I has been over a week now since i finished my last final exam. It also means the finishing line of my university undergraduate studies, at least for the meantime until i decide what i want to do on the coming years. For now while waiting for my convocation in June, I have started to pickup different projects that i had planned in the past but never had time to finish, it feels good to be done school for this same reason, i get all the time i want to spend on things.

It is also the time for uncertainty for me as well, having to find a job and moving. It all comes down to time management of your life, there is so much one can do at any given moment in time, then you figure that life is finite and you ask yourself this question: "Where do i want to be at the end of the day?". I always had this philosophy of "If you never try, you will never know" in terms of goal setting and discovery, but also give importance to my well-being, how can you really achieve happiness without it?. Remember that there is more to life than just work to live, you have to live for today and live for life.

(Click to listen then read post series)
Once upon a time, in the far reaches of Computer Science universe different kinds of algorithm analysis emerged with its complexities and their hard understanding nature became computer science students final frontier . . .

Yes, you guessed right. Its 0360-454 Design and Analysis of Algorithms and its mighty CLRS book (The MIT Press - Introduction to Algorithms). The course covers a broad range of algorithms along with their design and analysis, some examples are Quick Sort, Dynamic Programming, Greedy Algorithms, Graph Algorithms, NP-Completeness and Approximation Algorithms.

Most of my fellow classmates and previous generations of Honours Computer Science students have/had hard times staying on the thin red line of the passing mark which ultimately i call it the "Final Frontier" of Honours Computer Science students to graduation. All said, may my degree be in the hands of 0630-454.

I must say goodbye to summer holidays and hello to school. Its the beginning of a fresh semester, new challenges, new habits and most importantly the last year of my university life. A memorable last year as i hope and plan it to be. This last 2 semesters will also be the hardest and one of the heaviest course load i ever had.
I got back a couple of days ago, this time i flew with Air Canada on a non-stop flight and i loved it; the seats were quite comfortable and the in-flight entertainment system was fabulous.
This summer passed real fast but did quite a lot of interesting things like visit Thailand, South Korea and went to places around Hong Kong that i never been before. I spent most of my time improving and exploring the diverse field of photography as you may see on previous postings and some others that i will post later.

This last weekend was the last weekend before final exams and decided to take a little break. I always wanted a Nintendo Wii console ever since i started to hear and watch the media related to it; so i heard my friend Wai Lit talk about getting one that by coincidence a small shipment was coming to the local Toys "R" Us toy store the next day after hearing about it. Months have passed by after the release of the Nintendo Wii and supplies have not catch up yet as a result there is a high demand in the market right now. Knowing that, we decided to go early and line up in order to get one of the 20 consoles that were going to be available at store opening in a first-come-first-serve basis. Luckily i managed to be the 12th in line and finally got one, took it home and played for the whole day the bundled games "Wii Sports" and "Wii Play" that came bundled with an extra Wii remote i bought. At the end of the day the following graphic shall illustrate my impressions:



Yes, it is indeed a pretty cool and fun console despite the small number of consoles i ever owned (GameBoy, GameGear, SNES and PS2). The Nintendo Wii was also the first console i ever lined up for outside of a store to get. I am looking forward to do some cool experiments with the Wii remotes and the console just as you may have encountered everywhere on the internet. For now i am going to not study and get through my final exams first.

My first final exam is around the corner and preparations are well on the way... not! On my study breaks i found some more genius answers to exam questions.


Example 1. Boss Wife.


Example 2. Elephant on the way.


Example 3. Blonde Chick.

Fianlly, this long and hibernating cold semester is comming to an end. Having said that, it is also cram and and long study hours coming this following week.
Today came across some funny old email from my friend Becky related to math exams and in-test-free-time.


Example 1. Expanding of an equation!


Example 2. Finding a Variable!


Example 3. Re-writing a question: Finding Bruce Wayne's Identity.

It's about time to context switch to study mode and try not to end up in the situation like the ones above of not having idea on what to write on my final exams.

Say goodbye to winter snow and welcome April flowers. Lately weather has been real nice forcing most of us away from the computer and work to enjoy the warm and refreshing breeze with sunny and clear skies. It is also the beginning to the end of this Winter 2007 semester, work piles up and finals approaching.



April also brings fools together on April's Fools day with wacky and crazy inventions like the Google new TiSP (Toilet ISP). If you are reading this entry you should maybe take a day off and enjoy the rest of the day.

Today, i finalized the first version of my AJAX message box and implemented AJAX for my blog add comments form. For those who dont know what is AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is a technology which enables web applications to be more interactive and is part of Web 2.0 technologies. More info on AJAX and WEB 2.0.

I have successfully moved the website to this new faster and more reliable server/host (GoDaddy.com). Also during this few days, most of the architecture of this site has undergone major structural changes. Amongst the most important changes is the redesign of the blogging system, photo album management system, video management system and the administrative features attached to each one of them. Also, AJAX functionality will be added to each section enhancing the user experience.

As of this posting date onwards, you are welcome to post your comments!.

Have a nice day! :-)

One day you wake up with neck pain and wonder? What did i do last night? What did i do to get such a, pain in the neck! Then you turn on your computer and type the keywords "neck pain computer wiki" on Google and walla! the first hit is Repetitive Strain Injury.

Well after reading and understanding the nature of such a pain i decided to prevent it by happening again by the simple fact to not work continuously in front of the computer for more than 5 hours with no break!

Moral of the story: Take a break and get a life!

As a continued effort to make this website appealing, useful and informative but yet following industry standards since 2002 when the first framed version of this website vision. The next logical step was to provide administrative functions and the implementation of user management and content management such as videos, photos, projects, tutorials, and other.

This post represents a first step in the development of my administrative panels, since this post is created and being typed in my administrative blog panel.

The next step will be to re-create a new schema for photography content management and database linkage.
Thank you for your interest and hope this site will become a useful resource in the short future to come.

Cheers, Manuel

Happy New Year to everyone, it has certainly been a long time since my last post. My last semester workload was quite heavy and finished December 20th with good marks. On the 21st i went down to Toronto for a mini photo shoot of night car photography, the results did not turn out to be too good as expected for first time experimentation. On the next day i took my plane ride back to Cancun for Christmas Holidays. This last christmas holidays i had the company of my friend Dominic and together we had some fun times hanging out, eating and drinking. During the last week of holidays back in Cancun i worked on Hong Kong Group for web consulting and managed to get quite some work done. After the holidays, i came back to Windsor started school and also got an internship as a Nightlife Photographer at the Windsor branch of Canada Social Magazine. during this week i have also been sorting and separating photos from 2006 for uploading here on the web which have been taking quite some effort considering that i took 5 times more the amount of pictures than previous years.
Some new albums will be coming up this coming week and i will be spending a bit more time implementing functionality to this website as well as other consulting sites.

Yet another busy week at school, started a couple of course projects and gained some more knowledge in web technologies and concepts. All this, have enabled me to add and provide extra functionality with industry standards to this website. This last 2 weeks i converted the video section to XML-based and improved flash video controls. Next i will work on XML support in my PHP Dynamic Photo Album, allowing extra information and portability.

Today i finished a week of midterms and i noticed the level of satisfaction after you acomplish something successfully is quite great. Lately the weather is transitioning to winter with cold and cludy weather with the ocasional rain. There comes a point in your life where you start to change, perhaps mature or let go the past and move forward. You start to have higher goals and ambitions, plans for those goals. Times change and with time we change.

Summer ended and i am back to Windsor attending my lecture now. Got back saturday afternoon from CUN-YYZ, Jacque came to pick me up and we had a half day visit in Toronto. These last 4 days i have been busy reordering the whole apartment, setting up things and getting all up and running.
My last 2 weeks in Cancun were great worked in many interesting projects such like taking photographs of a whole food menu in a restaurant and assist in the marketing department of a medium sized company called "Grupo Hong Kong". Also, during those 2 weeks i also had lots of my favourite mexican dishes.