When UP Diliman made headlines for having more than fifty percent of this year’s graduating class finish with Latin honors, it raised a lot of eyebrows from both members of the UP community and outsiders. Author Butch Dalisay who teaches at UP has weighed in on the peculiar issue, attributing the seeming generosity of the prestigious state university with Latin honors to the relaxation of academic policies brought about by the COVID pandemic. Citing a few studies critiquing the Latin honors system, he’s on point in saying that the time has come to find a better way of recognizing and rewarding academic achievements. In general, the problem also exists at other education levels.
A place for your words, thoughts, and content
Eleven years since Jon Udell asked where have all the bloggers gone, I still find myself asking the same question from time to time. We all know the answer to this, the rise of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, the defunct Google+, TikTok, Instagram, etc has captured the online conversation. Google didn’t help when it killed off its Google Reader app.
But thanks to Scott Hanselman, the realization that one should continue to blog and do so on your own domain instead of putting it all in one or scattered across walled gardens would ensure that you have control of and ownership of your words.
Just look at the mess Twitter is now in. Musk rebranding it to ‘X’ is just but the latest evidence that social media platforms will come and go, and each time one goes under after going through ‘enshittification‘, what happens to all of your content?
With a blog, there will always be a place for your words, thoughts, and other content.
No AI was used in writing this blog
When the AI revolution broke out, my timeline was flooded with AI ‘gurus’ with all the praise, tutorials, and hacks to maximize it for work and in particular writing. Never mind that most of these ‘experts’ were once ‘crypto bros’ when cryptocurrencies were all the craze.
Anyway, I kept an open mind and even got excited about AI because for a moment I was hyped with the prospects of how beneficial these neural networks would be for me, thinking at long last, this could help me get back to regularly publishing content again.
When I finally got the chance to try out ChatGPT and Google Bard to write a draft blog post, the thrill quickly evaporated. It’s not that the results were bad, heck I said to myself “I finally found myself an editor”. It’s just that the reading of the output felt like it was no longer my work. I could not find my voice in it, immediately I knew it wasn’t my work anymore. It felt unauthentic.
So that was how I quickly reverted back to my own words and writing process. Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t turn me into an AI naysayer as there’s genuinely some value in using it. Maybe I just used the wrong prompts and need to learn more about how to better use it, and I will. Just not for my writing.
Instead, AI has helped me with ‘spit-balling’ ideas and supplementing online searches, which pretty much suits my needs. As for my writing, it’s still just me, my notes, and a blank screen or piece of paper.
Thirty-eight
After almost a decade, I’m celebrating my birthday back in my hometown and in the house where I was born. The move from the city has been full of challenges but there’s not been a single day of regret ever since. With the worsening climate crisis, getting away from the urban jungle has been a gift for the family.
While the writing, podcasting, and building scale models are still on hiatus, the anxiety from not being able to continue with all of it has been less severe. In fact, the anticipation of getting back at these has been a positive force as it has helped me stay focused on settling down back home and getting through the difficult times.
The other day, the thought of adding more books to my home library was so tempting that I couldn’t help but consider it. Moreover, I am determined to make a good start on my reading list for 2021.
Call it baby steps if you will, what matters is I’m still moving on a trajectory rather than standing still.
While not much has been published on this blog since last year, the advocacy on social issues has been consistent on my social media accounts. The next step is getting it all synced with this blog as centerstage and happening on a regular cadence.
There was a mention of a health concern in last year’s birthday post, to which I’m glad to report that a very positive step has been taken to address it thanks to a wonderful, brilliant, and caring doctor. The prognosis is very good overall and there’s a very strong chance that by my next birthday, I would be in a much better state. I intend to talk about it more on this blog in the coming months.
To everyone who will take the time to send me a greeting today, a big thank you!
Globe Broadband vs PLDT FibEr
A month ago today, we finally moved out of the city and back into my hometown of Silang, Cavite. Aside from figuring out where to put all of our stuff in a much bigger house, one of the things I worried greatly about is getting decent fiber internet service.
Back in Taguig, our PLDT Fiber service of almost 7 years has been mostly reliable and fast. Globe wasn’t available in our neighborhood so Converge became a secondary service, a backup that is so crucial for remote work and online classes.
I tried to get our PLDT Fiber service transferred to Cavite but to no surprise, the process became a lengthy ordeal and ended up being abandoned because it turns out that it’s not available in our new address.
Fortunately, my sister has been on Globe Fiber and she told me that the service has been virtually great and reliable for some years now, so we’ve decided to split the bill and upgrade to a faster subscription of 800Mbps to accommodate the additional users and devices we’ve brought with us.
So far, Globe has not been a disappointment. Except for one inconvenience, we cannot ignore, even when there are a couple of us using the network, we’re only getting roughly 400Mbps connection speed. Half of what we are being billed monthly.
We’ve already reported this to Globe and this afternoon, one of their technicians dropped by to check the connections and the modem. He agreed that our connection speed should way above 400Mbps so he escalated it for further investigation. So now, we wait yet again for the issue to be resolved.
The entire experience just reinforced a couple of observations; first, the quality of internet connection varies largely from one area to another, and second, the state of an ISP’s provider in the area will influence the quality of the service.
So this would be my answer to anyone who’d ask ‘Which internet provider is better?’ It depends, literally on where the location is.