The Geek Brewery

I admit that I am bitter with the results of the Mensa IQ Challenge I took sometime last month. It was a BIG slap on my face, after self-proclaiming myself as a geek. I don’t believe you have to pass Mensa to be a full-pledged full-fledged (as corrected by Aldrin, point well taken) geek. Hahaha. Here’s something geekier than Mensa.

After two sessions of training on our new “programming guild”, I’ve encountered tons of intellectually challenging programming problems. The spectrum of problems were very wide; from counting descendants of a person in a family tree, to beating a greedy opponent on a game, to getting the height of a rocket model using three ground observers using a theodolite, and the list goes on and on.

I admit those problems were new to me and I think it was the best answer for my hunger for knowledge. Those problems squeezed my neurons to the highest level, thus greasing up my brain. Those were the problems that made me realize I still have a lot lot lot more to learn. I mean, A LOT!

To all other geeks out there who have a background on any programming language (preferably C or Java), I dare you to solve the problems on real ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition (ACM-ICPC). There are a lot of problems available there from ACM-ICPC contests around the globe.

So far, I have only solved four ACM-ICPC problems. My goal is to solve at least one per night. Good luck to me and have fun with those problems.

Last Sunday, I took the Mensa IQ Challenge at Fully Booked in Bonifacio High Street, Taguig City. The first 30 items of the exam were super easy that missing out a point for a problem was a big deal. The next items (I won’t say how many) were moderate. The only enemy I had was the SUPER limited time.

The only criterion for membership in Mensa, is to score within the top 2 percent (98th percentile and up) on an accepted and properly supervised qualifying test. -Mensa Philippines website

Earlier today, the unofficial result of the 2.22 exam was released via web. Mensa posted the good and bad news. To maintain a level of privacy, they posted the codenames we picked from a fishbowl before the exam. My lucky word was MAGELLAN. Waaaaaaaa.

After checking the super cool good and bad news, I found out that I belong to the world’s top 3% IQ-wise. Hahahaha. Yes, I am a genius.

Yes I am a genius.

I am a genius.

Yeah, right!

Anyway, proceeding to the next item I’ll be sharing. I’ve recently shared to you that I have a hunger for knowledge and today, I was fortunate enough to learn something new. I love learning new things! It was a file transfer thru SSH crash course.

My orgmates asked me to generate reports of the recently concluded Computerized University Elections here in UP Diliman. All they gave me were the login credentials of the server where the database was stored and the I.P. address.

The account they gave me did not have any write access to the www folder so uploading the script thru FTP and dumping the results thru HTTP was not an option. I asked for more options and one of them suggested that I use SSH. What the heck?! I’ve never used SSH for uploading and downloading files, seriously. I never thought it was possible.

Since the only thing I knew was to login to the server thru SSH, I had to ask for help. Gladly, kuya Prem extended his help despite his busy schedule. I was also able to apply my newly acquired (last year) Linux shell skills like dumping something to a file. It was so much fun.

Yey, I am a genius. Yes I am a genius! I AM A GENIUS!! Mikko is a GENIUS!

Woot!

Yesterday, I took the Mensa IQ Challenge at Fully Booked, Bonifacio High Street. And guess what, I took it on Mensa Day (2.22).

According to the Mensa Philippines website, Mensa is an international society in which the sole criterion for membership is a score at or above the 98th percentile on any of a number of standardized IQ tests. Cool, isn’t it?

I have a bad feeling that I’ll fail the exam. Waaaaaaa!! A number of bloggers already took the exam, and they passed. I want to be a part of the very exclusive secret society. Waaaaaaa!!

The official results are expected to be mailed to us three weeks after the exam. But there will be an earlier unofficial results release on the web thru their website, just check on the Good News and Bad News section.

Want to take it, too? Check Mensa Philippines for exam schedules.

(from XKCD)

Offtopic: In line with the comics above, I always find my self in the same situation. I love to do this with plate numbers.

These past few months were the most dormant periods of my geekiness. I badly need to expand my knowledge.

I have hunger for knowledge. Some people may find it weird but it’s actually true. It’s fun to have passion for learning stuff you’re interested to. Don’t think of me as a college nerd reading all those Bio, Chem and Physics books. I’m not interested on those stuff  except those rare moments when I felt geek enough to make simulation of scientific concepts (so far, I’ve made a simulation for freefall and projectile, road traffic and matrix multiplication).

The latest bit of geekiness I got was from my Computer Science class. It’s only this semester when I got a pretty good picture of real Object Oriented Programming. I knew about it before but I only had the chance to get a clearer picture of it on our class.

Currently, I’m interested on studying Python, Ruby on Rails and JSP. I’m tired of PHP, seriously. I’ve been obsessed with the language since I learned it three or four years ago. I’m also interested on making an application using any API. I’m thinking of making a web application that has something to do with geographical information (so that I can use Google Maps) like generating a map, like a Map of Misfortune [I'll discuss this later].

The BIG problem now is where to start. Do I start with Ruby on Rails or what? That I still do not know. I need help.

To the other geeks, feeling geeks (like me), aspiring geeks, retired geeks and non-geeks out there, I need your suggestions. It could be a programming language or an API to explore. Please respond thru the comments section. I am THIS pathetic to expand my knowledge. Waaaaaaaaaaaaa.

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?

Hi.

I’m now half-finished in brewing up my very own Sony PlayStation Portable. I used a PIC16F873 microcontroller courtesy of the super-kind and generous kuya Butch Tabios.

I’m not done yet programming my very own handheld device yet but I have tried putting a sample program in it. And yeah, it worked. The single green LED blinked at a constant interval.

The blinking of the LED alone made me uber-happy, but I guess its still a long way to go before I get a game work.

There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who can understand binary and those who don’t.

I’ve encountered this “quote” on our Embedded Systems class last year. I love its geekiness.

Anyway, this shirt is available at ThinkGeek.com.

Hello.

Pagpasensiyahan nyo na po ako, namimiss ko na kasi ang magblog sa wikang Tagalog. Mahigit dalawang buwan ko na rin iyong hindi nagagawa eh.

Masaya ako ngayon. Bakit?

Uhhhhmmm, kasi nakagawa ako ng isang web application? Ganun na nga. Wala lang. Ganun talaga ako pag nabobore, biglang naiisipang magprogram. Mas okay naman iyon diba, kaysa magdrugs! Yung pinrogram ko pala, para sa First Screening Results ng Pisay na nirelease kahapon. Similar siya sa official results web application ng Pisay System, mas maganda nga lang ang akin at mas flexible. Hindi naman talaga natin napipigilan ang ating galing, diba? Hahaha. Ito nga pala ang link, bisitahin mo naman para makita mo rin ang aking kagalingan. Nga pala, PHP at mySQL gamit ko dun.

Uhhhmmm, kasi bagong gupit ako matapos ang apatnaputwalong araw (48) kong pagtitiis na sa aking huling gupit. Maikli na ulit ang buhok ko, yey. Noong ginugupitan ako, napansin ko na medyo naiintindihan ko ang alien language ng barberong gumugupit sa akin at nang asawa niya. Kaya naman pala eh, nagiIlokano sila! Wow, minsan lang kasi ang ako nakakarinig nang nagiIlokano sa GenSan eh.

Uhhmm, kasi nabalikan ko ang OSI Model? Hahaha. Napagusapan pala namin ni Batang Yagit ng Davao ang OSI model, geek stuff. Wala lang, out of the blue inisa-isa namin ang pitong (7) layers. Ang saya, diba? Haha. Hindi nyo yun alam noh? What? Hindi mo alam yung application, presentation, session, transport, network, datalink at physical! Hahaha, wala akong magawa. Kayo nalang bahala magresearch tungkol nun kung gusto nyong malaman. Tas napagusapan din namin ang Advanced Windowing Toolkit at Swing ng Java. Tas umabot kami sa PIC at 8051. Saya diba? Hahaha. Nakadrugs ba ako?

Ano ba ‘tong post ko na ‘to, pwede na pang ABSTRACT REASONING. Hehehe, nasa first screening yun ng Pisay. Kung mapapansin nyo, nababawasan ng tig-iisang ‘h’ at ‘m’ ang Uhm ko sa kada talata. Ang saya, hahaha.

Waaaaaa, wala akong magawa. Salamat sa pagsasayang niyo ng oras sa pagbasa ng post na ito. Weeeeeee, blog ko ito walang makekeelam. ;D

Introduction

3am has been labeled the Devil’s Hour. A lot of people claim that they have a lot of unusual experiences especially on this hour of the day. One of the most common 3am phenomena is the Saint Elmo’s Fire, colloquially pronounced in some places as santilmo. Join me in my quest on digging in the 3am Saint Elmo phenomena.

Before I formally start my investigation, I know some of you are not really familiar with the Saint Elmo’s fire so I feel obliged to define it.

Saint Elmo’s fire, as described by my trusted eyewitnesses, is like a floating ball of fire. Yeah, its floating without a trace of its source. They tend to be attracted to humans, like a magnet. That’s why they are freaky, imagine a chasing ball of fire.

Investigation

Some people say that 3am is also the darkest hour of the day. Eager to confirm this, I made my own experiment using a self-modified QSE159 phototransistor. The set-up: I created a circuit of a QSE159 phototransistor with an ADC (analog to digital converter). The ADC output lines were connected to the port pins of an AT89C4051 microcontroller unit by Atmel. The port 3 of the said microcontoller was interfaced with the computer’s COM ports (RS-232) for datalogging. A prototype datalogger was also created using Visual Basic 6. (more…)