Sabado, Nobyembre 29, 2008
Tribute to OBoys who went ahead...
...to other countries. At least these are the ones who were honored during the N2008 Farewell Affair. Wait for the video to be posted in a few-ish hours.
Sabado, Nobyembre 22, 2008
Biyernes, Nobyembre 21, 2008
I sang with Michael Johns onstage!
I wasn't for Michael Johns the rocker during Season 7 of American Idol. I had been for David Cook and Syesha Mercado and was glad that Cook broke my jinx of rooting for the wrong person since Season 3. (I was for Diana DeGarmo, cheered for Bo Bice, wanted Katharine McPhee to win, and prayed Blake Lewis would come up on top.) However, I will have to admit that Johns was increasingly good throughout the season. The Filipino bet Ramielle Malubay had no chance with great talent abounding — given the fact that the others have already had "professional" experience.
Anywho, flash forward to Thursday, 20 November 2008. I had left the university a little after lunch to go to rehearsals at Zobel. I had several stops before I eventually got to La Salle. I passed by Ayala Avenue first, then Bicutan, then eventually Alabang. It was nearly 4.00p when I got to AlabangTown Center. At the Activity Center were seats arranged as if there were a show. I went down and realized a very sparse group of people gathered near a stage, camera phones snapping away.
So what happened? There was Michael Johns rehearsing on the stage wearing a simple white shirt. As I got off the escalator just beside the stage, he said "Hi!". I immediately recalled the song he performed with Carly Smithson at the finalé of the season. I was audibly singing it. "She wrote me a letter. Said she couldn't live without me no mo'. Listen, baby, can't you see I got to get back to my baby once more... Anyway!"
So there: I sang... with Michael Johns onstage.
Martes, Nobyembre 18, 2008
Rihanna and Chris Brown (sorry konti lang ang pics)
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Have I told you I didn't watch the concert?
Linggo, Nobyembre 16, 2008
On self, psych, and computing
There's one problem with all psychological knowledge — nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly cleary-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.
Personally, I always thought there was a clue from computer programming, in a procedure called recursion. Recursion means making the program loop back on itself, to use its own information to do things over and over until it gets a result. You use recursion for certain data-sorting algorithms and things like that. But it's got to be done carefully, or you risk having the machine fall into what is called an infinite regress. It's the programming equivalent of those funhouse mirrors that reflect mirrors, and mirrors, ever smaller and smaller, stretching away to infinity. The program keeps going, repeating and repeating, but nothing happens. The machine hangs.
I always figured something similar must happen when people turn their psychological insight-apparatus on themselves. The brain hangs. The thought process goes and goes, but it doesn't get anywhere. It must be something like that, because we know people can think about themselves indefinitely. Some people think of little else. Yet people never seem to change as a result of their intensive introspection. They never understand themselves better. It's very rare to find genuine self-knowledge.
It's almost as if you need someone else to tell you who you are, or to hold up the mirror for you. Which, if you think about it, is very weird.
Or maybe it's not.
There's an old question in artificial intelligence about whether a program can ever be aware of itself. Most programmers will say it was impossible. People have tried to do it, and failed.
But there's a more fundamental version of the question, a philosophical question about whether any machine can understand its own workings. Some people say that's impossible, too. The machine can't know itself for the same reason you can't bite your own teeth. And it certainly seems to be impossible: the human brain is the most complicated structure in the known universe, but brains still know very little about themselves.
I am so loving and dreading getting back to thinking about theories in computing! Loving since I get to exercise rusty brain cells and recall theories, theorems, and lemmas that I've learned to use and facilitate efficient programs before. Dreading since I know that it's been a very long while since I actually used the knowledge and that I may have already forgotten how most stuff work.
Being a student again has its perks, pluses, and pitfalls.
Biyernes, Nobyembre 7, 2008
Martes, Nobyembre 4, 2008
Ito daw ang uso e...
Tentative, that is. Wala pa akong MS load sa lagay na 'yan. I won't be able to visit AHS YFC with that schedule, pero pwedeng pwede ako bumisita sa Zobel YFC.
Sabado, Nobyembre 1, 2008
I just HAVE TO share this about Starbucks...
Starbucks Lovers out there (coming to mind are Chan, Vince, Bryant, Ron, ...), they are raising their prices for drinks by PhP 5 for each cup on the fourth of November. Pretty paltry for what I take from them anyway (charging my laptop, charging my phone, quality napkins, A/C, Internet, etc). The good news is...As a prelude to the Christmas season, we're treating you an upsize on all Starbucks Coffee, Tea, Espresso, and Frappuccino Blended Beverages from 01 to 03 November 2008.Take advantage of this in the next two days before they pump up the cups!
As a prelude to the Christmas season, we're treating you an upsize on all Starbucks Coffee, Tea, Espresso, and Frappuccino Blended Beverages from 01 to 03 November 2008.
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