The Four-eyed Journal » LIFE

Taking a Break from College

jhay — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:38:36 +0000

In an earlier post announcing that my 1st daughter has been born last June 7, I shared a realization that things will change in my life, a lot of things. Among them would of course would be my priorities.

Right now, my new family is my priority. I need to devote much of my time and energies in taking care of them. From my understanding, caring takes two forms mainly, material and non-material.

Material naturally means that I have to provide for my new family’s needs and ensure that they have a roof over their heads, food in their stomach and clothes on their backs. Of course throw in an occasional recreational activities like going to the movies, visiting some place for rest and relaxation, and the like.

Non-material means that I need not just to be simply around whenever my baby or recovering wife needs me, I need to have my loving and caring presence felt by both of them. It’s bonding time every time.

Now it means that I no longer have the time for the other things that I used to do up until now. Being a college student-leader and volunteer that’s . That’s why I’ve decided to take a leave of absence from DLSUD this 1st semester.

Not only that my new family needs me, I need my self too! I can’t take care of them at home where I already do a lot of chores and get inadequate sleep while I manage two organizations and regular classes at school all at the same time. Though I know I can, it’s just smarter not to.

Besides, I’ve been in those two organizations for quite some time now, it’s a good opportunity to move aside and let others take my place and show that they have what it takes to lead and succeed. For my org-mates, don’t worry too much. I’d be back this coming second semester, better than ever. In the meantime, I’d get in touch to further facilitate my sabbatical.

On top of that, I could use the break myself. I could revisit the things that got pushed aside and gradually start working on them again. Chief among them, is my reading list and book blog!

So, for the next five months, you’d be reading more about my new family life and other geeky adventures. Hopefully, you’d stay around for the journey and the stories.

Of mice, men and the fountain of life

jhay — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:39:47 +0000

Would you smell rotten-eggs to stay young? Okay, it’s an exaggeration. Well you don’t have to literally smell rotten eggs but just get a sniff of the gas that smells like rotten eggs and you could cheat death and stay young because you’ll end up in suspended animation. At least this is what some scientists had hoped for.

I’m talking about Hydrogen Sulfide which has been reported to induce suspended animation to mice by US researchers led by study senior author Dr. Warren Zapol of Massachusetts General Hospital. They further said that:

Hydrogen sulfide is the stinky gas that can kill workers who encounter it in sewers; but when administered to mice in small, controlled doses, within minutes it produces what appears to be totally reversible metabolic suppression.

Carson Chow blogged about this in Scientific Clearing House back in 2005 with the following details:

When the mice were exposed to 80 ppm of H2S, their oxygen consumption dropped by 50% in the first 5 minutes. After 6 hours, their metabolic rate dropped by 90% and the core body temperature reached 15 degrees Celsius where the ambient temperature was 13 degrees. When the mice were returned to room air and temperature, their metabolic rate and body temperature returned to normal.

Wait, what’s suspended animation?

Good question. Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. (Wikipedia)

The dream, which has been a major subject of science fiction, is to cheat death by temporarily stopping the body’s natural clock, thereby delaying death and preserving the human body for some future purpose like space travel or enabling one’s self to see and experience what life on Earth would be like centuries from now.

In the real world, suspended animation has its practical uses in the medical field. In particular suspended animation induced by hypothermia is an alternative to heart-lung machines in some open-heart surgeries. Another use is the preservation of living organs that would have to be transported over long distances to where patients need them.

Where do mice and Hydrogen sulfide come in?

Using gases falls under the chemical-induced suspended animation and it doesn’t cause brain or tissue damage as do hypothermia, which is temperature-induced suspended animation.

Ever since mice were put to suspended animation thanks to Hydrogen sulfide, it could also be used in larger mammals and eventually humans, in theory. This is exactly what scientists did. They moved on to sheep, because hey, if it will work in sheep there is greater chance it would also work in humans.

And why not? The possibilities were simply hard to resist. Again Carson Chow wrote:

If this works in humans, we may now have a means of reducing metabolic demand after traumatic injury or surgery. H2S may become a standard part of the repertoire of paramedics. I won’t bother to dwell on the space travel implications.

Unfortunately, the idea never worked on larger mammals as tests in sheep as conducted by Haouzi et al. had discouraging results. Aschwin de Wolf writing in Depressed Metabolism put it straightforwardly: “Hydrogen sulfide does not induce hypometabolism in sheep”

How can H2S induce hypometabolism in mice? The authors state that “the present results have little to offer on the pathways that are responsible for H2S-induced decrease of metabolism.” They raise the point that in small animals such as mice a large portion of metabolism is devoted to heat production instead of ATP production. In contrast, small reductions in oxygen utilization in humans, as produced by H2S exposure, will affect ATP generation. Or as Ikaria’s Csaba Szabo speculates in “Hydrogen sulphide and its therapeutic potential”, “the window of opportunity to compromise oxidative phosphorylation in a human, therefore, must be smaller than in the mouse.“

The authors do not expect that higher dosages of H2S will produce hypometabolism in large mammals because the 60 ppm that was administered to sheep already exceeds what is known to be toxic in humans.

So now the search for safe and effective means of inducing hypometabolism in humans goes on. The “fountain of life” remains to be an product of our desire for immortality and the Hydrogen sulfide will remain as such, smelling like rotten-eggs and in large doses, deadly to us humans.

Tree-planting photos & Bloggers’ Kapihan Round-up

jhay — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:18:58 +0000

The weekend has been an exhausting one, evidently from the lack of updates to this blog and my apparent disappearance from the online world. Nonetheless, I have little regrets for the things I’ve done offline were equally important and well-worth their online equivalents. Bawi na lang ako sa susunod na Bloggers’ Kapihan.hehehe

Let’s focus on the Tree-planting activity first. It’s my second under the Lasallian Institute For the Environment and just like the first one, it was fun and totally new experience; a new adventure so to speak.

The contingency was made up of students from DLSU-Manila, the La Salle Professional Schools, DLS-Health Science Campus, La Salle Antipolo, College of St. Benilde and of course from DLSU-Dasmarinas. (Some one please correct me if I’m wrong )

Leading the DLSU-D team was the University Student Council represented by none other than our president Joymay Amihan who came straight from a 5-day seminar on the environment from Subic. Talk about resiliency right?

Of course, the SERVE Volunteers were once more present and so active in this eco-friendly campaign. If I’m not mistaken, they were the first ones to finish planting the seedlings assigned to them. Giving them more time to play around, meet the other La Salle students and become complete camera whores. Just look at the slideshow below.

More photos can be found in Zooomr account. The activity was a success as we were able to plant all of the seedlings we brought with us, 2 of which are endemic to Mts Palay-palay/Mataas na Gulod. This would ensure the growth and survival of the trees and the preservation of the mountain park’s natural ecosystem. I look forward to the next tree-planting activity as we move forward to achieving our La Salle’s goal of planting 1 Million trees by 2011.

So that’s where you’ve been

Yup, that’s why I wasn’t able to join the Bloggers’ Kapihan last Saturday. Nonetheless, I’m proud and happy that the event was a success. Congratulations to my fellow BK Crew who were there and really did the most of the hard work in making the event a success. Kuya Mong, Shari, Sir Martz, Ederic, Sarah, Bikoy and Vencer bawi ako sa inyo sa susunod. Pwamis!

Tons of thanks and link loves to all the sponsors for the first Bloggers’ Kapihan:

Digital Filipino

DigitalFilipino.com is a personal website of Janette Toral that discusses e-commerce developments in the Philippines. She also has a community of e-commerce enthusiasts and software process improvement students.

Philippine Genre Stories

http://philippinegenrestories.blogspot.com/

Minor sponsors

Pinoy Web Hosting Solutions

The AnitoKid Chronikos

And special thanks to:

Google Pilipinas and GMAnews.tv

Now here’s what bloggers have said about the 1st Bloggers’ Kapihan

Bloggers Kapihan + Post-Event @ Giligan’s Trinoma by thE.thumBSuckeR saying that:

Prolly the best bloggers EB that I’ve attended ever!

Bloggers’ Kapihan by Filipino Librarian who says:

the most interesting thing for me was to interact once again with bloggers who have encountered the same problems and difficulties I’ve had as a blogger, and who do not think blogging is merely a fad, or worse, a useless exercise.

Leftovers at Bloggers’ Kapihan by Frances who inspite of being had a great time at the event.

The BK Crew was saved by Ms Noemi who called up Yuga which reminded him that he was a key-speaker for the event. The amazing Pinoy Problogger made it in time for his talk at the Bloggers’ Kapihan. Many many thanks Ms Noemi, you’re truly heavent sent!

I’m sure there are more write-ups about the first Bloggers’ Kapihan. Thank you once more to all those who supported this event and much more thanks to my fellow BK crew for everything! Mabuhay kayong lahat!

Sudden change of plans: I’m off to the mountains

jhay — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 15:26:24 +0000

It’s a call of duty, duty to my school as I, with a bit of regret, announce through this blog that I won’t be able to join the BK crew, the Pisay students and other awesome bloggers who will be coming tomorrow to the Bloggers’ Kapihan event.

The first ever bloggers’ kapihan unexpectedly coincided with De La Salle Philippines and LIFE’s (Lasallian Institute For the Environment) tree-planting activity tomorrow at Mts Palay-palay in Ternate, Cavite. This is part of the One Million Trees project of the De La Salle Philippines spearheaded by LIFE.

I will be one of the key-persons leading the students from the various La Salle schools as we push once more for a greener country tomorrow. I tried to get a proxy for myself but could not find one so I apologise to my fellow BK crew members; Kuya Mong, Shari, Sir Martz, Ederic, Sarah, Bikoy and Vencer for not being able to join and help you out with the event tomorrow.

Apologies also goes out to the bloggers who are expecting to meet me, especially the ones that signed up through my blog. Thank you for showing your support to the Bloggers’ Kapihan initiative and I promise to make it up on the next event. But I’m sure you would all enjoy the program tomorrow, with all the free coffee and donuts, awesome speakers and fellow bloggers and of course the students of the Philippine Science Highschool.

Enjoy yourselves and raise those coffee cups to bloggers here and beyond!

Well that’s it, I’m off to get some much much needed sleep for I need to wake up very early. I’ll be back with stories from the mountains. In the meantime, have a great time at the Bloggers’ Kapihan!

LIFE Reborn

jhay — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 05:10:54 +0000

One of the projects I’ve been so busy with this past few weeks, if not months is the redesign and re-development of the Lasallian Institute For the Environment’s (LIFE) website. My first encounter with LIFE was when I joined a tree-planting activity on Mts Palay-palay/Mataas na Gulod last year as part of their ambitious and noble One Million Trees Project.

What’s LIFE?

From the name itself, and its flaghsip project, LIFE is a newly created institution of the La Salle Philippines Provincialate that aims to fulfill the De La Salle Philippines’ role of being God’s stewards of creation.

The One Million Trees project is an initiative that aims to plant 1 Million trees by the year 2011, which is the De La Salle Philippines’ centennial anniversary in the country.

A tall order

Sir Wowie, a good friend of my college mentor, Sir Yuri knew that I was quite handy with the internet and websites and thought I could be of help in the re-design of their former website, which back then was a relic from the realms of Web 1.0, it was all html, no CSS and had *shudders* tables. It was nicely designed though so kudos to Dan who built the site and later on my would be partner in this new project.

So I was introduced to Dan and Tito Ben, LIFE’s founder and Executive Director who immediately put me in the project. They told me that they wanted the site to be dynamic, with regularly updated news, stories, other rich content like videos and audio clips. They also wanted the site to feature and highlight the projects and initiatives by LIFE in an interactive manner. They wanted readers to comment on their stories, news, announcements, etc. They wanted a shoutbox so that visitors could leave a message on the fly, they wanted a photo gallery, a downloads section, summarizing what they need and envisioned for the site, they simply needed a CMS or a content-management system.

There are dozens of CMS platforms out there, like Drupal, PHP-Nuke, Joomla and yes WordPress. I came clean and honest with them that my programming skills are nothing to be so proud of as I am not formally trained in web programming, let alone creating and managing databases and creating a custom CMS from scratch.

They kindly considered that fact but still held on to me for advice and eventually, actual work on the site.

The first thing I did before taking on the project was assesing their current host’s specs and capabilities. I forgot who their webhost was, but it was something I was not comfortable working with. It was a Plesk-powered, Windows-run webhost account that 1) I wasn’t so familiar with, 2) I do not personally prefer to work on.

This bias comes from my limited experience of dabbling with WordPress, PHP-Nuke, Drupal, Fantastico, CPanel and FTP clients this past 4 years or so of being a netizen and blogger. Aside from blogging, I took on a small hobby of fiddling with the online apps and whatchamacallits becoming a newbie webmaster only tru experienec, trial-and-error and experiments.

My recommendation to them was to switch from a Windows-based webhosting account to Linux-based one. It’s a lot cheaper and allows for a certain degree of flexibility and robustness. Gladly, they agreed and decided to put me in complete control of the project.

Yikes!

I took on the project as a big opportunity to learn new things, work with new people much more knowledgable than me and to help out LIFE, because hey, I’m now a Lasallian, with a touch of blue of course. *ehem*

Drupal or WordPress?

I initially decided on using Drupal and customizing or extending it to suit LIFE’s needs which weren’t that complex. So the past 4 months or so, I spent whatever spare time I had dabbling and learning the inner workings of Drupal. It wasn’t such a simple and easy task, I even made little to no progress alone. Aside from Drupal’s steep learning curve for newbies like me, blogging on WordPress ate all of my time and my learning curve. Since I’ve been using it since, I’ve become so acustomed and comfortable with WP, I believe I have the basic know-how in making it work to meet LIFE’s online needs.

So that custom Drupal-based prototype for LIFE was shelved and I downloaded a fresh kit of WordPress and started tweaking PHP files once more. I figured that with what LIFE has stated for their needs, a blog would be best for them at this time. A more promising assurance is the emergence of a movement that is now pushing WordPress as a full-pledged CMS and not just a blogging plaform. More on this in a later post.

LIFE 2.0 (beta)

So the result is the new LIFE site that could be seen today, which was soft-launched last August 20, 2007. It uses a tweaked Mandigo theme plus a staple of WP plugins that add more functionality to WordPress.

The custom header will be changed to a more elegant design by the month’s end. The photo gallery and downloads section will follow suit. It’s basically a work in progress but it’s ready to serve LIFE’s needs of making its presence felt in the world wide web and pushing for its mission of being God’s stewards of creation.

It even has username@life.net.ph mailbox system powered by Gmail for your domain, which is a component of Google Apps suite. I plan on installing ActiveCollab on its back end so that LIFE core members and staff could carry out their work, planning and other collaborative projects online.

Lastly, an online discussion board would be setup once the LIFE community gets active online. Lots more are instore for the future, things will come as LIFE itself grows into a solid and well-known Lasallian institution for the environment and human development.

Do check out the new LIFE site, subscribe to their RSS feed and if you feel like it, join in one of their projects in saving our environment and securing a better future for all of us.