NSTR

New apps

2011-04-10T21:36:00.004+02:00

It's becoming more and more usual to delay each post for a month, but on the other hand I post quite frecuently on twitter: almost 1 tweet per day which is not bad.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about is that I've been coding a lot recently, and some old projects finally start to be "usable".

One of them was one that I specially like, not because it's very usable (which is just "usable") nor because it's nice (in fact is far from being eye-candy). I like it because it was the first serious app that monogatari released, and after some problems it's back again. These who follow my blog since 2008 may know which one it's: it's the datereminder.

The other app has nothing to do with that one, since it's a brand new app. I don't play poker too often, but I enjoy it, and as an exercise I decided to create a "helper" to guide people to decide when to bet. It's far from being perfect and sometimes it misses the shot, but in the long run it teaches when to bet and when to stay safe. This app is called poker helper and has been prepared to be usable from mobile phones (I tested it on iPhones, but I want to test it on androids as well).

The image is the poker helper logo. I hope you like it.

It's been a whole month!!

2011-02-23T23:56:00.003+01:00

I can't believe I had the blog with no update for a month. I mean. I update twitter A LOT, but I totally forgot about the blog.

I guess having twitter lets me do 2 things I don't use to do on the blog:
- First of all: Post about technology.
- Second: Post small updates.

None of the above is because twitter is great, but because the blog is intended to be "mainstream", which means that I don't want people to "suffer" these kind of posts.

If I would only post here about technology I know a lot of my readers would stop reading me mainly because the most of the people who read these lines don't really care about programming languages as much as I do. So as I know about this I don't want to bore you. In fact I should thank you for reading my thoughts :-)

The second point is because I see each post as a "chapter" on a book. And each twit is like the "title" of each chapter. So there's no point on writing a whole entry which will only be 3 lines long (In a way that's why I created a twitter account).

I hope next time I'll be able to write a more interesting post, but for now I think it's better for these to know what I'm doing to stay tuned to my twitter. Moreover if you care about web development because I'm reading and comenting a lot on new technologies (blogger readers, you are safe for now :-).

Image taken from joelanman

Update: I didn't mention is that the titles of the book belong to a "computer science" book, while the chapters are part of a biography book, so both books are not really related at all. Thanks Audrey-Laure for the suggestion :-).

Programming contests

2011-01-15T13:33:00.003+01:00

I didn't take part on any of this since last week when I decided to give it a try and what I found didn't let me down.

I took part on the facebook's hacker cup qualification round and after spending the whole weekend coding I wasn't happy because I thought I wasn't going to pass. In fact the whole monday I was a bit upset because I thought I shouldn't have spent the full weekend on it. Luckily I made it and this weekend I've to play now Round 1.

I guess Round 1 will be really hard and I'm almost sure it'll be impossible for me to qualify because I'm not used to think on creative solutions for these kind of problems. At least, by taking part on this contest I've learnt an important thing that can be extrapolated to anyone:

Even if you do the same task once and again you should keep creative thinking because you never know when you may need it (it my case it was just for a programming contests, but who knows).

Staying creative is not something you achieve just by having the will. I guess there any many ways to be creative, such as painting, doing sudokus, watching movies... The essence is to do things in "not so common" ways.

6 Years / 6 años

2011-01-06T14:53:00.001+01:00

It's the time that has elapsed since I wrote the first post here.

Many things have changed since that time: The blog's layout (including the recent integration with twitter), the links (which most of the old ones do no longer work), the kind of posts I write, and the language are just a few changes related with this site, but there're others.

Regarding my personal life there've been countless changes too, most of them for good, being the most important the many people I met during this time.

I guess it's been a long time, but new times seem to be much more exciting...

Image: Same as when I started the blog, this post has none :-)

Es el tiempo que ha pasado desde que escribí la primera entrada aquí.

Muchas cosas han cambiado desde entonces: El aspecto del blog (incluyendo la reciente integración con twitter), los enlaces (de los que muchos de los antiguos no funcionan), el tipo de entradas que escribo, y el idioma son sólo unos pocos cambios relacionados con este sitio, pero hay otros.

En cuanto a mi vida también ha habido numerosos cambios, la gran mayoría a mejor, siendo el más importante la gente que he conocido durante este tiempo.

En general creo que ha pasado bastante tiempo desde entonces, pero lo que esta por venir parece ser mucho más interesante...

Imagen: Al igual que cuando empecé el blog, esta entrada no tiene imagen :-)

... and finally came Twitter

2010-12-26T19:46:00.007+01:00

As you may have noticed I have slightly changed the template (once more :-) This time I did so to show my Twitter updates.

I don't post very interesting stuff there, mainly notes for myself, and certain interesting links I find, but these might be useful for anyone, who knows...

Anyway, the thing is that you can now read my twitter updates here if you want, or if you preffer you can follow me on twitter (right now I have 2 followers but I don't know where they came from).

By the way, I did it by modifying JQTwitter (info in Spanish here) to have it as I wanted.

As you may have guessed the image has been directly taken from twitter.

The story of the Nativity

2010-12-24T11:59:00.002+01:00

Just a video related that my brother sent me, which is related with this time of the year :-)

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all!!

Anonymous support to Wikileaks

2010-12-08T22:17:00.003+01:00

After noticing how bad things are going to Wikileaks, I read some good news regarding some Anonymous actions.

They have attacked or are planning to attack sites such as Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, and also some Swedish sites related with Assange's detention.

In days like today, I think there's still some people out there giving a hand to those who need it when laws do not work as they should.

Problems with the PATH

2010-11-28T23:09:00.004+01:00

Disclaimer: This post is highly technical, so it might be a bit boring for many people :-)

Today I was trying to install android SDK on my linux, and while doing so I had to modify the PATH, and I totally screwed it, so I'll write here the hints to modify it correctly.

First of all: Your path will contain some entries: I'M TOTALLY SURE. In case you are not type "echo $PATH" on the console. See? In my case I get:
echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games

I thought my PATH contained no entries so I directly entered: "export PATH=/home/nest0r/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools". You SHOULDN'T DO this. I repeat: DON'T DO IT. If you do it you PATH will miss all the entries it had, so you'll only have this:
echo $PATH
/home/nest0r/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools

And you don't want this because in this case you'll have to type /usr/bin/gedit to get gedit running, and so on. So please don't screw it as I did. In case you already screwed it, please enter this command to become happy again:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games

Now you have your system as it was (at least it now works well).

In order to add a new entry to the path (in my case it's "android-sdk-linux_x86/tools")
export PATH=$PATH:/home/nest0r/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools
Please, pay attention to this part PATH=$PATH This way you can be sure that you'll keep the former path you had.

I hope this helps someone!

Image taken from: 4_ever_young

R2D2 projector

2010-11-21T23:21:00.003+01:00

Some TVs have special features your TV and mine don't have, but this projector is the most amazing projector I've ever seen.

I know it's been a short post, but this video doesn't need any further explanation :-)

Worst president of the Spanish democracy

2010-11-15T23:52:00.004+01:00

This afternoon I was a bit bored, so I created an online poll to vote for the worst president of the Spanish democracy: http://www.elpeorpresidente.es/

As it's focused on Spanish speakers I don't have it translated to English, but you can use Google translator which translates it perfectly.

I hope you enjoy it.

PS: It's amazing how productive I can be some days :-)

Image taken from: gipajournos

Suited to screw

2010-11-15T20:54:00.003+01:00

After my previous post where I stated that sometimes we have to use a certain suit to "impress" someone, in this one I want to focus on another kind of suits: The uniforms.

This post is about these who think that by wearing an uniform while being in charge of something they can act like a police. The sad thing is that they aren't and they don't realize.

I'll explain why I'm specially annoyed with them.

Around my area there are some fields which have a long fence around them and most of them have the door opened (or don't have any door), so when you just close the door or block the entrance it becomes a perfect place for the dogs to run.

A few days ago I was on one of these fields doing nothing, just letting my dogs run, when a security guard came and said: "Is this field yours?" Obviously he knew it wasn't, which was true, so I said that it wasn't mine. He then said: "This field has an owner and he doesn't want anyone to be inside it". After that I left the field, but the way in which he came to me asking the first question really enervated me because I was doing nothing and he just came to annoy.

I know the field isn't mine, but I think that as long as it's opened and I'm doing nothing wrong there's no bad on letting the dogs run on it.

On the other hand the security guard never says anything to the people who's fucking on the cars around the fields (yes, the streets belong to the same company that owns the fields).

I think many security guards really should look for another job, because they act as if they were police, but police at least behave in a propper way when addressing someone.

Image taken from robmcm

Suited to serve

2010-10-23T17:52:00.005+02:00

Three days ago my current employer assigned me to a new client where I had to go dressed on a suit. I already used a suit a few times, but this time I started to think about the meaning of the suit: Why do they require us to use a suit?

My final thought is this: You have to use a suit to impress someone, which means that you have to use it when you are "serving" someone.

After thinking for a while I found that I used a suit when I was interviewed by someone. During the interview the interviewer doesn't have to use a suit (they can use it, though), but what is for sure is that my boss uses it when he's to visit a client. I also realized (when I was at another client) that such client didn't use a suit when meeting my boss, but he used it when he was visiting his own client. And I'm sure this goes on and on.

Wearing a suit is not something uncomfortable nor nasty, but I the fact that it's used to show respect to someone else makes it a bit "awkward". Don't you think?

Image taken from brennuskrux

Hair economy

2010-10-16T16:50:00.004+02:00

Today I had my hair cut. I used to go to the same hairdressing salon since one year or so, but I want to make a break here to expose what I thought yesterday, and what I think now about economy, but related with the hair cut.

Yesterday I was talking with my father about the hairdressing salon. I used to go to one where I have to pay 10 Eur per haircut, but as I have the client card each time I go I register it, and the 6th haircut costs me 5 Eur. Also, I had my first and second haircuts for 5 Eur (special opening offer). This means that after the 6th haircut it'd cost me 45 Eur in total (5 + 5 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5).

A bit farther there's another hairdressing salon where the hair cut costs 7 Eur. I haven't been there (so I don't know how good this hairdressing salon is), but if you count it after the 6th haircut it'd cost me 42 Eur in total (6*7).

Yesterday I thought that the first one (45 Eur) was better because I liked my haircut at that place, and in fact it's almost the same price.

Today, as I said at the begining of this post, I went to have my hair cut, but I realized that the hairdressing salon had closed down... this was going to be my 5th haircut there (the next one would have been the cheaper one): bye bye client card.

Then I thought I had to give a try to the other one, so I went there, but it was closed (perhaps it was too early for being a saturday).

Finally I went to the one I used to go some time ago, and I realized how much they had risen their prices... I ended paying 13 Eur for the haircut.

I think I'll have to look for new places to have my hair cut because 13 Eur seems quite expensive compared against the other places.

Image taken from malias

Nanban Trader

2010-10-14T22:58:00.004+02:00

A very good friend of mine recently moved to Japan to stay there for (at least) 2 years and a half. To me this is such an adventure (in fact I'm a bit jealous, but happy for him) so I think it's worth talking about it.

Me and many others asked him to creating a blog to read about how he is doing, and he kindly create a new blog, which he called Nanbantrade. Although the blog is in Spanish I'm almost sure you can read it in english through Google translator.

He just landed there at the begining of this month, so he's still getting used to everything there, so he's still posting about how he's trying to find a house, the people he meets, the hotels and such things.

By the way, in case you want to know why his blog's name is "nanbantrade" you'll have to read his first post ;-)

Image taken from ~ezs

Clients and monogatari (II)

2010-09-24T17:56:00.004+02:00

If you haven't read the previous post about this story you should do so to get the complete picture.

On the previous post I leave the story after asking for some information to the "link" between me and the customer (who is the friend of a friend, so nothing to me). He then gave me the information but started demanding more features (small features that weren't on the first agreement but as them were easy to me I didn't say a word)

Then, after having the final development ready (twice, the first one didn't feel 100% nice to me but I didn't show it to anyone) I showed it to the "link", who everything but praises. He said that I didn't understand the specifications (he didn't give me any), and it also didn't contain the look&feel that such company's blog had (he hadn't say anything about that on the meeting, and moreover, the blog didn't have any look&feel as it's wordpress default layout).

Having to perform so many changes I tried to reach an agreement with him on an intermediate design that would respect these new needs while using my development. To probe him that such thing was possible, I exposed him another development that someone at his company had done before, and he went crazy and started saying nonsense: He said that the fact that something had been done before wasn't a reason to do it again (even if all the other designers who saw the design agreed with me that my design was far better than wordpress' default theme). To "prove" his reasons (none, in fact) he yelled that it had to be done his way, while insulting and demanding as if he was the final customer (I remind you he was the "link").

As he wasn't the final client I proposed him to show my desing to the client to get his point of view, but he didn't acceded. Something that really annoyed me as he is a plain comercial and has no sense of design.

As you may imagine, a few hours later I sent him a polite e-mail saying him that I was no-longer interested on such project. (Which so far cost me the "link"'s rant and the investment of 2 days in exchange for nothing)

With this story I just want to expose you that not all customers are interesting, and that by doing what's good there's no need to deal with people like that guy. The life is full of idiots, so stay away from them... Your life will be better and you'll be much more happier.

Image from claudiogennari

Clients and monogatari (I)

2010-09-24T17:24:00.004+02:00

This is a long story that happened to me during the last days, so in order to tell it right I'll split it onto 2 parts. Here you have the first one. Enjoy!

As I said a few times, on my spare time I work at Monogatari developing web applications and webs on client's demands, but I want to share with you something that happened this week to me.

At Monogatari we do developments on two main branches, one is the "beta branch", while the other is the "on-demand branch".

The beta branch is the most interesting because all the new features and applications are developed there, which are then applyed to the other branch after many tests. On the other hand the branch that gives us some benefits is the on-demand branch.

The past week I was contacted by someone who was very interested on a development and I became in charge on studying such need. We agreed to meet and everything went fine during the meeting.

So far it was good, but then I asked him a few things that weren't clear to me, and the relationship became quite strange. I'll tell the rest the rest of the story on my next post.

Image from nabeel

False is true... on Javascript

2010-08-26T23:55:00.005+02:00

I've been reading a lot about Javascript recently, and I want to share this little piece of code that, if you are a programmer, will cause a lot of confussion to you when you test it:

var myBoolean = new Boolean(false);
if (myBoolean) {
alert(myBoolean);
}

In case you want to know why this happens I recommend you to take a look at some of the lectures from Douglas Crockford that I already introduced in a previous article.

Image taken from: extraketchup

The misuse of social networks

2010-08-21T10:22:00.003+02:00

Today I read an interview with Eric Schmidt (from Google) where he said that in the future, the best way to protect one's own privacy would be to have your name changed.

I think for some people that would be the best, because they upload any picture they take and they also say anything that comes to their minds, without caring about who might read it.

I think that these people don't really care about configuring their privacy settings, but one important thing to keep in mind is that even if you set all your privacy settings properly what you upload will be stored within a private company, so you are giving them very important information about yourself.

In my case I can say that I have a profile in almost all the major social platforms, but I upload files very rarely and my information is very scarce because of that. On the other hand I use to check my profile regularly and I also send private messages. Sometimes I think I may be on one side of the coin, representing one extreme, but I don't think being on the other side is so worth it.

This has been said many times across the internet, but people still don't care enought about it. Anyway, I think having to change one's name is going too far.

The imagen has been taken from Gene Hunt

Standing on the shoulders of giants

2010-08-20T17:06:00.006+02:00

This sentence has been very interesting to me since I first saw it on Google Scholar.

As it is stated on the wikipedia it means:

One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past

I don't know if you agree to that statement, but I after I found a very nice resource from Yahoo with very interesting information for software developers I'm starting to love such expression.

By the way, the image has been taken from Wikipedia's article.

Antiquities

2010-08-11T21:42:00.003+02:00

As some of you may already know I've played "Magic The Gathering", which is a card game with many expansions based on civilizations (real ones or fictional ones).

In fact, I didn't know it, but one expansion is called Antiquities, and I thought that this one was based on a fictional civilization, but yesterday talking with a friend he told me that one of the oldest known mechanical devices is "Antikythera mechanism". This may be a coincidence, but this expansion is strongly based on ancient devices, which really shocked me...

I have always thought that throught that game one could learn lot of things, and I have learnt many things, but I didn't thought that Antiquities (an expansion from 1994) could still teach me something.

The image is the "Antikythera mechanism", taken from wikipedia.

Harder, better, faster, stronger

2010-08-03T20:33:00.002+02:00

Although the song is not one of my favourites, the video is good fun.

At the begining it seems to be a boring video, but if you wait until the first minute is complete I'm almost sure you'll watch the whole video:

Working at work

2010-07-28T17:02:00.006+02:00

This video explains a couple of interesting things:

Modern workplace is all about interuptions. And this is why you can't work at work.
You should remember that are no real emergency in business.

The video is only 6 minutes long but I can ensure you it's worth watching. At the end you'll realize that many things from the video may be also happening to you.

Tripping over stones

2010-07-01T00:18:00.005+02:00

A long time ago (in fact it was when I was at school) a teacher I had showed us an interesting example about how to face life.

I guess it was one of these things that you forget the minute after they tell you or you remember your whole life from that moment on. In my case I think I'll never forget that, and I don't mind since it was very enlightening to me.

The example is this:

When you face a problem is like when you walk and you trip over a stone. You can either fall down, or you can be almost falling and use such extra impulse to walk further. The result (you on the floor or much farther than before) only depends on how you face it.

How do you face problems? I know the second way of facing things is a bit harder but the results will be better at the end.

The image has been taken from another of my posts about walking, but I'm afraid I can't remember where I found it the first time.

What we learn at school

2010-06-12T10:31:00.003+02:00

I'm reading Haruki Murakami's book titled "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running". On this book I found an interesting sentence I want to share with you:

The most important thing we learn at school is that important things can't be learnt there

I think he's not totally wrong on that sentence :-)

On the other hand I can tell you that the book is a amusing reading, so if you want to read something, you can give it a try.

A good example of how to face a problem

2010-06-03T10:56:00.007+02:00

Today I started the morning watching a video that my friend Bor sent me about Alex Rovira. On such video Alex was exposing how to face crisis and some other things related with attitude and the effort that people have to do by themselves.

It was such a coincidence because while I was listening to it, I started reading an article about PixelQi (don't be scared I won't dive on such technology).

It reminded me that some time ago I bought a mobile phone that was very hard to use outdoors because the screen was really hard to see unless you were covering it with your hand (too much glare). I also read the forums about this by that time, and one guy said: You can't do nothing, it's "just that, and nothing can be done".

Then, remembering Alex Rovira's speech, I though: "well, it seems someone was really unconfortable with that and decided to change it by creating PixelQi".

I agree with Alex Rovira's thought: the difference between a pessimistic and an optimist is that the pessimistic thinks that nothing can be done, while on the other hand the optimist pushes the changes.

And now, back to such technology, on the video you can see what is the problem that PixelQi solves.

PS: It seems you can only enjoy an iPad at home or during cloudy days :-)

LOST: the end

2010-05-30T17:19:00.010+02:00

I'll write my personal review of LOST's final episode, and I won't include any spoiler, although the video at the end might contain some information about the serie.

I've watched all the episodes from that serie, and even if some people say that the last episode is really bad I've to say that it's not bad, it's just useless. It's really nice, very emotive, but tells nothing. It doesn't solve any question of the thousand questions that they proposed during each season, and the very few questions they solve are solved by assumptions.

At this point there are 2 possitions regarding how the serie answers the questions:
- The ones who want answers (where I'm)
- The ones who think the writers don't have to give all the answers and if you are smart enough, you might solve all of them by yourself.

To the people on the second group I say: None of your answers you get by your assumptions is true 100%, so you are on the same place as I am. You need the answers to know the facts.

During the time I watched this serie I was thinking that it was worth it just because the final episode would be a world phenomenon... And this is what happened. Unfortunatelly few people think they deserved the last episode.

I always thought that the serie was not good putting together science and fiction, and it was more like magic-fiction because most of the things happened because someone was "a candidate" which meant that some rules applied and some didn't apply to them.

To me Lost is just... a waste of time. If you haven't watched it, don't do it and give a try to Galactica, at least it has an story to tell.

Ah, just in case I'm exagerating it here's the video with the many unsolved questions:

Back up your DVDs (easily)

2010-04-18T22:33:00.003+02:00

Believe it or not, I hadn't copied any DVD since last few months. On the other hand, these last few months I had to back up a few files, and I didn't have any idea about how to do that, but a friend recommended me a very nice software called DVDShrink.

Although its name can make you think that the copies you create don't have the same quality, in fact, shrinking can be performed if you wish, and it's not compulsory.

The copies are quite easy to do, so in case you need to copy any (even DVDs protected with anti-copy) take a look to this software, it will make your life a bit easier

In case you need a DVDShrink step-by-step guide you can use this one.

Image taken from El Gran Dee

Politicians and Hackers

2010-04-17T16:47:00.012+02:00

This week a friend of mine said a sentence worth quoting:

Hackers are like politicians, both use their power to become rich.

I think he's quite right. The only difference is that politicians also create laws so they are much more dangerous because they can tell you that what they do is also legal.

Image taken from: Al Corr

Lego Matrix

2010-04-11T22:32:00.008+02:00

This week I found a matrix video worth watching. It's a Lego version of Neo's famous dodging bullets scene, and even if it's quite short it's incredible.

The author of the clip has another video comparing both versions (the original film and this video), scene by scene and it's amazing. Don't miss it

Include a search button

2010-03-26T18:17:00.009+01:00

I realized that it was not very convenient to use google everytime that someone wants to look for something on my blog, so a few days ago I included a search option on the right side column (just below the comments) that you can use to search for anything within this blog.

I thought it was going to be quite tricky, but in fact it was really easy, so I thinkI can explain you how to do so, so you'll be able to have your own search button on your blog. This is the code:

<form class="searchform" method="get" id="searchform" action="http://www.google.com/custom">
<input name="query" size="20" value="search in this blog..." onfocus="valuedefault=this.value; if (this.value == 'search in this blog...') this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='') this.value=valuedefault;" type="text">
<input name="domains" value="'nestor1981.blogspot.com'" type="hidden">
<input name="sitesearch" value="'nestor1981.blogspot.com'" type="hidden">
<input value="Search!" class="button" type="submit">
</form>

You only need to change 2 things (marked in red). Just put there your blog's address (without "http://www") and that's all. The best part is that this works on ANY blog (and not only on blogspot's blog like mine).

Image taken from: danardvincente

States of mind

2010-03-19T15:49:00.005+01:00

I used to think that productivity is a "recycling state of mind". I mean, when you are bored you want to do nothing and you produce nothing. On the other hand, when you are very active you want to do many things, and you produce a lot of things; and each time you produce something, you want to produce something else (that's why I understand it as a "recycling" state of mind).

I don't know about you, but in my case every time that exam's date was close I used to start thinking on the many things I had to do apart from the exam, such as meeting people, doing exercise and so on (of course I thought on studying :-).

Some people say that it's just procrastination: You want to do anything but being productive, so that's why you watch movies, read books and so on. But I guess it depends on each one. In my case, studying was included on the "tasks" I had to do, but I know some people who won't put it on the to-do list.

By the way, in my case I see this blog as something that's here, so writing here is not affected by my productivity state of mind :-)

Image taken from: orcmid

Credit card signature

2010-02-14T21:08:00.003+01:00

Some time ago I received a new credit card and I realized that it had written on the backside "not valid unless signed", and I didn't remember whether my former credit card had such quote on it, so I checked it.

I realised that it also had it, but what it didn't have was the signature, which means that I had been using it for years without having it signed, which involved that no employee bothered on checking it.

When I stayed in England I also had the unsigned credit card, and it also worked perfectly. And it also worked on places such as France, Austria and Japan, where I went and used the credit card .

I really wonder why employees don't check such things on stores. From my experience it's not something people doesn't do on one country: it seems to be a global constant.

Image taken from: andresrueda

Goya Awards

2010-02-14T20:43:00.003+01:00

I'm not sure if I already exposed my thoughts on Spanish cinema movies. But these are easy to summarize: most of our movies are not worth watching. There are a few, though, which are a "must-watch". But in order to prevent having big let downs (I already had a few) it's better to wait a couple of weeks after Spanish movies are on theaters and then hear what people say about them.

One example is Agora, which seemed to be amazing, but every time I ask for thoughts about this movie I always get the same result: I didn't like it at all, and I have to agree.

Our government doesn't do too well either. Even if they gave a lot of money to foster such industry the benefits have been lower than the subventions, which arises one question: Why do you pay them when they don't produce any benefit?...

Another important thing to notice is that actors, directors and so, might think that they're doing quite well because tonight they're having the Goya awards. I have no words, mainly because the Goya awards are something done by them to award themselves... Which is a bit stupid.

Anyway the big winner will be the director and the actor who get more money from subventions than because of their work and then are aknowledge for such "achievement". Just imagine yourself saying: "Hey boss, this month I've cost you 1000€, but the government will give you 1100€ for having me employed and they'll have a party to celebrate my productivity".

And there's still some people who wonder why I don't talk quite good about Spanish movies.

Image taken from steepways

Nice move, Google

2010-02-01T22:36:00.003+01:00

Today I was at work talking about tech things with my colleagues when one told us that the new HTML5 (which is what your browser uses to present websites to you) is not so "standard" and the videos are displayed as each website decides: In some places you'll find flash videos (as it used to happen during the last years) and at other websites you'll find videos using other formats.

Just in case you're curious, right now there are 2 big formats used on HTML5 videos: Theora and H264. The thing is that H264 is not totally free (which means that it's owned by a company which decides what to do with such format), and it's not currently supported by Mozilla (which supports Theora).

On the other hand Google supports H264 and is using it on Youtube HTML5 version (which is the largest video site on the web, don't forget it).

The point that my colleague exposed was that as Google has released Google Chrome browser, in order to set it as one of the main browser they might have opted for H.264 on youtube so that people having other browsers (such as Firefox and Internet Explorer) can't access it, whic means that people will quite probably try Google's Chrome.

If that was the case it's been a nice (but unfair, to me) movement.
Image taken from mukumbura

Please, choose for me, I'm stupid

2010-01-31T12:11:00.004+01:00

This week I heard some news that really shocked me: There was going to be a ballot to raise retirement age 2 more years. Right now retirement age is was 65 years, but now it's been raised to 67 years.

But first, before showing my point, I want to put the facts that motivated such decision. In Spain (I guess in many other countries it's the same) working people has some taxes to contribute with public economy. The thing is that in Spain demographic piramid isn't well balanced, so in a few years there'll be more people receiving the retirement payroll (which is paid after you retire) than people contributing. Which means that there will be few money to share among many people. So our politicians thought that raising retirement age would help it.

Now I'll put a few more facts over the table: Politicians only have to work 2 months (yes, you read it correctly) to get the maximun retirement payroll (that's why in Spain there's so much rotations on charges before elections, so everybody in the same political party gets easy money).

That's quite unfair: 2 months against 40 or more years of hard work. But the other thing is that as they only have to work for 2 months why do they have to decide how long the "ordinary" people has to work?.

It's as stupid as having them voting the raise on their own payroll, which sounds funny, but happened some time ago.

Believe it or not, this is happening here, in Spain: paradise for politicians, shame for ordinary people.

Image taken from: sweet one

...Or perhaps see you, JooJoo?

2010-01-28T20:51:00.014+01:00

I just read a few more reviews on the iPad and I noticed that the iPad doesn't sport USB ports nor SD slots, so it's a big loss against the JooJoo, which does have it.

Another important things to notice are that iPad is NOT an e-book reader because it doesn't have e-ink (which makes e-readers amazing). And also the iPad is NOT a netbook (after a few hours using it's keyboard I guess you might hate it, mainly because it's like typing on a flat board, very unnatural). So keep in mind that it IS a tablet, and also keep in mind that it's NOT a phone (even if it looks quite similar to an iPhone).

By the way, a few more things you WON'T find on the iPad:
- The iPad doesn't have a camera (the JooJoo does)
- The iPad is not multitask (which means you have to close the e-mail to listen to music... Amazing)
- You have to crack the DRM if you want not to be limited by Apple's will (same as in the iPhone)

Eventhough the iPad lacks few things I guess it's going to be a huge succeed, but I'm almost sure many people will find very annoying being unable to plug external hard drives on it. Will I buy it? I don't think so, I find much more useful a laptop :-)

Update: You can find JooJoo's information extended here.
Update2: Take a look to a couple of funny images a friend sent me: image1, and image2

So good bye JooJoo

2010-01-27T21:14:00.005+01:00

I thought the iPad (not iSlate as I mentioned) wouldn't cost same as the JooJoo. And now, after the price of both devices will be simmilar, the JooJoo will have nothing to do against the iPad.

I say this because the iPad is very well known after today's great presentation, but also because Apple used to compete on price, which they didn't do this time; moreover when the iPad seems to be much better in both Hardware and software as it's shown on the presentation video.

I said that Apple should lower their prices, and I guess this time they've achieved the perfect price for theirs device. They created a great device, which amazed everyone, even me. I guess it'll be a huge succeed, as huge as the iPhone or the iPod have been.

Just one statement that amazed me from the video:

We build battery technology, we build chip technology and we build software, and we bring all these things together in a way that no one else can do it

This time they did it: Congratulations. I just hope the hype lasts until iPad reaches the market, which will be in 2 months.

Don't be evil

2010-01-26T23:23:00.005+01:00

As many people know this was Google's motto, but it seems they changed it during the past years.

Right now Google is no longer the cool company it was. It has already touched almost everything we know, mainly related with technology, and such a company had to be controlled, and it seems it's being controlled, or at least some people in the US is able to be control it, as it's stated in the article I read today: Gmail accounts (just like yours) can be accessed by US government.

I love Gmail, but I think I'll start looking at other e-mail clients because even if others are not so eye-candy they at least respect my privacy.

Picture taken from: rpongsaj

The JooJoo and Apple

2010-01-25T22:09:00.007+01:00

The day after tomorrow Apple will have a conference, and many people has already said that it's quite probable that they'll release a table (named "iSlate" or "iTablet" presumably)

This is one thing that amazes me because there are already other incredible things on the market such as the JooJoo (on the picture) which few people know, but as it always happens Apple has all the buzz around the company.

It also happened with the Nexus one, which didn't do as well as the iPhone on its first week, but is quite cool too.

As I already said Apple seems to be overhyped. The JooJoo costs 500$, and I guess Apple's iSlate will be much more expensive (I'd price it around 800$), and perhaps it brings better hardware, but people will use both for the same things, so they don't care so much about computer's guts.

On the other hand the iPhone has been in the market for quite long (during tomorrow's conference they'll talk about the newest iPhone, expected to be released during this Spring), but I guess you didn't know Google's Nexus now has multitouch capabilities.

To me apple is standing "on air", overpricing things because of the hype, as I already said.

PS: In case you thing I'm wrong, please comment what I missed about Steve Job's company

Madrid by night

2010-01-24T18:44:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I was around Madrid's city center and I decided to try the camera on my mobile phone while going on the car. At first I didn't manage to record anything, but then after changing a few parameters on the light and contrast I did a decent video. I edited it today also adding a nice song from atomic cat.

Just in case you are wondering what are the main things you can see on the video at 2:30 you can see the Puerta de Alcalá. A few before was the Retiro (which we just bordered) and afterwards we go throught Cibeles to face the Gran Vía.

Enjoy the trip!.

Crane picture

2010-01-24T14:36:00.005+01:00

I have been away from updating, and today when I checked this blog I just realized that the images from my strip post had been deleted, so as a compensation I've posted here a image I took with my phone and I think it's quite nice (in fact, dawn images are all nice to me :-).

I took it by the place where I live at 7:30 in the morning, so what you can see in the crane is not the sun, but a light.

Hint: you can click on it to view it on it's full size

Strip generator

2010-01-02T13:25:00.007+01:00

Creating a strip was not quite easy, but I found a website that makes it really straightforward: It's called stripgenerator

The image you can see here is the strip I created for testing. It has no meaning nor title, but in case you want to name it you're very welcome!

By the way:

Augmented reality

2009-12-27T17:52:00.004+01:00

I've heard of it many times, and all of them I thought it was something far away from these days, but it seems there are a few applications regarding augmented reality. A simple example is the following video:

There are many more augmented reality applications as you can read on this article.

And yes, it's available today!

Some Software

2009-12-24T17:59:00.003+01:00

Today I read that VLC, which to me is the best video/audio player, will release VLMC (VideoLAN Movie Creator), which is a free video editing software.

Amazing news! This is a nice Christmas gift.

As an extra I leave here a video about its use:

Forgetting things

2009-12-16T23:05:00.003+01:00

Last week a guy came to the business area where I'm working at and he said: "Do you know Mrs XYZ?" (I can't remember the name he asked for).

My colleague said: "What's the company you're looking for, here there are plenty companies". The guy then said: "I can't remember, sorry".

My colleague tried again: "Do you have any other information?". "No, I only remember her name, I have all the information on the e-mail she sent me", the guy said

My colleague just told him: "Ah, fine, you can check your mail on my computer". The guy then checked it, told us the name of the company and we sent him to the correct place.

When he had left my colleague told me: "Someone who doesn't really care about the name of the company has to be a very nice programmer, so that's why he deserved checking the mail".

Image taken from Robert Scoble

Macarena

2009-12-08T12:30:00.004+01:00

I hadn't post about any advertisement in a while, and this is because I don't watch TV so often, but the other day I watched an ad that really made me laugh.

It's in Spanish, but the idea is quite easy to understand: Some spanish soldiers receive the mail and one of them finds a pudding which isn't common in Spain so he realises that the English soldiers swapped it with the ham that he was going to receive.

He then meets the English and they say that they don't know anything about Spain (nor the ham).

The fun comes after when the spanish soldiers prove that the English soldiers know Spain quite well...

Enjoy!

Antipodes

2009-12-01T21:39:00.005+01:00

Today I just received a postcard from very far away, in fact it came from the Antipodes of Spain, so it couldn't have came from any further.

I didn't know it but there are very few cities having an antipode city:

Since about 80% of the world's land is antipodal to ocean, this list is necessarily very short.

You can check the (short) list at The other side of the world

Reset ubuntu password

2009-11-29T13:38:00.004+01:00

I don't know why, but recently I don't feel like there are so many things I can tell you, so that's why I'm not writing as often as I used to do (before the long break, I mean), when I used to post once or twice per week. Such periodicity was not terribly often, but the blog at least didn't seem to have been abandoned :-)

Today I want to talk briefly about an AMAZING feature I discovered in Ubuntu. A few weeks ago I installed ubuntu netbook remix in a very nice netbook: the samsung N130 (which was quite affordable, although the keyboard is a bit too tiny to me). As the computer was not going to store sensible information, I didn't set any password, but I forgot that for installing applications a password is required. So then I didn't have any password when I was prompted for it...

Luckyly I found a website where they showed me how to reset the password in 3 easy steps (and only one command: "passwd"), so in case you suffer from such problem, use this solution: it worked perfectly.

200 more images

2009-10-18T11:09:00.004+02:00

While uploading a picture to the first post after my long break I had to agree to Google's new terms and conditions on images, which I did. And today, when I uploaded another picture, I realized a small message saying that I was using 17MB (1%) of my 1024MB at Picassa web album.

First, Google linked Blogger and Gmail accounts, and it seems that now we have Picassa in the house too.

I don't mind having my services linked (I preffer not to have everything together, so that it's me and not Google who controls each thing), but what I really dislike is to have to agree to their conditions to realize then that what I had was far better than what I have after the "upgrade".

Well, as I've uploaded 2 images filling 1% of my space I guess I'll have room to upload 200 images or so, which means that I'll have to start to "hotlink", which is something that I don't like.

Image: hotlinked from google.

thought on business model

2009-10-18T10:38:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I went to a restaurant specialized on serving oriental food and I was surprised when I saw some of they sauces they used and also some of the noodles they serve placed on shelves at the entrance of the restaurant ready for being sold. I just passed by without looking at the prices.

Then I thought: How much do you think the items cost? Before continue reading, What would you say? Do you think it was more expensive, cheaper or had the same price than the same products on shops?

I tried to guess it, and I think I did fine.

When I sat at the table and after ordering the menu, I tried to guess how much these things would cost. I started looking at how many of these items they had: they only had 4 shelves with 3 or 4 types of each sauce/noodles on it: not too many. Then I thought what was the main business model of such place: "they serve meals". After such thoughts I realized that products couldn't be more expensive than at shops, perhaps a bit cheaper and when I went to the shelves again I realized that they were on average 10% cheaper on average.

Some can argue than getting the products at the restaurant will prevent you from going back to the restaurant (you can cook it at home), but as always, it's a risk you have to take to be succesful, and providing more services to customers is one of the keys to succeed.

Image taken from diamondjoe

Back to the present

2009-10-17T12:59:00.006+02:00

Hi!... Anyone still there??

In case anyone still reads my blog: sorry a lot for not updating in such a long time!. I had a good excuse... but so long time without any update deserves a VERY good excuse and I don't have it, so I'm very sorry about it.

I was looking for a good thing to write about and even if I had a few I didn't feel these were interesting enought, anyway I'll write a short description of a new website you might find usefull. It's a website that one colleague mentioned once and very useful for finding music online: Dilandau.

I hope you like Dilandau and also you continue reading my blog (I promise next entry will come before 2 next months :-)

See you soon!

Image taken from lautenbach

The CD inconvenient

2009-07-20T20:28:00.005+02:00

I, same as a lot of people, have original CDs with music from various artists. What I'm not sure about is what people does with these CDs.

In my case even if I have the CDs I bought at the shop for a lot of money (like 15-20 Euro for 12 songs) I no longer listen to them. I also have some other CDs with tons of songs I downloaded from Internet (in Spain it's legal :-) but I don't even listen to them either.

Having to find the concrete CD on the shelve, then puting it on my computer and then looking for the concrete track I want to listen to is too much work to me. I'd rather go to an online service to listen what I want without having to worry about where I left the CD or whether there're scratches on it.

I think services such as itunes are great and nowadays such services are amazing because it solves the problems that physical media brought. On the other hand crazy things like the one that just happened on amazon can be really a pain, but I reckon there're many more advantages in these days.

I think I won't buy a CD / DVD / Blu-ray anytime soon. By the way, do you know any impressive music site? In case you do, post a comment. In my case I mainly use deezer, what's your favourite?

Image taken from [nati]

The art of start

2009-07-19T18:37:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I just finished reading an interesting book called "the art of the start" where Guy Kawasaki explains a lot of things related with companies. I wanted to read it since a long time, but it was because of one thing or another that I always delayed it.

If you want to get a nice overview about what he says on the book don't miss this speech, because Guy is really brilliant.

image taken from tojosan

Site creator

2009-07-01T21:35:00.007+02:00

As I briefly introduced in a previous post , last few weeks I've been a bit busy. Some might think that this is the typical excuse you give when you don't want to tell anything about what you've been doing in some other case, it becomes what you say to avoid the embarrasment of recognizing that you've been so lazy :-).

In my case I've coding some cool things, but not all of them can be seen on Internet, so I'll just show you one of the best things we've ever done at Monogatari. It's called site creator (sc) and it's a website that you can use to create your own websites. It works perfectly on Firefox (we are working on the Internet Explorer version), but the very best thing is that you can create the website you like (you don't have to stick to a boring template) without knowing anything about programming.

It's not 100% done, so any flaw you might find, just let us know.

Uodate: to use the website just right click to open the menu (even if it's written on the tutorial I think few people read it :-)

Uses of Google

2009-06-30T12:27:00.003+02:00

Today I found this picture and I thought it was interesting because it shows the use of google.

The colours are:
- Blue -> search for useful information
- Green -> search for porn
- Yellow -> when you're too lazy to type ".com"
- Red -> to check spelling

Image obtained from curiosidadesone

Not holidays, but business

2009-06-30T12:07:00.003+02:00

This has been one of the longest periods I've had my blog without any update (in fact June 2009 was about to not to have a post :-).

These days most people use to go on holidays, but unfortunately I've been busy, so that's why I left the blog as a secondary thing (and I also felt a bit lazy last week) until today.

I don't have new interesting things for this post, so you'll have to read the next post.

Image taken from: ktpupp

We're all the pirate bay

2009-05-22T01:03:00.003+02:00

In a very weird judgment (I can't imagine any other word for a judgment where the judge is also involved and looking forward to condemn someone) the pirate bay was found guilty of providing access to media files protected by copyright.

In response, the pirate bay devised a plan to pay the fine and also to complaint for such judgement.

A couple of days ago Montt Mardie composed the song at the begining of this post. I hope you enjoy it.

Google's shortage

2009-05-14T18:21:00.006+02:00

Today I started firefox and I went to gmail to check my mails and chatting a little with some people. It was a pity because it took a long time to load so while I waited for it to fully load I went to my blog to check the comments. Unfortunately it was the same, and my blog didn't load properly, but since I was reading some news on internet I realised that my internet was fine so it wasn't my computer's fault.

After trying to reload both my blog and gmail a few times I went to another blog and I tried to play a video there... But I suffered from the same problem again. As it was a youtube video I realized that perhaps google had some kind of problem today or perhaps there was something wrong with my computer when trying to access google. Such a pity because under other circumstances I'd have googled for this problem to check what was happening.

On the other side it was not so bad because I realised this:

I tried to access my e-mail (gmail) and I couldn't.
I tried to access my blog (blogger) and I couldn't.
I tried to watch some videos (youtube) and I couldn't.
I tried to figure out what was happening and I couldn't (I tried using google).
I read some news -> I did it, but I couldn't access the videos

As you can see I was just able to read some news. Moreover, trying to find something in a map would have failed again because nowadays almost everybody uses google maps.

In brief: I'm afraid because we rely on google too much. Do you use google so much?

PS: On time to time I check some sentences I write on this blog using google's translator -> Once more here they are!

Image obtained from: keso

Firefox scrolling

2009-05-13T11:29:00.004+02:00

Today I realized that firefox wasn't scrolling webpages correctly and it was really annoying because sometimes when I pressed the arrow pointing downwards it moved a bit while another times it moved a lot.

Then I realized that the pointer was scrolling over the page as if it was a word document: going line after line, so when there was an image it moved to its bottom.

I don't know why the configuration changed to it, but in case you need to fix this problem you just have to go to "Tools" menu and then choose "Options". Then, under "Advanced" tab, you have to look at "Accesibility" and unmark the option "Always use the cursor keys to navigate within pages" (it's the first option on this menu)

If you never suffered from it I can ensure you that it's really annoying. To test it just mark the option I mentioned above and then try to scroll over this blog.

Image taken from mrtopf

Apple competing on price

2009-05-11T01:55:00.004+02:00

I swear I didn't read this new until today: Apple might start competing on price. I seems someone inside Apple realized they are missing a huge ratio of customers just because of staying cool.

As it's been said for long: "Better late than never".

Image taken from jordanmerrick

Meneame's ban day

2009-05-09T16:50:00.004+02:00

Or why you should remove any link to meneame and point to apezz.

A few days ago one of the most popular Spanish Internet site, meneame, became sick. This was a site I used to visit quite a lot, but which I visited less day after day. In fact I stopped visiting it for long terms and right now, after what happened (let's call it meneame's sickness) I decided to switch to a better place: meneame isn't worth my time anymore.

What happened with meneame? Nothing new at all, some users claimed that the admins weren't fair at all, not publishing interesting news because the admins didn't like it.
It was hard to probe so, and admins also didn't say it so clearly. The way admins had to get rid of the news they didn't want was easy: they just applied "meneame's rules" as they pleased. The way they applied "the rules" was something like this:

This news is good (good= I think the same way): lets publish it.
I don't like this other one...mmm... let's see if there's something wrong: aha!, the title doesn't correspond 100% with the article!!

(The examples above are an aproximation, not 100% veridic, but quite close to the facts)

As you can imagine this wasn't approved by the community (the non-admin users, which is the most of the users), so some users used to complaint.
Then a popular user submitted a story which was rejected. He then complaint, and finally the admins banned him from the site. As you can see it wasn't fair at all so a lot of users posted a list telling which were the admins that rejected this user's news.

As you can guess that didn't pleased the admins, which then started banning anyone publishing such list, so at the end of the day more than 400 users were banned.

Some of these users were very active ones, sending a lot of news, which in fact is the engine of the site (to publish news). So the site creator decided to undo the massive ban (his business was going down quite fast), keeping only one user banned: the one who started it all.

I never had a user on such community, but a lot of people moved to apezz because there aren't such injustices.

Perhaps you think my vision isn't objetive at all, but to me such site was going down month after month, so this just speeded it up a bit.

One last advice, move from meneame, because if you still stay there they'll think they did it right, so this is the only way we have to tell them we don't approve what they did.

Try apezz (from where I got the image): You'll like it (if you understand spanish)

Update: I just removed all the links I had to meneame: You should try it!!, it's sooo relaxing :-)

Position

2009-05-08T14:25:00.004+02:00

As I'm very interested on Internet's stuff, today I consulted a few websites to check what they were ofering and I realized something which was between lame and a cheat.

A spanish web developers' service claimed that among his customers they had a "striptease" website and that they had them positioned the first on google when looking for "stripers": It's AWESOME!!!, they seem to be real genius because they can get any website promoted to the best place on google... Or can't they?

Did you realize it? In case you didn't realize I wrote "stripers"?, Ah!, you mean I should have written "strippers" (double "p") but unfortunately I wrote it correctly. The "experts" on positioning used the wrong-written word to probe their expertise which is lame to me (they are talking about the stripper artist, which has nothing to do with a "striper").

This is like saying that you are an expert in positioning websites on google because you website specialized on chairs and lamps appears the first one when you look for "cahirs" (chairs bad spelled): obviously there are few places where the word "cahirs" is relevant, so you won't have to compete with them.

A lot of times I've heard of experts who claim they can get your website to the first place on Google, but to me these is just shit. They can promote your website and make it climb some positions, but none can ensure that your place will be the first one because it deppends on many things, and none outside Google (not even within that company) know how google works internally.

The amazing picutre belongs to jcolman I think it's perfet to illustrate this post :-)

The importance of the interface

2009-05-04T13:06:00.005+02:00

On time to time I discover a new website and I try to do basic things there like registering myself, visit the most popular "whatever_the_page_has" area or changing the language.

I realized that many places have not so many words explaining what "this" or "that" button does, but it's quite straightforward to guess the meaning because most of the buttons are simmilar across websites (ie: for changing languages you've got a flag icon, and to return to the "main page" or "home page" there's usually a house).

I remember when videogames also had huge booklets where everything was explained. Few people used to read it then and fewer does nowadays. In fact I once saw a report where a video-game developer said "by doing this you get extra speed". The interviewer asked him about this trick and he replied: "It's not a trick, it's written on the booklet".

I think we're getting used to the interfaces we use the most, so we are getting lazy as well because we expect to find everything "as usual". Changing the interface can be very challenging but also very interesting:

Image taken from striatic

PS: The new interface looks very nice, Deep!

Thoughts about Macs' prices

2009-04-26T23:10:00.005+02:00

I wanted to answer the comment Anonymous posted, explaining everything clearly, so I'll do so in this post.

Price is not the only factor but one used to compare products. The fact is that the total addition of several factors (price included) gives the value of a product, and also the price/worth ratio as well as many other ratios. On the other hand it happens to be that many people gives price much more weight on such comparations than what aesthetics can imply.

In the same way companies give customers what they "need" (call it price, call it aesthetics, or call it usability) but there's an specific part of economy called "marketing" which is ONLY focused on forging our needs. So we have to stop again and think: What I think I need is what I really need?.

Answering this question leads us to another question: Can I get what I really need at a sensible price?

Now, focusing this topic on computers (which seems to be the point where we disagree because I say Macs are not worth its price "it's only a wise thing [to buy one] when you are IN LOVE with Mac's navigation" and as I understand you seem to think they are worth it) I can say that some people has Windows on their computers and they are "happy" because they can do what they need easily. I wouldn't insist them to use any other operating system as long as they are happy with the one they use. Moreover when they have to switch to another that they have to buy.

Now that I have unveiled my reasons, I have some more information: I use linux and I'm incredibly happy with it because I can do EVERYTHING i want for free. I also have a system I can toy with, a system which is very nice and eye-candy and also something that is very stable and almost 100% virus free. I guess when you say "There's a huge difference in using Mac OS X versus any other OS" I don't know whether you have or you haven't tried Unix and quite some linux distributions among the many varieties that are out there. I hadn't try many but anyway I can compare Mac Os X (I've used it) with the things I know and find my current linux distribution much better (you may find Mac os X better, but I do find linux better).

As Steve Jobs uses to say: "And one more thing..." you can get Mac OS X without buying a Mac (so you can have the same operating system on a much cheaper hardware), just check Psystar's computers: the difference among a Psystar and the same Mac computer, is the price you are overpaying... unless you also want to have Macs computers ( not only Mac Os X).

Now I've exposed most of my reasons and I say it again: Mac computers are overpriced. Anyway when I have a lot of money I might buy a Mac just to say: "Hey! I can afford it". But today I prefer much more spending my money on things I enjoy rather than on showing people how cool I'm.

Final thought: I said "it's only a wise thing when you are IN LOVE with Mac's navigation" because a part from the navigation, MAC OS X is another UNIX with a brand new interface, so there's nothing new under the sun... of Mac's layout.

Image taken from: xazac

Chewing gum video

2009-04-25T21:26:00.004+02:00

As you know I find really interesting japanese culture and several times I've added contents regarding Japan. One of my favourites one is the video that I posted about Shingo Mama.

Today I saw another crazy video where a guy dances the song of a chewing-gum ad.

This is the original ad video.

I'm not related at all with him, but I read his blog on time to time and I thought it would be nice to help him to get some move views because the video with the most views will win the contest.

If you read this post play the video :-)

The cost of fashion

2009-04-25T15:35:00.005+02:00

Yesterday I saw something that made me think about fashion. Sometimes we just buy expensive things because we want people to think that we are cool.

For example, some people use to buy expensive cars like ferraris just to show that they have a lot of money, when in fact you have speed limits that force you to use ferraris at half power. I admit ferraris are really nice but in this case you are paying a lot for something that you can't fully enjoy.

Another case is when you pay more for the same thing just to prove once more that you can afford it. I always talk about macs to illustrate it because it's only a wise thing when you are IN LOVE with mac's navigation, otherwise you can get the same thing much cheaper at hp or dell, so paying mac prices (even more on Europe when they raise the prices much more than in USA) is not so ideal.

What made me think about this is that yesterday I saw a guy with an Iphone, (so cool, right?), but he had it with the screen totally broken (like the one on the picture above). I don't know how nice it's to type on a broken screen, but I guess that this guy paid a LOT (in Spain Iphone prices are around 600 Euros) and now he has to use it anyway, even when it's broken.

Extra link: A few weeks ago Microsoft sponsored a research to study the price of coolnes. While two non-apple computers cost 2700 dollars over 5 years, it becomes 6000 dollars for the equivalent apple computers, a difference of 3300 dollars. (yes, it's more than the double)

Image taken from minusman

Ubuntu 9.04

2009-04-24T01:53:00.006+02:00

It's not only fun these days (but last weekend I played games a lot, I admit). Besides that, I've been busy with a few projects I'm involved with, but I thought I had to post some day soon because having the blog with no update for 10 days isn't nice at all.

This week was so hectic that I didn't do many things a part from reading a lot of articles regarding programming (which I won't explain because I don't want to torture you) and working hard on some more things regarding programming.

As you can see these days I've only thoughts about programming, so I'll just introduce you the new Ubuntu, which I'll install as soon as I can because I really want to try it.

I know perhaps you don't feel like Ubuntu is what you need (specially when looking at screenshots and realize than it's NOT like Windows) but I can assure you that it's much better than windows, and trust me: You don't have to know anything about computers to feel comfortable while using it.

Just in order to motivate you I'll use a very famous motto: "Go, play"

Imagen taken from Andrew Mason

Update: For those wondering why Ubuntu uses these crazy names (9.04, 8.10 and so on) I'll tell you that the first digit goes for the year and the other one corresponds the month of the release (Ubuntu releases a new version every 6 months).

Videogames

2009-04-14T13:41:00.006+02:00

I talk about videogames quite few times, so I decided to retake this topic given that I found again the game I bought a long time ago and I had to return to the shop because the gun-pad was broken. Believe it or not, I first bought it on September 2008, returning it the week after. And until last week I didn't find it anymore. I think it was out of stock so I bought it without thinking, and I don't regret it.

Today I also bought another peripheral for the Wii given that game producers don't want to make compatible hardware and my Guitar Hero's guitar isn't compatible with Rock band (I didn't post about this game, but I got it as a new year's gift with the drum set). Rock band's drums are AWESOME, I think it's one of my favourites peripherals. The problem is that I only had the drums (and guitar hero's guitar which is totally unusable), so I couldn't play with anyone which is not that fun, but I hope to have this problem solved in a couple of days when I receive the crossplay adapter. Getting it plus a microphone will be amazing, perhaps I buy it too :-)

I guess this weekend I'll play Wii quite a lot.

Image taken from foreversouls

Spanish new minister of culture

2009-04-07T22:58:00.004+02:00

I can't say too much about her because in fact almost everything has been already said. So I'll just sum it all up.

The Government has placed some new ministers because a few ministers were fired (I guess they were "so good" at what they were doing that they deserved such holidays).

But in this case the new minister in charge of Culture ministry is Ángeles González Sinde a woman who has done quite a few good things to Spanish culture. She said that internet downloads have to be controlled, perhaps that's because she's a cinema scriptwriter and knows what is good for her (not for the most of Spaniards).

You migt argue that she's a good scriptwriter. Perhaps she was... a long time ago. Here it's the trailer from her last movie:

You don't have to speak Spanish to understand how crappy it's. They just talk about having sex and taking drugs. In fact this movie has been rated 2.9 (over 10) at filmaffinity (She also had some other movies, but I'm not sure about what's the culture she wants to foster after watching the trailer)

Anyway I guess 99% of the people on Internet can't be wrong when they say should leave her position as fast as possible.

As many people said: SINDE, RESIGN NOW!!!.

Not just glowing

2009-04-06T15:36:00.005+02:00

In my previous post about laptops I stated that:

Paying double for the same laptop with a glowing apple was out of my scope

It was such a coincidence because yesterday I found a cool mod which made the "Glowing apple" much more interesting by converting it in a monitor showing any video or whatever you'd like, as you can see in the video.

In case you are interested on adquiring one the creator is currently selling it on E-bay. It's a cool laptop, but still far away from what I need.

I'm a PC

2009-04-05T15:32:00.003+02:00

This post's title might remind you the very well known commercial which stated "Hi, I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC".

Recently, Microsoft started a very sensible campaign showing normal people looking for a computer. Up to date there are two commercials.

In this first commercial Lauren has 1000 USD budget for buying a laptop.

In this second one Giampaolo wants a laptop with power, portability, and lots of battery life, for under 1500 USD.

I can say when I had to buy my laptop I visited Apple and Dell websites, but I decided that paying double for the same laptop with a glowing apple was out of my scope. So I finally got my Dell laptop. As you know I had one problem with the keyboard, but so far it was the only problem I have had, which was solved by Dell.

Every music

2009-03-29T21:20:00.010+02:00

Today I'll just show you a cool application I found:
http://everymusic.co.cc/

It has tons of music. You can listen to your favourite tracks or download them, and all for free.

Enjoy it!

Image taken from markusschoepke

Interesting features

2009-03-21T16:39:00.003+01:00

Today I'll introduce you a couple of interesting Firefox features. You might think that's a very technical post, but trust and keep on reading because you might find them really useful (these features helped me many times).

A lot of people know that Firefox uses "tabs" which you can open quite easily (just try "File" > "New tab" or the fast way: Ctrl+T). To close the tab you can either click the "x" button on the tab or use another combination: Ctrl+W. These two shortcuts are quite straightforward and also listed on the "File" menu.

So far perhaps 60% of the people reading this post knew these two features, which is good because it probes that Firefox is very useful and also implies that these post is not so "techie", right? Well, now here it's the cool feature.

What can you do when you close a tab you didn't want to close? Usually what mos of people does is to check the "history" it's a good solution, but I want to introduce another interesting shortcut. Just try Ctrl+Shift+T

You see? it was not so technical post, and you also learnt a nice feature (in case you already knew it you can comment and share another cool trick :-)

Image taken from mrtopf

The dates day

2009-03-12T16:33:00.004+01:00

Today could have been called to me "the dates day" because many things related to dates arose to me today.

First we started to seriously tackling one issue regarding datereminder and how the dates were represented there because so far it's not very eye-candy (in fact is really far from "attractive" right now).

I also had to apply for something before 3/4/2009, which to me (I'm used to Spanish calendars) meant April's 3rd but as it was something related with an Americans, in fact it meant March 4th, luckily the guy in charge of the issue was spanish too and he understood my problem giving me another date for the application.

At the begining of the day it seemed to me that "the dates day" wasn't going so well, but half day after I think things were going really good. To me, this proves one very well-known english advice:

When there's will, there's a way

Image taken from ton3vita

Automatic Beer

2009-03-11T03:15:00.004+01:00

As the guy says at the end of the video:

Is it the perfect pint? mmm, Maybe

Studying

2009-03-09T14:14:00.006+01:00

While talking with a friend about why people keeps on studying and why some other people just quits studying after obtaining their university degree he said:

Studying is not something you do because you like it. It's something you do because you want to improve your skills

I think there are some more reasons (at least to me), but all in all, this is the main reason for 99% of the people who's studying.

To me he was quite right with such sentence, don't you think?

Picture from: the master shake signal

Homer and the computers

2009-03-06T00:59:00.004+01:00

Today, while talking with a friend about websites it came to the conversation how crappy Homer's website was. Then while going from one video to another I discovered this one, and I think it's worth mentioning because it seems its creator did a fine job creating it.

Gifts ungiven

2009-03-05T19:41:00.008+01:00

A few weeks ago I told Nico that I would give him a picture from the ones I took in Paris (yes, I said Paris, where I also shoot the Statue of Liberty).

As it's been a long time without updating the blog I think it's a good time to do so, so instead of one picture I'll give 2 that I took from the bells of a house (not very nice, but at least curious):

Remi Gaillard

2009-02-22T14:04:00.006+01:00

He is a french guy who's becoming more and more famous. You can see what I mean by taking a look to Remi Gaillard's youtube videos.

You might be wondering what he does. I'm sorry, but this's not the right question. You'd better ask what he DOESN'T DO because he has done plenty of things while performing many characters: He became Rocky, Mario (from Mario Kart video game), an austronaut, a snail, a tenis player and many others...

I just leave here the mario Kart video because it's one of his most famous characters

PS: The videos where he pushes people away aren't that funny to me because he might hurt some people but he doesn't care about them. I think he can be as funny as he wants, but he should also think that there SHOULD be some limits on his performances.

Newspapers' information

2009-02-18T08:47:00.005+01:00

On time to time I take a look to a newspaper to check the news, and today I got one. Then, while browsing it, I thought about the news it contained.

I realized that most of the news are not so interesting at all, and there are also news which are not so "new" (haven't you ever though that newspapers are too insistent regarding certain news?) which lead me to think that perhaps newspapers could be half or tenth its size but in exchange they'd be much more interesting. I mean: Why do they have to clutter newspapers with so many irrelevant news?.

Then I exposed this thoughts to a friend of mine who clarified everything:

Newspapers first place the ads among its pages, and then they place the news to match such ads layout

As you can imagine by doing so newspapers become financed, but on the other hand they become less and less interesting (none wants to read crap just placed to get a few more pages of ads). I guess by doing so newspapers are digging their own grave.

I can imagine what's next: perhaps someone (quite probably related with newspapers' industry) starts saying that people is not interested on news, or perhaps newspapers anounce that they try to bring knowledge and useful information to the people but we don't want to stay informed, or who knows, but basically claiming that newspapers try to help people and people turns back at them.

Anyway, at the time when they realize that their business model is no longer working I guess it'll be to late to keep doing so. At this point I guess the wiser alternative is to go digital: so far it's the easiest way to solve their problems and don't force us to read useless or repetitive news.

Image taken from laffy4k

Versailles discrimination

2009-02-13T21:42:00.005+01:00

One week ago I came to Paris on holidays I am enjoying it a lot visiting many places as you can imagine (there're plenty of things to do here).

Today I visited the Palace of Versailles and I want to express one thought about it. It's not a thought about the building nor the gardens. But regarding the weather I'll give you an advice: try to come here in summer because right now Versailles is still a bit snowy, as it also is the north of France by these days.

What happened on Versailles was that at the moment when I was going to pay (you have to pay for almost anything you want to visit here in France, and the Palace was not an exception) I told to the one who had to charge me that I was a university student (I also showed her my student ID), but she replied "What's your field?" and then, after telling her, as I wasn't studying History or arts I had to pay the full price of the ticket.

I think this is really unfair: Mainly because if you are already studying arts or History you should receive a discount because you are interested on it, but in case the discount is based on the "interest" it's not the best way of have people interested on it if you don't offer them any motivation. The solution for this should have been to reduce the fare to ANY university student, not just to a few of them.

I think this unfair discount is applied because History or arts students are just few. I guess there are not many History students nowadays when it's really hard to find a job related with it, and perhaps they think by doing this they motivate them (who knows).

I guess in case engineers say "only the ones studying engineering at uni have computers at half price" everybody would say "that's unfair, we want computers too, ease the access to information". I agree, I thought that too this morning when a nice girl got me really pissed off.

Enjoy the picture from Versailles that I borrowed from Marcia Salviato

Days of code

2009-02-03T22:22:00.004+01:00

I think during December I coded much more than what I used to code daily, but was quite happy because I coded things I enjoyed a lot, and I also learnt a lot of inner things I didn't know.

By that time I was involved in 2 projects. One of them was a POP3 client/server service. For those who don't know what I'm talking about it means to code a mini "Hotmail".

My thought after coding it all was that Hotmail could have been coded in a very short period of time (in fact, much less than a month). To me it's amazing to see how much the guys who coded it earn with that service (mainly when it was sold to Microsoft).

On the other hand, the other project was to rework Monogatari's website in order give it better presentation (the concrete words I had in mind when working on it were "make it look like a proper 21st century website". It's still on process (we hope we can have it fully functional by mid March), but it's going pretty well too, so I think I can show this mock-up (not usable yet).

In fact, this post should have been posted on December when I was programming such projects full-time, but since then I hadn't programmed anything. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks I'll be programming again. By that time I hope I can tell you a bit more on what we are doing at Monogatari (which is quite interesting, at least to me).

I obtained the picture from adulau.

DMC

2009-01-30T15:00:00.002+01:00

This is the acronym for a manga called: "Detroit Metal City". I began reading it a couple of weeks ago and it's quite funny. The main character is a simple guy who is "forced" to play guitar in a metal rock band while he only wants to play guitar on a pop band, so he is not really happy doing what he does and this leads to a lot of funny moments on the plot.

There are also the anime videos for this manga. Episodes are 13 minutes long, which is just fine for watching one on time to time, and having 12 episodes makes it a easy to watch anime.

Here you have the first episode:

And now, after updating the blog, I'll watch another episode.

AWESOME

2009-01-16T01:44:00.005+01:00

I just found this ad and I thought I had to share it with you.

As its name says: Awesome!. I love it, don't you?

Download videos from internet

2009-01-13T21:51:00.009+01:00

Today I was surfing the net and I found a video which I wanted to download. It's pretty easy to download videos from youtube and many popular sites, but when it comes to sites which are not so popular (for example, Spanish sites) things are not so straightforward.

Today I wanted to download a video from www.tu.tv a popular Spanish site, and what I found is worth sharing so in case you can't understand the video at the beginning of this post I'll translate it for you.

The video explains why getting the videos is much easier than what you think. If you have watched a video it means that your computer already downloaded it, so you only have to found it.

Just follow these steps to get the video:

1) Let the whole video to be loaded on the player (you only have to have it fully loaded, even if you are not watching or not playing it)

2) Then go to the folder where all temporal files are stored.
If you are on Windows the path would be:
C:\Documents and Settings\"your_user_name"\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
Note: If you are not user about what your usre name is check a look to this picture. In this case the user name is "John Doe". Yours should look similar.
Note2: for Spanish users the path would be C:\Documents and Settings\"your_user_name"\Configuración local\Archivos temporales de Internet

On Linux it's much easier. Just go to: /tmp

Then you have to look for a file with ".flv" extension which is the one for flash videos (such as youtube videos)

Then you only have to copy it to another folder to prevent it for being removed in the future (these are temporal files removed on time to time).

Finally just play the video. In case you can't play "FLV" files download VLC. With this player you shouldn't have any problem.

One more thing, be careful because if you close the website where the video resides before you have copied the video from the temporal folder to another folder, the video might be deleted from the temporal folder.

Update: Nathalie posted a comment about downloadhelper which is a Firefox plugin that downloads videos from many websites. Perhaps it's much easier solution.

Snow!

2009-01-09T14:09:00.006+01:00

Today Madrid was covered with snow, so I took my camera and took a few pictures.

It's not common at all in Madrid to have such amount of snow, so it's a very rare thing, and such an amazing chance to post some pictures.

The best part of it is that as we don't have snow frequently in Madrid we are not very prepared for that, so a few schools and roads have to stay closed, which means that a lot of people can enjoy snow because they can't go to work.

Update: a friend of mine told me that one car got stuck at his place and one road became blocked. Is that a problem? Not at all. Check the pictures he took:

I think it's cool!

Call on me

2009-01-04T14:20:00.004+01:00

I haven't posted a Music entry for a long while, so I decided to add a new one that I listened to yesterday on the radio. As the great Barney Stinson would say:

songs should go up and stay up.

I do agree. As you can hear this song doesn't let you go down.

Enjoy!

Moderate consumption

2008-12-26T17:14:00.004+01:00

I just realize that people from the Internet is helping the world (just a bit, though).

If you watch the video series: "Story of Stuff" (The video at the top is a version where you can watch it in English, with subtitles in Spanish) you'll realize that we're consuming a lot of things, mainly because we are watching a lot of ads everyday on TV.

On the other hand as we are going more web we can decide what we watch and we also avoid ads easily (at least I do, because I think watching them is a waste of time), so we are not watching advertisements at the same rate as we did 3 or 4 years ago, which means that we are not so concerned about having every brand-new thing that comes to markets. Basically because ads are what push us to desire buying such "new" things also making us feel uncomfortable when we don't have whatever they want us to buy.

Going web is an interesting way to slow down the consumers market, which doesn't mean that we are going to force producers to create worse things, but to produce the things we really need.

If you've read up to here perhaps you think it's not the proper time to talk about stop buying like crazy (Christmas time implies buying gifts and stores get a lot of incomes on these days). But if you stop and think for a second just consider how fast things get "old" (they are not fashionable or they break).

Personally I think that formerly all the stuff we bought was made to last. Computers lasted longer, same happened with phones, trousers and pullovers, don't you think?

It's Christmas time

2008-12-24T19:04:00.005+01:00

Hi, today we started Christmas decoration at my place. Quite late, I know. But as the advice says "it's better later than never".

Anyway I wanted to use this post to show you and amazing big decoration item we bought at Ikea. Look at its size. What you can see is my hand holding the golden Christmas balloons from the first picture:

Ah!, and of course: Merry Christmas to you!!

Amazing Operating System

2008-12-18T14:17:00.002+01:00

Perhaps you use and love windows, perhaps you love Mac, or perhaps you love any kind of Linux. Anyway this new operating system is amazing. Just take a look to the video. Who said Minority Report was far away in the future?

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Days of code

2008-12-13T15:42:00.006+01:00

This days I've been coding a lot!, which is good fun for me.

I think I've coded much more during this week than what I coded daily during last months. Mainly because I coded for 10-12 hours a day, but it was nice because I coded something I enjoy.

The first thing I had to create was a POP3 client/server service. For those who have no idea about what I'm talking about I'll put it clear: It's just a mini "Hotmail". What amazed me a lot was that when you see Hotmail you think it's really hard to create such a service, but when you put your hands on it you realize that as long as you know what you have to face it's kind of easy to implement it.

Yesterday in order to take a break from so much application code I reworked Monogatari's site. It's not yet fully functional, but I like how it looks right now. If you want you can write your thoughts on this because we are still looking for its look&feel, so any comment is very appreciated

The picture has been taking from jjjohn, and its title is: "The unseen great little world", which to me is something like "realizing that there are a lot of small things that can make us happy". A very inspirating idea, don't you think?.

Enjoy life

2008-11-30T09:54:00.006+01:00

It's been three weeks since I last wrote a entry in this blog. I know it's been quite long time, but I've been doing tons of things, so finally I decided what to continue doing and what to leave. I know I'm not too good at managing my time because I always want to do as much as possible, but this always means that I sleep less than what I should. In a way, I'm happy because I'm again a "normal" person, which means that I can sleep more than 6 hours again.

Right now I feel really comfortable, even if next week I'll have to do a lot of things too. At least I'll have a bit more of time to do more of "what I want".

On the other hand at my place we changed our ISP, so we didn't have internet for a week and then I had to reconfigure a lot of things, but finally datereminder is online again. No new features, though. In fact, talking about datereminder, I'm glad to anounce that as we already planned we'll include a better look and feel to its interface by the end of December, so stay tuned!

The picture, titled "Enjoy life", represents quite good my current mood. I think who shot this picture is called Wendy, who also gave me the idea to this post's title, I have to thank her.

Successful teams

2008-11-07T09:14:00.007+01:00

I've been thinking about how bosses should behave to create a good atmosphere at work, and in general terms I think it doesn't depend on how the boss is or what he thinks about his subordinates. It only depends on how he "interacts" with his co-workers which determines how the environment is.

To me, there are only 3 points that make the difference:

The first one is knowing "how to motivate", when someone is motivated he works fine, otherwise things are always delayed and you start hating what you work on. As you can see having a motivated team is the most important thing, and also keeping such motivation should be as important to any boss as it's for a subordinate to have things ready on time.

The second point is "recognizing". When someone does something good it's important to recognize it. I don't mean that your boss has to go to your post at the end of the day saying "I realized you send an e-mail, well done!". There are certain occasions when you should be recognized. Being recognized leads to being motivated, which is the main point. As you can see we have almost rounded the circle, but keep on reading for the last part.

This is the most difficult point (Specially for bosses), but also very important because is the one that completes the circle. This one is about "rewarding". How many times have you heard "Well done, keep on this, you are doing great"? Hearing this is fantastic, but if afterwards you receive nothing in exchange you start thinking that your reward are only words, which are almost as worth as nothing. You work hard and you receive nothing in exchange, so the common thought is "Why should I work this hard?". Just to clarify (for bosses) you get your payroll in exchange to something you are supposed to do, so if you you do more than what you are expected to do, you should be rewarded (in money, holidays, going back home sooner... just be imaginative, you're the boss, right).

As I already introduced it's a circle: you break one part, you break the circle. The most common thing is to not start this process or to start breaking it bottom-up (not rewarding).

The most common things are either your boss doesn't motivate or he doesn't reward you in exchange to your efforts, which leads you to think that his congratulations are useless which also demotivates you.

Now, that you think you are safe and it doesn't affect you I have bad news: It doesn't only apply to bosses at work, also to you in any project you might have, even at your soccer team on your
neighborhood. This is not about work, but about having a succesful team.

Image taken from Tom Leuntjens

Weekend update

2008-11-03T21:28:00.008+01:00

This weekend I was not so super-busy, but I was all the time saying: "I'll update my blog a bit later", "I'll do it in a while" and things like this. So it happened what you know by know: I didn't update.

Well, in order to fix this I have pasted here a few pictures I took these weekend that surprised me.

The first image is a picture I took from the same restaurant that appears at the beginning of this post. The restaurant wasn't very special. The interesting thing was its name "Pá Jamá" which is the short way of saying in Spanish slang "To eat". Here you have the sign a bit closer (perhaps you can't see it clearly, in this case just trust me):

This next picture corresponds to one book that I saw at a book store. It's something like the Ubuntu bible, and it had more than 800 pages... Who can read it? The book is in the middle of the bookshelves. What scares me much more is the size of the Windows book. I didn't realize it when I was there (orange color is much more attractive), but I think Windows book should have at least 1200 pages, WOW!

Another part of the book store where art books were had this manga book. For these who don't speak Spanish one book has written "Manga Erótico paso a paso", which means "Erotic manga step by step". Not a bad name to get readers.

As you can see this weekend was quite interesting, although a part from that we also updated datereminder's functionality adding a new function to share dates with your friends (If you haven't seen it in action yet I recommend you to take a look: it's really easy to use and works nicely to share events).

Gurren gundam is built

2008-10-25T16:59:00.004+02:00

Here you can see the image of the Gurren gundam after being built. What you see between Gurren's legs is another figure representing Lagann, another one of the most important bots in the anime.

I built 2 more gundams some time ago, but my other figures were given to me by another good friend. That time the figures didn't come from Japan, but from Taiwan.

In this next picture you can see my whole "army":

If you want to see a lot of figures take a look to what Cornell brougth from Japan. In one word: Amazing

Omiyage: Daruma

2008-10-25T15:43:00.003+02:00

Another friend gave me another gift from Japan.

This time the gift was a cell phone strap of a Daruma, it's nice because we also used a Daruma as Monogatari's logo.

Right now we're just building Gurren gundam, so I'll post the picture of it built soon.

By the way, in this post's picture you can see my Daruma gift.

Omiyage: Gurren gundam

2008-10-19T16:18:00.005+02:00

The title of this post, Omiyage, refers to the word used by Japanese to refer to gifts you bring for friends and coworkers when coming back from countries you've visited.

In this case, Cornell brought me a gundam from one anime that I enjoyed a lot: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (in fact, right now it's one of the best animes to me). There are a few "robots" on that serie, but the most amazing one is this one: Gurren, so I'm pretty happy with the gift.

Now I only have to build it because it's for decoration, but before that you can have some fun puting all the pieces together in order to construct the robot.

The contents look like this when you open the box:

Next time I talk about it I hope I can show you the robot I built.

bin full of music

2008-10-13T21:09:00.005+02:00

Here you can see one picture I took on the same street where I took the last two where I talked about Street art in Madrid [1,2].

It's funny because there were a lot of tapes and CDs, all for free, all of them with vintage music recorded.

I think it really shocked me not because of the many tapes and CDs that were there, but because most of them were tapes!!!.

It's crazy, but I'm almost sure you haven't seen so many tapes together for a long while. Just think about it, most of the music nowadays is stored in CD, mobiles, and mp3 players, so it's not common to see tapes.

Now another one, where you can see the bin a bit better:

SPAM: not wanted mails (not just ads)

2008-10-09T20:18:00.007+02:00

On time to time I receive mails that I don't really enjoy. You might be thinking which are these mails. Well, I mean these mails where you remind me that we are friends, also these where you share pictures from places you haven't been and you think are cool, and also pictures showing babies, dogs, and any other thing that no one is interested on (not even you, who usually just forward mails you haven't read). Receiving this can be funny, but not every week.

You might think you sent me the best image/presentation/excel spreadsheet ever, but don't be disappointed. Saying "ah, this is nice" doesn't imply that I want to receive all the crap that reaches you mailbox related with that subject. In fact, all of these are things I can (and wish to) live without, but unfortunately you think I need it. Sorry, but I don't.

This post is not dedicated to one concrete person, in fact the kind of people that uses to send these kind of mails uses to be the people who think that their time is much more worth than mine, so they expect me to read all their mail (something that I ~~use~~ used to do), but on the other hand they don't have time to read my blog (which is fine, you can do whatever you want, you're free to do so). Anyway I have no regrets: I read your mails, but now I'm fed up of with them.

Dear readers, I have to clarify that in case you are reading this you haven't been labeled as "Spam", so welcome to my mailbox anytime you want :-)

Disclaimer: It's been a long time since I wanted to say this, but I thought it was going to be to hard. I think I coped with that for too long, but I wanted to write about this, so here it's.

Image taken from david ॐ

Nightmarehost's second Strike: time for magic

2008-10-08T13:03:00.005+02:00

As you can imagine from my previous post on this topic, I fixed the previous problem by myself, but after a few time (not too long, just a couple of months) Dreamhost "delighted" their users (not just me, but a lot of users) deciding to "improve" their services (improve in this case just means to worse: irony doesn't work on blogs as good as in real life :-).

Dreamhost did so by moving their servers to Debian 64 bit version (this just means that they updated their Operating system), this implied that a lot of things had to be redone properly, but Dreamhost relied on magic, which shouldn't be done when you have tons of customers trusting you.

The magical trick was this: One day I had everything properly working, and the day after: voilà, somethings work, some don't. I checked everything and, after two days, I located the cause and I reported it to them: "Hey guys, I found one thing doesn't work while yesterday it did. I didn't touch anything, so I think you did something".

Their response: "We updated the servers, so as you previously changed one thing you have to redo these changes again". They were talking about what I did on my other post, and sincerely, I think it was not fair because I had to work because of them (to solve something I hadn't cause). Imagine you pay someone for something, and he asks you to do it yourself. Would you be happy? I wasn't.

After a few mails they decided that I had to do it (no matters who caused it), and I decided that I was not going to do so, so I started copying all my contents to another server.

After one week everything was working again at Dreamhost, but they didn't inform me (I had to check it everyday). And when I thanked them, guess what they said: "I didn't perform any action".

Which to me means: "you've been really lucky". And given that I can't trust someone relying on luck to provide me some service, as you can imagine I decided to continue moving all my contents to the new host (where they actually are, even if everthing seemed to work at Dreamhost).

This is the second problem I suffered from, but not the last, so keep on track, nex time I'll tell you about the last issue I suffered from them (and the worst one to me).

Image taken from mrpunto