Keep IT Simple

One of the problems in electronics since it was conceptualized is its durability. Sure we have anti-shock devices that could withstand constant bumps but if you drop them, you can always tell that a new one should be considered. Read the rest of this entry »

I am a true netizen. From the moment I wake up, the first thing that I would do is head to my computer and check emails and read the news.

I spend more than half of my day in front of my computer. I maintain several websites and at the same time, I want to always keep myself abreast with the latest in technology.

And I also have short attention span and poor memory. I tend to surf from one website to the next. So to help me with my memory problem, I bookmark some of my favorite sites and many other websites I would come across which I could not finish reading before jumping to the next.

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Good news to environmental groups and people! Although much of today’s environmental destruction of the planet (think global warming) has been due to technology, it also through technology that we can heal the planet’s wounds or prevent more damages being inflicted on our precious home.

Steve Gulick, an electrical engineer turned biologist left State University of New York (SUNY) set up a non profit organization. The organization which he calls Wildland Security has pioneered TrailGuard, a sort of system of small spy cameras installed on trees and communications illegal wildlife activities to the rangers.

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I just read an article saying that according to a research by Google, approximately 10 percent of all webpages published on the internet contain malwares. The research sampled about 4.5 million pages and found that 450,000 of them have scripts and codes that contain spywares, viruses and Trojans.

Just last week while traveling with my boss, we experienced an annoying worm called ttms that keeps popping up and disabling internet connection as well as firefox. My boss got this from an internet café while using his removable flash drive. My boss never visits any suspicious sites. In fact when I asked him, he said he only visited The Economist, Time Magazine, Newsweek and The New York Times websites and checked his Yahoo and Google emails.

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Developing and managing a website is an extremely daunting task. Well, actually it depends on the kind of website. For static websites, which means web pages having contents never change at all, it can be easy. But static websites are already very out dated. Today’s websites are very dynamic with pages that gets updated every day or sooner.

There are many content management systems (CMS) available today to help ease the burden of updating articles and other contents. Some CMS can be acquired with a fee; others are totally free.

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Last week, a notice of claim of CD for my brother arrived through the postal mail. Since my brother was out of town, I was the one who claimed the said CD.

It was from Ubuntu and was in fact an installer for Ubuntu Linux distribution. When my brother arrived a few days later, I asked him how much he bought the software for and he told me it was totally free. Even the shipment for the CD was free! I thought about how awesome it was.

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Since high school, I had been very interested in astronomy. I would borrow books from the library and get awed by the pictures of stars and planets from distant galaxies. In college, I had spent many night reading the books by Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. I particularly liked Stephen Hawking’s “Brief History of Time” despite the fact it was loaded with high match and technical jargons. Carl Sagan is famous for making star stuff a household name. I also liked Arthur Clarke even if he such a blatant atheist but that is beside the story.

I first experience with space tourism is through Google Earth. When I use Google Earth, I feel like riding a space shuttle or some kind of an alien invader hurtling down to any place I want on earth.
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No, I do not mean computer languages like C, Visual Basic or Java, which of course can be easily learned with the hundreds of thousands of programs available on the internet. I am talking about learning a real language, a spoken language like French, Spanish of Chinese.

I used to work for a Japanese outsourcing company as a software developer. Being a non-Japanese, my Japanese colleagues were some of the nicest people I have ever met. They were always very polite and gentle. But the problem with that company was that the owner was a traditional Japanese – does not speak English and pressured (although not required) the staff to learn Japanese (we also learned that he goes to an exclusive and very expensive bar in Japan that still has geishas).

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I once asked by my friend which one he would choose among hearing, seeing and talking faculties if all of them disappeared except one. I pondered hard because I know that each of them are important in their own individual and unique ways but I finally decided that it was the sense of sight I want to retain.

I can never imagine being blind. And I said that I would rather be dead than blind because there is no way to enjoy life without seeing the beauty of creation.

Although many blind people have been happy with their condition - some even excelling in life- science has developed a new means for the blind to see again.

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