The Akashic Field Chronicle

Long time, no post.

Today I did the Santa Monica 5000 (www.santamonica5000.com). A very short race, but noteworthy for several reasons:

• It’s my 1st race in more than 1 year. The previous one being “Paa-tibayan 5-miler” in UP, before I left the Philippines (Thanks primarily to some coercion from my good friend and avid runner Mr. Wilson Tan)
• It’s my 1st run in the US.
• It’s my attempt to get back to running after stopping for a long time (due to a mix of laziness and a busy 1st year at UCLA)

Also in the race were 2 other guys from my lab (Przemek and Jun), although they both did the longer race (10km).

In summary, I was really, really, really slow. It took me 33m11s to complete the 5k and I was 7th from the last in my age group (25-29). Given my deteriorating fitness level , I’d say it was good enough. Honestly, my pace was very laid back and I was closer to easy jogging, than actually racing, for the better part of the race. My goal was to run the entire time and I did that. However, I started with too conservative a pace, that even when I picked up the pace close to the finish line, it was already too late. Still, I did achieve my original goal which was just to keep running the entire time. Hopefully, my next attempt (10km) would be at a much more competitive pace.

I thought some of my friends back in the Philippines (both the RFID guys, and the runners) might be interested on the tech behind the race, so I posted some photos on my gallery (click the t-shirt to view).

For anyone still reading this blog. No, seriously, I’ve been trying to post so bad, and I always run out of time. If only there was more than 24 hours in a day. Then, I guess I’ll have more time to procrastinate and still fail to blog. LOL.

Anyways, just some quick updates:

Summer

The school year is officially over. Yeah! My first school year ever (3 quarters to be exact). Oh, wait, what?! Summer’s only for undergrads and liberal arts majors?! Darn. Sad but true. I guess ‘the research’ never sleeps. Moving on then.

Moving Out

Lots of changes going on here, especially in the housing front. People moving, sublets being subleased, graduating and going elsewhere, getting jobs (what’s that?!). I am no exception of course. My contract at Weyburn Terrace ends at June 30th and I already have a new place around Santa Monica, thanks to my friend Allan Kelley.

• Pros:
  • Close to the beach!
  • Close to 3rd St. Promenade!
  • Close to a lot of other cool stuff!
  • A good deal cheaper
  • Weyburn just has this feeling of being part of the school. I feel like I’m always in school (sort of like a dorm)
  • Great people to share the house with.
• Cons:
  • Not so close to UCLA. I have to take a bus, and they are far apart and stops roughly every 2 blocks.
  • I have to say goodbye to the insanely fast UCLA residential internet access. Goodbye!
  • I really enjoy biking to school. If I still want to do that, I have to figure out how not to sweat

Overall a great blessing if I may say so.

Goodbye Weyburn! I will not miss your prohibitively steep roads.

WordPress 3.0

Speaking of updates, this blog has been updated. Woohoo. WordPress 3.0 is here. I haven’t really explored that much. So far, the only thing I’ve noticed is a slightly different color scheme. I’m sure a more thorough exploration will reveal what great new features these awesome developers have in store for us.

P.S. Oussama, another member of our lab just started a blog, which kinda reminded me that I also had one, which has recently fallen into neglect, thus prompting me to do this update post. Thanks and I’ll be watching your blog (ok, not really, but I’ll subscribe to your feed and in effect be watching your blog, only in a more efficient manner).

Who doesn’t love watching TV? Nobody (okay, maybe somebody). I thought I’d make a short list of my favorites right now. Here they are:

10. House

I don’t know why I get sucked in into the same disturbingly similar plot line (Someone gets sick. Awesome techno-electronic bass drum beat. House makes several faulty diagnoses. House looks blankly into nothingness. Comes up with a brilliant idea and saves the day.) But for all it’s repetitiveness, the drama is still very real. Thumbs up for exploiting a well-worn plot line.

edit: apparently the drum beat is from a group called Massive Attack.

9. Community

This might seem an odd choice, but the show is really really funny. Maybe because I’m still in a school after so many years. I especially like the extra scene during the end credits. ‘Donde, esta, la biblioteca’

8. The Office

Awkward situations. Awkward boss who finds a way to make everything said about him sound like a compliment. That’s what she said!

7. Lost

A lot of people love this show and it’s almost over. However, I didn’t give it a top spot because I’m weary of J.J. Abrams (wait till you see #1) just getting ‘lost’ in his own mythology. I still hate him for the final season of Alias.

6. Chuck

Well, well, well. Renewed for a 4th season. What can I say? The storyline might not be topnotch. But that Australian/Polish chick is just mesmerizing. Reason enough to watch in my book.

5. Modern Family

This show is hilarious. Very creative writers with well-crafted punchlines. Great cast too.

4. Stargate Universe (SGU)

Oh Brad Wright, you had me at ‘SG1′. Now, with more money to burn and better graphics too, this is just sci-fi heaven.

3. FlashForward

Cancelled! I know. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Oh well. Moving on.

2. V

The aliens are coming and they are HOOOT. Besides the pretty aliens, the show is action-packed, fast-paced, and has enough mystery to keep me interested.

1. Fringe

Where do I begin? This show is just plain awesome. J.J. Abrams, you fixed the complex plot issues from Lost & Alias and you give us this amazing show that’s not that hard to follow (a lot of episodes stand on their own), but has such a deep mythology to keep the avid fans glued. I expect great things from this show .

There’s a lot of other great shows out there, but I had to pick 10. Any TV Series suggestions? Violent Reactions?

I remember running around the University of the Philippines Diliman Acad Oval while I was doing my masters (good times) and even joining a short race (thanks to Wilson). Sad to say though, apart from 1 or 2 times when I first arrived at UCLA, I haven’t really ran that much since I got here. Come to think of it, I haven’t done any sort of physical activity .

And I feel it. You know that feeling you get when you’ve been sleeping the entire day after not sleeping the entire night and then having to get up because you’re really really hungry (having skipped all the usual meals)? Sort of like that, but for months. So I decided to try and get back into shape by running around the UCLA campus more regularly. Boy, did it feel good!

Since I was always more of a ‘geek’ than a ‘runner’, I decided to tech it up and make my running route Google Maps style. I dunno why, but making routes that passed through unofficial roads were tough on Google Maps. It’s either roads only, or manual trails only. Good thing they have a great API and some guy was able to make this webapp just for making running maps. Here’s mine:

Around the campus (7km only?!) My apartment is on the DOT

I have to say, this webapp is really nice, especially for guys like me without a GPS device. It gives you km markers (or miles if you want to be English about it). It even gives you calories burned (if you’re interested in that kind of stuff). I was shocked to find that the entire UCLA campus is barely 7km! I’d bet that’s a tiny fraction of the UP campus. Then again, land prices in this part of LA are steep, being so close to Beverly Hills. To compensate, UCLA is building upwards.

What’s different?

So last week was my first time to run this route. Some key differences I noticed compared to running around UP Campus:

• Freezing - I know it’s spring already, but it’s still cold in the afternoon (the only time I can run). I had to wear a jacket wile running. And here I was thinking that Manny Pacquiao was just trying to look cool.
• Tough Terrain - UP is generally flat. UCLA = Hills. So most of the time, you’re either sweating profusely while climbing up a slope or trying to prevent yourself from going downhill too fast.
• Anytime Running - here’s one weird thing I immediately noticed when I got here. People run here anytime of the day. In the Philippines, only the crazy guys run at noon (heat stroke anyone? skin cancer?)

Here’s one similarity though, both campuses look stunning at dusk. Too bad I didn’t have a camera the last time (so un-yuppy-like of me). Hopefully next time, I can snap some photos. My plan is to try a different route every time so that I get to see the entire campus in a few months. Besides, I don’t want to get bored of running the same route every single time. Wish me luck on sticking to my schedule.

Quick-ees:

• I passed Prelims! woohoo! (Quoting the email: We advise you now to concentrate on your research). Hehehe. I guess I have no choice
• Passed the english for teaching exam – will probably be TAing next year.
• Prof. Joel Marciano (UP EEEI) presented our paper entitled: “Combining Parallel Sequence Spread Spectrum (PSSS) with OFDM – Concept and Simulation Results” this week in IEEE WCNC 2010 in Sydney, Australia.

Man. This blog hasn’t been updated in a while. It’s become almost a quarterly thing. Based on the dates of the past entries, it is. I wish I could update it more often. I read the following somewhere (forgot where) edit: well well well, it seems I saw it on Stellify.net, who quoted it from Andrew Sullivan:

A blog is less a publication and more a broadcast…

The point is, without regularity, a blog is useless. I think, writing short entries, but with good regularity would probably make it a bit easier. On the extreme case there’s twitter (which I haven’t really tried). edit: using it now, follow me!

I want to keep this blog alive (I’m not sure why), but it would take substantial effort on my part to keep it that way. On the one hand, nobody is forcing me to do it, but on the other hand, it’s a really great way to release stress (call it therapeutic). Besides, with grad school occupying the majority of my time, it’s one of the few ways to exercise that other part of the brain (left or right?).

A long long time ago, when I started this blog, I also had a lot of stuff to do, but I still managed to post once or twice a week. Once you start getting into the zone (i.e. post regularly) it becomes easier. So right now, I’m way way out of the zone. I think a couple of short posts at least once every week should fix that.

So without further ado… I’m announcing that I’ll be making this a more regular “broadcast” rather than a quarterly “publication”. Not so much for the audience (which right now is probably close to 0, except for the feed reader & facebook folks who will be forced to read it), but as an outlet for stuff I’m thinking about. Once I get myself back on a more regular schedule, I guess we’ll see where it goes from there.

Some Updates:

1. Tomorrow I’ll find out the results of the PhD prelims (nervous) – It’s this exam. Very important and given once a year, so if I fail, it’s a year long wait.
2. Done with course work – basically it’s all research from this point on (hopefully until I graduate).
3. Taking the TOP exam tomorrow – It’s this exam. An oral English test for those who want to apply as a TA.
4. I got my MS diploma! – thanks to Ate Mimi (UP EEE) for helping out
5. I miss home – I won’t be going back to the Philippines for at least 8 months (Christmas Holidays). Sad.

That’s about it, if you read this post, please do look forward to my next one (hopefully within a week or so – oooh, that’s quite a commitment, oh well).