GDG Devfest and g|philippines

Next month, GDG (Google Developer Group) Philippines, will be hosting the first GDG DevFest. DevFests are now community-organized but will still be a great and free developer event where you can learn a lot about Google technologies and more. There will be speakers from Google and some Pinoy developers this year. GDG Devfest will be on August 4, 2012 at AIM Conference Center. To sign-up, visit the official blog at http://gdgdevfestph.blogspot.com/.

Meanwhile, the first annual g|Philippines in Manila will be on August 3 and 4, 2012.  Day 1 will be for Business, Marketing, and Entrepreneur and the second is University Day. The venue will also be at AIM Conference Center. For details, check the site at https://sites.google.com/site/gphilippines2012.

Google Apps Challenge Manila Meeetup

Last July 6-7, 2012, GDG Philippines organized a meetup/hackaton for the Google Apps Developer Challenge 2012 at the CodeFlux Inc. office. The event intends to give introductory talks about Google Apps and Google Drive APIs especially to those who are planning to join the competition.

During the meet up, I gave a basic talk about Google Drive API. Here is the slides I used:

Introduction to Google Drive API

View more presentations from Jomar Tigcal

My slides also got featured on SlideShare's homepage last July 13, 2012.

Run United 2 2012

To accomplish my goal of running in the three legs of Runrio Trilogy this year, I signed up for Run United 2 2012 in the first or second week after it was announced. I wasn't really excited; it's just that during those times, I was already processing some papers and stuff for my work transfer.

When I registered at Toby's Sports SM Mall of Asia, I was disappointed with the automated registration system of Runrio. I had to restart filling up the form because of a limitation of the system, which to begin with is not user-friendly. Anyway, after paying, I only got a singlet and was advised to go to Run United Race Expo whose venue is yet to be announced.

A few days or weeks later, the venue for the Race Expo was set at Bonifacio Global City. Since I now working in Alabang and it closes at eight in the evening, I just decided to go on Saturday, which is the last day of the expo and also the day before the run. As I was near the venue, I realized I forgot to bring my receipt. Good thing I still remember my code in the receipt and got the race bib and the free race belt. I also took a look inside the stalls in the Race Expo and bought myself a running shorts.

On the day of the run (June 17), it was raining because of Typhoon Butchoy. I thought this will be my first run in the rain. However, when the gun start is already near, it is no longer raining nor drizzling. I was a little nervous on the run because it has been months since I last ran. I've been too busy with work and the transition that I had not been able to have some time running. With this in mind, I decided to just run and not force myself to finish it.

After more than 5k, my body started to feel pain. Good thing there was bananas in a hydration station. It was the first time for me to eat a banana in a run and it felt good. Slowly, the pain I'm feeling started to go away. I finished the run in 1:12:50 (based from My Tracks).

Update: Based from the official results, I finished the run in 1:08:17 (Chip Time) and 1:09:54 (Gun Time). The race analysis is also available here. Not bad! I actually beat my record last Run United 1 by a few minutes although I was unable to be near my 10k record (1:02:48) last year at the Takbo.ph NightFest.