Wanted: The Real Philippine Internet History

We need the real Philippine Internet history. Most Pinoy Internet users don’t know it at all. Some, might know the short version. Few know about things that really happened.

These are the juicy bits that would be polished over in an official “textbook” Philippine Internet story.  These are the “off the record” stuff that either get circulated as hearsay and urban legend, or kept secret. This is because the Philippine Internet History is not all rosy.

This comes into mind because the ph-cyberview mailing list anniversary is coming up.

A few years ago, I contributed to the Philippine Internet Review publication and wrote about Philippine Internet History. However, this was just based on my notes and personal research off the Web.

We need it written by a real journalist, with interviews and first-hand information.

Coding No More?

Two surprising things have happened.

First, I have admitted to myself that I have grown tired of coding.

Second, I have been reading business books, and will be reading some more. I choose these from the Personal MBA reading list.

How did this happen?

After being a programmer for 23 years - since age 11 - I have grown tired of it. I do code for work, but I no longer relish the thought of coding in my spare time. No personal hobby projects. Sadly, no open source contributions - a cause for open source angst. Who would write Pinoy open source now? I still hope some of the younger generation pick it up. Perhaps that itch to scratch will find its way back to me.

Will it come back? Perhaps. It could just be a phase.

I now find analyzing requirements and writing specifications and designs interesting. I used to think that this was a boring, or even unnecessary activity - just hack away on hardcore tech! I guess understanding this stuff is part of growing older - and wiser, I hope?

I still love software development. The difference is that I see it from a wider perspective.

If You Can’t Blog, Get Interviewed

Thanks to Keith Rull! He interviewed me as the first Pinoy developer in his interview series.

Things I’d like to add: to get to do stuff, you need to put in a lot of hard work - and often, you’ll think about the road not taken. And, nostalgic oldtimers might be surprised when I say that the kids of today have it better. I must add - that’s why expect much much more of them, and then get disappointed.

Sharing your stuff is made much easier if someone asks you questions. I remember the old interview meme. I did not remember it just like that. Instead, WordPress told me that I got a new comment.

Now, I am restarting my blogging once more.

Open Source Angst

Open source is supposed to make users happy (except when it doesn’t work). It’s supposed to make their developers happy (as long as it scratches their itch.) But it has been causing me angst.

I don’t get to write any.

Of all the years I’ve been working with free software/open source, I have only been hacking bits and pieces. I did write one thing that seems to have found its way into many project. A little ego trip. And, almost everything I did was work related. I never got to scratch a personal itch. I think back and realize, perhaps I didn’t have that itch at all.

In the past few months, I thought that I should get back to writing open source. For pure fun.

But the fun didn’t come. It never had a chance. I did not get motivated. Now I realize, I wasn’t really interested. I was just feeling guilty, feeling obliged.

I felt obliged because the Philippines doesn’t contribute much to open source. There are some significant people and companies who do, but in absolute terms it’s just a drop in the bucket of global open source contribution. This has been discussed before, in PLUG (Philippine Linux Users Group). The conclusion was, in the Philippines, the people who have the skill to contribute to open source need to make a living. If they had extra time, they would work on a sideline. Students could do it, as there are programs like Google Summer of Code that help. But someone told me, students are lazy.

I still want to help. I still actively use open source products - and thus help, as a tester. I’m not much of an advocate anymore. I have grown tired of it. Perhaps in other non-coding, technical ways.

In the PLUG thread that discusses this, the post that kicked off the topic was all about using open source to add to the portfolio or resume. At this point in my career, writing open source won’t help much. But I hope younger folks would find it useful.

bittersweetness

I will forever associate the word “Bittersweet” with Marc Almond. That 1988 song is stuck in my head thanks to the NU 107/99.5 RT of that era, mixed with the a killer melody and lyrics that tempt you - “Let’s Go To Paradise Jack.” Ultimately nonsensical but filling for the moment.

Just like that, memories of my 1995-2002 ISP career haunt me.

Jim Ayson reminded me of this because of his post on the Philippine Cyberspace Review, with some significant but mostly forgotten Internet history information.

I once blogged that I will share more of my personal experiences. But I still feel the time isn’t right. I just have too much regret over missed opportunities and what-could-have-been. The bitter. On the other hand this was a career and life-changing six years. The sweet. Need one to have the other.

But I’ll leave the stories for the planned EB, if the stars on that night shine right.

Unswitchable

I read MacRumors on occasion. It’s not just because I want tech gossip. I’m thinking, when shall I get myself a Mac? The old Mac Envy.

It’s still nowhere in sight. Even if technical articles showed to me demonstrating Mac superiority over Windows and even Linux, I have already invested in building a home Linux/Windows PC, which costs cheaper than a MacBook, is more powerful and expandabe, and is well-suited for me learning sysadmin stuff under virtualization.

Most of my laptop work is done on my office PC which needs to be Windows.

There’s just no ROI for me getting a Mac. It would be useful if I were a pure Java developer - no dependencies on proprietary stuff. But that’s not happening soon.

In the ideal world I would have lots of free time to hack on Java, Rails and other Unixy stuff that would run on OS X, but I’m not there.

What Page Represents You?

What Page Represents You? What is your homepage?

In the 90’s, it was a Geocities or Tripod.com page, or an ISP-hosted ~page. With links, pictures, about me, and blinkie-blinkie things.

In the 2000s, this became a blog. With blogrolls, pages, and then widgets.

But for those who are not defined by their blog, what should their page be now?

That is what I ask myself. What do I do with my domain? This blog barely represents me, so I shouldn’t point it there anymore.

How about my lifestream? There’s friendfeed. I could redirect it to my friendfeed. But it doesn’t paint a complete picture of what I do online. How about posts on other sites (famous only in the Philippines?) like Multiply? How about posts to online forums and mailing lists/Yahoo! groups. They represent me, and they are public. But they remain scattered in a million pieces around the web.

What page represents you?

VPS Migration Step 1

I have been hosting my sites or blogs on Virtual Private Servers (VPS) since 2003 or so. I thought that a Unix guy like me should eat his own dogfood and do sysadmin on his own server. And, I’ve been planning to run my own apps - Rails, Java, etc.

But that didn’t happen. I am still doing my own personal R&D, but in its current iteration it does not need a public-facing website. It all lives inside my PC.

So, to cut costs and save time (yet another server to update and check), I canceled my VPS. I still want paraz.com content to be visible and searchable, so I migrated it here to wordpress.com. But, I was using a custom permalink structure - my preference, which is /POST-ID/post-slug. wordpress.com uses the default date-based scheme.

Therefore, I had to make my own redirect. The post slugs are the same, but WordPress has no “search by post slug” query. I had to make a 1:1 mapping for each post. I did this by performing an XML export on both blogs, then writing a small Python script to parse the XML and do the matching. The output is a flat file with the old URI on the left and the wordpress.com URL on the right. This is used by a RewriteRule which looks for a match and issues a HTTP 301 redirect.

The effect now: people who click on my old URLs from a search engin, or from a link, will land here in wordpress.com.

The effect later: The new URLs should replace the old URLs in the search engine results.

Regression

Many people move from a free domain like wordpress.com, or blogspot.com, to their own domain. Now, I do the opposite. Strange, but with a reason.

I realize that my “problem” with my lack of blogging, for a year or so, is simply because blogging is not very important to me anymore. Is it just a phase, or a break? I don’t know.

But for now, I think my personal domain - paraz.com at the moment - is better used pointing to something that represents me better than my blog.

Tech Update

Unfortunately, I can’t post the best and most interesting tech I’m up to, since it’s work related and I can’t share a single clue as to what I’m up to. Really secret stuff.

Instead, let me tell you about the tech stuff I do in my own time:

• Beta testing Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron
• Using kvm Kernel Virtualization, and comparing it with VMware. Soon going to try Virtualbox
• Trying OSX86 on different PC’s. Already got it working on my Acer 4710Z laptop, but in my desire to achieve the proper 1280×800 resolution instead of 1024×768, I trashed it and the graphics system no longer starts. Will try to fix it still.
• Trying to get back into open source development, especially in Java. Still frustrated that I - and Pinoys - use a lot of open source but don’t give back.
• Planning further PC upgrades. Will probably add another hard drive to my desktop for a RAID0 setup. Might get a “branded” case like a Lian Li.
• Reading a lot on my Safari Books account. Read some tech classics. Read a .NET programming book - but haven’t gotten started. Reading EJB3, just in case I need it. Reading about the Linux kernel details, so that I know what I’m working with under the hood.
• Thinking about how to earn from Adsense and online ads again - without spending too much time on it. It’s not really passive income if you spend too much time working on it and thinking about it.