tedxdiliman 2012

the stage is set for tedxdiliman

urban graffiti defines a strange facet of the city.
photo by benjamin dela pena

the future of human rights according to atty ted te

former senator leticia ramos-shahani describes the differences in distance
of scarborough & spratlys from the philippines and from china

director jose javier reyes postulates that in man's struggle
to be at one with the world, he ends up being just one 

casa de san miguel stirs up the atmosphere with some
gut-wrenching music on strings

rick rocamora displays his knack for visual storytelling

tony oposa reminds us that we have only one earth

jaemark tordecilla explains how the azkals team easily got 1 million pesos
from manny v pangilinan

this was ermita near roxas boulevard during a foregone era

and these stuff are my take-home souvenirs from tedxdiliman 2012 (plushies not included):

tedxdiliman shirt

the cover reminds me of a psychedelic mc escher painting

my nametag is without a last name

forty-third TED translation

Ipinamalas ni Pattie Maes ang "Sixth Sense," ang teknolohiyang sinusuot na babago sa lahat
TED2009, filmed february 2009, postedmarch 2009
Translated into Filipino by Polimar Balatbat
Reviewed by Schubert Malbas

forty-second TED translation

Ang ninuno ng wika, ni Murray Gell-Mann
TED2007, filmed march 2007, postedjune 2008
Translated into Tagalog by Chris S
Reviewed by Schubert Malbas

seryoso na 'to

my spanish is getting rusty again, after 1 month of disuse. ugh

astrobiology & mims

the search for extraterrestrial life & life-saving drugs sit next to each other

i have to thank my pharma elective for teaching me to look at mims to list down the costs of each drug. it was my first time to appreciate such a neat book. looking back, the publishers of mims actually turned me down when i applied for a job at their company as mims researcher/writer.

as for my astrobiology book, it was another rescue sale i did at booksale for only 20 pesos; i consider that as rescuing because they'd rather stay with me and be read, rather than collect fungus on a shelf while no one bothers to purchase them. i've never got past chapter 1 because of the pharma reports last week; we'll see if my schedule this week, together with a bit of clinical work from ortho-rheuma-rehab, can accomodate some geek lovin'.

mga biskwit

nabawasan ng isa dahil kinain na 'yung condensada flavor

mga kape

nagsulputan ang mga 3-in-1 ngayon na parang kabute 

urban water art

This is pretty awesome... I'd say both  awesome and pretty.


Water Light Graffiti by Antonin Fourneau, created in the Digitalarti Artlab from Digitalarti on Vimeo.

The "Water Light Graffiti" is a surface made of thousands of LED illuminated by the contact of water. You can use a paintbrush, a water atomizer, your fingers or anything damp to sketch a brightness message or just to draw. Water Light Graffiti is a wall for ephemeral messages in the urban space without deterioration. A wall to communicate and share magically in the city.

The Water Light Graffiti project is a creation of Antonin Fourneau and his team. The art installation was done in Poitiers, France last July. I can imagine this LED board being installed on the seaside park behind the mall of asia. It's going to be a hit.

rescued some books

some basic tools

¿cuál es correcto, oto-ophtha or ophtha-oto?

books on a long weekend

un mensaje de señor carl sagan

just months before he died in 1996, author & scientist Carl Sagan wrote a message to all the future colonists of the planet Mars. who knew that just about 16 years later, we're celebrating a major breakthrough towards colonizing our neighboring planet.

experimentar con los gatos

cats are fond of chasing lights aren't they

somebodies that i used to know

Taking a cue from Eric Whitacre and his fantastic TEDTalk “A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong” at TED2011, Belgian-Aussie singer and songwriter Gotye posted a similar video over last weekend, entitled “Somebodies: A YouTube Orchestra.”

Says Gotye from his official YouTube channel:

Reluctant as I am to add to the mountain of interpretations of Somebody That I Used To Know seemingly taking over their own area of the internet, I couldn't resist the massive remixability that such a large, varied yet connected bundle of source material offered. Thank you to everyone who has responded to Somebody That I Used To Know via YouTube. It's truly amazing!

The video is a mashup of his smash hit “Somebody That I Used To Know” that stitches together the many individuals who’ve posted covers of themselves playing the song. Take out the words from this song, and it's still music to my ears. Beautiful; just beautiful.

the geek zodiac

Well, apparently there is such a thing as Geek Zodiac! It comes with a cool poster and you can search your zodiac assignment by year of birth. There's also an ongoing comic series featuring the characters; you might as well check that out, since it's pretty neat.

the 12 signs of the geek zodiac

So, what's your sign? (It says that I am an undead/slayer, a soulful transcendental that appreciates the value of all life forms, whatever that means!)

français o español

written french is so much easier compared to spoken french. ugh. all o'them french words sound the same, at least to my untrained ears.

me thinks spanish is straightforward and easier to understand, whether it is written or spoken.

i will learn you both, in due time.


for now, good vibes muna! ;)

snowflakes, ferns & dragons

from snowflake, to fern, to dragon:



The interpolation here is made from Koch snowflake to Barnsley's fern, from Barnsley's fern to Heighway's dragon and finally from Heighway's dragon to Koch snowflake (made by jfrusciantetube).

how to make the dragon fractal:

why i translate

TED & Global Voices have starkly different themes: TED is generally a global venue for sharing cutting-edge ideas across scientific & artistic disciplines (it can pass off as elitist, truth be told), while Global Voices is a dynamic online citizen media outlet about current events & news stories that traditional media sometimes ignore (a grassroots community with a grassroots orientation).

At the end of the day, however, their missions are one and the same: to spread worthy ideas across borders, including the barrier that is language, in which people are inherently varied.

coke, pop or soda

Edwin Chen posted this interesting post in his blog. Edwin Chen is a data scientist at Twitter.

Coke, soda, or pop? copyright Edwin Chen 2012

It shows which parts of the world use the word "coke", "soda", or "pop".

I think I'd like to suggest a corollary to this neat piece of geographical data. How about putting this data alongside a map of the prevalence of diabetes mellitus type 2 per country?  Notice how Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines are filled up with red dots? While most of Africa and China are spared? Would the prevalence of both disease and soft drink actually have a correlation? That'd be something awesome!

florence nightingale's pies

While researching about anesthesiology, I found out that Florence Nightingale was probably the pioneer in critical care medicine, having served as nurse in military camps in the Crimean War in the 1850's.

I also found out that Nightingale was an astute statistician! She was the first woman to be elected into the Royal Statistical Society (in UK) and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

If anything, she could very well be called the mother of graphical representation of data. One of her works is this pie chart known as the polar area diagram, the Nightingale rose diagram, or what we now call as the circular histogram.

florence nightingale's report on the causes of army morbidity circa 1854-1856 (source: Wikipedia)

An intensivist and a statistician at the same time! Wow.