“To most programmers, Lisp seems like an entirely alien language at first- One thing that I think the Lisp community has failed to do is convince other programmers that this strangeness is not an arbitrary obstacle, but a necessary adjustment that imparts great power to programmers that would otherwise be unattainable. The alien Lisp mascot and quirky logo designs are designed to accentuate the awesome (and, to most people, alien) power that Lisp languages have- At the same time, they show how fun Lisp programming tends to be and that Lisp has wide appeal far beyond the stuffy academia it is sometimes wrongly associated with.”

I couldn’t resist. When do you ever get to take Lisp lightly? I’m glad I survived it partially unscathed!

But Barski’s right though: give Lisp a chance. Like Math, you can’t let your fear of it overwhelm you. It won’t run short of your expectations, and will cause you twice the stress if you let it take over you.

I’ll post it at another blog. Eventually…

2005 Trend Micro Tech Challenge Finalists

Teams: Savers, UPBibo, Vulcan
Coaches: Susan Pancho-Festin, Sanjay Risbud, TJ Vergel de Dios

Congratulations! They will compete in the final round at Crowne Plaza Hotel at Ortigas on November 22-24 where they will vie for the PhP1,000,000.00 grand prize. Good luck guys!

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ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Programming Contest - Manila 2005

Teams: Booroongoo, Decided, Team Roger, UP BisDak, UP Team of Artistic Engineers, UP Wet
Coaches: Riza Batista, Mike Samson

You may not have brought the bacon home, but we’re still proud of you guys! Among the local schools who had at least two teams, only the UP Diliman and DLSU Manila teams were able to solve at least one problem (walang bokya, ika nga)!

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2006 BPI-DOST Science Awards

Awardee: Geo Lubaton
Finalists: Mai Sibayan, Carlos Lasa
Coach: Joyce Avestro

Hooray! Finally, after eight years (nine if 2006), DCS produced a BPI awardee once again! BTW, the last DCS awardee was Cattleya Sanchez, BCS 1997. Past BPI science awardees of DCS include Amelita Martija-Donaldson and Joanne Jill Olazo.

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Coming soon:
Clash of the Brains
MIT-PESO
HSBC Young IT Entrepreneur Awards
Undergraduate Research Competition

Congratulations! Win or lose, this world class organization is proud of you guys! Mabuhay!

It is my second time to be a member of the board of judges for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition here in Manila. The first one was several years ago at the University of Asia and the Pacific and the second was this afternoon at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Topping the 99 teams are teams from Ateneo de Manila University, University of Tokyo and if I am not mistaken, University of Hong Kong (sorry if it is another university but I am sure that they’re from Hong Kong).

One of the UP teams, however, came in at a dismal fourth among local teams with Ateneo de Manila on first and third and De La Salle University on second. Better luck next time, guys! I reckon you need more serious training sessions for next year’s competition.

Three questions were submitted by judges from the University of the Philippines, 4 from De La Salle and one from Ateneo de Manila University. I submitted one of the 3 questions from UP and although the board judged it as the sole easy problem among all the problems fielded, it became one of the more difficult one to solve. I found it rather absurd considering how easy it was! Heck, the one from a colleague got even more correct solutions and to think that we considered his problem as medium-difficult. I guess looks can really be deceiving…
The question now is — how many among the 17 teams who solved my problem came from UP Diliman? I think out of the 6 teams from UP Diliman, 1 came home without even solving one! Ha - coaches, you better tell who these students are…
Anyway - good luck next time! And one more thing, the answers to some of the problems are sometimes too simple and/or obvious that people would rather resort to more complicated ways of solving them.

CROSSROADS’ MISSION: to provide accessible articles related to computer science, a forum for students to share their research, and to introduce the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

What is the ACM Crossroads Student Magazine?

C - Career advice from Jack Wilson, ACM’s career consultant
R - Read by more than 20,000 people
O - Official ACM international magazine for students
S - Security and Networking columns each month
S - Students publish the magazine and website
R - Respectable website with information on Java, C++, and more
O - Objective articles written by students, for students
A - Association with ACM, a highly respected professional organization
D - Demand the best from students and professionals alike
S - Service to the profession of computer science

These are a few qualities which define CROSSROADS. Participate in ACM Crossroads today!

http://www.acm.org/crossroads/doc/liaison/flier2.pdf

“Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation’s oldest venture capital firm, carrying on an unbroken practice of venture capital investing that stretches back to 1911. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.”

Wonder why? Click on the link to find out.

(It’s a whole lot better if you find out now than later. ^_^)

I don’t know about you guys, but Venture Capitalists are not a familiar lot to me, until I joined PESO. But anyway, this is why Bessemer’s Anti-Portfolio is all the more amusing. It’s a list of famous companies they passed on investing. HP, Apple, eBay, FedEx, Google, Intel, Lotus, Compaq, PayPal, IBM, Cisco Systems… Will the absurdness ever end?

They’re so un-bitter about it that I wonder if it’s even true.

Beyond the humor of the story is a greater lesson, of course, especially to us Marketing apprentices (aka the VC lapdogs).

Never say die. Getting turned down the first time will just be the start of a string of many other rejections.

The greatest ideas aren’t the easiest to recognize. They’ll never know what genius hit them.

And we, shall laugh hardest, laugh last.

Fellow ACMers, I believe Kuya Harv has successfully transferred our present UPACM.Org files to the Chapter Website account provided to us by ACM International. W00t! Thanks!

It will become our mirror site at the moment, but it could even be our main one should we decide not to renew our hosting anymore. After all, it would be nice to hold on to this “UP” subdomain we grabbed quicker than the other UP’s (U Portland, U Pennsylvania, etc.) in the world.

HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awards is a regional business plan writing competition, inviting talented post-secondary students from Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand to display their creativity and business acumen.

The local competition will take place from September 2005 to March 2006. Gold Award winners from each country or territory will compete for the Best of the Best Awards in Hong Kong in June 2006, following by a rewarding US study tour.

Congratulations to the Sinfinity group, a finalist and best poster winner at the recently concluded Engineering Marketing Congress. Kudos to the CS198 groups responsible for this project, JSP (Secretary Ia Lucero, Treasurer Jonas Roque and Logistics Head Phil Kimpo) and J2L.

Folks, all members of the SIG are requested to subscribe to SDN. If you have friends who use Java, ask them to register as well.

The City College of Manila was generous enough to give UP ACM a nice plaque.

Kudos to all the ACMers who contributed to this endeavor!

P.S. Sorry for the poor quality of the images. I only used my phone’s camera.