Best Handheld/Mobile Game: Crazy Kite by Zeenoh Games

Best PC/Mac Game: Circle Speedster by Roan Contreras

Best Browser-based Game: Lords and Colonies by Anino Games

Innovation Award: Circle Speedster by Roan Contreras

Cultural Awards: Jan-Jan the Jeepney by Anino Games

Best Indie Game: Circle Speedster by Roan Contreras

GAME ON! (Student Project Awards)

People’s Choice Award: Hala! by Typhoon Games

Student Project Award Grand Champion for PGDF 2011: Gates of Heaven by TAM-OWL

16-year old Roan Contreras scored a hat-trick by winning 3 awards – the Innovation Award, Best PC/Mac Game and the coveted Best Indie Awards. Anino games scored a brace by winning the Best Browser-based Game and the Cultural Award. Crazy Kite by Zeenoh Games won in the Best Mobile/Handheld Game category. For the Best Student Project award – the public voting went in favor to eventual People’s Choice award winner Hala! by Typhoon Games but the Best Student Project Award for PGDF 2011 went to the addicting (It reminds me of the oldskool Typing Tutor games) Gates of Heaven by TAM-OWL. The victory was all the more sweeter for the TAM-OWL team because the group members were also part of GUILD (the professional student organization of the Game Development and Design Program of DLS-CSB) who were handling the logistics of organizing the Philippine Game Development Festival 2011. Special mention must be given to Charles Que and his team – he had them most number of nominations but wasn’t able to bag an award. But aren’t all nominees already winners in their own right just for being the pioneer nominees for these awards? To the nominees, winners and organizers – Congratulations! See you all at the Philippine Game Development Festival 2012

posted by Paul Pajo

“WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress.

WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.  WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.

On October 2, 2010, the Filipino WordPress community will gather together in Manila for WordCamp Philippines 2010. It marks the third time WordCamp is held in the Philippines, following successful WordCamps in 2008 and 2009. This year, the organizers promise a bigger and better WordCamp Philippines, featuring distinguished speakers and not to mention WordPress creator Matt Mullenweghimself being in attendance.

The spacious venue provided by the College of Saint Benilde in Manila allows for a multi-track system wherein participants may sign up for the Basic, Advanced and Developer talks depending on their skill level. WordCamp Philippines 2010 is a whole day affair running from 8AM in the morning to 6PM in the evening. An exciting schedule of activities is in the works. Please visit this site from time to time for more updates.

Avatar Media is the proud organizer of WordCamp Philippines 2010.

WordCamp Philippines 2010
October 2, 2010
College of Saint Benilde
Taft Avenue, Manila
Philippines”

“…can this be an alternative class? sayang kasi….you will really learn a lot in this seminar… sana required ang IS students to attend this =( …we must grab the opporunity.” – Jecca Cervero

“…in this seminar, you will learn a lot of things especially about refactoring the code, it will be a great help to a lot of IS students ..I think it should be required!” – Marjorie Buce

“… coding has never been this simple, I now see and write codes from a different angle. This workshop has taught me beyond what I can learn in my programming subjects, such as time management, simplicity and code readability. If it wasn’t for this, I would still have a hard time reading and maintaining codes, even my own.” - Tish Mahtani

“… I’m not really into coding or programming stuffs. That’s why I attended this event to help me gain more knowledge about programming. What I liked most is being able to shorten heavy weight of codes into a very short and readable ones.” – DK Abrenica

“.. the first rule of programming is not to program at all! This seminar taught me the virtue of simplicity and cleanliness in code writing; it surely was a great headstart into the very cumbersome software development field that we IS students are to undertake in the near future. The opportunity of learning from one of the best senior developers and programming mentors in the country lead me to into realizing that the practice of coding need not be so complicated, that the best way is to simplify. Less is more!” – Uij Dollosa

“… When I see codes that are alike, I just usually copy and then paste it. But, does it make me a good programmer? Of course not! It also makes me unprofessional. Good thing, refactoring helps a lot. It makes my codes short, simple, easier to maintain and organized. In addition, I could be proud that I don’t do copy and paste When I learned about refactoring, I realized that I don’t have to make myself not love programming due to tons of confusing code lines and time consuming editing the whole program, because there’s a more easy way to understand and do it ” – Jill Montano

An interview with Refactoring Guru, Philip Laureano, of CodeLean

Last November 14, 21, 28 and December 8, the Association of Information Management hosted a refactoring workshop for DLS-CSB students and alumni conducted by BSBA-CA Alumni, Philip Laureano, who is now a Technology Evangelist from CodeLean. Here’s an interview by Paul Pajo, faculty adviser of AIM about refactoring.

Paul Pajo: From a non-IT person’s point of view, what is code refactoring?

Philip Laureano: Refactoring is the part of a programmer’s job that they never teach you in school. Universities usually teach you how to build software like an engineer, but they don’t teach you how to maintain it once the software is built. In software development, we’re faced with impossible scenarios every day. We’re given deadlines, requirements, and schedules that change on a daily basis. Building the software is only 10% of the overall work involved. The other 90% of the work that is done by software developers is making sure that their applications are flexible enough to meet these seemingly impossible requirements It’s like having a professor who changes their mind every day, and holds you responsible if you’re unable to meet their requirements (no matter how unreasonable they might be). It’s not enough to build the software–you have to actively maintain it so that you’ll be ready to change it once the next requirement comes in

Paul Pajo: So where does or how does refactoring come into play?

Philip Laureano: Refactoring is the art of reorganizing your code so that it’s easier to change, maintain, and understand. This isn’t some new technology–it’s been around for almost four decades now. If you’re a software developer with at least four or five years of experience under your belt, there’s a good chance that you already do this but you probably never thought about it

Paul Pajo: It wasn’t called “refactoring” until fairly recently, was it?

Philip Laureano: I believe it’s been called that for four decades now. Actually, it’s been done for four decades but it really didn’t get much attention until Martin Fowler wrote his book on Refactoring.

Paul Pajo: Okay so, from your experience, why should students or even junior programmers learn refactoring from the get go?

Philip Laureano: It will give them an advantage that many people of their skill level rarely attain. It takes years to learn this stuff. Refactoring is about learning how to improve the quality of the code that you already have. It’s learning how to reshape your software in such a way that you can move faster than the competition because of the quality of your code. I would even say that refactoring should be as natural for a programmer as naturally as a doctor washes his hands before an operation. And from another standpoint, you really don’t get much peer respect from other programmers if you write code that is not refactored. So on one hand, it makes your job as a programmer much easier to do since refactoring makes your code easy to maintain. On the other hand, no programmer would want to work with you unless you can show them that the code you write is clean

Paul Pajo: Am I correct to say that the refactoring workshop you did in CSB is the one of the first if not the first refactoring workshop in the Philippines?

Philip Laureano: Yes, that’s correct. We wanted to see how it would affect people with some rudimentary programming experience. It was a mixed experience, but overall, I’d say the students learned quite a bit from the course.

Paul Pajo: Okay, this begs the question, if refactoring has been around for almost 4 decades and it’s such an important part of programming – why only now?

Philip Laureano: It’s because for the first few decades in software development, the focus has been solely on delivery and construction. But over the past ten years or so, we (as an industry) are slowly starting to realize that our problems are caused by the cost of maintenance, not the cost of construction. So you can come up with the most magnificent specification for software, but it quickly becomes obsolete when the next set of requirements come in and you can’t change your code fast enough to meet those requirements. Big Design Up Front (BDUF), in essence, is practically ineffective

Paul Pajo: There was a Red-Green Refactor: Test-Driven Development with .NET back in October 5 2006 – how is that different from what you’re doing?

Philip Laureano: I focus on the “Refactoring” part. You can’t do TDD without refactoring, and vice-versa. TDD helps you write testable code, but it’s the refactoring part that lets you improve the design of the code that you have already written. In fact, it’s pointless to show people what TDD does if they can’t refactor. They need to understand why their code needs to be clean; otherwise TDD can get messy and very, very, ugly. TDD’s basic concept is that you write the tests first, make the tests pass with the simplest (and even ugliest) code possible, and then you take the “ugliness” out of the code. It’s basically an introductory course. I assume that he doesn’t cover refactoring because it’s either too big of a subject to discuss or perhaps he thinks that enough people know how to refactor their code

Paul Pajo: I searched devpinoy.com – you’re right – refactor seminars/workshops are scarce.

Philip Laureano: You’d be lucky to find a single refactoring course within all of Southeast Asia.

Paul Pajo: How is technical debt related to refactoring and could you explain in layman’s terms what technical debt is?

Philip Laureano: In layman’s terms, technical debt is the kind of debt that you get into when you decide to skip critical development activities in favor of a shorter release cycle. It can be anything from deciding not to refactor or opting not to document everything because you think it takes too much of your time. Like any debt, you’ll eventually have to pay it back; otherwise, your productivity will eventually be crippled by that debt, and you won’t be able to work as efficiently as you did beforehand.

Paul Pajo: So from your experience, how much of a technical debt can be avoided if you refactor from the start?

Philip Laureano: All of it. It takes a lot of discipline, but you can pretty much cut your maintenance work to zero if you keep refactoring early. That’s what we have done with our projects at CodeLean.

Paul Pajo: And you’re saying this from experience? Can you compare your programming experience before and after you became disciplined in refactoring?

Philip Laureano: Yes, I’m saying this from experience. Back in 1999, when I was just starting out as a programmer, I didn’t know what refactoring was, nor did I understand how much the quality of my code had a huge impact on my own job performance. And now, in 2009, after working on dozens of both closed and open source projects, I’d say that refactoring has made my job really easy. I never have to spend more than an hour maintaining my code. Other shops typically would have entire teams looking through thousands of lines of source code to fix a bug. We keep our code so clean that we can spot the bug immediately and fix it. At first, refactoring didn’t make much sense to me–but it made a huge difference when I realized that I spent less and less time on maintenance because of refactoring. It also keeps our developers happy since we never get any complaints about ugly code. It just all works.

Paul Pajo: Can you go back to that “Eureka” moment? Was that a factor in you deciding to be a refactoring evangelist?

Philip Laureano: It wasn’t a “eureka” moment as much as a moment of frustration. I cared deeply about writing good software (even back then), and I couldn’t understand why people didn’t see anything wrong with their code when they decided to “Cut & Paste” it a dozen times over because they didn’t understand the concept of loops. I ran into so many cases where we had to stay overnight and fix a bug that was caused by a programmer who wrote ugly code. So I’ve become a big proponent of refactoring simply because teaching it to other people saves me the headache of having to clean up their code. At the same time, you really can’t get much respect among your peers if you don’t write clean code. Maintaining code is probably one of the most challenging parts about working as a programmer

Paul Pajo: So what exactly do you do now? From what I’ve gathered, it seems to be your dream job. Is this correct?

Philip Laureano: It is my dream job. I started off as a lead developer and CodeLean told me that they needed someone to help them get their shop set up with the best coding practices. So for the first six months, we got everyone setup with TDD, Continuous Integration, Refactoring, and Automated Web Acceptance Testing. Once we were done with the setup, CodeLean decided to focus more on training other developers. Now, I’m going to be a trainer/evangelist. So my job is to write articles, develop my personal projects, and promote the company’s courses with my blog posts and technical articles. It’s a dream come true for me because I get paid to do something I already do as a hobby.

Paul Pajo: That’s awesome! Any last words for students and programmers who might be interested in refactoring?

Philip Laureano: If you’re serious about being a good developer, then you must learn refactoring. It’s a critical skill that determines whether or not you’re a real programmer, or if you’re just someone that happens to write code. Any code monkey can write a program, but it takes a real human to write readable code for other humans. If you want to stand out as a programmer and be counted among the humans, then you definitely need to refactor your code. Always.

If you want to contact Philip Laureano about refactoring and other code-related matters, follow him on twitter.com/philiplaureano

It’s the stuff of legend:

“…It’s taken longer to develop than the mapping of the human genome. It’s the first Google result for “When it’s done.” It’s birthed the longest running development period in video game history, and the longest running joke in internet history. It’s still not out.

Maybe the one thing you can’t say about Duke Nukem Forever is that it’s been canceled. And now, thanks to that fortune, we may yet be treated to a release of the infamous game. But how did we get here? I was in 7th grade when DNF was announced, and though I’ve followed its development since, my memory of that time is muddled with the pleasures of late 90s gaming, and the horrors of braces…”

hahaha

well 3D Realms finally shut down:

“… Original story: A very reliable source close to Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms today confirmed to Shacknews that the development studio has shut down.

The closure came about as a result of funding issues, our source explained, with the shut down said to affect both 3D Realms and the recently resurrected Apogee. Employees of both entities have already been let go…”

The next time you find yourself working on a game and you can’t seem to finish it – don’t worry – there’s a benchmark for this kind of delay, here’s some comparisons (i.e. Word Events):

World Events:

• 4 nations have acquired nuclear weapons technology.
• 19 wars have begun.
• 5 wars have ended.
• Approximately 509,373,306 people have died and 661,373,082 have been born.
• There have been 7 total solar eclipses and 8 total lunar eclipses.
• The United Kingdom handed sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China.
• There have been 22 “major” school shootings worldwide.

You can check this page for more comparison!

The population of the world has crossed six billion

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

“Due to flooding caused by typhoon Isang, DLS-CSB is suspending classes&work today, 17 July. All campuses except CSB Hotel shall be closed”

got the txt/sms from the IS Chairperson, enjoy the day!

posted by Paul <a href=”http://paulpajo.com”>The Pageman</a> Pajo

“After initial experiments with pointless apps such as vampire bites and zombies, Facebook quickly became a casual gaming mecca, thanks to the success of games such as Scrabulous, Mafia Wars and scores of other multiplayer social games. Twitter could follow the same path as well.

After all, much like Facebook, Twitter offers the virality so vital to a social network, a name space and thumbnails, a communication channel for messages and notifications, and a simple API for developers. It also has momentum. But those are the basic building blocks of a good social gaming hub — they need to be aggregated to produce engaging experiences as well.”

Speaking of Mafia Wars – they’ve been upping the ante lately by even offering a new Cuban experience outside of the normal New York Mafia action. GigaOm does have a point, SpyMaster (I admit I’m not playing this so as not to spam my FriendFeed/Twitter/Plurk connected Facebook stream already) is a proof-of-concept of how viral Twitter can be if you used it as a casual gaming hub. Which begs the question and is actually the last sentence of the GigaOm article:

“Of course, all of this means nothing without good games that can hold people’s attention.”

So, I’ll leave it up to you DLS-CSB GDD students to come up with a Twitter casual game on your own free time to make the case for Twitter being a casual game hub, okay?

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo (you can add me on Twitter/Plurk as well!)

Confirmed Case of Influenza A(H1N1) and Extension of Suspension of Classes

De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) announces the extended closure of its campuses until June 18, 2009 in view of its first confirmed case of Influenza A(H1N1) virus. Based on existing Department of Health Guideline on A(H1N1) in schools, DLS-SCB will reopen on June 19.

The student has mild symptoms, has been admitted in a healthcare facility and is being closely monitored by medical practitioners.

The College has been cooperating fully with the DOH in its contact-tracing activities. DLS-CSB and the DOH team have been communicating with everyone on the contacts list to provide them with information and medication, if necessary.

This morning, DLS-CSB released an announcement on suspension of classes following the CHED regulation, which was sent to the College at 7:30 am. At 11:30 am, administrators of the College met with DOH officials and were informed of the one confirmed case, which prompted the amendment of the previous announcement.

During the closure period, the DLS-CSB academic community is advised to monitor flu-like symptoms, to stay away from crowds, and to practice good hygiene. If symptoms appear, members of the academic community should immediately seek medical attention. They should also inform the DLS-CSB Clinic or Department of Student Life of their condition by sending their full name and ID number through email at clinic@dls-csb.edu.ph, lazatinc@dls-csb.edu.ph or bacays@dls-csb.edu.ph.

Inquiries may also be made to the following numbers:
-       (0918) 916-3475
-       (0917) 570-2944
-       (0917) 570-2952
-       (0917) 570-2955
-       (0917) 521-9818
-       (0917) 859-2988
-       (0922) 843-2097

The DLS-CSB Clinic may also be contacted from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm for medical inquiries at the following numbers:
- Taft Campus: 526-7441 to 47 ext. 106 or 245
- AKIC Campus: 523-888 loc. 253
- SDA Campus: 536-6752 loc. 301

Any updates and developments on the issue and on class schedules will be posted on the DLS-CSB website: www.dls-csb.edu.ph.

Other concerns and inquiries may be sent to mco@dls-csb.edu.ph.