The Geek Brewery

Happy Independence Day to the Philippines!

The Philippines gained it’s independence from United States of America Spain last June 12, 1988. This means we’re celebrating our country’s 111th year of independence!

Google is also celebrating Independence Day with us. Thanks to ate Aileen Apolo for plurking about the Google Doodle for the day!

I was looking for related articles on my post UP Diliman start of classes, moved when I saw this article from Inquirer.net.

Share your insights? What can you say?

Earlier today, UP Diliman Chancellor Sergio Cao announced that the start of classes for 1st Semester of Academic Year 2009-2010 will be moved to June 16, a week later than originally planned.

The move was a precautionary measure against the spread of A(H1N1) virus. Yesterday, a suspected A(H1N1) case was confirmed NEGATIVE by the Infirmary (UP Health Services).

Student’s registration will also be extended.

Kalayaan Residence Hall is a freshman coeducational dormitory of UP Diliman. It houses more than 500 freshies from all around the country. The dormitory is under the Office of the Student Housing. I answered some of the frequently asked questions about the dormitory.

But before that, applications to the dorm has already been closed since April 30, 2009. If you haven’t applied yet, better try applying next semester or next year on a different dorm. (more…)

I have rendered an unofficial list of PSHS SMC Batch ’08 students who passed the UPCAT. Although all efforts were exerted to maintain the accuracy of the data table below, I do not guarantee accuracy of the rendered results. Some names may not be on the list. (more…)

UPCAT Results 2009 are now posted on UP campuses and on the UPCAT website!

The server for the online results must be super overwhelmed by the number of  the number of search requests.

Anyway, those people who requested to have their named checks on one of my posts will receive their notifications soon. I have started sending out notifications.

Good luck to everyone.

I read about this news in Reuters.

Several hours from now, we will all be ending 2008 — greeting a new year. But hey, we won’t be greeting a New Year at 12:00 midnight and 0.0 seconds. 2008 is extended by one second!

Unlike other leap years in which we add another day to a year, 2008 is something different — a leap second is added. This is a result to the gradually slowing rate of  spin of the Earth along its axis.

Countries around the World will be injecting the leap second on the last second of 2008 in UTC (December 31 2008: 23:59:59 UTC). The decision was made by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, an international body responsible for adding or removing a second to the World Time based on the Earth’s rotation.

The latest injection of a leap second was last December 31 of 2005. Leap seconds can be injected on the end of the months June or December.

Anyway, how do we describe the time during that instant? December 31, 2008, 11:59:60 pm?

Three men (one teller + two guards) were shot dead on an armored-car robbery outside the Bahay ng Alumni of UP Diliman Campus in Quezon City, Philippines at around 1pm.

The robbers initially used a Blue Mitsubishi Adventure bearing a plate number WKJ 409 which
they abandoned on a nearby location, just behind the Department of Citizens’ Military Training.

Inside the initial getaway vehicle were the two SFV 903 red plate numbers which was used to
hide the vehicle’s identity. (more…)

As of October 31, 2009 5am, the center of typhoon Santi is 60 kilometers south-southeast of Metro Manila. It is moving West Southwest at 24 kilometers per hour. For more information on the typhoon, visit PAGASA’s website.

Advisories

Due to typhoon Santi, airline flights have been cancelled. (more…)

Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, Plurk and Twitter.

First, there was Yahoo. A lightweight portal and search engine. Then came the n00b search engine Google. Yahoo could have been threatened by Google’s birth and so they bloated themselves with lots of unnecessary services. Google struggled to fit the mainstream, and eventually it did.

Years later, Yahoo was used by millions of users. In fact, Yahoo is the most-visited website in the Philippines (and the World). Meanwhile, Google remained the choice of the so-called “Internet elites”.

The “internet elites” tried they’re best to persuade people to use GMail (Google Mail), but the “internet masses” preferred to stay with they’re “user-friendly” Yahoo with all those eye-candy RAM hog interface (which slows down your computer to death). A few adpoted the minimalist yet very usable GMail — and ended up super-satisfied with it.

Following the flow of the story were Friendster and Facebook. The “internet elites” first liked Friendster but eventually adopted Facebook when it was released out in the World; while the “internet masses” continued to patronize the very Asian Friendster.

Facebook, during it’s Global release (it was initially available in US only), was like Google – simple yet usable. But through the years it started becoming Yahoo. To date, it is bombarded with tons of unwanted applications that fills your inbox like flashflood.

Out of the blue, Twitter joined the party. Twitter introduced itself as Google way back in 2001. Again, a simple yet usable website. Then came a competition which surprisingly was not a super-bloated Yahoo. It was Plurk, a present-day Google. A very usable but not bloated, improved version of the 2001 Google. No doubt it was better to Twitter for some, like me.

The_ ______ ______ ___ ______.

The Web 2.0 Tales’ pages started to become unreadable as the trying-hard, capitalist Microsoft tried to join the story. And this concludes my Web 2.0 tales.

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I know it’s crap, but deal with me. You may not agree with my binaries: the “internet masses” and “internet elites”, the “Yahoo” being associated as bloated and “Google” as minimalist, and the likes. This post is based on my opinion, the opinion of Conrad Miguel E. Gozalo.

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I hope present-day “Google” websites will remain “Google” and not evolve as “Yahoo”.