The School of Science and Engineering is proud to annouce that Charlotte Kendra G. Castillo (BS Physics and Class Valedictorian of Batch 2004) was one of the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines proclaimed during the awarding ceremonies in Malacanang Palace on Friday, 22 October 2004. Kendra was among the 30 national finalists who participated in a leadership laboratory from October 14-22. Congratulations, Kendra! We are truly proud of you!

Not that it should surprise anyone that Kendra's an outsanding student, but I'm proud of her, and I'm glad I know not only the academic side of her but also her as a friend.

SAY NO TO SOFTWARE PIRACY
By Ethel Timbol
Consumers Post

Check it out. Nice article. Kudos to Alex Timbol for helping his mom. =)

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E-Mail%20to%20Fumiko%20Kikuta

I need users. I need to know that what I am doing will make a difference, no matter how small or for no matter how short a time. I'm working on something I'll personally never use. I know no one else is going to use the software, either. It's hard to resist the temptation to cut corners, to use a somewhat hairy implementation because I don't want to think of a better one. After all, bugs aren't going to cause anyone any inconvenience, and good features won't make anyone's day a little better.

What I'm doing isn't needed, and that makes me feel absent from my work.

How is this different from school? Why did I have so much fun doing my school projects? Perhaps it was because my school projects still had a sense of novelty. Now, although I'd never programmed in Delphi before, I get the feeling that I'm just translating from some existing mental model instead of breaking a paradigm. I haven't delved into Delphi deeply enough to fall in love or even to get a sense of the Delphi-ness of Delphi.

Granted, I'm supposed to be doing this in order to learn how the Japanese work. The diagrams are the same as the ones I took up in CS123 but never put into practice in a real project. People work individually, occasionally asking their project manager for clarifications.

I need to figure out what to do in order to make the most of my work time. I refuse to go home drained. I refuse to spend most of my waking hours doing something I consider to be a waste. I must find out what is wonderful about this.

I have a lot of fun doing Japanese translation, and will probably focus on that aspect. I will work on advanced grammar and vocabulary as I prepare design documents. Although my work is not relevant to other people, at least I can benefit myself.

Open source is my lifeline. Even if I contribute a few lines of code here, a message or two there, I feel that I'm connected. I _exist._ I'm doing something useful. That's important to me. Teaching, too, is something I do because I love doing it and because I feel that I can make a difference that way.

Anyway, just some thoughts.