Pyongyang and Ulan Bator Underground

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Add to the list of subway systems I had no idea existed: Pyongyang, North Korea, and Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

Both systems are legacies of Soviet-era industry. The logo of the Ulan Bator Metro is a letter “M” superimposed over a camel’s humps. Pictures of the stations remind me faintly of the Baltimore Metro. Stations appear to have been named for cosmonauts and yurts.

Update: It’s come to my attention that the “Ulan Bator Metro” site is a joke. And if I’d just waited for the images to load, I’d have seen the satire, plain as day. Heh heh.

More Ormandy

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The Sayings of Eugene Ormandy.

(I linked famous Eugene Ormandy quotes previously, but I don’t mind linking to this larger collection. There’s more floating out there, and I have a feeling these quotes are fast gaining urban legend status; how many of those are still actual Ormandy quotes, I wonder?)

My current favorite: “You have to do two things. Watch it and me.”

Quid est, Christiane?

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A bonny Saint Patrick’s Day to ye, lads and lasses. Before you all break out the shamrocks and Guinness tonight, take a few minutes to read up on the history of Patricius, missionary to the Irish. Here’s Patrick in a nutshell from Ireland’s Eye, a more detailed history from the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent, and CCEL has the translated text of Patrick’s Confession, one of only two preserved documents by the Saint, which includes the Celtic creed, “the Rule of Faith of the Trinity.”

Because there is no other God, nor ever was, nor will be, than God the Father unbegotten, without beginning, from whom is all beginning, the Lord of the universe, as we have been taught; and His son Jesus Christ, whom we declare to have always been with the Father, spiritually and ineffably begotten by the Father before the beginning of the world, before all beginning; and by Him are made all things visible and invisible. He was made man, and, having defeated death, was received into heaven by the Father; and He hath given Him all power over all names in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess to Him that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe, and whose advent we expect soon to be, judge of the living and of the dead, who will render to every man according to his deeds; and He has poured forth upon us abundantly the Holy Spirit, the gift and pledge of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey sons of God and joint heirs with Christ; and Him do we confess and adore, one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name.

(If someone has the Rule in its original pre-Jerome Latin, that would be totally awesome, because I can’t find it.)

Update: And how could I miss Young Russ’ Patrick page? Go see.

Cumulative Effects

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This comes rather late, considering that The Butterfly Effect was “hooted off the screen” weeks ago, but for those of you who are still unaware of the reference, the original “cumulative-effects” concept of time travel was first popularized in Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story A Sound of Thunder. I hear that a Sound of Thunder film is in the works for later this year. (Of course, there was also Treehouse of Horror V with Homer and the Time Travel Toaster.) More on that from the Time Travel Reviews at Andy’s Anachronisms.

Thumbing

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By the way, the travel log still lacks pictures, but that will change soon.

Update: Travel log entries with photos now have inline pictures.

I’ve spent the past two nights learning how to dynamically resize images in PHP, and image functions are harder than they look at first glance. You would think that it would be as simple as passing a filename string to a “resize()” function in a PHP file and linking to that file as an image. Oh no, you need to create a container object and copy an image into it and resample and specify about a dozen different arguments and return “image/jpeg” Content-type headers before you can even think of resizing a JPEG nicely without getting sickly green tones over it. If you’re lucky. More often you just get a black square.

After much hunting, downloading, trial, and error, this code snippet set me on the right path. It needed tweaking — imagecopyresize() kept pixelating until I replaced it with imagecopyresampled(), and the colors were completely whack till I discovered imagecreatetruecolor() — but I think I’ve managed to make a decent dynamic JPEG thumbnailer which will take just about any local image and resize it to a given percentage, all specified in $_GET. It’s what’s running the webcam shot in the sidebar right now.

I should have a code snippets repository around here, perhaps.

Migratory Shame

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Fitting, I guess, that I finally re-uploaded the travel logs (still incomplete) last Saturday, March 13th: second year anniversary of The Jump. That means I’ve lived in the USA as an American for two years.

I get twinges of guilt about it sometimes, reading news from back home. The PDI is quite contentious in labeling as sellouts those young graduates who leave the Philippines’ troubled shores for higher salaries in foreign currency. Having contributed to the brain drain, I probably fall under that category myself. While I did depart with the stated purpose of earning my Master’s degree, it would be dishonest to say that my decision was not also affected by the same despair which drives the exodus.

Mark has thoughts on the “sellout” label, mounts a defense of overseas workers, and issues a challenge to those in power: give Filipinos a reason to stay.

Mike has an excellent admonition for those who characterize the flight from the country as a fight for survival: seeking greener pastures is not the same as fleeing for safety. The Philippines may be in bad shape, but certainly it is not a second Somalia. Yes, poverty, street crime, and dirty politics are present, and life in Manila is hard and rough, but it’s still much better than “merely survivable.” In 1998 I left home, rented a little room in Parañaque and lived in relative squalor for three years, and even that life of subsistence was nothing compared to the lives led by the seaweed farmers of Katakian Island, the farmers of Ilocos Norte, or bangkeros from Batangas or Palawan. (All of whom I have lived among for a short time, and even then sheltered from their harsh routine by the elitist veneer of Filipino social stratification.)

Rowie is growing a list of initiatives. Scroll down a bit also for further reflections on this “Avian Migration” issue.

From Ganns, an open letter to FPJ. Though I doubt FPJ would be able to even understand it if he received it, Ganns is staying on.

As for me, shameful as it is to admit to my friends back in the Philippines, my plans are set to stay here for the long-term. I’ve grown roots here in the Eastern seaboard, both in this city and in the girl that I love. What I wonder is, does this now exclude me from criticism of Filipino affairs, owing to the image of the deserter sellout sniping at his roots from afar?

House Call

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The phone rings. Being the only one in the office this morning, I pick it up and look at the handset to read the Caller ID: “U.S. Capitol.”

“Hello, this is Paulo.”

“Hello? Oops, sorry, I have the wrong number.”

“Oh, okay.” Click.

Have I mentioned how much I love living in DC?

Catching Up on Space News

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This journal has been somewhat behind on the latest space news, so in a nutshell, it pleases me to inform you that: