Born to a poor family in Lucena City in the southern Philippines, Eyestrain first tapped a keyboard when he was 12 when his school had just received its first computer, and it was love at first byte. He went to Manila, Philippines at age 17 to attend Systems Technology Institute, a technical college that offers low-cost programming courses. The classes were disappointing: he found that he knew more than his teachers and was exempted from most programming classes.
He was featured in the Time Magazine before and is a former member and spokesperson of an underground group in the Philippines called 'Locusts.org' and the National Bureau of Investigation's (NBI) Anti-Fraud and Computer Crimes Division (AFCCD) have evidences linking to the said group to numerous computer crimes. His group has allegedly been involved in using stolen credit card numbers, website defacements, launching of viruses, and other computer crimes, which is now punishable in the Philippines under the E-Commerce Law.