blah

post party post

2009-12-19T23:07:11Z

Went to the org party last night.

Overall, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary in last night's X-mas party. There's free food, random awards, and scandalous games, but nothing really fancy (in the context of the org, of course).

akutenshi_13 provided most of the lulz for the really "tanders" (<= batch 2th) table. No, wait, the bottle of Mountain Dew is also partially to blame for the lulz.

--

Left the venue a little after Chelli's arrival and proceeded to crash over at Jojo and maedinn's place.

Dunno what Chelli, Shari, and Cats were doing downstairs, but Jojo and I got to ~~fix a busted TV box~~ play Dynasty Warriors: Gundam for a couple of hours upstairs.

Left at around 3:10 AM to do something.

--

As a side note, I'd like to promote the thrill ride called "Flying EDSA Bus":

- Cheap! Only P35 for Philcoa to FTI! (downside: thrill ride is only 35 minutes long, "stops" counted)
- Exciting! Experience the thrill of swerving through EDSA traffic in a large unbalanced vehicle at around 100Km/h! Feel the wind at your face through the unclosable windows! and "Seatbelts? What seatbelts?"
- Free Bonus Feature! Once in every few rides, lucky riders get a chance to engage in psy-war with celphone snatchers or (if they're really lucky) armed robbers! Make them call off their hit by performing a variety of techniques to increase the perceived risk; if you fail, you lose your stuff!

bittersweet

2009-12-09T17:50:17Z

I guess it's time for me to write my year end post even though New Year is still 3 weeks away.

Part of the reason is that, in my current state, time goes too quickly for me. Answering to no one tends to do that.

Yes, I am aware that the conditions are right for crazy assed shit to happen in the next few weeks, but I have this strong hunch that nothing will happen.

--

The other reason why I can write the year end post now is that the year can easily be summed up as "It was bittersweet."

My happiest days, my happiest moments this year were also the saddest, the most painful, or the ones that came at great cost.

keshite! REWRITE-shite!

2009-11-29T14:54:16Z

Went to help in the fair yesterday.

I know it's weird that a person like me did some heavy work instead of just enjoying the event. It's hard not to notice the reactions of the other alumni and the few members who know of my former position in the org.

So why am I doing it?

Simple: I'm sick of cons. I don't go to events aside from Komikon and the AME fairs because I know how sucky they can get. Because of this, I'm driven to do what I can to make our fairs better than other cons.

Case in point: I stood as an unofficial usher at the gates in the first hour of the fair. The reason was simple - at that time, that was the place where crazy stuff was most likely to happen. I can't do anything about long line of people under the sun or the inefficient processing scheme they chose to use, but there are some things that I can do that most of the people at the gates can't (and I actually got to do them).

--

Overall, the fair was very similar to "Una kAME!"

The venue wasn't jam-packed but it wasn't empty either. The lack of attendance (due to the location of the venue, among other things) was both a blessing and a curse; there wasn't a repeat of the logistical nightmare of the previous fair (the air conditioning was a big plus) and that the attendees had enough space to move around but there was a lack of cosplayers (just like Una kAME :P).

There were a lot more booths this time around. It's just not noticeable because similar events tend to jam-pack a lot of booths instead of giving enough space for both the con-goers and the booth people.

There were some delays in the schedule due to unforeseen circumstances. However, thanks to the low turnout of cosplayers, the cosplay segment ended on schedule (8PM).

--

Met a bunch of alumni while walking around the hall. The alumni turnout was less than normal, but it's expected given the location of the venue.

There was nothing really notable about meeting the alumni/members, mostly just the usual "what's up?" stuff.

Meeting Jason was probably the most notable one, given his reactions to meeting other mems again after not seeing them for a long time (e.g. kuro_inu and Earle's weight loss). The main reason he was there was to fetch his younger sister who was part of the APH cosplay group, and this really made him feel old (younger sister in HS + joined the org 8 years ago = joined the org back when younger sister was... really young).

--

I was lying low at the fair because I was avoiding some people. So no pictures here.

The only real picture I had was with tRANCE, and the only reason I had that pic was because I was the one who took their picture in the dressing room (by chance I was resting in the AME baggage storage/dressing room when they knocked to ask if someone could take their picture).

--

Harakiri Jiro, a band made up of Japanese people (so technically, it's a Japanese band), was the best band of the night. Covering relatively old AjiKan songs was a big plus since a lot of people were familiar with them, even those songs not featured in anime.

Too bad most of the audience had already gone home at that time.

--

Wrap up was alot quicker than expected so I got to spend about half an hour hanging out with Lowell, Deng, and the other semi-oldies. Had a "sausage fest" (took some of the free hungarian sausage for mems/alumni. also, free leftover Coke from the Coke booth) while talking about random shit.

Random shit = LULZ

LULZ + Diego = (somewhat) epic LULZ

Decided to leave around 11:30 PM. Mistakenly took a Guadalupe jeep instead of an EDSA jeep, but after thinking about it, decided that Guadalupe was a better place to wait for buses instead of Buendia, as the former was well lit and usually has more people.

The ride home was quick. Yay, flying buses!

Bakemonogatari 12

2009-11-26T15:39:22Z

...is hands down, the cheesiest/sappy-est episode outside a romance anime series.

I probably would've enjoyed it more if the scene wasn't eerily familiar.

Or maybe I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if it wasn't personal?

meteor shower

2009-11-17T19:07:26Z

It isn't the special things we do that gets most cherished.

Often, it's the little things we do, those things that we don't even notice, that carry the most weight.

obligatory one year after

2009-11-11T03:58:37Z

I shouldn't be posting stuff like this post-musings but what the hell...

Last year I made a gambit. If it works, my life would have been much easier in the following months.

If it backfires, well... let's just say I have nothing to lose.

End result: it backfired.

--

Not that I mind much. Back then I had only two reasons why I should still stay in the company.

By March, that number went down to zero. Leaving the company was the only logical thing to do.

--

I never regretted making that gambit.

If anything, I was glad that I did it.

How else would I know the true extent of the problems in the company if I hadn't done it? Would I have known how inexperienced these people are in management if I hadn't pushed them to reveal their weaknesses?

How else would I have found time to expand my software engineering knowledge to this level if I still stayed with the company? Even now, I'm still frustrated that my 4 years of experience didn't expose me to standard practices like Unit Testing and Continuous Integration.

--

It may be a turning point in my life, but it's really no big deal.

I just learned the things that I should've known all along, that's all.

promises

2009-11-05T12:26:16Z

I can't seem to stop breaking them...

(It's ironic that I still stand by my decision, even though it's as easy to break.)

kasalanan ni Jason

2009-10-23T10:06:08Z

Pinaalala sa akin ni Em-boy kagabi:

The Missing Piece meets the Big O - libro na dinala ni Jason (?) sa tambayan back in the AS Lobby days.

It's the book that had the most influence on me in terms of how I look at friendships and relationships in general.

blast

2009-10-21T18:31:03Z

Two years ago, last Monday, an explosion occurred at the basement of the now under-renovation Glorietta 2.

However, its anniversary was largely ignored because of the partially foiled armed robbery at the nearby Greebelt 5.

--

Funny how people tend to forget things when faced with newer and more exciting ones. Even I myself forgot the full reason why October is such a special month for me.

...or was it because I was trying to push it to the back of my consciousness?

riding the wave

2009-10-17T19:16:32Z

Been trying out Google Wave these past few weeks. Finally been able to make a Robot and a Gadget.

Robot: Watexy (Java Port)
Address: watexy-java@appspot.com

It's a robot that automatically converts LaTeX text into images. Showed me how woefully inadequate the tutorial and API docs are.

Gadget: Pick Up Sticks
XML: http://wave.bryanbibat.com/pick-up-sticks-beta.xml

Basic pick-up sticks game. Showed me how asynchronous the platform is. Will have to overhaul the program to use functional programming techniques (which work well in asynchronous mode).

TRC timeline map up

2009-10-07T20:04:14Z

Posted a timeline map of TRC's convoluted plot over at CRC.

It's hit-whoring, I know, but to be fair my diagram's probably one of the better ones out there.

pagbigyan

2009-10-06T16:02:23Z

It's windy and raining hard outside.

I'm miles away from home. At this hour, the chance of getting held up while going home is around 1%.

And worse, I'm writing with this tone again.

Pagbigyan ninyo na, dapat ngayon nga matatapos yung musings i.e. dapat mas weird at mas-cheesy itong post na ito kung hindi lang nasira ni Ondoy yung momentum ko.

So yun, hanggang random ramblings na lang ito.

--

Today is one of those rare days where I can do silly things like this.

December 18 is the best example for this: starting from 2002 (the day I started wearing glasses again) up to 2004, and again in 2006, crazy stuff happened in those 4 days. Don't be surprised if I do something stupid again at that day this year.

In today's case, this day was the happiest two days I had in the past two years.

--

I should be reminiscing right now, but the softdrinks, iced tea, tea, and coffee in my system is preventing me from doing that. Good thing I didn't choose beer my dinner pantulak, otherwise I probably would have gone home early and canceled this whole thing. =/

Sabagay, tama rin naman. I think I've done enough introspective/retrospective stuff these past few months. The past is past; wala na akong magagawa doon.

What matters is what I'm going to do from now on.

I've learned to stop wallowing in self pity in high school, and I've learned to stop being an unpassionate procrastinator in college: why should I be trapped in both now?

So what if I couldn't achieve closure in some of the pressing issues in my life? Do they even matter anymore?

Tama na drama, Bry.

Paubos na oras mo, at marami ka pang kailangang gawin.

blah

2009-09-30T17:09:07Z

Tuesday:

Volunteer work from 10 AM - 8 PM at Whitespace 2314.

Packed goods in the morning, eventually progressed to carrying boxes and a couple of sacks of rice. Had to shout out orders often because of the sucky management.

Ended the day in pack-passing relays. Passed around 2,000 packs.

Didn't realize that I had skipped lunch and had not had dinner until that time.

Injuries:

Got a scrape in my right index finger. Fingers also hurt after grabbing thousands of packs and ripping open dozens of cartons.

Biceps surprisingly did not get DOMS even after lifting thousands of packs. DOMS hit my lower back hard (after all those heavy lifting/grabbing packs off the ground) and also hit my thighs (after standing for over 10 hours).

Lost my voice due to shouting and dehydration.

--

Yesterday:

Went to RFM gym. Saw the piles of packed goods neatly lined up and the 50+ people already there (and increasing every half hour from new batches of students).

Volunteered to repack those with torn packs in the current relay line, something that I also experienced the day before (blame the tear-prone bags). Repacked around 20.

Decided that the place wasn't as undermanned as they are saying (I've seen much worse: Whitespace AM the day before), and went to Balay Expo.

Expo had more people. =/

Decided to go home instead.

--

Google Wave accounts will be given away tonight to those who signed up for the preview.
My wave address is ~~bryan_bibat@wavesandbox.com~~ bryan.bibat@googlewave.com for those interested in adding me as a contact.

[edit: apparently, we'll be receiving normal accounts later. oooh... I get to invite people... :D]

--

As I predicted, TRC ended like Rayearth:

Denouement? What denouement? XP

paralyzed

2009-09-28T15:54:20Z

I'm tired. I haven't had much sleep since this whole thing started.

I'm caught between three things that I must do, and I can't seem to make the right choice in each one of them.

--

Damn this rain. Damn Ondoy and the two next tropical depressions.

At this rate, I'll have to ditch my original plan how to end the musings.

Dammit, why does everything have to get screwed up when I'm so close to closing large open loops in my life?!?

UP AME Roll Call Wiki Page Up

2009-09-27T16:35:55Z

No musings tonight. I'm monitoring the UP AME Roll Call Wiki Page in case the website gets borked.

Thanks to greyrook_22 for starting the list (and adding NSFW lulz), kikyou_oneesama for the alphabetical order suggestion, and all the members and alumni who have contributed to the list!

flood

2009-09-26T16:02:06Z

Living on top of a hill has its benefits: I never had to worry about flooding.

That said, I don't feel like making a musings post tonight because of today's events.

TRC 229

2009-09-01T03:58:41Z

Apparently I was wrong; the two in the first pages of the series are the non-clones and the whole thing only happened in the minds of the clones.

That means it's all about breaking the time loop now. =/

Well, they did do something about the time loop, but the multiverse is so unstable that making TRC the origin of all CLAMP worlds isn't farfetched.

--

All this talk about time loops remind me of Maaya's first single for Tsubasa: "Loop".

Coincidence? or hitsuzen?

--

One more volume left for xxxHolic and Tsubasa. I'm guessing the former will wrap things up like in the last volume of CCS.

lazy

2009-08-29T15:08:36Z

Sorry, no musings tonight. Brain too focused because of Layton.

internet connectivity borked

2009-08-12T13:32:50Z

Undersea cables cut = not motivated to write a musings post.

Will probably go out and buy the UD3R motherboard tomorrow so I could do the transfer while the lines are being repaired.

first facebook pic...

2009-07-15T16:17:41Z

...from my grade school years. My other batchmates have been posting and tagging class pics in the past few weeks, but this is the first time I've seen a pic of a class I've been in.

I'm the round-faced guy in the lower right with a weird head-turn-whatever pose. This is the post-nervous breakdown, pre-"I can run the acad oval" Bry so don't expect much.

Coincidentally, (Sir) Martin is also in this pic, being his last year in DBTI before entering Ateneo. Obviously, we weren't as tanned as we are nowadays.

blasphemous, just the way I like it

2009-07-13T06:09:38Z

Spent an entire week playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. I really like the entire Shin Megami Tensei mythos/multiverse but I'd have to admit that this is the first SMT game I've ever played (I don't consider Persona SMT because it shies away from God and the Devil).

Short write-up below the cut.

--

Calling the game "The World Ends With You" meets "Shin Megami Tensei" makes sense, but that's oversimplifying it. Sure it's got the 7 days to survive theme of TWEWY, but SMT:DS only has around half the style if the former. Compared to TWEWY, SMT:DS's characters and settings look bland.

What it lacks in style, it makes up for the trademark blasphemous nature of the SMT series. Now I am a religious person, but I still got a kick out of the SMT:DS's scenario. I'm really tempted to let an ultra-religious person play the game and wait until the guy throws the DS at the wall for trampling upon his beliefs. XD (I personally don't mind. It's fiction, and it allows me to stomach that most parts of the Bible and other sacred texts are also fiction.)

--

I like how they managed the simplicity of the game. Demon collection and fusion has always been a complicated part of the SMT franchise, but in SMT:DS they gave tools to the player to make these tasks easier. The Demon Auction removed the need of looking for demons ala-Pokemon, while the Fusion Search lists down all possible combinations to get the demon you want.

They also removed some features common to SRPGs for the sake of simplicity. There are no weapons, armor, or items in the game, just abilities. There's also no flanking or altitude rules in the battlefield. By taking away these (admittedly unnecessary) features in the game, they allowed the player to focus on the more important parts of the game, namely, the demon fusions and the blasphemous story.

--

I was planning to finish the game with Nyarlathotep to add another bad-ass entity to my list of finishers:

Persona 3 - Satan (because only Almighty works on Nyx)
Persona 3 Fes - Odin (with 100 Magic)
Persona 4 - Loki

Unfortunately, Chaos Wave is a liability in the final stage because you can't get an Extra Turn. I had to make do with a Buddhist god with an exactly opposite skill (Double Up) instead.

Wasn't able to open up the best ending so I went with the "God Wins" route (which is just a couple of notches above the "bad ending" in the SMT franchise). I'm now rushing through the game in the New Game+ mode following the 6 ending walkthrough hoping to get there by the end of the day.

Just Be Friends

2009-07-12T18:48:37Z

No musings / daily CRC entries for tonight. Need to rest my brain after finishing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor without a FAQ or walkthrough. Write-up later.

In the meantime, here's a short post on this week's Nico Nico Douga LSS video.

"Just Be Friends" is a techno breaking up song synthesized using Vocaloid (Luka Megurine voice). The selling point for this song is that the fan video is made of win:

I'll have to agree with Juts that the donishima version is the best cover:

But then again, the distorted vocals are sort of cheating. Here's halyosy's version:

rolling..

2009-06-30T13:43:19Z

There's nothing much to say about this quarter. As I said in last quarter's post, it's supposed to be boring.

--

The only thing worth mentioning about this quarter was getting my own domain and regularly updating my braindump/blog.

Everything else was blah.

--

I've started loading up on marketable skills, but progress has been slow. I guess I underestimated my overall state of mind back then i.e. I never realized how lazy I really am. :P But then again, I'm in no rush to get back to work so pace doesn't matter that much.

The weird part about my slow pace is that I'm still learning a lot more nowadays than back when I was still working.

--

Enough about work, let's go back to talking about life.

I'm proud to say that I'm happily unemployed.

I feel more like a retiree than burned out guy who just quit his work. My final pay still hasn't dried out yet even though that was over a hundred days ago and I've already spent a lot on books and other stuff in my "home office". The other people in the house don't mind me living like a NEET (which isn't exactly true since I'm undergoing self-education and self-training) because I still pay my share of the bills and even though I could do some household chores, there's always someone around who should do it.

It does get boring sometimes, though.

Recently, I was tempted to delve again into crazy 夢-ish psychobabble to have some fun. Noticed that I was just being tricked into a trap and pulled out at the last moment. So yeah, this paragraph is the closest you could get to psychobabble from this post.

--

Next quarter is supposed to be exciting, From the looks of things, however, I think it's still going to be a boring one.

Realistically speaking, the next "era" probably won't even begin this year.

More sleeping time for me! ^_^

meh

2009-06-23T17:43:58Z

Didn't feel like writing my blog entry today. Ramble na lang ulit.

--

Been answering Project Euler problems since 5PM. Used 3 different programming languages and 2 different OSs in solving the problems. All of them dealing with prime numbers.

Sawa na ako sa prime number problems. I mean, there's only one efficient way to generate primes:

- keep a list of primes
- iterate through your number range, dividing each number to the list of primes.
- add the current number to the list of primes when you reach the point in the list of primes where "square root (current number) < current prime"

It's on the volume one of The Art of Computer Programming. Go figure.

--

Learning new languages isn't that interesting nor is it something to brag about. Programmers go through a couple of programming languages in their lifetime. For me it's:

BASIC (6yrs)
Pascal (1yr)
C / C++ (4yrs)
Java (7yrs) / VB.NET (2yrs)

And that's just the "general" programming languages.

What is interesting in the new programming languages I am trying out is the inclusion of functional programming related syntax and approaches. After reading SICP, I found it weird that UP's CS curriculum doesn't include functional programming.

Sure, we got to play around with pointers and assembly and other stuff that could make your computer crash unexpectedly, but there are still a lot of lessons a computer scientist could pick up from learning functional programming languages like LISP.

--

Got to cook lunch in between programming sessions because the rest of the house went somewhere.

Oh, and yeah, I gave up fighting my insomnia and moved my body clock accordingly. The house's lunch is my breakfast, dinner is my lunch, and I get to cook my own dinner after midnight.

My dinner for the past week is homemade pizza. I cook a customized pizza sauce at the start of the week and store it in the ref. Every night I just put it on top of bread along with toppings then pop it in the toaster.

I could have made pizza for lunch, pero nakakasuya naman kung ganoon. So I decided to cook spaghetti instead, using the pizza sauce as the base of the spaghetti sauce.

I was surprised at the outcome: it was probably the best plate of spaghetti I've ever had in my life.

The noodles were firmer than the usual fast-food spaghetti (al dente?) and the sauce was... let's just say that every bite was bursting with flavor. I basically followed the advice in video #8 here and prepared the pasta like they do in hotels (sauce and pasta mixed in a pan). But the flavor itself was an accident, I think.

I've mentioned before in a plurk that the pizza sauce batch I made this week was too salty because of the Italian seasoning and the salt used in the minced garlic. To counter this, I added sweet pizza sauce (bought from a nearby supermarket) to the batch before I made the spaghetti sauce. In addition to this, I also fried some chopped onions, hotdogs, and salami in olive oil and added the sauce on it afterward. Also added around a quarter cup of water to thin the sauce (as pizza sauce should be dry). The end result was spaghetti coated in a sweet, sour, salty, Italian-y, whatever sauce. XD

--

Been playing Mafia Wars because I'm already way above the ceiling score of Restaurant City beta and a good number of friends from Facebook are playing it.

It's a decent game, but I don't see myself being addicted to it. My current play style is similar to my RC play style - optimize everything. It's not a fun way to play, but it exercises my mind more than taking the game seriously or bending the rules to get ahead.

I'm tempted to make a clone of the game just for kicks, though.

--

Speaking of game making and programming, Psyren was one of the random manga I've read in OneManga these past few weeks. It's got this interesting little mechanic that might translate well in an RPG or SRPG game.

It's also tempting to program that mechanic into a game. But I don't have RPG programming/designing experience yet so it's going to take some time before I get to do that. :P

--

Also been re-reading some manga I've read back in college. Remembered that I sometimes got to use quotes from those manga in real life situations.

It's a lot cooler when your listener doesn't know you're quoting from some obscure source. ^_^

--

Masakit nga lang pag nahahalata ko na iba yung outcome sa mga eksena sa manga na halos pareho sa mga eksena sa buhay ko...

UPD DCS batch 2004 EB

2009-06-19T19:17:44Z

Just came back from the batch EB I mentioned in my previous post. Venue was Big Buddha at Greenbelt 3. Service was slow, maybe because it's Friday or maybe we didn't look like highly paid IT people (or both). Transferred to SBC after dinner for air conditioning and coffee.

Wasn't as OP as I'd expected because of occasional groupmates Eymard (the guy who called for the EB) and Dex, and blockmate crazyangelee. Blockmates Paul and Alpert arrived much later because of an unfortunate incident (2 flat tires, what the?!?). I was familiar with the rest of the people who were there, but I didn't know them personally. Still, I was able to join in the discussion once in a while.

--

Everyone was generally ok with their jobs and life. Roles ranged from development to QA to bureaucratic/managerial roles. The distribution of people among the prominent IT companies in the country was well within my expectations i.e. after 5 years, people dispersed to multiple companies instead of being concentrated in just a few companies. Sure companies like HP and Lawson each have a good number of UPD DCS peeps, but the concentrations aren't that significant.

--

I probably freaked out people by stating topics within CS, EEE, and Math subjects (e.g. why dinosaurs are on the cover of CS 140's Silberschatz & Galvin book, EEE 8's Karnaugh Maps, and Math 180.1's Simplex Methods). I'll blame it on my long term memory (which, unfortunately doesn't work as well on people's names) and recent re-studying of those topics. Kung high school electronics lessons nagagamit ko pa, paano pa kaya college lessons.

--

Stuck to my guns and declined offers to apply for some companies. The IT world undergoing massive changes this year, from cloud computing and SOA migrations, to new RIAs, to mobile platforms like iPhone and Android, to Google Wave and new Social Media. Joining a company now might make me miss my big break in one of those fields.

--

One of the more interesting parts of the night was when the question about "whether graduating with honors makes a difference in the workplace" popped up. The general answer was no.

Having honors might (theoretically, as none of us had experienced it) make it easier to land a job and might give a slight edge in initial salary (which was experienced by a few of us). In the long run, however, honors don't really matter. We did agree, though, that getting good grades is a good idea as it gives you a safety net preventing you from not graduating on time.

--

Even if I couldn't relate to some of the discussions, I still enjoyed hanging out with the CS 2004 peeps. Thanks again to Eymard for organizing this EB! :D