Sunday, June 11, 2006

HOW TO: Build your memory by 'Pegging'

This is a great in-depth article on an effective memorization system called pegging. The first thing that you need to do in order to learn how to peg, is to memorise the basic phonetic sounds that will be used to represent the numbers 0-9. To speed up your mastery of this number/letter code, I have offered a few memory aids.

It's extremely cool and unbelievably easy. I am trying to get the 100 common peg words into memory but I think it will take a fair amount of practice to automatically transform a series of numbers into images and commit them to memory.

read more | digg story

Mark Shuttleworth almost strip searched by US customs

"When Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth recently traveled to the US, he was declined entry and almost strip searched! (He refused, and they relented). Furthermore, he now has to fill out a visa application form for "people with a criminal record" every time he wishes to travel to the US."

Obviously the customs people do not use Ubuntu :-)

Seriously, though, I find this a rather large coincidence. I am applying for a B1/B2 (for those who don't know, a tourist/business visa) from our local embassy. I'm not worried anymore about getting declined on the interview, now I'm worried that I'll get rejected right at the airport when I arrive.

read more | digg story

Working in the US

Read the comments.

It is fascinating to read the comments that people have about foreigners working in the United States, about the h-1b visa, about how the system supposedly protects local workers and how it is sometimes abused by US companies.

I consider my self blessed because I work for a company in the US and yet I have not had to set one foot in US soil. All of my work is done online thru e-mail, instant messaging and ssh. I doubt that my salary is at par with US software engineers because that is my edge, living in the Philippines. It is, however, competitive when compared against local salaries. There are no health benefits and things like that, but I do get to work at home and time is pretty flexible.