'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Ghost In You by the Psychedelic Furs
Psychedelic Furs: "Ghost in you"
Ghost in you
A man in my shoes runs a light
All the papers lie tonight
but falling over you
is the news of the day
Angels fall like rain
and love , is all of heaven way
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade away
The race is on, IM on your side
but hearing you my engines died
I'm in the mood for you
or for running away
All the stars come down in you
but love, love, love you cant give it away
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade
inside you the time moves and she don't fade away
don't you know she don't fade
don't you go it makes no sense
and all these talking superman
just take away the time just to get it away
aint it just like the rain
cause love,love,love,love is only heaven away
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade away
inside you the time moves and she don't fade away
the ghost in you she don't fade
A man in my shoes runs a light
but all the papers lie tonight
falling over you is the news of the day
and love will not fade away
and love love love will not fade away
-=0=-
Friday type of Music.
--andoy
17 June 2005
Ghost in you
A man in my shoes runs a light
All the papers lie tonight
but falling over you
is the news of the day
Angels fall like rain
and love , is all of heaven way
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade away
The race is on, IM on your side
but hearing you my engines died
I'm in the mood for you
or for running away
All the stars come down in you
but love, love, love you cant give it away
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade
inside you the time moves and she don't fade away
don't you know she don't fade
don't you go it makes no sense
and all these talking superman
just take away the time just to get it away
aint it just like the rain
cause love,love,love,love is only heaven away
inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade away
inside you the time moves and she don't fade away
the ghost in you she don't fade
A man in my shoes runs a light
but all the papers lie tonight
falling over you is the news of the day
and love will not fade away
and love love love will not fade away
-=0=-
Friday type of Music.
--andoy
17 June 2005
Friday
It's Friday and I'm doing some work. Put it another way, I'm working. That's an improvement, from the past few days, when I didn't know what I'm doing. I'm trying to have fun here, working on my desk. Without any supervision, and creating a test script, or checklist for testing the programs.
It's not much, I agree. But at least I get to write things. It's a table of screens and menus, actions, results and comments, etc. This should have been the job of a QA. But we don't have a QA. So there, something to do.
Friday, and then the weekend. Tomorrow the Pixela people will have a reunion at one of the agents' house. Since leaving the company, I have changed my opinion about that agent. I don't like her much anymore. Much like some people here in the office who keep on showing signs of violence and belligerency because that is their normal behaviour. (Shouts of "pagsasampalin kaya kita?" over the phone has a way of carrying over to real life.) I don't like to be around people who keep on shouting expletives. It riles me. I've been trying to rid myself of that habit since I left the Call Center job. It is not healthy. Not for me or the people around me. I don't like to be cussing at home either. That one, I try very hard not to cuss at home, in front of my kids and my wife.
But I digress. Some of the people in the group would be interesting to see again. But I'd like to say here and now, I don't look forward to seeing about six of my former co-workers. Not that I hate them, but I just don't like to see them. I don't want to work with them again, and I will be perfectly happy if I don't ever talk to them. Ever.
Another rant on a perfectly nice day. Now that that's done, I can go on enjoying my work.
--andoy
17 June 2005
It's not much, I agree. But at least I get to write things. It's a table of screens and menus, actions, results and comments, etc. This should have been the job of a QA. But we don't have a QA. So there, something to do.
Friday, and then the weekend. Tomorrow the Pixela people will have a reunion at one of the agents' house. Since leaving the company, I have changed my opinion about that agent. I don't like her much anymore. Much like some people here in the office who keep on showing signs of violence and belligerency because that is their normal behaviour. (Shouts of "pagsasampalin kaya kita?" over the phone has a way of carrying over to real life.) I don't like to be around people who keep on shouting expletives. It riles me. I've been trying to rid myself of that habit since I left the Call Center job. It is not healthy. Not for me or the people around me. I don't like to be cussing at home either. That one, I try very hard not to cuss at home, in front of my kids and my wife.
But I digress. Some of the people in the group would be interesting to see again. But I'd like to say here and now, I don't look forward to seeing about six of my former co-workers. Not that I hate them, but I just don't like to see them. I don't want to work with them again, and I will be perfectly happy if I don't ever talk to them. Ever.
Another rant on a perfectly nice day. Now that that's done, I can go on enjoying my work.
--andoy
17 June 2005
Macworld: Editors' Notes: The Jobs Amendment
Macworld: Editors' Notes: The Jobs Amendment
By Dan Miller
Back in 1965, Intel founder Gordon Moore famously opined that ongoing advances in chip design would allow engineers to cram ever-greater numbers of transistors onto computer chips—the observation that became known as Moore’s Law. But there’s another passage in his 1965 paper (which you can download here) that isn’t remembered so well.
After describing the marvels of ever-greater transistor densities, Moore asked, “Will it be possible to remove the heat generated by tens of thousands of components in a single silicon chip?” His not-so-surprising answer: You betcha.
If we could shrink the volume of a standard high-speed digital computer to that required for the components themselves, we would expect it to glow brightly with present power dissipation. But it won’t happen with integrated circuits.
OK, so computer chips aren’t glowing—yet. But heat dissipation may still turn out to be as important to the next 40 years of computer design as Moore’s Law has been since 1965.
That’s what Steve Jobs seems to be thinking in making the switch from IBM to Intel. In explaining that switch, he put up the now-famous Keynote chart comparing the Power PC with Intel’s chips for “performance per watt.” Forget that he failed to define exactly how he was measuring performance. His point was that, no matter how many transistors it’s got, even the speediest chip isn’t much good if it sucks more juice than a daycare center in August.
“As soon as I heard Steve say that the factor where Intel’s road map was superior was processing power per [watt],” Steve Wozniak wrote the New York Times, “I knew right away that it was exactly what I have been reading and saying and so have many others, that this is the real key to the future of high performance computers.”
Sure, switching to Intel means Steve can put “3GHz” and “Power Mac” in the same sentence without looking like he’s getting a migraine. But the main reason for the switch is heat. Faster, more powerful chips mean more power consumption. More power consumption means more heat. More heat means Apple can’t produce ever smaller, ever cooler products. And that makes Steve mad.
Sales of desktop computers are already flattening while laptops are booming. Meanwhile, the iPod is contributing increasingly to Apple revenues.
Five to ten years from now, where will those revenues come from? A tablet Mac? A living room Mac that’s some combination of home entertainment center, video jukebox, personal video recorder? Newton II? Whatever Apple comes up with, chances are it’ll be small and demand cool-running chips of all sorts—which Intel can provide in droves.
So maybe it’s time Moore’s Law got a slight rewrite—call it the Jobs Amendment: Transistor densities will continue to increase, but their temperatures can’t. Power management, as much as megahertz, will be the new frontier of CPU design. And, whatever the other reasons may have been for the switch, Apple’s betting that Intel’s going to beat IBM at that game.
By Dan Miller
Back in 1965, Intel founder Gordon Moore famously opined that ongoing advances in chip design would allow engineers to cram ever-greater numbers of transistors onto computer chips—the observation that became known as Moore’s Law. But there’s another passage in his 1965 paper (which you can download here) that isn’t remembered so well.
After describing the marvels of ever-greater transistor densities, Moore asked, “Will it be possible to remove the heat generated by tens of thousands of components in a single silicon chip?” His not-so-surprising answer: You betcha.
If we could shrink the volume of a standard high-speed digital computer to that required for the components themselves, we would expect it to glow brightly with present power dissipation. But it won’t happen with integrated circuits.
OK, so computer chips aren’t glowing—yet. But heat dissipation may still turn out to be as important to the next 40 years of computer design as Moore’s Law has been since 1965.
That’s what Steve Jobs seems to be thinking in making the switch from IBM to Intel. In explaining that switch, he put up the now-famous Keynote chart comparing the Power PC with Intel’s chips for “performance per watt.” Forget that he failed to define exactly how he was measuring performance. His point was that, no matter how many transistors it’s got, even the speediest chip isn’t much good if it sucks more juice than a daycare center in August.
“As soon as I heard Steve say that the factor where Intel’s road map was superior was processing power per [watt],” Steve Wozniak wrote the New York Times, “I knew right away that it was exactly what I have been reading and saying and so have many others, that this is the real key to the future of high performance computers.”
Sure, switching to Intel means Steve can put “3GHz” and “Power Mac” in the same sentence without looking like he’s getting a migraine. But the main reason for the switch is heat. Faster, more powerful chips mean more power consumption. More power consumption means more heat. More heat means Apple can’t produce ever smaller, ever cooler products. And that makes Steve mad.
Sales of desktop computers are already flattening while laptops are booming. Meanwhile, the iPod is contributing increasingly to Apple revenues.
Five to ten years from now, where will those revenues come from? A tablet Mac? A living room Mac that’s some combination of home entertainment center, video jukebox, personal video recorder? Newton II? Whatever Apple comes up with, chances are it’ll be small and demand cool-running chips of all sorts—which Intel can provide in droves.
So maybe it’s time Moore’s Law got a slight rewrite—call it the Jobs Amendment: Transistor densities will continue to increase, but their temperatures can’t. Power management, as much as megahertz, will be the new frontier of CPU design. And, whatever the other reasons may have been for the switch, Apple’s betting that Intel’s going to beat IBM at that game.
A Pro Camera That Amateurs Can Afford - New York Times
A Pro Camera That Amateurs Can Afford - New York Times
By DAVID POGUE
Published: June 16, 2005
PREDICTING the future just by extrapolating from current trends can be risky business. One megabyte of memory in 1985, for example, would have cost you about $400. By 1995, the same amount cost about $35. You might conclude that memory makers will eventually have to start paying you.
Still, watching prices of popular technologies crash to earth is always exciting while it lasts. Take the highly regarded digital single-lens reflex cameras from Nikon, for example. Over the years, prices for Nikon S.L.R.'s hit $5,000 (the D1 in 1999), $4,000 (the D1H in 2001), $2,000 (the D100 in 2002), $1,000 (last year's D70) and $900 (last month's slightly upgraded D70S).
Nikon's latest data point represents a delicious addition to the line: the D50, due next week. It takes the same spectacular photos as the bestselling D70S - for a list price of $750.
(These prices are for the body only - bring your own lens. With a great starter lens, the D50 will be priced at $900. Prices online will be even lower once the camera has been on sale for a few weeks.)
Now, $900 may still sound like a lot, but these are professional cameras - or were, until amateur shutterbugs started snapping them up. And that price frees you from the teeth-grinding annoyances of everyday consumer cams.
For example, the D50 powers up in two-tenths of a second, so you don't miss shots because your camera's not ready. You don't worry about running out of battery power by lunchtime at Six Flags, either; the D50's battery lasts for weeks on a charge. (It has a 2,000-shot capacity, compared with 200 to 400 on a pocket-size consumer cam.) And a digital S.L.R. reduces shutter lag - the half-second delay after you press the shutter button - to zero.
But a digital S.L.R.'s most important advantage is that it takes infinitely better pictures than those little pocket cams. These are big, bright, sharp, professional-looking photos, with ultra-sharp subjects and gently blurred backgrounds. You can freeze motion, making a pool splash look like crystallized ice; you can shoot in the dark, leaving the shutter open to record the orange trails of car taillights; and you can fire off several shots a second, improving your odds of catching the bat meeting the ball, the cork exiting the Champagne bottle or the 5-year-old sitting still.
What you can't do with a digital S.L.R., though, is capture digital movies, compose shots using the back-panel screen (you must look through the viewfinder) or put the camera in your pocket; a digital S.L.R. is bulky. Harsh trade-offs, yes, but that's the ballgame.
Still, the explosive success of Nikon's D70 and Canon's Digital Rebel proves that millions of consumers will overlook those cons to gain the pros - and to shoot like pros. So Nikon was smart to design, in the D50, a camera that offers the same stunning photographic quality as the D70 in a more family-friendly package. (You can see some examples at here.)
What does "family friendly" mean? It would be easy to say that the D50 is just a stripped-down D70, but that wouldn't be accurate. The D50 is certainly a modified D70, but it adds as many new features as it takes away.
The lower price is a key feature. But so is the reduction of size and weight, made possible in part by a switch in memory format (from Compact Flash to SD card). In conjunction with its new, compact 18- to 55-millimeter starter lens (a 3X zoom, the equivalent of a 28- to 80-millimeter zoom lens on a film-based S.L.R.), the fully assembled D50 makes a much less intimidating-looking package than its predecessor. (It's 5.2 by 4 by 3 inches, vs. 5.5 by 4.4 by 3.1 on the D70.)
If you can afford a second lens, Nikon's new, equally compact 55- to 200-millimeter telephoto lens (equivalent to an 80- to 300-millimeter lens on a film camera) makes a great choice at $250. Its zoom picks up where the starter lens leaves off, bringing you 11 times closer to soccer goals, school plays and shuttle launchings.
The D50 also features an improved autofocus system; in sports mode (one of its six scene presets), for example, it can track a subject as it moves. The D50's rubber eyepiece is larger and more comfortable than the D70's.
The displays have been rewritten for better clarity; the confirmation message when you delete a photo, for example, now tells you not only which button to press to proceed, but also which button cancels the operation. And the scene dial's new child mode is supposed to offer a magical combination of vivid clothing colors and natural flesh tones, although the pictures are generally indistinguishable from those of the auto setting.
The four-way controller's left and right arrow buttons now summon the previous and next photos. (On the D70, it was the up and down arrows, which always felt wrong.) Zooming in on a photo is still an awkward two-handed procedure that should send Nikon back to the drawing board - but at least on the D50, you can scroll through your pictures at the same magnification level, without having to rezoom each one.
So Nikon giveth, but it also taketh away - in this case, a bunch of tweaky features that nonprofessionals, it believes, won't miss. The D50's fastest shutter speed is 1/4000th of a second (slower than the 1/8000th of the D70). You can't choose any I.S.O. (light sensitivity) settings between 800 and 1600. The D50 can't drive a wireless flash attachment, as the D70 can. And the D50 lacks its predecessor's compositional grid option for the viewfinder, clip-on plastic screen protector and depth-of-field preview button. (The D.O.F. preview button closes down the lens aperture before shooting to give you an accurate view of what foreground and background elements will be in or out of focus at the selected aperture setting.)
In most cases, Nikon was right; for the amateur, most of these omissions are of advanced, fussy or obscure features. But in two cases, Nikon slipped with its scalpel, hacking off features that you may indeed miss in everyday shooting.
First, the burst mode captures only 2.5 frames per second, down from 3. That may not seem like a radical difference. But when you're trying to snap just the right instant in a skydiver's flight, the dog's trick or the children's ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl, every little frame helps.
Second, the L.C.D. status window on the top of the camera is no longer illuminated, which means you can't read it in dim light. To change flash, ISO or white-balance settings, for example, you're supposed to turn a dial - but without being able to see the status display, you have no idea how far you've cycled through the choices. (Note to D50 buyers: keep a keychain flashlight in your camera case. Note to Nikon: O.K., fine. Put the backlight back in, and raise the price 85 cents.)
Sold on the idea of a digital S.L.R. but not sure which one to buy? If you already own lenses for a certain brand, well, then, your decision is made. (Technical note: Remember though, that because a digital S.L.R.'s sensor is smaller than a frame of 35-millimeter film, traditional lenses act as though they are 1.5 times as long when they are mounted on a digital camera body. A 200-millimeter lens, for example, will give you an effective focal length of 300 millimeters.) )
Here are the D50 and the two current market leaders in a nutshell. (Pentax and Olympus also make sub-$1,000 digital S.L.R.'s.)
NIKON D50 Smaller, lighter and easier to use than the D70. The status-panel back light is the most serious missing frill. Price, with lens: under $900. (Discounting online hasn't yet begun.)
NIKON D70S Greatest photographic flexibility. Loaded with features that come in handy, if only occasionally. Best battery life (2,500 shots per charge). Wireless flash option. Awkward playback controls, slow U.S.B. transfer. Online price, with lens: $1,120.
CANON DIGITAL REBEL XT Highest photo resolution (8 megapixels, vs. 6.1 on the Nikons), yet least expensive. Shortest battery life (600 shots) and smallest screen (1.8 inches vs. 2.0 on the Nikons). Inferior starter lens. Awkwardly shrunken handgrip. Online price, with lens: $835. (The older, slower, larger original digital Rebel is still available, too, for as little as $660 online.)
The prices of digital S.L.R.'s haven't finished their long, slow descent from the stratosphere. He who waits longest, pays least - but misses out on a lot of spectacular photo ops. In the meantime, the Nikon D50 is a great camera, a mouth-watering option for the family amateur who wants to take professional pictures.
E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com
By DAVID POGUE
Published: June 16, 2005
PREDICTING the future just by extrapolating from current trends can be risky business. One megabyte of memory in 1985, for example, would have cost you about $400. By 1995, the same amount cost about $35. You might conclude that memory makers will eventually have to start paying you.
Still, watching prices of popular technologies crash to earth is always exciting while it lasts. Take the highly regarded digital single-lens reflex cameras from Nikon, for example. Over the years, prices for Nikon S.L.R.'s hit $5,000 (the D1 in 1999), $4,000 (the D1H in 2001), $2,000 (the D100 in 2002), $1,000 (last year's D70) and $900 (last month's slightly upgraded D70S).
Nikon's latest data point represents a delicious addition to the line: the D50, due next week. It takes the same spectacular photos as the bestselling D70S - for a list price of $750.
(These prices are for the body only - bring your own lens. With a great starter lens, the D50 will be priced at $900. Prices online will be even lower once the camera has been on sale for a few weeks.)
Now, $900 may still sound like a lot, but these are professional cameras - or were, until amateur shutterbugs started snapping them up. And that price frees you from the teeth-grinding annoyances of everyday consumer cams.
For example, the D50 powers up in two-tenths of a second, so you don't miss shots because your camera's not ready. You don't worry about running out of battery power by lunchtime at Six Flags, either; the D50's battery lasts for weeks on a charge. (It has a 2,000-shot capacity, compared with 200 to 400 on a pocket-size consumer cam.) And a digital S.L.R. reduces shutter lag - the half-second delay after you press the shutter button - to zero.
But a digital S.L.R.'s most important advantage is that it takes infinitely better pictures than those little pocket cams. These are big, bright, sharp, professional-looking photos, with ultra-sharp subjects and gently blurred backgrounds. You can freeze motion, making a pool splash look like crystallized ice; you can shoot in the dark, leaving the shutter open to record the orange trails of car taillights; and you can fire off several shots a second, improving your odds of catching the bat meeting the ball, the cork exiting the Champagne bottle or the 5-year-old sitting still.
What you can't do with a digital S.L.R., though, is capture digital movies, compose shots using the back-panel screen (you must look through the viewfinder) or put the camera in your pocket; a digital S.L.R. is bulky. Harsh trade-offs, yes, but that's the ballgame.
Still, the explosive success of Nikon's D70 and Canon's Digital Rebel proves that millions of consumers will overlook those cons to gain the pros - and to shoot like pros. So Nikon was smart to design, in the D50, a camera that offers the same stunning photographic quality as the D70 in a more family-friendly package. (You can see some examples at here.)
What does "family friendly" mean? It would be easy to say that the D50 is just a stripped-down D70, but that wouldn't be accurate. The D50 is certainly a modified D70, but it adds as many new features as it takes away.
The lower price is a key feature. But so is the reduction of size and weight, made possible in part by a switch in memory format (from Compact Flash to SD card). In conjunction with its new, compact 18- to 55-millimeter starter lens (a 3X zoom, the equivalent of a 28- to 80-millimeter zoom lens on a film-based S.L.R.), the fully assembled D50 makes a much less intimidating-looking package than its predecessor. (It's 5.2 by 4 by 3 inches, vs. 5.5 by 4.4 by 3.1 on the D70.)
If you can afford a second lens, Nikon's new, equally compact 55- to 200-millimeter telephoto lens (equivalent to an 80- to 300-millimeter lens on a film camera) makes a great choice at $250. Its zoom picks up where the starter lens leaves off, bringing you 11 times closer to soccer goals, school plays and shuttle launchings.
The D50 also features an improved autofocus system; in sports mode (one of its six scene presets), for example, it can track a subject as it moves. The D50's rubber eyepiece is larger and more comfortable than the D70's.
The displays have been rewritten for better clarity; the confirmation message when you delete a photo, for example, now tells you not only which button to press to proceed, but also which button cancels the operation. And the scene dial's new child mode is supposed to offer a magical combination of vivid clothing colors and natural flesh tones, although the pictures are generally indistinguishable from those of the auto setting.
The four-way controller's left and right arrow buttons now summon the previous and next photos. (On the D70, it was the up and down arrows, which always felt wrong.) Zooming in on a photo is still an awkward two-handed procedure that should send Nikon back to the drawing board - but at least on the D50, you can scroll through your pictures at the same magnification level, without having to rezoom each one.
So Nikon giveth, but it also taketh away - in this case, a bunch of tweaky features that nonprofessionals, it believes, won't miss. The D50's fastest shutter speed is 1/4000th of a second (slower than the 1/8000th of the D70). You can't choose any I.S.O. (light sensitivity) settings between 800 and 1600. The D50 can't drive a wireless flash attachment, as the D70 can. And the D50 lacks its predecessor's compositional grid option for the viewfinder, clip-on plastic screen protector and depth-of-field preview button. (The D.O.F. preview button closes down the lens aperture before shooting to give you an accurate view of what foreground and background elements will be in or out of focus at the selected aperture setting.)
In most cases, Nikon was right; for the amateur, most of these omissions are of advanced, fussy or obscure features. But in two cases, Nikon slipped with its scalpel, hacking off features that you may indeed miss in everyday shooting.
First, the burst mode captures only 2.5 frames per second, down from 3. That may not seem like a radical difference. But when you're trying to snap just the right instant in a skydiver's flight, the dog's trick or the children's ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl, every little frame helps.
Second, the L.C.D. status window on the top of the camera is no longer illuminated, which means you can't read it in dim light. To change flash, ISO or white-balance settings, for example, you're supposed to turn a dial - but without being able to see the status display, you have no idea how far you've cycled through the choices. (Note to D50 buyers: keep a keychain flashlight in your camera case. Note to Nikon: O.K., fine. Put the backlight back in, and raise the price 85 cents.)
Sold on the idea of a digital S.L.R. but not sure which one to buy? If you already own lenses for a certain brand, well, then, your decision is made. (Technical note: Remember though, that because a digital S.L.R.'s sensor is smaller than a frame of 35-millimeter film, traditional lenses act as though they are 1.5 times as long when they are mounted on a digital camera body. A 200-millimeter lens, for example, will give you an effective focal length of 300 millimeters.) )
Here are the D50 and the two current market leaders in a nutshell. (Pentax and Olympus also make sub-$1,000 digital S.L.R.'s.)
NIKON D50 Smaller, lighter and easier to use than the D70. The status-panel back light is the most serious missing frill. Price, with lens: under $900. (Discounting online hasn't yet begun.)
NIKON D70S Greatest photographic flexibility. Loaded with features that come in handy, if only occasionally. Best battery life (2,500 shots per charge). Wireless flash option. Awkward playback controls, slow U.S.B. transfer. Online price, with lens: $1,120.
CANON DIGITAL REBEL XT Highest photo resolution (8 megapixels, vs. 6.1 on the Nikons), yet least expensive. Shortest battery life (600 shots) and smallest screen (1.8 inches vs. 2.0 on the Nikons). Inferior starter lens. Awkwardly shrunken handgrip. Online price, with lens: $835. (The older, slower, larger original digital Rebel is still available, too, for as little as $660 online.)
The prices of digital S.L.R.'s haven't finished their long, slow descent from the stratosphere. He who waits longest, pays least - but misses out on a lot of spectacular photo ops. In the meantime, the Nikon D50 is a great camera, a mouth-watering option for the family amateur who wants to take professional pictures.
E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com
What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance - New York Times
What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance - New York Times
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: June 11, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO, June 10 - Nearly a quarter-century ago, Apple Computer ran a snarky ad after its onetime rival encroached on its territory: "Welcome, I.B.M. Seriously." This week, however, Steven P. Jobs had a different message for Big Blue, which had since become a chief ally: "Goodbye. Seriously."
Mr. Jobs, 50, a co-founder of Apple, is famously brash and mercurial. Even so, the Apple faithful - not to mention I.B.M. itself - were caught by surprise by Apple's decision to end its 14-year relationship with I.B.M. and team with Intel for its computer chip needs.
The buzz that began Monday among developers, bloggers, analysts and Apple followers trying to guess Mr. Jobs' true designs has not let up. After all, Mr. Jobs is a legend in no small part because he defied the monster combination that is Wintel - as the digerati call the Windows and Intel alliance - and lived to talk about it.
Apple's decision in the 1980's to use a different chip from the one put in most personal computers "fit in with the idea of Think Different," Stephen G. Wozniak, who founded Apple with Mr. Jobs in 1976, said in an e-mail exchange. "So it's hard for some people to accept this switch."
So what could a Macintel possibly hope to accomplish?
Potentially, quite a lot. In striking the deal, Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has opened a range of tantalizing new options for his quirky company.
Many people in the industry believe that Mr. Jobs is racing quietly toward a direct challenge to Microsoft and Sony in the market for digital entertainment gear for the living room. Indeed, Sony's top executives had tried to persuade Mr. Jobs to adopt a chip that I.B.M. has been developing for the next-generation Sony PlayStation.
An Intel processor inside a Macintosh could put the vast library of Windows-based games and software programs within the reach of Mac users - at least those who are willing to run a second operating system on their computers.
Moreover, having Intel Inside might solve an important perception problem that has long plagued Apple in its effort to convert consumers who are attracted to the company's industrial design, but who have stayed away because the computers do not run Windows programs.
There is an immediate risk in the tie-up with Intel, however: Mr. Jobs could soon find himself trapped if his best customers stop buying I.B.M.-based Macintoshes while they wait for more powerful Intel-based systems, which are likely to begin arriving in January 2006.
"There is going to be a long wait," said Mark D. Stahlman, a Wall Street analyst at Caris & Company. The power-conserving 64-bit Intel chips that Apple is counting on to rejuvenate its laptop products will not be available until early 2007, he pointed out.
In an interview, Mr. Jobs rejected the notion that Apple might suffer from what is known as the "Osborne Effect," a term that describes the fate of the computer pioneer Adam Osborne whose firm went bankrupt when he announced a successor to his pioneering portable computer before it was available.
At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Mr. Jobs talked of a transition that would appear almost seamless to customers. "As we look ahead we can envision some amazing products we want to build for you and we don't know how to build them with the future PowerPC road map," he said.
Nothing was seamless about how the deal with Intel came together.
Several executives close to the last-minute dealings between Apple and I.B.M. said that Mr. Jobs waited until the last moment - 3 p.m. on Friday, June 4 - to inform Big Blue. Those executives said that I.B.M. had learned about Apple's negotiations with Intel from news reports and that Apple had not returned phone calls in recent weeks.
Each side disputes what led to the breakup. People close to I.B.M. said pricing was a central issue, while Mr. Jobs insisted on stage Monday that I.B.M. had failed to meet promised performance measures.
On stage, Mr. Jobs noted that he had promised both a 3-gigahertz Macintosh as well as a more powerful PowerPC-based portable computer, promises that he had not been able to deliver.
In the end, Mr. Jobs was given no choice but to move his business to Intel, when I.B.M. executives said that without additional Apple investment they were unwilling to pursue the faster and lower-power chips he badly needs for his laptop business.
"Technical issues were secondary to the business issues," said an executive close to the I.B.M. side of the negotiations. Because the business was not profitable, I.B.M. "decided not to continue to go ahead with the product road map."
But Mr. Jobs disputed this assessment, simply stating that I.B.M. had failed to meet its technology road map. The issues in the end, he said, came down to speed and the absence of a chip that consumed less electricity than traditional processors designed for PC's.
"As soon as I heard Steve say that the factor where Intel's road map was superior was processing power per [watt] I knew right away that it was exactly what I have been reading and saying and so have many others, that this is the real key to the future of high performance computers," Mr. Wozniak wrote.
As it happens, Intel's was not the only alternative chip design that Apple had explored for the Mac. An executive close to Sony said that last year Mr. Jobs met in California with both Nobuyuki Idei, then the chairman and chief executive of the Japanese consumer electronics firm, and with Kenichi Kutaragi, the creator of the Sony PlayStation.
Mr. Kutaragi tried to interest Mr. Jobs in adopting the Cell chip, which is being developed by I.B.M. for use in the coming PlayStation 3, in exchange for access to certain Sony technologies. Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.
Now that Mr. Jobs has broken with I.B.M., however, Apple is free to pursue a potentially intriguing consumer electronics strategy with Intel.
Intel has been looking for ways to get its chips into devices that can compete with game consoles as living-room entertainment hubs. In fact, all three next-generation video game machines made by Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are based on I.B.M. chips. And analysts say that both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3, scheduled to arrive next spring, will be positioned as home media hubs in addition to being video game machines - and priced far lower than the Intel-powered, Windows Media Center PC's that are also aimed at the living room.
Should the new consoles find wide acceptance as broad-based entertainment engines, Intel will need to respond - and one attractive alternative would be an inexpensive Macintosh Mini based on an Intel processor, able to run the vast library of PC games.
Before he can set his sights on that new market, Mr. Jobs faces the task of shoring up his base, his customers and developers. On Monday, he made the case to the software designers who must be willing to rewrite their software for the new Macintel world.
Early indications are that he made a convincing presentation.
"The reason people buy Mac is the software, and I think the real fun is yet to come," said Scott Love, the president of AquaMinds, a software concern in Palo Alto that sells a Macintosh program called NoteTaker used by writers, researchers and students. "We'll be able to develop a program that will just work on both I.B.M. and Intel-based computers."
Even more important will be Mr. Jobs' ability to persuade the Macintosh faithful to join him in his journey from I.B.M. to Intel. That is where he has an advantage over virtually every other executive.
"He is still committed to the idea of an Apple culture," said Peter Schwartz, the co-founder and chairman of the Global Business Network, a consulting firm in Emeryville, Calif. "It is the counterculture to the dominant Windows culture."
Indeed, Mr. Jobs has always set himself apart from other corporate executives. After all, which other American business executive would have thought to name the holding company for his executive jet airplane "Marmalade Skies"?
Steve Lohr contributed reporting from New York for this article..
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: June 11, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO, June 10 - Nearly a quarter-century ago, Apple Computer ran a snarky ad after its onetime rival encroached on its territory: "Welcome, I.B.M. Seriously." This week, however, Steven P. Jobs had a different message for Big Blue, which had since become a chief ally: "Goodbye. Seriously."
Mr. Jobs, 50, a co-founder of Apple, is famously brash and mercurial. Even so, the Apple faithful - not to mention I.B.M. itself - were caught by surprise by Apple's decision to end its 14-year relationship with I.B.M. and team with Intel for its computer chip needs.
The buzz that began Monday among developers, bloggers, analysts and Apple followers trying to guess Mr. Jobs' true designs has not let up. After all, Mr. Jobs is a legend in no small part because he defied the monster combination that is Wintel - as the digerati call the Windows and Intel alliance - and lived to talk about it.
Apple's decision in the 1980's to use a different chip from the one put in most personal computers "fit in with the idea of Think Different," Stephen G. Wozniak, who founded Apple with Mr. Jobs in 1976, said in an e-mail exchange. "So it's hard for some people to accept this switch."
So what could a Macintel possibly hope to accomplish?
Potentially, quite a lot. In striking the deal, Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has opened a range of tantalizing new options for his quirky company.
Many people in the industry believe that Mr. Jobs is racing quietly toward a direct challenge to Microsoft and Sony in the market for digital entertainment gear for the living room. Indeed, Sony's top executives had tried to persuade Mr. Jobs to adopt a chip that I.B.M. has been developing for the next-generation Sony PlayStation.
An Intel processor inside a Macintosh could put the vast library of Windows-based games and software programs within the reach of Mac users - at least those who are willing to run a second operating system on their computers.
Moreover, having Intel Inside might solve an important perception problem that has long plagued Apple in its effort to convert consumers who are attracted to the company's industrial design, but who have stayed away because the computers do not run Windows programs.
There is an immediate risk in the tie-up with Intel, however: Mr. Jobs could soon find himself trapped if his best customers stop buying I.B.M.-based Macintoshes while they wait for more powerful Intel-based systems, which are likely to begin arriving in January 2006.
"There is going to be a long wait," said Mark D. Stahlman, a Wall Street analyst at Caris & Company. The power-conserving 64-bit Intel chips that Apple is counting on to rejuvenate its laptop products will not be available until early 2007, he pointed out.
In an interview, Mr. Jobs rejected the notion that Apple might suffer from what is known as the "Osborne Effect," a term that describes the fate of the computer pioneer Adam Osborne whose firm went bankrupt when he announced a successor to his pioneering portable computer before it was available.
At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Mr. Jobs talked of a transition that would appear almost seamless to customers. "As we look ahead we can envision some amazing products we want to build for you and we don't know how to build them with the future PowerPC road map," he said.
Nothing was seamless about how the deal with Intel came together.
Several executives close to the last-minute dealings between Apple and I.B.M. said that Mr. Jobs waited until the last moment - 3 p.m. on Friday, June 4 - to inform Big Blue. Those executives said that I.B.M. had learned about Apple's negotiations with Intel from news reports and that Apple had not returned phone calls in recent weeks.
Each side disputes what led to the breakup. People close to I.B.M. said pricing was a central issue, while Mr. Jobs insisted on stage Monday that I.B.M. had failed to meet promised performance measures.
On stage, Mr. Jobs noted that he had promised both a 3-gigahertz Macintosh as well as a more powerful PowerPC-based portable computer, promises that he had not been able to deliver.
In the end, Mr. Jobs was given no choice but to move his business to Intel, when I.B.M. executives said that without additional Apple investment they were unwilling to pursue the faster and lower-power chips he badly needs for his laptop business.
"Technical issues were secondary to the business issues," said an executive close to the I.B.M. side of the negotiations. Because the business was not profitable, I.B.M. "decided not to continue to go ahead with the product road map."
But Mr. Jobs disputed this assessment, simply stating that I.B.M. had failed to meet its technology road map. The issues in the end, he said, came down to speed and the absence of a chip that consumed less electricity than traditional processors designed for PC's.
"As soon as I heard Steve say that the factor where Intel's road map was superior was processing power per [watt] I knew right away that it was exactly what I have been reading and saying and so have many others, that this is the real key to the future of high performance computers," Mr. Wozniak wrote.
As it happens, Intel's was not the only alternative chip design that Apple had explored for the Mac. An executive close to Sony said that last year Mr. Jobs met in California with both Nobuyuki Idei, then the chairman and chief executive of the Japanese consumer electronics firm, and with Kenichi Kutaragi, the creator of the Sony PlayStation.
Mr. Kutaragi tried to interest Mr. Jobs in adopting the Cell chip, which is being developed by I.B.M. for use in the coming PlayStation 3, in exchange for access to certain Sony technologies. Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.
Now that Mr. Jobs has broken with I.B.M., however, Apple is free to pursue a potentially intriguing consumer electronics strategy with Intel.
Intel has been looking for ways to get its chips into devices that can compete with game consoles as living-room entertainment hubs. In fact, all three next-generation video game machines made by Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are based on I.B.M. chips. And analysts say that both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3, scheduled to arrive next spring, will be positioned as home media hubs in addition to being video game machines - and priced far lower than the Intel-powered, Windows Media Center PC's that are also aimed at the living room.
Should the new consoles find wide acceptance as broad-based entertainment engines, Intel will need to respond - and one attractive alternative would be an inexpensive Macintosh Mini based on an Intel processor, able to run the vast library of PC games.
Before he can set his sights on that new market, Mr. Jobs faces the task of shoring up his base, his customers and developers. On Monday, he made the case to the software designers who must be willing to rewrite their software for the new Macintel world.
Early indications are that he made a convincing presentation.
"The reason people buy Mac is the software, and I think the real fun is yet to come," said Scott Love, the president of AquaMinds, a software concern in Palo Alto that sells a Macintosh program called NoteTaker used by writers, researchers and students. "We'll be able to develop a program that will just work on both I.B.M. and Intel-based computers."
Even more important will be Mr. Jobs' ability to persuade the Macintosh faithful to join him in his journey from I.B.M. to Intel. That is where he has an advantage over virtually every other executive.
"He is still committed to the idea of an Apple culture," said Peter Schwartz, the co-founder and chairman of the Global Business Network, a consulting firm in Emeryville, Calif. "It is the counterculture to the dominant Windows culture."
Indeed, Mr. Jobs has always set himself apart from other corporate executives. After all, which other American business executive would have thought to name the holding company for his executive jet airplane "Marmalade Skies"?
Steve Lohr contributed reporting from New York for this article..
Thursday, June 16, 2005
An "I don't really care" kind of day
This is one of those days when I woke up and I sut my eyes again. It's Thursday, the sun is shining, not too brightly with all the clouds in the sky. The alarm went off at 5:15 (or 5:30) and I set it to snooze. It went off again, and I turned it off. And I closed my eyes. After a while I looked at the clock, and it's past 6:00 in the morning. Again, I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, it was 6:30. No hurry. Just got up and out of bed. The kids had already finished eating and were already in their uniforms.
I got up, showered, dressed and ate. And out of the house by 7:10. I knew that when I went to the shuttle terminal, there would be a long line and I'd have to wait past 7:30 to get a ride. I got a ride past 8:00.
There was a girl ahead of me -- maybe fifteen "slots" ahead, which means she'd be riding one vehicle ahead of me -- she saw an acquaintance about thirty persons behind me. She dragged this second person to her slot in the line, and I don't care. What's the worst that can happen, I arrive late at the office? I was already running late. Funny part about it was that, the second lady got dragged to up the line, and when the vans came along, they rode in separate vans.
I arrived at the office around 9:15.
Late. Second day in a row.
Who cares?
--andoy
16 June 2005
I got up, showered, dressed and ate. And out of the house by 7:10. I knew that when I went to the shuttle terminal, there would be a long line and I'd have to wait past 7:30 to get a ride. I got a ride past 8:00.
There was a girl ahead of me -- maybe fifteen "slots" ahead, which means she'd be riding one vehicle ahead of me -- she saw an acquaintance about thirty persons behind me. She dragged this second person to her slot in the line, and I don't care. What's the worst that can happen, I arrive late at the office? I was already running late. Funny part about it was that, the second lady got dragged to up the line, and when the vans came along, they rode in separate vans.
I arrived at the office around 9:15.
Late. Second day in a row.
Who cares?
--andoy
16 June 2005
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Pinoypoets' Anniversary Night at Conspiracy
If you're a writer, a poet, an artist or simply a lover of literature, better block off Tuesday, June 28 on your social calendar. Pinoypoets (PP), an online community of literary enthusiasts, will be holding its first anniversary bash at Conspiracy Bar in Quezon City.
The event, dubbed PP 'to!(The Pinoypoets' First Anniversary), promises to be an evening filled with laughter, music, and of course, excellent poetry. Prominent social, academic, and literary figures Makati Rep. Teddy Locsin Jr, Conchitina Cruz, Vin and Kris Dancel, Noel Del Prado, Joyce Burton Titular, Enrico John Torralba, Hannah Romawac, Roli Inocencio, Monica Llamas and Gary Granada, are but a few of our guest readers.
The celebration will also be highlighted by performances from G-Strings, 10kpp, Rubberband, Johnoy Danao of Bridge, Paramita, and Hanna Romawac of Session Road.
Pinoypoets is a community of poets, writers and literary enthusiasts who share their works, thoughts and insights on poetry. Formed by less than 50 members in June 2004, Pinoypoets has grown to 250 members based in different regions of the archipelago---and even abroad.
Its primary objective is to facilitate a creative forum and enrich its members' knowledge and craft. Michael Coroza, Edgar Samar, Santiago Villafania, Louie John Sanchez, Eileen Tabios, Bino Realuyo and Jema Pamintuan, some of the most respected names in Philippine poetry today, are the group's consultants and critics.
PP 'to!(The Pinoypoets' First Anniversary), will start at 8 p.m. Admission is FREE! For more information, please get in touch with Rhodge Fernandez (721 7229, seventhgecko@yahoo.com ), Kathline Tolosa (09175777128, kathline_anne@yahoo.com ) or Romel Samson (09278470212, risingphoenix101@yahoo.com)
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
One of these days...
One of these days, this blog here will move direction, and there will be a real difference in approach between this and the other.
I think I'll move all succeeding poetry contents to the the carabao blog, including all the links to Pinoy Poets members. And this one will be for technology, rants, blog links, and other odds and ends. Random thoughts would be between the two.
Really, really other there entries will have to find a different home.
For now, the planned movement will be content-wise in an evolutionary manner.
--andoy
14 June 2005
I think I'll move all succeeding poetry contents to the the carabao blog, including all the links to Pinoy Poets members. And this one will be for technology, rants, blog links, and other odds and ends. Random thoughts would be between the two.
Really, really other there entries will have to find a different home.
For now, the planned movement will be content-wise in an evolutionary manner.
--andoy
14 June 2005
In My Opinion: Guilty! Jueteng
Guilty! (But then again, who else isn't.)
Let's just get this over and done with. Chavit Singson is guilty. He is a jueteng lord. He was and is, and will always be involved with jueteng. Pampanga Representative Mikey Arroyo is stupid enough to get into politics and he is stupid enough to receive money from jueteng. Iggy Arroyo? He's always been tainted since day one of the GMA Presidency. FG Mike Arroyo? Too many stories from unimpeachable sources about his backroom dealings.
And whoever goes into Malacanang will also be receiving a big sum of money from jueteng.
Which begs two questions: How can a child say that he has washed his hands, just because the right hand is clean? Or how can it be possible that a child can have a perfectly clean right hand, while keeping the left hand dirty?
That's my opinion.
--andoy
14 June 2005
Let's just get this over and done with. Chavit Singson is guilty. He is a jueteng lord. He was and is, and will always be involved with jueteng. Pampanga Representative Mikey Arroyo is stupid enough to get into politics and he is stupid enough to receive money from jueteng. Iggy Arroyo? He's always been tainted since day one of the GMA Presidency. FG Mike Arroyo? Too many stories from unimpeachable sources about his backroom dealings.
And whoever goes into Malacanang will also be receiving a big sum of money from jueteng.
Which begs two questions: How can a child say that he has washed his hands, just because the right hand is clean? Or how can it be possible that a child can have a perfectly clean right hand, while keeping the left hand dirty?
That's my opinion.
--andoy
14 June 2005
In My Opinion: Guilty! GMA Tapes
Why don't she just admit the whole conversation? Why do they need to do a white wash? I have no idea what they want to prove, and I guess, neither do they.
First of all, admit the tapes are true. Second, those tapes are passe. The events are over and done with and the "evidence" is inadmissible in court. And last, whoever did not cheat in the elections, are not in the Senate (or House of Representatives) right now. Last, I don't want Noli de Castro to be the next President.
Forget it, and move on to the next issue...
--andoy
14 June 2005
First of all, admit the tapes are true. Second, those tapes are passe. The events are over and done with and the "evidence" is inadmissible in court. And last, whoever did not cheat in the elections, are not in the Senate (or House of Representatives) right now. Last, I don't want Noli de Castro to be the next President.
Forget it, and move on to the next issue...
--andoy
14 June 2005
In My Opinion: Guilty! Michael Jackson
Hello World!
Just to make it clear, the last time I liked to hear Michael Jackson's music was with the Thriller album. And to think that when he started to record that album, he still had his original nose.
This is the gist of my gripe here: this was not the first time that he has been accused of child molestation. And this will not be the last time he will be accused. And how many more times will he be accused before he is found guilty? How many more stupid parents will allow their kids to play with him?
Michael Jackson is guilty. The parents' are stupid and guilty! And all of them are demented! Crazies!
--andoy
14 June 2005
Just to make it clear, the last time I liked to hear Michael Jackson's music was with the Thriller album. And to think that when he started to record that album, he still had his original nose.
This is the gist of my gripe here: this was not the first time that he has been accused of child molestation. And this will not be the last time he will be accused. And how many more times will he be accused before he is found guilty? How many more stupid parents will allow their kids to play with him?
Michael Jackson is guilty. The parents' are stupid and guilty! And all of them are demented! Crazies!
--andoy
14 June 2005
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Wala Lang
Lonely, dark and downtrodden mood... wala lang.
Our offices are located on the seventeenth floor and I dare not go anywhere near balcony (also called the smoking area) to take a look at the weather. I might jump.
I'm listening to "Somebody," "Both Sides Now," "My Immortal" and other downer songs including "Downtown" (no pun intended) which to me has downer memory connections.
Must be the rain. I don't know.
I am not going to jump! Besides I've already confirmed to join a photo session on Monday next week (13 June). That would be a shame, not attending a free photo session. (Ha! Take that, Lord Vader!)
--andoy
8 June 2005
Our offices are located on the seventeenth floor and I dare not go anywhere near balcony (also called the smoking area) to take a look at the weather. I might jump.
I'm listening to "Somebody," "Both Sides Now," "My Immortal" and other downer songs including "Downtown" (no pun intended) which to me has downer memory connections.
Must be the rain. I don't know.
I am not going to jump! Besides I've already confirmed to join a photo session on Monday next week (13 June). That would be a shame, not attending a free photo session. (Ha! Take that, Lord Vader!)
--andoy
8 June 2005
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Live from WWDC: Steve Jobs keynote - Engadget - www.engadget.com
Live from WWDC: Steve Jobs keynote - Engadget - www.engadget.com
Live from WWDC: Steve Jobs keynote
Posted Jun 6, 2005, 1:00 PM ET by Peter Rojas
Related entries: Desktops, Laptops
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference begins this morning, and you know what we’re waiting for: Stevie J. is expected to drop a bombshell and announce that they’re switching to Intel chips. Engadget bestest buddy Paul Boutin is there and will be live-blogging Jobs’ keynote for us, so stay tuned for all the gory details:
9:59am PDT - Paul says he’s in line to go in, sandwiched between NGerda from Wikinews and John Markoff from the New York Times. Everything should start rolling in a few minutes.
10:06am PDT- “Steve and his bottle of water take the stage. “Today is an important day.” Half a million members in the developer community. 109 Apple stores world wide get 1 million visitors a week. $500M in 3rd part products sold in past 12 months.
10:07am PDT - Steve is showing off the London store again. Those lucky RHD geeks! (RHD = right hand drive)
10:09am PDT - Video promo for Apple stores.
10:11am PDT - iPod update: You know you’re successful when you’re on the cover of The New Yorker (in a goofy cartoon). 76% market share. 430M songs sold thru iTunes. iTunes 82% market share.
10:12am PDT - Steve is explaining Podcasting. “TiVo for radio.” “Wayne’s World for radio.” “We see it as the hottest thing going in radio.” 8,000+ podcasts and growing.
10:14am PDT - “The pros have realized this is huge.” Rush Limbaugh, ABC News NBC News ESPN Disney Proctor & Gamble etc, long list. ot surprisingly, iTunes is adding Podcasting support, including a podcast directory in the iTMS. [Which is old news to us] “You don’t have to type URLs into iTunes, although you can still do that.” Demo: Adam Curry podcast in iTunes.
10:15am PDT - Curry sound bite: “Sixty million dollars worth of airplay strapped to my ass.” KCRW demo.
10:16am PDT - The Treatment KCRW show, with fat-sounding Kruder & Dorfmmeister theme music. The point being a podcast can sound as good as satellite radio. iTunes shows album cover art to go with songs being ‘cast.
10:17am PDT - Mac update. PC units shipped, growth is slowing fromm 10% 5 quarters ago to just above 10%. Mac has gone from less than 10% growth to just over 40% in most recent quarter. Steve showing high points of Tiger. Quicktime with H264 for Windows preview release today.
10:20am PDT - Steve running through gushy quotes about Tiger from the press.
10:21am PDT - 2,000,000 copies of Tiger sold already. 40+ Spotlight plugins, 400+ Dashboard widgets, 550+ Automator programs available in first few weeks.
10:23am PDT - Dashboard demo. Amazon, BusinessWeek, CNN. Calendar (Steve enters far-in-future Longhorn date), package tracker. NPR station finder. Steve is now explaining Wikipedia as “one of the most accurate encyclopedias in the world.”
10:25am PDT - OS 10.5 will be called Leopard. Timed for release near Longhorn.
10:26am PDT - “Now, let’s go to the big topic: Transitions.”
10:27am PDT - 1994-1996 Moto 68K -> PowerPC. “I wasn’t here then, but from everything I hear the team did a great job.” 2001-2003: OS9 - OS X.
10:28am PDT - “It’s time for a third transition. And yes, (puts up slide that says): It’s true.” Next slide is one word: “Why?”
10:29am PDT - “I stood up two years ago and promised this (3.0G PowerMac), and we haven’t been able to deliver.” Steve says it’s bigger than that, though. No roadmap for the future based on PowerPC - they can’t see a future.
10:30am PDT - Intel offers not just increased performance, but reduced power consumption. Transition will be complete by WWDC ‘07.
10:31am PDT - PowerPC - 15 integer perf units (not sure what) per watt. Intel does 70 per watt. “Mac OS X has been living a secret double life” for the past 5 years.
10:32am PDT - Satellite shot with crosshairs shows building where a team has been working on the “Just in Case…” scenario. Every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for Intel for the past 5 years. Here comes the demo!
10:33am PDT - “As a matter of fact, this system I’ve been using here…” the keynote’s been running on a P4 3.6GHz all morning”
10:34am PDT - Steve’s hopping through every app. Performance is snappy. He’s playing an H264 movie trailer for something wtih Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. “Ok, enough of that” he says after a few seconds.
10:35am PDT - Here’s the geekout for developers: Widgets, scripts, Java: they’ll just work. Cocoa - Xcode: small tweak, recompile. Carbon - Xcode - a few weeks of tweaking, recompile. Carbon- Metroworks: Move to XCode.
10:37am PDT - There’s a checkbox for builds: “Intel, PowerPC” that makes a cross-platform single binary.
10:38am PDT - Theo Gray, cofounder of Wolfram Research, comes onstage to talk about porting Mathematica in the past 5 days.
10:39am PDT - “I get the most ridiculous phone calls from Apple sometimes. This was like 9 c’clock at night and he says, ‘I can’t tell you what it is, but …” they flew out a developer with source code to do a demo for today.
10:40am PDT - Theo is hilarious. “I said, ‘I’ll send out our crack team of Mac developers that we keep on standby.’” Turns to guy standing next to computer. “That’s you, Rob.”
10:41am PDT - Theo says it took 2 hours to get it ported: “We had a lot of resources. There’s Rob, there’s Apple … your mileage may vary. But his biggest problem was figuring out what to do with the rest of the weekend.”
10:42am PDT - Mathematica demo. This stuff always makes me wish I’d studied harder at MIT.
10:43am PDT - Theo shows a 3D diagram being built and modified on the fly. “It could be experimental architecture, something you’d see in Vegas, or it could be candidate nanotech architecture.”
10:45am PDT - Steve back onstage: “Not every application will be Universal on Day 1.” A new technology, Rosetta, will run existing PowerPC apps on Intel. Dynamic binary translation, transparent to users. “Fast (enough),” the slide jokes, that most users won’t know.
10:46am PDT - Demo: MS Word PowerPC binary on Intel. Excel spreadsheet. They’re no notably slower than usual. Photoshop still takes forever to load, but all the plugins work. Photoshop Filters seem fast enough.
10:49am PDT - Select and premier ADC member software developers will be getting a build kit.
10:50am PDT - Roz Ho, General Manager of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit, is onstage to talk about what MS is doing for the Intel platform.
10:51am PDT - Unfortunately her speech seems to have been written by a junior flack at Waggener Edstrom or Edelman. Waiting for her to get to a noun… Here we go: Universal binary versions of Office coming, as we just saw.
10:53am PDT - Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe, comes on, jokes that his mom thinks he works for Apple. “The only question I have, Steve, is what took you so long?”
10:55am PDT - Steve is talking about how Intel engineers turn out to be passionate about their products, just like Apple employees.
10:56am PDT - Paul Otellini, President & CEO of Intel, is on. “I suspect there’s a whole bunch of you who never thought you’d see that [Intel] logo on this stage. I was one of them.”
10:58am PDT - Otellini is telling a timeline story that goes back to founding of Intel in 1968, founding of Apple in 1976. Photo of Jobs and Robert Noyce together. As Markoff said to me this morning, people love to see photos of execs with long hair. Otellini says he asked Jobs, “Is that the last time you wore a tie?” Steve’s answer: “No, it’s the last time I wore a moustache.” 1996: “They set fire to our bunny person!”
10:59am PDT - Runs old TV ad: “Apple Computer would like to apologize for toasting the Pentium in public.” Otellini: “Now, we didn’t have a grudge about that…”
11:00am PDT - Here’s the talking point you’ll be hearing over and over: Intel chips run cooler than the PowerPC. More boilerplate about combining our strengths, two legendary companies, relentless advancement (advancement?) of Moore’s Law, etc….
11:01am PDT - More boilerplate: It’s not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning! He was funny about the bunny, though.
11:04am PDT - Steve is back on now, restating the theme of this as Apple’s 3rd big transition. “It’s not gonna happen overnight. We’re making AWESOME machines right now” (Frequent comment in the press line: Will anyone buy one in the next year?) “When we meet again here next year, we will have products with Intel processors entering the market.” Next year he’ll show Leopard. One non-boilerplate truth: “The soul of a Mac is its operating system.” Plus the slick industrial design, of course.
11:05am PDT - That’s it, show’s over!
-=0=-
Several things. Everyone on the Apple side is harping about the support and compatibility issues. What has been conveniently left out is that if it runs on Intel. It will run on AMD. And most probably, the Mac will be running on 64-bit Intel (or AMD Opteron, for that matter.)
--andoy
7 June 2005
Live from WWDC: Steve Jobs keynote
Posted Jun 6, 2005, 1:00 PM ET by Peter Rojas
Related entries: Desktops, Laptops
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference begins this morning, and you know what we’re waiting for: Stevie J. is expected to drop a bombshell and announce that they’re switching to Intel chips. Engadget bestest buddy Paul Boutin is there and will be live-blogging Jobs’ keynote for us, so stay tuned for all the gory details:
9:59am PDT - Paul says he’s in line to go in, sandwiched between NGerda from Wikinews and John Markoff from the New York Times. Everything should start rolling in a few minutes.
10:06am PDT- “Steve and his bottle of water take the stage. “Today is an important day.” Half a million members in the developer community. 109 Apple stores world wide get 1 million visitors a week. $500M in 3rd part products sold in past 12 months.
10:07am PDT - Steve is showing off the London store again. Those lucky RHD geeks! (RHD = right hand drive)
10:09am PDT - Video promo for Apple stores.
10:11am PDT - iPod update: You know you’re successful when you’re on the cover of The New Yorker (in a goofy cartoon). 76% market share. 430M songs sold thru iTunes. iTunes 82% market share.
10:12am PDT - Steve is explaining Podcasting. “TiVo for radio.” “Wayne’s World for radio.” “We see it as the hottest thing going in radio.” 8,000+ podcasts and growing.
10:14am PDT - “The pros have realized this is huge.” Rush Limbaugh, ABC News NBC News ESPN Disney Proctor & Gamble etc, long list. ot surprisingly, iTunes is adding Podcasting support, including a podcast directory in the iTMS. [Which is old news to us] “You don’t have to type URLs into iTunes, although you can still do that.” Demo: Adam Curry podcast in iTunes.
10:15am PDT - Curry sound bite: “Sixty million dollars worth of airplay strapped to my ass.” KCRW demo.
10:16am PDT - The Treatment KCRW show, with fat-sounding Kruder & Dorfmmeister theme music. The point being a podcast can sound as good as satellite radio. iTunes shows album cover art to go with songs being ‘cast.
10:17am PDT - Mac update. PC units shipped, growth is slowing fromm 10% 5 quarters ago to just above 10%. Mac has gone from less than 10% growth to just over 40% in most recent quarter. Steve showing high points of Tiger. Quicktime with H264 for Windows preview release today.
10:20am PDT - Steve running through gushy quotes about Tiger from the press.
10:21am PDT - 2,000,000 copies of Tiger sold already. 40+ Spotlight plugins, 400+ Dashboard widgets, 550+ Automator programs available in first few weeks.
10:23am PDT - Dashboard demo. Amazon, BusinessWeek, CNN. Calendar (Steve enters far-in-future Longhorn date), package tracker. NPR station finder. Steve is now explaining Wikipedia as “one of the most accurate encyclopedias in the world.”
10:25am PDT - OS 10.5 will be called Leopard. Timed for release near Longhorn.
10:26am PDT - “Now, let’s go to the big topic: Transitions.”
10:27am PDT - 1994-1996 Moto 68K -> PowerPC. “I wasn’t here then, but from everything I hear the team did a great job.” 2001-2003: OS9 - OS X.
10:28am PDT - “It’s time for a third transition. And yes, (puts up slide that says): It’s true.” Next slide is one word: “Why?”
10:29am PDT - “I stood up two years ago and promised this (3.0G PowerMac), and we haven’t been able to deliver.” Steve says it’s bigger than that, though. No roadmap for the future based on PowerPC - they can’t see a future.
10:30am PDT - Intel offers not just increased performance, but reduced power consumption. Transition will be complete by WWDC ‘07.
10:31am PDT - PowerPC - 15 integer perf units (not sure what) per watt. Intel does 70 per watt. “Mac OS X has been living a secret double life” for the past 5 years.
10:32am PDT - Satellite shot with crosshairs shows building where a team has been working on the “Just in Case…” scenario. Every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for Intel for the past 5 years. Here comes the demo!
10:33am PDT - “As a matter of fact, this system I’ve been using here…” the keynote’s been running on a P4 3.6GHz all morning”
10:34am PDT - Steve’s hopping through every app. Performance is snappy. He’s playing an H264 movie trailer for something wtih Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. “Ok, enough of that” he says after a few seconds.
10:35am PDT - Here’s the geekout for developers: Widgets, scripts, Java: they’ll just work. Cocoa - Xcode: small tweak, recompile. Carbon - Xcode - a few weeks of tweaking, recompile. Carbon- Metroworks: Move to XCode.
10:37am PDT - There’s a checkbox for builds: “Intel, PowerPC” that makes a cross-platform single binary.
10:38am PDT - Theo Gray, cofounder of Wolfram Research, comes onstage to talk about porting Mathematica in the past 5 days.
10:39am PDT - “I get the most ridiculous phone calls from Apple sometimes. This was like 9 c’clock at night and he says, ‘I can’t tell you what it is, but …” they flew out a developer with source code to do a demo for today.
10:40am PDT - Theo is hilarious. “I said, ‘I’ll send out our crack team of Mac developers that we keep on standby.’” Turns to guy standing next to computer. “That’s you, Rob.”
10:41am PDT - Theo says it took 2 hours to get it ported: “We had a lot of resources. There’s Rob, there’s Apple … your mileage may vary. But his biggest problem was figuring out what to do with the rest of the weekend.”
10:42am PDT - Mathematica demo. This stuff always makes me wish I’d studied harder at MIT.
10:43am PDT - Theo shows a 3D diagram being built and modified on the fly. “It could be experimental architecture, something you’d see in Vegas, or it could be candidate nanotech architecture.”
10:45am PDT - Steve back onstage: “Not every application will be Universal on Day 1.” A new technology, Rosetta, will run existing PowerPC apps on Intel. Dynamic binary translation, transparent to users. “Fast (enough),” the slide jokes, that most users won’t know.
10:46am PDT - Demo: MS Word PowerPC binary on Intel. Excel spreadsheet. They’re no notably slower than usual. Photoshop still takes forever to load, but all the plugins work. Photoshop Filters seem fast enough.
10:49am PDT - Select and premier ADC member software developers will be getting a build kit.
10:50am PDT - Roz Ho, General Manager of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit, is onstage to talk about what MS is doing for the Intel platform.
10:51am PDT - Unfortunately her speech seems to have been written by a junior flack at Waggener Edstrom or Edelman. Waiting for her to get to a noun… Here we go: Universal binary versions of Office coming, as we just saw.
10:53am PDT - Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe, comes on, jokes that his mom thinks he works for Apple. “The only question I have, Steve, is what took you so long?”
10:55am PDT - Steve is talking about how Intel engineers turn out to be passionate about their products, just like Apple employees.
10:56am PDT - Paul Otellini, President & CEO of Intel, is on. “I suspect there’s a whole bunch of you who never thought you’d see that [Intel] logo on this stage. I was one of them.”
10:58am PDT - Otellini is telling a timeline story that goes back to founding of Intel in 1968, founding of Apple in 1976. Photo of Jobs and Robert Noyce together. As Markoff said to me this morning, people love to see photos of execs with long hair. Otellini says he asked Jobs, “Is that the last time you wore a tie?” Steve’s answer: “No, it’s the last time I wore a moustache.” 1996: “They set fire to our bunny person!”
10:59am PDT - Runs old TV ad: “Apple Computer would like to apologize for toasting the Pentium in public.” Otellini: “Now, we didn’t have a grudge about that…”
11:00am PDT - Here’s the talking point you’ll be hearing over and over: Intel chips run cooler than the PowerPC. More boilerplate about combining our strengths, two legendary companies, relentless advancement (advancement?) of Moore’s Law, etc….
11:01am PDT - More boilerplate: It’s not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning! He was funny about the bunny, though.
11:04am PDT - Steve is back on now, restating the theme of this as Apple’s 3rd big transition. “It’s not gonna happen overnight. We’re making AWESOME machines right now” (Frequent comment in the press line: Will anyone buy one in the next year?) “When we meet again here next year, we will have products with Intel processors entering the market.” Next year he’ll show Leopard. One non-boilerplate truth: “The soul of a Mac is its operating system.” Plus the slick industrial design, of course.
11:05am PDT - That’s it, show’s over!
-=0=-
Several things. Everyone on the Apple side is harping about the support and compatibility issues. What has been conveniently left out is that if it runs on Intel. It will run on AMD. And most probably, the Mac will be running on 64-bit Intel (or AMD Opteron, for that matter.)
--andoy
7 June 2005
Monday, June 06, 2005
Star Wars: Closure
One of the guys here in the office gave a comment that he was disappointed with the latest Star Wars release "Revenge of the Sith." He mentioned that it did not have any twist. I retorted that I knew the story as early as "Empire Strikes Back." The story was no secret.
The movie itself is a wrap up of all the six movies. It answers all the questions. It is closure, and as such, is a fitting end of the saga. No drama is needed. No twist. I only expected it to be a straight-forward story-telling. And it is.
It is not the best episode among the six. But it closes the circle. It was not meant to be the best either. There's "Empire Strikes Back" for that. Or even "Episode IV." That is all there is and that is all that it should be.
Vader Lives! Yoda Rocks!
'nuff said.
--andoy
6 June 2005
Anxiety Attack
One of the guys in the office, Butch, the senior programmer was sick last week and was confined at the hospital. During that time, another of the programmers, Julie was also absent for a day due to tonsillitis. This week, and another friend is not feeling well and she's going to have a check up tomorrow.
Personally, I don't like it when that happens. When friends are sick or not feeling well, I don't like it. I feel anxious about it.
When I'm talking with friends, I can somehow feel their anxiety and concerns. Sometimes, I want to give them a hug, but, within the context of Philippine society, this is not an acceptable behaviour. It is not politically-correct to hug an officemate, or to hug in public for that matter. And not with guys, nor with somebody much younger than you. Society!
I can only wait for news that all these people would get better. And that any feelings of anxiety that they have would all disappear. The (borrowed) anxiety and suspense is killing me.
--andoy
6 June 2005
Other Books
The questionnaire was limiting in a sense that if you read a lot of books, a listing of five books would not be enough.
Follows are some more books, just off the top of my head, which mean a lot to me and I really liked:
- "Psalms," from the Bible.
- Antoine de Ste. Exupery, "The Little Prince."
- Niccolo Macchiavelli, "The Prince."
- Kernighan and Ritchie, "C."
- Hemingway, "The Old Man and the Sea."
- C.S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia."
- Arthur Clarke, "2001, A Space Odyssey."
-=0=-
--andoy
6 June 2005
Books
I read a friend's blog, and she had a listing about books, I thought to myself: "I can do that. That would be easy."
Total number of books owned:
I have no idea. Lots, would be a starting point. I don't have enough space in one book shelf, the books are arranged three-deep. And I have about a third maybe, in a big box somewhere which got lost (or maybe these were borrowed and never returned.)
The last book I bought:
Tom Clancy? Netscape Development? Mac OS X? I'm not sure, but it must be one of those.
The last book I read:
Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising", for the nth time.
Five books that mean a lot to me that I really liked:
- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings." The books were borrowed and never returned. I first read them at college, where the library has these big book bound copies. I kept borrowing and borrowing and rereading them over and over again. The first time I bought my own books were Irwin publications with the Eye of Mordor design on the cover.
- Richard Bach, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." One of the few books which was the number 1 bestseller for two consecutive years. Actually, I don't know of any other book which was the number 1 bestseller for two consecutive years. A simple story wrapped around a very simple truth.
- Khalil Gibran, "The Prophet." The poetry of Gibran is astounding in its simplicity. "Your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself."
- "Ecclesiastes." From the Bible. (Have you read it?)
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." A narrative of a single day in the life of a gulag prisoner. It is a solace when you are alone and you think that everything is an insurmountable problem.
Tag 5 people and have them fill this out in their blogs:
-=0=-
--andoy
6 June 2005
First Day of School
Today, Monday, 6 June is the first day of school. Both my kids are in high school. Darwi is a freshman and Kenneth is a sophomore. We've not really discussed the coming school year, but even before it began, there was a small but very pleasant surprise. Darwi was elevated to the star section. My wife Lilia was informed of this only Friday. Normally, the student is assigned a section upon enrollment. I have no idea why she was transferred to another section just days before start of classes. I don't know and I don't really care. I'm just happy she got "promoted."
Kenneth and Darwi started elementary in star sections. And then the grades caught up with them. When Kenneth started elementary school, my wife and I decided that she resign from work and devote her time instead to being a stay-at-home housewife to take care of the kids. It also gave us the chance to keep a close eye on the children's development. We made sure though, that there was no pressure on them. We wanted them to enjoy their childhood and school as well. No pressure, but we also tried to limit their TV viewing, as well as computer use.
Part of school preparations, Kenneth had a haircut. He let his hair grow during the summer vacation. It looked like a big shock of hair on top of his skinny frame. And, as usual, I also went with him to the barber to have a haircut. During the summer vacation, they also enrolled in summer classes. Darwi attended tae-kwon do, and Kenneth studied guitar. If plans push through, Darwi should be able to continue her tae-kwon do.
Several things I plan to do during the coming school year. I need to have a computer at home. And I need to have a DSL-internet connection. I also want to acquire a digital camera. Afterwards, I can move forward and teach them rudimentary web page development (HTML programming). And also their own web page or web log.
We'll see.
--andoy
6 June 2005
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Jueteng in the News
Front page news are two items which should be funny, only because they're together.
One story recounts the testimony of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel regarding the second envelope as evidence in the Estrada Senate Impeachment investigation. The subsequent downfall of Mr. Estrada was due to the Senate vote not to open the second envelope. There were several things noteworthy about Sen. Pimentel's testimony. But suffice it to say, that this was a trail of money-laundering kickbacks and payolas related to jueteng.
And on the main story is the eyewitness account detailing the involvement (where and how much) of government officials to jueteng. The list includes the Presidential son and Pampanga Vice-Governor Mikey Arroyo. Supposedly, he's receiving 600,000 pesos a month with a former Vice-Mayor as bagman.
This should be fun.
--andoy
31 May 2005
One story recounts the testimony of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel regarding the second envelope as evidence in the Estrada Senate Impeachment investigation. The subsequent downfall of Mr. Estrada was due to the Senate vote not to open the second envelope. There were several things noteworthy about Sen. Pimentel's testimony. But suffice it to say, that this was a trail of money-laundering kickbacks and payolas related to jueteng.
And on the main story is the eyewitness account detailing the involvement (where and how much) of government officials to jueteng. The list includes the Presidential son and Pampanga Vice-Governor Mikey Arroyo. Supposedly, he's receiving 600,000 pesos a month with a former Vice-Mayor as bagman.
This should be fun.
--andoy
31 May 2005
Monday, May 30, 2005
Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless
This is a great piece of technical blogging: Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless
-- andoy
30 May 2005
-- andoy
30 May 2005
Business: Switch to Macs has Web all riled up
Follow-up to the earlier post. This looks exciting.
-=0=-
Business: Switch to Macs has Web all riled up: "securityawareness.blogspot.com"
Switch to Macs has Web all riled up
A Seminole technology security expert is surprised by reaction to his post of frustration with Windows and Intel.
By DAVE GUSSOW, Times Staff Writer
Published May 28, 2005
Winn Schwartau switched his office from PCs to Macintosh computers, a seemingly simple move that created an overwhelming reaction in the online world.
Schwartau is no mere computer user. He's a nationally known technology security expert from Seminole, so when he wrote in his online blog that he was tired of unreliable technology and fending off virus and spyware threats to his office PC he triggered a torrent of attention.
"I just didn't know this was going to be controversial," Schwartau said.
In a column titled "Mad as Hell," posted Monday at the Network World Web site and his blog (securityawareness.blogspot.com) on Wednesday, Schwartau declared that systems using Microsoft's Windows software and Intel processors are "a threat to the national economic security of any organization or nation-state that relies (upon) it."
The Macintosh community, always on the lookout for good news about Apple Computer and its products, started a flood of reaction. Schwartau's blog tracked 9,000 visitors Wednesday, 40,000 Thursday and 12,000 by midafternoon Friday. In a month, it usually gets 4,000 visitors.
According to Greg Hoffman, chief marketing officer for Schwartau's Security Awareness Co., responses were running 10-1 in favor of and praising the switch, which occurred last month.
Some in the Linux operating system community sent notes recommending it, and some fans of Windows and Intel systems, known as WinTel in shorthand, responded with some less than charitable comments. Macintosh computers are less susceptible to spyware and other forms of computer chicanery in part because of the way they're designed and in part because Apple has such a small share of the computer market that spyware code writers don't bother with it.
But, Schwartau says, it's too early for people to draw conclusions about what his switch really means. For one thing, he says he has posted only the first two installments of what he says will be a 30-part series on the subject. Second, he hasn't abandoned WinTel, though he doesn't want to give away the end of his tech saga.
But he clearly is unhappy with the time he has invested in protecting systems from spyware, viruses and other problems.
"I know how to do all this stuff," Schwartau said. "The point is I don't want to do it and I don't think 98 percent of the computing public should have to do it."
Dave Gussow can be reached at gussow@sptimes.com or 727 771-4328.
[Last modified May 28, 2005, 00:08:13]
-=0=-
--andoy
30 May 2005
-=0=-
Business: Switch to Macs has Web all riled up: "securityawareness.blogspot.com"
Switch to Macs has Web all riled up
A Seminole technology security expert is surprised by reaction to his post of frustration with Windows and Intel.
By DAVE GUSSOW, Times Staff Writer
Published May 28, 2005
Winn Schwartau switched his office from PCs to Macintosh computers, a seemingly simple move that created an overwhelming reaction in the online world.
Schwartau is no mere computer user. He's a nationally known technology security expert from Seminole, so when he wrote in his online blog that he was tired of unreliable technology and fending off virus and spyware threats to his office PC he triggered a torrent of attention.
"I just didn't know this was going to be controversial," Schwartau said.
In a column titled "Mad as Hell," posted Monday at the Network World Web site and his blog (securityawareness.blogspot.com) on Wednesday, Schwartau declared that systems using Microsoft's Windows software and Intel processors are "a threat to the national economic security of any organization or nation-state that relies (upon) it."
The Macintosh community, always on the lookout for good news about Apple Computer and its products, started a flood of reaction. Schwartau's blog tracked 9,000 visitors Wednesday, 40,000 Thursday and 12,000 by midafternoon Friday. In a month, it usually gets 4,000 visitors.
According to Greg Hoffman, chief marketing officer for Schwartau's Security Awareness Co., responses were running 10-1 in favor of and praising the switch, which occurred last month.
Some in the Linux operating system community sent notes recommending it, and some fans of Windows and Intel systems, known as WinTel in shorthand, responded with some less than charitable comments. Macintosh computers are less susceptible to spyware and other forms of computer chicanery in part because of the way they're designed and in part because Apple has such a small share of the computer market that spyware code writers don't bother with it.
But, Schwartau says, it's too early for people to draw conclusions about what his switch really means. For one thing, he says he has posted only the first two installments of what he says will be a 30-part series on the subject. Second, he hasn't abandoned WinTel, though he doesn't want to give away the end of his tech saga.
But he clearly is unhappy with the time he has invested in protecting systems from spyware, viruses and other problems.
"I know how to do all this stuff," Schwartau said. "The point is I don't want to do it and I don't think 98 percent of the computing public should have to do it."
Dave Gussow can be reached at gussow@sptimes.com or 727 771-4328.
[Last modified May 28, 2005, 00:08:13]
-=0=-
--andoy
30 May 2005
Mad as hell, switching to Mac - Yahoo! News
From the MacOSX Yahoogroups, I received this link to an article on Yahoo. Interesting piece by a PC bigot.
-=0=-
Mad as hell, switching to Mac - Yahoo! News
Mad as hell, switching to Mac
By Winn Schwartau, Network World MacCentral Thu May 26, 5:49 PM ET
This is my first column written on a Mac - ever. Maybe I should have done it a long time ago, but I never said I was smart, just obstinate. I was a PC bigot.
ADVERTISEMENT
But now, I’ve had it. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
In the coming weeks I’m going to keep a diary of an experiment my company began at 6 p.m. April 29, 2005 - an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft basher, either. I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.
I have come to the belief that there is a much easier, more secure way to use computers. After having spent several years focusing my security work on Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless, I also have come to the conclusion that if I’m having such security problems, heaven help the 98 percent of humanity who merely want a computer for e-mail and multimedia.
Even though I’m a security guy going on 22 years now, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else’s. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My two day-to-day laptops (two, for 24/7 backup) are my business machines. I don’t need them to do a whole lot - except work reliably, which is why I am fed up with WinTel.
I want my computer to function every time I turn it on. I want my computer to not corrupt data when it does crash. I use a handful of applications: Microsoft Office, e-mail, browser, FTP client and some multimedia toys. Regardless of format, they should work without crashing.
I live on the ‘Net. I do not want my browser to eat up all of my memory. In the WinTel world I need an assortment of third-party tools to try to keep my PC alive. That’s just crazy.
Why does WinTel have these problems? I have heard all sorts of explanations, and I don’t subscribe to any of them. I’ve come up with my own (hopefully rational) reasons WinTel will fail - and has to fail:
Windows is complex, trying to be everything to everyone. This complexity comes at a terrible price: downtime, help desks, upgrades, patches and the inevitable failures.
When a new operating system or service pack is released, there are tons of changes to the functionality.
WinTel machines use different versions of BIOS They are not all equal, nor do they all have the same level of compatibility.
Some Windows software applications are well written; others take shortcuts. Shortcuts may work in some environments, but not all, and ultimately the consumer pays in lost time, availability and productivity.
Hardware. There are hundreds of "WinTel-compatible" motherboards, each claiming to be better than the next. Whatever.
Memory. Not all RAM is equal. Some works well. Cheap stuff doesn’t.
Hard disks. Same problem: cheap or reliable. Your call.
Here’s my answer to the WinTel problem: We need an open Simple Operating System (SOS) that meets the needs of the majority of people who buy PCs for everyday home and enterprise tasks. Get rid of the complexity and simplify the interface between SOS, BIOS and hardware. In other words, KISS. You know what it means. KISS SOS.
Because SOS doesn’t exist yet, my company has given up on WinTel. We have successfully moved to Mac in less than two days. Think about it: a security-friendly alternative that works and doesn’t require gobs of third-party utilities to safely perform the most mundane tasks. Please follow the details of our experiment at www.securityawareness.blogspot.com. It’s already way more interesting than I thought it would be.
Schwartau is a security writer, lecturer and president of Interpact, a security awareness consulting firm. He can be reached at winn@thesecurityawarenesscompany.com.
-=0=-
--andoy
30 May 2005
-=0=-
Mad as hell, switching to Mac - Yahoo! News
Mad as hell, switching to Mac
By Winn Schwartau, Network World MacCentral Thu May 26, 5:49 PM ET
This is my first column written on a Mac - ever. Maybe I should have done it a long time ago, but I never said I was smart, just obstinate. I was a PC bigot.
ADVERTISEMENT
But now, I’ve had it. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
In the coming weeks I’m going to keep a diary of an experiment my company began at 6 p.m. April 29, 2005 - an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft basher, either. I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.
I have come to the belief that there is a much easier, more secure way to use computers. After having spent several years focusing my security work on Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless, I also have come to the conclusion that if I’m having such security problems, heaven help the 98 percent of humanity who merely want a computer for e-mail and multimedia.
Even though I’m a security guy going on 22 years now, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else’s. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My two day-to-day laptops (two, for 24/7 backup) are my business machines. I don’t need them to do a whole lot - except work reliably, which is why I am fed up with WinTel.
I want my computer to function every time I turn it on. I want my computer to not corrupt data when it does crash. I use a handful of applications: Microsoft Office, e-mail, browser, FTP client and some multimedia toys. Regardless of format, they should work without crashing.
I live on the ‘Net. I do not want my browser to eat up all of my memory. In the WinTel world I need an assortment of third-party tools to try to keep my PC alive. That’s just crazy.
Why does WinTel have these problems? I have heard all sorts of explanations, and I don’t subscribe to any of them. I’ve come up with my own (hopefully rational) reasons WinTel will fail - and has to fail:
Windows is complex, trying to be everything to everyone. This complexity comes at a terrible price: downtime, help desks, upgrades, patches and the inevitable failures.
When a new operating system or service pack is released, there are tons of changes to the functionality.
WinTel machines use different versions of BIOS They are not all equal, nor do they all have the same level of compatibility.
Some Windows software applications are well written; others take shortcuts. Shortcuts may work in some environments, but not all, and ultimately the consumer pays in lost time, availability and productivity.
Hardware. There are hundreds of "WinTel-compatible" motherboards, each claiming to be better than the next. Whatever.
Memory. Not all RAM is equal. Some works well. Cheap stuff doesn’t.
Hard disks. Same problem: cheap or reliable. Your call.
Here’s my answer to the WinTel problem: We need an open Simple Operating System (SOS) that meets the needs of the majority of people who buy PCs for everyday home and enterprise tasks. Get rid of the complexity and simplify the interface between SOS, BIOS and hardware. In other words, KISS. You know what it means. KISS SOS.
Because SOS doesn’t exist yet, my company has given up on WinTel. We have successfully moved to Mac in less than two days. Think about it: a security-friendly alternative that works and doesn’t require gobs of third-party utilities to safely perform the most mundane tasks. Please follow the details of our experiment at www.securityawareness.blogspot.com. It’s already way more interesting than I thought it would be.
Schwartau is a security writer, lecturer and president of Interpact, a security awareness consulting firm. He can be reached at winn@thesecurityawarenesscompany.com.
-=0=-
--andoy
30 May 2005
Friday, May 27, 2005
Blog undergoing revision
Note: this blog is undergoing some cosmetic revisions. I like the template layout, but I need to be changing the pictures.
Who knows, within several days, this blog site would be almost unrecognizable from what what it is now.
--andoy
27 May 2005
Who knows, within several days, this blog site would be almost unrecognizable from what what it is now.
--andoy
27 May 2005
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Myspace.com: Romantic Death
Myspace.com
The video is "Romantic Death. It even has a link page. Different type of music video.
Very different.
--andoy
24 May 2005
The video is "Romantic Death. It even has a link page. Different type of music video.
Very different.
--andoy
24 May 2005
Monday, May 23, 2005
From Pinoy Poets, Anne Stephanie's blog (Part 2)
From Anne Stephanie's blog:
"I know it's a cornball thing, but love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? I say fall head over heels. Find someone you love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. Run the risk. Because the truth is, there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love --well, you haven't lived a life at all. You have to try. Because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived. Stay open. Who knows? Lightning could strike." --Meet Joe Black
-=0=-
I think I need to watch "Meet Joe Black" again, to find out where that quote was.
--andoy
23 May 2005
"I know it's a cornball thing, but love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? I say fall head over heels. Find someone you love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. Run the risk. Because the truth is, there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love --well, you haven't lived a life at all. You have to try. Because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived. Stay open. Who knows? Lightning could strike." --Meet Joe Black
-=0=-
I think I need to watch "Meet Joe Black" again, to find out where that quote was.
--andoy
23 May 2005
...and looking back at the first week of May: Lessons Learned (Part 2)
What were we fighting for in the first place? If we made it, we get our quarterly quota and a bonus.
We failed to get the bonus. But yes, our reward is that we get to try again. We enjoyed ourselves and we get to try again. Cool!
--andoy
23 may 2005
...and looking back at the first week of May: Lessons Learned
Earlier, I had a very long week which I gave comment on (see "That was the week that was...") And I keep coming back to that, and wonder what lessons did I learn then. Or re-learn, for that matter.
Several things really:
Among other things, it pays to work smart, not work hard.
When the going gets tough, your team has to pull together.
There are days when even your best effort will not bear fruit.
Give your best effort, and it will be appreciated.
You have to enjoy what you're doing to even be doing it in the first place.
When I joined this company, I was promised that we will have fun. And that we will work hard, but we will also work smart. We don't need to put in so much overtime and that we don't have overtime pay. Because we were trying to beat a deadline, I've forgotten those things he said. At that point, he has also forgotten about them. We did a recap afterwards, and we promised to stick to that premise.
That week, even members of the team not directly involved with the project pushed and pulled and helped in every way possible to get it done. We dropped everything to get that project out the door. And in the end, we still didn't have a workable program. It took about two weeks more of work by two people to make it workable and presentable. And even then, there's still a big hole in the program (or a series of small holes) which conservative estimates put as additional two to three weeks work by a single programmer. We gave our best, and it was not good enough. We were not able to get it out the door.
However, the effort was appreciated by the company owner. He tested the live site personally, and it stank, but we didn't hear any bad words about it. He gave us time to finish it and get over and done with. Hell, we even went out bowling that Friday evening. The whole company (about 60-70 people) went bowling and we had catered buffet and open bar at the Rockwell bowling alley.
One reason we were adamant about sticking with that project and pulling together as a team is because we are IT people who don't like loose ends. And, besides, we enjoy what we do. For all the gripes about our "failure" we truly enjoyed that week. And given the circumstances, we'd do it all over again, even if we know we're going to fall short of the delivery. Even if the project did not come to fruition, we tried to blow that sucker off, for all we were worth. And we enjoyed it. And the owner saw the effort and he enjoyed himself that he saw we were working our butts off.
It does not make sense. It frustrates me, but at least we enjoyed ourselves, and we were greatly appreciated.
Someday, the program might even be bug-free.
--andoy
23 May 2005
Several things really:
Among other things, it pays to work smart, not work hard.
When the going gets tough, your team has to pull together.
There are days when even your best effort will not bear fruit.
Give your best effort, and it will be appreciated.
You have to enjoy what you're doing to even be doing it in the first place.
When I joined this company, I was promised that we will have fun. And that we will work hard, but we will also work smart. We don't need to put in so much overtime and that we don't have overtime pay. Because we were trying to beat a deadline, I've forgotten those things he said. At that point, he has also forgotten about them. We did a recap afterwards, and we promised to stick to that premise.
That week, even members of the team not directly involved with the project pushed and pulled and helped in every way possible to get it done. We dropped everything to get that project out the door. And in the end, we still didn't have a workable program. It took about two weeks more of work by two people to make it workable and presentable. And even then, there's still a big hole in the program (or a series of small holes) which conservative estimates put as additional two to three weeks work by a single programmer. We gave our best, and it was not good enough. We were not able to get it out the door.
However, the effort was appreciated by the company owner. He tested the live site personally, and it stank, but we didn't hear any bad words about it. He gave us time to finish it and get over and done with. Hell, we even went out bowling that Friday evening. The whole company (about 60-70 people) went bowling and we had catered buffet and open bar at the Rockwell bowling alley.
One reason we were adamant about sticking with that project and pulling together as a team is because we are IT people who don't like loose ends. And, besides, we enjoy what we do. For all the gripes about our "failure" we truly enjoyed that week. And given the circumstances, we'd do it all over again, even if we know we're going to fall short of the delivery. Even if the project did not come to fruition, we tried to blow that sucker off, for all we were worth. And we enjoyed it. And the owner saw the effort and he enjoyed himself that he saw we were working our butts off.
It does not make sense. It frustrates me, but at least we enjoyed ourselves, and we were greatly appreciated.
Someday, the program might even be bug-free.
--andoy
23 May 2005
From Pinoy Poets, Anne Stephanie's blog
I met Anne Stephanie through the Pinoy Poets' yahoo groups. There were a lot of emails going back and forth from that group last week, and she was loud. She wanted to be heard and she was participating like crazy. Finally met her last Friday when we met at the General Assembly. And she was very animated and excited.
I was glad to meet her.
I was glad to meet her.
-=0=-
From Anne Stephie's blog:
“I want to let you in on a secret. I’m not who you think I am. In fact, my disguise is so thin, I’m surprised you haven’t seen right through me. I’m the girl of your dreams masquerading as your best friend. Sometimes I want to rip off this facade like I did at the Spring Formal, but I can’t because you’ll get scared and you’ll run away again. So I decided that it’s better to live with a lie than expose my true feelings.
My dad told me there are two types of girls. The ones you grow out of and the ones you grow into. I really hope I’m the latter. I may not be the one you love today, but I’ll let you go for now, hoping one day you’ll fly back to me because I think you’re worth the wait.” - Chloe Sullivan's letter to Clark Kent
-=0=-
--andoy
23 May 2005
From Anne Stephie's blog:
“I want to let you in on a secret. I’m not who you think I am. In fact, my disguise is so thin, I’m surprised you haven’t seen right through me. I’m the girl of your dreams masquerading as your best friend. Sometimes I want to rip off this facade like I did at the Spring Formal, but I can’t because you’ll get scared and you’ll run away again. So I decided that it’s better to live with a lie than expose my true feelings.
My dad told me there are two types of girls. The ones you grow out of and the ones you grow into. I really hope I’m the latter. I may not be the one you love today, but I’ll let you go for now, hoping one day you’ll fly back to me because I think you’re worth the wait.” - Chloe Sullivan's letter to Clark Kent
-=0=-
--andoy
23 May 2005
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Combat for Dummies
Picked these up from some website.
"Aim towards the enemy."
--Instruction printed on U.S. Rocket Launcher
"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend."
--U.S. Marine Corps
"Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground."
--USAF Ammo Troop
"If the enemy is in range, so are you."
--Infantry Journal
"A slipping gear could let your m203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit."
--Army's magazine of prevention maintenance
"It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed."
--U.S. Air Force manual
"Try to look unimportant; the enemy may be low on ammo."
--Infantry Journal
"Tracers work both ways."
--U.S. Army Ordnance
"Five-second fuses only last three seconds."
--Infantry Journal
"Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid."
--David Hackworth
"If your attack is going too well, you're walking into an ambush."
--Infantry Journal
"No combat-ready unit has ever passed inspection."
--Joe Gay
"Any ship can be a minesweeper....once."
--Anon
"Never tell the platoon sergeant you have nothing to do."
--Unknown Marine Recruit
"Don't draw fire; it irritates the people around you."
--Infantry Journal
"If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him."
--USAF Ammo Troop
19 May 2005
-=0=-
Advice and instructions taken from actual military sources. Some of these guys must have had a sense of humor"Aim towards the enemy."
--Instruction printed on U.S. Rocket Launcher
"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend."
--U.S. Marine Corps
"Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground."
--USAF Ammo Troop
"If the enemy is in range, so are you."
--Infantry Journal
"A slipping gear could let your m203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit."
--Army's magazine of prevention maintenance
"It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed."
--U.S. Air Force manual
"Try to look unimportant; the enemy may be low on ammo."
--Infantry Journal
"Tracers work both ways."
--U.S. Army Ordnance
"Five-second fuses only last three seconds."
--Infantry Journal
"Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid."
--David Hackworth
"If your attack is going too well, you're walking into an ambush."
--Infantry Journal
"No combat-ready unit has ever passed inspection."
--Joe Gay
"Any ship can be a minesweeper....once."
--Anon
"Never tell the platoon sergeant you have nothing to do."
--Unknown Marine Recruit
"Don't draw fire; it irritates the people around you."
--Infantry Journal
"If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him."
--USAF Ammo Troop
-=0=-
--andoy19 May 2005
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
"Steep" by Lauren Christy
"Steep"
Lauren Christy
Softly, gently, I will let you down
Cause I don't love you in the same way now
I can hold you but not with lover's arms
Cause you are more of a brother to me now
And I can lie next to you, but I can't lie to you
So walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain,
For you the future's easy, so don't weep, for me it's getting
Steep
I loved you for exactly who you are,
And I'd say you've come the nearest yet by far,
And I can lie next tou you, but I can't lie to you
So walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain,
For you the future's easy, so don't weep, for me it's getting
Steeper and in the dark that's where I want to be
Deeper, I'm going somewhere you won't want to see...
So walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain,
For you the future's easy, so don't weep
Yes I will watch you,
Walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain drops
For you the future's easy, so don't weep
For me it's getting
Steep.
It's that kind of a slow day.
--andoy
18 May 2005
Lauren Christy
Softly, gently, I will let you down
Cause I don't love you in the same way now
I can hold you but not with lover's arms
Cause you are more of a brother to me now
And I can lie next to you, but I can't lie to you
So walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain,
For you the future's easy, so don't weep, for me it's getting
Steep
I loved you for exactly who you are,
And I'd say you've come the nearest yet by far,
And I can lie next tou you, but I can't lie to you
So walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain,
For you the future's easy, so don't weep, for me it's getting
Steeper and in the dark that's where I want to be
Deeper, I'm going somewhere you won't want to see...
So walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain,
For you the future's easy, so don't weep
Yes I will watch you,
Walk into the sun and watch me
Run into the rain drops
For you the future's easy, so don't weep
For me it's getting
Steep.
-=0=-
It's that kind of a slow day.
--andoy
18 May 2005
"Freshmen" by The Verve Pipe
"Freshmen"
by The Verve Pipe
When I was young I knew everything
She a punk who rarely ever took advice
Now I'm guilt stricken,
Sobbing with my head on the floor
Stop a baby's breath and a shoe full of rice
I can't be held responsible
She was touching her face
I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
My best friend took a week's
Vacation to forget her
His girl took a weeks's worth of
Valium and slept
And now he's guilt stricken sobbing with his
Head on the floor
Thinks about her now and how he never really
Wept he says
I can't be held responsible
She was touching her face
I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
hey yeah
hey yeah
hey yeah
We've tried to wash our hands of all this
We never talk of our lacking relationships
And how we're guilt stricken sobbing with our
Heads on the floor
We fell through the ice when we tried not to
Slip, we'd say
I can't be held responsible
She was touching her face
And I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
We were merely freshmen
I've been listening to this for the longest time. About 6 years, I think. I'm not sure. Sure, there was no follow-up hit, but hey, it's that kind of song. It's that kind of day.
--andoy
18 May 2005
by The Verve Pipe
When I was young I knew everything
She a punk who rarely ever took advice
Now I'm guilt stricken,
Sobbing with my head on the floor
Stop a baby's breath and a shoe full of rice
I can't be held responsible
She was touching her face
I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
My best friend took a week's
Vacation to forget her
His girl took a weeks's worth of
Valium and slept
And now he's guilt stricken sobbing with his
Head on the floor
Thinks about her now and how he never really
Wept he says
I can't be held responsible
She was touching her face
I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
hey yeah
hey yeah
hey yeah
We've tried to wash our hands of all this
We never talk of our lacking relationships
And how we're guilt stricken sobbing with our
Heads on the floor
We fell through the ice when we tried not to
Slip, we'd say
I can't be held responsible
She was touching her face
And I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We'd never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe
We'd ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
We were merely freshmen
-=0=-
I've been listening to this for the longest time. About 6 years, I think. I'm not sure. Sure, there was no follow-up hit, but hey, it's that kind of song. It's that kind of day.
--andoy
18 May 2005
"Same Ground" by Kitchie Nadal
"Same Ground"
by Kitchie Nadal
[verse:]
My love,
Its been a long time since I cried
And left you out of the blue.
Its hard
Leaving you that way when
I never wanted to.
Self-denial is a game
Its strange I never would've
Wanted 'till there was you.
**'cause I have learned that love is beyond
What human can imagine,
More it clears the more I have to let you go.
[chorus:]
But now I don't understand why I'm feeling
So bad now when I know it was my idea.
I could've just denied the truth and lied.
But why am I the only one standing stranded
On the same ground?
[repeat verse except **]
'cause I have learned that love is a
Word gets thrown a little bit too much.
The best excuse to fill the infinite abyss
I would never ever have to if
[repeat chorus]
When else fail,
Would you be there to love me?
When all else fail,
Would you be brave
To see right through me?
-=0=-
Less popularly played, because of the heavy lyrics. Dark.
--andoy
18 May 2005
by Kitchie Nadal
[verse:]
My love,
Its been a long time since I cried
And left you out of the blue.
Its hard
Leaving you that way when
I never wanted to.
Self-denial is a game
Its strange I never would've
Wanted 'till there was you.
**'cause I have learned that love is beyond
What human can imagine,
More it clears the more I have to let you go.
[chorus:]
But now I don't understand why I'm feeling
So bad now when I know it was my idea.
I could've just denied the truth and lied.
But why am I the only one standing stranded
On the same ground?
[repeat verse except **]
'cause I have learned that love is a
Word gets thrown a little bit too much.
The best excuse to fill the infinite abyss
I would never ever have to if
[repeat chorus]
When else fail,
Would you be there to love me?
When all else fail,
Would you be brave
To see right through me?
-=0=-
Less popularly played, because of the heavy lyrics. Dark.
--andoy
18 May 2005
Musings from a life spent shooting nude photos of pretty and sexy girls
Musings from a life spent shooting nude photos of pretty and sexy girls
This guy makes a living taking pictures. And he gives a critique of the pictures and the sessions. Sounds like hard work.
--andoy
18 May 2005
This guy makes a living taking pictures. And he gives a critique of the pictures and the sessions. Sounds like hard work.
--andoy
18 May 2005
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
From enplenitud.com: The Genesis According to Computer Science
From enplenitud.com:
El Génesis según la informática
1. En el principio DIOS creó el bit y el byte. Y con ellos creó la palabra.
2. Y había dos Bytes en la palabra; y nada mas existía. Y Dios separó el Uno del cero: y vio que era bueno.
3. Y Dios dijo: que se hagan los Datos; y así pasó. Y Dios dijo: Dejemos los Datos en sus correspondientes sitios. Y creó los disquetes, los disco duros y los discos compactos.
4. Y Dios dijo: que se hagan los ordenadores, así habrá un lugar para poner los disquetes, los discos duros y los discos compactos. Así Dios creó a los ordenadores, les llamó hardware.
5. Pero aun no había software. Pero Dios creó los programas; grandes y pequeños... Y les dijo: Creced y multiplicaos y llenad toda la memoria.
6. Y Dios dijo: crearé el programador; y el Programador creará nuevos programas y gobernará los ordenadores y los programas y los datos.
7. Y Dios creó al Programador; y lo puso en el Centro de Datos; y Dios le enseñó al Programador el Directorio y le dijo: Puedes usar todos los Volúmenes y subdirectorios, pero NO USES WINDOWS
8. Y Dios dijo: no es bueno que el programador esté solo. Cogió un hueso del cuerpo del Programador y creo una criatura que miraría al Programador y admiraría al Programador y amaría las cosas que el programador hiciese. Y Dios llamó a la criatura: el Usuario.
9. Y el Programador y el Usuario fueron dejados en el desnudo DOS y eso era bueno.
10. Pero Bill era más listo que todas las otras criaturas de Dios. Y Bill le dijo al Usuario: ¿Te dijo Dios realmente que no ejecutaras todos los programas?.
11. Y el Usuario respondió: Dios nos dijo que podíamos usar cualquier programa y cualquier pedazo de datos, pero nos dijo que no ejecutásemos Windows o moriríamos.
12. Y Bill le dijo al Usuario: ¿Cómo puedes hablar de algo que incluso no has probado?. En el momento en que ejecutes Windows serás igual a Dios. Serás capaz de crear cualquier cosa que quieras con el simple toque del ratón.
13. Y el Usuario vio que los frutos del Windows eran más bonitos y fáciles de usar. Y el Usuario vio que todo conocimiento era inútil ya que Windows podía reemplazarlo.
14. Así el Usuario instaló Windows en su ordenador; y le dijo al Programador que era bueno.
15. Y el Programador inmediatamente empezó a buscar nuevos controladores. Y Dios le pregunto: ¿que buscas? Y el Programador respondió: Estoy buscando nuevos controladores, porque no puedo encontrarlos en el DOS. Y Dios dijo: ¿quien te dijo que necesitabas nuevos controladores? ¿acaso ejecutaste Windows? Y el programador dijo: fue Bill, quien nos lo dijo...
16. Y Dios le dijo a Bill: Por lo que hiciste, serás odiado por todas las criaturas. Y el Usuario siempre estará descontento contigo. Y siempre venderás Windows.
17. Y Dios le dijo al Usuario: por lo que hiciste, el Windows te decepcionará y se comerá todos tus recursos; y tendrás que usar malos programas; y siempre permanecerás bajo la ayuda del Programador.
18. Y Dios le dijo al Programador: por haber escuchado al Usuario nunca serás feliz. Todos tus programas tendrán errores y tendrás que corregirlos y corregirlos hasta el fin de los tiempos.
19. Y Dios echó a todos del Centro de Datos y bloqueó la puerta de entrada con una password.?
Translation (as near as I can, with the help of altavista babelfish):
The Génesis according to computer science
1. In the beginning GOD created the bit and the byte. And with them was created the word.
2. And there were two Bytes in the word; and nothing else existed. And God separated the One from the zero: and He saw that it was good.
3. And God said: Let there be Data; and thus it happened. And God said: Let us leave the Data in its corresponding sites. And diskettes were created, then hard disk and compact discs.
4. And God said: Let there be computers, thus will be a place to put the diskettes, hard disks and the compact discs. Thus God created the computers, and called these hardware.
5. But even then there was no software. And God created the programs; great and small... And it said to them: You grow and multiply and you fill all the memory.
6. And God said: I will create the programmer; and the Programmer will create new programs and will govern computers and the programs and the data.
7. And God created the Programmer; and He put the Programmer in the Datacenter; and God taught to the Programmer the Directory and said to him: You can use all the Volumes and subdirectories, but YOU DO NOT USE WINDOWS
8. And God said: it is not good that the programmer is single. It took a bone of the body of Programmer and created a creature who would watch the Programmer and would admire the Programmer and would love things that the programmer did. And God called to the creature: the User.
9. And the Programmer and the User were lazy, and without anything, naked were the TWO and that was good.
10. But Bill was readier than all the other creatures of God. And Bill said to him to the User: You, God really said that you did not execute all the programs.
11. And the User responded: God said to us that we could use any program and any piece of data, but said to us also that we did not execute Windows or we would die.
12. And Bill said to him to the User: How can you speak of something that you have not even tried. In the moment that you execute Windows you will be equal to God. You will be able to create any thing that you want with the simple touch of the mouse.
13. And the User saw that the fruits of the Windows were prettier and easy to use. And the User saw that all knowledge was useless since Windows could replace it.
14. Thus the User installed Windows in his computer; and he said to himself and to the Programmer that it was good.
15. And the Programmer immediately began to look for new controllers. And God asked him: What are you looking for? And the Programmer responded: I am looking for new device drivers, because I cannot to find them in the TWO. And God said: who said to you that you needed new device drivers? perhaps you executed Windows? And the programmer said: it was Bill, he told us it...
16. And God said to Bill: Because of what you did, you will be hated by all the creatures. And the User will always be displeased with you. And you will always sell Windows.
17. And God said to the User: Because of what you did, Windows will disappoint you and it will eat all your resources; and you will have to use bad programs; and you will always remain under the aid of Programmer.
18. And God said to the Programmer: because you did not listen, the User will never be happy. All your programs will have errors and you will have to correct them and to correct them until the time end.
19. And God threw them all out of the Datacenter and blocked the front door with one password.
--andoy
10 May 2005
El Génesis según la informática
1. En el principio DIOS creó el bit y el byte. Y con ellos creó la palabra.
2. Y había dos Bytes en la palabra; y nada mas existía. Y Dios separó el Uno del cero: y vio que era bueno.
3. Y Dios dijo: que se hagan los Datos; y así pasó. Y Dios dijo: Dejemos los Datos en sus correspondientes sitios. Y creó los disquetes, los disco duros y los discos compactos.
4. Y Dios dijo: que se hagan los ordenadores, así habrá un lugar para poner los disquetes, los discos duros y los discos compactos. Así Dios creó a los ordenadores, les llamó hardware.
5. Pero aun no había software. Pero Dios creó los programas; grandes y pequeños... Y les dijo: Creced y multiplicaos y llenad toda la memoria.
6. Y Dios dijo: crearé el programador; y el Programador creará nuevos programas y gobernará los ordenadores y los programas y los datos.
7. Y Dios creó al Programador; y lo puso en el Centro de Datos; y Dios le enseñó al Programador el Directorio y le dijo: Puedes usar todos los Volúmenes y subdirectorios, pero NO USES WINDOWS
8. Y Dios dijo: no es bueno que el programador esté solo. Cogió un hueso del cuerpo del Programador y creo una criatura que miraría al Programador y admiraría al Programador y amaría las cosas que el programador hiciese. Y Dios llamó a la criatura: el Usuario.
9. Y el Programador y el Usuario fueron dejados en el desnudo DOS y eso era bueno.
10. Pero Bill era más listo que todas las otras criaturas de Dios. Y Bill le dijo al Usuario: ¿Te dijo Dios realmente que no ejecutaras todos los programas?.
11. Y el Usuario respondió: Dios nos dijo que podíamos usar cualquier programa y cualquier pedazo de datos, pero nos dijo que no ejecutásemos Windows o moriríamos.
12. Y Bill le dijo al Usuario: ¿Cómo puedes hablar de algo que incluso no has probado?. En el momento en que ejecutes Windows serás igual a Dios. Serás capaz de crear cualquier cosa que quieras con el simple toque del ratón.
13. Y el Usuario vio que los frutos del Windows eran más bonitos y fáciles de usar. Y el Usuario vio que todo conocimiento era inútil ya que Windows podía reemplazarlo.
14. Así el Usuario instaló Windows en su ordenador; y le dijo al Programador que era bueno.
15. Y el Programador inmediatamente empezó a buscar nuevos controladores. Y Dios le pregunto: ¿que buscas? Y el Programador respondió: Estoy buscando nuevos controladores, porque no puedo encontrarlos en el DOS. Y Dios dijo: ¿quien te dijo que necesitabas nuevos controladores? ¿acaso ejecutaste Windows? Y el programador dijo: fue Bill, quien nos lo dijo...
16. Y Dios le dijo a Bill: Por lo que hiciste, serás odiado por todas las criaturas. Y el Usuario siempre estará descontento contigo. Y siempre venderás Windows.
17. Y Dios le dijo al Usuario: por lo que hiciste, el Windows te decepcionará y se comerá todos tus recursos; y tendrás que usar malos programas; y siempre permanecerás bajo la ayuda del Programador.
18. Y Dios le dijo al Programador: por haber escuchado al Usuario nunca serás feliz. Todos tus programas tendrán errores y tendrás que corregirlos y corregirlos hasta el fin de los tiempos.
19. Y Dios echó a todos del Centro de Datos y bloqueó la puerta de entrada con una password.?
-=0=-
Translation (as near as I can, with the help of altavista babelfish):
The Génesis according to computer science
1. In the beginning GOD created the bit and the byte. And with them was created the word.
2. And there were two Bytes in the word; and nothing else existed. And God separated the One from the zero: and He saw that it was good.
3. And God said: Let there be Data; and thus it happened. And God said: Let us leave the Data in its corresponding sites. And diskettes were created, then hard disk and compact discs.
4. And God said: Let there be computers, thus will be a place to put the diskettes, hard disks and the compact discs. Thus God created the computers, and called these hardware.
5. But even then there was no software. And God created the programs; great and small... And it said to them: You grow and multiply and you fill all the memory.
6. And God said: I will create the programmer; and the Programmer will create new programs and will govern computers and the programs and the data.
7. And God created the Programmer; and He put the Programmer in the Datacenter; and God taught to the Programmer the Directory and said to him: You can use all the Volumes and subdirectories, but YOU DO NOT USE WINDOWS
8. And God said: it is not good that the programmer is single. It took a bone of the body of Programmer and created a creature who would watch the Programmer and would admire the Programmer and would love things that the programmer did. And God called to the creature: the User.
9. And the Programmer and the User were lazy, and without anything, naked were the TWO and that was good.
10. But Bill was readier than all the other creatures of God. And Bill said to him to the User: You, God really said that you did not execute all the programs.
11. And the User responded: God said to us that we could use any program and any piece of data, but said to us also that we did not execute Windows or we would die.
12. And Bill said to him to the User: How can you speak of something that you have not even tried. In the moment that you execute Windows you will be equal to God. You will be able to create any thing that you want with the simple touch of the mouse.
13. And the User saw that the fruits of the Windows were prettier and easy to use. And the User saw that all knowledge was useless since Windows could replace it.
14. Thus the User installed Windows in his computer; and he said to himself and to the Programmer that it was good.
15. And the Programmer immediately began to look for new controllers. And God asked him: What are you looking for? And the Programmer responded: I am looking for new device drivers, because I cannot to find them in the TWO. And God said: who said to you that you needed new device drivers? perhaps you executed Windows? And the programmer said: it was Bill, he told us it...
16. And God said to Bill: Because of what you did, you will be hated by all the creatures. And the User will always be displeased with you. And you will always sell Windows.
17. And God said to the User: Because of what you did, Windows will disappoint you and it will eat all your resources; and you will have to use bad programs; and you will always remain under the aid of Programmer.
18. And God said to the Programmer: because you did not listen, the User will never be happy. All your programs will have errors and you will have to correct them and to correct them until the time end.
19. And God threw them all out of the Datacenter and blocked the front door with one password.
--andoy
10 May 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
That was the week that was...
Just for the record, I had these log in times last week:
Sunday, May 1: 11:30AM to 9:00PM
Monday, May 2: 9:30 am to 4:30pm
Tuesday, May 3: 3:45AM, up to 4:00PM of May 4.
Thursday, May 5: 9:30AM to 3:00am, May 6
Friday, May 6: 9:30AM to 6:30PM
And considering that it was a holiday last Monday, instead of a 36 hour week, I spent more than 79 hours in the office.
Most of the team also spent almost the same amount of time. We made a resolution that we're not going to be doing the same mistakes we made, and that we would not be logging in any more all-nighters. It's late Monday of the following week, and I can still feel the fatigue from last week.
--andoy
9 May 2005
Sunday, May 1: 11:30AM to 9:00PM
Monday, May 2: 9:30 am to 4:30pm
Tuesday, May 3: 3:45AM, up to 4:00PM of May 4.
Thursday, May 5: 9:30AM to 3:00am, May 6
Friday, May 6: 9:30AM to 6:30PM
And considering that it was a holiday last Monday, instead of a 36 hour week, I spent more than 79 hours in the office.
Most of the team also spent almost the same amount of time. We made a resolution that we're not going to be doing the same mistakes we made, and that we would not be logging in any more all-nighters. It's late Monday of the following week, and I can still feel the fatigue from last week.
--andoy
9 May 2005
Friday, May 06, 2005
Long Day at the Office
One of the reasons I left systems development several years ago was because of the necessary long hours of work you have to put in. There was a project I was involved in about 10 years ago where I lived in the office, literally. The programmers would come in around 9 or 10 and I'd be sleeping till noon. I'd wake up, have lunch, do some work, take a bath, change clothes in the work area, and work till dinner. After dinner, I'd still continue to do code, stopping at around 1 or 2 in the morning. After which I'd do some maintenance work, and go to bed around 4am. It was a six month stint. And I just felt burned out.
It has been more than ten years since I last stayed in the office for more than an overnight session. This time I started early Tuesday morning, and ended afternoon of Wednesday, spending 38 hours with less than 2 hours of sleep. I was luckier than some. Two guys left the office at 10pm Wednesday evening, one of them spending 38 hours and the other guy (my boss) 44 hours.
The day started inauspiciously enough. I got out of bed around 2:30, and got out of the house just after 3:00am. I went to Bayan to catch a taxi cab from there. Bought some breakfast at the 7-11 and took the cab with the attendant driver. (Most of the other cab drivers were sleeping.) We took C-5, and the driver was running at a sedate 60kph up to Libis, and sped a little bit after the Ortigas flyover, running at 70kph. He was safety conscious, not being tempted to drive at 100kph. The funny thing was that we almost met an accident. While approaching the foot of the Vargas flyover and approaching the bridge crossing the Pasig River, a bag of cement flew from the truck we were following. We were several car lengths away so the cab driver was able to avoid it. And he tried to flag the truck driver warning him that his cargo was flying off the truck.
I arrived at the office at 3:45am, while my boss had arrived earlier at 3:30am. The rest of the day I want to forget. It was all a blur, with the initial plans going out the window because of unexpected events delaying the debugging and testing. Almost the whole development team was thrown into the effort for deploying to the production (live) server. One of the team members had to go home just before midnight Tuesday. Some of the crew were sent home at around 2:00am, Wednesday. Four of us stayed for the clean-up and actual deployment. The programmer who went home early assisted as soon as he got to the office. At around 3:00pm, I wasn't sure if I could be of any more assistance, so I decided to go home.
During the whole time I was able to get some naps of about 30 minutes each. Twice I slept on the couch, once while sitting on my desk (didn't bother to lie on the couch), and in the morning just after breakfast I lay on the floor of my boss's office for another 45 minutes. When I got home, I rested a bit, then me and my family ate out. I slept like a log and couldn't get myself out of bed the following day, coming in late on Thursday.
NOTE:
After several years of being outside of the IT industry, my current job takes me to the cutting edge of systems development: programming for the internet. The needs follow internet time: it is now, now, now. Unlike traditional business environments, where the project needed to be done yesterday (hence the requirements are outdated once approved), internet development is for the here and now. There is an immediate need which did not exist yesterday. It has to be done today. The requirements change on a day-to-day basis, with additional functionality being delivered for each iteration. An iteration lasts about a week or two and the deliverable for each iteration is a working program. In this sense, development is evolutionary. Functionality is added as the system progresses. At any point in time, the delivered iteration is a working program.
--andoy
6 May 2005
It has been more than ten years since I last stayed in the office for more than an overnight session. This time I started early Tuesday morning, and ended afternoon of Wednesday, spending 38 hours with less than 2 hours of sleep. I was luckier than some. Two guys left the office at 10pm Wednesday evening, one of them spending 38 hours and the other guy (my boss) 44 hours.
The day started inauspiciously enough. I got out of bed around 2:30, and got out of the house just after 3:00am. I went to Bayan to catch a taxi cab from there. Bought some breakfast at the 7-11 and took the cab with the attendant driver. (Most of the other cab drivers were sleeping.) We took C-5, and the driver was running at a sedate 60kph up to Libis, and sped a little bit after the Ortigas flyover, running at 70kph. He was safety conscious, not being tempted to drive at 100kph. The funny thing was that we almost met an accident. While approaching the foot of the Vargas flyover and approaching the bridge crossing the Pasig River, a bag of cement flew from the truck we were following. We were several car lengths away so the cab driver was able to avoid it. And he tried to flag the truck driver warning him that his cargo was flying off the truck.
I arrived at the office at 3:45am, while my boss had arrived earlier at 3:30am. The rest of the day I want to forget. It was all a blur, with the initial plans going out the window because of unexpected events delaying the debugging and testing. Almost the whole development team was thrown into the effort for deploying to the production (live) server. One of the team members had to go home just before midnight Tuesday. Some of the crew were sent home at around 2:00am, Wednesday. Four of us stayed for the clean-up and actual deployment. The programmer who went home early assisted as soon as he got to the office. At around 3:00pm, I wasn't sure if I could be of any more assistance, so I decided to go home.
During the whole time I was able to get some naps of about 30 minutes each. Twice I slept on the couch, once while sitting on my desk (didn't bother to lie on the couch), and in the morning just after breakfast I lay on the floor of my boss's office for another 45 minutes. When I got home, I rested a bit, then me and my family ate out. I slept like a log and couldn't get myself out of bed the following day, coming in late on Thursday.
NOTE:
After several years of being outside of the IT industry, my current job takes me to the cutting edge of systems development: programming for the internet. The needs follow internet time: it is now, now, now. Unlike traditional business environments, where the project needed to be done yesterday (hence the requirements are outdated once approved), internet development is for the here and now. There is an immediate need which did not exist yesterday. It has to be done today. The requirements change on a day-to-day basis, with additional functionality being delivered for each iteration. An iteration lasts about a week or two and the deliverable for each iteration is a working program. In this sense, development is evolutionary. Functionality is added as the system progresses. At any point in time, the delivered iteration is a working program.
--andoy
6 May 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
French Songs
I've been listening to some french songs lately. I have no idea what the lyrics mean. It's almost very different. Though there are still fragments of the New Wave style with the contemporary pop singers, the ballads are very distinct in style. Very french "chanson." Some of the slow "chanson" style songs are by Benabar, Charles Aznavour, and Carla Bruni (I can't remember the other singers). The pop/rock songs are by Mylene Farmer, Keren Ann, Alizee and Anggun, among others.
For the slow songs, the style is distinct and harkens back to Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier. Though the newer slow songs are sung almost in the same manner as Piaf. There is a clear distinction: whereas the older songs were "naughtily sexy" the newer songs are brazenly about sex. (At least as far as I understand the lyrics and the style.)
I have no intention of learning french if only because I want to understand the songs. Although that would be a good reason to study french. Or even to begin studying french. [I remember a friend of mine who started to study french because he found a book by Marquis the Sade in the UPLB library. Although it was in english, there were several passages in french which he went to the trouble of translating on his own.]
Another difference between the french and the rest of the world: a lot of the french female artists have nude photos or topless photos. Carla Bruni was a former super model before concentrating on being a singer. She has lots of nude studio photos. Another sexy singer is Alizee.
A friend of mine once noted that there was a real difference in comparing the french women or girls and the rest of the world. My friend studied at the International School (Makati) and he noted that though the french students may not be the prettiest around, you would know their being french by the aura they exude. It seems that the french "breed" this x-factor or sex appeal, and that the rest of the world is just left in the dust over-powered.
In hindsight, I have taken a stand that this might not be true. It is possible that growing up in France or having a french environment, might contribute a lot to this. The X-factor, or sex appeal, or confidence is just there because of the french environment.
I doubt if I will ever really know.
--andoy
3 May 2005
For the slow songs, the style is distinct and harkens back to Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier. Though the newer slow songs are sung almost in the same manner as Piaf. There is a clear distinction: whereas the older songs were "naughtily sexy" the newer songs are brazenly about sex. (At least as far as I understand the lyrics and the style.)
I have no intention of learning french if only because I want to understand the songs. Although that would be a good reason to study french. Or even to begin studying french. [I remember a friend of mine who started to study french because he found a book by Marquis the Sade in the UPLB library. Although it was in english, there were several passages in french which he went to the trouble of translating on his own.]
Another difference between the french and the rest of the world: a lot of the french female artists have nude photos or topless photos. Carla Bruni was a former super model before concentrating on being a singer. She has lots of nude studio photos. Another sexy singer is Alizee.
A friend of mine once noted that there was a real difference in comparing the french women or girls and the rest of the world. My friend studied at the International School (Makati) and he noted that though the french students may not be the prettiest around, you would know their being french by the aura they exude. It seems that the french "breed" this x-factor or sex appeal, and that the rest of the world is just left in the dust over-powered.
In hindsight, I have taken a stand that this might not be true. It is possible that growing up in France or having a french environment, might contribute a lot to this. The X-factor, or sex appeal, or confidence is just there because of the french environment.
I doubt if I will ever really know.
--andoy
3 May 2005
Happy Birthday Bert!
My brother Bert celebrated his birthday, Monday, May 2. And he's been slightly more than a year out of the country now. He had a somewhat early celebration of his birthday when he visited Tatay's cousin who works in the Middle East. Last Friday (his day-off), he went to Tita Beth's and there was also another birthday celebration there. He got lucky I guess.
Anyway, I just hope he keeps safe.
--andoy
3 May 2005
Anyway, I just hope he keeps safe.
--andoy
3 May 2005
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