Happy new year everyone -- belated greeting I know, but like they say: it's better late than never.

It has been so long since I last blogged. I have been traveling in Asia the past 6 months, leaving little time to blog. Alright, I also have to admit that I was being unmotivated and lazy to blog at times. But after returning home from my travels, I have been hankering for an outlet to express myself. So starting today, I will make an effort to start blogging again. Stay tuned.

2/8/2008 11:03:03 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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I know I have not blogged for a while; but for a good reason. Unfortunately, my blog will remain on silent mode till further notice.

1/22/2007 10:31:46 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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I am starting to have a hankering for blogging since I have not been writing for sometime. True, I am still preoccupied with other things in my life but I figure out that I can certainly spend fifteen to thirty minutes to write a decent blog. Regretfully, due to time constraint the blog will be short.

So expect my blog to be succinct from now on.

10/4/2006 11:56:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Long time no blog. No kidding. Well, this week marks the first week of the spring semester at MIT and I have been busy auditing a bunch of classes. Consequently, I didn't have time for anything else. Or so it seems. I really haven't been writing very eloquently lately and with school starting up, I am less inclined to blog. The truth is that I am less motivated to blog these days. I am actually thinking of calling it quits. All the sudden, I started feeling that I am sharing way too much about my life with the rest of the world and I am not very comfortable with that notion. Somehow I think that what I write now will come back and haunt me in the future, especially if I become famous one day - yeah that's the dream/goal. But seriously, I haven't been articulating very well on my blog. For some time, I have been going with quantity instead of quality. Besides the daily anecdotes about school and my life have become quite mundane and predictable (well, at least for me). Moreover, I don't make very strong statements on my blog, which maybe why my blog is a little uninteresting. Instead, in most cases, my words really reflect my stream of consciousness at the moment of writing. In a sense, it is like a public memoir - one share one's personal thoughts to the public. So it all comes back to full circle; I am having second thoughts about sharing my feelings and thoughts publicly, but spontaneous writing is what I am good at and enjoy. So citing a busy schedule at school as an excuse, I think I am going to keep a low-profile on my blog for a while. There will be fewer updates from now on.

2/9/2006 11:05:07 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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I didn't get care to blog the last couple of days because I was busy making improvements and cleaning in my apartment. I wasn't particularly busy but I wasn't constantly on the computer or the Internet so the motivation to blog was nominal. As the house work dwindles down, I see myself settling into a more or less the same student routine. This means that I will start to blog more regularly.

1/4/2006 5:28:09 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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It was interesting to see 2 different groups of my friends coming together this weekend. One group is made up of people I know from MIT and the other group consists of people I knew prior to MIT. You might think that these 2 disparate groups have very little in common. But in reality, they all share one thing in common - they all read my blog. Moreover, through my blog entries, blog comments, and links to friends' blogs, my diverse group of friends have unknowingly crossed paths in some point in their life before.

A case in point, I introduced Yoav to Brian as the guy who is the first to comment on my blog entries. Brian immediately recognized who this guy is. Likewise, Yoav had apparently read Brian's travel blog prior to meeting Brian last Friday. When I introduced Ilana to my friends at Blanche's party, people apparently recognized her as the lady of the pink blog than some random stranger at a party. On the other hand, Yoav and Ilana are always keen on meeting the real Siobhan, whom had made several comments as well as being mentioned several times on my blog. It also find it amusing when I hear people citing my blog. Today, Eimear cited several interesting material not just from my blog but from the blogs that are connected from my blog site. Last but not least, I sometimes have random people coming to me to tell me that they have read my blog and enjoyed doing it. Overall, it is a highly gratifying experience knowing that I have readership and that people are some how connected to one another through my blog.

10/16/2005 4:12:21 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Yoav has posted on his blogsite a reference to Ivan Tribble's article on the detrimental effects of blogging have on job hunting.

I agree with Ivan's arguments to the extent that every blogger should be tactful and blog with the notion that his/her thoughts are now in public domain. However, I see that blogging is still a good way of maintaining an online presence. Regardless of audiences, search committee or job recruiter notwithstanding, a blog is still a good medium to gain insights to someone's thoughts, personality, and wit. So potential employer, read this blog to your heart's content.

9/12/2005 6:07:38 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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I pleasantly surprised how many people actually visit and read my blog on a regular basis. From MIT, I have a growing legion of regular readers from my SDM cohort. Fellow SDMers like Yoav and Ilana literally got cranky with me if I didn't update my blog for more than 3 days. Well, guys... That's the highest compliment a blogger can get. Thanks for reading.

There are other surprises as well. Recently, I was approached by staff from both Sloan and ESD explicitly asking me for the url of this website so that they, too, can start reading my blog. There are also friends like Ramey, Eimear, Siobhan, Steve, Fanny, etc who now know more about me than I do of them. Last but not least, I have heard from a few people who read my blog because they appreciate my insights to MIT and the SDM program. I wonder who else besides those that I have mentioned read my blog on a fairly regular basis? You can always leave a comment on this blog entry.

9/12/2005 5:35:55 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Having nothing to do tonight, I decided to read the blog entries that I wrote in the last few weeks. I came to 2 conclusions: (1) I am still not an eloquent writer and (2) I have to proof read my blog for typos. Arggghhh... Seriously, in the future I have proof read my blogs more carefully after writing them. In any case, I edited a few entries for grammatical correctness. They should be more reader friendly now.

8/25/2005 12:34:39 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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For people who have read the excellent book The Whale and the Reactor, are immediately familiar to Langdon Winner's thesis on how technology are often design, built, and then deployed in society with little concern for sustainability, humane regard, and conservation. Being a fan of the book, I was especially excited when I found Langdon Winner's blog on the Internet earlier today.

8/15/2005 5:30:25 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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My blog has fallen victim to blog spam or link spam the past week. Luckily the spam affected mostly earlier blog postings. Since I am responsible for the maintenance of the blog application on my website, I needed to install a spam filter software on my website to prevent further spam. Thankfully, all I have to do is to turn the anti-spamming feature on and update the software with the latest spam filter list from MT-blacklist.

8/11/2005 9:37:53 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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I am planning to not only give my website a new look but to migrate the website to a Linux platform in the next few weeks. Now that I am primarily a mac user, it doesn't make sense for me to continue using .NET on my website. I am particularly looking for a web host that offers MySQL, PHP, and MovableType in their hosting plan. Any advice from anyone from cyberspace?

8/2/2005 1:38:56 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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This blog site just expanded slightly with 3 new categories: Radio, Mac, and Travels.

7/15/2005 6:12:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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So News @ MIT Sloan, the weekly newsletter for students, staff, and faculty at MIT Sloan, has once again decided to make me a star. The last time they interviewed me was for my survival story in the Thailand tsunami. This time, apparently my blog along with Yoav's, Ilana's, and a few other Sloanies' were noticed by Diana, one of the newsletter writers. She is currently researching a story about MIT Sloan student bloggers and would like to know why we blog despite our very busy schedule. If I decide to participate in the story, it means that my identity and the url of my blog will be published on the newsletter. My blog will certainly see an increase in hits from students and even faculty members, and I am not sure if I am ready for that yet. I am also concerned that my blog may be a little dry on content and that my writing may not be eloquent enough for massive viewing by my peers. On the positive side, since I started blogging seriously 6 months ago, my rhetoric along with self-articulation and self-expression have improved dramatically. Broad exposure of my blog will challenge me further in blogging more eloquently.

So to those of you who have been reading my blog regularly, what do you think? Should I get my blog mentioned on News @ MIT Sloan?

7/13/2005 7:18:31 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Sorry folks, I have been missing in action in blogspace because I was up the wall busy the last couple of days. Interestingly, I seem to have more thoughts in my mind whenever I am busy. Thankfully, I was able to jot some of these thoughts on paper and update my blog with them retrospectively.

7/11/2005 11:16:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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I just added another fellow SDM student's blog, which is written in Spanish, to my blog roll. I found it while surfing on Matti's blog site.

7/8/2005 1:14:58 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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MIT Media Lab gave me this lousy icon for completing their online survey on weblog.

But seriously, if you blog, consider participating in the survey.

6/29/2005 6:22:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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I made some minor changes to my blog:

1. Added RSS and ATOM feeds. If you are like me who uses Firefox, you can click on the orange RSS icon on the bottom left of Firefox to subscribe to my blog feed.
2. Added a new link "Find out what I'm listening to" under "About Me" heading.
3. Made some changes in "Steal These Buttons" section.

5/30/2005 1:14:08 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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I have not been writing with a lot of thought and content on my blog lately. So for those of you who have been reading my blog the past week, sorry. Life has been so hectic, it has been difficult keeping up.

3/10/2005 12:22:04 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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In my quest to create what I would call the ultimate personal blog site that I can live with for a long time, has made me jump from one blog solution to another in the past month. In order to blog, you either need to have blog software running on your web host or utilize some of the commercially available web hosts available on the Internet. I was using a .NET open-source blog solution called BlogX from 2003-2004 on my website but it wasn’t as stable as some of the more popular blog software like MovableType. My laziness aside, the lack of good editing tools on BlogX was one reason why I didn't update my blog for almost over a year prior to 2005. It was only coming to MIT that Matti and especially Yoav profoundly influenced my decision to share my thoughts and life with other people online.

To save time, I decided to use a blog host for my blogging needs a month ago. My first free blog host is Blogger, which I still high recommend to people who wish to start blogging online. It was free, easy-to-use, and fast, but I wanted more features, in particular, category. So I went to Modblog, which has more features but a lot slower and restrictive on how you can customize your blog. Along the way, I tried other free blog hosts like My blogsite and Typepad but none met my needs. My blogsite impose an online ad on every client's blog, it's ugly but the blog hosting is free (well, sort of). Typepad is cool but it's not free and it's really not as good as Blogger IMHO. I don't know why I was so insistent on the feature of using icons along side with blog categories (like slashdot). Despite the shortcomings of BlogX, I was able to modify BlogX source code and implemented what I the icon-category feature quite easily. Fed up with the inadequacies of these free blog hosts, I decided to download the latest version of BlogX and create a completely revamped blog site on my own website.

When I downloaded BlogX, I was quite surprised to find that BlogX is now under new management by Newtelligence who has done a good job in maintaining the software and the software has now been renamed to dasBlog. Anyway, I hacked the source code to implement what I want and completely redesigned my website to come out with what you currently see the past weekend. There are still bugs and as usual, this project is still a work-in-progress but I am mighty proud of it. I have managed to transfer my previous blog entries but the timestamp for each blog entry was lost during transfer. So without further ado, may I present to you Cybersam's blog version 4.0. Suggestions are most welcome.

2/27/2005 9:11:28 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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You are welcome Yoav for thanking me for blogginig regularly. Let me return my thanks to Yoav and Matti who reintroduced blogging back to my life again. I am not an eloquent or prolific writer, but I have found blogging conducive to improving my writing skills. I have also discovered blog as a good way to share my life and thoughts to others, especially my friends. No more repeating the same story any more, I just tell my friends to read my blog. Furthermore, with blogging my thoughts are captured at the moment I write my blog.

The schoolworkload has been very light this weekend, I was able to finish my ERBA homework and put in some hours to my professional work. My friend, Joanna is in town and so a few of us went to Legal Sea Foodsfor dinner and followed by attending a party organized mainly by BU students at Tantric. I felt really happy for Joanna who will be graduating from U of Chicago buisness school this summer and marrying Zack this fall. I will be booking a flight to Detroit (Rock City) to attend the wedding very soon.

2/12/2005 2:44:14 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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My good buddy, Brian Squibb decided to quit his high-paying job in San Francisco and started traveling around the world. He just emailed me the link to his travel blog. Let's see what misadventures he can find.

Not to be outdone by Brian, I started my own travel blog. The only problem is that I am currently stuck in Cambridge, Massachusetts attending school. I need to start filling that blog soon. Yes, I know I have to get a better picture than the one that is currently on my travel blog.

2/8/2005 2:06:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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I miss the Category feature in my previous blog software. Since I am new to Blogger, can someone tell how I can associate each blog entry with a category? Instead of reading the material for a class tomorrow, I started hacking with cybersam.org to correct the problem that I had the night before. I am just too compulsive to let the problem rest. On the bright side, I added new code to associate icons with categories. Nonetheless, I still question the wisdom of this decision since I will probably wind up using blogger anyway.

On the bright side, I went out for some beer with Chris, Dave, Matt, and Spiros after "Product Development" class. As usual, drinking helped to induce creativity, we came out with a few ideas that we may actually use as individual product design proposal for this class. Time for shut-eyes. I am getting tired.

2/1/2005 10:44:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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I have not blogged for a while on my personal website www.cybersam.org since its blogging software (BlogX) isn't adequate for editing and publishing. I got tired of it after a while. But so much have happened since I last blogged in April 2004 and I really want to do start doing a "Dear diary" moment again (Yikes). I got my act together today and tried installing/configuring the new version of the blogging software that I use, which by the way has been renamed to dasBlog. But I gave up after 5 fruitless hours of fiddling around with .NET and IIS (Inherent Insecurity Server). Now that I am back in graduate school full time and still working part time, I can't afford to waste time mucking around with senseless software issues. So I signed up with blogger just to get me started with blogging again. We'll see what happens.

1/31/2005 1:56:02 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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