Published Scholars in the Philippines

Using Google Scholar data, webometrics ranks 453 scientists in the Philippines (June 2016 report). Each of these scientists has at least an h-index of 5. Starting 1978, the National Academy of Science and Technology of the Philippines has 117 Academicians, 38 of them became National Scientists. Since 1978, the Philippines has inducted 41 National Scientists.

To date, only 17 National Scientists are still living. I attempted to locate them in the Scopus database. Not all of them has a record at Scopus. The interactive map below is an attempt to visualize where these scholars served. Each pin is the location of an institution. A pop-up window shows the number of scholars in an institution, the total citations of the scholars, and the range of h-index of the scholars. The database I am curating now has 523 records (which is in no way exhaustive).

The scholars are obviously concentrated in the National Capital Region. The map however shows that there are scholars in other parts of country.

 

Champions!

My picks in championship games usually end up losing. Not this time though.

Dallas Mavericks won its first NBA championship trophy by winning 105-95 in its game 6 against Miami Heat! Miami Heat may have three of the best players but Dallas Mavs definitely is the better team.

Ateneo Eagles won the FilOil-Flying V Hanes Preseason Premier Cup (75-56) against the NCAA 2010 champion, San Beda Lions.

Pilipino Funny Komiks

Pilipino Funny Komiks for Children was published by Islas Filipinas Publishing Company from 1978 to 2004.  I collected PFK starting with issue #2.  I stopped buying PFK when I was already in College (but I did remember buying a PFK issue when I was still a freshman, as a 'pasalubong' to my siblings).  My whole PFK stash was left in our old house when we moved.  I remember having several boxes of PFKs.  I wish I could have those copies back. :-)

In October 2008, PFK was revived by Infinito Publishing.  Three issues were published in 2008 (#1405, #1406, #1407) and one issue in 2009 (#1408).  It is really hard to look for a copy of these PFKs.  I was able to purchase my first copy of #1407 at the National Bookstore at SM Megamall and #1408 at Filbars at SM Megamall.   The National Bookstore at Pavillion Mall (Sta Rosa) still has a copy of #1407.   I was able to get #1405 and #1406 from a newstand at Farmer's Market, Cubao.

#1405	#1406
#1407	#1408

There are some scans of old PFKs floating in the Internet.

If there are people out there who want to part with their old PFKs (circa 1978 to 1990), I would gladly take them. :-)

The Push for K+12

The Regional Consultation on the K+12 Educational Reform is on-going.  This morning, Dr. Isagani Cruz talked about the current ideas on how to implement K+12 in the near future.  K+12 is actually kindergarten + 6 years of elementary + 4 years of high school + 2 years of career academy.  Dr. Cruz however calls the last 2 years of basic ed as senior high school and not career academy.  Career academy is the one being pushed by Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ.

The K+12 will actually start next School Year (i.e., SY 2011-2012).  This however is met by hesitations and concerns.  Participants from Elementary schools expressed concern about training their teachers to teach an appropriate preparatory curriculum (i.e., the K in K+12 proposal).

The kindergarten program (the K in K+12) is essentially the familiar prep and not the current "kindergarten" program and not the nursery program.  In the K+12 proposal, kindergarten is necessary and not optional as before.

My concern is more on the assurance that graduates of Career Academies will actually get jobs.  This will entail close partnership with employers and the industry players.  I hope that DOLE and Employers Confederation of the Philippines actively participate in the implementation of K+12.

Nowadays, some employers would insist on a college degree requirement even if that is clearly an over-qualification.  I hope that graduates of a Career Academy will be attractive to employers and will be well paid.

Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ provides an excellent coverage of the K+12 Educational Reform (see : http://taborasj.wordpress.com/).

Remembering Robert Frost

I keep on hearing the President about "tuwid na daan" since his campaign to clinch the presidency.  I have this thought that people might mistake the "tuwid na daan" as the easy path and the "baluktot na daan" as the difficult one. 

I think it should be stressed that what we should be doing is to find the correct path, the path not easily discovered.  I recall a poem that we read in Mrs. Favoreal's class back in early 80s at NPS. The poem was written by Robert Frost, an American poet.  

The Road Not Taken

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost, Mountain Interval,1916)

Robert Frost was born March 26, 1874 and died January 29, 1963.

Giyera ng gulay -- circa 70s

Noong unang panahon, sa konstantinopla
Hari ang pipino, reyna ang malunggay
May anak-anakan na isang prinsesa
Bansag na pangalan, si donya patola
Kaginsa-ginsa ko, nag-kagulo-gulo
Lumabas ang lahat na konstabularyo
Nagpa-embahada si heneral upo
Si kondeng kalabasa ang siyang sumaklolo
Si sundalong talong ay sulong pa nang sulong
Si sundalong patani ang siyang sumalubong
Si sarhento bataw, mga sundalo'y tinipon
Dahilan sa giyerang hindi mai-urong

-- author unknown

I recall that this is part of our required readings when I'm in Grade 1 or 2.

The author perhaps is referring to a sort of a vegetable cuisine that involves pipino, malunggay, patola, upo, kalabasa, talong, patani, bataw -- salad?

Revisiting Fractal Compression technique

During the early nineties, I was involved in the Fractal Image Compression research of Ateneo de Manila.  Last night, I uncovered an early IFS-based algorithm implemented by Michael F. Barnsley and Lyman P. Hurd in 1992.  The implementation was written in C and only works on TGA monochrome images.  I modified the algorithm so that it would work on colored images. I then implemented it in C++.

A total of 2304 affine maps are needed to encode the 192 x 192 image below:

Using the said 2304 affine maps, the image below was produced after 16 iterations:

Obviously, the resulting image is not good because the reconstruction errors are very apparent.  I decided to throw away the use of unsigned char (used by Barnsley and Hurd). Instead I used floating point datatype to represent pixel data.  After a thorough code modification, I got the result below:
 

This result is amazing!  The difference image below shows where the errors are:

While I'm quite satisfied by my implementation, the compression process is slow.  I recall that this is a problem that hindered the progress of our research then.  I may work on this problem again when I get a substantial amount of spare time.

Gusto ko lamang

Gusto ko lamang sa buhay ay yakapin mo ako
Hindi naman ako milyonaryo
Basta't araw-araw yakap mo ko
Feeling ko ang yaman yaman ko

-itchyworms

Configuring Prepaid Globe Tattoo in my Ubuntu Linux 10.04

I bought Prepaid Globe Tattoo several weeks back.  However, it would not work in Ubuntu Linux out of the box. I found this thread in the internet and the guys there can't find a solution either.

I finally made Globe tattoo work.  It turned out that the Globe dongle I have is by default in mass storage mode.  A quick lsusb shows the following information.


me@me-laptop:~$ lsusb


Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 09da:000a A4 Tech Co., Ltd Port Mouse
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 08ff:1600 AuthenTec, Inc. AES1600
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 064e:a103 Suyin Corp.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 12d1:1446 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

The product ID is 1446 (mass storage mode) and not 1001 (modem mode).  I simply have to switch to modem mode!  To do this, I have to install usb-modeswitch program, which quite easy to do using apt-get.

me@me-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install usb-modeswitch

After which, the next step is easy. Switch to modem mode using the following command!

me@me-laptop:~$ sudo usb_modeswitch -H 12d1:1446 -v 12d1 -p 1446 -R -V 12d1 -P 1001

I ejected my Globe Tattoo and reinserted it.  I now works wonderfully.  In fact, I'm using Globe Tattoo now in my trusty Ubuntu Linux box. 

Btw -- of course you still have to do the usual mobile broadband configuration.

Making Epson T10 work in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

I have been using Ubuntu Linux since October 2009 as my main OS (Windows 7 is still available though on top of VirtualBox OSE).  I can't print however using Epson T10 even if I already installed the gutenprint library and cups-driver.

For three days, I searched the net for instructions on how to install the correct driver for Epson T10. Not one worked except for this post I got from Pinoy Computing Tips & Tricks.  It turned out that I have to downgrade libgutenprint2 v5.2.5 and cups-driver-gutenprint v5.2.5 to version v5.2.4.

Here's a procedure that worked for me (I'm using 64bit Ubuntu Linux 10.04):

1. Remove the existing gutenprint packages:

sudo apt-get remove libgutenprint2 cups-driver-gutenprint

2. Download the 64bit version of gutenprint v5.2.4 packages:

libgutenprint2 v5.2.4 (64-bit)
cups-driver-gutenprint v5.2.4 (64-bit)

3. Install the library.  Double-click libgutenprint2_5.2.4-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb file and click the Install button.

4. Install the cups-driver. Double-click cups-driver-gutenprint_5.2.4-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb file and click the Install button.

5. Lock the v2.5.4 version. Run Synaptic Package Manager and search for the gutenprint packages installed. Select each package and click Package ->Lock Version.

To Gie -- our colleague in teaching

She's someone who will never give up in any challenge.

She's my first Senior Project advisee back in the late 90s. If I'm not mistaken, she's the first one to finish the Senior Project requirement in the history of the Department of Computer Science of Ateneo de Naga. She's also the first editor of the Computer Science student publication named Bits and Pixels. She's the first CS graduate who accepted a teaching position in the Department of Computer Science. She's the first Region 5 Chapter President of the Philippine Society of Information Technology Educators.

She's a well loved teacher and a well loved colleague in the College of Computer Studies. She's a well loved daughter, sister, wife, mother, and friend to us. We will surely miss her.

There's no more fear, no more pain. When you surrendered your soul to God Almighty, only love remains -- love that we will remember in our hearts.

New Posting for 2010!

It's been a long time since my last post.

Hello Blogger! I'm here again.

End of vacation

Tomorrow is the start of the classes after the mid-semester vacation. Two weeks of vacation should have revitalized and prepared us to work ahead.

I would not exchange for anything else the time I spent with my family.

That was a vacation well spent.

Starting the year

I welcomed 2009 with my wife and kids in our new home in Cavite. We watched the fireworks in the neighborhood and feasted on pasta, chicken lollipop, glazed ham, roll, and salad. The most important thing is that we spent the media noche as a family in the new house.

Happy new year to everyone!

The year is almost over

This year has been a roller-coaster ride and I'm glad my wife is always here with me and I with her. We finally have a new home! There are still a couple of things to fix and furniture to buy though. Also, we never anticipated the inconveniences of following up documents and paying dues -- from the Engineers to the people at the City Hall to the utility companies.

Teaching is good but research is kind of faltering in the sense that there are few research opportunities. -- I'm glad though that our 3 year research proposal to DOST is approved. Hopefully we get the research fund early next year. I am under the impression that our research grant is a very small part of government budget devoted to research.

My undergraduate thesis advisees have been very diligent -- hopefully they will finish their projects on time.

Building our dreams - bit by bit

We wished to have our own home for a long time. Late last year, we finally started building one. The groundbreaking went without fanfare. The "trabajantes" even asked us if we are to celebrate the groundbreaking with lechon and pancit. Since we don't have any money to spare -- we have to disappoint them.

Our architect -- vis-a-vis -- our project manager is very efficient. The second floor of our house is already partitioned. Next week, our house will have roofing. Possibly, the stairs will also be in place next week.

Building a house, we realized, is not easy -- even if a husband and wife have decent jobs. You have to cough up a huge amount for house-bonds and for starting up the construction. In fact, the bank will not release your loaned money until X percent of the construction is done. I envy those OFWs who have the dollars to have their houses built. I have been thinking lately, that if -- a big IF -- I stayed a little bit longer in the US, I might have the money to finance the house construction without resorting to loans. Now, a substantial part of our net pay goes to mortgage.

Hopefully, we can transfer to the new house before the summer vacation.



State of construction, late December 2007



Planning for the construction, November 2007

Merry Christmas

My wife and kids are here with me in Naga today. What could be merrier?

Merry Christmas everyone!

Striked!

I commute daily. Others like me are affected by the transport strike today. Students commuting from outside Naga City will surely miss classes.

The Duke Superbowl

Duke U is known for excellent college basketball program but not in college football. Their weekend match with notre dame, a traditional college football powerhouse, however upped the desire of Duke fans to win. Duke and ND are both 1-9 in football standings (that is 1 win and 9 losses). There is a big possibility of Duke winning it -- a rare opportunity in a lifetime. :-) For a more humorous story, visit http://www.dukesuperbowl.com/

A new life!

Congratulations to daddy Manny and mommy Girlie. A 7-plus lbs baby will now make their nights memorable. We are very happy for them!