me, ordination, delay and marian rivera

Due to the explicit contents of photos from the FHM 100 sexiest, I'm taking some time to choose not-so-unrestrained photos to be published in this blog. Meanwhile, feast your eyes on a portrait of me while I was covering the ordination of the brother of Pael this morning (goody goody picture taking naman!). I actually used two cameras (my Canon 350D and his 40D), which made the experience a lot of fun. I wish I had a second body of my own. hehe...

Sad to say, most of the shots were under exposed maybe because the meter was "fooled" by the white gowns of the priests and seminarians. I also made a blunder of using ISO 1600 in my 350D so some noise reduction post processing may be needed. I also forgot to change the aperture setting of Pael's 40D from f2.8 to a higher value during the group shots, so not everyone in the group photos was sharp. But I think there were also some good shots (I hope). And in terms of the coverage, almost all parts of the ceremony was covered (I wasn't able to get a shot of JV giving the communion to his family). Here's a photo of newly-ordained deacon Jose (*Jaime pala hindi Jose) Vidal Zuniga lying down with his family kneeling behind him.

By the way, Marian Rivera was awarded the Philippines Finest in the FHM 100 sexiest event. Here's a photo of her strutting on the FHM runway.

fhm: 100 sexiest women in the world

A good friend of mine and I got invited to see the FHM 100 sexiest women in the world last night. We were able to get VIP tickets from his cousin, Allan Madrilejos, who also happened to be the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. We were very anxious that the tickets indicated that we couldn't bring our cameras inside. Good thing we took our chances (i'll upload the photos soon because I still have to trash 90% of the photos which were ruined mostly by the smoke in the venue). My right hand is still shaking right now due to the prolonged holding of my camera. I also feel discomfort in my legs due to the extended period of standing up (almost 4 hours). To add to that, I have a 7:30 AM class tomorrow and I still have to check the exam I gave my students last week. But I don't mind. hehe. I just hope my students don't loose the remaining respect they have for me (if they do have) when they find out what I've been up to the last couple of weeks. (last week I was in a lingerie show, photos here).


Stay tuned for the few selected photos. :P

on checking exams

Last week I gave the first ever long exam of my teaching career. The excitement was overwhelming that I in fact created a very long test for most of the students. I wasn't very much concerned with the difficulty they had since they'll still be learning from the answers to the exam questions, even if they get low grades. However, now that I am checking their papers, I am having difficulty deciding the partial scores for essay and problem solving, and I am already consuming a lot of man-hours in this acticivity. So up to now(it's 3:52 in the morning), I still have another final item to finish checking. And it seems to be the hardest part to check. huhuhu...

Teaching is a learning process. So next exam, I'll be giving less essay and problem solving type questions, that's easier to check. hehehe

to do list (for the next two weeks)

I've been getting into this habit of putting my to-do list in this blog. It's kinda useful actually. The fact that I declare to the public what things I ought to do adds a little bit of pressure on my part to actually do them right away. The exercise of striking items on the list also promotes a sense of accomplishment in me.

Anyways, here is the list of my things to do for this week, and the next:

Study Load:
1. Drop EE227
2. CS 270: Prepare for 45 minute report on MySQL
3. CS 270: Re-submit PostgreSQL problem set
4. CS 270: Prepare for Midterm Exam
5. CS 297: Finalize business idea proposal
6. Get transcript of records

Teaching Load:
1. CE 21: Finish checking long exam 1 + bonus exercise
2. CE 21: Finish checking exercise#5
3. CE 21: Create notes on the solutions to long exam problems
4. CE 21: Finalize Machine Problem #1
5. CE 21: Create sample program for Machine Problem #1
6. CE 21: Create instructions for exercise#6 on arrays.
7. CIE 122: Check homework
8. CIE 122: Create sample database script with sample data
9. CIE 122: Create 15 questions from northwind database (+Schema Diagram of northwind)
10. CIE 122: Burn DVD for HTML, CSS and PHP/MySQL tutorial
11. CIE 122: Create long exam #1 questions

Grid/Cluster System Administration
1. Install Cluster in CTC219
2. Follow-up subsidy form in Dean's office
3. Find a hotel near Technology Park and reserve
4. Book plane tickets

JRM Photography:
1. Gibet and Cel Wedding DVD

Miscellaneous
1. My Academic page in ECCE website

cloud computing charts for CS 297

Here are the charts for my second presentation for our CS297 class. It's about cloud computing.
The article can be read from: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19785

Cloud computing is basically performing all "computing" from a remote server through the Internet (it's not uncommon to use a cloud to represent the Internet in diagrams). It's not a very new technology but there is a trend to lean towards this type of computing architecture. A common example of computation done in the cloud is our mail applications. When we access our e-mails, we don't really use applications running on our PCs. Instead, we use the "mail application" in the browser that enables us to access our e-mails through our browsers. And not so very recently, Google released Google Docs, where you can use spreadsheets and word processing applications similar to Microsoft Office. In this type of architecture, all that you'll need in your PCs is an interface to the cloud, which is currently our web browsers.

This kind of architecture, when fully embraced, has several stakeholders:

1. Software development companies
In previous models, Software is sold as a product (software in a box). However with cloud computing, since all applications reside in web servers, selling software as a service is a more viable model, whether it be pay-per-use or a on monthly/yearly rental basis. Having the applications reside in the cloud also presents a challenge to the current model for making revenues. Google for instance allows users to use Google maps, docs, etc. without charging anything from the users. Software developers should look at generating profit from advertising, which is currently the biggest source of income in the web. This then leads to challenges in improving ad targeting algorithms and similar technologies to generate high revenue from ads.

There are discussions that the operating system may be put on the cloud. This is obviously far-fetched but it seems possible. And when this happens, Microsoft will be out of business. I think Microsoft is realizing now that they are being left behind in online services/applications that's why they want to buy Yahoo! They spent a lot of effort on developing Vista, which I think happens to be a disaster due to its performance requirements (I noticed it's very slow).

2. Hardware development companies
With a full cloud computing architecture, memory requirements, HDD requirements will be minimal on the client side. However, on the server side, since much of the computing load will be performed by the servers, the processing and memory requirements will be very high. This will lower the sales of consumer HDD, memory and processor manufacturers, while high end, server-capable computers and parts will notice a huge demand for their products. Technologies such as Cluster computing and Grid computing will receive more attention since they provide lower costs than Super Computers, while still achieving the same computational capability.

3. Internet service providers
Cloud computing will increase the demand for fast and reliable Internet connections.

4. Network infrastructure companies
Network infrastructure companies such as Cisco stocks will get higher due to increased demands on their products.

5. Consumers
With Google implementing a free service to users, other companies that will be offering software as a service and hardware as a service, will be in extreme pressure to provide their services for free and generate income from other sources such as web advertising.

6. Start-ups
There are a lot of aspects of cloud computing that can be explored and be turned into a business.

Of course there are barriers to the deployment of a full cloud computing architecture, some of which are:

1. Privacy of data stored in servers
2. Reliability and speed of network connection

an ID finally

Yey! The security guards won't be bothering me anymore. I also don't have to scour my messy bag to look for the certificate provided by the ECCE Department every time I go to Rizal library and borrow books. Wohoo!

Now I'm only waiting for my AdMU e-mail account (which I need very urgently by the way) and my first paycheck which will arrive at around end of July while my transcript is still being processed by UP.

recharging gadgets wirelessly

We're having a 10 minute presentation on two technology topics on our CS297 Techpre class. The requirement is 3 charts per topic. Here are the charts for my first topic:

The article can be read from: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19894