Of Spambots

I have added the "Humanizer" mod into the Philippine Atheists forum. From now on, spambots must contribute to the debate: the forum will now require that spambots express an opinion on the existence of god, in short, more human than robot. Soon we will see them categorized into two camps: on one side are believer bots, and on another, the non-believer bots. I am sorry to say agnostics wont be able to join the forum. :D Just kidding! Try it, you may be surprised that your answer may be acceptable.

Lost in Akihabara

Akihabara is a district of Tokyo. It is the unofficial geek Mecca to the technology religious. I will never be lost in its streets. I guess I know its streets very well now. I have bought a lot of stuffs from there, including the used 14" CRT monitor for Hiroko, the first and cheap PC I built here to help me fight boredom in my serviced apartment. In Akihabara you'll find all kinds of things and merchandise and services that target the otaku. There were lots of people and there are girls dressed in different costumes called cosplay in Japanese. (Another place where cosplay is common is at Yoyogi Park in Harajuku.). Anyway, I went to Akihabara today straight from work around 3pm. It was very hot this afternoon but there were many people as usual, including the gaijins carrying big Laox paper bags filled with shopping merchandise as if it's the only store out there. I had to check at Tsukumo on what is the latest and hottest gadgets if I want to build a new PC. Based on what are now abundantly available, it looks like super-cooling your PC is now a necessary part of any new PC as a big portion of the 1st floor is dedicated to all kinds of schemes to cool the CPU, the case, the memory, the video card, etc. I was surprised at myself because nothing that I saw appealed to me. I usually get excited at seeing new motherboards and new peripherals but today I didn't have the urge to buy anything yet. I was kind of hoping I would be able to find a cable that will convert VGA or DVI into D4 for my TV but I was not so eager to look for it as well, and maybe I already saw it but I suddenly became uninterested. I went next to Yodobashi Akiba, maybe I can take a peek at the latest iMac released just last Monday. It was sexy. I would like to have one. Again I started to think about having Yuki exiled to Laguna to make some room in the 4.5 tatami room where I have my stuffs. Oh, I wish things will be so much simpler than getting caught in a desire for something I don't need at all. But who could not be tempted, 24" of beautiful pixel real-estate enough for an xemacs and many X terminals to be visible at the same time! No, I wont get lost in Akihabara, but I easily lose the sense of time, as I drift from store to store not just gawking but most of the time able to touch and feel and play around with the latest geek toys.

Each time I visit Akihabara, I had had to buy something, anything, before I can really go home. And if I didn't set out to buy anything in particular, I usually ended up buying something I didn't have immediate need for but still related to electronics. One time, I was so desperate I just picked up a Philips screwdriver just so I could start for home. Today I bought a cheap but cute red camera bag. It was 7:30pm and I was starving already so I had to really get going. I think it's a steal with it being a practical thing to buy.

Picture above is the Akihabara JR station on the side where Akihabara UDX building is located.

(This post is copied from another blog I am thinking of shutting down. 12.24.2007)

Of Macs and Men

Whenever we visit Ginza, we always drop by the Apple Store. There, you can check the latest products and try them out. I love the latest notebooks specially the black 13" MacBook with a widescreen aspect ratio. I wish I have a penny for each of the things I want, but here in Tokyo where space is a premium, you can only have one (or two?) of them at a time. I am seriously considering ditching Yuki, my Athlon PC running Win2k, to make space for an Apple computer but I don't have a new home for her yet. I think I should ship her to Laguna but I have taken good care of her that parting with her will not be easy. And besides, she's got choice parts when I built her a good five years ago. She is sexy in the all-aluminum case, with a 500 watt power supply. I have not replaced a single part since I built her and I only re-built her OS once in her first year. Recently, Win2k support has been discontinued such that I have not been getting anymore OS update. This means, her OS is now officially, frozen in time, waiting to be euthanized when no more new software will be compatible out-of-the-box for her to run. Consider the latest digital cameras and mobile phones. The latest of these gadgets are no longer supported directly so I had to use a cheap flash card reader if I need to upload pictures. Going back to Macs, I thought I should get a Mac mini instead so that I can still use the monitor and the keyboard, and ship only Yuki's brain out but I read somewhere Mac minis are no-brainers but the next option is a PowerMac which I think is too costly for my own purposes as most of the time I will only be using her for no-brainer tasks like emailing and browsing porn so it wont really matter that much if I use a mini. Add to that the fact that it's simply too bulky for Tokyo reality. I may decide yet, when Leopard starts shipping.

The truth is, for a year now, I had been itching to give Yuki a make-over. I have not built a new PC for over five years and new technologies have been around and old ones that she was built upon have been obsoleted. I need to to be able to feel the new hardware whenever I click the mouse or save a file. But Yuki has been performing well. She has been hit by a few worms before that I had to remove manually and she always came out less and less prone to infection with every OS updates, maybe because the worm-making industry had shifted its effort to XP a few years ago. Since she has continued to give good service, I intend to reward her by not upgrading any of her parts and OS until they're really broken. I reckon I can still get good service for a few more years without breakage but Apple is really dishing out good arguments for it. The only complaint I have for Yuki is that she is a little bit noisy, with her three fans. (She has five but I disabled the two.) Well, let's wait a few more months then...

On Adobo

One casual moment, my manager told me about his mother who likes to cook chicken avocado which he said is a Filipino dish but surprisingly there's no avocado in it. I was a bit puzzled because I never heard of such a dish before so I asked him more questions. Finally, I figured out he was talking about chicken adobo so I explained to him what is adobo. I explained to him (I could be wrong) that adobo is a Filipino dish, the main characteristic of which is that it has vinegar in it. It doesn't matter what kind of vinegar, as long as it has vinegar. That not all Filipino dishes with vinegar are called adobo while no adobo has no vinegar. No vinegar, you don't have adobo. (This is not the fact it seems.) But there are many ways of making an adobo, and none of them are more adobo than the others. For example, in eastern parts of Laguna, there is a very common but different kind of adobo - cooked with coconut milk - while I have never encountered it elsewhere, it seems like it's quite well-known in the whole country. On our part, we call it, adobo sa gata (adobo on coconut milk), and it's usually chicken.

Based on the above, it now seems that the word adobo is a generic term, and based on the above-cited Wikipedia article, is in fact, Spanish in origin, which means marinate. Not a surprise of course given that the Philippines was under Spanish rule and cultural influence for over three hundred years. So adobo means different things to different Pinoys, and non-Pinoys for that matter. There is a standard-carinderia adobo and sub-culture adobo cooked in a non-conformist kitchen. Arguably, today's adobo is not the same as yesterday's adobo since ingredients also change over time. Whereas now we use commercial vinegar, my grandparents used vinegar from Balian (Pangil, Laguna) which also implies that tomorrow's adobo will be different still. At any given time, there will be an adobo dogma and adobo heresy. There is traditional adobo and fusion adobo. I bet that if adobo ever attains international recognition (doubtful), in the same way that pizza or chopsuey did, it will be a relative adobo to the culture it finds itself into. Indian adobo will be spicy, while Japanese adobo will definitely have mirin in it. Perhaps a Korean adobo will have a hint of kimchi and a Saudi pork adobo, though a valid theory, is less likely to exist in practice at all, the idea itself considered absurd/heretical by the gastronomical orthodoxy held by the zealots but nonetheless merits serious attention that holding the concept in public discourse must be punishable by public decapitation. Yet all of these variations are adobo in their own right taken in their respectively proper context. As long as adobo cannot be reduced to mathematical and mechanical means, adobo will continue to be a concept with different meanings and different degrees of having the quality of adobo-ness taken from different vantage points.

Pictured above is a mean pork Adobo with hard-boiled egg, Tokyo, circa 2007 CE.

Niigata Earthquake Today

Niigata prefecture (and Northern Nagano prefecture) was hit by strong earthquakes again today. The earthquakes are strong enough to be felt in Tokyo, where I live, as intensity 4 in the Japanese scale. Japan is probably the most earthquake prone country in the world. Ever since I came to Japan more than seven years ago, I could not remember a single year that an earthquake of considerable magnitude didn't strike, somewhere in the country. Here is a running list of earthquakes that has hit the country, updated automatically I presume: Japan earthquakes. What is very interesting though is how they have managed to live and deal with this type of natural disaster. For example, earthquake bulletin is really impressive, with reporting on the epicenter, the magnitude, and the depth of the earthquake are flashed on TV as it happens, followed immediately by the tsunami bulletin. Even the newsroom while the earthquake is happening are sometimes shown. For example, today's strong earthquake bulletin included footage of the Niigata newsroom. Because of these strong earthquakes that strike Japan in a regular basis, Japan maybe the most earthquake-aware and earthquake-ready population. Niigata was hit by a M6.8 (Japanese scale) earthquake three years ago. That year, the people most affected by the quake had a difficult winter. I hope the damages this time would be less.

Did Rizal Retract?

Rizal was not Catholic. At least for most of his adult life. He was most probably a deist like most freethinkers of his time. Sabi ng Katolikong Simbahan si Rizal daw ay nag-retract ngunit walang matibay na prueba ang Simbahan. Maliban sa testimonya ng pari, ang "ebidensiya" ng Simbahan ay isang sulat daw na pinirmahan ni Rizal nung araw bago siya pinatay. Yung dokumentong ito ay "nawala" daw kasama na rin ng dokumento ng di umano'y Katolikong kasal ni Rizal kay Josephine. Hindi maipakita ng Katolikong Simbahan ang dokumentong sinasabi kahit na mailang ulit na hiningi ng pamilya ni Rizal. "Natagpuan" lang ang mga mahahalagang dokumentong ito noong 1935, o 39 na taon matapos ma-firing squad si Rizal. As suggested already, the Catholic Church should submit the supposed retraction letter to an independent forensic investigating body, for example, the FBI, to settle once and for all the issue that the retraction letter is not a fabrication but the Church has not been frorthcoming in this regard.

Venus Doing Good

It's 2:00 AM and I am supposed to be asleep. Tomorrow i need to be at the office for some very important work. I came home late just one and a half hours ago having left the office around 10:30pm but dropped by the Izakaya where some friends are having a quick chat over beers and Japanese food. Then Wimbledon! I caught Federer's match against Ferrero where the world number one disposed of Ferrero in four sets. Next up is the Venus Williams Ana Ivanovic game which Venus won to advance into the final. Williams owned Ivanovic. The first set just ended after 35 minutes with the set going to Williams at 6-2. The second set also went to Williams with some spectacular play. I am rooting for Williams to win Wimbledon for the fourth time and she is now waiting for her opponent, most probably world number one Henin. I think Venus will beat her convincingly. Let's see.

The Power of Prayer

Everytime I leave the office, I say my goodbyes to the people who are still working. In IT, you know a lot of developers do it as programming is a creative process. I have a few colleagues who are Pinoys and I always make it a point that I'd drop by their cubicles before I leave. My favorite expression to them is Magpakabait ka (be good). This evening, it's my turn to be left behind and W, my Pinay colleague who sits next to me, said the same thing. "Yes, I will," I replied. Then put my hands together as if in the act of praying. She said, being good is doing good not in praying to be good. Now, this is what I also believe. Being good has got nothing to do with praying. She said, it's like praying to be rich. You can pray all you want but no amount of praying, if praying is all you do, can make you rich. You have to work (hard) for it. That is obvious of course. What is not obvious for the believers though is this: you need not pray at all in order to accomplish anything, including getting rich. Prayer has got nothing to do with work. I asked her if she's heard about Occam's Razor. She said she haven't so I proceeded to explain it to her. What you have just told me is practical Occam's Razor. I will give you another example. I have this paper cup on my table. I placed it in front of me and pretended I was praying. I told her, I can pray all I want but the paper cup wont move, no Divine Intervention coming my way. I know it and she knows it and you know it but if you are a fanatic, you wont be able to accept it, but it's true nonetheless. What I can do is use my hand to move the cup, which I did. Normally, one would not see anything unusual in this simplistic exercise. It's not an issue as moving the cup is a straightforward undertaking where there are not much unknowns involved. But as more unknowns are added into the situation, as more ignorance is involved, bigger and bigger portion of the exercise are attributed by the religious that a Cosmic Force is out there helping us thus, "sa awa ng diyos, nailipat ko yung tasa." Such is the supposed power of prayer. To me, it's nothing but a function of the believer's ignorance and misguided belief.

I Love My Pointers!

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I am very reluctant to switch to Java as my main programming language at work. Why? I guess one reason is that I have this fetish of feeling the wires of the machine in my own programs. I don't want to stay away from the 0s and 1s. As much as possible, I like to have the illusion of control on my pointers, memory, and registers. I tried looking for assembly language work but they were scarce then, and scarcer now than before, so I settled for C programming. When I first did C++/C programming, I immediately loved it. My cousin wanted to have a pulldown menu system in his Clipper application and I volunteered to write one for him, in C. I read up on how to interface Clipper with C modules. It was sweet. I like to visualize my functions on how they will look in the stack, how my data structures will populate the heap, what the application footprint will be. Because of this, I was slower than necessary in finishing my programs. I tend to do premature optimization and always conscious of memory footprint and application performance. This is a product of my abnormal passion to do assembly programming. I remember in COBOL class, my teacher Miss Chua noticed that I was having trouble with my workstation so she approached me to ask me what seemed to be the problem with my COBOL program. The assembly language program I was debugging in the COBOL lab was hung and even a Ctrl+Alt+Del wont do to abort it as the BIOS interrupts were messed up already. Yes, that was DOS era and I am talking about BIOS, interrupt handling, and a COM program as opposed to an EXE program. I was debugging a small COM program that's supposed to be for my Operating Systems class under Mr. Didulo, a memory-resident utility I affectionately called Looney Tools. It was made to intercept the BIOS keyboard interrupt and scan the key combination of Ctrl+Alt+T and it will kick in, much like the Borland Sidekick. She asked me if I wanted to do my COBOL machine problem in assembly. I restrained myself so I wouldn't get into trouble any further but deep inside of me, I wanted to scream: YES! Fuck COBOL, give my pointers back!

13 Years Of Being A Code Monkey

Next month, I shall have been programming, officially as my job, for thirteen years. In all these years I have done mostly C++/C programming in various platforms including DOS, Windows, and now UNIX (Solaris). But nowadays, I have been spending less than half of my time on programming and finding myself doing more and more of paper pushing, chasing signatures, and being the dump site of the miscellaneous stuffs that other co-programmers don't want to do - mainly, paperwork. I am starting to feel I am losing that technical side the more I do this. Part of this is that I have been resisting being absorbed by the Java wave as I seem to be reluctant to spend considerable effort on getting acquainted with the Java class libraries. I have been doing mostly C++/C programming and with which I feel I am still not an expert, yet I must build my skills again from the ground up for yet another programming language. I have many books that I have yet to read but my motivation is so low. Part of this is because I don't see myself as programming in Java full-time but rather, the skills that I need to acquire is to give me a certain level of proficiency where I can jump into the code and fix small items to help the team by focusing on the things that don't seem trivial and easy while others devote their time and energy on solving the biggest issues of the day. Any problem that will require longer time to do than a day or two will just drag on and on as I get interrupted with the other stuffs that I would be looking after, e.g., replying to trivial queries from other groups, attending meetings, reporting status, and so on. I know this look like I am stuck badly but I see something at the end of all this. I know there is some value in what I do but I cannot give a name to it somehow. At any rate, I can go back to programming any time if I choose to yet I haven't done so. I am at the crossroad. I am re-thinking my next move all this time. Meanwhile, I am giving myself a few petty projects that should finally help me re-gain that competitive technical skills that I will be needing in the next few months.

Independence Day

In my opinion, you don't have the magnitude to imply things like what you belive in, because if there's no God then you wouldn't have a purpose at all in this world even if you control the whole world with your computers.

If you will read "The Purpose Driven Life" and "Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom you'll be enlightened.

Believe you me I got this piece of unsolicited advice from somebody who admitted he got agitated because I wrote a statement of fact: that I don't believe in the concept of god. Based on this mere statement, he was able to write a lot about me. Frankly, I don't know how to react to his post because I don't like to stir the forum with a non-issue. But I think he read too much between the lines, flamed me, but got a blowback instead. Good for him.

I must tell him though, that the people who read The Purpose Driven Life are still in doubt about (a) their purpose, or (b) their life. Seriously though, I haven't read that book myself and I will do so only if somebody will lend me his copy - by all means, let me see if I will be enlightened! Do I need a purpose in life? Naaah. I am happy with what I have and what I am and what I live for. It doesn't sit well with me the idea that there is some cosmic force (farce?) out there that is interested in my life and how I live it, whether I screw up or not.

Happy Independence Day. I hope today your mind is free.

New Dawn Fades

I am listening to Joy Division - my reliable source of self-induced depression. This song is one of the most intense I've ever heard and is a personal favorite.




New Dawn Fades (by Joy Division)

A change of speed, a change of style
A change of scene, with no regrets
A chance to watch, admire the distance
Still occupied, though you forget
Different colours, different shades
Over each mistakes were made
I took the blame
Directionless so plain to see
A loaded gun won't set you free
So you say
We'll share a drink and step outside
An angry voice and one who cried:
"I'll give you everything and more,
the strain's too much, can't take much more."
Oh, I've walked on water, danced with fire
Can't seem to take it anymore
It was me, waiting for me this time
Hoping for something more
Hoping for something else
Me, waiting for me this time
Hoping for something more.

Here is a great acoustic cover by John Frusciante. Please take note that the lyrics is somewhat different.

Zard Vocalist Sakai Izumi Dead At 40

I was shocked and saddened to hear the news, though a week late, about the passing of Sakai Izumi, the vocalist of the very popular J-pop group Zard. When I first came to Japan, I immediately felt at home because of J-pop. I bought this cheap component system with MD player/recorder entirely from the points I got when I bought my SLR film camera from Yodobashi. I would borrow CDs from this CD/video/DVD rental shop near my place in Hatagaya (near Shinjuku via Toei Shinjuku line) and I'd record them in MDs. Zard was one of the bands I liked listening to because of the very enthusiastic beat that made me feel light and happy. Zard's melodies set me into an optimistic mood.

Here is one song I like to listen to.

She will be missed by fans.

Being Blunt

My manager and a peer were discussing their project this morning and joking about it while I was staring at my PC when I thought I heard my name mentioned again so I peeked behind my monitor and asked them what it was they're discussing. They were telling me, as a kind of joke, that my manager should first convince me about something (I didn't really catch what it was) because I am hard to convince, as I am an atheist. My manager said, "but he is not an atheist" and turning to me repeated it, "you are not an atheist" and I replied: "What is it to you? Is it relevant to your project?" Yes was my peers reply. I asked them again, "how is my lack of belief relevant to your discussion or project?" My manager insisted that I am not an atheist. But I stood firm and asked him again "why is my belief a relevant subject in our work environment?" Sensing that I was serious, they changed the subject. Sometimes, you have to be blunt in order to deliver the message.

PhilippineAtheists.Org Is Offline

It will be back soon. Apologies.

Rebranded!

I have renamed the blog from Pinoy Infidel, Inc. to Kapanalig Sa Wala to give it a more Pinoy flavor. Also, I have revived a dead blog to separate my posts that are not about atheism.

Voter registration

I was able to vote in the last election but not without a slight snag. My name was still in the voters' list but when I was to cast my vote, my name was crossed out already in the list inside the precinct (not the one posted just outside). The chairman (I don't know her) was for a moment at a loss. I insisted that I be allowed to vote and she relented.

My question is, how does the COMELEC decide who should be struck out from the list and who decides? What are the criteria used? I have been abroad for over seven years now but I always make it a point to come home to Laguna at least three times a year. I am building my residence in Laguna and am planning of opening up my business very soon, right in the same barangay where I am a registered voter. I have vested interest in the future of Laguna and have as much the same right to vote as anybody who is staying in Laguna.

Inefficient utility company or deliberate?

I was in the Philippines during the last election. During the ballot counting, as this is not without precedent in in my hometown, power was cut-off many times, and at least in one instance, only in the portion where ballot counting was happening. This happened in the second level of the public market which is temporarily converted into public high school classrooms. I posted this in the community forum, just to ask the question since it seems it has not been mentioned at all:

I am wondering why the brownouts were never mentioned at all? Is it not important?

I was in Ibaba and in the upper palenke during the ballot counting and in one instance, the brownout hit only the upper palenke while in the heat of counting the ballots. After sometime, Ibaba had the power restored but the upper palenke continued to have no power for some time. It's totally irrational. It makes one think that it can only be explained as a purely deliberate action by somebody playing tricks on our townfolks as it happened a couple of times. I am not saying it's this or that camp. It could very well be just a prank but I am not sure if any effort has been made to find out why power was lost only in the upper palenke during the crucial moment of ballot counting. I have never seen anything like it before.

Just wondering.

I am waiting for the first ad hominem I'll get with this post. Pinoys are very sensitive and always resort to ad hominems as if it's always the best argument.

Freethought discussion group

I will be experimenting on organizing an informal group of freethinkers or with people interested in what freethought is about. When on vacation in the Philippines, I spend most of my time in my hometown in Laguna so I think it's better to have a local group there where it will be more convenient for me. So far, I have received no email. I will keep the thread alive in case somebody notices, or maybe it will take off one day. One day may be months and months ahead. I'll be waiting. Anyway, my library is still not setup. I would like to have a plan of the library to be built soon. I will be stuffing it with books on history, philosophy, science, and religion. I envision a cafe+library style venue where there are few coffee tables next to the bookshelves. I already shipped many books but they are languishing in the stockroom waiting to be re-discovered. I will make sure the library will be available by the end of this year.

Updated PA.org Forum

I took advantage of the Golden Week holidays to update the Philippine Atheists forum consolidating forums and posting initiating a few new topics. Hopefully, I can sustain this for some time until it becomes self-sustaining.