My thoughts on digital marketing, personal development, fun stuff, technology and more.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Many run, but who's run to save oneself?
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Peace in the middle of the fire.
Monday, December 21, 2009
My favorite "athletes" #1 - Lee Jaedong
I can say that pro-Starcraft is a combination of several facets of other sports:
-> It is as strategic and rigorous as chess. "Build orders" or the order with which you build units, buildings, expansions, and upgrades are studied and practiced - think chess openings. As an example, in Terran vs Zerg, if you miss the timing for producing missile turrets by just 15 seconds, mutalisks will have already come in and ravaged your mineral line. Likewise, if the Zerg misses the timing for Dark Swarm upgrade, Terran siege tanks will have already destroyed your natural expansion. Which is why scouting your opponent's base is critical in Starcraft, to determine how your opponent opens, and know the appropriate timings of their attacks.
-> It requires as much alertness as contact sports like basketball. On the spot decision making is critical in Starcraft. When an opponent attacks your base, do you pull your forces back, or do you counter? In Protoss vs Zerg, a lone dark templar left unchecked can kill dozens of drones unless you bring detectors and attacking units to fend it off. And more often that not, you only see it as a blip on the minimap. A sneaky shuttle dropping a high templar on your mineral line, if not stopped, will often kill your entire mineral line in a few seconds. Pros need to see these things and move their miners out a few seconds before the enemy drops, or take it out with scourge (Zerg)/placing anti-air (Terran and Protoss).
-> Apart from these, it requires multitasking like no other sport. Harvesting resources (and controlling idle workers), creating unit-producing buildings, producing attacking units, upgrading, attacking your units, harassing enemy bases, expanding. All these have to be done in rapid fashion to keep up. This is especially true for Zerg, as units are fragile, and the units require a lot of clicks to manage (lurkers, clumped mutalisks, defiler/ling/ultra combos, scourge suicide attacks). I can not multi-task like this, so while attacking, my production buildings are not running at full throttle. It's amazing because pro-gamers can simultaneously attack, defend, build units, expand and more.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Our DLSU LEADERS student projects
- There is much diversity in this class, as seen in the projects they did. It is also nice to see people from different course backgrounds collaborate and come up with unique ideas.
- It's interesting to see that this course provided a venue for the students to do something they probably would not have done otherwise. I have not done something like this in my college years.
- It's also leadership in action. Since this is a leadership class, we wanted the students to practice leadership in practical situations. It's nice to see people applying the frameworks on leadership and project management that we shared during the course.
- Finally, with their projects, they have helped some people in their own ways.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Places I want to go to - Socotra
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
[reblog] Boxer's brutal, realistic take on eSports
Monday, December 14, 2009
What does AIDS awareness and Adolf Hitler/Josef Stalin/Saddam have in common?
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Make love, not porn - an interesting (but tricky) TEDtalk
My Nov 2009 HK experience in pictures
My TEDxManila experience, and 3 things I've learned
Monday, November 30, 2009
Using boobs to promote shoes
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Castrated for the love of music - the castrati
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
How academics differs from business.
Spot on. Another amazing piece by XKCD that highlights the big difference between an academic career and a business career.
If you're interested, read up on Guy Kawasaki's blog on things that should be taught in school. He mentioned "Perhaps in school people have plenty of time and no money, so long papers, emails, and presentations are not a problem. However, people in the real world have plenty of money (or at least more money) and no time."
Friday, November 20, 2009
The most beautiful man in the world...
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Good afternoon, my name is Russell, and I am a wilderness explorer...
RUSSELL: Good afternoon. My name is Russell. And I am a wilderness explorer in tribe 54, Sweat lodge 12. Are you in need of any assistance today, sir?
CARL: No.
RUSSELL: I could help you cross the street
CARL: No.
RUSSELL: I can help you cross your yard.
CARL: No.
RUSSELL: I could help you cross your porch.
CARL: No.
RUSSELL: Well, I gotta help you cross something.
CARL: No, I'm doing fine.
RUSSELL: Good afternoon. My name is Russell. And I am a wilderness explorer in tribe 54. Sweat Lodge 12. Are you in need of any assistance today...(door slams).
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Raise your voice for Climate Change - support the Filipino voice
To the country: productivity and value creation due to lesser time spent in transit, fuel importation might be decreased
To the people: less stress in travel
Other ideas (I like to stress the first one, so I won't explain these.)
3. Reward actions that help the environment. Reward citizens for helping the environment (activities, purchasing eco-friendly products) and companies via tax breaks. Reward entrepreneurs for eco-friendly businesses.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Big Bird is in today's Google doodle!
But honestly, today's doodle made Google read like Googlle.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Testing Google Wave - embed a wave into a blog!
One of the cool features it has is the ability to export Waves to blogs, and have people interact with your wave from within your blog, in real time!
Take a look at the Wave I embedded at the bottom of this blog: (Note: if you don't see the wave, it maybe because you don't have a Google account, or even a Wave account.)
Sunday, October 25, 2009
How to do the Nozomi Sasaki dance (for Fit's!)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Did you know? (the extremely fast pace of tech changes)
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer selling Windows (circa 1980+)
Watch the commercial here:
Discovered this via @JimAyson.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Twitter lists out as a beta feature
Twitter rolled out a beta feature for lists to a part of Twitter's user base, according to Techcrunch. This summarizes the list feature:
Setting up a list is simple. Currently, the homepage features a Lists banner that allows you to start simply by clicking on the “Create a new list” button. Once you do this, an overlay appears and you just type in the list name (which Twitter then converts into a permalink along the lines of twitter.com/USERNAME/LISTNAME), and set the list to be public or private. This is obviously an important distinction as the public one, others will be able to see, while the private one will be for your eyes only.
On the right hand column of you Twitter.com homepage, you will see a new “lists” area under you bio. Clicking on this will take you to your list overview page where you can manage your own lists, as well as see other user’s public lists that you are a part of. Also, on user profile pages you will see that the users’ lists are now listed under the “Favorites” area in the right hand toolbar.
Clicking on any of these lists will take you to a stream of just the users followed by that list. Basically, this is a filter, if used the right way. This is something Twitter proper has long needed (though plenty of third party services like Brizzly have stepped in to offer it).
Unfortunately, adding people to your list is not as easy as it should be. The reason for this is that there is no user search functionality. Instead, you have to either go to your “following” page, or to that person’s profile to manually add them.
I have created my own list - for "friends." I'm still playing with this feature. As of now, its main benefit for me is to filter my feed according to my own personal preferences.Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Dear God... (more funny letters!)
Monday, October 12, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Google barcode logo today!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Wanna have an ID photo like this?
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Metallica - Turn the page
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Stranded in DLSU-Manila (thanks to Ondoy) - part 4
When I went back to LS 309 to sleep, Toffee, Tim, MJ, Jessie, and 1 more person were already asleep. Tim, MJ, and Jessie were asleep on the wooden platform below the blackboard; Toffee and the other person (a girl - I don't know her name) slept on chairs. I tried to snuggle myself into a corner, and put another chair for my legs. I generally have a sleeping problem, but this setup complicated things a bit more. Anyway, I think I was finally able to sleep 230am.
Noah's Ark
We woke up around 6am. Looking out, like Noah's Ark survivors we celebrated the fact that we can see more and more land jut out from the water! We felt that we can already leave. Our newfound friends had already left (they slept in a different room)
Walking around DLSU at approx 630am, we saw Aimee Chua ferrying a bunch of sandwiches (breakfast) via a tricycle. That wasn't going to be of much use, since many people have started leaving.
We made our way to the EGI building with a newfound perspective of the power of nature...
... and a 200 peso parking bill, like it was our fault we couldn't leave that night.
The businessperson behind EGI is a rather insensitive guy. They even raised room rates astronomically (from 1500 (per Tim) to 6500 for one night stay)!
Tim and I made our way to McDonald's for breakfast. We saw Jill's group yet again and we had breakfast there. After breakfast and almost 24 hours of staying in DLSU, they were finally fetched. Since the flood in the SM Manila area is still very high and difficult to pass, Tim and I decided to go back to school to wait out a bit more.
Have a safe trip home!
Back at DLSU, the cleaning operation was already at full swing. Janitors were cleaning the pavement, removing water from the Amphitheater and cleaning the buildings. We wanted to walk around a bit more, but we were asked to go to the Chapel to not intefere with the cleaning.
Nothing much happened back in the Chapel. The view from the window presented a very calm and sunny weather - like nothing happened last night. The number of people staying in the Chapel slowly decreased until there was only a dozen people left.
Outside the Chapel, the volunteers assembled a board saying what roads are passable/impassable. That's nice - but it's too fragmented so we can't really use it.
One thing that I really liked was the concern Br Armin and the other leaders showed for the students. Before leaving, students were asked where they went home to, and how they would go home. If they deemed it was unsafe, they politely asked the students to wait out some more. If it was safe, then they were able to go. If it's a tricky situation, then they got the student's number to call him/her later.
Around 11am, Tim and I finally left. To get to my house, it was a little adventure since the water around the SM area was flooded up to the waist. But I was able to go home anyway. (cut out a lot of details here - it's not that important)
What happened to Jim and my brother?
Jim left DLSU at around 12 noon in his car with his driver. At around 1pm, he was still stuck in Taft. He was still in Quirino by 3pm. He actually walked from Quirino to his house in Alabang!
My brother was stranded in a nearby SM. He bought shorts and slippers there because he had to wade through waist deep waters. The waters eventually reached neck level, but by that time he was already safely in SM. At 5am with just 2 hours of sleep, he left SM, waded a lot more, then finally got home around lunch time.
Watch out for my next blog article - helping out in the relief operation!
Approaching a girl on the train - funny cartoon
Via XKCD yet again. The image has an alt tag - "And I even got out my adorable new notebook!"
Monday, September 28, 2009
Stranded in DLSU-Manila (thanks to Ondoy) - part 3
Stranded in DLSU-Manila (thanks to Ondoy) - part 2
Part 3 is here.