For the Gifted: Living at the Edge of Competence

In transforming potential into performance, talent and achievement, and giftedness into expertise, Dr. Maureen Neihart has identified seven crucial mental competencies. These include a tolerance for stress or anxiety, ability to take realistic risks, goal setting, mental rehearsal, mood management, positive explanatory style or optimism, and finally reconciling acceptance and approval issues.

She posits that in creating true competent experts, talent is not enough. Neither is hard work. Childhood talent is not a factor that explains elite performance in adulthood, and the time (may it be weeks, months or years) we’ve spent practicing our work won’t necessarily make us experts. Intrinsic motivation is the key to success, and the seven mental competencies above are crucial in honing our talent.

I will touch on each one eventually, but I’d like to start with that which struck a personal chord — taking realistic risks. Dr. Neihart argues that to truly develop our talents, one must live at the edge of competence. Note the following diagram.

We all have something we’re already good at and comfortable with — that is the comfort zone. Beyond the comfort zone (light blue area) is everything that’s possible to us. Those possibilities require more effort and hard work to achieve. Everything else beyond that line is the realm of the impossible — no matter how hard you try, you just can’t achieve it.

For example, I’ve been learning tennis. At where I am now, I cannot defeat Roger Federer (World No. 1 to those who don’t know) and that falls in the realm of the impossible. Perhaps, I can defeat someone who has had a month head start in training. That game will be the fight of my life but it’s possible. What is in my comfort zone right now is the thrice weekly training I have with my personal coach. Those drills and exercises I can do. However, I will not improve if I remain there.

What coach has done lately was to drill me harder. He would throw the balls faster and make me run harder. He would put more spin on the ball to make it harder to hit, or would drop the ball close to the net when I am far behind the baseline. He would do that and expect me to return the ball. When I don’t, he would do it again until I do. This line between what I can still do and barely can (red line) is the edge of competence.

Gian, thanks for that voice (updated with video)

Updated with a video, thanks again to Benj!

Over at Filipino Voices, Benj wrote a glowing review of Gian’s win at the ESU and what it means for everyone else. He even posted a copy of Gian’s speech at his blog, Atheista.net.

It’s amazing how big a phenomenon Gian has become. For me, he will always be

My work assignments for this school year

Today was day one of a two-day planning with the Social Science unit. Without a doubt, this will be my busiest school year yet. I am not overloaded but I may as well be. I have one new assignment and it’s a doozy. So far, I will be

• teaching four SS2 classes (I have to give up one, you’ll see why),
• handling AKSIS (now also aksyon.iskolar ), and

The Rising (Personal) Cost of Gas

I’ve been driving for myself since I was in first year college, but it was only when I started working that I took notice of gas prices — that was when I started paying for my own. Then I could still recall gas priced at the high 20’s and low 30’s. At the beginning of the week, I’d gas up P500 and it would last my daily commute from Parañaque to Ortigas with still some left over for a Saturday trip. Fast forward to now.

By the time school ended last March, gas was priced at P40 to P42 a liter. My car, a 1997 Honda City, is fairly fuel efficient. It can give me 10 to 12 kilometers per liter. A one-way trip from my house in Parañaque to Philippine Science High School in Diliman, QC is 21 kilometers. So on average, I use up 2 liters of gas one way. Thus, the round trip is 42 kilometers and 4 liters.

To calculate how much fuel I used up every week,

Unveiling AKSIS for 2008/09!

AKSIS is getting a little upgrade!

We’re going to focus our vision and mission for this coming school year and I’ll tell you all about it soon. Old members are in no pressure at all, but I’ll appreciate all the volunteers we can have to get started this coming year. I’ll call on all of you early in June. Check out our simpler group blog at aksis.wordpress.com. You can contact either Marz or me if you wish to register and leave messages.

An iBlog4 Question for Rimban, Quezon and Toral

This question directed to Luz Rimban, Manuel Quezon III and Janette Toral is long overdue. I would have wanted to ask this during the open forum but we ran out of time. As mentioned in Knowledge Politics, I have a question on blogging and the 2010 elections.

The panel raised a paradox: that blogging the elections have had a marginal effect and yet remains a pivotal medium. In light of this, Janette Toral shared a plan on how to mobilize bloggers to be vigilant during the 2010 elections. It was a comprehensive plan that included educating bloggers on elections (which I agree wholeheartedly with), creating a bloggers’ handbook, and even engaging election advocacy groups. It’s definitely a sound plan, but when thinking about it strategically, I felt that it misses one critical component.

Here is my question: Is there a strategy in place for integrating the blogosphere activity with mass media?

In asking this question, I have two assumptions.

Critical Convergence, part 2: Knowledge Politics

Previous section: Prometheus 2.0 || The previous section explored the notion of ICT and social construction, particularly how new meanings, norms and practices are formed through our use of technology. In this section, I explore my insights on ICT and government as I’ve picked them up from the CIO Conference and iBlog 4. I think there are still some contradictions to consider, and challenges for our policymakers to surmount.

These days we talk about the knowledge economy, but how about knowledge politics? That somehow sounds odd, given that our popular notion of politicians have so little to do with knowledge. But that phrase, in all its ambiguity, is where we are headed. This does not mean to say that the same transformations we’ve seen in the market will be seen in government. I can’t see policy-making being outsourced, though I’m sure a lot of us won’t mind our politicians losing their jobs to those who can do their job better and more cheaply. Though of course that would raise questions of accountability, transparency and even patriotism, ideals which remain firmly entrenched within our borders in this age of intensifying globalization.

The impact of ICT on government will vary. The liberating nature of the Internet is a threat to closed regimes, while investments in ICT are necessary for thriving democracies. I suppose, the principle is similar to market reforms we’ve seen in China in the late 70’s and in Russia in the early 90’s: closed systems will have to be eased into the technology, and we must avoid shock therapies that hope to digitize politics en masse. What has to be struck now is a balance between the investments made by government, and the transformations demanded and generated by their citizens.

I have been fortunate enough to peer into both sides. From April 24 to 25 at the 2nd CIO Conference, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to captains of government and industry such as Dr. Fortunato dela Peña of the DOST; Sherwin Ona, Associate Director of the SPIDER Project by the DLSU; and Dr. Emmanuel Lallana, CEO of Ideacorp, among others. They delivered presentations on the relationship between government and technology in mobilizing communities. And on April 26 at iBlog 4, a panel with journalist Luz Rimban, columnist Manuel Quezon III and e-entrepeneur Janette Toral focused on blogging for the 2010 elections. From that I’ve picked up some insights on blogging and its delicate relationship with democracy.

I will keep this entry simple with the following three synthesis points.

Critical Convergence part 1, Prometheus 2.0

Previous section: Introduction || This section presents a thematic overview of the relationship between technology and society. I draw primarily from the insights I’ve picked up from the talk of Dr. Raul Pertierra, and on secondary reading into the work of historian Johan Goudsblom. This article ends by setting up the key themes of the next two parts.

Mankind has been in control of fire for at least 400,000 years – some believe that it may have even been for 1.4 million years. However, there are historians who argue that fire did not play as large a role as the emergence of agriculture, cities and writing in the dawn of human civilization 10,000 years ago. Johan Goudsblom, of the University of Amsterdam, takes a different view.

In The Civilizing Process and the Domestication of Fire, Goudsblom characterizes fire as a destructive, irreversible, purposeless and self-generating natural force whose domestication deserves to be ranked among the first ecological transformations brought about by mankind. Fire, in its multitude of applications, extended the range of food through cooking and extended the range of societies through clearing land. Fire allowed and facilitated hunting (grazed land loosed animals from their habitat), aided in enhancing the survival of settled communities (through heat, light and cooking), and ultimately enabled the earliest empires – such as the Aryans who worshipped fire – to conquer other societies and extend the reach of civilization itself.

In the CIO conference I attended last week, University of the Philippines Asian Studies professor, Dr. Raul Pertierra, introduced the notion that some sociologists and anthropologists are beginning to draw parallels between the domestication of fire and the prevalence of Internet and communication technology (ICT). The wheel, the printing press, the cotton gin and the steam engine were all just technology; the Internet is a force of nature in itself!

The Global Leadership Forum is now ongoing!

For those with an interest in international relations and geopolitics, keep track of the different panels in the live blog of the 2008 Global Leadership Forum hosted by Newsweek, the Royal United Services Institue and the Princeton Project on National Security. Topics reported on so far include U.S. Foreign Policy and the 2008 Elections, The Future of the Transatlantic Relationship, Reconfiguring the War on Terror and Reinventing Multilateralism. The focus of tomorrow’s panels will include Iraq and the global economy.

LINK: GLOBAL LEADERSHIP FORUM BLOG

Critical Convergence, Introduction

Previous section: Preface

There was a moment in the year 2000 that could have landed me on another planet. I realize now that there are two possible prevailing emotions in a college freshman: confidence and doubt. And in a particularly doubtful time, I contemplated a shift from political science to MIS (management information systems).

Early on I felt that I did not share the predisposition towards politics and law (the eventual destiny of most of my polsci batchmates) that my blockmates did. Instead, I showed a greater proficiency in managing the class website, editing music videos for birthdays and debuts, and finding my way through a computer and most digital devices at that time. Moreover, courses such as MIS and Computer Science were gaining currency as the courses to go to if you wanted to land a good, high-paying job in the future. The year 2000 was the era of the dotcom bubble in the United States. It was still months off before it eventually burst in 2001, but the message for Filipinos was clear: the future will be in information technology.

I have written in Confessions of a Teacher, part 3: Bushido about the different layers in my choice to continue on in political science. The counterfactuals are definitely irresistible, but there is no doubt that I am confident in who I am today. At whimsical times, I see my stay in Pisay as purgatorial: that I make amends for my choice by guiding those who will eventually make that choice. It is through them that I have hope for the future.

But there really is nothing to regret. I still believe that the future will be in information technology (and to add, other forms of technology which I will explain later) because, quite simply, we are already here. And in the years that intervened between the year 2000 and today, I have learned there are too many dimensions to IT and that a social studies teacher can find his place in it as well.

This series, The 2008 Keynote: Critical Convergence, is about that place. It is a place that is in urgent need of our attention and navigating it will require the collaborative forces our knowledge economy allows.

In part 1, Prometheus 2.0, I broadly talk about the transformation our society has undergone because of Internet and communication technology. I will delve into the notion of ‘social construction’ and how technology has upended our notions of the individual, and what the implications of that could be on sustainable development.

Part 2, Knowledge Politics, will focus on governance and how technology has redefined the relationship between the governor and the governed. We shall look at the duelling forces of e-governance and i-democracy, and in this portion I draw insights from both the CIO conference, with its hefty portions of e-governance, and iBlog4 where the role of blogging in democracy was underscored.

And finally, part 3, How to Download Your Teacher, will be on education. The conferences did not tackle education head on, and thus this will be where I present my synthesis of everything I learned. I will draw on my experiences with Pisay Meets World and with using blogging as a teaching aid. I will comment on how technology has changed how our students learn, and how we teachers can best respond to them in this digital age. At the very end, I hope to tease my plans for the coming school year and the other advocacies I aspire to be part of.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on these topics. I am simply an eager learner with a passion for sharing all I’ve learned. More importantly, I know fully well the limits of what I can’t write about and thus the sky is the limit on those topics which I know I can. The wonderful thing about the knowledge economy we are in is that there is no monopoly of knowledge. We all have something to contribute as long as we’re willing to learn and find ways to create value. In each one of us is the talent to offer something truly unique to the world. It is in writing this series, and all the entries yet to come, that I discover what mine is.

Critical Convergence, Preface

The following series of entries, The 2008 Keynote: Critical Convergence, is an attempt to recollect and synthesize everything I have learned in attending the 2nd CIO Conference: ICT and Sustainable Development sponsored by the De La Salle School of Government last April 24 to 25, and iBlog 4 last April 26 in the UP College of Law.

I will be writing about topics which are dear to my heart. Those who have followed my career from the moment I graduated with a political science degree from the Ateneo de Manila University to the years I spent teaching Asian history in the Philippine Science High School would have noticed my growing interest and dedication to the topics of education, development, technology and human society. The convergence of all those is the primary subject matter of this blog, and this series of entries is my keynote essay. In addition, I will be writing them in the wider context of my own historical narrative. It is the only approach I can, for better or worse, write in and do these ideas justice. Therefore, I would like The 2008 Keynote: Critical Convergence to set the tone of this blog moving forward.

Why Political Cartoons are All the Education You Need

I won’t even elaborate. Images courtesy of TIME.

I couldn’t stop laughing with the last one. Too sad.

How do the Chinese see the Tibet issue?

Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, chimes in on China, Tibet and western protests. Here’s an excerpt:

The Chinese are so angry because virtually all of them believe that the Western protests have had little to do with human rights, Tibet or Darfur. Instead, the Chinese think, the West’s real motivation is to deny China the triumph it deserves for its enormous successes. According to this view, Westerners cannot stomach the thought that China is poised to hold the best Olympics ever. Such a spectacle would vividly demonstrate how power has shifted from West to East. This would be intolerable, and thus Americans and Europeans are dead set on finding some way to disrupt the Games—and if Tibet or Darfur won’t suffice, they’ll find some other method. As several Western-educated Chinese friends have whispered to me, “Kishore, this is pure racism. The West cannot bear the thought of China’s succeeding.”

Read the full article here.

This blog post can be a rejoiner to an earlier one, Boycott Beijing at Your Own Risk.

The Tao of Debate: Words from Calvin and Master Lin

This post is a shout out to MLQ3, whose blog will always be an area — and topic — for debate. What won’t be up for debate is that all the time you’ve invested in your blog has inspired a lot of us to invest in ours. Thank you!

In his blog, Tao Master Derek Lin was asked:

Derek, you have “Those who are good do not debate / Those who debate are not good” in your translation of chapter 81. Are you sure “debate” is the right word? I do not see debate as a bad thing. Historically, rigorous debates have always been the basis of our scientific advances as well as our democracy. Other translations use “argue” instead of “debate.” Wouldn’t that be more correct?

Here is an excerpt from his response:

In theory, debates seem like they can be a very constructive thing. However, when Tao sages observe personal debates in practical, everyday reality, they notice much more harmful effects. Instead of achieving consensus, both sides become ever more entrenched in their beliefs. The participants expend a tremendous amount of effort, but accomplish no particularly useful results.

Dissecting the “Ahon Pamilyang Pilipino” program and our paradigms of the poor

As a food crisis looms, the government offers a way out. Or do they?

“Ahon Pamilyang Pilipino” is an initiative launched by the Philippine government through the Department of Social Welfare and Development. It is a welfare subsidy that will grant P500 to one family that is deemed among the “poorest of the poor”. Moreover, they will receive an additional P300 per child, with the maximum number set at three children. Thus, the most a poor family could receive is P1,400 in one month.

The families will not be receiving these directly though. These are incentives which they will receive if they satisfy some basic conditions.

Other tweaks for the new martinperez.asia

This post will be updated and pushed to the top as more changes are made throughout the site. So far, you can observe the following throughout:

• Two new pages are up: FOR EDUCATORS and FOR STUDENTS. Both will become resource pages. Some early links are available on the page for teachers.
• My incoming 2011 students will rely on a separate blog feed for SS2 updates: http://socscidos.wordpress.com/feed
• All the contact info you need to know are on the header image.
• The ABOUT page has been edited.

I don’t plan to migrate the existing personal stuff (ex. Confessions and Pisay Life) into The Education of Martin Perez. They will remain here although future content may be in published in the other blog.

Shedding “AKOMISMO” and sharpening my professional focus

I had the pleasure over the past three days to attend a series of conferences that revolved around ICT (Internet Communication Technology) and society. They were reinvigorating experiences, and through everything I learned and everyone I met, I was inspired to sharpen the focus of this blog in order to serve the larger purpose of my various advocacies, particularly the convergence of technology and development in an Asian context.

I’ll be writing about everything I’ve learned in a 3-part keynote essay on ICT and sustainable development, governance and democracy in an age of new media, and ICT insights into education. Watch out for them this week.

Nonetheless, this will remain an educator’s blog. My students will be tapping into resources I’ll be making available here, and I wish to continue meeting fellow educators enthusiastic about taking our students to the next level.

Reflections, particularly introspectives (ala Confessions), will find their new home in my aptly entitled The Education of Martin Perez. Still, philosophical pieces may find their way here when I weave them into a wider, social context.

Most importantly, martinperez.asia is not just a name. It is my new domain name. Do update your bookmarks! My new feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/mperezasia

Where I’ll be in the next three days

My schedule from Thursday to Saturday is packed, and not for vacation reasons. I’ll be expanding horizons a bit and soaking up knowledge that would usually take a semestral course or a five-book reading list to accumulate. Say “Hi!” if you run into me!

• From Thursday to Friday, I’ll be at the New World Renaissance Hotel in Makati City to attend the CIO Conference 2008: ICT and Sustainable Development. It’s a conference on one of my favorite theses: the convergence of information technology and development. How do we devote our resources to high-technology industries without sacrificing basic investments for the poor? There are just too many ways to answer that question, and this conference will venture some answers in the field of agriculture, governance, law and environmental sustainability.
• On Saturday, I’ll be at the Malcom Hall of the University of the Philippines attending iBlog 4. I haven’t seen the blogosphere in ages (by that I mean the people behind the blogs) and hopefully we can get the BK Crew back together for another round this 2008.

I enjoy these conferences for they get my intellectually pumped up. These couldn’t come at a better time considering that the school year is almost just a month away. Expect me to be blogging my experiences and let’s see what I learn.

History’s first draft, a quick review of “The Forbidden Kingdom”

I am not a movie guy, so every time I go to the theaters has to be an event. For this round, the historic meeting of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Does this dream ticket hold up?

I was prepared to say, “It is simply impossible for me to review this film objectively.” However, I won’t be. Instead, I was able to walk away from the film sober despite the Drunken Master himself.

Wait, I think I made the movie sound worse than it did. Hold on.

Let’s start with the what everyone wants to know — the fight between Jackie Chan and Jet Li was

The Shape of Things To Come, an SS2 preview

Quoting the introduction in this coming school year’s syllabus:

There is a growing consensus that the 21st century will be Asia’s. The rise of China and India are no longer fairytales, and the changing dynamics in the Middle East challenge the current balance of world power. They are the very realities that underpin today’s current of political, economic and social change. And together with these changes are challenges and opportunities which we have to prepare our students for.

Our students, primed to be among the top students in the Philippines, are growing up in an increasingly interconnected world where they will be competing with Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Singaporeans, Malaysians and everybody else for slots in universities and job interviews. Gone is the age of the Great Wall and upon us is the era of the Great Firewall. In this knowledge-based economy we live in, we must enable our students to be leaders and actors in this new Asian century.

This course acknowledges those realities. Thus using a blend of political, economic and historical perspectives, this course will offer SS2 students a broad survey of the themes relevant to preparing us for tomorrow – That Asia, once the center of the world, will be dominant once again.

While I can’t say with 100% certainty that I’ll be teaching the entire coming school year, I have been preparing as if I am. I have already outlined the entire year and so far, I can confidently say that this outline is the best ever. I’m taking the best of everything that worked and none of those that didn’t. And as a final tease: Pisay Meets World is coming back.

Out of school, part 1: Forks

Over the past months, I constantly felt that my life was headed towards a fork in the road. There was a certain sense of inevitability that a time will come when I have to make the choice of whether I continue on teaching or stop in order to pursue other goals in life.

In the past week I learned that I won’t be pursuing my Masters in Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. I’ll mince no words: I wanted it so bad. I can only speculate exactly why I wasn’t chosen but I won’t. I rather not wallow in the thought that I wasn’t good enough. I’ve been too optimistic, too hopeful and too ready to attend that school to give up on myself now.

There are greater opportunities laying in wait; other doors that remain to be opened. And yet, underneath this facade of calmness and sobriety, those cliches hurt. In a bitter moment, I realized that no matter how high the standards you set for yourself are, the only standards that matter in this world are those others impose upon you. I know that is uncharacteristic for me to say, but I can only pretend to be as strong as I can be.

It has always been my condition that if I don’t make it to Singapore, I stay on and teach in Pisay. That was my fork in the road. And yet, now that I am making the actual choice, I feel less that I took one path over the other and more that I walked straight through the fork, hit the signpost and crashed my head into the sign, reeled back and fell on my ass. I don’t feel like an actual choice was made, but only that I knocked myself silly so that I don’t have to choose. However, I can only bang my head on the sign for so long.

I realize now that the real fork in the road is what I feel at this moment: Do I stay on and teach, or do I carry on to create something else out of myself? It is not a simple question. For the past few days up to the last few minutes, I have contemplated tearing this blog down. I dubbed it “AKOMISMO” during a time when I was most sure of myself; now that I am at a crossroads, I find it tenuous to declare to the whole world that this is who I am. Therefore, this post is an attempt to regain my blog — and myself.

But why am I even thinking of leaving teaching?

Now I know where I’ll be on June 2

“The true profession of a man is to find his way to himself.”
- Herman Hesse

I’ve always believed that opportunites are made, not given. However, the story of my life has always been the opposite. It’s been about taking chances and finding our place in where we are. When I first applied to Pisay, I was rejected. Fast forward to now: here I am.

I learned last night that I did not make it. Apparently, this picture will be the closest I could get to that school for now. The selection process was very competitive indeed. And while we can say that I had good chances, we can say that at least sixty others had better. However, this isn’t the end of the road – a rest stop perhaps, but not the end.

In an interview for Pinoyblogero (pardon me Karlo if I share this excerpt now), I said the following in response to the item, “Tell us a little more about yourself”. I consider that sort of item the most difficult to answer. Given where I am now, this is how I replied:

I am currently a social studies teacher at the Philippine Science High School, and I have my eyes set at a career in development and public policy – that is influencing how decisions are made to help the less fortunate, manage social change, and improve the country. When I’m not busy trying to change the world, I love playing racket sports such as tennis and badminton. I like long drives, listening to music during those long drives, and finding a nice place to rest and relax after those long drives. I’m a voracious reader. I love reading non-fiction books and gawking at comic books. It is my dream to one day write about my life as a teacher, decision maker, and Filipino, after the end of one long drive.

I realize now that long drives are never straightforward. They are full of twists and turns, lefts and rights that will all get us from start to end. I just ask all those watching to be patient with me as I find my way. Time may run out on me but I’ll never run out of road. I’ll get to where I have to eventually even if it turns out to be where I already am. When the time comes, I’d like to use that as my story’s ending.

So where is my next stop? I have some plans but I’ll try to surprise more from here on out. You will all find out on June 2.

 

 

Boycott Beijing at Your Own Risk

Protesters run the risk of this little irony. (Image by TIME.)

 

In Don’t Feed China’s Nationalism, Fareed Zakaria outlines some reasons why a boycott will only make Beijing more defensive and stubborn. With the decline of communist ideology, the CPP relies on nationalist fervor which all the anti-China demonstrations only serve to strengthen. Moreover, Zakaria notes China’s attitude towards Tibet is not unusual, and that associating China with Sudan may be taking the notion of responsibility a little too far. (Not taking responsibility too far would be to mention Guantanamo and Abu Gharib to Americans.) Instead, he believes that the United States is pursuing a wiser track with diplomacy. Nudging China privately will do more wonders than large scale protests.

On the other hand, Jackie Chan labels the negative attention on China as “unfair”. China’s problems — environmental degradation, human rights — is not just China’s but the world’s. What he means by that is that those problems can be found everywhere else, so why the ganging up on China. He’s obviously dodging the question but I’ll still watch his movie.

The Bottom Seed: Notes on the Philippine Rice Crisis

Looking at the history of mankind, we can trace the origins of government to the emergence of a food surplus — will the opposite spell its decline?

Purchasing around 1 million metric tons of rice a year (15% of the rice they consume), The Philippines is the world’s biggest buyer of rice. This may seem counterintuitive to a lot of us knowing that our population is smaller than other major rice-consuming countries such as India and China. Moreover, rice is the foremost agricultural industry in the country — the government even claims that rice production now is at an all-time high. However, why do we have a “crisis” now?

Common sense dictates that we are not producing as much rice as we need, whereas other countries such as China, India, Vietnam and Thailand are able to produce enough rice to satisfy domestic demand. It has even become policy in Vietnam and Thailand to limit the amount sold for export – meaning sold to us — in order to secure local stock. But why do we — a major rice-producing and rice-consuming nation — end up importing rice to feed our people? And can we buy ourselves out of this crisis we are in?

This crisis is multifaceted and complex. 

Debuting the new face of AKOMISMO!

I just renewed my CSS subscription several days back and so it felt appropriate to debut a completely new design for the blog. I’ve been using the Pool theme for a full year now and I’ve switched over to Digg 3 Column. I’ve always liked Digg3’s features; function-wise it has everything I need. However, its default design isn’t its strong suit for me. As you see, I’ve retouched it a lot and embellished it with the classic AKOMISMO colors of blue, orange and white. However, as you can see now, there is much more white. This move is inspired by my personal journal which really focuses on content and it is that focus which I bring to this new design.