Echo Binary

Since we only had cable TV in less than 1 year it’s understandable that I have not seen this documentary in 2006. It’s National Geographic: Fight Science. It’s great that Nat Geo played a replay of this documentary.

What interested me is not how they compared the martial arts. In fact, the documentary hardly compared which martial art is the best. It only distinguished what are the qualities of the best martial art and what techniques delivers the most damage. They also proved that legendary techniques are true such as the legendary death punch. The goal is to separate fighting fact from martial myth.

The engineers used a $150,000 Hybrid III biofidelic crash test dummy filled with sensors. It can determine the strength of the impact and the damage to the tissue relative to the blow. In weapon testing, they used human torso made of a material that mimics the density of human flesh. They also used motion capture to simulate the action in full 3D.

Martial arts featured: boxing, tae kwon do, kung fu, karate, muay thai & jiu-jitsu. Weapons featured: kali (Arnis), bo staff, nunchaku, three-section staff, bow & arrow, shuriken (throwing star), dao (Chinese broadsword), jian (Chinese straight sword) and katana.

Link: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/fightscience

Where is the Google love? I still haven’t seen the new UI for Gmail in my inbox. Apparently, my account has not received the upgrade yet. Maybe it’s randomly assigned. I’m using my Gmail account everyday — an avid user — why I haven’t seen the new version yet? I’ve been waiting for it ever since the first rumor came out.

While everyone is discussing the new features and showing off screenshots, I’m still here, waiting anxiously. I really hope that the new UI will be activated in my account soon.

Update:
I’m surprised to see that the “loading…” message in my account in Gmail had changed from red to yellow so I knew right away that my account is already using the new version. From what I have ‘felt’ so far, what I’ve read is true. There is a slight slow down when scrolling page. However, I noticed that there opening email from inbox listing is now faster. I think that the javascript is pre-fetching the content of the listed email so it now loads faster.

I really wonder why I’m still stuck with my old ATI Radeon 9550 graphics card after reading this review. It is already aged and it still uses AGP. Unbelievable. I totally skipped PCI-e version 1 because I’ve read that new graphics cards are now shipping for PCI-e 2.0 already.

As much as I like to upgrade, I pushed back my computer upgrade this coming Christmas ‘07 instead of last year’s. Then I’ll ask this question again. Do I really need an upgrade? My cheap-o-meter will instantly tell me that I don’t need an upgrade soon because my computer is still good for my work. Most of the times I’m running 3 different web browsers (Mozilla, Opera, IE) and a couple of multimedia applications. Overall, I’m still satisfied with the speed of my computer in image manipulation and compressing or uncompressing zipped files. I could play games in medium settings smoothly. Maybe I’m just excited with all these technologies that I am missing so I’m itching to get my hands on these products. What makes me excited are the following: Intel Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 8800 series, DDR3 Corsair memory modules and liquid cooling system. Man, if I can just buy all these on December, I’ll be so happy. Then, I’ll ask myself again. What will I do after 6 months? Will I buy the newer Intel microprocessors? I’m sure that 8800 series will be cheaper and there might be DDR4 as well. Will I still need to buy now?

I really hate how fast hardware gets outdated. Don’t let me start with cellphones. It’s just ridiculous how fast a cellphone with a price tag of P40,000 drops value after 6 to 9 months. Computer hardwares are more forgiving as they decrease in value slower than a cellphone unit but it’s disturbing if you want to invest on a gadget for a long term.

Nevermind how slow my computer is — the fact that I can still post in my blog using this good-old computer means that I don’t really need an upgrade yet. I play console games so why would I invest in P10,000++ graphics card when I can use that money to buy a PSP or PS3. The only reasonable thing I have in my mind to buy a new CPU this year is to get a fresh hardware to run my work-related stuffs and use my old hardware to run a local Linux file server.

So will I still buy a new computer this coming Christmas? Maybe.

I spent a week in “hermit mode” to focus on my office work and some other things that kept me busy. For instance, the Halloween costume party that we had last Friday — I spent several days pondering what the hell I’m going to wear that day. I’ll discuss the details later on.

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To begin with, I feel cheapskate these days because I want to save up more money to recover from my overspending last quarter. I’m happy that I managed to tune my car’s fuel consumption to the minimum since the recent oil price hike. I haven’t refueled for the last 3 weeks. That’s a record. Either I’m not using the car too often or the last change oil significantly improved the fuel efficiency of my car. Either way, I’m not complaining. It’s good no matter how I look at it.

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Now for the Halloween party last Friday, I cosplayed Akatsuki — more or less Itachi — since I didn’t have any weapon or accessory to carry. I didn’t have the Sharingan. That would be too silly or ricey (baduy)!. Red eyes… sore eyes? Bleh. It was my very first cosplay so I had a mixed feeling about it since I just improvised the costume. I made the cloak out of a black graduation gown (toga) and I put white straw / Japanese paper strips around the cone “rice hat” (actually I used bathroom tissue because I couldn’t find Japanese paper! kukuku!). I had to be creative to patch the symbol of Akatsuki, the red clouds, around my cloak. I used red construction papers and white paint to draw the outline of the clouds. Then I pasted, clipped and stitched the clouds around my cloak. I have 5 red clouds evenly distributed around my cloak and it was not an easy feat because the paper clouds can be ripped easily. If you’re familiar with toga, it does not have a collar so I had to wear black long sleeves to cover my neck. I also had to wear red shirt inside because the underside of my toga is also black. The underside color of Akatsuki’s cloack is red. Just use your imagination.

That’s not the fun part yet. The event took place in Manila Peninsula Hotel. Just imagine what the executives and VIP in the hotel lobby were thinking when I was walking along the hallway. Were all pretending like children there. I was fortunate that other people wore more ridiculous costumes than mine. It’s just a whim of my mind to cosplay Akatsuki. I can’t be bothered spending money for a costume so I just made one — and it happens that Akatsuki’s costume was very easy to create.

Near the end of the event, the organizers nominated best costumes. Since my costume was all improvised, when you inspect it closely, you’ll agree how overrate my costume was. It’s just appealing from a distance but the overall quality sucks big time when you scrutinize it. I’m lucky to be in the top 15 costumes because other people who spent real money on their costumes were not even recognized.

The lesson learned here is simple — it’s the thought that counts! If that makes any sense at all.

After seeing the news over and over again, I still can’t believe what happened. There was a big blast in Glorietta at around 1:30 PM this afternoon and I was near the vicinity when that happened. At that time I was searching for a book for my little brother in Greenbelt 1. I wanted to search for the book in Glorietta National Bookstore but I decided to return to office soon. Several minutes after I have arrived in the office, someone blurted out that there was a big explosion in Glorietta 2 as one of our officemate called and reported the commotion happening in Glorietta. We initially speculated that it was a bomb or an LPG tank explosion but it was confirmed later on — it is a bomb.

If you can recall the bombing that happened on February 14, 2005 at Ayala MRT bus station. This tragedy somewhat resembles the incident. A lot of people + busy hour + bombing = many bomb victims. This time however, there is no terrorist group associated with the bombing yet.

On my way to bus station this evening, I was very uneasy because I can’t stop thinking about the possibility of another bombing near the site. Despite tighter security, fear can be seen in the eyes of many passersby. I thank God that I managed to go back home safely. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the office. We planned to dine in Glorietta 3 that noon but luckily chose Greenbelt instead.