Never in a bazillion year would 2009 Ian have anticipated what 2010 Ian was about to do in 2010.

2010 was all about firsts. It was a year full of new experiences. Of changes. It was a year that I found new friends (yes, not a typo). It was a year that I truly lived. Although 2010 was blissful for my personal life, 2009 Ian would be entirely happy with my career (more on that later).

KPOP

Everyone knows that I’m a big KPOP fan. Last February, I went to the very first Philippine mall tour of the Korean girl group 4MINUTE. That was the first time that I attended a “musical event” in my entire life. That was also the first time that I bought an original album with my very own money.

Although I got raped by raving 15 year old girls, its all worth it because I got my album signed by the entire group. Just reminiscing about it makes me excited! WOW! Seeing these girls in the flesh is just AWESOME. They’re really like life size dolls. And oh, the leader, Ji-hyun, waved at me while I was recording a video of the group! <3 4MINUTE!

Personal Style / Fashion / Hairstyle

My KPOP addiction didn’t stop to just being addicted to music. As they say, music influences fashion. So in 2010, I got all KPOP-ish.

Let’s start with the hair. To get that authentic Korean/Asian hairstyle, I went to the #1 authority in Asian hairstyle: Tony & Jackey – a Korean salon with authentic Korean stylist who can speak just enough English to communicate your desired hairstyle. That was the first time that I went to a Salon! Before, my dad will always take me to these barber shops to get my “2-by-3 barber’s cut”. I hated that school boy cut. Thank you KPOP!

Anyone who’ve got their hair styled from a salon knows that it only looks cool after the stylist styled your hair with wax using their insane ninja waxing skill. So, it was in 2010 when I took my hairstyling really seriously. I’ve experimented with dozens of hair products. I’ve tried different variants of gel, putty, wax, mousse and hairsprays (all firsts). I finally settled on using Gatsby Moving Rubber (Gray for texture, Purple for spikes) but realized that its only available overseas so I bought them online (the first time I shopped online). And I also bought my online hair iron (straightening iron) and hair blower. This year, I had about 4 different hairstyles (with different colors, mind you) and sank about 100 hours researching and learning about hair styling. PS: The 1,500 PHP TIGI Bed Head Hard Head Hairspray is a joke. Don’t buy it.

There was a brief moment in 2010 when I wore really “girly” clothes (words from non-KPOP officemates). I have now a half closet-full of clothes that I might never wear again. But for those brief moments, I felt like a Korean POP star!

Nothing says “I’m a KPOP addict” more than Mix-styles headphones. Well, not before it got JEJEMONIZED by jejemons wearing crappy 150 PHP China-made Mix-style imitations. So, in the summer of 2010, I bought an authentic one online from Yes!Asia. This may just be a 3,500 PHP headphones but buying it gave me more firsts than buying a 10,000 PHP Sennheiser at Megamall. To make that purchase, I opened a new bank account (first) from a bank that supports online transaction. I used Paypal services to pay for the item (first). I bought the item online and got it delivered via courier (first). And got exploited by the tax man (first).

Before I close the chapter on KPOP for 2010 (will never give-up on KPOP, ever. Suck it, btchs), let me just express how thankful I am to KPOP for changing my life in more ways that one. KPOP really made me a better person.

Gimiks / Parties / Vacations

Thanks to her 7,107 islands, the Philippines is gifted with a total of 36,000 KM of shorelines. But that doesn’t mean every Filipino has gone to the beach.

Our company’s trip to Anawangin was my very first beach experience. There are only two things that I remember from that vacation: 1. The Pacific Ocean is really HUGE and really really salty. 2. Jägermeister AKA cough syrup (first!). The cough syrup has been my favorite alcoholic poison since. Since 2010, I can no longer legally claim that I don’t consume alcoholic beverages.

Don’t tell the Geek Association of the Philippines but I’ve been to one of those “cool” bar places in 2010. It’s our little dirty secret. If my fellow geeks were to find out that I partied at Encore (first), they’ll evict me from the geekdom.

Books / Reading

When I borrowed the Mythical Man Month from my very good 40 year old friend Orson, I got really addicted to books. By the way, this book is the very first book that I’ve read from cover-to-cover (I don’t count FHM and UNO as “books”).

If you’re following me on Facebook, you may have noticed a sudden drop on my SELCA postings. Blame my crazy but a profound genius on nutrition and body building (and not to mention the science of PUA) friend, Mike Palad. Instead of taking vanity pictures while being stuck at a bus in EDSA, I used that time to read the books being supplied to me by Palad. Since August of this year, I’ve read about 14 books already and I plan to continue this addiction for years to come. Thanks Palad!

Oh, I can now finish a 400 page book in just 2 weeks; reading for about 2 hours a day! Here’s the short list of books that I’ve read so far: All of Gladwell’s 4 books, Peopleware, The Game, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum and Joel on Software essays.

Physical Fitness

I really took my physical fitness seriously in 2010. I’ve went from bench pressing 10 lbs to 50 lbs. I lost about 30 lbs this year (down from 160 lbs). And its all thanks to my personal trainer, Jon (no, not you Jon Villegas the wrestler).

This year, I took it upon myself to learn basketball. Thanks to the “encouragement” (and by encouragement, I mean encouragement by verbal abuse) of fellow officemates (special mention goes to Mike Saddi and Oliver Fos), I can now shoot a ball from the free-throw line and actually sink it, with correct form. TRUE STORY.  The entire department is now engaged on a weekly basketball session, and my big thanks goes to the pros who never gave up on us geeks (Ash, Ors and Me).

New Found Friends

These guys are the ones I’m blaming for all those unproductive hours at the office. Hahahaha. Thanks to Orson the 40 year-old xxxx bear, Jon the wrestler from UP who eats fishballs for lunch, Saddi the 500 lbs Indian (oops, 450 lbs, sorry dude) and especially Palad, the new-age knowledge guru (fitness, PUA, mind reading, etc). To those I didn’t mention, you know me, I’m lazy so sorry (haha, seriously guys, you know who you are, thanks!)  You guys made my 2010 fun and less productive!

Career

I lied. My career didn’t suck this 2010. Professionally speaking, I’m doing great. Typical folks will be happy at my professional accomplishments this year. But you know what? “Professional success” (promotions, salary increase, bigger responsibilities) is not everything – at least not for me.  For me, a successful career in software development should be measured by the degree on how much you influenced or changed the world through software and innovations. So here’s to 2011, hopefully, the year when my career will enable me to work on projects that will change the world.

PS: This section should be an entirely separate blog post about the condition of the software development industry in the Philippines and what we can do to change it. I promise to be more active next year so hopefully, I’ll get to write that.

PSS: I didn’t proof read. It’s new years eve and I’m here blogging, so give me a break.

PSSS: I’ll leave you with a video of the two recent innovations that I’m particularly interested in: Mobile Development and Augmented Reality. Please please please, let me have a project that involves these technologies.

Having been a newbie software developer (and I’m still fairly “new”), I did not understood why software developers in our company are quitting. Having been a fresh graduate, I was, then, still amazed by the fact that there are people out there in the real world that will pay me real world money just to write code – a hobby that I will do for free. I was puzzled. We are working in an environment that fosters creativity and innovation, a company that strictly subscribes to the “programmers’ bill of rights”, and a company that scores high in the Joel Test (11/12).  Those, plus the fact that we can surf Facebook anytime and drink all the brewed coffee in the pantry, made me believe that this is the best company to work for locally; it made me believe that anyone leaving our company is insane.

Just a few months after starting my job (I had my internship there for 6 months), one of the bestest programmer I know (he’s actually a “software architect”, but hates being called one), my mentor when I was still an intern, filed his letter of resignation. This guy is one of the most passionate programmer I know. He gets it. Paul Graham classifies him as a hacker and he actually worked for Microsoft (in Redmond, not the local whatever-they-are-doing-there branch).

For some, asking people why they quit their job is taboo; I actually enjoy having those type of conversation. Gives me insight. So I asked the fallen hacker, “Why did you quit?”. He pointed to the picture of his new born baby (his desktop wallpaper) and said with an enthusiastic smile “He is my new priority”. He then explained to me, in a fashion that I would understand, why working overseas means “better opportunity” for his family. Being a bit unconvinced with his explanation, I asked him “Is that all? Better opportunity?” and he replied back with a playful smile, “In my new job, I will be able to code again. I will no longer be a ‘Word Programmer’”. He has always joked about being a Word Programmer – programming in Microsoft Word using narrative texts (use cases, scenarios, etc) and UML diagrams; programming by story telling. He was indeed a hacker.

Having spent a year and a half on this job, I can say that I now have a vague idea on why programmers (or I.T people, in general) quit. Even though I’m only a year-and-half year old in corporate servitude, I had been handled by four managers and had been transferred to four teams and that gave me great insights on the crucial dynamics that affects employee turnovers. In my year-and-half stay, I have seen three managers, a project manager, two architects, four senior developers and a handful of intermediate developers go. Just a few months ago, four of my teammates left. The statistics above is a little off; it is more than 20%.

So why do programmers quit?

There are a lot of models that scientifically explains turnover, but most of them does not really cover the programmers psyche because most of them are written three decades ago. These models are not exactly wrong; they just don’t capture how programmers think and react.

So let me present to you my model. Let’s call it the Programmer Turnover Model. There are only two controlling variables on this model: Opportunities and Grievances. When these two factors achieve “equilibrium” (fancy word eh?), the employee will finally pull the trigger and call it quits. Seldom do I see or hear that a programmer quits just by one of these controlling variables; it is usually a combination of both. But it is not unheard of that an employee quits just because of opportunities or grievances: If you’re boss is verbally abusing (Grievances) you everyday, that is enough reason to quit.

Opportunities

Opportunities are the voice inside us that always yells “The grass is greener on the other side”. It is the greedy side of the human emotion. It is the human emotion that seeks larger paychecks and better benefits.

Programmers have all the incentives in the world to quit. In fact, if you want to suddenly increase your salary, all you have to do is quit your job and find another one. A 25% increase in salary between job hops is typical. In fact, most local programmers do it. You don’t even need to be highly competent to do this; you just need to impress the interviewers and pass the interview. In an industry that caters to outsourced work (typically boring business systems) and software maintenance jobs, the bar that is being set is not that high (not “Google high”). Fact of the matter is, most grown-ups (including my mom) advice I.T. workers to just “get a few years of experience and switch jobs”.

Local industry culture believes that the sooner you get overseas, the better it is for you. Those programmers that work or have worked overseas are perceived to be “successful”. And what better way to increase your chance working abroad than to beef-up your resume with “experiences”? Not only that you get larger paychecks and better benefits when hopping jobs, you also get a set of fresh credentials to put into your resume. When you work for a single company, you’re stuck with their technology. And in an industry where your skills are obsolete within five years (max), being stuck in a technology is a really really bad thing for you.

It seems that the game is rigged for the employers. Employers are nearly powerless in stopping the greedy side of human emotion. Aside for paying large sums of cash to these spoiled programmers, they incur the risk of losing expensive human capital. All hope is not lost, the human emotion provides some form of protection against job hoppers. The loving side of the human emotion.

A few moments ago, I made it sound that it is so easy to job hop. Well, it is for soulless programmers (and about half of programmers are). But programmers are human too and they possess some of that soft, caring, vulnerable human emotion. People just don’t quit their job out of greediness. They are attached to their officemates, they been used to the smell of that particular brand of brewed coffee in the morning, they love how their $5 dollar computer chair squeaks when they lean back while waiting for their programs to compile, they love those once-a-month company parties, they know their way into their programs and they’re quite competent in it, they love to see their crush on the opposite cubicle, they are considered the domain expert inside the department. Humans resist change because attachments are hard to break.

It is painful to leave a company and that is what stops most people to quit their job even if they know that there are better opportunities out there.

Grievances

Grievances are the devil’s advocate that whispers “Stop taking this sh*t and quit”. Opportunities provide all the incentives in the world to switch jobs and although the touchy human emotion tells us to stay because it is painful to leave, grievances makes it justifiable and easy to quit.

Grievances builds up over time that’s why it’s hard to avoid it. It stacks up high. Each person have a certain threshold on how high they can keep their grievances stack before it falls down and crumble (translation: Each person can only take so much bullshit).

There are many forms of grievances, but all of them contributes to the metaphorical grievances stack:

• My company is still coding in Cobol when there are better technologies available.
• We don’t have source control.
• My boss is a back-seat driver. His hobbies are micromanagement and micromanagement.
• The elevator takes forever.
• The air conditioner is too cold.
• The code base is so poorly written that it breaks in 27 different places when you add a single line of code. The previous developer maintaining the code base is a literal arts major.
• We are responsible for testing our own code.
• My teammates are bozos.
• I hate my project. It’s not fun and exciting. It’s grunt work.
• I have written just 150 lines of code in the last 2 years.

Grievances have many forms but grievances are simply things that gets listed down in the “I do not want” column of your employees checklist.

The good thing about grievances is that managers and employers can manage and control them. Unlike Opportunities where employers are powerless, Grievances can be managed and controlled. It’s not easy but it’s doable. And the first thing that needs to happen is communication.

If you’re an employer/manager working with programmers, understand that your programmers have all the incentives in the world to leave you for better opportunities. Do not make it easy for them by giving them reasons to quit.

The Price of Turnover in Software Development

In his influential book, “The Mythical Man-Month”, Fred Brooks emphasized the importance of Conceptual Integrity in software design and architecture:

Most European cathedrals show differences in plan or architectural style between parts built in different generations by different builders. The later builders were tempted to “improve” upon the designs of the earlier ones, to reflect both changes in fashion and differences in individual taste. So the peaceful Norman transept abuts and contradicts the soaring Gothic nave, and the result proclaims the pridefulness of the builders as much as the glory of God.

Against these, the architectural unity of Reims stands in glorious contrast. The joy that stirs the beholder comes as much from the integrity of the design as from any particular excellences. As the guidebook tells, this integrity was achieved by the self-abnegation of eight generations of builders, each of whom sacrificed some of his ideas so that the whole might be of pure design. The result proclaims not only the glory of God, but also His power to salvage fallen men from their pride.

Even though they have not taken centuries to build, most programming systems reflect conceptual disunity far worse than that of cathedrals. Usually this arises not from a serial succession of master designers, but from the separation of design into many tasks done by many men.

I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas.

The conceptual integrity of software is a measure of how well software conforms to a single, simple set of design principles. When done properly, it provides the most functionality using the simplest idioms. It makes software easier to use by making it simple to create and learn.

Conceptual integrity is achieved when the software’s design proceeds from a small number of agreeing individuals. For software to maintain conceptual integrity, the design must be controlled by a single, small group.

When turnover is high, the conceptual integrity of your product is being sacrificed. And because conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design, having bad conceptual integrity will make your product hard to use. This in turn will affect your sales and eventually your bottom line.

Not only will the loss of conceptual integrity of your product negatively affects your sale, it will also affect the morale of your best programmers. High turnover rates induces the Software Peter Principle:

The software Peter principle is used in software engineering to describe a dying project which has little by little become too complex to be understood even by its own developers.

It is well known in the industry as a silent killer of projects, and by the time the symptoms arise it is often too late to do anything about it. Good managers can avoid this disaster by establishing clear coding practices where unnecessarily complicated code and design is avoided.

When your project becomes too complex to be understood by your best programmers, they will be naturally be forced to rewrite it. They will go into their manager’s office and ask for a re-write, the manager’s will then disagree because there are no “business reasons” to do so (and maybe they are right because “rewriting is probably the ‘single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make’”), so you’re best programmers go back to their cubicle grumpy and dives into the unmaintainable piece-of-crap that is your codebase. Soon, they quit (because there are better opportunities and you gave them enough reason to leave you).

The managers then instruct their H.R. people to hire a new software developer to maintain the unmaintainable codebase. But since the programmer is new, and inexperienced,  he makes implementation choices that work but have unintended negative consequences. Further degrading the conceptual integrity of your product; making it increasingly difficult to understand. It’s a death spiral.

If there is one thing that the best programmers hate other than maintaining crappy software, it is working with incompetent programmers. And because you have a crappy codebase and you need software “maintainers” to maintain your codebase, you hire cheap, incompetent programmers and that will send you down further in the death spiral. Paul Graham puts it nicely in his essay “What Happened to Yahoo!”:

Microsoft (back in the day), Google, and Facebook have all been obsessed with hiring the best programmers. Yahoo wasn’t. They preferred good programmers to bad ones, but they didn’t have the kind of single-minded, almost obnoxiously elitist focus on hiring the smartest people that the big winners have had.

Why would great programmers want to work for a company that didn’t have a hacker-centric culture, as long as there were others that did? I can imagine two reasons: if they were paid a huge amount, or if the domain was interesting and none of the companies in it were hacker-centric. Otherwise you can’t attract good programmers to work in a suit-centric culture. And without good programmers you won’t get good software, no matter how many people you put on a task, or how many procedures you establish to ensure “quality.”

In technology, once you have bad programmers, you’re doomed. I can’t think of an instance where a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered. Good programmers want to work with other good programmers. So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no recovery.

Turnover reduces the conceptual integrity of your product. When there is no conceptual integrity, your product becomes hard to use and hard to maintain for programmers. The programmers maintaining the products hate the code so much that they quit. You hire new inexperienced programmers that further reduces the conceptual integrity of your product. You enter into a death spiral and you can no longer attract the best programmers because your code stinks. You enter another death spiral from which there is no recovery. That is the price of high turnover in software development: You lose your best talents then you lose your product and eventually your company.

How NOT to Retain your Best Software Developers and Programmers

One of the most popular form of “employee retention” is Training Bonds. Although it is not legally enforceable (or if it is but the company won’t really run after you because it is expensive to sue), most bright programmers will never sign a training bond. For most hackers, a training bond is a sign that a company is being ran by “suits”. Joel Spolsky attributes training bonds to “blind loyalty”:

I think that companies need to keep their employees loyal by treating them well, not by enforcing blind loyalty though a contract. I am not going to make the mistake of signing this clause again. Fortunately, with today’s shortage of qualified programmers, the balance of power today is sharply in your favor when you start a new job, and I think you have a very high chance of getting a job without signing restrictive employment clauses.

Another popular form of employee retention mechanism is counter-offer. Counter-offer is when your current employer gives you an offer (counter-offer) that is larger than the offer you received from the company you intend to jump to. Counter-offer is a big no-no because it sends the following message to your employee:

We have not really paid you the amount you deserve. But since we really need you to stay, we are willing to pay you more. We don’t think that you deserve this, but our hands are tied.

It is much worse when the news of a counter-offer leaks to your other employees. They will also feel that they are not being paid the amount they deserve, they will feel cheated and eventually quit. More turnovers, yay! Always remember the bribery never promotes loyalty.

If you think bribing your programmers when they accomplish something extraordinary will increase their loyalty: you are wrong. A lot of books have been written on the subject of incentive pay and why it is considered harmful:

… “incentives (or bribes) simply can’t work in the workplace”. DeMarco and Lister go further, stating unequivocally that any kind of workplace competition, any scheme of rewards and punishments, and even the old fashion trick of “catching people doing something right and rewarding them,” all do more harm than good. Giving somebody positive reinforcement (such as stupid company ceremonies where people get plaques) implies that they only did it for the lucite plaque; it implies that they are not independent enough to work unless they are going to get a cookie; and it’s insulting and demeaning.

I know that the title says “How to Retain your Best Software Developers and Programmers”, but I was only able to give the “How NOT to do it” guide. It took me a year-and-a-half to understand what motivates programmers to quit their job. It may take me another year-and-a-half to understand how to motivate them to NOT quit their jobs. You may wait for it, or you can just read Spolsky’s blog for a complete guide on how to manage and retain the best programmers that you will ever find.

Just a few words before I start: I am not here to offer you insurances, investment “opportunities” or some form of “networking” – No, I am not an evil sales agent and I don’t have much time on my hands to play around with “networking”.  I am also no financial expert (so take all the information here with a grain of salt). I almost flunked my high school Accounting course and I still don’t have an idea how to make a Balance Sheet that will be deemed acceptable by any sane CPA.

Caution aside, I am here to share with you some basic financial concepts that I have recently learned. It is also my goal to make you realize that your personal finance is YOUR OWN BUSINESS. As much as we hate to accept it, we must acknowledge that we are slaves of the global financial system. In this capitalistic world, your very survival on this money-driven economy may lie in your understanding of this few, basic financial concepts.

It all started with saving…

I can’t say that I’m an avid “saver”. Most people say that I’m stingy; I disagree. It’s just that there’s so much “pre-shopping tasks” involved before I pull the “trigger”. Being a geek, I refuse to accept the idea that one can just walk around the mall, decide right there and then what items they think they need and buy it without prior knowledge of the product and the company that made that product. So you might wonder what these “pre-shopping tasks” are… So, for your amusement, I present my “pre-shopping tasks”:

1. Convincing Phase – I first need to convince myself that I really need to buy that item or to procure that service. (Output: “I need a moisturizer”)
2. Scientific Inquiry Phase – Once I’m convinced that I need the item, I need to really understand how this item will benefit me. I mean really UNDERSTAND. (Output: “I need a moisturizer that is not oil-based because water-based moisturizers get absorbed better by the skin”)
3. Research Phase – When I’m convinced that I really need a certain item (or a service), I will scour the internet to research about the “product” (product reviews, customer testimonials) and compare all my choices. (Output: “I need a Dove moisturizer”)
4. Financial Scheduling – But before I buy, I need to “schedule” when to actually deposit the money into my account.

I’m not stingy and I am most definitely not cheap. When I realize I need something, I will happily spend the required amount to get it (My haircut always cost me no less than 3,000 PHP). I’m not stingy and I’m not cheap, I am just lazy. So I always defaulted to saving my money because it doesn’t need me to do anything.

Having saved a substantial amount, I was made aware (after a quick visit to a bank) that the banks only insure a certain amount per depositor. My mom also reminded me to not put all my savings in a single account/bank because that’s like putting all your eggs in a single basket. For a brief moment, I thought about spending the “spill-over” on something but laziness struck me again So I just opted to open a new savings account under a different bank.

During this point, my actions were only limited to: 1.) Saving and 2.) Spending. “If you have money, you either spend it or save it”, right?

Apparently, there is a third option…

Growing up, I have always heard my aunts and cousins give this advice to each other during family reunions and events: “Invest”.  Being Chinese, I guess that the only things to talk about during gatherings are money and how to make more of it. But somehow, back then, I did not manage to care enough to focus on the part of the conversation where they discuss the how of investing (when that Sweet & Sour Pork is in front of you, you just have to drop everything you’re doing and eat).

Thanks to the “old” people at the office in whom financial wisdom have been bestowed by experience, I was inspired to research more about the different kinds of investment opportunities. Having talked with said people, they shared with me their experiences with mutual funds, bonds, time deposits and the stock market. I was surprised to discover that the first three are passive investments – you don’t actually need to do anything substantial to earn. The latter is an active investment wherein you need to actively “manage” your investment like a business.

Not so long ago, I associated the word “invest” to “business”. I thought that for one to invest, one needs to start his/her own business. For people who have jobs, starting and managing a business is most often not a viable choice. Lucky for us, there are passive investment opportunities.

But even having heard of these investment opportunities, I wasn’t “inspired” enough to actually “care” about investing. I didn’t want to decide on how much risk I am willing to take. I didn’t also understand why I should invest… My money is safe in the bank and I thought that it’s greedy of me to “risk” my money for a “little” more in return. Besides, my mom is skeptical about these investments which for her sounded like a scam. So I said to myself “someday I’m gonna try these investment opportunities” and left it at that.

That someday came sooner than expected.

The invisible hand of a thief…

“Aside from the fact that I still can’t fathom that there are people out there who are willing to pay programmers to do stuff that they will otherwise do for free, I also find it astonishing that companies are mandated by the government to increase the salary of their employees every year.” – Me, just a year ago.

During my trainee days, I found it fun to “cubicle crash” certain people just to chat about anything related to their job. One of the people that I frequented was our software architect (and my mentor back then). We were talking about the retention problems of local I.T. companies (plus the fact that some of our colleagues are going abroad to work) and the reason why it is happening. I mentioned to him that I don’t understand why people are leaving despite above-average salaries here and he said to me: “Inflation pa lang, lugi ka na. Yung yearly increase mo, kulang pa para matalo ang inflation”. I never really understood then what he meant by “inflation”. That software architect is now in Singapore.

What is inflation and what role does it play in our lives?

To put it simply, inflation is the rate in which you get poorer. If you had 10 pesos in the year 2000, that 10 pesos will only be worth 5 pesos today (calculated at 7% average inflation rate). You won’t see deductions from your savings account. Inflation rate negatively affects the “purchasing power” of your money (which, in effect, makes you poorer). Depending on the economic performance of our country, the “purchasing power” of your money will either increase or decrease. According to the data available here, the average inflation rate in the Philippines from 2000 to 2010 is 7%. I hate to be repetitive but I just need you to understand the point: YOU ARE GETTING POORER BY 7% EVERY YEAR. If you have 100,000 pesos today, that exact 100,000 pesos will only be worth 93,000 pesos next year. 7,000 pesos gone without you spending it.

Inflation rate is being computed using Consumer Price Index. Using a market basket (which you can think of as a real basket  that you use for grocery shopping), economist will take the prices of basic commodities (think of the basic stuff you buy from the grocery store) every month. The rate of change in the price of these commodities is the “inflation rate”.

To deal with the inflation rate, the government mandates local companies to increase the salary of their employees across the board.

Here’s the sad thing about the inflation rate. Say you got a salary increase of 15% because of your stellar performance, taking into account our high inflation rate, your actual increase is only 8%. If you receive an annual salary increase of less than 7%; your salary is, in effect, lower than the previous year. Isn’t it ironic that they call it a salary increase?

If that wasn’t bad enough, here’s another sad reality that we have to face. When you put your money into a savings account, it accumulates interest (yes, you get richer without doing anything). The rate depends on the bank but locally, it’s between 0.5% to 2.0% annually (According to a friend, there is a small bank that offers 16% annual interest, but I don’t recommend it). Taking into account the average inflation rate (7%), via simple arithmetic, your actual annual interest is –5%. (You are getting poorer by 5% every year!)

Inflation rate is the invisible hand that steals from us; slowly making us poorer. Here’s the good news, we can fight it! In the real world, we fit our houses with electric fences to guard against thieves. In the financial world, investment is the electric fence that guard against the negative effects of inflation.

In my next blog post, I will discuss the different investment opportunities that is available locally. I will also discuss the different risks involved in these investments. As always, I will try to make it as simple as possible. Please stay tuned!

I am very disappointed with myself for not being able to register as a voter for the upcoming 2010 Philippine National Election. I am disappointed not because I will not be able to fulfill my duty as a citizen of this country. This feeling of disappointment comes from the knowledge that I missed out on what would probably be the most important election in Philippines’ modern history. So for those of you who are registered: Don’t be lazy, wake-up early and be part of this momentous event.

This post will contain my thoughts with regards to the Philippine election… Specifically my thoughts on “Voting as a right and how it affects the current political climate of the Philippines”, “the importance of the automated election and what it signifies” and “what will Gibo’s or Gordon’s victory signify”. Before you start reading, let me remind you that I am in no-way an expert on the topics and legalities of the Philippine election. These are just my idle thoughts; thoughts that were mostly conceived while I’m taking a dump or while stuck at a bus in EDSA.

Voting as a right and how it affects the current political climate of the Philippines

It has been said that the most important right acquired by a citizen of a democratic country is the right to vote. As written in Article V Section 1 of the Philippine constitution of 1987 (Present Constitution):

Suffrage may be exercised by all citizens of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law, who are at least eighteen years of age, and who shall have resided in the Philippines for at least one year, and in the place wherein they propose to vote, for at least six months immediately preceding the election. No literacy, property, or other substantive requirement shall be imposed on the exercise of suffrage.

So is voting a right? By definition, not exactly. If voting is a ‘right’, especially if you call it a ‘civil right’ then by definition it can not be taken away. Rights can not be lost, for then they would not be ‘rights’. Also, ‘rights’ belong to everyone equally, so if you have any rules about voting, it can not be a ‘right’. Many countries, including the Philippines, have a minimum voting age. Not only that, there are also clause that prohibits one from voting if one has not resided in the Philippines for at least a year.

If voting is not a right, is voting a privilege? By definition, yes. We have in our constitution a well-defined set of rules on how one can earn or lose this “privilege” to vote. However, literacy nor social status (being rich or poor) is not part of those rules.

One would then argue, why not make literacy part of the rules to earn or lose the right to vote? If voting is the most important right in a democratic country and if the future of a nation relies heavily on the appointed leaders, why leave it at the hands of people who are not “educated enough” to make an informed choice?

In the late 19th century, the government of the United States of America enforced a Poll Tax (a discriminatory tax that is a pre-condition of the exercise of the ability to vote) to disfranchise the African-American and Native American voters  as well as poor whites who immigrated after the year specified.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not proposing that we don’t let the poor people vote. I am merely proposing a system wherein votes from people who are “literate” enough to make money to pay their taxes will “weigh” more than the votes of the people who are not able to get a job to pay their taxes. I understand that this is a flawed system, in such a way that “money” doesn’t truly represent one’s ability to make an “informed” decision with regards to choosing the next leaders of this country, but this is an “easy” and straight-forward rule to implement. We can’t let people take an I.Q. test before they are allowed to vote, right? Even then, one could argue that an I.Q. test is not a true measurement of one’s ability to make an informed decision. How about a pop quiz about the candidates then?

The problem with defining rules on how one can earn or lose the “privilege” to vote is that it will always be flawed but we should at least implement a system wherein the votes from certain “classes” of people in the society that is perceived to have the ability to make good informed decisions will weigh more than the votes from certain “classes” of people in the society that is perceived to vote by “preference” (popularity, religious affiliation, race, etc).

Yes, I know it’s complicated. I also understand that we can’t really quantify the ability of a person or group of persons to make an “informed decision”. We even haven’t started to define what entails an “informed decision”. Personally, I don’t even consider myself qualified to make an “informed decision” on who to vote as the next president. Maybe we should just follow other countries and leave the voting to “solons”?

The reason why I brought this up is because our current constitution allows for the likes of Eddy Gil (and some of the current presidential bets) to run for president (Under Article 7, Section 2 of the Philippine Constitution, in order to serve as President, one must be at least 40 years of age, a registered voter, able to read and write, a Filipino citizen by birth, and a resident of the Philippines for at least 10 years immediately preceding election.). Our constitution failed to give a more thorough “selection process” on who to allow to run for president. Yes, the COMELEC do label some of them as nuisance candidates but the criteria is very vague.

All I’m saying is, if the constitution allows unqualified people to run for office, how can we even expect people to take voting seriously? How can we expect them to make an “informed decision”? The combination of allowing unqualified yet popular people to run for office and allowing uneducated voters who votes by popularity will always result to a sad failure. The situation is worsened by the fact that 90% of the Filipino people belongs to the Class C and D income specification (the MASA). The MASA is known to vote by popularity and not by capability. Even if the remaining 10% will vote wisely, it will never ever win against the 90%. However, if we create a system wherein only “qualified” men and women will be allowed to run for office, the 90%-10% divide would no longer matter because whoever wins will be qualified for the job.

The way I see it, there are two ways to solve this problem:

1. Create a system wherein votes coming from people who are known to make “informed decision” to weigh more than the votes of people who are known to only vote by “preference”.
2. Create a more thorough “selection process” so that only qualified men and women will be allowed to run for office.

The importance of the automated election

Let me begin by quoting Chairman Jose Melo of the COMELEC:

We are finally moving away from the known flaws and weaknesses of the old ways of doing things and toward an automated election system that promises a speedy and accurate count, a highly efficient reporting mechanism that democratizes the count and canvass of election results, and most importantly, the extinction of dagdag-bawas (vote padding and vote shaving)

Automation is a good thing. It represents progress. It represents change. Did you know that in the entire South-east Asian region, the Philippines would be the first to implement a fully legally binding electronic voting using voting machines? This map from Competence Center for Electronic Voting and Participation shows the global proliferation and use of electronic voting machines:

Note that the white part are the countries that have not yet implemented E-voting (this was published last Feb. 2010 so the Philippines was not included), the yellow part are the countries currently testing or considering E-voting and the green part are the countries that have successfully conducted a legally binding electronic voting with voting machines.

So according to the map, China have not yet even considered E-voting, while South Korea is still considering E-Voting and Japan have successfully conducted E-Voting. If the automated election tomorrow will be a success, Philippines will join the ranks of 1st world countries such as USA, Japan and Australia. The eyes of our fellow Asian neighbors will be on us tomorrow as we set the stage for proving that E-Voting in a large scale and a small budget could be possible.

The success of the automated election is very important because it will signify the re-entry of the Philippines, and of the Filipino People, to the global race for modernization.

Let me tell you, there are a lot of unqualified, laypeople who don’t really understand the science of Computer Security and encryption that discredits the automated election. I have spent the last couple of days reading news and laughing at laypeople while they make shame of themselves by talking about something that they don’t really understand.

However, I’ll be honest and admit that I have not conducted proper research about the PCOS machine and its technical details. I have searched online for the technical details of said PCOS machine but I haven’t found anything but let me tell you this: I have more confidence in a counting system being performed by machines and that was reviewed by *real* international experts that will have nothing to gain in making false claims, than in a counting system being performed by humans that are prone in making mistakes because they are hungry, irritated, tired, and just-want-to-get-home, plus the fact that they can have biases, lapse in judgment and be bought by dirty politicians.

I am not arguing that there is no possibility of cheating or “errors” in an automated system. I am just merely arguing that the probability of having such unwanted behaviors is way higher in a manual system than in an automated system. As an added bonus, the automated election will be faster too!

The success of the automated election will represent a collective change in the way of thinking of the Filipino people and of the Philippines as a nation. Moving away from flawed traditional ways to a more efficient, effective and modern ways.

My presidential candidate

Before I begin, let me quote my schoolmate who’s a genius at making offensive comments:

There are only three types of people in the Philippines:

1. Gordon Supporters
2. Gibo Supporters
3. Jejemons

Sometimes, I can’t help but think that people voting for the other presidential candidates are morons being misled. Having said that, let me just say that I respect your opinion.

If you haven’t noticed yet, you’re either living under a rock or living in a remote province that is out of reach of local media. In one hand, we have the other leading presidential candidates (Yellow and Orange) battling it out on TV land to have the most number of political ads shown. On the other, we seldom see Gibo or Gordon political ads in T.V. Why is that? Because Gibo and Gordon are like Apple. They don’t really rely on traditional “marketing”. They have their legion of crazy fanboys and fangirls who battle it out on social media land. Their supporters write blogs to promote their candidate, using reason and logic to convince people, not addictive jingles and feel-good messages (another reason why they don’t do 30-second ads, its just not enough time to deliver a coherent and convincing argument). That is one of the reasons why I believe that the supporters of these candidates are more “intellectually” inclined than the others.

Also, if you will profile their supporters, most of them are either students or part of the white-collar “working class”. Both Gibo and Gordon have a weaker influence on the other 90% of the Filipino population, the MASA. Which is understandable because the “MASA” will not care if you’re a Harvard graduate or a proven leader with a good track record. They just don’t care. The MASA votes in terms of “familiarity”: Were you poor before? Are you a strong believer of Filipino values? Are you a catholic? Are you popular? The answer to those questions by both candidates will disappoint the masses: Both were born in a well-to-do family. Both have “Americanized” values. Both have not relied on their religious affiliation for popularity and both are not as popular as local celebrities.

A few weeks ago, my company performed a “mock” election for both the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. I was surprised to learn that the Yellow Team won by a really close margin (2-5 votes difference) over the Transformers (Gordon/Bayani). Why would my intelligent colleagues vote for a less capable candidate? I pondered. After reflecting on this, I realized that some people chose the Yellow Team because it makes them feel good about themselves. They “think” that it is the right thing to do. And you really can’t blame them for it. Some people are optimists, they just want a leader with “perceived” trustworthiness; a leader that will boost the moral, albeit temporarily, of the millions of Filipinos who have lost the will to fight. Yes, its a noble cause and that’s why they feel good about it (in the same sense that you feel good about yourself after giving 5 pesos to a beggar).

I, on the other hand, am a pessimist. I don’t believe a single person will have the ability to influence the thousands of corrupt government officials to stop their evil ways. Let’s say Noynoy wins, people will be crying, they will feel good, somehow they see Noynoy as the “second Ninoy”, the “second savior”, it will boost their moral, people will be hugging each other on the streets. It will be like Feb. 25 again. What happens next? Not much. After 100 days, people will be questioning Noynoy. Because of the high expectations placed upon him, people will be deeply disappointed if he didn’t magically eliminate corruption and poverty. Moral goes down again. People will be mad. People will be doubtful. Allegations of corruption and bad governance will crop up. It’s the same sh*t all over again.

If Noynoy wins, it will indicate that the Filipino People do not yet understand what real change means. It will simply illustrate that majority of the population still think using the faulty, traditional way of thinking. Being tricked by the same set of old tricks.

So let me introduce you to my presidential candidate: The “Dick” Gordon. So what’s so great about this guy, you ask? Aside from his proven track record and credentials, this guy is the embodiment of change. This 9 minute video convinced me that he is exactly what the Philippines need:

Watch it. No, finish it! I’ll wait. Done? Okay. Good!

In just 9 minutes, Gordon was able to say the following offensive things:

1. Kapag naniniwala ka sa survey, tanga ka (SIC)!
2. He dissed Noynoy for being a Mama’s boy
3. He made a “negative” comment about Jesus Christ! (JC not being able to end poverty)
4. He dissed the entire AQUINO family for not being able to stop corruption
5. He praised strongman Marcos for something good that he had said
6. Colonial Hangover. Inferiority Complex.
7. “Shame on us”

How are these “offensive” sentences an indication of “change”? of something new? Because it represent “something” that we never had on a politician (more so on a president):

1. Principle: He stands firmly on what he believes in. He believes that surveys are a big scam and people blindly believing in survey are idiots. He is not afraid to lose votes or make enemies for saying something that he believes in.
2. He is not afraid to challenge dogma. He is ready and willing to challenge the traditional and backwards way of thinking.
3. He is not afraid of the Catholic church. Separation of church and state? I believe he is the only one we can fully enforce that. For once, let us have a leader who is not being manipulated by men in white robes.
4. He is not afraid nor easily influenced by traditional political dynasties. He is not a “tuta” of anyone.
5. He is not afraid of public reprisal (and again, challenging social dogma). Aside from the Marcos family, he is the only politician (that is running) that I know of that have publicly acknowledged the late dictator for something good that he have done. In a society that demonized the late president, it takes a lot of courage and conviction to publicly praise Marcos.
6. He understands the root of all current cultural and social problems of our nation: Colonial Hangover and Inferiority complex. Before other people can respect us, we should respect ourselves first.
7. He honestly and bravely acknowledges the current ills of our society (not sugarcoat it. LOL @ Overpopulation being a “good thing”)

Just like in the success of the automated election, if either Gordon or Gibo wins, it will represent a collective change in the way of thinking of the Filipino people and of the Philippines as a nation. Moving away from the flawed, emotion-driven, dogma-ridden, and traditional way of thinking.

First things first, let me assure you that this is not me and my typical Microsoft fanboy-ism speaking. Secondly, let me tell you that this post is not a credible source for the “best offline editor for Wordpress”; I have only tried Windows Live Writer, there are hundreds of offline blog editors out there.

Even during the first months of this blog, I was already made aware of the shortcomings of the Wordpress’ default online editor. One of the said shortcomings is that you need to manually “hack” TinyMCE’s settings to achieve the perfect WYSIWYG effect that matches your blog’s font setting. Another shortcoming is that it doesn’t have a default spell check engine that helps grammar offenders like me (although you can download a spell check plug-in from Wordpress but it doesn’t work as nice as Microsoft Word’s spell checker). So I ended up composing my posts in Microsoft Word and painstakingly copy/pasting them to my site; and let me tell you know, it is not a pretty sight (and Wordpress does not recommend it). What kept me from abandoning Word is the ability to have an “offline” backup of my blog posts and that just about it.

When I learned of offline editors for blogs, I quickly downloaded the (then) latest copy of Live Writer and I was disappointed! There were a lot of XML RPC errors and Live Writer did not automatically match my blog’s font to the editor’s font and worst of all, you have to jump a lot of hoops to change the editor’s font especially if it’s a non-standard Microsoft font! So I ditched the idea and went back to Microsoft Word.

Not so long ago, I got tired of composing my posts in Word and manually copy/pasting them to my blog so I contented myself to just use the online Wordpress editor (since I was able to fix TinyMCE’s setting) and just perform manual backups of the database from time to time. It was okay for quite some time until I got a bad RAM stick and have my Firefox randomly crash while composing a blog post which eventually resulted in me trying to remember what I typed in the post for the third time in the last five hours. It was a sobering sight – a programmer without mastery of his own tools and a crappy memory stick.

In the spirit of optimism and embracing change, I gave Windows Live Writer another try and I was surprised that most of the frustrations I experienced months ago are now fixed in the latest version of Live Writer!

Live Writer will now “automatically” detect your blog settings and make the appropriate change for you! It’s the perfect WYSIWYG experience. It’s like using Microsoft Word – the familiar feel of "Word” is everywhere. I will go out on a limb here and say that it’s like Microsoft Word for blogging.

The software is so great that I can even do inline images now (like so! Look Ma, no hands!) As a bonus to developers, Live Writer is extensible which mean that you can write your own extensions for it! But before you do, check the online gallery first because someone might have already written it. I’ve already downloaded the Polaroid Picture plug-in which is responsible for the nice Polaroid picture effect on the image above and the Insert Videos plug-in which allows me to embed Youtube Videos quickly!

Never mind the awesome plug-ins ecosystem for Live Writer, the WYSIWYG perfection should be enough to make you jump ship! Allow me to demonstrate (and test this baby for the first time):

Text effects: Bold, Italic, Underlined, Strikethrough

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

• This
• is
• a
• bulleted
• item
• list

1. One
2. Two
3. Three

This is a quote!

This is a hyperlink.

PS: Me trying out to edit an existing blog post via Live Writer.

And all this without typing a single HTML code. Here’s the screenshot of the editor (compare it with the actual post and you will be amazed!):

However, its not always rainbows and roses. Live Writer have some downsides, too. And if we’re talking about downsides, we can never exclude the dreaded XMLRPC problems. Personally, I have resolved most of my XMLRPC problems but I can’t seem to fix a particular XMLRPC problem related to retrieving my previous blog posts (useful for referencing your old posts). Good thing that there’s a manual workaround; but if you’re patient, you can try to fix the problem by editing some PHP scripts and disabling a handful of Wordpress plug-ins.

Another downside is that Live Writer doesn’t support the "All-in-One SEO Pack” Wordpress plug-in by default, so you have to download a “bridge” before you can add the SEO details using Live Writer. For the lazy and untrusting ones, there’s a manual workaround. Publish your post as draft and add the SEO details via the Wordpress dashboard. That way, you’ll be sure that the SEO will really work.

Just like most Microsoft products, installing Live Writer will also install unwanted software so be sure to uncheck them during installation.

Live Writer is an awesome offline editor for Wordpress on its own merits. If you don’t believe me, try it out for a spin! It’s free!

Recently, there have been a lot of hate towards the KPOP fandom in the Philippines and KPOP itself. There are a couple of Facebook fan pages that are dedicated solely in hating KPOP. While searching for the term “KPOP Jologs” on Google, I found out that there’s a discussion thread in MYX’s Facebook fan page entitled “KPOP IS JUST FOR JOLOGS JOLOGS!!!!” (Ironically, the group was created by Westlife fans ) Honestly, I wasn’t THAT surprised by this turn of events… I have somehow anticipated that this would happen sooner or later given the raging popularity of KPOP in the Philippines. Just last year, I posted an article expressing my disagreement to the soon-to-be KPOP craze with the anticipation that KPOP will soon be “jologs”. Nonetheless, I do feel the need to defend the Fandom by debunking the common attacks against KPOP and its fans.

Why the hate?

I felt the need to post this blog because “arguing” on the MYX discussion board is pointless. The entire discussion is a huge flamebait wherein each reply contain at least 1 Ad Hominem and 2 curses. I have posted a very long, three-paragraph rational argument and my reply was followed with a post that reads “Putangina mo”. So yeah, I wish your eyes good luck if you wish to read that discussion board.

So okay, let’s start discussing the most common “attacks” to the KPOP fandom and KPOP. I will continually update this post when “new” attacks surface. 

1. KPOP is JOLOGS

Before we can sanely argue if “something” is “jologs”, we must first define what jologs is. In my previous post wherein I discussed SNSD’s popularity, I defined jologs as:

I don’t really know how to define Jologs but I will try to give an example on how something can achieve the Jologs status. Just as a certain footwear became the “in” thing in the Philippines. This particular footwear is really expensive considering its just a pair of rubber stuff worn on one of the smelliest parts of the human body. But since the Philippines has that penchant for creativity, anything is plagiarized just as fast as the speed of light, the said footwear now cost only 50 pesos and is readily available at your local tiangge. Now everyone from your driver, to your labandera’s son owns the skillfully crafted identical footwear you are wearing. The footwear is now “mainstream” in the sense that the “representative population” of the Philippines (AKA “the masses”) can now own and wear the footwear. Congratulations, your footwear is now jologs.

In summary, something is jologs when the “representative population” of the Philippines (AKA “the masses”) have direct access to it. In terms of music (or entertainment), a certain music genre is jologs when “the masses” have direct access to it by means of local radio and TV. The jologs factor of the music is being amplified when said music is being played in places where “the masses” thrive like the “Divisoria” or some low-end malls. In one word, a music genre (or anything for that matter) is jologs when it is already “mainstream”.

Given the criteria above, I must sadly acknowledge that KPOP is now jologs. Here are the telltale signs:

• Remember Wondergirls’ Nobody? Even Jollibee and KFC’s Chucky wasn’t immune to it.
• SHINee’s visit for the Korea-Philippines Friendship day
• 4Minute’s guess appearance at Wowowee (I love Hyuna!)
• F.T Island’s concert at PICC
• 2PM’s Nichkhun Danbi shoot at Payatas (Ala Manny Villar)
• UKISS’ guess appearance at Party Pilipinas
• Upcoming Super Junior concert at Araneta

If that wasn’t enough, local KPOP-wannabee groups such as POP GIRLS and XLR8 are polluting the local KPOP scene. (Side comment: I think XLR8 is a huge improvement from POP GIRLS. The entire act is so KPOP-ish. They even release 30 second trailers on Youtube lol. )

Here’s the take-away: Most western groups are jologs (yes, that includes Westlife). Both (them and KPOP) have already achieved critical mass to be considered jologs. However, the “English” group’s  material is much more accessible to the pinoy “masses”, thus achieving more jologs points. Case in point, I say that there is a certain level of sophistication that is required to be a TRUE KPOP fan… the barrier-to-entry to KPOP fandom is way higher compared to western music. Remember that our country is more “western” (in terms of music) than Asian and most Filipinos can easily understand English by default… so there is a tendency for them (the masses) to listen to “English” songs more than KPOP. So the question is, why the sudden influx of KPOP fandom “membership”? I say it’s just a trend. Like the Macarena trend, we true KPOP fans hope that it will soon fade out of the limelight.

As a side note, please do not confuse the poser KPOP fan — one who merely follow the trend, with the true KPOP fans. They are not of the same caliber.

2. KPOP Fans do not understand the lyrics

This has to be the most pathetic assault on KPOP. For the sake of argument, I must say that I can’t really follow the English lyrics of Paramore (Or songs with growling in it). Now, people might say “Well, you just suck at understanding English lyrics”… Those people are usually the ones who do a mockery of the song by singing it with a different lyric with the defense of mishearing the song. (Side comment: I have a colleague who went to the Paramore concert and was singing “That’s what you get” and I had to correct his lyrics). Although this argument does not justify the inability of Filipinos to understand Korean, it illustrates that people can enjoy music without really understanding the lyrics.

Setting that point aside, let me just say that we “true” KPOP fans are willing to go the extra mile to understand the idols (Note: Idol is another word for boy band or girl group). Each popular KPOP group has their own international fan cafe (read: Fansite) where fans can download “subbed” (with subtitles) music videos (MV). To have a more deeper understanding (or connection, if you will) of the group, fans would usually download variety shows, commercials, BTS (behind-the-scene) clips, award show clips, documentaries and news clips where their idols are in. Not only that, true fans will usually take the effort to learn the basics of the Korean culture because it is impossible to fully grasp the context of the songs without such understanding of the Korean society (Like what does “Oppa” mean? Why is there a need to suffix names with “Ssi”, etc). Also, most true fans that I know can read Hangul (I said read, not understand. )… If you really put an effort into learning it, you can read any KPOP lyrics in just 6 hours! (Watch this series of tutorials to learn Hangul now!)

Remember what I was saying about KPOP having a high “barrier-to-entry”, well this is it. For us, this is what makes the fandom more meaningful. Having a deep understanding of a foreign culture that we admire and at the same time, having a deeper connection with our favorite groups. Since the Philippines is intrinsically western (we are more American than Asian), I doubt that there’s a need to “go the extra mile” to understand the English bands and their culture.

3. Korean group members are not talented

This really really makes me mad. I have a colleague (yep, you guessed it right, she’s a she) who will always insists that Girl’s Generation (SNSD) is not talented in terms of singing and dancing. I mean., W.T.F., she even compared SNSD to Sexbomb! Blasphemy!!! Okay okay, enough of the obsessive fan boy act.

According to her, SNSD members are not talented singers because they are producing “synthesized” music (or music that is heavy on the usage of Synthesizers). Okay, she might have forgotten that SNSD is a POP GROUP performing a Bubblegum pop song; I may not be an expert on music but Bubblegum pop rely heavily on Synthesizers. I mean, I don’t even understand how the use of synthesizers undermines the singer’s vocal capabilities. Another issue that she pointed out is that SNSD is always lip syncing during performances… My response to that is that – SNSD performances are not concentrated on just “singing”, they also do a lot of powerful dances with cute poses together with the performance. Singing is just a part of the performance. If the performance is just singing, then they will always sing live. Local artists are more pathetic, the number are just singing and yet they are lip syncing.

Another colleague of mine has a girlfriend with innate hate towards SNSD. She criticizes SNSD’s dance routine; according to her, the dance moves are just cutesy and not even hard (she even showed us how “easy” it is for her to dance Gee; I will just leave the imagination to you on how it turned out). Adding insult to injury, she said that the “Pussycat Dolls” is a lot better than SNSD when it comes to dancing just because their dance routine involves breaking your bones in 17 different places (Italicize text is mine).

This is what I want these people to understand. SNSD (and other KPOP idol groups for that matter) is a POP GROUP. Their total entertainment value does not rely solely on just dancing or singing; it’s an entire package. They are, what I call, entertainers. Allow me to explain.

In Korea, there are big entertainment companies (like conglomerates) that control the Korean media. These entertainment companies hold “audition” all over the country to recruit (more like hoard) really young talents (like 9 years old). After they recruit talents, they will put them on a crazy “Training Academy” in where they will be trained in areas of singing, dancing, modeling, acting, rapping, foreign languages, asian poses, looking at the camera (projection), fashion, etc (all of the needed skills to be successful in the entertainment industry). The average training period is 6 years… during this time, they do not have any exposure to the public (If you’ve watched Batang-X, it is somewhat like this ). Now, when the company decides “Okay, we need a new group”, they will select from this pool of well-trained entertainers to create the group and they will let them sign unfair contracts that span 10 years (and then perform plastic surgery! Kidding! ).

My point is, how dare you compare these well-trained entertainers to a group of On-the-Job trainee entertainers. No, sorry, that’s not my point. My point is, these people are “commercially” created in “talent factories” to entertain. They are performers that are “created” to suit the public taste. They do not write their own song, they don’t even choreograph their own dance. The company will decide on what “concept” (song, dance, fashion, etc) suits the current entertainment climate and they will hire armies of stylists, composers, choreographers to “train” the group. But that doesn’t mean they are not talented. Even before they “start” training, they are already talented. Remember the gruesome audition process? They are being picked against thousands of candidates. And right after that, they are even trained in all aspects of the entertainment business. How can you say they are not talented?

One argument that I always receive is this: “Local artists don’t even need years of training and yet they are performing okay”. Seriously? I was a genius at birth but I still had to attend school and college to get a job. So don’t throw me that argument, it’s just stupid. And as a side effect of this “untrained” entertainers, just look at their performance on noon-time shows… its mediocrity at its best. They don’t know where the camera is, they don’t have any “emotions”, and they have that smile on their face that says “I don’t know what I’m doing but since I look good, I’ll just copy the backup dancers”. Your entertainers are not just “untalented” (incapable), they are also unskilled. Maybe it is best to put them in some “training academy”.

4. KPOP fans are not nationalistic

Growing up, I was not really fond of music. Okay, I take that back, let me rephrase. Growing up, I was not really fond of contemporary music. I grew up listening to my Dad’s antique song collection that includes John Denver, Matt Monro and Frank Sinatra. For me, contemporary music (both foreign and local) is just too “noisy”. Somehow, I felt that the “perfection” found on my Dad’s antique song collection is not found on said contemporary music. That all changed when I first heard the local band called Eraserheads from our neighbor’s loud boom box. The music of Eraserheads is what we call OPM (or Original Pilipino Music) and up to this day, their albums are still on my MP3 player (together with Rivermaya’s and Parokya ni Edgar’s albums). Sadly, as one of my dear readers have pointed out, the “O” in “OPM” is now long gone; It’s no longer “original”. It’s the same crappy, mediocre, cheap rip-off of whatever music is perceived “cool” by the masses (usually foreign songs).

My point? We, KPOP fans, will not “support” the local music industry just because “we need to support our own”. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. I would gladly buy a repackaged E-heads album but I will NEVER EVER EVERY buy POP GIRLS’ album or Sexbomb’s album or Sarah Geronimo’s album (Sorry SG fans, you don’t have the right to label “Right Here Waiting” as OPM). If local artists wants our support, they should first rid themselves with the mediocrity that is so common in the local music scene today.

One of the reasons why I am addicted to KPOP is because I can see “perfection” on everything they do. From the superior technicality of their music videos to the perfect execution of their dance routines, you can never see a hint of mediocrity on their performances. I was never able to detect the prevalent “Puwede na yan” (It will do) mentality on their products. It’s just perfection all around. Let me emphasize:

• In terms of technicality: They have HD videos (720p at least) while we are still stuck with Standard Definition. The camera angles (close-ups) are just perfect, I can’t say the same to the camera angles on our noon-time show (I often end up puking out of dizziness).
• In terms of dance routines: Synchronized. Just watch our local talents on noon time show to get your daily dose of mediocrity. (and hey, wardrobe malfunction anyone?)
• In terms of “concept”: In Korea, they have this concept of “debut”, “hiatus” and “comeback”. When a certain KPOP idol group “debut” for the first time, they will promote their album using a certain “concept” (Sexy concept, cute concept, dark concept, etc). The concept covers fashion (Wardrobe), hairstyles and behavior (Yes! Each concept have a certain “feel” that the members of the group needs to emit) among others. After promoting their albums on different shows for a couple of months, the group will then go into “hiatus” which will officially end their “group activities” and promotions. Using the “hiatus” time, the company and the group will then prepare the new “concept” and album for their “comeback”. Usually, the new “concept” is totally different from the previous concept and you will feel that its an entirely different group! My point? KPOP groups always deliver fresh material. Unlike our local talents who are just stuck on whatever image they started with (Uh sorry, I shall correct myself. When local artist reach the lowest point of their careers, they usually post nude/sexy on Men’s Magazine. Maybe that’s their new “concept” huh? )

I think I have the answer why the local music industry is suffering from mediocrity and its bad effects: Lack of competition and complacency. Big stars are complacent because there is no competition and somehow, new artists never seems to threaten the big stars. When was the last time Regine Velasquez or Christian Bautista came up with a new concept? It’s the same stuff and I’m sick and tired of it. Complacency kills competition and lack of competition kills innovation. Did you know that in just 2009, there are a total of 10 KPOP girl groups that debuted in Korea? That is how tough the competition is in Korea! And big stars such as Lee Hyori is never complacent because they are never guaranteed the top spot anytime they make a comeback — they need to fight for it. Anyone who took an Economy subject knows that market competition is a good thing — and that applies in music, too.

5. KPOP boy band members look gay (or lesbian)

I have a colleague who’s a practitioner of MMA (Mixed martial arts) and I wasn’t surprised that he thinks Super Junior (and other KPOP boy band for that matter) is gay. Ironically, he thinks that LFO and Justin “Beaver” is cool.

Anyway, there’s a recent scandal between the popular Philippine DJ Mo Twister and the KPOP boy band UKISS (Details here). Apparently, MO dissed UKISS by twitting “UKISS looks gay” or “UKISS looks like my lesbian aunt”. Filipino KPOP fans shouldn’t really be surprised about this, Mohan is known as a “careless” DJ with a penile disorder (Wikipedia’s words not mine)… the guy’s surrounded by scandal for saying stupid things. Also, just a little bit of FYI, Mo is born and raised in the US of A. His perception of what “manly” is is being influenced by his American lineage. For Mo Twister and my MMA friend, this is how they define manly:

"Manly" by Mo Twister

What I am saying is, when judging KPOP boy bands, please do not forget that this people are POP GROUPS from an East Asian country. For them, being “manly” is not defined by biceps and tight shirt nor is it defined by grown men cuddling with cute teddy bears. The issue here is that Koreans (boy or girl) have an insatiable addiction to cute things. This is a “social” thing in Korea… I will let the Korean do the explaining:

Why is this happening? A society’s consumption pattern is a complex sociological issue, requiring many eggheads and inscrutable doctoral dissertations in order to uncover the multitudinous layers that create a sophisticated mosaic comprised of tastes, class identifications and …

Heck, who is the Korean kidding? The answer is one word:  Japan.

Although Korea is a major exporter of culture at this point (in the form of movies, TV dramas and pop music,) Korea had no significant pop culture to speak of as recently as 40 years ago as the country struggled to build their way out of the heap of rubble. As Korean pop culture grew into form, it was influenced by two major pop cultures close to Korea — American and Japanese. It is, then, no surprise that Korea is infected by Japan’s love for cute cartoon characters. Let’s face it — people like cute things. There is no population of children in the world that rejected Pokemon, and that’s not because of its compelling story line. It is perhaps the first cartoon whose only appeal was cuteness overload.

So, there you have it, blame the Japanese’s Kawaii culture!

Okay, let me move on to my next point. We Filipinos are heavily influenced by the Americans. When they bought us from Spain for US$20,000,000.00 in 1898 (Treaty of Paris), they didn’t just “use” the Philippines as a military base, they’ve also “educated” us. In the process of educating the Filipinos, the transference of their social, political, and economic culture was inevitable. As a result, Mckinley’s dream for the Philippines has been fulfilled. A nation who thinks and speaks like an American but will work for half the price (I Kid, I Kid ).

Anyway, my point is, most Filipino’s outside the Fandom will think that KPOP boy band members are gay (or lesbian) because they are mentally-conditioned to do so. Growing up, they (or we) were bombarded by movies of Robin Padilla wielding dual handguns in a shiny leather jacket… for them, that is the definition of being a man and we cannot change or influence that. Being a true KPOP fan, it is our obligation to just ignore their lack of understanding of cultures outside of their own. Let me quote the Korean again for his words of wisdom:

The only reason why American adults are inhibited from embracing their cuteness-loving nature is the years of Puritanical repression they suffered as children, only using yellow No. 2 pencil when they secretly desired colorful mechanical pencils with anime characters printed on them.

As a side note, it is my hope that we start to act more like Asians than Americans. Not that there’s something bad about the American culture… but maybe we can take what’s good from the Americans and merge it with our own Asian heritage (Like in Japan where they’ve successfully merged the old with the new). I may not be THAT proud as a Filipino but I am a proud Asian.

If you liked this article, I suggest that you also read this. And If you know of any other attacks to KPOP and the fandom, just leave it at the comments and I will try to update the article! KPOP Hwaiting!

PS: You do not need my permission to re-post, re-blog, tweet, or link this blog post. I do appreciate a linkback/trackback but it is not necessary. Please propagate this message to all KPOP haters. Let us spread KPOP love! <3

Thanks to "Jesika Wabbit" noona for proof-reading this post. <3

Authentic Mix-style Headphones are <3

Before thinking of buying these online, make sure that you have the necessary stuff like Paypal first! For more information on how to start shopping online, click click!

So if these headphones are not available locally and there is a danger of getting fake ones when buying from Netizens, where can one buy authentic Mix-style headphones? Where else?! From YesAsia of course! The leading Internet source for Asian entertainment products.

YesAsia is the leading Internet source for Asian entertainment products

So why YesAsia?

Aside from being the trusted online store for Asian entertainment product since 1998, the fact that they will ship your item FOR FREE (Yes, Free International Shipping) makes YesAsia the ONLY online shop to consider when buying Mix-style headphones. Also, YesAsia would reship your item for free if it gets lost or late. They also support a wide range of payment options including Paypal.

Great! So how do I start buying?

Woah! Relax! You need to create an account first! Click the “Sign in or Register” button at the top of the page to get started!

YesAsia registration page

After completing the form, you will receive an e-mail that contains instructions on how to continue. Don’t worry, the registration process is easy, fast and free. Just remember to always provide your correct postal address since this will be used in delivering your item.

Done and done! Can I buy now?

Not yet! Log-in with your account first. Then, using the green navigation bar at the top, go to the Electronics page (Shop -> All Departments -> Electronics -> All Electronics). Immediately, you will see on the left side of the page a section labeled “Specials” and you will see Mix-styles listed under that.

YesAsia Electronics page

Click that and you will be redirected to the Mix-style catalog that contains all Mix-style products! If you’re lazy, just click here.

Mix-style Catalog

So how can I order?

Now that you’re in the Mix-style product page, you should now choose the Mix-style design that you want. Personally, it was a hard choice between the BK*PK (Black-Pink) and Star U.S. (Blue and Red). But I got the BK*PK one. Anyway, after you’ve decided which design you want, just click the Add to Cart button.

Add your Mix-style to your cart

After adding the item to your cart, click the “View Cart” button or click the “Cart” button on the upper-right corner of the page to proceed to the check-out page.

Proceed to the check-out page

Checking-out

Review the item on your cart then click the “Proceed to Checkout” button to pay for the item.

Proceed to Checkout

NOTE: If you want to send your item as a gift (Mark as Gift), click the “Show Free gift options during checkout?” box. According to some netizens, marking your parcel as gift should let you avoid taxes.

After clicking the link, you will be redirected to a page wherein you will enter your personal information and the address where the item will be shipped.

Shipping page

When filling-up the form, double-check that you gave your correct details! This information will be used to ship your item. Click the “Save this to my address book” so that you don’t need to give this information again on your next order. Click the “Ship to this address” button to proceed.

Choosing a shipment option

Personally, I chose the “Express Service” (courier) thinking that I would be able to avoid getting taxed but on the contrary, shipping your item via Sea Mail (SAL) has a larger probability of avoiding the tax man (More on this subject here). I ended up paying for the shipping fee and the customs tax. So I highly advice you to save the $16.97 shipment fee and just choose the “Standard Service” to avail of the free shipping. The only downside is that the item takes longer to arrive (and you can’t track your parcel) and you need to pick-up your parcel over at your local post office.

Choose Standard Service for Free shipping

To continue, select  “Standard Service” and click the “Continue” button.

More on my failed attempt on avoiding the tax man: So yeah, I chose the “Express Service” option. That’s an additional $16.97 USD (Go here to calculate for the shipping fee for Philippines [ZONE1]).  By choosing this “premium” option, YesAsia shipped my parcel using DHL and gave me a tracking code. The tracking code is a code that you will use to track your parcel (DUH) online. The tracking report looks like this:

DHL Tracking Page

So when the package arrived at the local DHL distribution center, I got a call from them and they notified me that I need to pay some fees from the custom before they release my parcel. DHL already paid for me in advance and I need to pay them. All in all, I paid an additional fee that amounts to 548.60 PHP. According to their “Inbound Charges Invoice”, the breakdown is as follow:

• Informal Entry Declaration ————————————————— 33.60 PHP
• Import Processing Fee      ————————————————— 250.00 PHP
• Customs Documentary Stamps ——————————————– 265.00 PHP

Paying with Paypal

You will then be redirected to the “Payment” page. Tick the Paypal option then click continue.

Right after, you will be redirected to the last and final page from YesAsia. Click the “Place Order” button and you will be redirected to PayPal. Login with your PayPal account and confirm the payment. (Sorry, I forgot to get some screenshots!).

After confirming the payment, you will receive a couple of E-mail from Paypal and YesAsia. Paypal will confirm the payment and YesAsia will confirm the order. If this is your first time to use your Paypal account with YesAsia, YesAsia will need to “verify” your Paypal account first. That should take 1 business day, 2 at most. You can check the status of your order on your YesAsia account page. If you’re payment has been verified, YesAsia will send another e-mail to notify you that your item was shipped. If you chose “Standard Service”, you should sit back and wait for your local post office to send you a “coupon” that you will use to pick-up your item. If you chose to pay for the “Express Service”, you can use the tracking code to track your parcel. Also, the courier will deliver the item to your doorsteps.

Unboxing your Parcel

When you receive your parcel, it should be nicely sealed-up in a box. If not, you should “Refuse the package” and contact YesAsia for a reshipment.

Here are additional pictures of the Unboxing!

Yours truly modelling a BK*PK Mixstyle

Additional Questions

How can I identify fake Mixstyle headphones?

- This is just from my personal observation. I noticed that the fake ones have a shiny “plastic” finish while the authentic ones have a “rubber” finish. Click here for a guide to spot fake Mixstyle headphones.

How much does a Mixstyle cost at YesAsia?

- As of press time, all Mixstyle headphones cost $49.99. Depending on the exchange rate, the appropriate amount will be deducted on your account.

How can I get a Paypal account?

- For more information on how to sign-up for a bank account and a Paypal account, click here!

How long did it take to receive your package?

- I placed my order on the night of Feb 25 (Thursday). My order was verified and shipped by YesAsia on the 26th (Friday). I got the call from DHL on Monday morning March 1. I refused accepting the shipment because no one is at home to receive it. I got the parcel on March 2 (Tuesday). So that’s 3 business days.

If you have additional questions, leave them on the comments!

Isn't she cute with those earmuffs?

At first, I thought “Can I wear earmuffs? I mean, those are for girls only right?” and then I found this:

Even KPOP Boybands wear cute earmuffs!

I was ready to get my own pair of those cute earmuffs but then I realized that THERE IS NO FREAKIN WINTER IN THE PHILIPPINES! Unfortunately, continental drift wasn’t on our side when it decided to the place Philippines near the freakin equator. So until the next Polar Shift, I’ve agreed to settle on a compromise: Headphones. So the search was on for my KPOP inspired headphones. I am glad to have watched the S.E.O.U.L music video by SNSD and Superjunior where I saw the SuJu guy wearing a very cute headphone:

Mixstyle headphones!

I am not really a big fan of Super Junior. But I am the biggest SNSD fan in the Philippines (Self-Proposed). So when I saw SNSD wearing Mixstyle headphones, I just have to get one for myself!

Yoona, Sooyoung and Hyoyeon loves their Mixstlyle!

So I tirelessly searched for a shop (online or not) that sells Mixstyle headphones in the Philippines. My search was fruitless. There are a lot of people selling Mixstyles on Multiply but a lot of them are fake! I saw a dude selling Mixstyles for only 1,500 PHP but how is that possible when Mixstyles retails for about 4,000 Yen (or about 2,000 PHP) in Japan (these are Japanese headphones, afterall)? My friend, Carlos, even told me that Mixstyles are available at Trinoma for only 500 PHP! Since I don’t really want to use cheap, fake ripoffs, I was glad to know that Mixstyles can be bought online for a reasonable price (around 50 USD). But there was a dilemma, I have never bought anything online! But fortunately, I found out that its so easy to buy stuff online! Read on and be amazed on how easy it is!

(For more of my experience with Yesasia, click here!)

So how do I go about buying stuff online?

First things first, you will need some kind of a bank account that accepts online transaction. From what I know, a Credit Card or a Debit Card will let you accomplish this. There are certain advantages in terms of ease-of-use and security when using Debit Card over Credit Card for online transactions.

Credit card vs Debit Card

You can get a Credit Card that you can use for online shopping at BPI (there are a lot, but this is the only one that I know of). Their entry level Credit Card called the BPI Express Credit Blue MasterCard can be used to register for a Paypal account that you can use for online shopping. However, it is not easy to get a credit card (especially if you’re still a student!). They (the bank) will first need to investigate your “earning capabilities” before giving you a credit card. Also, most credit card have some sort of an annual fee that you need to pay. For the BPI Express Credit Blue MasterCard, the annual fee is 1,550 PHP.

BPI Express Credit Blue MasterCard

According to Wikipedia, Credit card works like this: “Credit card is a card entitling its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder’s promise to pay for these goods and services. The issuer of the card (the bank) grants a line of credit to the consumer (you) from which the user can borrow money for payment to a merchant  or as a cash advance to the user.” In simple terms, the bank will pay for you in advance, then you will pay them back later. This doesn’t mean that you can buy a plane with your credit card right away. There is a thing called “Credit Limit” that limits your spending potential. Depending on your “earning capabilities”, the bank will decide on your credit limit.

It’s important for you to understand the above concept. In the scenario that your credit card got hack, the hacker can buy anything until he maxes out your credit limit. Scary huh?

So I opted to use a Debit Card. The question is, which bank offers a debit card that you can use online? Lucky for us, Unionbank offers a debit card with Visa Electron! The debit card is called UnionBank EON Cyberaccount card or just Cyber EON.  Signing up is easy. Just go to your nearest Unionbank branch and approach the teller then ask for a Cyber EON account. She will give you a form that you need to fill-up (basic information such as your name, address, etc). She will then ask for a photocopy of two valid I.D.s (Driver’s License, TIN, School ID, Company ID, etc) so make sure to bring a photocopy of those with the original ones. Then that’s it!

Unionbank Cyber EON

You’ll need to wait 7 banking days for them to process your application. Unlike a credit card, Cyber EON is like a normal bank account wherein you can withdraw and deposit funds so that means that even student can get a Cyber EON account. However, Cyber EON charges 300 PHP annually but they don’t enforce a maintaining balance. Don’t forget to bring additional 200 PHP that you will deposit into your Cyber-EON account. You need this to verify your Paypal account later on.

Signing up for Paypal

Paypal is much safer!

Now that you have a credit/debit card, you can now register for a Paypal account! Although you can already use those cards to shop online, I highly recommend that you get a Paypal account for your own security. It’s free anyways (the 1.95 USD / 200 PHP will be credited back to you after you verify your card) and provides additional benefits such as the Buyer’s Protection Program.

Signing up is easy. Once you get your Cyber-EON card, you need to create an account over at Paypal.com. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll need to “link” or tie-up your Cyber-EON to your Paypal account. After that, you will need to verify that you are the owner of that card. Paypal will charge 1.95 USD to your account, then you will see a charge in your statement from Paypal (you will need to log-in to your Cyber-EON account online to view your account’s statement). This charge will contain a “code” that you will use to verify your account. Don’t worry, Paypal will credit back your 1.95 USD after you’ve verified your card. After you’ve verified your card, you’re ready to shop online!

The most common question about Paypal is how much do they charge for their services? You might be surprised to know that they will not charge the buyer (you) anything. The charge will be shouldered by the seller.

For a more detailed information on how to use your Cyber-EON with Paypal, go to Unionbank’s page.

Ordering online

Online shopping!

There are a lot of online shops in the web. You need to be careful when buying from individuals because there is no guarantee that they will “send” you your item. When shopping from E-Bay, always remember to check the seller’s reputation first before buying and even if the reputation is high, that is not even enough guarantee to trust the person (what if the person is selling fake goods?). So I suggest that you do your research first.

Personally, I only buy from reputable online shops (such as Yesasia.com). As far as possible, I try to avoid transacting with individuals; I make sure that I buy from a ” real company” with a “business address” and “business permits”. You know what I mean right? A real “online business shop”. So when something goes wrong, you know that you have someone to go after.

Anyway, the concept of online shopping is mostly the same everywhere:

1. You search for the item you want to buy
2. You click the “add to my cart” button
3. You click the “check-out” button
4. You will provide the shipping details (shipping address, shipping method, courier, etc)
5. They will give you choices on how to pay: Choose Paypal.
6. Login with your Paypal account. Confirm the payment.
7. Done.

Depending on the company or their chosen courier, they may give you a tracking code that will let you track your parcel (package) online.

Shipping

Online shops use different couriers

There are tons of courier and shipping methodology out there. Some company will ship your package directly at your house (door-to-door delivery) and some will ship your package to your local post office (postal service). If the courier ships your package to the post office, the nearest local post office to you will mail you a claim stub that you will use to pick-up your package.

When you “check-out” your order, most often than not, the online shop will give you a choice of what shipping methodology you want. The shipping charge will depend on the online shop (some even ships for free!), so make sure to contact the online shop regarding their shipping policy.

According to Pinoy netizens, the local post office is quite unreliable when it comes to handling parcels. They said that it takes between 3 weeks to 2 months for you to get your package from the post office. So I suggest that you always go for the “express” door-to-door shipping if you don’t want to wait and you don’t want the additional hassle.

Sales Tax and Import Duties

Be careful of the taxes!

Some online shops imposes Sales Tax. It depends on the country where the company is based so always make sure to check their policy when buying online.

Also, the Philippine government imposes Import Duties/Fees/Taxes on all parcels going in the country. I don’t exactly know how they compute such fees and it isn’t clear what parcels are getting charged. Some Netizens say that their parcels never got charged. Personally, when I ordered my Mixstyle headphones, I was asked to pay 548 PHP for Import Fees (Processing Fee/Stamps/etc) by DHL. Since Yesasia doesn’t declare the value of your purchase, I don’t know how the Tax Man will compute for the taxes. Also, I declared my Parcel as a gift, which in theory, should be enough to bypass the Tax Man, but I still paid 548 PHP. From what I understand, the 548 PHP fee doesn’t even include any form of tax; its just a “processing” fee of some sort.

I apologize if some part of this post is too general. Frankly, I only experienced online shopping once (from Yesasia). Click here for more detailed instruction on how to order from YesAsia! Happy shopping!

If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments and I will try to answer them. But remember, the most reliable person that can answer your questions are the online shop themselves.

Larry Wall haz dem

Larry Wall, the creator of the infamous Perl programming language, has once said that the greatest virtues of a good programmer are Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. To not mislead the lazy “computer science” students, allow me to define each virtues:

1. Laziness — The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. See also impatience and hubris.
2. Impatience – The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris.
3. Hubris – Excessive pride. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.

A few days ago, a tester at our company filled a track that contained multiple attachments (Screenshots, Error Logs, etc) to assist the developers on their investigation. As we are using Microsoft’s Team Foundation System for source control and bug tracking, the most obvious way to get these attachments is through TFS Web Access; Frankly speaking, this is the only “official” way to access the track (bug report) on our company.

The TFS Web Access homepage UI

I don’t know if its a lack of feature or what, but there is no way in TFS Web Access to download multiple attachments at once. Additionally, when downloading attachments that contains a space on their filename, TFS Web Access will automatically concatenate the filename and that will remove the file’s extension (EG: Screenshot of the bug.jpg will be renamed to Screenshot)… You still need to manually rename the file with the proper extension to open it. And because I’m lazy, I don’t want to log-in to TFS Web Access, type in the track ID, click on the attachments tab, click on the file(s) I want to download, browse for the location where to save the file, create a new folder for the track, click save, minimize my browser, open the download location and (unzip the attachment, it its zipped, which normally is) to just view a single screenshot.

Since I am a big believer of Wall’s three virtues, I created a tool that will automate those boring and repetitive tasks for me (and allow me to download *all* attachments from a work item + workaround the “spacing” bug). The tool is called WIF or Work Item Fetcher and it is currently in Closed-Limited Beta.

At first, I thought about parsing the web pages to download the attachments using HTML Sanitizers and Regular Expressions but then I remembered that only Chuck Norris can parse HTML using regular expressions! So I searched the web and found out about the TFS SDK! Go .NET! Go Laziness! Okay, enough chit-chat, the rest of the post will be dedicated to discussing how to use the TFS API to download attachments from TFS.

Step 1: Acquiring the needed libraries

To be honest, I don’t really know where to download the DLLs. I’ve searched and found nothing. What I did was I referenced the DLLs located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\. The DLLs should be available after you download and install Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2005. For our purposes, you should reference the following DLLs:

• Microsoft.TeamFoundation.DLL
• Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.DLL
• Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.DLL

You must then add the needed declarations like so:

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client;

Compile your project to check. Remember to always compile your project after each step.

Step 2: Connecting to your TFS server

If you want to do anything with your TFS SDK, the first thing that you should do is to connect to your TFS server. Connecting is straight-forward, but a little tricky if you need to provide your network credentials. First, lets assume that the program will run on a machine that is connected to the domain with the proper credentials (AKA straight-forward way):

const string TFSServer = "http://mytfsserver:8090";
 
using (TeamFoundationServer tfsConn = new TeamFoundationServer(TFSServer))
{
	try
	{
		tfsConn.EnsureAuthenticated();
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Cannot connect to TFS Server!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
	}
}

A call to EnsureAuthenticated(); is needed to check if your connection is properly authenticated. If not, the method will throw an exception.

How about if you need to manually provide login credentials or your machine is not joined to a domain? Just use the NetCredential object from System.Net to pass your credentials:

const string TFSServer = "http://mytfsserver:8090";
 
NetworkCredential netCred = new NetworkCredential("Username", "Password", "Domain");
 
using (TeamFoundationServer tfsConn = new TeamFoundationServer(TFSServer, netCred))
{
	try
	{
		tfsConn.EnsureAuthenticated();
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Cannot connect to TFS Server!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
	}
}

Step 3: Acquire the Work Item

Now that we’re good and connected to TFS, our next task is to acquire the Work Item from TFS. First, we’ll need to acquire the WorkItemStore service from TFS by calling the GetService method:

WorkItemStore wis = (WorkItemStore)tfsServer.GetService(typeof(WorkItemStore));

Then, we’ll get the Work Item by invoking the GetWorkItem method:

WorkItem wi = wis.GetWorkItem(1000); //Where 1000 is the Work Item ID

Now, your code should look something like this:

const string TFSServer = "http://mytfsserver:8090";
 
NetworkCredential netCred = new NetworkCredential("Username", "Password", "Domain");
 
using (TeamFoundationServer tfsConn = new TeamFoundationServer(TFSServer, netCred))
{
	try
	{
		tfsConn.EnsureAuthenticated();
                WorkItemStore wis = (WorkItemStore)tfsServer.GetService(typeof(WorkItemStore));
                WorkItem wi = wis.GetWorkItem(1000); //Where 1000 is the Work Item ID
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Something has gone wrong!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
	}
}

Step 4: Get the attachments’ URI

After acquiring the Work Item, we can now directly iterate through the attachment collection to access its attachment’s URI:

foreach(Attachment attachment in wi.Attachments)
{
	string FileName = attachment.Name;
	string attachmentURI = attachment.Uri;
}

Cool huh? Just like that! Your entire code should look like this:

const string TFSServer = "http://mytfsserver:8090";
 
NetworkCredential netCred = new NetworkCredential("Username", "Password", "Domain");
 
using (TeamFoundationServer tfsConn = new TeamFoundationServer(TFSServer, netCred))
{
	try
	{
		tfsConn.EnsureAuthenticated();
                WorkItemStore wis = (WorkItemStore)tfsServer.GetService(typeof(WorkItemStore));
                WorkItem wi = wis.GetWorkItem(1000); //Where 1000 is the Work Item ID
 
		foreach(Attachment attachment in wi.Attachments)
		{
			string FileName = attachment.Name;
			string attachmentURI = attachment.Uri;
		}
 
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Something has gone wrong!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
	}
}

Step 5: Downloading the attachments

And now that we have the attachment’s URI, all there is left to do is to download it. Thankfully, .NET provided us with the WebClient class that simplifies the downloading:

using (WebClient wClient = new WebClient())
{
	wClient.Credentials = netCred; //Provide your network credentials.
	wClient.DownloadFile(attachment.Uri, Path.Combine(@"C:", attachment.Name));
}

That’s it! You’re done. The completed code should look like this:

using (TeamFoundationServer tfsConn = new TeamFoundationServer(TFSServer, netCred))
{
	try
	{
		tfsConn.EnsureAuthenticated();
                WorkItemStore wis = (WorkItemStore)tfsServer.GetService(typeof(WorkItemStore));
                WorkItem wi = wis.GetWorkItem(1000); //Where 1000 is the Work Item ID
 
		foreach(Attachment attachment in wi.Attachments)
		{
			string FileName = attachment.Name;
			string attachmentURI = attachment.Uri;
 
			using (WebClient wClient = new WebClient())
			{
				wClient.Credentials = netCred;
				wClient.DownloadFile(attachmentURI, Path.Combine(@"C:", FileName));
			}
		}
 
	}
	catch (Exception ex)
	{
		MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Something has gone wrong!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
	}
}

Step 6: Optional Improvements

The code above is the minimum required to have a fully functional attachment downloader for TFS. There are a couple of things that you can do to improve your program:

• Automatically create a directory for each Work Item. This way, you will have an organized local storage of the attachments.
• Instead of using the DownloadFile method to download your file, you can use the DownloadFileAsync method to download the file asynchronously. DownloadFileAsync is non-thread blocking. This call will also allow you to listen to EventHandlers for the download progress.
• After the download, you can check if the file is a zip file (by using Path.GetExtension), and if it is, you can use SharpZipLib to automatically unzip the package.
• Sometimes, instead of providing the Incident number, your users will provide the Incident Fix number. Its good to anticipate that and provide a way to resolve the Incident Number from the Incident Fix. To do that, first check if your user provided an Incident Fix by calling wi.Fields.GetById(25).Value.ToString() == “Incident Fix” then if yes, you can get the Incident Number by calling int ParentID = (int)wi.Fields.GetById(10120).Value. Thank you Impatience!

I can’t really share my program with you guys (you know all of that “corporate” legal mumbo-jumbo). But here’s the screenshot:

Work Item Fetcher @ TFS

Thank you Laziness for making me go to great effort to reduce the total effort and time needed to download attachments from TFS. Thank you for making me write labor-saving programs that other people will hopefully find useful.

Thank you Impatience for pissing me off when I am manually downloading and renaming attachments one by one. Thank you too for making me angry when my initial prototype failed when I gave it an Incident Fix number rather than an Incident number.

And, as always, thank you Hubris! (People around me knows exactly why!)

My nine precious girls

Just recently, KPOP bands started becoming popular in the Philippines. I believe it all started when the news about Sandara Park (Yes, this is her) being part of a Korean Girl Group reached the Philippines. As Dara (her cool Korean nickname, we just call her Krung-Krung here) was a big star here in the Philippines, the media got curious and actually gave a f*ck about KPOP. Fire, their first single I believe, entered the local hit chart and every stupid emo kid everywhere was like “ZOMG, I know that girl. KPOP is so cool~~~~ KAWAII! I love Japan” without actually having a clue on what their talking about. So those little emo kids searched the interwebz and the youtubez and found Wonder Girl’s “Nobody” and spammed the local hit charts and radio stations with request of this song. That did it, the Hallyu was in full effect in the Philippines. With Nobody’s addictive chorus (which was incidentally in English), it reached mainstream media faster than you can say “Anyeong Haseo!”. From FM’s 102.7, to Mike Enriquez’s Saksi, there was no escaping Nobody. Even Jollibee and his close friend Chuckie from KFC wasn’t invulnerable to the craze. Nobody was everywhere!

Wondergirls - Nobody

When all of this “KPOP Insanity” was happening, I was quietly downloading all the SNSD videos on Youtube I can get my hands on and then watching them again and again and again till 5:00 AM in the morning or until my mom catches me and scold me to sleep. And while watching the very heart warming Kissing You music video, I was really hoping and praying (I do it once a decade) that SNSD won’t reach the mainstream media here in the Philippines. Almost a month passed and no news about SNSD on the local hit charts. I was relieved.

One fateful day came when a schoolmate popped me on Facebook and said “I just saw SNSD’s Genie on MYX”. I was shocked to say the least! So I asked “Where? On the hit charts?” and I was delighted when she said “On Myx Premiere”. That just meant that the Myx people are just premiering the new Genie song. So I quickly headed over to Soshified and warned everyone to never request for any SNSD songs on MYX. Months passed, and I was overjoyed that the pinoy SONES (local SNSD fans) over at Soshified heeded my warning. But I couldn’t be more wrong. Just a few weeks ago, SNSD entered the local hit chart. It was the result of an effort spearheaded by a pinoy SONE over at Soshified to “mass vote” SNSD’s Genie. SNSD went from rank 20 to 9 in just two weeks! That isn’t surprising at all given the girls’ charm and the wonderful song. As a fan, I should be happy about this. I should be throwing house parties every week to celebrate. BUT I AM NOT. In fact, I hate that SNSD’s Genie is being transmitted on local airwaves.

So why am I not thrilled about SNSD’s popularity here in the Philippines?

JOLOGS

I don’t really know how to define Jologs but I will try to give an example on how something can achieve the Jologs status. Say a certain footwear became the “in” thing in the Philippines. This footwear is really expensive for just a pair of rubber stuff being worn on the smelliest part of the human body. But since the Philippines has that creativity to pirate anything fast, the said footwear now cost only 50 pesos and is readily available at your local tiangge. Now everyone from your driver, to your labandera’s son owns the identical footwear you are wearing. The footwear is now “mainstream” in the sense that the “representative population” of the Philippines (AKA “the masses”) can now own and wear the footwear. Congratulations, your footwear is now jologs.

Divisoria and "the masses"

So back to my point… Since SNSD is now accessible to the masses via the mainstream local media, like the poor footwear who has once prided itself as the “most expensive rubber stuff you are wearing on the smelliest part of your body”, as hard and painful it is for me to admit, SNSD will soon be jologs. And no matter how much I love and care for SNSD, I can’t stop it. I’m just an obsessed fan with a “KPOP boy band”-like hairstyle.

Like Wonder Girls’ Nobody, SNSD songs will be played over and over again everywhere to oblivion. Here’s the list of what I think will transpire over the weeks as SNSD reaches the top 1 spot on the local hit charts:

• Willie Revillame will dance Gee on Wowowee
• The Sex Bomb Girls will perform a cover of Genie
• Maja Salvador, Erich, and that other girl (ASAP) will perform a “sucky” (”poor” to be more polite) rendition of Kissing You (With the lollipop and all)
• Kids from Divisoria will be shown on T.V. dancing Gee from a loud boom box playing from a “pirated” music store
• Bubble Gang will parody SNSD
• Mainstream Media will talk about SNSD (and mixing/confusing them with 2NE1 and WG)
• “Malilibog” (Dirty old) jeepney drivers will have the SNSD posters on their jeeps with indecent markings.
• A “disco remix” of SNSD song’s will be available in Divisoria’s pirated music stores
• Infinite jologsness to come…

The Sex Bomb Girls

However, even if SNSD becomes jologs, I think my love for the 9 girls will outweigh the harm done by the local media. I will still watch my SNSD video collection until 5:00 AM in the morning or until my mom scold me to sleep for staying up late, I will still have my mp3 player play SNSD’s album collection, and I will still buy SNSD albums from Yes! Asia. If this unfortunate event changed something, that would be me changing my phone’s ring tone from SNSD’s Kissing You back to Nokia’s standard tone.

If you liked reading this post, you may want to read this post entitled “In defense of KPOP: Is KPOP Jologs?”

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Do you think my definition of jologs is inaccurate? Do you think I’m being a spoiled delusional elitist? Please assist me in finding the accurate definition of jologs… Help the world accumulate and catalog Human Knowledge, discuss! (Ad Hominem comments will be rejected).

PS: I am particularly interested if the “jologs” mentality applies to other countries as well.

Paul Graham (Author of Hackers and Painters)

I love Paul Graham. The guy speaks my mind. Although I don’t agree with all of his ideas (E.G. Java programmers are stupid. PERIOD.), most of his ideas are golden. For those of weak hearts (and sensitive ego), please proceed with care.

The essay that will follow, entitled Great Hackers, basically compliments the main idea of my previous post which is “To do something well you have to love it.”

Some quotable quotes from this essay:

“Ordinary programmers write code to pay the bills. Great hackers think of it as something they do for fun, and which they’re delighted to find people will pay them for.”

“Hackers like to work for people with high standards. But it’s not enough just to be exacting. You have to insist on the right things. Which usually means that you have to be a hacker yourself. I’ve seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you’re not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.”

“The distinguishing feature of nasty little problems is that you don’t learn anything from them. Working on nasty little problems makes you stupid. Good hackers avoid it for the same reason models avoid cheeseburgers.”

“I’ve found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent.”

“The key to being a good hacker may be to work on what you like. When I think about the great hackers I know, one thing they have in common is the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don’t want to. I don’t know if this is cause or effect; it may be both.”

“One difference I’ve noticed between great hackers and smart people in general is that hackers are more politically incorrect. And I can see why political incorrectness would be a useful quality in programming. Programs are very complex and, at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. In such situations it’s helpful to have a habit of questioning assumptions.”

AND NOW, THE ESSAY

Great Hackers

Edisons

There’s no controversy about which idea is most controversial: the suggestion that variation in wealth might not be as big a problem as we think.

I didn’t say in the book that variation in wealth was in itself a good thing. I said in some situations it might be a sign of good things. A throbbing headache is not a good thing, but it can be a sign of a good thing– for example, that you’re recovering consciousness after being hit on the head.

Variation in wealth can be a sign of variation in productivity. (In a society of one, they’re identical.) And that is almost certainly a good thing: if your society has no variation in productivity, it’s probably not because everyone is Thomas Edison. It’s probably because you have no Thomas Edisons.

In a low-tech society you don’t see much variation in productivity. If you have a tribe of nomads collecting sticks for a fire, how much more productive is the best stick gatherer going to be than the worst? A factor of two? Whereas when you hand people a complex tool like a computer, the variation in what they can do with it is enormous.

That’s not a new idea. Fred Brooks wrote about it in 1974, and the study he quoted was published in 1968. But I think he underestimated the variation between programmers. He wrote about productivity in lines of code: the best programmers can solve a given problem in a tenth the time. But what if the problem isn’t given? In programming, as in many fields, the hard part isn’t solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve. Imagination is hard to measure, but in practice it dominates the kind of productivity that’s measured in lines of code.

Productivity varies in any field, but there are few in which it varies so much. The variation between programmers is so great that it becomes a difference in kind. I don’t think this is something intrinsic to programming, though. In every field, technology magnifies differences in productivity. I think what’s happening in programming is just that we have a lot of technological leverage. But in every field the lever is getting longer, so the variation we see is something that more and more fields will see as time goes on. And the success of companies, and countries, will depend increasingly on how they deal with it.

If variation in productivity increases with technology, then the contribution of the most productive individuals will not only be disproportionately large, but will actually grow with time. When you reach the point where 90% of a group’s output is created by 1% of its members, you lose big if something (whether Viking raids, or central planning) drags their productivity down to the average.

If we want to get the most out of them, we need to understand these especially productive people. What motivates them? What do they need to do their jobs? How do you recognize them? How do you get them to come and work for you? And then of course there’s the question, how do you become one?

More than Money

I know a handful of super-hackers, so I sat down and thought about what they have in common. Their defining quality is probably that they really love to program. Ordinary programmers write code to pay the bills. Great hackers think of it as something they do for fun, and which they’re delighted to find people will pay them for.

Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money. This isn’t quite true. It is true that all they really care about is doing interesting work. But if you make enough money, you get to work on whatever you want, and for that reason hackers are attracted by the idea of making really large amounts of money. But as long as they still have to show up for work every day, they care more about what they do there than how much they get paid for it.

Economically, this is a fact of the greatest importance, because it means you don’t have to pay great hackers anything like what they’re worth. A great programmer might be ten or a hundred times as productive as an ordinary one, but he’ll consider himself lucky to get paid three times as much. As I’ll explain later, this is partly because great hackers don’t know how good they are. But it’s also because money is not the main thing they want.

What do hackers want? Like all craftsmen, hackers like good tools. In fact, that’s an understatement. Good hackers find it unbearable to use bad tools. They’ll simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure.

At a startup I once worked for, one of the things pinned up on our bulletin board was an ad from IBM. It was a picture of an AS400, and the headline read, I think, “hackers despise it.” [1]

When you decide what infrastructure to use for a project, you’re not just making a technical decision. You’re also making a social decision, and this may be the more important of the two. For example, if your company wants to write some software, it might seem a prudent choice to write it in Java. But when you choose a language, you’re also choosing a community. The programmers you’ll be able to hire to work on a Java project won’t be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the language you choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java should tell you something about the relative merits of those languages.

Business types prefer the most popular languages because they view languages as standards. They don’t want to bet the company on Betamax. The thing about languages, though, is that they’re not just standards. If you have to move bits over a network, by all means use TCP/IP. But a programming language isn’t just a format. A programming language is a medium of expression.

I’ve read that Java has just overtaken Cobol as the most popular language. As a standard, you couldn’t wish for more. But as a medium of expression, you could do a lot better. Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don’t work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero.

Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. Not just because it’s better, but because it gives them more control. Good hackers insist on control. This is part of what makes them good hackers: when something’s broken, they need to fix it. You want them to feel this way about the software they’re writing for you. You shouldn’t be surprised when they feel the same way about the operating system.

A couple years ago a venture capitalist friend told me about a new startup he was involved with. It sounded promising. But the next time I talked to him, he said they’d decided to build their software on Windows NT, and had just hired a very experienced NT developer to be their chief technical officer. When I heard this, I thought, these guys are doomed. One, the CTO couldn’t be a first rate hacker, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have had to use NT voluntarily, multiple times, and I couldn’t imagine a great hacker doing that; and two, even if he was good, he’d have a hard time hiring anyone good to work for him if the project had to be built on NT. [2]

The Final Frontier

After software, the most important tool to a hacker is probably his office. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. But hackers use their offices for more than that: they use their office as a place to think in. And if you’re a technology company, their thoughts are your product. So making hackers work in a noisy, distracting environment is like having a paint factory where the air is full of soot.

The cartoon strip Dilbert has a lot to say about cubicles, and with good reason. All the hackers I know despise them. The mere prospect of being interrupted is enough to prevent hackers from working on hard problems. If you want to get real work done in an office with cubicles, you have two options: work at home, or come in early or late or on a weekend, when no one else is there. Don’t companies realize this is a sign that something is broken? An office environment is supposed to be something thathelps you work, not something you work despite.

Companies like Cisco are proud that everyone there has a cubicle, even the CEO. But they’re not so advanced as they think; obviously they still view office space as a badge of rank. Note too that Cisco is famous for doing very little product development in house. They get new technology by buying the startups that created it– where presumably the hackers did have somewhere quiet to work.

One big company that understands what hackers need is Microsoft. I once saw a recruiting ad for Microsoft with a big picture of a door. Work for us, the premise was, and we’ll give you a place to work where you can actually get work done. And you know, Microsoft is remarkable among big companies in that they are able to develop software in house. Not well, perhaps, but well enough.

If companies want hackers to be productive, they should look at what they do at home. At home, hackers can arrange things themselves so they can get the most done. And when they work at home, hackers don’t work in noisy, open spaces; they work in rooms with doors. They work in cosy, neighborhoody places with people around and somewhere to walk when they need to mull something over, instead of in glass boxes set in acres of parking lots. They have a sofa they can take a nap on when they feel tired, instead of sitting in a coma at their desk, pretending to work. There’s no crew of people with vacuum cleaners that roars through every evening during the prime hacking hours. There are no meetings or, God forbid, corporate retreats or team-building exercises. And when you look at what they’re doing on that computer, you’ll find it reinforces what I said earlier about tools. They may have to use Java and Windows at work, but at home, where they can choose for themselves, you’re more likely to find them using Perl and Linux.

Indeed, these statistics about Cobol or Java being the most popular language can be misleading. What we ought to look at, if we want to know what tools are best, is what hackers choose when they can choose freely– that is, in projects of their own. When you ask that question, you find that open source operating systems already have a dominant market share, and the number one language is probably Perl.

Interesting

Along with good tools, hackers want interesting projects. What makes a project interesting? Well, obviously overtly sexy applications like stealth planes or special effects software would be interesting to work on. But any application can be interesting if it poses novel technical challenges. So it’s hard to predict which problems hackers will like, because some become interesting only when the people working on them discover a new kind of solution. Before ITA (who wrote the software inside Orbitz), the people working on airline fare searches probably thought it was one of the most boring applications imaginable. But ITA made it interesting by redefining the problem in a more ambitious way.

I think the same thing happened at Google. When Google was founded, the conventional wisdom among the so-called portals was that search was boring and unimportant. But the guys at Google didn’t think search was boring, and that’s why they do it so well.

This is an area where managers can make a difference. Like a parent saying to a child, I bet you can’t clean up your whole room in ten minutes, a good manager can sometimes redefine a problem as a more interesting one. Steve Jobs seems to be particularly good at this, in part simply by having high standards. There were a lot of small, inexpensive computers before the Mac. He redefined the problem as: make one that’s beautiful. And that probably drove the developers harder than any carrot or stick could.

They certainly delivered. When the Mac first appeared, you didn’t even have to turn it on to know it would be good; you could tell from the case. A few weeks ago I was walking along the street in Cambridge, and in someone’s trash I saw what appeared to be a Mac carrying case. I looked inside, and there was a Mac SE. I carried it home and plugged it in, and it booted. The happy Macintosh face, and then the finder. My God, it was so simple. It was just like … Google.

Hackers like to work for people with high standards. But it’s not enough just to be exacting. You have to insist on the right things. Which usually means that you have to be a hacker yourself. I’ve seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you’re not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.

The problem is not so much the day to day management. Really good hackers are practically self-managing. The problem is, if you’re not a hacker, you can’t tell who the good hackers are. A similar problem explains why American cars are so ugly. I call it the design paradox. You might think that you could make your products beautiful just by hiring a great designer to design them. But if you yourself don’t have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer? By definition you can’t tell from his portfolio. And you can’t go by the awards he’s won or the jobs he’s had, because in design, as in most fields, those tend to be driven by fashion and schmoozing, with actual ability a distant third. There’s no way around it: you can’t manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what beautiful is. American cars are ugly because American car companies are run by people with bad taste.

Many people in this country think of taste as something elusive, or even frivolous. It is neither. To drive design, a manager must be the most demanding user of a company’s products. And if you have really good taste, you can, as Steve Jobs does, make satisfying you the kind of problem that good people like to work on.

Nasty Little Problems

It’s pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big, clear, problems, you have to solve a lot of nasty little ones. One of the worst kinds of projects is writing an interface to a piece of software that’s full of bugs. Another is when you have to customize something for an individual client’s complex and ill-defined needs. To hackers these kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts.

The distinguishing feature of nasty little problems is that you don’t learn anything from them. Writing a compiler is interesting because it teaches you what a compiler is. But writing an interface to a buggy piece of software doesn’t teach you anything, because the bugs are random. [3] So it’s not just fastidiousness that makes good hackers avoid nasty little problems. It’s more a question of self-preservation. Working on nasty little problems makes you stupid. Good hackers avoid it for the same reason models avoid cheeseburgers.

Of course some problems inherently have this character. And because of supply and demand, they pay especially well. So a company that found a way to get great hackers to work on tedious problems would be very successful. How would you do it?

One place this happens is in startups. At our startup we had Robert Morris working as a system administrator. That’s like having the Rolling Stones play at a bar mitzvah. You can’t hire that kind of talent. But people will do any amount of drudgery for companies of which they’re the founders. [4]

Bigger companies solve the problem by partitioning the company. They get smart people to work for them by establishing a separate R&D department where employees don’t have to work directly on customers’ nasty little problems. [5] In this model, the research department functions like a mine. They produce new ideas; maybe the rest of the company will be able to use them.

You may not have to go to this extreme. Bottom-up programming suggests another way to partition the company: have the smart people work as toolmakers. If your company makes software to do x, have one group that builds tools for writing software of that type, and another that uses these tools to write the applications. This way you might be able to get smart people to write 99% of your code, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be in a traditional research department. The toolmakers would have users, but they’d only be the company’s own developers. [6]

If Microsoft used this approach, their software wouldn’t be so full of security holes, because the less smart people writing the actual applications wouldn’t be doing low-level stuff like allocating memory. Instead of writing Word directly in C, they’d be plugging together big Lego blocks of Word-language. (Duplo, I believe, is the technical term.)

Clumping

Along with interesting problems, what good hackers like is other good hackers. Great hackers tend to clump together– sometimes spectacularly so, as at Xerox Parc. So you won’t attract good hackers in linear proportion to how good an environment you create for them. The tendency to clump means it’s more like the square of the environment. So it’s winner take all. At any given time, there are only about ten or twenty places where hackers most want to work, and if you aren’t one of them, you won’t just have fewer great hackers, you’ll have zero.

Having great hackers is not, by itself, enough to make a company successful. It works well for Google and ITA, which are two of the hot spots right now, but it didn’t help Thinking Machines or Xerox. Sun had a good run for a while, but their business model is a down elevator. In that situation, even the best hackers can’t save you.

I think, though, that all other things being equal, a company that can attract great hackers will have a huge advantage. There are people who would disagree with this. When we were making the rounds of venture capital firms in the 1990s, several told us that software companies didn’t win by writing great software, but through brand, and dominating channels, and doing the right deals.

They really seemed to believe this, and I think I know why. I think what a lot of VCs are looking for, at least unconsciously, is the next Microsoft. And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn’t be looking for companies that hope to win by writing great software. But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM.

It’s a mistake to use Microsoft as a model, because their whole culture derives from that one lucky break. Microsoft is a bad data point. If you throw them out, you find that good products do tend to win in the market. What VCs should be looking for is the next Apple, or the next Google.

I think Bill Gates knows this. What worries him about Google is not the power of their brand, but the fact that they have better hackers. [7]

Recognition

So who are the great hackers? How do you know when you meet one? That turns out to be very hard. Even hackers can’t tell. I’m pretty sure now that my friend Trevor Blackwell is a great hacker. You may have read on Slashdot how he made his own Segway. The remarkable thing about this project was that he wrote all the software in one day (in Python, incidentally).

For Trevor, that’s par for the course. But when I first met him, I thought he was a complete idiot. He was standing in Robert Morris’s office babbling at him about something or other, and I remember standing behind him making frantic gestures at Robert to shoo this nut out of his office so we could go to lunch. Robert says he misjudged Trevor at first too. Apparently when Robert first met him, Trevor had just begun a new scheme that involved writing down everything about every aspect of his life on a stack of index cards, which he carried with him everywhere. He’d also just arrived from Canada, and had a strong Canadian accent and a mullet.

The problem is compounded by the fact that hackers, despite their reputation for social obliviousness, sometimes put a good deal of effort into seeming smart. When I was in grad school I used to hang around the MIT AI Lab occasionally. It was kind of intimidating at first. Everyone there spoke so fast. But after a while I learned the trick of speaking fast. You don’t have to think any faster; just use twice as many words to say everything.

With this amount of noise in the signal, it’s hard to tell good hackers when you meet them. I can’t tell, even now. You also can’t tell from their resumes. It seems like the only way to judge a hacker is to work with him on something.

And this is the reason that high-tech areas only happen around universities. The active ingredient here is not so much the professors as the students. Startups grow up around universities because universities bring together promising young people and make them work on the same projects. The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own.

Because you can’t tell a great hacker except by working with him, hackers themselves can’t tell how good they are. This is true to a degree in most fields. I’ve found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent.

But it’s particularly hard for hackers to know how good they are, because it’s hard to compare their work. This is easier in most other fields. In the hundred meters, you know in 10 seconds who’s fastest. Even in math there seems to be a general consensus about which problems are hard to solve, and what constitutes a good solution. But hacking is like writing. Who can say which of two novels is better? Certainly not the authors.

With hackers, at least, other hackers can tell. That’s because, unlike novelists, hackers collaborate on projects. When you get to hit a few difficult problems over the net at someone, you learn pretty quickly how hard they hit them back. But hackers can’t watch themselves at work. So if you ask a great hacker how good he is, he’s almost certain to reply, I don’t know. He’s not just being modest. He really doesn’t know.

And none of us know, except about people we’ve actually worked with. Which puts us in a weird situation: we don’t know who our heroes should be. The hackers who become famous tend to become famous by random accidents of PR. Occasionally I need to give an example of a great hacker, and I never know who to use. The first names that come to mind always tend to be people I know personally, but it seems lame to use them. So, I think, maybe I should say Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, or Alan Kay, or someone famous like that. But I have no idea if these guys are great hackers. I’ve never worked with them on anything.

If there is a Michael Jordan of hacking, no one knows, including him.

Cultivation

Finally, the question the hackers have all been wondering about: how do you become a great hacker? I don’t know if it’s possible to make yourself into one. But it’s certainly possible to do things that make you stupid, and if you can make yourself stupid, you can probably make yourself smart too.

The key to being a good hacker may be to work on what you like. When I think about the great hackers I know, one thing they have in common is the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don’t want to. I don’t know if this is cause or effect; it may be both.

To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you’re likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you’re worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is.

The best hackers tend to be smart, of course, but that’s true in a lot of fields. Is there some quality that’s unique to hackers? I asked some friends, and the number one thing they mentioned was curiosity. I’d always supposed that all smart people were curious– that curiosity was simply the first derivative of knowledge. But apparently hackers are particularly curious, especially about how things work. That makes sense, because programs are in effect giant descriptions of how things work.

Several friends mentioned hackers’ ability to concentrate– their ability, as one put it, to “tune out everything outside their own heads.” I’ve certainly noticed this. And I’ve heard several hackers say that after drinking even half a beer they can’t program at all. So maybe hacking does require some special ability to focus. Perhaps great hackers can load a large amount of context into their head, so that when they look at a line of code, they see not just that line but the whole program around it. John McPhee wrote that Bill Bradley’s success as a basketball player was due partly to his extraordinary peripheral vision. “Perfect” eyesight means about 47 degrees of vertical peripheral vision. Bill Bradley had 70; he could see the basket when he was looking at the floor. Maybe great hackers have some similar inborn ability. (I cheat by using a very denselanguage, which shrinks the court.)

This could explain the disconnect over cubicles. Maybe the people in charge of facilities, not having any concentration to shatter, have no idea that working in a cubicle feels to a hacker like having one’s brain in a blender. (Whereas Bill, if the rumors of autism are true, knows all too well.)

One difference I’ve noticed between great hackers and smart people in general is that hackers are more politically incorrect. To the extent there is a secret handshake among good hackers, it’s when they know one another well enough to express opinions that would get them stoned to death by the general public. And I can see why political incorrectness would be a useful quality in programming. Programs are very complex and, at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. In such situations it’s helpful to have a habit of questioning assumptions.

Can you cultivate these qualities? I don’t know. But you can at least not repress them. So here is my best shot at a recipe. If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker, the way to do it may be to make the following deal with yourself: you never have to work on boring projects (unless your family will starve otherwise), and in return, you’ll never allow yourself to do a half-assed job. All the great hackers I know seem to have made that deal, though perhaps none of them had any choice in the matter.

Notes

[1] In fairness, I have to say that IBM makes decent hardware. I wrote this on an IBM laptop.

[2] They did turn out to be doomed. They shut down a few months later.

[3] I think this is what people mean when they talk about the “meaning of life.” On the face of it, this seems an odd idea. Life isn’t an expression; how could it have meaning? But it can have a quality that feels a lot like meaning. In a project like a compiler, you have to solve a lot of problems, but the problems all fall into a pattern, as in a signal. Whereas when the problems you have to solve are random, they seem like noise.

[4] Einstein at one point worked designing refrigerators. (He had equity.)

[5] It’s hard to say exactly what constitutes research in the computer world, but as a first approximation, it’s software that doesn’t have users.

I don’t think it’s publication that makes the best hackers want to work in research departments. I think it’s mainly not having to have a three hour meeting with a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of Word 13.27 with the talking paperclip.

[6] Something similar has been happening for a long time in the construction industry. When you had a house built a couple hundred years ago, the local builders built everything in it. But increasingly what builders do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone else. This has, like the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the freedom to experiment in disastrous ways, but it is certainly more efficient.

[7] Google is much more dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was. Probably more dangerous than any other company has ever been. Not least because they’re determined to fight. On their job listing page, they say that one of their “core values” is “Don’t be evil.” From a company selling soybean oil or mining equipment, such a statement would merely be eccentric. But I think all of us in the computer world recognize who that is a declaration of war on.

From: http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

Judy Ann Santos - Philippine Superstar

If there is someone that I hate more than Ms. Judy Ann Santos, that someone would have to be a person who has a job that he or she is not passionate about.

I don’t know if it’s the Philippine economy or just the Filipino culture that makes it “okay” for someone to live a life of suffering; enduring a job he or she hates for exchange of a comfortable life and a prestigious career. I’ve heard countless stories of teenagers being forced by their parents to take a course like Medicine, Law or Engineering (Courses which will attach fancy-sounding, age-old, titles to their child’s name) against their child’s will. I’ve accidentally watched countless Pinoy movies with the same theme. (Kid wants to major in Fine Arts, MOM aka Mrs. Attorney wants the kid to major in Law and be a lawyer. Sounds familiar?)

Five years ago, Nursing became a popular course for High School graduates to take in college. I know that because that was the year when I graduated from High School. During that time, some of my classmates took Nursing courses not because they want to be nurses but just because being a nurse would almost guarantee a free-work pass to the US and a chance of snatching that American dream. And you know what? I think majority of the newly graduated nurses thinks the same too.

Nursing school in the Philippines

Is this already a deeply-ingrained practice in our society? Seems so.

In College, I have met a lot of people who did not know the exact reason why they took Computer Science. Most of them did not even know what Computer Science is when they took it. Some of them took the course because they heard from their Uncle’s Friend’s Cousin’s who is the Executive Vice President of a multinational company that being a programmer pays well. True Story. Some of them took computer science because they thought computer science is EASY and because they thought computer-related jobs are easy to get.

For me, the only reason that you should take a course is because you absolutely love it. No other reason should override that. Your course will more-or-less dictate your life long profession. It will define you. You will breathe it, you will think about it, most of your waking hours will be used to deal with it. IT WILL DEFINE YOU. Why waste it in something you don’t really want? That’s stupid.

This pattern is not limited to Nursing or Computer Science. Look around you… Technical support staff, Call center agents, etc. I bet you that majority of them are there not because they love their job but because of the money. And you wonder why you are getting crappy customer service when you call your DSL support hotline? The moment they pickup the phone, they are already thinking of the best and fastest way to put it down. The more calls they get, the more money they’ll receive. This should stop. (One could argue that the system is to be blamed, but who can change the system?)

When I was in college, I really believed that everyone working in the software industry are passionate, nerdy, geeky programmers. But reality begs to disagree. I have met my share of software developers who are just here for the money, for the career.

So what is wrong with having a job that you are not passionate about? Well, I believe that if one is not passionate about his or her job one will always produce average and mediocre result. The Filipino culture of “Puwede na yan” (That’s good enough) fits the image perfectly. Maybe this is why you can see this pattern everywhere?

If you don’t really like what you are doing and if you are only after the rewards of finishing the job, you would never go the extra mile to rise above mediocrity. Well, if there is an additional reward for doing so, then you just might. But you would never work unpaid on an overtime just because you want to add that last “touch” that will make your result or product a little more perfect, because there is no additional reward for doing so.

I really admire the Japanese work ethics… they always aim to perfect something. I call that the Samurai Mindset, the art of the samurai. On the other hand, the unpassionate Filipino worker would outright claim that “nothing is perfect”, “perfection is impossible” then give up trying.

During my college days, I’ve met my fair share of these unpassionate programmers. Some of them are even dean’s listers and cumlaudes. Its just sad. You can see it on their projects (Computer Systems)… Since projects only accounts for 15% of the total grade, they would submit these mediocre systems that just meet the requirements. They would argue that its pointless to make your project perfect since its only a portion of the grade. Never trust the grades.

It is a well known fact that the local IT industry gives one of the highest salary and that is making the situation a lot worse. Just like in Nursing, teenagers and their parents are most likely to choose IT courses because of the eventual monetary payoff and that is attracting more potential unpassionate programmers.

And Software companies hiring non-technical graduates for a programming job isn’t helping either.

Without passionate programmers, the local Software Industry would never be able to produce really innovative products. We will just be stuck as a source for cheap software “labor”. Making and remaking the same boring “business” systems. Producing average products, for average people.

6 Months of Corporate Citizenry

For those who are not acquainted with the Philippine’s Labor System, let me put you up to speed with the “regularization” process. When a new employee enters a company, there is a six-month “getting-to-know” period wherein the employer will closely observe the employee’s job performance and base on that performance, the employer would decide whether to keep the employee as a “regular” employee or not (Fired). During that “getting-to-know” period, you as an “irregular/probationary” employee, are not entitled with some benefits like full medical benefits, perfect attendance bonus, etc.

Somehow, the people who are responsible for monitoring my job performance thought that the performance I have shown for the last six months is acceptable and have decided to promote me to a regular employee.

During the past six months, I have experienced a lot of new, exciting things. Like learning a new programming language, approaching random girls at some public place and consuming alcoholic beverages. I can’t say that all of them are geeky experiences, but hey, its part of being human.

Listed below are things that I have experienced during the past six months (this is not a complete list of what transpired for the last six months):

• Worked on four separate projects
• Started a blog about software development
• Learned COM
• Worked on a Localization project
• Migrated a product to work on Vista
• Drank Zombie
• Asked the digits of a totally random chick
• Worked with bit patterns
• Discovered that Javascript doesn’t support internationalization (Russian dates)
• Learned Impersonation (and the basics of Windows Security)
• Consumed Alcopops
• Written a blog post about nationalism and got flamed
• Attended a Leadership Conference
• Received an award for delivering a product on time
• Bought a shoe with my own money
• Hated DateTime parsing on .NET
• Partially learned AJAX and JSON
• Maintained and supported three products
• Created and documented a new build process
• Discovered SNSD
• Dined at really expensive restaurants
• Wore a suit
• Felt the pain of migrating .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0
• Debugged a 25 line SELECT statement (with 5 joins)
• Coding Horror
• Got really pissed with an officemate
• Admired the technical knowledge of my superiors
• Treated the entire team to a Pizza
• Jogged 2 kilometers at a real outdoor red urethane track
• Talked to a Microsoft representative
• Coordinated with testers to resolve an issue with our product
• Paid Taxes
• Joined a fan club
• Had a Flu Shot
• Discovered that my bone density is uber low
• Wore eyeglasses
• Was astonished at how big corporations work (Changing a splash screen image needed the approval of a bunch of people)
• Appreciated my work environment
• Learned Windows Communication Framework
• Worked with SVG graphs (and discovered that Visual Studio 2005 and Adobe SVG Viewer hates each other)
• Had someone tell me that I lack professionalism
• Broke a daily build
• Really understood what text encoding is all about
• Discovered that the real world is full of mediocrity
• Experienced integration hell
• Surprised that most software developers doesn’t follow best practices for Localization support
• Studied MFC
• Understood the meaning of Teamwork

Most of these experiences are not possible without the help and encouragement of my teammates (especially the Zombie one!). So I would like to thank my team (you know who you guys are) for being such great geek buddies and for actually teaching me a few stuff about life. We may not agree on some topics (SNSD vs Wondergirls, Gravity, Time Management, Filipino Culture, etc), but I am damn sure that we had a lot of fun debating. Seriously, thanks!

Looking forward to a great year (and career) ahead!

Adidas Ozweego 365

It was just like yesterday when my Dad took me to a nearby mall to buy me my first pair of school shoes. I can still vividly remember that shoe – it was black, made of leather, and had those noisy “strap-ons”.

'twas black, made of leather and had those noisy "strap-ons".

I never chose that shoe. I hated it. It was common and boring. Everyone in school wore the same shoe except for the cool kids. The cool kids had those shoe that will light/blink whenever you take a step. I want that shoe and I remember crying and whining all the way home when my Dad forced me to “choose” the leather one. I’ve always hated leather shoes.

Cool Kid's Shoes -- IT BLINKS!

Time flies. I’m already 20-ish, and today is the first time that I bought my own pair of shoes! Without my dad telling me what to like, choose or buy. I also paid it on my own. Oh, the price of independence.

A Typical Call Center in the Philippines

WOW. After watching this video/documentary, I can definitely say that the state of outsourcing here in the Philippines is SO MUCH better compared to India.

What happens when a successful US-based computer programmer, who lost his lucrative job to outsourcing, travels to India to try to get it back?

Will he discover the secret of India’s success, or that sending jobs overseas is an unstable gamble?

The videos below share his incredible experience. It’s a fascinating and humanizing portrait of real Indians in Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley of India”.

This inside look shows how ridiculous it is to throw around terms like “slave labor” and “stealing jobs” without understanding the realities of this unusual world where best jobs start at 6pm and end at 3am…

Three suggestions:

1. Keep in mind which jobs are displacing foreign workers and which are not.
2. Notice the level of complaining among Indian workers. It’s almost non-existent.
3. Give the videos a minute to load. Patience, young Jedi.

This is hard-to-find coverage that will change how you think about “your” job. Highly recommended.

Watch the documentary here!

DateTime.Parse() will break your software on localized system

So, after some time working on the migration project, we finally released a stable Release Candidate. While the Test Team is still running their Critical Regression testing (that’s the final test before release) on the release candidate, I was transferred back to the Localization project.

My current task is to make a certain web application work with the localized version of our product which is running on a localized version of Windows.

So far, there are 8 tracks filled against this certain web application. A quick look at the tracks revealed a common problem:

“String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.”

Along with that error message, the exception also gave the error’s stack trace. Lucky for me, it already gave the name of the offending namespace (but no line number, weird.) So I dig thru the code and found this on a simple Get/Set class:

private static DateTime _offset = DateTime.Parse("04/21/2007 1:45 PM");

There are a couple of things that tickled my curiosity. Firstly, what is the purpose of this offset and why is this certain date chosen as the offset? Secondly, why is there a hardcoded date on this code? Finally (and most importantly), will DateTime.Parse() be able to parse the standard US date format (MM/DD/YYYY) in a localized version of Windows (running a Russian locale)?

The first two questions were never answered (the developer who made it is no longer connected with the company). But the answer to the last question was given (more like demonstrated) by my manager using Iron Python. My manager loaded a copy of Iron Python into a running Russian Windows Server 2008. He then launched Iron Python’s Command Line Interpreter for .NET (ipy.exe) then typed the following commands:

import System
DateTime _offset = DateTime.Parse("04/21/2007 1:45 PM")

Shockingly, the Parse command thrown an exception! DateTime.Parse() is dependent to the current CultureInfo of the machine! Since the Russian version of Windows uses the default russian date format (ISO 639.1) which is DD.MM.YYYY, DateTime.Parse() was not able to “understand” the supplied date in standard US format MM/DD/YYYY.

As a simple fix, instead of parsing the date and time, I passed the values as argument like so:

private static DateTime _offset = new DateTime(4,21,2007,13,45,00);

Problem solved!

Wordpress 2.8 Upgrade, Pain in the as*

A number of things had gone wrong during the upgrade:

1. During the automatic upgrade of my plugins, some of them didn’t restart succesfully on their own so I have to manually activate them agian.
2. Some widgets were removed. Needed to re-add it manually again (Most Viewed Widget).
3. My custom smiley was erased. Need to re-upload them again.
4. The Wordpress editor (TinyMCE Editor) font had defaulted back to its original font (Times New Roman, 12px). This is frustrating because I totally forgot how to set the editor font. You need to manually match the editor font to the blog font to have the WYSIWIG effect. (For my future reference, the settings are in wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/skins/wp_theme/content.css . You need to click “Save Draft” after making the css changes to see its effect!)
5. After upgrading to Wordpress 2.8, I checked to see if IE 8 will display the site properly (thankfully it did!). However, I noticed that my blog is now serving ads from specificclick.net! (I wasn’t able to notice the pop-up ad from Firefox because I’m using Ad Block Plus). At first, I thought that my friend’s hosting service / contract has changed and is now injecting ads into my blog (talked to him and he said that he hasn’t done anything). Then, I suspected that one of the plugin owners got broke and decided to sell ads thru their plugins… So I deactivated all plugin to no avail. So then I suspected that Wordpress 2.8 might be serving the ads (how pathetically stupid of me, Wordpress wouldn’t do that!). So after a few hours of searching, I found out that SiteMeter is the one who is serving unsolicited ads from my site! (Don’t worry kids, I already replaced the JS code with the HTML code to block the ads. More info about the scandal here.)

I have also added the Global Translator plugin (see footer) to boost traffic. (Hey, not everyone can read Engrish! )

I haven’t checked every function of the blog yet. So if you find something that looks broken, please hit the comments! Thanks!

PS (totally unrelated): Yuri is so freakin’ cute! New SNSD single out on June 25!

“Madali lang to sayo. Parang laro laro lang.”

He would always give me that answer while putting on a big, warm smile. Every time that I see him coding or preparing a design document, I would always approach him and ask him out of curiosity, “Ano ginagawa mo Sir? Mahirap ba yan?” and he would always give me that answer. And I have always wondered what he meant by “parang laro laro lang“. Sadly, I was never able to ask him about the actual meaning of it (he is now in Singapore) but as an Intern, I assumed that he meant that “If you’re having fun, it’s easy!“.

So much for work being fun?

Even from Day 1, I have never looked at my job as *real* work. I have always looked at it as “laro laro lang”. That work is something fun. That does not mean that I don’t take my job seriously. As a matter of fact, I think that I am doing a good job while having tons of fun. Of course, seeing your job as “laro laro lang” does have some negative effects. As one of my co-worker has pointed out, I’m a bit lacking in the “professionalism” department. I don’t exactly know how she arrived to that fact but I am assuming that she doesn’t like me watching SNSD videos in the office or playing a casual Facebook game once in a while.

So I wondered, what’s the big fuss about Professionalism and what exactly is professionalism? A close colleague of mine suggested that I should read about professionalism while we are having a discussion about proper work ethics. And so I did. Quoting from Wikipedia, for someone to be considered as a “professional”, he/she should have the following:

1. Academic qualifications – a doctoral or law degree – i.e., university college/institute
2. Expert and specialised knowledge in field which one is practising professionally
3. Excellent manual/practical and literary skills in relation to profession
4. High quality work in (examples): creations, products, services, presentations, consultancy, primary/other research, administrative, marketing or other work endeavours.
5. A high standard of professional ethics, behaviour and work activities while carrying out one’s profession (as an employee, self-employed person, career, enterprise, business, company, or partnership/associate/colleague, etc.
6. Reasonable work moral and motivation. Having interest and desire to do a job well as well as holding positive attitude towards the profession are important elements in attaining a high level of professionalism.

1, check. 2, specialized knowledge, check. 3, sure, check. 4, check. 6, motivation! check!. Out of the 6 criteria, I sort-of fail in one so I’m about 83.33% Professional. Kidding aside, despite having someone put me on the “unprofessional” basket, I still believe that I am a professional. I still think that I have a high standard of professional ethics (ask the people that I have work with), and I still think that my behavior, even though you can classify me as a Kid with ADHD, is still within the “appropriate” range (I am not a model employee in terms of behavior, though). I admit that some of my work activities are not professional though, like playing a casual Facebook game in the office. BUT I assure you, it hasn’t negatively affected my output and my job. I would even go out on the limb here and claim that being able to have fun at work resulted in a positive output. (Facebook vs. Productivity articles here and here)

"Nerds are always getting in trouble. They say improper things for the same reason they dress unfashionably and have good ideas. Convention has less hold over them." - Paul Graham (Hackers and Painters)

Last Friday could have been one of the happiest day of my young career (~4 months). I was recognized for my efforts in delivering a product on time that is of high-quality (I’m paraphrasing here, couldn’t remember the exact words from the certificate). But sadly, last Friday turned out to be one of the saddest day in my professional life.

During our weekly team meeting (which is held every Friday), our Manager gave a guideline about the team’s “Expectations on proper usage of internet resource”. The guideline basically says:

1. Use the internet resource wisely
2. Access to Social Networking Sites like Friendster, Facebook and Multiply should not be abused
3. If you’re going to use the internet that is non-work related, be discreet.
4. Absolutely, no GAMES allowed

The guys made it clear that this is just a guideline, not a set of rules that we need to follow. They also stressed the fact that access to Social Network Sites are not forbidden but we should exercise our “best judgment” when accessing them during office hours. Finally, it was said, in verbatim, that games of any sort are no longer allowed.

In actuality, I am not against this guideline. The exact instance that I took the job, I was asked to sign a 13-page document that basically say “The internet is just for work”. I am just frustrated that the guidelines are not clear. Telling me to use my “best judgment” is like giving a kid the key to a candy store. My judgment and reasoning is so unconventional that conflict may arise from my actions. Also, judgment is subjective, what’s okay for me may not be okay for others and what’s okay for them may not be okay for me and that scares the sh*t out of me.

For some, this guideline is just, well, a guideline. “This is just a guideline, don’t take it too seriously”, a close colleague told me. Well, not for me. This particular guideline is a team “expectation”. It is like a promise that we have to each other. That is how I feel about it.

Personally, using my best judgment, I think that I have never abused my usage of the Internet. I may not be discreet on using them because I don’t understand the value of being discreet. I mean, we are still doing it, but we are doing it “secretly”. For me, Its like lying and I don’t like to lie.

I don’t understand why casual games in Facebook should be banned. I don’t understand the difference between a video and a game. If we are talking about bandwidth, the bandwidth consumption of a 5 minute video in Youtube is so much greater than the bandwidth consumed by Barn Buddy, a casual game that I am playing in Facebook.One of my colleague has pointed out that you are not just focused on the game but your cursor is also in it (You can’t really multi-task!). That’s a good point though but I’m not entirely convinced. But for the sake of following the guidelines and as a respect to the people around me, I will indefinitely suspend playing games while in the office (or I will be just “discreet” ).

Judgment is subjective. And that scares the s*it out of me.

To check how different the judgment of my colleagues are, I asked them personally about their take on the guideline. And boy I was not that surprised to discover that judgement is really subjective. One of the guys basically told me that “The 8 hours in the office should just be for pure work”, while another guy told me that “It’s okay to take a break once in a while to relieve stress”. Another guy told me that “This is not an issue about productivity but the proper usage of the company resources.”.

This is what I am really scared about, judgment is subjective. You see, if I exercise my “best judgment” and still use Facebook, people on the team may think that I am being “abusive”, they may think that I am not paying attention to the guidelines, that I am disrespecting the entire team by not doing my part.

To be on the safe side, I just stopped using the Internet for non-work related stuff for the rest of the day. Considering that I only stopped using the Internet for just 4 hours, the psychological effect is so devastating. My motivation was down to ZERO and it felt like that I am just a slave that should do what he is supposed to do. From that point on, I felt that work is no longer fun. Work is now officially work and that made me extremely frustrated and sad.

My biggest fear is that this guideline will make work no longer fun. It will make work feel like *real* work. I can tolerate that kind of environment but I am afraid that this will hinder great work. I have always believed that the source of my skills is my passion. That I am doing a great job because I am enjoying every single moment of it. I am afraid that my output will be negatively affected if I no longer find work enjoyable. To quote Joel Spolsky:

For his part, Jeff says he didn’t want our new venture to feel “like work” — that if Stack Overflow wasn’t fun to do, he didn’t want to be doing it. If I had tried to make him play by my rules, I don’t think the project would have come together, at least not as well as it has.

The truth is, the three guys who coded Stack Overflow are great programmers. They’re smart, and they get things done. And in the end, that’s what really matters.

I believe that my team is composed of great software developers. I believe that we are smart and we can get things done. And I also believe that this is what really matter, to get things done.

So by Monday, I will default back to doing what I have always done which is to have fun. I will still try my best to get things done (which I have always done in the past). I will no longer play casual games in the office (to show my respect to the team’s expecatation) or at least hide somewhere when doing it . I can’t promise to be discreet but rest assured that my work and my job is still my priority. Finally, I believe in my teammates… I believe that they would always be there to offer me their best judgment when they find mine unfitting.

When I was an Intern at a large Global 500 company, my major responsibility is to deliver a Software Delivery process that uses the software engineering practice called Continuous Integration. In simple terms, I am responsible for a project to create and setup a Continuous Integration Build Server that will be used to “build” the company’s products.

During those days, when I hear the word “build” or “compile”, the first thing that comes into mind is to press the F5 button. Ever since I started programming, when someone asks me for a copy of my program or if I need to distribute the “binaries” of my program, all I do is press the F5 button to create an EXE (sometimes with a DLL), then browse to the output folder(Bin) and copy the binaries. Suffice to say, that is my “Software Delivery” process however crude it is.

In College, I got a little bit more sophisticated. My major projects are all carefully packaged in a very neat MSI installer — but that is just for the major projects. Most of my standalone tools are still made using the “Press F5 button to build” method.

So you can just imagine my horror when the Software Architect presented me my task on my first day at work. I don’t know anything about Software Delivery, more so Continuous Integration. What is more scary is that I am expected to deliver my output in just 240 hours (my Internship duration). But thru the continuous support of the said Software Architect, I somehow managed to cram the concept of Software Delivery and Continuous Integration in just 2 weeks. Also, this book helped a lot, too!

Expert .NET Delivery Using NAnt and CruiseControl.NET

The build process that I created is quite simple and somewhat standard. However, there was a special requirement that the test harness be run on a different machine and that made the build process a little bit more complicated. This are the different stages of my build process:

1. Clean-up: Before starting a new build, delete all the previous directories (Source codes, Artifacts, etc.)
2. Fetch: Get the latest copy from the source code repository
3. Build: Compile the different projects
4. Archive: Tag the build then archive it
5. Test: Run the unit tests, measure code coverage and perform static code analysis
6. Feedback: Provide feedback by generating reports (with beautiful graphs!)

CruiseControl.NET Build History

The build process will automatically check for any changes in the Source Code Repository every 15 minutes, if it detects any change in the code, it will automatically start the build process. That is one of the advantage of using Continuous Integration — there is no need for a costly “Integration” phase.

In my previous blog posts, I’ve mentioned that I am working on a certain product that will be shipped later this month. Well, that project is nearing its completion. We now have a “Beta” build for our product and it won’t be long before an official Release Candidate is available.

During our weekly status meeting, I brought up a concern regarding how we are building our Beta builds that are being sent to the Test Department. Our current Build Machine (which is physically located locally) also acts as our Development Machine. All of the development activities like bug fixing are being done on the Build Machine. If you are REALLY REALLY careful, this is fine but still, a little bit crazy. But since we are Software Developers, we are never too careful. We are programmers, we cause accidents.

So why is it important to have a dedicated build machine? Here’s why.

1. Pristine – You want to keep the build machine as clean as possible to make sure that only the needed resources are being included in the build. If your build machine also acts as your development machine, keeping a pristine state is a very tough task. When I inspected our latest Beta build, I was shocked to see that there are *.pdb (debug) files included in the install image.
2. Control - It is very important to control your Build Environment. All of your builds must be coming from a standard setup from a standard state. The keyword here is standard. This means that the “exact state” of the machine used in creating Build 001 should also be used in creating Build 002. When you use your Build Machine as a Development Machine, it is almost impossible to maintain this “exact state” every time for every build. When we were migrating our product from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005, we added the SQL2005 installer to our local build machine but somehow, someone forgot to add the SQL 2005 installer to the source code repository. When we tried building from a new build machine, the installer would no longer work.
3. Reliability - All builds coming from the build machine must be Reliable. If you are using your Build Machine as a Development Machine, most often the not, your builds are coming from your local copy and not from the Source Code Repository. In most cases, this is okay. But in our case where the final build will be built using the official build machine (located in the US), this is a big problem. One of the problem that we encountered is that the local copy is not in sync with the repository copy. We are Humans, sometimes we forget to check-in our changes.

To solve the above problems (and since we don’t have any spare machines ), I used a Virtual Machine! Yes, I used a Virtual Machine as a Build Machine. After 3 days of fixing the build scripts and updating the unsync’d files, I was able to create a clean and working build from my VM Build Machine.

I'm a big VirtualBox fan!

Virtual Machines are perfect as Build Machines. You can always maintain a pristine state by creating a snapshot of a freshly installed setup build environment and always building from there. Everytime that you need to create a build, you can just rollback to that pristine state. This feature of build machines gives you control over your build environment. Since you are always rolling back to a pristine state, you will then be forced to always fetch the latest copy from your source code repository! This means that you can be confident the builds coming out from your build machine is always reliable.

Before, I have no faith in our source code repository copy. As a result, I am always too anxious in making sure that I don’t break the local copy. There’s always that constant fear that the official copy from the Source Code Repository is broken or the official copy does not reflect the local “tested” copy. Now, I am always confident that anytime, anywhere in the company, we can always create a clean and reliable build that will work straigth from the repository. That feeling is very liberating!

EDIT: It was not my intention to offend people, I just want to share my opinion in my personal blog. Again, If I have offended you, I apologize.

I apologize for the sudden lack of software development updates. Its just that I got hit by the Korean Fever (no, its not a pandemic Flu! ) So please forgive this non-programming blog post.

Girls Generation

My addiction to all things Korean started when my Ex showed me a cute music video of a South Korean nine-member girl group called Girls Generation (SNSD/????). At first, I got very annoyed with the crazy jingle, but I instantly recognized the cuteness of the video. Now, I have a total of 4 GB of SNSD videos (meticulously stolen from Youtube), their complete discography on my Phone, and SNSD Ringtones. I am so addicted to them that I even have my four office monitors with SNSD wallpapers and SNSD Screensavers. I even watch and listen to my SNSD videos while working. My colleague, too, is also uber addicted to them and he says that the video increases his productivity!

To make my addiction worse, my brother who is addicted to Korean and Japanese Dramas, introduced me to Boys Before Flowers – the Korean drama adaptation of the Japanese manga Hana Yori Dango. After watching the said video, I suddenly want a Korean Hairstyle and a wardrobe makeover. Now, my TV set is locked-in to KBS. (And somebody please remind me to call Sky Cable to inquire YTF they removed Arirang from my TV Listing).

To my curiosity, I researched about the history of South Korea, the culture of South Korea and the economy of South Korea. And one thing was apparent, South Koreans love their country. They are proud of their lineage. They are both protectors of their future and guardians of their past. Just like the Japanese, they are nationalistic.

So it begs the question, Why are they Nationalistic and Why Filipinos are not? After sometime thinking bout this, I arrived at a simple answer.

Because they have something to be proud of!

In South Korea’s case, there is really something to be proud of. After their formal establishment in 1948, South Korea’s GDP is insanely growing. Just look at this graph!

South Korea's GRP Nominal Groth from 1960 to 2007

Just reading this Wikipedia article makes me want to be Korean:

The economy of South Korea is a highly developed^[7] trillion dollar free-market economy that is the fourth largest in Asia and 13th largest in the world. South Korea’s overnight transformation to a wealthy developed country in less than half a century is often called the Miracle on the Han River and earned the distinctive reputation of “Asian Tiger” in the international community.

Today, South Korea is classified as a high income economy by the World Bank and an advanced economy by the IMF and CIA. Its capital, Seoul, is a major global city and a leading international financial centre in Asia.^[8] South Koreans enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world and have a high life expectancy and a high level of economic freedom.

An extremely competitive education system and a highly skilled and motivated workforce are two key factors driving this knowledge economy that has the world’s highest scientific literacy^[9] and second highest mathematical literacy.^[9]

It boasts the world’s highest broadband internet access per capita^[10] and is the most wired country in the world.^[11] In 2007, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked South Korea’s IT Industry Competitiveness among the top three in the world^[12].

For the longest time, I can say that my nationalism is peculiarly high for a kid my age. I have always believed that the Philippines still has a chance. That my generation will somehow get us back on track. But now, I’m having second thoughts. In the past, I have a strong hate against the people who are leaving our country to work abroad. Now, I want to grab the cheapest flight to South Korea and work there, forever. If only majority of South Koreans can speak English.

Lapu Lapu -- True blooded Pilipino

To be fair, I did some research too about Filipino History. Sad as it is, there is only one instance in the entire Filipino History that I can truthfully say that I am proud to be a Filipino and that was the time when Lapu-Lapu killed Magellan. This is how I imagined it happened:

Lapu-Lapu’s Second Hand Man: Sir, the Spaniards are arriving! They are 3 miles off the coast of Mactan!

Lapu-Lapu: Let them come to their deaths! /gg

Lapu-Lapu’s Second Hand Man: *Thinking* “What the f*ck? Are you freakin’ insane? They have GUNS!”

*After 5 hours of waiting* (The boats are not diesel-powered, afterall)

Lapu-Lapu to Magellan’s Messenger: Before you speak, Spaniard, know that in Mactan… Everyone, even a King’s messenger, is held accountable for the words of his voice. Now, what message do you bring? (In Spartan voice)

Magellan’s Messenger: Education and Religion.

Lapu-Lapu: You rode all the way from Spain for Education and Religion? Do not be coy or stupid, Spaniard. You can afford neither in Mactan.

Magellan’s Messenger: THIS IS MADNESS!

Lapu-Lapu: Madness? THIS IS M-A-C-T-A-N!

Lapu-Lapu then stabbed the Messenger in the right eye. He then grabbed his “Spear” and threw it to Magellan who is observing from the balcony of his boat. Magellan got hit in the heart and then died and his men, slaughtered.

How can you not be proud? That is pure courage and valiance! A mark of a true Filipino. After Lapu-Lapu, all of the so-called “Filipino Heroes” are either 1.) A modern equivalent of a Blogger or 2.) An exact replica of a Bayanmuna Representative.

We only have ONE TRUE HERO in our entire history and what did we do to honor him? Put him in a 1 centavo coin! Seriously? When was the last time you saw one?

Lapu Lapu on 1 centavo coin

On our largest bill (1 thousand peso bill), we have the face of three unknown clowns. The only one that I am a little familiar with is Jose Abad Santos. I am not familiar with “Jose Abad Santos” (the person), but I am familiar with Jose Abad Santos (the street).

One Thousand Peso Bill

As a Filipino, its really hard to be nationalistic. When you hear news about the Philippines being the most corrupt country in Asia, how can you be nationalistic? When you see Politicians sitting in their Limo being escorted by the Police in a congested Makati street while you, the TAXPAYER, is sitting in a Jeepney inhaling all the smoke and sweating to death,how can you be nationalistic? When you watch insanely corny and cheap presidential campaign videos that you know is full of BS, how can you be nationalistic? When you see a “senator” who involves himself in a celebrity scandal that has nothing to do in making the Philippines a better country, how can you be nationalistic?

Being a Filipino is there something to be proud of? As a Filipino, how can we be nationalistic? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a clue.