A Few Thoughts on Yesterday’s Hostage Drama From Yet Another Armchair Observer

Tuesday 24 August 2010 - Filed under Just Another Day In The Philippines

August 23, 2010: A disgruntled and decorated police officer who had been dismissed on charges of extortion took hostage a bus full of tourists from Hong Kong. The hostage drama unfolded in front of the Quirino Grandstand in Manila with the expected media circus, confused cops and SWAT who didn’t know what to do and a tragic ending that involved dead hostages and a bullet to the head.

Read the full story on Inquirer.net.

I wasn’t there of course. In fact when the topic first started trending on twitter I dismissed it and went about whatever I was doing at the time and later took a nap. By the time I woke up, hostages had died and the situation had escalated, negotiations had apparently failed and the SWAT team was ready to assault the bus.

At first, like everyone else I was appalled at the incompetence of the law enforcement units handling the matter, especially with the rumors circulating that they had actually had training on this type of bus assault scenario before/recently. But when I think about it, our cops are poor and underpaid and working with substandard equipment and procedures and still they have to risk assaulting that bus and getting shot. I wouldn’t excuse them for the outcome of the event, but things can always end badly and in our case there are so many things contributing to that grisly end.

What about Captain Mendoza, the hostage taker, who claims he was unjustly dismissed from the force? It is easy to blame him as well. Of course we all agree that taking a bus full of tourists hostage is not the best way to air his grievances. But he is just another underpaid cop and was now even denied his measly pension. He could air his concerns to the media but would anyone listen? He could take it up with the courts but how long would that take? Instead of suffering through a long, arduous process of reclaiming his allegedly stolen honor, he chose to take a radical approach to get attention to his cause.

And of course it worked. The media lapped it up. The major TV stations, in their relentless quest for even more ratings kept trying to outdo each other in their coverage and in airing his side and the details of his case. It’s easy to say the media exacerbated the situation what with their broadcasting details of the police operations and of the arrest of the hostage taker’s brother. But the fact is that we the viewing public, we love this stuff, this drama. We stay glued to our TVs and radios and twitter streams, hoping to see how this unsightly assault on our country’s tourism industry would conclude. Can we blame the media for giving us what we want?

It’s easy to criticize, but it’s not like we were the ones there on the scene having to deal with the chaos and the media and the rain.

It’s easy to lay blame, but we can’t go back and change what happened. Hopefully the people in charge, and that law enforcement and media outlets and even we the people to whom these entities should be held accountable study the failures and learn the lessons and do what needs to be done to avoid another such incident staining our not-so-good-in-the-first-place international reputation.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-08-24  ::  roy

The Fifth Power

Monday 9 August 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

I maybe getting older but as anyone can attest, I’m still a child at heart.

As they say: life is a journey, not a destination. I still don’t know what my destination is, but I’ll keep moving forward one step at a time.

Looking forward to the next power of two.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-08-09  ::  roy

What Am I Doing Now?

Friday 23 July 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

I get asked this a lot since I’m not currently working. I never get to answer clearly, so here’s an attempt.

The short answer is: Whatever I want

The long answer:

1. Yes, I spend a lot of time goofing around – watching TV series, movies and playing video games. In fact I think for most of the first two months of my hiatus, this was what I did. Now there’s a lot less of that – I’ve caught up with all the series I wanted to catch up with, and I don’t have any significant video games I want to finish. (That may change next week with the release of Starcraft 2 :p). I don’t actually watch stuff on television unless I’m having a meal though.

2. I read a lot. Mostly online reading (so having an IPad would be nice, hah!). A lot of articles about a variety of topics such as entrepreneurship, new technologies, mobile application development, casual gaming development. Hacker News is a fair approximation of my usual reading material. I probably spend 2-3 hours each day on reading.

3. I’m working on some small projects. Not work stuff, not freelancing or anything like that. Just some tools/apps, many of them for my own usage (‘to scratch an itch”, as the saying goes). Often I will start building an app just to try out a certain API or technology. In the past 2 weeks I’ve looked at: Scala, Ruby, the Android SDK, Google App Engine, the Facebook Graph API, the Twitter API, the Plurk API, Git and Mercurial. It’s only recently that I’m getting back into the swing of coding (and seeing my own terrible bugs :p), and I hope to scale that up in the coming months. I want to write more apps that I can release for public consumption.

4. Something people who’ve been employed all the time don’t realize: even if I have a lot of free time, I’m still lazy. :p So there are a lot of backlog tasks I’ve been meaning to do since forever that I need to get around to. Mostly involves organizing stuff, getting rid of unneeded stuff, returning stuff. Stuff has a maintenance cost, so we should have a lot less of it!

5. I’m currently not earning any money and am still considering future plans. It’s fine, I can still survive for a while. There are a lot of options, and getting back into a regular employment scenario is only one of them. The more conventional options are getting a job again and/or working abroad (probably Singapore). My brothers and I talk constantly about starting our own company: consulting/software dev (need to find clients), or product development (IPhone/Android…but we’re still balking on the high price of entry to the IPhone market, i.e. need a macbook!). A friend of mine keeps telling me we should start working on a casual game, our own Plants vs Zombies as it were. I’m inclined to look into some sort of product development myself, in fact I already have a few design ideas for a casual/social MMO (similar to Castle Age…I like to claim I’m doing research when I play it).

So that’s the current status. I’m still not sure exactly the direction I should be going – it’s always been one of my weaknesses that when there are a lot of options available I have difficulty making a decision promptly. Getting a job again is the safe yet boring choice; at the same time I’m not sure if I’m equipped with the necessary discipline to handle the more challenging options such as starting my own company.

In any case I’m not really in a hurry. The whole point of the hiatus was figuring out what I want to be doing. I’m not sure yet, so hiatus is not yet over.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-23  ::  roy

Weekend Project: Stack Bragger

Wednesday 21 July 2010 - Filed under Software Development

Stack Bragger lets you brag to your Facebook friends whenever you ask new questions or earn new badges at StackOverflow, SuperUser or ServerFault.

I was looking for a weekend project and found out that stackoverflow api was released so I thought I’d make a small facebook app. I originally just wanted to post to FB whenever I got a badge, something like how PSN accounts automatically post Trophies to FB. It also posts questions you ask so that any friends you have on facebook not already using stackoverflow might want to help answer

It turned out to take a bit more than a weekend (mostly because my weekend was busy), but at least it gave me a chance to try out a few things:

1. Facebook’s Graph API
2. Google App Engine
3. DVCS

I’ve toyed around with Google App Engine before, but now was the first time I got to use it for something more useful than following tutorials or writing random “Hello World”. I pretty much got to try all of the relevant services: cron jobs, tasks, memcache, GQL, etc. Everything was well-documented and easy to follow.

Facebook on the other hand…this whole thing with their Graph API that they want to release the old REST API with makes things a bit confusing when searching for tutorials, as most of them will be referring to the old REST API, including the python facebook wrapper libraries available. It took me a while to get the authentication and setting up permissions thing going. The great thing is I don’t need to go through that again for future facebook apps!

This project also gave me a chance to create a bitbucket account and use a DVCS. I picked bitbucket over github because I prefered to have a private repository and mercurial just seemed a lot easier to use than git.

Here’s the StackApps entry. Originally, I wanted to win their contest, but to be honest that seems a bit far-fetched now. My app comes in late to the game and there was already a facebook app listed there before but it’s not ranked too high. Besides, we all know @codinghorror isn’t a fan of Facebook haha.

Am I releasing the source? I dunno yet. I’d have to create a public repo on Github, decide on a license, scrub out my API keys from the code and other stuff, so maybe later.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-21  ::  roy

Free Time

Friday 25 June 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

Aside from my current hiatus, I’ve taken month-long breaks even when I was still employed. One of the things I most often get asked when I take an extended break from work is “Won’t you get bored with all that free time?”

This question strikes me as a strange attitude towards free time, as if it were an annoyance to be avoided instead of a resource to be enjoyed. The people who subscribe to this belief are probably the same people who watch TV all the time when at home, or who can’t imagine life without having a 9 to 5 job eating up most of their day. Those people need to find a hobby :p

You wouldn’t ask a billionaire “Won’t you get bored with all that money?” because you know there are a lot of ways to invest money, grow it or use it. Time is the same thing: a valuable resource that you can simply use in everyday consumption activities like watching TV/movies or you can also choose to invest your time in learning or creation activities that expand your horizons.

The difference between time and money is that money is a renewable resource (you can always earn more!), while time used up is never coming back. Therefore, you should value time more than money. There are some people (workaholics) who think that time spent not earning money is wasted time. But in truth, you only need to spend time to earn money enough to provide for your own needs. Beyond that, the money is simply a luxury that you need to weigh alongside the luxury of free time.

So do what I do: cherish and enjoy your free time, especially that unprogrammed time that you can spend however you wish, and make sure you spend it only on activities that are worthwhile for you.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-06-25  :: 

On Working

Tuesday 22 June 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

I’ve been meaning to write about why I quit a perfectly good job I had at Azeus, but it’s been hard to articulate the reasons, in the same way I found it hard to explain to people why I didn’t feel a corporate “9 to 5″ was entirely necessary at this point. Then I read a blog post today “Why I Quit A Six Figure Job” which I found to express/coincide with my thoughts pretty well on the upsides and downsides of having a job.

When I started working in 2003 I was young and inexperienced and had no idea what sort of things should be planned out in life. For the first four years of my stay there I worked hard, the job was awesome, I was working with terrific people, I was learning a lot and the paycheck was great. Somewhere around late 2006 I completed my first largish project as technical lead and I felt we had pulled it off quite well.

Fast forward to three years later (2009). For some reason, it felt like time went by really quickly and the period of rapid growth that I experienced during the first half of my stay had slowed down into a more gradual pace. Though I was still improving and learning new things, it was nowhere near the level as when I first started. I felt like I was pretty much in the same place I was in 2006, in terms of technical skill, responsibilities, etc. (Well, of course my paycheck got better…).

This is the hardest part to explain, at that time I didn’t understand it very well myself, but basically there is a trap that anyone working a “9 to 5″ job easily falls into. That trap is complacency. It’s a trap fueled by the easy money of the regular paycheck. By then I would often find myself just phoning it in. Successive days would pass by where I’m just going through the motions of waking up, slogging through the commute, doing whatever needs to be done, sleeping through the bus ride home and hoping the weekend comes sooner. And whenever I tried to look down the line, imagining what the job would be like three or four years later, I couldn’t see it being any different than what it was right now.

I’m sure a lot of people (probably 95% of people or more) would have been perfectly happy where I was with a good job and a steady paycheck. But I’m a greedy bastard, I want more in life than other people are willing to settle for. I felt like if I stayed where I was, somehow the story of my life would be over, as I already knew how the future would go if I stayed.

So I forced the change. I resigned from my job and took the leap into an uncertain future. I still don’t know where I’m going, and I’m still currently unemployed, but I know I have a lot of options. I don’t have any big commitments (not gonna be married anytime soon) and I have enough of a safety net to last me a few years, so I’m in no hurry.

This post already went on for longer than I intended, so I’ll leave other questions such as “What are you doing now that you’re a bum?” (I get asked this a lot) or “Isn’t it stupid to quit your job without a plan?” for future discussions. If you found my reasons interesting though, you may want to read the discussion thread on Hacker News about Xavier Shay’s post, it’s quite interesting.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-06-22  :: 

The Setup

Tuesday 8 June 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

A while back I started reading The Setup, which is basically a collection of interviews with various tech/creative guys about what sort of hardware and software they use. I always enjoy this sort of thing – it feeds my tech envy when they describe cool setups or gadgets I don’t have. (A lot of them have Macs!)

I actually purchased a new desktop computer a while back without posting any details, so I thought I’d something similar to The Setup so that I have a record of what I’m using now.

What Hardware Do You Use?

Desktop – my desktop is primarily for gaming, is a custom-built setup. Prepackaged and branded desktops aren’t really popular here in the Philippines, at least among techies. I actually had my brother put this one together, just gave him the budget and told him to maximize it.

Specs:

• 2.67 gigahertz Intel Core i5 750, 4GB ram, 1TB HD, ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1GB onboard memory)
• I also have a pair of crappy speakers – I have to adjust the connector every so often when watching eps because the voice tracks get filtered out for some reason.
• I have never solved that 5×5 Rubik’s Cube.

Laptop

My laptop is an Acer Aspire 4920G that I purchased around 2 years ago. Core2 Duo 1.8GHz, 3gig ram, 160GB HD, ATI Radeon X2500 video card. It’s old and not really that portable – I seldom bring it outside the house, but it’s a workhorse and gets the job done. It’s my primary machine at home for random internet surfing and coding; I usually have it mounted on a breakfast tray (shown in the picture) so I can use while lying down on the bed. It can also act as a secondary gaming machine in a pinch, although it tends to overheat and crash if I use it for an extended gaming session.

Gaming Console

It’s an 80GB original model PS3 hooked up to a 22″ Samsung HD monitor. We have the Rock Band 2 set provided by chowtimer, plus a couple of arcade fight sticks for Street Fighter IV. There’s an SD-only TV beside the PS3, so we can usually watch whatever is on TV same time as playing PS3 games.

Others

• My cellphone is a Nokia 5800. It’s handy and since I don’t text much most of my prepaid load gets eaten up by internet data usage when I’m outside of the house. It’s also my only camera, so I can’t take a picture of it.
• For mobile gaming I have a first-generation silver Nintendo DS and a purple PSP-3000.
• I have a couple of nonworking desktops lying around the house – we need to figure out what to do with them.

What Software Do You Use?

The desktop runs Microsoft Windows 7 Professional, while the laptop dual-boots between Windows 7 Professional and Ubuntu 10.04, which is my primary OS for internet and coding.

The programs I use most are Google Chrome/Chromium for internet browsing (Firefox if I’m doing any web coding) and Tweetdeck for the twittering. For coding on Ubuntu I have Eclipse for Java and good ‘ol gedit for Python. Any document editing is usually done using Google Docs and my email is using GMail (yeah, I like Google!)

All the images in this post are available as a flickr set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zroytang/sets/72157624234499706/

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-06-08  :: 

Coming Back to Writing

Monday 7 June 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

So the other day I was watching a video of Scott Berkun‘s talk about the future of WordPress:

(Go ahead, watch it first if you like, this blog post will still be here when you get back)

I loved how he delved into the history of writing itself, not just of WordPress – harking back to the days of the printing press, etc. We live in such a world of privilege where anyone with an internet connection can easily publish his thoughts and words unto a worldwide audience, and yet for many people writing is a lost art that they don’t partake in on a regular basis.

For the past few months, I’ve been one of those people, as I’ve neglected to update this blog (aside from a short spurt during the elections). I’m still actively posting bite-sized snippets of my brain on twitter and I even added a new outlet for random internet nonsense on my tumblr account Easily Distracted but I’ve been lazily avoiding the elaborate writing of long prose.

It’s easy to find excuses not to write; for the longest time I was considering switching this blog back to WordPress (I’m currently running a custom Django-based blog engine of my own creation) and changing the theme, et cetera – the sort of busy work one gets into when avoiding something else.

Have I been avoiding writing? Maybe I’d fallen into the trap a lot of people fall into – thinking that I have nothing useful to say, so I better not just say anything. There’s something about staring at a blank text box that you need to fill up that triggers a primitive part of our brains that thinks we should avoid pushing out our thoughts or opinions into the world for fear of being questioned or ridiculed. Maybe it’s a holdover from the days that elementary school English teachers would force us to write reaction papers and essays with a required number of words or pages. (Few teachers ask for an N-page paper, they know students will just cheat by using double-space or large fonts.)

I’ve also been worried about the sort of things that I write; like a lot of bloggers I somehow fell into the mindset that I should limit myself to a specific set of topics such as software development or Philippine politics or whatever. It’s a bit ridiculous, this isn’t a topical blog, it’s a personal website and I can (and should) write about whatever I damn well please.

Sidebar: If you’re wondering “Why write a blog at all?”, try reading “You should write blogs” by Steve Yegge.. Looking over his reasons why not to blog, I don’t even have the luxury of claiming I don’t have enough time, not since I quit my job. (Hmm, I should probably write about that in a future post…)

So anyway, let’s put this ramble to an end. I’ll be writing regularly again for now, probably five times a week. Wish me luck!

1 comment  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-06-07  :: 

Elections 2010 – Annoyances

Monday 10 May 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

Expect long lines, hot and sweaty rooms and maybe disorganized Comelec. Here are some other annoyances I encountered (just a quick brain dump):

1. The Comelec BEI and volunteers may be uncoordinated. I went to a waiting room at the first floor and got a number and was told to wait for my batch of 10 to be sent to the voting room at the second floor. After about an hour, we found out the voting room wasn’t aware numbers were being given out and had let some people start voting already. We went upstairs flailing like an angry mob and were fortunately given priority.

2. People (i.e. idiots) keep trying to get ahead of people who were there before them, adding to the confusion. I was especially annoyed at a bunch of senior citizens who pushed ahead of us in line and saying they should be first because they were almost fainting from the heat. I understand that old people deserve some consideration, but even after they were told that they would be processed after the current people in line (about five people, including me) they still went ahead and basically forced the Comelec people to process them.

3. Because there were a lot of idiots trying to get ahead, and of course the people in line being angry about the idiots, the Comelec BEI were quite flustered and themselves frustrated at the situation. They’re not used to handling this many people – I remember during previous elections it would take us twenty minutes tops to get in, fill up the ballot and be done. This time it took me about an hour once I actually got into the voting room.

4. As a software engineer, I hate inefficiencies and there were quite a number in their procedures. The “book” of voter registration records for each precinct was needed in two queues – the one for getting the ballot and the one for putting the thumb print and indelible ink. So if you were in one queue and the voter book for your precinct was being used in the other queue…you’d have to wait! It seems they also

5. PCOS machine glitches – happened twice, once before I went into the voting room and once while I was in line to put my ballot in. Apparently the machine only needed to be rebooted.

Overall it took me around 2 hours, including the stupid waiting period caused by #1. I cast the 26th ballot in my clustered precinct, I’m not sure how it’s possible to finish 1,000 voters at this rate.

Despite all the problems, don’t forget to thank the Comelec staff once you’re done, they’re overworked and underpaid, they could use the boost.

Good luck to those who have yet to vote, may your experience be smoother than mine.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-05-10  :: 

Elections 2010 – My Ballot

Friday 7 May 2010 - Filed under Uncategorized

For President, I’m voting Dick Gordon, because I believe that the Philippines should be a meritocracy where people are chosen as leaders based on the strength of their accomplishments and qualifications.

For Vice President, I’m voting for Mar Roxas, as he’s simply the most qualified and with the strongest history of government service. The E-VAT thing is actually a plus for him, as it shows he has the capacity to make difficult decisions if needed.

For Senators:

Sonia Roco: I believe she will live up to the advocacies espoused by her husband the late Raul Roco (whom I voted for in 2004). Focus: Education.

Risa Hontiveros: A solid history of advocacy and support for pro-people legislation during her two terms as AKBAYAN party-list representative. Focus: Healthcare, Women’s Rights

Neric Acosta: Former teacher and three-term congressman of Bukidon, with legislative history focusing on environmental concerns. Focus: Environment

Martin Bautista: A successful doctor in the US, decided to come back to the Philippines to offer to serve the country. Focus: Healthcare, including reproductive health

Alex Lacson: I have to admit, I’m only voting for him because of his book “12 Little Things A Pinoy Can Do To Help His Country.” I’m a sucker for anyone who is able to point out to Filipinos that change has to start with ourselves, even with little things. It’s good to have new faces in the Senate instead of just the same old trapos. Focus: education, employment.

Adel Tamano: Originally I wanted to avoid voting for any NP candidates, given how ticked off I am by MV. But unlike the presidential race which is all-or-nothing, I prefer giving other parties some space in the senatorial race so that the Senate won’t be a rubber stamp of the administration. Tamano is a good choice, he’s another former educator (was head of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila) and adds representation for Mindanao

Pia Cayetano: The only other NP senator I’m voting for. Her advocacies include health, education, environment, youth and women’s empowerment.

Miriam Santiago: A lot of people don’t like Miriam for various reasons (luka-luka, madaldal were some of the reasons people cited), but I’m not the sort of person to dismiss someone just because she doesn’t follow social conventions. Miriam has been around a while and doesn’t take any BS from anybody. Her presence in the Senate will keep people honest because she likes to call a spade a spade. At the very least, it will keep the Senate interesting. Focus: ???

I’m stopping at eight senators for now. None of the others particularly appeal to me.

For Mayor/Vice Mayor of Quezon City, I’m going with Bautista/Belmonte, mostly because I trust that Sonny Belmonte wouldn’t choose idiots to take over after his well-respected term as mayor.

For Congressman and District councilors, I’m abstaining. I don’t know who the candidates are, and even worse, I’m voting in a different district than where I’m currently residing, I have no right to decide the fate of district 3.

For party-list, I choose AGHAM party list (same one I voted for last time). It’s sad that they are supporting Villar, but I’ll just overlook that since I’m strongly leaning towards their Science and Technology advocacy. S&T; isn’t usually a concern of ordinary Filipinos, but that’s something that has to change as it’s one of the ways we can climb out of where we are now and attempt to become an industrialized country.

Whew, composing this post took a while. I have to admit some of my choices were rushed (particularly for Senator), as most of my decision-making energy was spent researching the Presidentiables. Although things can still change between now and Monday, this will probably be close to my final ballot.

4 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-05-07  ::