The Geek Brewery

Last month, I wrote a blog post from an Android phone for the first time using my HTC Dream. Just a trivia, the HTC Dream was the first phone in the market that used the Android OS. During the last days of the same month, I bought the twin of my dream phone Nexus One – the HTC Desire.

Two days before August ended, I rewarded myself by buying an airplane ticket to Hong Kong. Since early August, I’ve been obsessed by the idea of going to Hong Kong or Singapore. There were countless nights when I slept late just to read Hong Kong and Singapore online travelogues.

In these two instances lie something common – I chased my dreams. I think it’s safe to assume that everyone of us has a set of dreams and aspirations in life but I believe I dream more compared to an average person, and you can, too. I must admit that my dreams are my motivation. The more I dream (postscript: I think obsess is a better word for me) about something, the more I work hard to attain it.

You don’t have start small. Don’t be afraid to try every opportunity that comes into your way that might help you reach your dream, no matter how big they are. Last July, there was this opportunity to work for the Google Word of Mouth project. At first I was hesitant to try it. I was starting to doubt my capabilities. Eventually, I gave it a try and fortunately I succeeded. Not only did I gain experience but I also got a chance to meet and work with interesting and inspiring people (including Googlers).

Chase your dreams! For those who are still confused on how to do it, here’s an article from eHow: How to Chase your Dream.

Hey, I’m doing my first post using the WordPress app I just downloaded from the Android Market!

The app is really intuitive. It’s very easy to add a blog, no need to edit WordPress settings or install a plugin on your blog. It works for wordpress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. Soon when I have access to my laptop I’ll grab a screenshot and post it here.

The physical keyboard of the Android Dev Phone 1 (an HTC Dream variant) makes it easy to write this post. Up to now I’m still not used to the touchscreen on-screen keyboard of this one, unlike the Nexus One. Maybe it’s because of the larger screen.

That’s all I got to say right now. Good night.

Here’s a short list of what I’m up to.

• Coordinating and following things up for an upcoming project with a company.
• Coding ACReS and hopefully committing the code to its Google Code repo once I build enough courage to do so.
• My application to GRIP UP (a sports climbing association in UP). Climbing, climbing and climbing.
• Working as a Student Assistant in DilNet.
• School.

I’m very excited for the first bullet. Woot.

Someone should have been or is gonna be reprimanded really soon for forgetting to renew bayandsl.com!

I can’t wait for the deletion of the domain. I’m quite interested on buying the domain once, or if ever, it becomes available.

Since 3am, I’ve been wasting my time here in iHOOKED Katipunan. Going to Internet cafes is not really my thing. The last time I regularly went to an Internet cafe was when I was in fourth year high school at a net cafe beside our school.

I’ve been locked out in my room. I left at around 1am to eat my dinner at Shakey’s Katipunan (which went 24/7 since last week, I guess) while waiting for my OS installation to complete. I only brought my wallet and pen with me. When I went back I discovered that the secondary lock was locked. It can only be opened from the inside. I tried to knock and shout at my sister for her to wake up but to no avail. I even tried to throw coins at her through the window but still I failed miserably.

For me to survive, my instinct told me to find a place where I can access the Internet. Next thing in mind was to find a place where I could spend the rest of my night.

And so I went to this Internet cafe. I haven’t been here before but I’ve been seeing it’s entrance everytime I withdraw money right before eating at KFC Katipunan. It’s a lot cleaner here compared to 168 129 Internet Cafe on the adjacent building. The seats are comfortable, the computers are responsive and they do have a good keyboard, mouse and speakers. The restroom was also okay, they had the necessary toiletries inside.

I kinda enjoyed wasting my time here watching Air Crash Investigation on Youtube, playing RockBand 2 songs and playing my favorite ATC simulator. I’ve also emailed and SMSed my sister to notify me thru email when she’s awake.

My only concern in staying here is that I’m using a public computer. There might be a keylogger here, that’s why I don’t type my password here directly. I copy-paste letters and numbers from webpages when typing my password. I also use Mozilla Firefox’ private browsing mode to reduce my footprint in this computer.

Good luck to me!

UP Diliman‘s Chemistry Pavilion (Chem Pav) is on fire. Oh noes!

There have been reports that the fire has also sprawled into the Llamas Hall (Physics Pavilion) and some parts of the main building of Palma Hall.

Advisory: Chancellor Cao declared all classes in PALMA HALL ONLY suspended today June 10, 2010. (Thursday) From Prof Eloi Hernandez. (http://twitter.com/gangbadoy/status/15790560413)

Should you have any more information about the fire, please don’t hesitate to post your comment in this post.

More reads about the fire:

• http://ph.news.yahoo.com/gma/20100609/tph-fire-razes-up-diliman-s-chemistry-bu-d6cd5cf.html

Since I was in high school, airplanes never failed to fascinate me. I spent hours watching take-offs and landings of airplanes on YouTube, the TV series Air Crash Investigation, and other relevant videos. I also spent a large chunk of time playing flight simulators, reading stuff about the modern jets and viewing pictures of airplanes.

It was my dream to enter a flight school after high school, but it was too expensive. I entered the University and gave up on my dream. My interest to airplanes slowly deteriorated up until recently when I was able to play Microsoft Flight Simulator X again.

Yes, you read it right – Microsoft. I installed Windows back on my laptop, originally to play WarCraft 3 Frozen Throne again. Then I gave Microsoft FSX a try again and I got hooked on it in no time. The other day, I’ve started playing an air traffic control (ATC) simulator, which I found very hard at first but later realized it wasn’t that hard when I got the feel of it. My interest on planes grew back, as well as my dream to become a commercial jet pilot.

The dream is back. After finishing my bachelor’s degree, I’m planning to save some cash for flight school and pursue my dream. I hope that I’ll be taller by then. (Should you have any tips on how to grow taller, just share them on the comments area.)

One of Cebu Pacific’s Airbus A319-100; actually rode the same plane with same registration number

Fifteen (15) minutes ago, I was flying an Airbus A321 on a flight simulator. Five to ten years from now, I envision myself flying a better Airbus (I’m an Airbus fan) jet in real life.

I know I’m asking myself much. In case I fail to pursue my dream, I hope I can be an air traffic controller at least. It’s a great job, too!

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PS: It’s 2:49am already. Tomorrow’s my first day of being a Junior College student. Hopefully, just another two more years and I’m done on my bachelor’s degree. (goodluck)

Summer isn’t over yet but I’m afraid that this summer season will be my first summer without experiencing saltwater.

I spent most of my summer taking summer classes (Physics 72 and PE 2 Weight Training). Aside from that, I spent a some chunk of my time in DilNet Help Desk answering phone techs, fixing networking problems on-site and fooling around with my co-applicants and student assistants. I also attended some interest-related events such as the UnPLUG Precinct Mapping Party and Ubuntu 10.04 Release Party.

The final leg of my summer, for me, was the most exciting. I accidentally got involved in a project while eating with my DilNet friends at a food stall near the Main Library. We had to develop an application to be used by a unit in UP.

Developing the app was exciting. Although I had previous experience with CodeIgniter (a PHP web-app framework that uses the MVC architectural pattern), it was my first time to use it for an actual project. It was my first time to use jQuery since the project required some realtime checking of constraints.

I also experienced roadblocks in making my part of the project. Three days before the deadline everything I coded for around a week got lost. After doing some research, I can attribute the loss of my folder to the way ext4 writes a file. I also found some solutions on how to recover my folder but I decided to do it again from scratch since recovering it will entail more work than actually rewriting the code. Here’s a more detailed explanation on what might have happened to me.

To catch up, I had to do some sort of coding marathon. I was awake for some 57 hours minus some short naps. During that time, I learned a lot from my co-developer.

It was a very fun experience and I am looking forward to working on more projects in the future.

And up to now, I am still looking forward for a beach outing. XD

Our organization, the University of the Philippines Linux Users’ Group, had a precinct mapping party for the upcoming May 10 elections last May 3, 2010 at the UP Computer Center. Those who were not able to make it to the venue mapped simultaneously with us in remote locations.

The goal of the mapping party was to map as many unmapped polling precincts (for the May 10 elections) to help our kababayans in finding their precincts in the upcoming elections.

Anyone may help in this Find Your Precinct initiative by Google.

By default, the Flash player in the repositories is a 32-bit version of Flash. This version does not work properly on 64-bit installations of Ubuntu 10.04.

Someone made a bash script to automate the process of installing Flash Player 10 to Ubuntu. All you have to do is to type or copy-paste the following in the Terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal):

wget http://conradmiguel.com/install-flash.sh
chmod +x install-flash.sh
./install-flash.sh

It will ask for your password. Just provide your password. Restart Firefox and enjoy your Flash Player 10!