Crimson Crux

That is the question that a recent Newsbreak report poses and dissects. One salient line:

[Philippine Science High School] graduates in UP are sometimes accused of overconfidence and academic delinquency in the latter part of their courses.

As a Pisay graduate myself, I’m able to refute and support several of the article’s points. True, some PSHS grads in UP end up fighting for academic survival, but take note of the word some (even the quotation above says “sometimes”). Many Pisay alumni graduate with stellar academic records, along with extra-curricular and student leadership feats.

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This techblog celebrates its birthday today!

I still remember feeling the energy of adventurism that coursed through my veins on May 21, 2005 as I opened my second blog, Crimson Crux. Opening additional blogs might be a mundane experience for some of you, but back then it was something special for me. Prior to CCrux, all my time was devoted to my literary blog, Slip of the Pen. I decided to have this blog (first hosted in Blogger) just to appease my techie/geeky side.

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“Its creations earn patents, outperform humans, and will soon fly to space. All it needs now is a few worthy challenges.” — Jonathon Keats, Popular Science.

No other two lines can more effectively sum up Stanford University professor John Koza’s “invention machine”, a network of 1,000 computers that creates innovative (sometimes startling) designs from the most basic code — all without human guidance. (more…)

Finally, the news that the IT world has been waiting for! Sun Microsystems has finally seen the light, or more specifically, saw that open source holds the key to Java’s future.

“At this point, it is not a question of whether, but it is a question of how,” said Rich Green, Sun EVP of Software at the annual JavaOne Conference at San Francisco.

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Or so Damien Katz writes. Several of those signs:

• Java is all you’ll ever need
• You take great pride in the high volume of code you write
• You model all your code in UML before you write it

You be the judge. Damien’s entry has generated quite a good discussion.

UML users no longer need to be software-centric with the arrival of SysML. The system-level design language SysML represents all elements of an electronic system, from hardware to software. Created primarily for systems engineers, SysML is both a subset to and an extension of UML.

According to the EETimes.com article, SysML took a major step towards standardization in late April, when key committees of the Object Management Group approved the SysML Team’s language 1.0 specification.

Several salient additions to UML provided by SysML:

• Requirements modeling
• Parametric models
• Extensions that support the flow of data/matter/energy (UML supports discrete events)

More information can be found on the language’s official website.

For those who haven’t visited it already, Eagle’s Corner has a helpful CGI-script translator that translates Tagalog words into alibata/baybayin. The translator works for foreign words, too, but the rendered translations might be incorrect (see the translation tips).

Honestly, I’m quite disappointed with myself for having not found this great site earlier. I can’t even remember how I ended up there! Next step, learn master alibata/baybayin so I can do the translations myself.

Update 05/15/06: Another tool is Victor Ganata’s Alibata Transliterator, which is a free software under the GNU General Public License.

Mon Abasolo over at Pinoy Tech Blog espouses the use of Open Office, which is entirely logical for all ye computer users. Even if you’re an established MS Office user, it still pays to install Open Office on your PC — at the very least, it broadens your perspective on things and makes you appreciate FOSS.

If you like a Pinoy feel to Open Office, download UP Office, developed by a quartet from the University of the Philippines. The screenshot is courtesy of Noel Feria, one of UP Office’s developers. You can find better pics on his blog.

If you don’t want to install Open Office (why?) but still want to access open document formats, you can use the OpenOffice.org Viewer created by a UP DCS undergraduate group under the supervision of Prof. Rommel Feria. The file is quite small — barely 350 KB! The viewer will run on any platform with a Java Virtual Machine.

Yours truly is now blogging at Basketball Exchange, your online resource on everything basketball — NBA, PBA, UAAP, NCAA, videos, and video games.

My rookie entry was about the NBA Playoffs, and I’ll do my best to regularly share my thoughts on the ongoing cage wars. Hats off to Gary Mercado for putting up the site. Thanks for the invite, sir!