The big news that’s rocking the physics, electrical and electronics engineering fields is the proof of the existence of the memristor. “Mem-what?” Well, that’s what my initial reaction was, too. The memristor is apparently the missing fourth fundamental basic element of electrical circuits, alongside the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor. And the cool thing about this is that the memristor was first hypothesized in 1971 by Leon Chua, a Filipino-American professor at the University of California at Berkeley who got his degree in B.S. Electrical Engineering at the Mapúa Institute of Technology in 1959, here in the Philippines! Yay, Pinoy!

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One thing I did over the long weekend was to contribute some more to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project, something I had been doing last year. This time around, I tackled various places in Metro Manila, not just the southern portions, and I added more types of data and not just streets.

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Found via Kottke is this absolutely geeky blog showing off science- and math-related tattoos from scientists, mathematicians, programmers, and other academics. I find it to be a wonderful blend of the rebellious and the geek.

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Did that title rattle you? Was your grammar/spelling Nazi evil twin awakened by it? If yes, then you’re not alone. Filipino Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia had a long-running debate this year regarding the name of the Philippine currency and what to name the corresponding Wikipedia article.

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Ever since I discovered that the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project expanded their coverage to the whole world, I was excited to map out my neighborhood since I saw that my area is still virgin territory yet untouched by Philippine-based OSM contributors. You can actually add data on the site itself using their Potlatch web app. It’s a slick Adobe Flash-based application that provides a rudimentary, yet powerful map data editor and can directly show Yahoo! Maps satellite imagery for tracing streets. The other popular way of adding data is via the JOSM Java-based desktop application. JOSM is intended for power users and serious OSM contributors.

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Let’s all have a slightly nerdy game this time. What is the longest chain of proper name etymology that you can think of? Here’s an example: One San Miguel Avenue (the building) is named after San Miguel Avenue in Ortigas, which is then named after San Miguel Corporation (whose headquarters is along the previously mentioned avenue), which is named after Archangel Michael. That makes a chain of four links.

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Here’s the second part of the story behind Lakbayan. You should also read the first part or the launch blog entry if you haven’t done so.

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Oh. My. God. This has got to be the coolest thing I have ever seen on Google Maps by far. Google has now integrated street-level panoramic views of practically every street in 5 U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Miami, Denver, and Las Vegas. The photos only require a flash player, is zoomable, pannable 360°, and it’s interactive! You could practically do a virtual drive around these cities! It’s almost as good as being there.

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If you understand the title, then it sounds intuitive doesn’t it? If you have a plurality elections (like what we have here in the Philippines), then the more candidates there are, the lower the probability of the winner getting the majority votes. To interpret that in another way and to put it into statistical terms, there is an inverse correlation between the number of candidates and the percentage of votes that the winning candidate gets.

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Not bad. I was able to name 115 UN member countries out of a total of 192 in 10 minutes. That’s almost 60%. Try to see if you can beat me via this cool online quiz. Tip: you don’t have to press the return key if you typed an unidentified country correctly. I would’ve listed my results here but that would spoil the fun! (Via Kottke.)

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Last weekend, I played around with the public domain data obtained by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission or SRTM. I wanted to use this data to create topographic maps that I can contribute to Wikipedia.

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I read an interesting business article yesterday saying that an Australian bank has developed a new purchasing power parity index called the iPod Index. We all know about foreign exchange rates. But we also know that just because the U.S. dollar is equivalent to 49 Philippine pesos, does not mean that an apple that sells for 50 cents in California will go for 24.50 pesos in Cebu.

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I believe I have created the first Philippine-related Google Maps mashup that is more than just placing points on a map. I remembered recently that I have scanned before an aerial photography plate of the University of the Philippines, Diliman area from the early 90s. (These plates are used by U.P. Geodetic Engineering students in their courses.) So last night, I had this brilliant idea to create a custom map in Google Maps with the aerial photography as a new map type. So now I’m proud to present my University of the Philippines, Diliman Map Mashup located at my dormant U.P. community site ASwalk.net (which I plan on reviving soon). Please select the “Aerial” map type to view the “new” imagery.

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I’ve added a beta Map page to my second blog, Tanawing Pinoy. Like the original Google Sightseeing, I plan this page to be an interactive embedded map pointing to all or a subset of the featured sights from the blog.

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Before reading on, visit this puzzle post by Jason Kottke about a plane on a conveyor belt. Read it? Thought about it? Or are you as confused as many of the commenters on his post?

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Tim Berners-Lee has a blog! If you don’t know who he is, then you either probably haven’t read Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, or you haven’t carefully read Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. For the still clueless, he’s the reason you’re reading this blog entry now; he’s the inventor of the World Wide Web.

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Being a person with good spatial intelligence, some talent for visual arts, and technical inclinations, it’s not a surprise that I’m a map freak. I love maps; I probably wouldn’t mind a job in the field of cartography or geographical information systems (GIS). And don’t be surprised if you find me poring over “where are you” maps longer than the average person.

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Since I’ve now done my part in passing the baton, I’ll blog about the meme itself. I first saw this meme on this post by Stuart Langridge, one of the geek bloggers that I read. Then I noticed it entered the Philippines (as far as I can tell) through Markku Seguerra’s post. From there, it took several more blogs and weeks before it got passed on to me.

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You learn something new everyday. While exploring the website of silverfilter, a local electronica act I saw at last Saturday’s Fête, I came across this tutorial explaining how to make a dance track. It’s interesting to say the least, and it might’ve ruined the way I listen to music (at least for a while).

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I’ve owned my Nokia 6610 for almost a year now, but I only discovered two of its nice hotkey features only recently. You’re welcome to skip this post if you’re not interested in techie minutiae. (I’m a self-confessed geek. So sue me.)

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An officemate of mine, Joanne, gave everyone in our division Rubik’s Cube for Christmas. These are not the official versions, but are imitation versions with maddeningly weird cartoon figures on the stickers. (Solving the Cube with these figures is actually more difficult since not only do you have to have the correct colors, you have to have the center cubes rotated correctly.)

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I opened Winamp a while ago and set it to play my playlist consisting of 75 songs in shuffle (random) mode. Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I heard it play my three currently most tripped songs one after the other within the first five songs! What are the chances of that happening? I would’ve believed it’s a sign from God except that I don’t know what it is a sign of.

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Several weeks ago, my officemates and I had a discussion on the question, “do you get wetter walking or running in the rain?” My guess is that the walker gets more wet, primarily because he spends more time in the rain. But intuitively, you could also say that the runner gets more wet because he is running into rain, rain that would not hit you if you were walking more slowly.

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