The Akashic Field Chronicle

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).

Just got home from WordCamp Philippines 2008, held at the College of St. Benilde earlier today. This whole day event was so much fun! Aside from that, it’s sort of a little historical too, being the very first WordCamp in South East Asia. For those not familliar with it, WordCamps are basically venues where WordPress users and developers hailing from a somewhat relatively small geographical region (say a country like the Philippines) can gather and talk about this outstanding piece of software.

The Event

Besides being fun, the whole thing was a really great learning experience. Matt Mullenweg, the creator of the WordPress platform was there for a short talk about the state of WordPress and some Q&A towards the end. He had a really really light character and seemed to be a very approachable guy. I really should go to more of these kinds of gatherings. It’s definitely a great way of enriching and cultivating my inner geek. Ooops, maybe I should edit that out, because I don’t think I have an “inner” geek. I’m probably geek inside-out. Haha. So much to learn today and I’m really glad that Wilson told me to register for WordCamp in the first place. Funny thing though, Wil doesn’t even have his own blog (yet).

Stuff I Learned

It won’t be like me at all if I didn’t take the opportunity to share with you folks some of the things I learned (and as I said, there’s a lot). There so much stuff that I can’t even figure out how to put it all in this post. So, to save up on time, I’ll just pile them up in a bulleted list:

• Indonesians Rock – apparently, the second most used language in WordPress, after English, is Indonesian. Cool.
• WordPress is so much more - I already knew that, but seeing companies using WordPress for corporate sites is simply amazing. You can’t even tell that some of the websites are made with wordpress. Like this one.
• Tons of SEO plugins - a really hot topic in today’s WordCamp was Search Engine Optimization. Just do a google search on WordPress Plugins for SEO to streamline your blog for search engines.
• WordPress is actually very profitable – a lot of people think that there’s no money in Open Source. I guess this just proves how wrong they are. Just the licensing of Akismet alone is already a lot of money.
• Some folks really take blogging seriously – I wasn’t really familiar with the concept of Pro-Blogging, but it seems, some folks earn decent (or maybe indecent) amounts of money off of their blogs. Wow. I’d be satisfied if I could just earn enough to pay for my webhost and domain.
• Custom Fields for CMS – using WordPress to manage web content becomes really easy by using custom fields in your post. You could attach additional content to a post such as a logo, an audio file, an excerpt to sort of customize the way each post will be presented. This is especially useful if you want to use WordPress to build a website other than a blog.
• A whole lot more - which I’ll just share when I get to apply them.

Photos

Here are some pics from the event:

Matt, Wilson and Me

Matt, Wilson and Me Again

My Sister with Free Chowking Food

Freebies Galore

For absolutely 0 pesos, I got the folloing:

• A cool mug from NuffNang.com
• A small cloth bag with the WordCamp Philippines Logo
• Chowking Lunch
• Two wordpress stickers (round and square) which I now proudly sport on my laptop
• Free blog advertising (care of wilson)

For a little bit more, I got:

• A really really cool shirt which I showed in this post. According to Matt, it’s one of the best designs he has seen so far from any WordCamp.

I can’t wait for the next one!

Woohoo! I’m going to the 1st ever WordCamp in Southeast Asia. WordCamp Philippines 2008.

For those who’ve never heard of WordCamp (like me, just a few minutes ago), it’s the premiere event where people can gather to talk about anything and everything related to WordPress. WordPress is the opensource blogging platform which runs the AFC (this blog). It’s community developed, meaning nobody really owns it. This also means that a lot of the features (and there are a lot) are developed by the community, for the community. This open-ness is the main reason I chose WordPress when I started the AFC.

I actually heard of this from a friend of mine, who interestingly enough, doesn’t even blog. Although, I think he reads more web content (blogs, etc.) than the average person. We both plan on going to the event which will be held on September 6, 2008 at the College of St. Benilde (watch out DLSU chicks! hehehe). As for my friend, he says he’ll start blogging just for the event, something to do with “hamsters” I think.

Reasons to go to WordCamp Philippines 2008:

1. It’s FREE. FREE. FREE. Hmmm… Did I mention, it’s actually free. Thanks to some sponsors, which I have to thank in writing right about now (since they are the main reason it’s FREE).
   • i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
   • Free Online Flash Games
   • Wazzup Manila Philippines
   • Real Estate CRM
   • Real Estate Website Designers
   • Orange County Real Estate
   • Auto Insurance Quotes
   • Lane Systems Inc.
   • RedMedia
   • Orange County Business Lawyer
2. You get to meet a lot of the really influential bloggers out there. I mean, dream as much as I want, I couldn’t really consider this blog as topnotch. It hasn’t even been up for more than 2 months. So, this is a chance to meet and greet the people who are turning the gears of the IntarWebs (at least in the Philippine setting). Maybe get some advice or something.
3. This might be a chance to rekindle the web development fire in me. I’ve recently been interested in PHP and Perl (for reasons not remotely related to blogging), and this might nudge me a bit in the right direction.
4. There’s this really cool T-shirt just for the event (which isn’t free, costs 400Php):

WordCamp T-Shirt (the Pinoy Sun is a great touch)

Very nice. I think the T-shirt alone is enough reason to go. Not to mention the DLSU blogger chicks.

So head on over, and register to WordCamp Philippines 2008, also presented to you by, MindanaoBloggers. See you there!

This event is presented to you by:

CODE IS POETRY