Reading List for December

Imitation of Christ - Thomas Kempis
The Silmarillion - J.R.R Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - J.R.R Tolkien
Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
The Space Trilogy - C.S. Lewis (If ever I could get copies :D)
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
The Everlasting Man - G.K. Chesterton

And most importantly The Bible ..it is a must read :)

Overtime!!

Disclaimer: This is NOT a rant! :)

Well in the morning two days ago,I was commissioned to do work on a site that was in need of HTML conversion and slicing. Funny thing is that I don't know how to do it! But since I am still new in the corporate programming world, I decided that this would count as work experience anyway so I bravely dived to solved the problem! ( actually I was not brave, I was duty bound to solve it as an employee :P)

Well for one thing what I discovered was that the greatest enemy of web development when you are fixing aesthetic issues is browser compatibility. I can tell you that many an elegant solution to a problem was foiled by a simple "bug" in a certain browser. Then you have to scramble and make a hack to make it work in that specific browser. Then hope the hack doesn't create problems with other browsers. If it does, then it would be back to debugging. To prevent this, it's best if you only use features that are approved by the ECMA standard to ensure cross-browser compatibility.

Another thing is that client demands may seem unreasonable at times. Sometimes they realize how hard it is for developers to do what do want sometimes not. But since we are being paid to work ( being in a corporate world ), it is only right that we give them what they want. I just wished they knew how hard ( sometimes downright impossible! ) to design,create and debug a website in a 12 hour ( plus or minus 6 hours) timeline.

Flash is common in websites but was not enough reason to warrant me to learn about it because of its bandwidth.....until now. I was simply lost on how to fix a flash issue in the site I was working on. I have to ask a co-worker to see what was wrong and solve it for me. Well if this episode is going to be repeated, I hope I won't be caught without a single knowledge in flash.

I didn't know that applets still exists in the web. I thought they were extinct now but I was apparently wrong since the site that we were working on were still using applets. That caught me off guard and was at a loss of how to fix it until someone showed me the options toolbar that all applets have.

Well after all have been done, I can say it was tiring but at least it was enlightening. I hope the lessons that it have imparted to me would stick...or else goto Overtime!! :P

My first piano piece!

Finally after 2 months of self teaching and practicing the piano ( actually a electronic keyboard), I finally finished playing the song "I'll be waiting here for you" by Bryan Adams. It took a while to get but after playing it often I got used to the finger patterns it needs. To think that a few months ago I had no idea how to play the thing :) Thanks to the music theory for providing me with VERY useful information about note reading and piano playing. Need to learn sight reading though.

Now finding new songs to play :P

What kind of soul are you?

I was browsing a forum when I found out this test. Basically this test tells you what kind of person/soul you really are. Below is a result of the quiz. Have Fun!

You Are a Prophet Soul

You are a gentle soul, with good intentions toward everyone. Selfless and kind, you have great faith in people. Sometimes this faith can lead to disappoinment in the long run. No matter what, you deal with everything in a calm and balanced way. You are a good interpreter, very sensitive, intuitive, caring, and gentle. Concerned about the world, you are good at predicting people's feelings. A seeker of wisdom, you are a life long learner looking for purpose and meaning. You are a great thinker and communicator, but not necessarily a doer. Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Note: The answer to the questions may look redundant and you may find yourself to be torn between answers. Just pick any and try.

Nothing to do

I am currently taking a "break" from developing web stuff at my office. Currently I am training myself to learn this nifty e-commerce component extension for Joomla! called Virtuemart. I dunno why my boss doesn't have any job for me so I spent my time tinkering with virtuemart and it was really good. But after three days I am starting to worry? Don't they have anything for me to do? I mean anything? Don't you think I have at least something to do in the office? I am worried about this since they are paying me for it. I think its not good if you are payed for doing nothing, neh? ahhh!! Maybe they will give me some real heavy projects next week!! Nooo!! The suspense is killing me!! I'd never thought that I would say this but....I wish I have something to do!! :(

On the other hand I think I have other things to worry about now that are not office related

let me see....

Senior Project for ICS 100
HR Project for CSSE83
Final Exams next week
my hobbies( currently learning how to draw and play the keyboard)
etc

I guess I have LOTS of stuff to do o_0

Survival of the Mediocre

I once came across an article that says that the world today no longer abide by the law of "survival of the fittest". Instead it asserts that the world today has already stuck on to the "survival of the mediocre" law. Now this may sound confusing since when did the mediocre became the top of the food chain? Aren't the people who are innovative and strive to be successful be on top?

My personal interpretation of this statement is that people nowadays are content living in mediocrity. I'm not saying the people nowadays are generally lazy. I'm also not implying that the work people today are mediocre or substandard. What I think is that people today rarely push themselves to their potential best. They accept anything as long as it's good enough. They are usually content in living in a comfortable setup even if they know that they can do more. The danger here is that when people tend to accept and produce mediocrity, they would eventually come to accept it as the norm which would eventually the standard. Now you and I both know that this is bad for everybody.

Some say that we are only using 10% of our brains and 90% remain untapped. While I doubt that the figures are accurate, the message is clear: We are grossly underestimating our capacity to do great things. "Great things" here doesn't mean things that can change the world! Even everyday tasks that we face become great if we do it with a passion. So go ahead, stop complaining/whining/imploring to other people that you can't do this. Just start doing it!

Senior Project Deadline coming to a close

I can't believe that this semesters finals is going to be on the first week of October! It wasn't like this last year! :(

It seems that I have underestimated the time to make my senior project. Not to mention that I have a part time job to maintain. Well not surprisingly, things like these almost always crop up in the software development world. Some hard to find bugs, feature creep, unforeseen architecture problems,etc. really throws a hammer into your "carefully planned" schedule. Not to mention occasional laziness, coder's block, personal problems then in that case you are really in trouble. In relation to the software world, you must adapt and adjust to this things or you will go crazy. Unfortunately, not all of us are trained to do so. So frustration sets in, procrastination results and...you know that rest! :D

Ahhhh what am I blabbering about! Might as well double up my efforts to finish my senior projects. It wouldn't go away unless I finish it anyway.

My new look on Christianity

Recently I have been voraciously reading on articles and books that tackles about my spiritual faith. Just last month I have bought a copy of Didache(a daily bible reflection guide) for the month of July, August and September. I also suddenly found this old book in our home library called Strengthening your Grip by Charles Swindoll which I suspect was my fathers. I also bought a copy of Kerygma for the month of September and I am planning to subscribe this year for one year.

Why the sudden interest in all this things? Well so far my interest in my catholic faith has been lukewarm for a while now and I want to rejuvenate this desire for connecting with my creator by reading books and articles about this integral part of our lives. I believe that without constant prayer and meeting with our God, our faith would just wither and die.

So what did I learn? Well many things! In fact there is so many that it would be impossible to enumerate them all in this article. So I'll just mention here the ones that I remember most vividly. One is that religious legalism is bad. What is legalism? From what I know, it is the excessive concern for laws and its intricate details that you lose sight of what the law was made for. It means giving importance to rituals and traditions while neglecting the basic needs of the Christian faith such as loving your neighbors and forgiving others. Another one is that although we rely on God's forgiveness for our salvation, it doesn't mean that we can go and sin to our hearts content. The proper response would be to accept his love and love him in return by following his commandments. Another is that to quit addictions you must not focus on it. Instead focus on your dreams. Stop thinking about the addiction and think about something else that is good. I found this is quit true since I was a video game addict back then.Ahhh too many!! I guess you will just have to read the books themselves to find out about all of them.

Anyway these were great books to read. It certainly corrected some gloomy and grim misconceptions I have about Christianity. It was worth reading for it cleanses my soul. I think it will also do this to you to.

OJT review

Been a long time since my last post. Well can't be helped since i was hooked back into playing ragnarok. But it does get boring after while :)

Anyway I'm doing my OJT now and so far there are many things that I have learned in the workplace. Things that can only be learned outside the realm of academia.

1. You are more motivated and pressured to finish your work since your reputation and your salary depends on your work.
2. The technical expertise needed in real world work is more advanced than what you have in school.
3. Real world projects mostly involved existing code unlike in school which you usually start from scratch.

A look on Shougi part 1

As usual, it is in my boring moments that I find something interesting. Today I was browsing the naruto article in wikipedia. I then read the profile of one the characters(shikamaru) and came across the part where he was playing shougi. I got interested and after a few more searchesa dn reading the rules, I was browsing the net for free software to give it a try.

At first I thought it was simple game even though it did resemble chess a bit. My first encounter with the computer(on very weak level) ended in utter defeat XD. Since I am a bit of an occasional chess player, I was surprised that playing it required a different set of mind set than chess. This led me to more matches.

Why I use Python

In the world of programming, there must be hundreds of languages in existence. Due to their sheer numbers, it is not possible that you will be able to learn and master all of them. Therefore you should pick languages to learn with respect to the problem that you are aiming to solve.

Which brings us to the language that I use the most, Python. First of all, I admit that the Python programming language is not the language for everything. But it does have things going for it.

• Brief and concise syntax -- in Python, more is less since the syntax lends to avoid wordliness
• Readibility -- because of the the reason above, Python programs can be easily interpreted and understood
• Extensive built-in modules -- most of the functions needed in common programming tasks are already available for Python
• Libraries -- As far as I know, most application domains nowadays have a Python library ready for available use
  
  

Civilization 3 review

Last week when I was bored, I searched for games that would cure me of boredom. I stumbled across this game called Civilization 3 that at first glance doesn't seem to stand out from "blockbuster" games such as CounterStrike or Warcraft 3. Anyway , I was bored enough to try anything so I tried to play the game. At first, I was at a loss on how to play the game but little by little, I learned how to use the game interface. What I discovered was a game that is simple rules but has deep complexity. For example, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that banks produce wealth for the government(for civilization for that matter). But if you want to know the wealth that is actually produced, you have to compute the the total number of population in the city, check if there is already a marketplace or a tax collector in each city, check if you have built the wall street or smith's trading company wonders...

Another feature of this game is that there are many ways to win in this game. If you are the aggressive type, you can win by building a large military force and try to conquer the world. If you are the peaceful type, you can try to win via diplomatic victory by building the UN and garnering the votes of your fellow civs or making your country the unofficial capital of the world by raising your culture levels. And if you are more inclined toward technology, you can win by building the first spacecraft to launch to the nearest star,alpha centuari.

But for people who like fast games, I do not recommend this since playing Civilization 3 may take a minimum of 2 hours that will suck off more time if you are not careful :).

But despite the disadvantages its still a fun and addicting game to the core.

Please ignore since this is my first post

I finally have my own blog but the timing could have been better...I was taking the exam earlier and to my utter contempt ,90% of the things I and my classmates studied did not appear on the exam paper.I am sure that most of my classmates(excluding those who inevitably cheat ("_) )of the class had a very hard time on the exam...I absolutely had no idea what the answers and Iwas just guessing the answers to the questions :P.Sometimes you just have to fail.On a sidenote, the teacher said "If you ever leak any exam, you will be the one who will suffer". Guess I will follow it ;P