The RubeTube

I reporting to work late in the afternoon today because I had to pass by Ateneo first to pick up some documents I had requested/ordered from the registrar (80 pesos for a flimsy sheet of paper with the Ateneo seal, geez). I dropped by the CS department before heading to the office to deliver a package: my donation to the Pamana Fund.

It's not a mind-boggling amount by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel that my contribution was fairly significant. When you're contributing to a good cause, any amount given feels like a whole fortune, especially when you factor in the warm-and-fuzzy feelings into the equation.

Seriously though, I owe a lot to our department (and to Doc Mana) for much of the experience that has shaped me into what I am today. I feel more like I'm giving back what I owe rather than just sharing what I can afford. I chatted a bit with Dr. Rodrigo and we discussed the declining Ateneo CS/MIS population, and the waning interest in ICTs in the Philppines in general. I'm hoping that my tiny contribution can help stem the tide. I'm not sure how, but I trust that the capable people at DISCS will find a way.

Labels: :), Ateneo, donations, IT, Philippines, PMana

I've mentioned before that I'm terribly hooked to Yahoo Fantasy NBA. I tune into the Yahoo NBA boxscores every morning to see the stats of my players (and I have four teams to check up on!). But I find it annoying to have to open the boxscore page of every game and collate the stats of my players just to see how my team is doing. Yeah, I could wait until the end of the day, but I'm afraid my level of addiction can't afford me that much patience.

I've had enough of doing this so I came up with a solution: create my own tool to gather the stats of my players in real-time and put them all on one page. So I've been spending my spare time the past two weeks not blogging and instead working on my pet project. And here's the finished product: Fantasy Sports Live!

Fantasy Sports Live! (a.k.a. "FSLive") lets you see your fantasy team's stats as the day's games are being played, without having to pay for "premium" services like Yahoo's StatTracker. It's completely free to use and it's pretty fast too! I use it every day, of course. It's only for Yahoo Fantasy NBA players right now. If you're a Yahoo fantasy baller, check it out and let me know what you think.

Whether FSLive ends up as a commercial success or not, I've certainly had a lot of fun just working on it. This project has allowed me to merge two of my biggest passions: fantasy NBA and programming. And it's also helped me learn a ton of new things along the way. Here's a partial list of the technologies and techniques that FSLive is built upon:

• C#
• ASP.NET 2.0
• ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 (formerly Codename "Atlas")
• The big three: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
  
• Screen scraping techniques
  
• A heavy dose of regular expressions
  
• A small dose of ASP.NET caching
• RSA encryption in .NET and in JavaScript (learn how!)
  

Currently it's hosted for free on AspSpider.NET but I've recently purchased my own domain (punzki.com, not yet up!) and web hosting, courtesy of Philhosting.net. My account there is not yet set up, but it's already paid for and I'll be moving everything there (FSLive and The RubeTube!) soon. For now the actual URL for FSLive is http://fslive.notlong.com which simply redirects to AspSpider. Funny, it took the FSLive project for me to go and get my own domain and ASP.NET 2.0 space. Really should've done that earlier.

Before I end this entry, I'd like to thank Borgy for helping me test, promote, and improve FSLive. FSLive is already getting hits from people around the world thanks to Borgy's effort in spreading the word. If you'd like to help promote FSLive, find out how. FSLive for teh win, baby!

Labels: AJAX, ASP.NET, basketball, fantasy sports, FSLive, geek, NBA, programming, projects

Finally, here's the answer to "Six things you probably didn't know about me, but one of them isn't true". I'm tackling the "facts" one by one and I'll reveal which is the odd one out.

1. I flunked the entrance exam to Ateneo Grade School. I ended up studying in Don Bosco for two years. I took the Ateneo Grade School exam again and got in when I was in Grade 2. The difference? I didn't become smarter. I took the exam the first time in Filipino, and in English the second time around.
   
   TRUE. I still am better taking tests in English than in Filipino. Who isn't?
   
   
2. I wasn't before, but I'm currently allergic to alcohol in alcoholic drinks; I get rashes and have difficulty breathing. Alcohol is not such a bad thing to be allergic to, in my opinion. Better than being lactose intolerant.
   
   TRUE. Sad, but true. Yet also quite fortunate. What's the big deal with alcohol anyway?
   
   
3. For as long as I can remember, my parents have played mahjong with their friends regularly, usually several nights a week. With mahjong such a big part of our daily life (and family income) I know the rules of the game, but strangely enough, I have never played an actual game in my life.
   
   FALSE. This may come as a surprise for most of you who know me quite well, but this one is totally false. But actually, it's mostly true, except that I have played an actual game of mahjong, twice or thrice. Tricky, tricky!
   
   
4. I learned to play the guitar during my first year of high school. One of my classmates ("IC" was his nickname) taught me the first song I learned to play: Ang Huling El Bimbo. My parents bought my my first guitar for my birthday that year. It was colored "toothpaste/Aquafresh blue", as I liked to describe it.
   
   TRUE. G-A7-C-G for the verse and chorus, and Em-G-C-D for the pre-chorus/refrain; how can I forget? Sadly, the toothpaste blue guitar is now broken.
   
   
5. I have never stepped foot inside a casino my whole life. Of course, the first 21 years of my life leading up to the legal gambling age hardly count, but still...
   
   TRUE. The inside of a casino is still a mystery to me. And I prefer to keep my innocence.
   
   
6. And now, for the most embarrassing thing you probably don't know about me... I was once a (closet) Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls fan. Much like every other guy in my generation, except that they're not man enough to admit it.
   
   TRUE. I've had the balls to admit it. Do you?

No one was able to figure out that #3 was the stinker. To everyone's credit, even my girlfriend failed to get it correctly on the first try; her first guess was #5 and she was deciding between that and #3. Akie (we chatted over YM) was the worst; by process of eliminating the other five choices, he finally got the answer.

Labels: facts, Punzki, tagged

(Warning: No one but the geekiest of IT professionals will appreciate this anecdote I am about to share. Prepare to be excited.)

One of the projects I'm involved in at work right now requires the hosting of a number of files on an intranet web server. After going through the proper channels and a considerable amount of red tape, a Windows Server 2003 machine was provided for us. However, it was completely useless for our purposes as it did not have IIS installed. (What use is Windows Server 2003 without IIS?!?)

As the lone resource allocated to the project, I was given admin access to the server so I was able to connect to it remotely. I attempted to install IIS (by adding the Application Server role) but the installation files were not to be found anywhere on the server. I had a choice to make. I could

1. Go through the proper channels, get stuck in more red tape, and have the experts install IIS on the server; or
2. Be the hero and find my own way to install IIS.

I initially tried Option 1, but since our client needed the files hosted as soon as possible, I realized there's no way I can wait for the cavalry to arrive. Equipped with the right tools and a couple admin passwords at my disposal, I decided to give Option 2 a try. I tried out different methods.


Method #1 - The brute force approach (Kids, do not try this at home!)

I couldn't find an installation disc for Win2K3 anywhere around the office and I didn't want to download the whole thing off of MSDN. All I needed were the IIS files. So I thought that maybe the installer can use the files off of an existing IIS 6.0 installation.

I had remote admin access to another Win2K3 machine which I knew had IIS installed. This second server was on the same network as the one I was setting up. A file search revealed that most of the files the installer was looking for were to be found in the WINNT folder and its sub-folders. So what I did was point the installer in right direction by telling it to look in the ADMIN$ share (which by default points to WINNT) of the second Win2K3 machine. I had to change the source path from time to time, but it was less of a hassle than the alternative.

I thought it was smooth sailing from there on in, until I reached the halfway point of the progress bar, when the installer started asking for "iis6.cab". But of course, iis6.cab didn't exist on the second machine because it only contains the contents of iis6.cab, not iis6.cab itself because it didn't have the actual installation files. Sadly, I had to abort the operation.


Method #2 - Slightly less brute brute force (Do not attempt without adult supervision)

I was resigned to having the experts install IIS when I realized another resource. I had dabbled a some time ago in researching on BizTalk and for testing purposes, I used a virtual machine which I downloaded from here. I remembered that it had Win2K3 installed, and more importantly, it had all the installation files on disk (for evaluating the different server functions).

I couldn't access the virtual machine from the remote server (VPN reasons) so I first copied all the installation files (around 700 MB) from the virtual machine to a folder on my local machine. I shared this folder over the network and I pointed the installer to this share. Because of the slow connection, I waited half an hour, but it worked! IIS was installed!


Post-installation

One of the requirements for the project was hosting some videos on a website. For this, I decided to use FLVs and FlowPlayer, a free embeddable FLV player. I got the FLVs and FlowPlayer up on the freshly installed web server, but somehow, the FLVs weren't being served and I was getting "Page cannot be found" errors. In another funky solution to a funky problem, the Wikipedia article on FLVs revealed a hint: the MIME type for FLVs was "video/x-flv".

(You can configure MIME types for a website by opening its properties page in the IIS snap-in, going to the "HTTP Headers" tab, and clicking on the "MIME Types..." button.)

I got around to telling the proper channels that their help was no longer necessary and was lauded for my brilliantly creative yet unorthodox solution.

Labels: geek, hacks, IIS, sysadmin

With me not being used to having a lot of work pile up, I haven't had much time to blog lately. But I will take a break from my blogging hiatus to respond to Aids and Bernard who have "tagged" me to tell five things you probably don't know about me.

But I'm going to take matters into my own hands and add my own little twist. Instead of jotting down five things, I'm going to make a list of six things you probably don't know about me, but one of them isn't true; you'll have to guess which one that is. I'll reveal the answer in a later post and you'll still end up finding out five things you probably didn't know about me. In the meantime, mark your guess by leaving a comment.

Six things you probably don't know about me (but one of them isn't true!):

1. I flunked the entrance exam to Ateneo Grade School. I ended up studying in Don Bosco for two years. I took the Ateneo Grade School exam again and got in when I was in Grade 2. The difference? I didn't become smarter. I took the exam the first time in Filipino, and in English the second time around.
   
   
2. I wasn't before, but I'm currently allergic to alcohol in alcoholic drinks; I get rashes and have difficulty breathing. Alcohol is not such a bad thing to be allergic to, in my opinion. Better than being lactose intolerant.
   
   
3. For as long as I can remember, my parents have played mahjong with their friends regularly, usually several nights a week. With mahjong such a big part of our daily life (and family income) I know the rules of the game, but strangely enough, I have never played an actual game in my life.
   
   
4. I learned to play the guitar during my first year of high school. One of my classmates ("IC" was his nickname) taught me the first song I learned to play: Ang Huling El Bimbo. My parents bought my my first guitar for my birthday that year. It was colored "toothpaste/Aquafresh blue", as I liked to describe it.
   
   
5. I have never stepped foot inside a casino my whole life. Of course, the first 21 years of my life leading up to the legal gambling age hardly count, but still...
   
   
6. And now, for the most embarrassing thing you probably don't know about me... I was once a (closet) Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls fan. Much like every other guy in my generation, except that they're not man enough to admit it.
   

And with my blogging obligations heretofore accomplished, I tag the following unlucky souls: Akie, Arbi, Borgy, Pau, and Cu.

(Update: Find out the answer here!)

Labels: facts, Punzki, tagged

Had dinner last night at Mister Kabab (corner of Quezon Ave. and West Ave.) with a bunch of my 4th-year high school classmates. Attendance wasn't bad at all: 18 out of 30. Seems like it's been ages since we had a Charm Day Out (CDO), or in this case, a Charm Night Out. I think it was four years ago since we last had this many Charmies in one place, and I don't even remember what that event was.

It was rather unfortunate that we were seated into two tables separated by the length of the restaurant floor. Coincidentally, it was mostly a "boys table" and "girls table" arrangement, just like the old boys and girls dorm arrangement. Didn't stop us from having fun though.

It was a very nostalgic night, mostly spent reminiscing, reviving old jokes and hirits, laughing at high school teachers, and digging up embarrassing moments, all long thought buried in the past. Our outside appearances have all changed, but it's amazing how some things have stayed the same over the years: Moi's hysterical laugh, Morales' antics, Lopao's down-to-earth nature.

On a not-so-positive note, there was a noticeable lack of people "making kwento", updating everyone else about their lives. My theory is that we were mostly too shy of going forward and telling stories about ourselves, lest we be thought of as "makapal ang mukha" for sharing things no one else can relate to. But with a reunion this long in the making, it was inevitable that most of our time was spent just remembering the good old days.

I'm hoping that the next reunion will see us truly reconnecting and building relationships on more than just shared experiences. And I'm hopeful that this next reunion won't be too far off.

("Charm" is the name of our section, and yes, we are named after a quark. The 4th-year sections in PSHS Diliman are all sub-atomic particles. Guess you learned something new today, unless you're a Physics major or a Pisay alumnus.)

Labels: high school, reunions

2006 was an awesome year. 2007 will be even more exciting, I am sure. I mean, what could be more exciting than a blackout on New Year's Eve that lasted way past midnight, right?

If, by all counts, you had a terrible past year, then here's some fantastic news:

You're still alive! Now go out there, kick ass, and take names.