This was imported from my old
BlogDrive blog posts.
Oh yeah, now it’s on, on my job, lots of programming work. But I love pressure.
Top 5 for the week:
1. Midnight Venus – by w-inds
2. Resonance – by T.M.Revolution
3. Gekidou – by UVERworld
4. Athena – by abingdon boys school
5. Iris – by Goo Goo Dolls
Pacquiao wins, again. The stakes are getting a bit higher every time he wins.
David Diaz got floored solidly at the 9th round, and with that Pacquiao took his belt, and that bulls-eye off his back.
If this is an indication, Pacquiao could very well stay at 135lbs until his body is comfortable enough to accomodate 140lbs.
Now he’s leading the charge of superfeatherweights invading the lightweight division. And Floyd Mayweather’s retired, so now he’s the de facto top boxer in the world.
The only problems with Manny Pacquiao now are these three factors:
1. Home, Country and Politics
I swear, politics and sports can never ever mix very well. Pacquiao should ditch the politicians hounding him, because what those politicians only want is a share of the kissing space on Pacquiao’s ass. If Pacquiao really wants lips pressing against his buttocks, let him be.
Pacquiao should never ever train again in the Philippines. Roach and Arum are right; there are way too many distractions in RP for a boxing trainee like Pacman. Commercials, ad placements, endorsements, show appearances, showbiz. And that really sucks big time if you’re in Roach’s shoes.
2. The “Time To Hang Up The Gloves”
Now that he’s Top Rank’s prime cash cow, when will Pacquiao see fit to retire?
When he’s basically at the top of his game like Mayweather did?
Or when he’s a whipping legend steppingstone used by rising boxing stars much like how Pacquiao did with Marco Antonio Barrera?
Time will tell. Or maybe his body will.
3. Where does his money go?
Admittedly, Pacquiao earns millions of pesos with each megabuck fight. And he should be wise where his money goes, because if he just looks at his own back, he can see his friends… and people with money on their sights.
It’s not a cynic point of view with that and Manny; it’s true. Pacquiao ran in the elections last year, and most of his “friends” took huge sums of money for trifle expenses that cost a pittance, much akin to collecting 10 million dollars just to buy a pair of plastic scissors at Wal-Mart.
Pacquiao should learn from the bitter lessons from past famed Filipino boxers like Luisito Espinosa, William Magahin, and Mansueto velasco, each whom earned millions of dollars and were the Philippines’ pride in the past but now live in poverty and obscurity.
Money eventually is spent. The only matter is “how fast” does it go. The slower the better.
The good thing now is that Pacquiao is getting a university degree in business administration. That’s great, now he can handle his business by himself.
Well, frankly, my mom’s getting a little under my skin lately. It’s akin to a tonic water that tastes just like yesterday’s stale used bath water; it’s bad, disgusting and leaves a very piss-poor taste in the mouth.
Now I know the local ube (a root crop product) sandwich spread and a few drops of vanilla extract in the container bottle, mixed together, tastes great.
When I was in Grade 6 I was also enthralled with cryptography. It was when I got hold of my mom’s first set of encyclopedias (she used to sell them as a sideline), I was reading random lexicon book letters weekly, devouring them due to the lack of JK Rowlings (though years later I bought her first book), Dan Browns, and Bob Ongs. Though I enjoyed most of Coelho’s novels at the school library too.
Don’t get me wrong though; I also consumed my high school library’s set of Hardy Boys detective novels (I managed to befriend the high school librarian and permit me to enter only for reading).
The World Book 2000 encyclopedia sets also included an A-K dictionary with a section of it dedicated to cryptography. I was riveted to it instantly. I never knew then people need to hide their messages while giving it – the irony of it, giving away to the public something only a select few can only understand, a language never native.
In the movie “Con Air”, the character played by John Cusack read a one-sentence English message from a Spanish consulate paper through the holed-out heads of the 12 apostles on a Last Supper postcard. Now that was cool. Hey, who said cryptography always needed math?
There’s simple substitution. Like substituting A-Z with any letter as long there is a guide on what is and what isn’t.
Some very complex. Take for example, a Reader’s Digest article pertaining to one war veteran who used a 36-letter key and arranged it in ascending order.
Like ADOBEREADER becoming AABDDEEEORR.
Then composing a diary in a 36 by 36 mathematical grid-style notebook using numerical positioning, becomes a set of randomly arranged letters until someone knew how.
In history there’s Enigma. And Caesar cipher.
Some also used columnar substitution. Arranging the letters in columns and rearranging them using a numeric passkey from 1-9. Or if he’s more sadistic, a column-row substitution with 2 passkeys.
In computer science too, the crptography field is also necessary. Cloaking private communication is one. Even the way of reading analog to digital signals is also a slight part of crptography, from 0s and 1s to readable information. Sometimes the art of cryptography in this science is called “encryption”.
But when I grew older and the enthusiasm waned away, I retained three from those experiences;
One, I don’t have to use cryptography at home; I am the only intellectual at home and even my dad doesn’t know much about history let alone to read a book explaining chaos theory. He knows no Shakespeare, no Sartre, no Dumas, no Homer, no Descartes, nothing. Just history in his experience and nothing more and less of it. I can just simply guise my home paper writings, anime CD Titles, file bindings and the usual hide-from-parents stuff, littering it with computer science jargon and linguistic wordiness and it becomes unreadable. Say I have anime DVDs stacked in a cylindrical plastic 20-pc container. I usually title it “2D Animation Installation and Reference” which is not entirely wrong, but is effective repellant for most.
Two, I can place some cryptography in my programs for fun. Like for example, I presented a good program in C language to one of my professors at UST a few years back. If you see the C code, it’s just normal. But if you take the floating random jumbled letters in some of the comments part of the program and arrange them in sequence, then placing the letters in an 8 by 8 grid and reading it from right to left (Japanese way), you’ll see a nice little tirade about my professor. I liked it especially that the professor graded so good a program filled with encrypted filth about him.
That was hard to do, but was made easier with graphing paper.
Some people (usually underclassmen) ask me to create their COBOL, C++ and Java programs. I always manage to insert my copyright and authorship in each, discreetly. I really love the 62287 number, that’s my birthdate in short date format. So I insert my copyright in the comment form (using double backslashes in C++ and Java) or some unnecessary jumbled letters in comment form in COBOL. In C++ and Java, just collect all strings and codes in comment form, get the 6th, the 22nd, the 8th and the 7th alphanumeric letters of every line (using the selected position to move 2 rights and 2 lefts, start with 0), beforehand this time replace all + with t and @ with a.
For example,
//this may be a step for numb. control and manipulation
//force reset = 0. It is necessary, to abort system redundancy
//1 reset01 variable paramtr. to be used as requirement for this funct’n.
//siml’n return glitch in some code runtime, but very minimal and irrelevant.
I hid my name in those 4 lines. Can you try?
Sometimes it needn’t be complicated. One of my PHP pages I did for my projects had a little salt in the coding.
Three, it’s not always the English alphabet that’s suited for coding. Take the Chinese writing characters. They also have a different reading style when used in Japan, so it’s a perfect vehicle for cryptographers to use. Or we can use historical references. Like word etymologies, geographical references and even blood-sugar content computation. Now that’s some serious coding there.
Imagine the possibility: intercepting a letter written in fluent Chinese but using English letters. Then convert it to standard Chinese symbols. That is hard, but in the share of the pie that’s the easy part. Then converting it to its equivalent Kanji reading and convert it to English. Only linguists will have an easy day for this.
Bonus: my thesis program was devoid of any of my copyright and/or sarcastic cryptography. why? it is itself like a decrypter of jargon, heh. didn’t bother me much to write something hidden in there. if the program will be open-sourced then it would be lost.
Yesterday I got REALLY sick, for the first time in 2 years. Well, it could be 4 months if you include me being “sick to my stomach” regarding my Theory of Automata subject, or being “sick” of Java usage in my thesis, or being “sick” of my dad constantly pushing me to find work instantly 3 days after I graduated.
But I mean, physically sick. Try coupling cough, headache, stomachache and fever, all in one day. That sucks, but that’s what happened to me.
At 4:30AM, I’m supposed to wake up, but I couldn’t get up. I tried again, but then I felt my breathing was as hot as steam off my usual lukewarm morning bathwater. And my head f**king hurts.
I already had a high fever the day before yesterday. My mom went to panic mode the moment she touched the side of my neck (damn, shouldn’t have let her in) and gave me heckuva dosages of pills. Ascof, Alaxan, Biogesic, Ascorbic Acid, Decolgen, Bioflu, maybe she should have included baccardi and shots of heroin because I’m terribly pissed off.
I obediently drank my pills and wondered if the sun will still shine for me tomorrow.
Good news; it did. The bad news is that my sickness got worse. Damn.
Luckily my mom went to work earlier than usual, so I didn’t have to worry about her transforming to caregiver mode.
I pulled the trigger and made the decision to skip work. I texted one of my workbuddies that I will miss a day of work, and with that I slept again and hoped that my sickness will fade.
I figured out REST was the thing I badly needed. At afternoon most of my ailments dissipated, and the fever subsided to a manageable level.
Thankfully, I was able to go back to work without any problems. The only remaing thing is that 2 problems came up at work: GUI and some minor VB.NET revisions.
Now back to work. Hopefully the fever goes away. Damn that storm named “Frank”.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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