110,
and it’s much smaller, so I guess it’s worth it.

For finite state automata, someone who wishes to remain anonymous uses
gastex
(http://www.liafa.jussieu.fr/~gastin/gastex/gastex.html). Thanks for
the tip!

Looks like Ryan Kristoffer Tan has started
blogging over at http://www.blogspot.com . Isn’t it about time you
started keeping an online journal, if you don’t have one already? =)
He’s an Ateneo BS MIS 2001 graduate into music, stuff like that.

Ooops. Hadn’t realized I’d left some of the student lists out of my
.cvsignore . My apologies to people who found their cellphone numbers
and e-mail addresses on the Web. (And their ID pictures, too!)

These are some of the ways people have gotten to my website: InterestingQueries

The website of the person who wished to remain anonymous also turns up an
interesting link to monthly puzzles at IBM
(http://www.research.ibm.com/ponder).
Update: 2003.04.04

Looks like POP connections to i-manila work again. Cool! It’s a
universal conspiracy – the minute I complain about things in my
journal, they get fixed. Thanks to Sherwin T. Ang for volunteering
help anyway. =)

Students should be able to have their own directories, and preferably
have their own webpages too. They also need to be able to run… It
would be nice if they could run.. We want to be able to post the
application on the web, which means they should be able to run
something on a test server accessible on the Web. We’ll need to have
login servers.

This looks pretty sweet. I’ll look around for it here, and if it feels
nice, I’ll see if I can justify getting it..

DISCS Planning Kick-Off Meeting

Issues / Plans
- New Chair: Didith
- Research Program
goal: create more structure in our research
proposal: form “research groups”

hard to actually come up with a formal research group, unlike in the
US where research groups are composed of several faculty and students
and they actually get grants and funding. We don’t necessarily have
that, but we can at least form research groups. Take a look at the LCS
website. You can see that they have general topics, and then under
these are particular groups. If you go to their group website, you’ll
see that typically the group website is divided into people,
publications and projects. Directory. Different projects. It’s kind of
a loosely formed group, and maybe that’s something we can do for now.
My idea is basically, I want to be able to – well – organize our
webpage and say in Ateneo we have these research groups, and list the
faculty, students, theses and ongoing projects. This can be a loosely
organized group. It doesn’t have to be a focused group. For example,
you can list all the multimedia stuff together. At least a semblance
of structure. Eventually, when you have these groups, then people can
talk to each other. They know what different people are working on.
We’re hoping that more people will be encouraged.

example: MIT’s LCS
- many different research groups
- each group’s website usually follows the format
- faculty, students, projects, publications
- faculty do not necessarily have to be working directly with each other
- need to push students and faculty to publish
- research directory?

Proposed groups
- MIS and Software Engineering – paolo, john paul, bong, roland, eugene, mm, beth, ariel, sandra
- Multimedia, E-Learning and Human Factors: – bea, nestor, bong, jal, didith, albert, david, luis, reena, paolo
- Networks and Distributed Systems – pierre, jal, luis, gino, william, marco
- Wireless, Mobile and Pervasive Computing – luis, pierre, didith, doc mana, nestor, eugene, sacha, marco
- Open Source – sacha, doc mana, gino, william, marco
- Computational Science and Grid Computing – john paul, luis, jon
- Theory of Computation – bong, jon, john paul, beth, doc mana
- Others?
Now that we have the groups, maybe someone in that group can take care of collecting projects and fixing the web page

umbrella groups

- Curriculum Review

Goals
- update our curriculum
- identify ‘must-haves’ for our curriculum
- integrate into current subjects
- create new subjects / recreate subjects if necessary
- make sure we satisfy ACM and CHED minimum requirements
- be innovative and daring!

(note: ACM publishes a curriculum for liberal arts colleges, too)

(note: we actually went beyond the ACM curriculum before when we introduced Java.)

(note: ACM 2001 – look at page 17 to 21, list of body of knowledge. Page 20, 21 – example of how you can do a curriculum.
Different approaches.)

(note: wants spreadsheet form of this)

They also have recommended syllabi. Note that we don’t have the textbooks yet.

- New things in ACM Curriculum 2001
- objects-first is now a “standard” option
- “net-centric computing” is now a major core topic group
something for us to look into because we’re already doing a bit of that. We start them out with network programming already. We should also integrate net-centric thinking into all the other subjects. Doesn’t just mean the CS154 course, where you talk about setting up networks, but writing programs that run on top of the network. Maybe even multimedia could benefit.
- curriculum document actually gives sample syllabi for different classes and different styles
- IS curriculum
Previously it was just CS. Haven’t looked at this one yet.

New Topics I think We _Should_ Integrate
- web-centric computing
- web front-end programming
- web services
- enterprise computing
you probably have to deal with enterprise systems, and I don’t know what you need in order to be able to do that. We should think about that.
- distributed systems (incl. WAN systems and clustered systems)
beyond what we teach in CS21B and think about that. I don’t know if we need to add another class where they do distributed computing. Required class perhaps for enterprise computing?
- database-backed web-based systems (incl. JDBC, .NET, etc)
- B2B, B2C
- Data mining, data warehousing, etc.
Mentioned in MIS101. All Doc Luis’s batchmates are doing Oracle data warehousing. Something to look into.
- (note: this may also be relevant for e-learning)
I think e-learning is still a specific thing for now. Knowledge management.
Didith: Our interests are dovetailing because they mix strong capabilities in certain areas. We should work again on the core CS competencies and reinforce them. So many of our efforts have focused on our interests and bahala na yung core subjects. I think it’s a good idea to go back to our core subjects. I don’t quite know how to deal with the research subjects. If it’s just to fill the 3 units, why don’t you get something else? Unless you see yourself as practicing, it’s not going to be relevant to you. They seem to cater to a very specific crowd, and I don’t know. It needs to be rethought.
Luis: Maybe we can think about generalizing what you learn… Instead of e-learning, think of knowledge management.
Need to rethink for the undergrads. While it’s nice that the classes are filled, you can see that they’re only taking it for the credits…
Luis: ACM, number of hours per topic. You dedicate one or two lectures on this topic and put it in some class. We might be able to put e-learning as a required topic in some other class.
Didith: Even the multimedia… fine, we have the intro to multimedia class. Some people are looking for something more advanced. Computation. They want to get into compression and rendering algorithms. (Mention of Eric Vidal). There seems to be interest in more advanced multimedia topics. Niches? Development of simulations. Simulations are not necessarily for learning. It can be offered as an elective. Discussed under CAI, but lip service. Simulation can be a subject in itself. For example, scientific.
Fr. Nebres. Thrust toward computational science.
- mis buzzwords
- crm, scm, cmm
advanced topics elective in MIS
- open source
- including methodologies and tools such as CVS, etc.
CS161, CS23 – maybe some things on methodology
- wireless?
to what extent do we integrate it into our curriculum?
- quality assurance suggested by Ariel
- any others?

doesn’t have to be a separate subject. Could just be a quick lecture.

Bong: One person should do an industry scan.
Luis: We need to involve alumni. Self-survey. We haven’t been involving alumni directly into our curriculum reviews for the past few times. I think maybe one person or a small group of people can be in charge of doing the industry scan, and everyone else is welcome to contribute. Point person for that. We’ll assign tasks later.

Didith: Suggestion. Consult with our mentors and advisors from the different schools so that we can get their perspective.
Didith will do it. Pierre also, from his position.

Some ideas
- CS21B
design patterns
RMI and/or servlets
J2ME?
- CS122
JDBC
discuss clustering
introduce data mining, data warehousing, etc.
Feedback: we should discuss performance and ways to improve it, like clustering and stuff.
Ariel: Nagging problem. Time constraint. This sem we weren’t able to discuss JDBC because of time constraints. Nagging problem, explored in the last curriculum review. Solution proposed, two semesters?
JPV: clarifying curriculum review direction. need a process for making key decisions.
Luis: Topics *:* course
- CS161?
suggestion for CS, CS161+CS23 -> CS162a&b
Luis: Was talking to William. Kind of a mess this year. I think we should split the MIS and the CS again.
Ariel: Ayoko na!
- CS112: Programming Languages*
XML, Perl, LaTeX, Python, make your own language, etc.
LISP!
New course. Structure of programming languages.
Intent: Compiler theory. Part of automata.
JPV: Sequencing is important. Problem of irreconcilable groups.
Luis: Try to map out what we have right now by the hour.
Doc Luis flunked the programming part of the MIT diagnostic thing because it was in Scheme.
- CS123
Design patterns
Web services
Enterprise systems
- These are just a few random ideas

The Plan
- everyone please browse through ACM curricula in order to be “inspired”
- divide into groups
- review existing subjects
- include alumni
- suggest change
- iterate
- have 1 or 2 “big meetings” where everyone can see the emerging “big picture”

DocMana: Maybe not the CS students, but maybe the MIS students might be interested in learning Visual Basic. I think we should have a pool of Visual Basic programmers we can draw from.

Luis: I would rather do a .NET thing.

DocMana: Isn’t .NET that Microsoft thing?

Everyone: So is VB.

Luis: We need to reconsider the math requirements. The ACM team, that was one of their weak points. Our sophomores are flunking their math.
Luis: Can we do a calculus for computer scientists?
Mike: They do that in ECCE. There’s a math for engineers. They’re teaching it
Doc Mana: We can teach calculus like Math 20.
Luis: Abstract algebra? Statistics is also very useful.
Doc Mana: The kind of calculus they teach in the BM program.
Doc V: Points. Very controversial. Turf issue. You don’t want it to evolve into everyone teaching their own math. Second, core curriculum constraints with math. Some discussions. Core curriculum for science programs? It’s not fully within our control. Output should be these are the type of things we think we need.
Doc Mana: Think they will require Ma101?
Doc V: Think students are a problem.
Doc Mana: Why should it be a problem now, when it wasn’t with you and Didith?
Doc V: Has been a problem ever since. Usual concern – top 10% of those who applied in math. They may not be enough for the Math department.
Doc Luis: Big group failing Ma22.
Doc V: Lower target group. We have a whopping 7 out of 70 confirmees with two weeks to go.

Bong: Optional fourth hour.
Pierre: Tutorials. Optional.
Doc V: Tools course. Virginia Tech. 1 unit.
Luis: Sa MIT, ganoon din.
Luis: Warning about regular basis and peer pressure.
Didith: Seminars.
DocV: Keep hour free.
Luis: CS hour.
Luis: Monday, 4:30 – 6? Parallel sessions?
Eugene: Org-assisted? Use activity hour?
Luis: In fact, it should be org-assisted.
Bong: We give the structure, they implement it.
DocV: We can sustain it. Maybe we’ll even give allowances. We can make that evolve. Increase our student assistant fund.
Luis: Parallel sessions.
Bong: CompSAT and MISA.

Luis: Course outlines and hours per topic. Suggest changes. Don’t try to solve it yet. We need to be able to get feedback from the alumni. Very crucial. Need to know what’s out there. Generate a wishlist of what you want to add. Everyone needs to see what the demand is. Ideally, I would like to raise the bar on our students as well. Try to push them. Reviewing our subjects…

JPV: Milestones and deliverables so that it’s a little clearer. Schedules also.

Luis: Are the electives really worth that much time?
Luis: Existing syllabus and wishlist.
JPV: Wishlist of topics and hours.

Before BM1
Per subject: (Including Math, Physics and Electives)
Review existing syllabi
course outline and hours per topic
wishlist / recommendations
wish list of topics (with hours)
Rough recommendations
fit wish list within current course
or put in a new course or existing course
survey alumni (when possible)
Notes
includes looking at ACM 2001, CHED and “Hot Topics”
look at requirements and recommendations
Where does ACM 2001 put them?
Industry scan
Generate wish list
Deliverable by 1 week before Big Meeting #1

Big Meeting #1
When? Last weekend of April (26-27)
Where? Hotel in Manila?
What do we do?
Present deliverables
Inclde outside faculty and alumni
Output
Rough curricula – coarse grouping of topics
CS, MIS, Grad
Clustering of electives
Suggest minors?
Agenda for BM #2
In charge of organizing: Didith – Ortigas Center

New: Albert, Edwin, Jon, Sacha, Stanley (part-time)

(Note: Marivi is leaving on April 1st to study. Grace will replace her. Has been working for the Registrar’s office for 2 years.)

math: possibly calculus for computer scientists, abstract algebra, linear algebra and stuff…

Tasks and Grouping

Note: Service courses. CS30, multimedia.

After Big Meeting #1, the issue would be fitting in the actual courses already? Making the detailed outline of the courses.
Farm out syllabi to generate
Output: new syllabi per course (in Loyola Schools format)
Includes plan for exams/lab/projects/assignments and grading scheme.

Big Meeting #2:
When? Last Saturday of May (31)
Where? Ateneo
What do we do?
Present Deliverables
Output
Validated curriculum
Todo list

Need to propose items for the agenda.

From debian-user@lists.debian,org, Simon Piette:

http://www.privoxy.org/ is a good solution. It’s the following of
junkbuster. You can disable a plugin by default, and you can re-enable
them site by site. Since it will change the HTML code embedding the
flash file, so more messages about a missing plugin. Also, I think more recent
versions of mozilla have a switch for that, and maybe some prefs.js
editing could do it on 1.0.

debian-user@lists.debian.org, Vineet Kumar:

apache + libapache-mod-dav will act as a calendar server for Mozilla Calendar.

On debian-user@lists.debian.org, Karsten M. Self links to many handy open source primers.
I’ve added then to the OpenSource node.

http://www.i4u.com is a great gadget-oriented Slashdot-like site. Visit and bookmark.

Destiny’s appallingly slow today. I’m getting around 1kb on my aptitude connections, and cyrus.free.net.ph is s-l-o-w…

My connection’s back up to its normal speed. Whew!

Okay, before I go to sleep, I need to dump all these graduation
stories somewhere. =) Let’s try chronological order or so.

I managed to get to school in time for the Baccalaureate Mass (had to
be there by 7:00). My mom stayed for the Mass. Uneventful.

Felt mildly sick during the day due to certain things I will not
mention here. Remembered I had an emergency heat pack at home. Asked
Papa to bring it, but didn’t get to meet him until after graduation.

Then we had our graduation rehearsal. We’re the second-to-the-last
school, and we ran out of time so we didn’t get to practice walking
around and bowing.

Met my mom. Had solo picture taken. Turned out Mom knows the photographer.

Had lunch at Pancake House. Some sort of mixup – they
thought our graduation wasn’t until tomorrow, and were rather
understaffed.

Hung out at the CS department after lunch. Looking forward to being
one of the faculty. Lots of fun stories.

Volunteered to check Doc Mana’s papers.

Went back to the Ateneo High School grounds.

Assembled, marched, graduated.

After ceremony, ran into Dr. Sarmenta. Nice toga! I definitely want to
go to http://web.mit.edu/ ;) Talked to him for a moment, then dashed
off to find my parents.

Found my parents.

Dashed off to return my toga. (Have to return on same day, or pay a PHP 100 fine for every day late).

On way in, talked to and got hugged by Fr. Nebres. He’s our university president. Cool person.

Found Dr. Sarmenta again. Led him to my parents. Had quick chat. He
understands my parents’ concerns and will try his best to get me
on-campus housing.

Went to Aresi for dinner. Met Kathy and John.

Food wasn’t so nice. Scratch Aresi off list.

Received interesting keychain-pen from my mom. Pen actually comes with instructions.

Got funny card from my parents. =D

Got texted by practically all the friends in my phonebook.

Yay!

Heard a kitten inside the walls between my room and the bathroom. What was that short story that had a cat meowing from within the walls? I couldn’t bear to think of letting the cat starve to death there, so Kathy and my dad pried out large sections of the bathroom wall to get to the kitten.

Having rescued the kitten to the great detriment of the wall, we tucked the kitten into a hurriedly scrounged-up shoebox and sped off to the zoo. The kitten was fed, cleaned, and put to bed by one of Kathy’s friends, and we took the kitten back home after being given some instructions on how to take care of her (her!).

There are some complications, of course. My dad is a bird person, my sister is a dog person, and I don’t know how the KittenWhoMustNotBeNamed (my sister fears I’ll get too attached if I name her) will get along with Lucas (a big black Labrador), Kaygee (a somewhat grumpy toy poodle) and Picco (the Lovebird of Death).

Maybe I’ll get to keep her if I ask for her as my graduation present. If I do get to keep her, I’ll probably name her something like “Nano”. ;)

Cross-reference: KittenWhoMustNotBeNamed#1

http://slashdot.org links to http://www.devx.com/devx/editorial/11659,
an article that talks about “flow” and how to encourage programmer
creativity. Pretty good suggestions, like letting developers pick
their own desks and chairs. I hope managers read this and similar articles.

Again from http://slashdot.org:

http://www.corante.com/gotgame/ is a blog about the gaming industry. Eric and some other gamedev geeks might be interested in this.
Related sites: http://www.gamegirladvance.com/, http://www.ludology.org/, http://konzack.blogspot.com/, http://www.costik.com/weblog/, http://www.popularculturegaming.tk/

One of these days I should really try out
Eclipse. Rumor has it
that it’s much like Emacs, but runs on Java.

Cross-reference: OpenSourceCourseware#1

Looks like one of my favorite novelists has some insights on the
software industry.
http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees, from
Google:orson+scott+card+software+companies,
from a Slashdot comment on programmer psychology.

The humor collection linked to is also somewhat interesting.

Cross-reference: PlannerMode#9

Cross-reference: CurriculumReview#1

What, there’s a comp.sys.wearables? Must head over to http://groups.google.com …

help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, Thomas Link: filesets.el in CVS Emacs, and
also at http://members.a1.net/t.link/CompEmacsFilesets.html .
“filesets.el makes it easy to open frequently accessed files. In
conjunction with external viewers for formats like PDF or HTML,
filesets.el can be used to browse all your documentation.”

From ACM Technews: http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21095.html -
“Far from draining the field of the most talented IT workers, there is
a distinct possibility that the IT downturn may be weeding out
less-qualified applicants.”

Making Computers Talk is a Scientific American article about
developing speech synthesizers. You might also be interested in
SALT, an XML standard for web-based voice interaction. Links from
ACM Technews.

I am very, very glad that Gnus can automatically delete duplicates with (setq nnmail-treat-duplicates 'delete) .

RedirectMatch permanent /~sachac/notebook/wiki/(.*).html /~sachac/notebook/wiki/$1.php

is a very funky .htaccess line that helps me deal with the Great Renaming.

Looks like UA&P geek JM Ibanez has taken the plunge! =) Welcome to the Emacs world, JM.

Kaygee, our otherwise adorable toy poodle, is apparently as insecure as they come. Have my hands full trying to take care of the kitten.