Crimson Crux

I’ll be at the Philippine Blog Awards Night tomorrow to support and accompany Ia, whose Stellify.net is a finalist in the technology category. It came as quite a surprise for both of us, as she’d be the first one to tell you that Stellify wasn’t meant to be a tech blog. You can say that we’re not expecting Stellify to win the best tech blog award, especially since it’s going up against established tech bloggers.

Both of us have a “you win, I also win” mentality, and I’m happy that her efforts with Stellify (which is less than seven months old) have already been recognized. This kind of nullifies my disappointment at not winning a recently-concluded prestigious Tagalog poetry contest (too bad I couldn’t follow up my being published on the newspaper — that would’ve been a great birthday treat this coming May!).

Aside from Ia, a number of my blogosphere friends got the nods of the judges, namely Eric (aka Senor Enrique), Jorge Cosgayon, Gibbs Cadiz, and Dean Jorge Bocobo. I’m hoping these guys will win their respective categories, especially sir Eric — I was the one who nominated his photo blog, hehe.

Wish Ia and my friends the best of luck!

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s oldest scientific and educational computing society, turns 60 this year.

By May 2007, I’ll be completing my first year as a professional member and my second year overall (I was first a student member and officer of UP ACM). Admittedly, I haven’t squeezed every bit out of my membership — I haven’t touched ACM’s vast digital library in a year, nor have I taken even one of the free online courses.

Still, I value my membership for two things. First, I enjoy reading the Communications of the ACM (CACM) magazines, which keep me up to date with a field I tangoed with for four years in UP. I love to acquire and reacquire CS knowledge, even though at times I have trouble understanding the articles. My favorite articles are those related to what I do and where I work today — namely, blogging/webmastering and the Internet, respectively. The only time when reading the magazines becomes more of a chore than a pleasure is when I’m in serious mag backlog.

Second — and I’m going to unabashedly say this — being a “Member of the ACM” (MACM) looks good on the CV. Of course, it’s a paid membership. Anybody can be a member, really. Even someone who mistakes portable DVD players for laptops.

The travesty in ‘buying’ your membership lies in not trying to know more about CS and its diverse disciplines and how they meld into the everyday things around you. The travesty lies in ‘buying’ the title “MACM” to improve your resumé, not your brain.

Of course, there are always two sides to every story. There are people who have reasons not to become an ACM member. One such person is Kent Pitman, a former ACM member and columnist for the now-defunct ACM magazine Lisp Pointers.

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Article Crux, our “free high-quality article directory” has been around for more than a month already, but I’ve been too busy with the site that I forgot to ‘formally launch’ it here on my blog!

Borrowing from the directory’s About page:

Article Crux is a free online article directory where writers can share their knowledge and publishers can obtain free web content. With ArticleCrux.com, authors can easily post their articles and ezine publishers or webmasters can effortlessly search through the collection of knowledge either through our search engine or by browsing through the many categories.

The directory’s elegant design is the work of Ia (read her design anecdotes on her portfolio). Together, we maintain the site, and are planning to open another one in the near future (this time niche-oriented).

Article Directories: A Primer

Article directories have always been popular with internet marketers, writers, and search engine optimizers. The basic reason: free links. Not just any ordinary free links, but free links from sites trusted by search engines (in this case, article directories). And you know what’s next when you’ve got good, free links — free traffic, TrustRank, and PageRank.

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Never laid your hands on the famed notebook known as the moleskine? Or looking to add another to your collection?

Here’s a great chance to win one, courtesy of Pinoycentric.com. All you’ve got to do is join their newly-launched weekly “Ika Nga” Cartoon Caption Contest. For one well thought out blurb of text, you get a moleskine — sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Thanks to Sir Armand Frasco of Pinoycentric.com for the email!

For the better part (if not all) of my youth, I’ve been a poor suitor of girls. As some of my friends told me, “you’ve got the looks but not the moves”, which is unfortunate.

But thanks to Google, I can indulge in the illusion that I’m improving in the wooing department. Last month’s check of my Google Sitemaps account (just before Valentine’s) revealed that Slip of the Pen, more specifically this old essay of mine was number 1 for the search phrase “steps in courting a girl” (without the quotation marks).

Pretty neat, and pretty nonsensical, too! It’s certainly one of my most amusing “accidental SEO results”. For some reason, this blog gets “tame” search engine referrals (laptops, iPod, etc.) while my lit/writing blog gets the absurd (many of which are even downright pornographic!).

No, I’m not talking about credit cards in general (though I’m pretty sure a lot of people hold that opinion!). I’m referring to a couple of my cards, which I’ve not used for more than half a year.

The only three things I’ve charged to my cards in my whole credit life are 1) half of my laptop purchase, as my hard cash wasn’t enough; 2) a “sauna belt” advertised on home TV shopping channels, which I bought for my dad; and 3) my ACM professional membership fee.

After the trio, I stuck to paper and shunned plastic money. Sure, it felt less ‘liberating’ (less cool, perhaps?) to pay in cash instead of proudly brandishing a shiny card at the counter, but this stance of mine has kept me from worrying about debt and the trauma that follows in its wake.

If you’re like me, your resolve will probably strengthen once you read this article on the tricks credit card companies employ. Insidious, hehe.

How about you? Any (untoward) experiences? I’m particularly interested in knowing how my fellow young professionals in the Philippines manage their credit cards. In my case, I currently work from home, therefore there are less chances to shop and less temptation to draw out my cards.

After several months with Google Adsense, I finally received my first cheque yesterday, straight from Dublin, Ireland (Google’s European HQ). Nothing spectacular with the amount, but the first time is always sweet, hehe.

While not enough to buy certain gadgets and gizmos I’m eyeing right now (read: Nintendo Wii), the Adsense funds will at least cover my domain and webhosting expenses for the year. I’m hoping Text Link Ads will deliver even a little bit of goodness next month!