Crimson Crux

Subtitled: Blogging in the Dark

Typhoon Milenyo has just rampaged through Metro Manila, leaving our little neighborhood without power. Here’s to brownout blogging and all. I’ve got to love the scant 3-hour battery life of my Corsarify.

Anyway, we’re now down to the last three days of the Php130,000 Philippine SEO Contest. My team’s entry, Go-Ogle! Isulong SEOPH, is presently ranked 7th in the first Google search engine result page (SERP) for the keyword Isulong SEOPH. We’re hoping to at least maintain our position until September 30, the SEO competition’s end. Just a few hours ago we were at 5th place, and a month ago we were Top 1 in Google (can you believe it?).

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From yesterday’s INQ7.net Infotech article:

The University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City, is getting a 500 million pesos budget to set up the country’s version of “Silicon Valley,” a ranking House leader said Monday.

Finally, the Philippines’ premier state university gets what it deserves.

Villafuerte said the Diliman hub would serve as the national center for research and development in the natural and applied sciences, and mathematics.

Let’s see what role the UP Diliman Department of Computer Science shall play should this Diliman Silicon Valley lift off in the (hopefully near) future.

Congratulations to the San Beda Red Lions for clinching this year’s NCAA men’s basketball championship! The roaring lions from Mendiola held their ground against the PCU Dolphins to eke out a 68-67 win in Game 3. SBC thus ended the 28-year title drought in the 82nd Season of the NCAA.

What made the game memorable was that San Beda was ahead by 20 big points early in the fourth quarter. Believe it or not, with 24.8 seconds left, PCU had cut it to just 1 point! As I wrote in Basketball Exchange Philippines, the Red Lions “survived what could’ve been one of the greatest comebacks in the annals of Philippine basketball.” Definitely, one of the best games I’ve watched. Ever.

Now, you might be wondering why the heck I’m posting about SBC when I’m a diehard UP Diliman alumnus. (Go Fighting Maroons!) Well, I’ve been rooting for the Red Lions since childhood because my dad’s a proud Bedan. Umpa Umpa Beda Beda Fight Fight Fight!

*That cool image is courtesy of Kenneth Pangilinan’s Photonski gallery.

Personally, I don’t use the www when visiting websites, chiefly because I’m a lazy typer. This has led to several encounters with “Server not found” errors, because some sites need to have that www in their addresses (one example of which is the UP Diliman website).

Ia, our guest writer of several days past, has written about the www issue in our Go-Ogle! Isulong SEOPH blog. She writes:

In order to market your URL properly it has got to be memorable; that’s one of the basic things to consider when choosing a domain name…So if you’re all for convenience, stripping the WWW out should seem logical. It’s basic knowledge that the more things you throw at a person, the more difficult it is to remember.

Read her complete post here.

Yours truly understands the need for good captcha systems; after all, spammers must go to hell. However, extremely distorted captcha images need to go to hell, too. Take the crap of an image (to the right) as Exhibit A.

Captcha images are designed to differentiate man from beast bot. Exhibits B and C below — way much worse than A — make me wonder if I’m still human. (Dammit, I knew sitting in front of my laptop everyday was bad…!)

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[Ed. note: This is courtesy of the first, and possibly only, guest writer for Crimson Crux -- Ia Lucero of Qwerky. Take it away, Ia.]

I’ll be straight. This article caught my eye simply because it was about software. I saw several good things mentioned in it, including:

1. Favoring fresh graduates instead of requiring at least two years of experience
2. Being involved with open source applications
3. Founding an incubator firm with a Filipino name (”Simula Labs”)

But this one left a mark:

“Another Philippine-based software firm, Exist Engineering, is now working with local universities to design courses that will prepare fresh graduates for a software engineering job at the company.”

And I just had to protest. (more…)

The best manifestation of the computing power of video game chips? Interesting, especially to hardcore console gamers, I suppose.

According to ACM TechNews:

IBM has won a contract from the Department of Energy to develop a peta-scale supercomputer powered by 16,000 Cell chips. The system, due to be completed in 2008, will cost a projected $110 million. The selection of the Cell chip, which originally was jointly designed with Sony and Toshiba for video games and animation, is an indication of how the computer industry is increasingly shaped by technologies that were initially developed for home and consumer uses.

Hmm…the Cell processor. Does PlayStation 3 ring a bell? Read the full New York Times article (registration required, but free).

People love to have favorites, and maybe more importantly, like to attach themselves to a “group”. Both of these yearnings fuse with regard to people’s fascination with sports teams. And having been born into a basketball-crazy family in a basketball-crazy country, I’m afflicted with this wonderful curse called “frenzied basketball team loyalty”.

People who know me also know the usual suspects — I’m a Purefoods fan in the national league of the Philippines, a Chicago Bulls loyalist in the NBA, and an avid supporter of the UP Fighting Maroons in the collegiate league. But how about in the other basketball leagues, let’s say, the defunct MBA?

For that and more, I guide you to my article on Basketball Exchange Philippines. And if you’re a hoops fanatic like me, do share your own favorite teams in the article’s feedback section!

If you ask me, I think it’s impossible to declare one piece of software as king over all others…but heck, that’s how it goes with everything in life. Everybody’s got their bets on what/who gets to be on top. But saying “heck, that’s how it goes with everything in life” is the easy way out, too.

Fortunately, Charles Babcock of InformationWeek unflinchingly barrels through the slew of great software made through the decades and arrives at a tough decision. Among the heavyweights he considered were Java, Google’s page-ranking search application, the Morris worm, and the first Apple Mac OS.

In the end, Babcock arrived at one champion, which is…

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