Techior's Blog

New deviances

2010-11-25T13:29:00.001-08:00

Here are the latest fruits of my effors... in photography :-D

Photography 2 - Optics (1)

2010-10-28T12:53:00.001-07:00

You don't need to be a physicist specialised in optics to take a good photo, but it is necessaary to understand some basic concepts about light: what it is and how it behaves, the relationship between frequency and colour and how to understand light to make the most of it.

I won't go into all the technical details about these concepts, as there are loads of extensive academical texts you can refer to. I will, however, mention specially a book which is used as basic academic material in photography. It is called "Basic photography", by Michael Langford, now available in its ninth edition in [Amazon] at a more than reasonable price for the knowledge it will give you. I strongly encourage its read to anyone who is considering taking up photography half seriously.

[Light] is a wave that behaves as a particle (photon) or viceversa... the long standing scientific argument is still raging, according to some. I won't take sides. The fact of the matter is it has direction, orientation, frequency and intensity.

...All of those who have ever stood next to a flash when it fires off can even tell you it has mass, but, as I say, I won't go into debates about this point X-D.

Frequency and colour

We will begin with the more "complicated" part: The relationship between frequency and colour. Light, as an electro-magnetic wave such as radio or even like a sound wave, "vibrates" or rather, oscillates at a certain speed. That is, there is a distance relationship between a light-wave and the next one. This distance determines the colour of a light-beam. The narrower this distance is (more cycles per second), the higher the frequency, the bluer or "colder" the colour. The wider the gap (less cycles per second), the lower the frequency and the redder and "warmer" the colour. We can see this relationship, for example, when we see blue or red stars, depending on wether our distance from them shortens or lengthens (relatively, of course).

This frequency is known, in terms of optics, as light "temperature" and it is "measured" in Kelvin degrees (you can see the scale on the lower part of the graph below).

We have all, at some point, seen a [scale graph] such as the one below, which looks like a section from a rainbow (which is what it actually is, since, due to refraction, the light is split into all its spectrum, showing the different frequencies at different angles and thus all the colours are shown... but I digress...). Towards the right is the ultra-violet range (too high a frequency for the human eye to see), and towards the left is the infra-red (too low a frequency for the eye to see). The colour scale continues on either side towards space background noise, gamma and X rays on one side and microwaves, radio and TV signals on the other.

This will help you understand the concept of "white balance" which is the reason why some of your photos will come out blueish when shot in a shadowed area un a very sunlit day or under fluorescent light (when the light frequency is very high) or will come out red-tinted when shot at dusk (when the sun, having to push through so much more atmosphere is "slowed down" to lower frequencies).

As an experiment you can, for example, stand in a room lit by fluorescent light at dusk. Everything on the inside will look normal but everything outside will look redder than it is. If you then go outside and look in, everything inside will look blueish, whilst everything outside looks more normal. This very same effect happens when you shoot in the wrong white balance setting: shooting with "daylight" setting in a room light by lightbulbs or a picture taken with "fluorescent" setting on an outside dusk environment.

All cameras have (either automatic, manual or both) an option so it may take into account the ambient light temperature, so that the camera may correctly interpret it and show an image that is closer to what our eyes perceive. Our brains, being that much smarter, does this adjustment all the time automatically, pushing the balance (to a point) so that everything looks "as it should".

Colours and coloured filters

Also, the images we perceive of things are made up from the light reflected or absorbed on/by them. For example, take a red car. It will look so because under a white light (with all the colours in it) will absorve all the colours and bounce back the red, which our brain will interpret is the actual colour of the surface. In the same way, if we look at the colour wheel on the right, we han asume as a rule for filters, any coloured filter will allow the same colour it is made of to pass through and will darken the rest of the colours. The further away from the original colour, the darker the resulting colour will be (the more light is stopped).

This is an important concept to understand when using coloured filters (wether they be real optical filters or "simulated" in Photoshop). For example, the same red car from before, seen through a green or blue filter will appear darker. However, if we see it through a red filter, it will stay the same, whilst everything else around it is darkened since all other colours have a harder time getting through the filter, making the car look lighter in relation to everything else.

You can practice this when, for example, you use the black and white smart layer in photoshop and place a red gradient layer under it with a "multiply" mixer setting. As you can see, both the sky and the blue bike appear darker. This adds to the skies intensities, setting a darker mood, for example.

Orientation and polarization

Light, as the wave it is, as we have already mentioned, oscillates. Now then, this oscillation has a defined direction on the plane, depending on the light emitter or the surface it is reflected on. This is called [polarization]

This is the reason why "polarizing" filters work. They actually are no more than a very thin mesh of straight lines which only allow the light to pass through if the waves are in the right orientation. This is the same effect that protects our eyes on the snow with polarized sunglasses, since they avoid a large percentage of the light bounced off the snow, avoiding the retinas burning off.

Polarizing filters, however, unlike the sunglasses, may be spun or re-oriented so we can decide what light to allow through so we may, for example, eliminate a large percentage of light bounced of a liquid surface (so we may take a picture of a dawn near to a lake and we can see through to the bottom of the lake). These reflections cannot be eliminated later in Photoshop since we would still be missing the information of what was behind them.

To be continued...
Next entry: Photography 2 - Optics (2) - Focus, focal length, contrast and histograms

Photography 1 - Digital developing (2)

2010-09-11T04:41:00.000-07:00

I've just re-read the previous post and, although it is quite dense (I tend to squeezze too much detail), the proper terms are used in the right manner in the right places, so with a little practice and some [Saint Google], you can make pretty good use of it.

I've also realised that, wihout some very important sources, I wouldn't know much of what I do about photography. So, credit is given where credit is due. The majority of what have learned (or rather, the better part of the most important parts) come from [Maestro Ayarza] and also one of his pieces of advice: the [Super Foto Digital] magazine (Grupo V). And no, I don't get any money for this :-P

Right. Having said this, let's get started...

Last time we saw the first of the panels in the Camera Raw, the Basic panel. The next panel is the Tone Curve panel. This panel allows us to control (to a certain extent an always on an image that has been callibrated in the Basic panel) highlights, Lights, Darks and Shadows in our picture, that is, it allows us to enhance the details in over or under exposed areas. This is done over the whole picture so watching the preview panel is a must. Overdoing it on the controls will leave us with a grayed picture. Practice, once again, will lead us to the best results.

The next panel, Detail, will allow us to alter the focus of a picture. My advice is that the focus be done when taking the picture. Another way to apply this focusing is through the focus filter, which we will talk about in further articles. Much more interesting, in this panel, is the noise reduction tool. This is very useful when we have taken pictures in less than optimal conditions or exposure times were too long. We will talk about noise in further articles (I really am giving myself a lot of homework here!!). As advised in the panel, it is best to view the image at full zoom, 100% or even a little more.

Right. This next panel is where I spend a lot of my time. Here, for each colour channel, we can tweak and correct colours to out heart's content. Again, it effects over the whole picture which means we can, for example, make the sky's blue that much deeper (by balancing blue and cyan - we can even get green and purple skies- saturating and darkening the channels), make praeries have a more intense green or make a dusk's reds much more striking.

The next panel, Split Tone, will allow us to control the colour tones splitting them into light and dark areas separately. I have used this panel sparsely, and when I have I didn't get what I expected. So any advice will be welcome and if and when I learn something new, I will edit this... (sorry...)

The Lens correction panel will allow us to correct chromatic aberrations and vignetting that our cheap (or not so much) lenses may cause in our photos. Vignetting occurs because the lens' barrel "shadows" the image sensor, so the corners are darkened. This last effect can be corrected or introduced in this panel if, for example, we wanted to simulate an antique photo in black and white (B/W) or sepia. Chromatic aberrationbs can happen either due to incorrect exposure or minor defects in our lenses. We will need to zoom in to 400% in order to get a clear view of these aberrations. These may be examples of what we may find and the third picture would be the corrected image:

And this is an example of what you may accomplish by introducing some vigneting (obviously exagerated). It is usually used to supress these subtle shadows.

The next two panels, Camera calibration and Settings, are designed to save us time. The first will allow us to select an automatic colour callibration and balancing based on the setting we choose (I usually leave this one alone). The second panel will allow us to save settings we have applied to a single image so we may apply the same settings to a series of images taken under the same conditions, saving us a lot of time since we don't have to go through all the options again.

Right. Now we have applied all the adjustments we needed to the photo, we have a few options at our disposal. We may:

- Save the settings for the photo and leave it for a later time by pressing "Done".
- Cancel all the work we've put into it or, by pressing Alt (the button will change to Reset), discard all the changes and start again.
- Open the image in Photoshop. We have several options. We may open the image as an intelligent object (which will allow us to come back and modify any settings made in Camera Raw at any time) or not. If you look carefully, under the preview panel you may notice a link which will open a window with options of what to do when we Open the image. These are:
1.- Colour space: Adobe RGB
2.- Colour depth: 16 Bits
3.- Size: (by default, the camera's. In my case) 3888x2592 pixels
4.- Resolution: 240 DPI
5.- Shapness adjustment (for paper, card, etc.) and how much - None
6.- Open as Inteligent Object (yes or no): Yes

I've given you the options I use, taking into account I use an EOS 450D, which has 10,2Megapixels (MPs) and takes photos with 16bit depth (remember the previous post which included an explanation on colour depth). Resolution is determined by how we want to use the image and it means "How many Dots Per Inch (DPI) will I need for a good image". For screen displays the standard is 72DPI, whist printed photos (in photographic paper) use above 200DPI. If we take, for example a 3888x2592pixel image, at 240DPI it will be 41.15x27.43cm big. At 72DPI, the same image would measure 131.16x91.44cm. The resolution, then, determines the density our image will have.

You may have notice I've skipped a tools panel at the top of the window. This is justified since, other than the zoom (first button on the left) and the rotation controls (the last two buttons), all other actions are best done in Photoshop itself (again, this is just my opinion).

Other interesting links:
- Ayuda de Adobe para [Camera RAW]

(to be continued...)

Photography 1 - Digital developing (1)

2010-07-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

I begin, today, a series of articles in which I will share all I know and I keep learning about photography. It doesn't warrant the title of "tutorial" but I'm hoping some will find it useful.

We will begin with the first step in post-processing a photo, its digital developing. Yes, digital photos also get developed!

To begin with, we should always shoot in [RAW] format. Why? Here are some of the many reasons:

- RAW format contains all the raw information gathered by the camera's sensor (not compressed nor processed)
- Images are made up of 3 channels: RGB (Red Green Blue) and, for each channel, the JPEG format (8 bits) contains 256 levels of information, that is, it can contain 16,7 million colours (that's the maximum amount of colour combinations of all three channels). The RAW format contains 65,000 levels for each channel which means over 280 TRILLION colour combinations. This implies...
- Improved final quality
- Greater flexibility: with all that information (much of which isn't perceptible to the human eye) will multiply the possibilities of what we can achieve with a photo.
- MUCH larger dynamic range

What all this really implies will be seen over the next articles (HDR from a single shot, separate channel processing, high lights recovery and an extremely long etc which is largely impossible to do with JPEG.

Of course,m all this flexibility comes at a cost: memory. The RAW images are pure raw unprocessed data, all the sensor can capture. This implies that, a single photo of a 10.2MP (mega-pixel) camera such as my EOS450D will take up around 10Mb. For me, the advantages far outweigh the price :-)

There are several tools for the digital developing of RAW images (see the wikipedia link above). I will be using Adobe's Camera RAW 5.7, included in their Creative Suite 4 (which I'm lucky enough to own through my work). And, as an example, I will use [this photo] which you can download, for practicing purpouses, from [here].

Once opened, the following screen will show:

This screen is divided into several panels: Preview panel, Histogram (very important!), Tool panel and the button section. The Preview will show the effects of our actions on the Tools panel. The Tools panels (9 in total) are where we will be modifying the images parameters. The button section will enable us to save, open the image, etc.

We'll begin with the Histogram, which represents graphically. From left to right we have the brightness values (black on the left, white on the right) which are represented in lines. The highter the line, the more information for that value. Each colour chanel has its own graphic. Overlaps are shown in white or the corresponding colour combination.

On the top corners we can see the control which, when pressed, will show the burnt areas (right button, shows burnt in red in the Preview) or absolute black (left button, showing blue in Preview). Both red and blue show areas with no detail information or "flat" (totally black or totally white)areas.

This panel will also show information on how the photo was shot: the f value (7.1), shutter speed (1/125s), sensor sensitivity (ISO), the lens used (18-55) and the focal distance (18mm). All these I will talk about in other articles.

The Tool panel

The first tool panel is the Basic panel, maybe the most important one. From here we will control Temperature, Exposure and (general) Saturation. As a rule of thumb we will start with "day" light values, that is 5500 and 0 tint. From this we will balance to taste, depending on what we wish to transmit and the conditions in which the shot was taken, (bluer and colder to the left and redder and warmer to the right).

For exposure we have Auto values or Default values (in case we want to go back to the original values) but we will act on the controls. To help ourselves we can press the ALT hey as we use the Exposure, Recovery and Blacks sliders. This will change the preview panel so we can see burnt areas in white going towards black as the unburnt information is spread out. If we want to see the results on the actual image we will release the ALT key. When doing this in Blacks, the preview will show white for non-black information and towards black as the information is lost towards black. Again, as a rule of thumb we will aim to remove all burnt areas and level blacks so only general shapes are shown in light yellow. How much burnt or black we allow depends on taste and our goal. Other controls include Fill light (to lighten gently), Brightness (we will generally avoid going over the 100 value) and Contrast.

The lower section will allow uys to control Clarity, Vibrance and (general) colour Saturation. To see the effects it is best to experiment.

The result we are aiming for is a histogram which shows as much information as possible towards the middle area or even a little to the right, trying to avoid flat areas (areas where detail is lost to white or black), with the colour balance we wish to obtain.

Remember this is just the beginning (althought the most important part) of the process. Experience will teach us how much we can attain with the Camera RAW according to what we finally want out of the photo.

All parameter changes are stored (when we click "Done" or "Open" or "Save as") in an XMP file, leaving the original file absolutely intact. If we want to start over all we need to do is remove this XMP file or press "Default" on the exposure section.

(to be continued...)

More devs

2009-12-14T05:37:00.001-08:00

Another set (see if I get to publish them a little quicker next time...). Though some of these are not technically mine since I didn't shoot them (the neon ones) I did actually do the development and contributed to the ideas... hehehe. The official photographer is [Mr. Ayarza].

Two jewels

2009-10-20T06:36:00.000-07:00

Some of you (spanish readers) know how fond I am of [Fogonazos], a wonderful blog in which, "Aberron" delights us with the weird and wonderful, the original and the impressive. Like me, he is a science lover.

Today he has brought us some videos in which he combines snippets of Carl Sagan's legendary series "Cosmos" together with others like Stephen Hawkins, thanks to the technology of MIDI and Vocoders and the talent of [The symphony of science], sing the glories of the Universe.

It is also better if you can understand the lyrics, of course ;-)

His entries:

[Como de grande es la antartida]

[Nuevo dueto de Sagan]

And the videos:

I will download the entire "cosmos" series, which already fascinated me back then.

Newer deviances

2009-09-28T14:14:00.001-07:00

I promisse, I will write something soon!!

New deviances

2009-08-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

Some recovered old pics, some more recent, slightly treated or very treated. In essence, pieces of what I see

Sorry for not publishing... My new responsibilities are, as you all know, taking a toll in both time and energy, though the rewards are great.

Let's find out!

2009-05-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

let's find out

That's a sentence that has become a war cry every time I draw my iPhone in the company of others. When I bought the gadget, I didn't imagine all the useful things that could be accomplished with it. I bought it out of a whim. I liked the concept and I could afford it.

But it has surprised me the usefullness I've been able to get from it.

Appart from being able to continue chats once I've left the office, level hanging pictures (yes, seriously), reply to important (or not) emails, here are other examples:

Resolve an argument about the Earth's circumference (where the "let's find out" cry was officially born) or the exact speed of light (Wikipedia).

What do the initials TT exactly stand for in the Audi model? (Tourist Trophy)

Look up the tube map well away from any tube stop and without the paper map.

Find out what's on at the cinema in the middle of a meal to plan ahead.

Photograph your gal's favourite car or a similar jewel.

Send forward examples for a DIY project in order to clarify what is needed.

To be able to show your bike to people who don't know about bikes but want to know which bike you have.

Report traffic violations (thought not legally binding) even commited by real car jewels.

Stay in touch with what your people are doing at all times.

Make phone calls overseas for free (yes, yes, this is Skype through 3G).

All this plus the usual suspects (ever more necessary to my new life), of course: datebook, calendar, tasks, notes, calculator, measure unit converter, music, videos, games and other gadgetry.

And still other examples: sending Xing invitations to potential collaborators you meet in parties. Give directions to people who ask for a street you're not quite sure where it is. And the list keeps on growing! What? Let's find out!

New blog

2009-04-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Starting this new phase of my life, I have decided to share my experiences from a more serious point of view than this, my corner of expresion. I have opened a [NEW BLOG] to expose my experiences and explore another facet of my interests, the one on professional growth, coaching and other terms associated with these concepts.

I won't linger on this entry since it is now a little latem, the day has been long and I need my rest. There is still a long way to go on my projects, both professional and literary. The latter, as you will see, is still in dipers, since I have not spent a single minute on the graphic side.

I give you my [Diary on growth]

As usual, all critique is welcome.

New pieces

2009-03-20T01:02:00.001-07:00

In a continuing effort of creativity that burdens me, I present to you today two new musical pieces which, again, are half-way through production. I've decided I will be publishing them as I go along and I will let you know when they are finished (which will substitute the present ones).

All critique is welcome. Be aware, though, that except when otherwise mentioned, these are unfinished works. They are also published in diminished sound quality for reasons of space and versatility. If anyone wants a full-quality version, you only have to ask and I will gladly send it to you.

This said, I proceed.

The first piece, "Tame" (pronounced "tameh") tells a lovestory. It is a piece in 5 parts (see if you can differenciate them). It starts with the noise that fills it all, strange and uncomfortable, and a weak voice trying to be heard. The call for help is surrounded by a melancholic halo, still strange, but is suddently heard in an unsuspected new change. Two voices (still absent in this version, since I removed "the experiment" some of you have heard, untill I have it sorted out) start talking to each other, initially separatedly, then together, sometimes dissonant, sometimes harmonious, finally concordant... untill a third voice breaks the harmony and the melancholy returns, the sadness. But the sadness doesn't last long and turns to romanticism and returning, renewed love. This turns much more sober, mature and solid, in a promise of endurance that the music will continue.

The second piece, "Drawings" speaks of that moment when we stop and, distractedly start doodling, lost in the melancholy of the moment. But we realise where that line of thought will lead and we change it to something happier, experimental, attempting, testing, flowing with it. The contrast of staccattos with a finer melody combines the drawing of thicker lines with finer details. Where will this moment of divagation take us?

To listen to the pieces you only have to select them in the player, in the selection list. Be patient, as the pieces are "big" and will take some time to download depending on your connection, but it does work with any browser that has flash installed. Guaranteed! You can watch the download progress once you've selected a track.

By the way, this is the very same player you can find at the top of the menu on the right of these entries.

Enjoy and thank you for your time and thoughts.

Only with great ideas can you accomplish great things

2009-03-02T01:44:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, in a local station, TeleMadrid (know to be right-winged, but you have to read both sides to understand a story) I was watching a program called "Crisis Office". They usually interview important personalities, such as (the reason why I was watching), Mrs.María Garaña, responsible for Microsoft Iberica. The interview came about due to Microsoft's anouncement to cut 5000 positions as a world-wide measure.

I will not dwelve too much on the interview, in which the interviewer was attempting to get Mrs. Garaña to confess that Microsoft was in such dire situation as to have to sack people. This was frustrated by Mrs. Garaña when she explained, in all possible ways, that Microsoft was going to attempt by all means necessary not to have to fire anybody. This fact has been demonstrated.

Following the program's main subject, the host quoted, completely out of context, a piece by Albert Einstein by only mentioning the line "Incompetence is the the true crisis." In spanish, this could be interpreted as a clear criticism to the government and their "blame" in all this.

I will now reproduce the full text, so this sentence can be propertly contextualized and have its meaning restored and just to prove that a mis-contextualized quote can actually go against he who pronounces it. As Natalie Imbruglia once put it: "Second hand opinions don't make you look any smarter".

"Let's not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things.A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation.For all crises bring progress.Creativity is born from anguish.Just like the day is born form the dark night.It's in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies.He who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome.

He who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent,and is more respectful to problems than to solutions.Incompetence is the the true crisis.The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There's no challenge without a crisis.Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony.There's no merits without crisis. It's in the crisis where we can show the very best in us.Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead. Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it."

- Albert Einstein

Therefore, it is the actual incompetence which is in crisis. Those who are not incompetent will see, in this crisis, the oportunity they needed.

Sony eBook reader: How to make eBooks

2009-02-25T02:59:00.001-08:00

Yep. Given the acquisition of my new Sony PRS-505 (don't bother, it's still not available on Sony España's site since it's not available on the european market... although there are ways to purchase one, clearly ;-)) I thought I'd write up a small tutorial of what I've hacked from... errr... learnt from what it is and how it works. More specifically, how to create and manage eBooks of almost any format.

The PSR-505 is an electronic book. No more, no less. It has no WIFI, Bluetooth, nor anything like it. Nor does it need it. It does exactly what is says on the tin (and it does it very well). It is a book. Or, to be precise, it's a whole lot of books on the palm of your hand. Its main advantage and the reason why it costs what it costs (apart from being Sony and a not very extended piece of equipment, of course) is it's intelligent ink screen. You cannot explain it, you have to see it to appreciate it. It's an LCD with no back-illumination (that is, it's not tiresome for your eyes), great contrast, resolution and a technology which makes extremely efficient use of the battery (which is why it lasts soooooooo long). It has sockets for SD and (of course) Sony's own MemoryStick. With them it means you carry with you more books than you can read already in your eBook. Carrying even more books means carrying memory cards which don't take much space at all. And it is impossible you'll read them all before your holiday is over... however long your holidays are...

It's comfortable and really easy to use. Technically speaking, once plugged to your USB (from which it gets its charge, you need no extra for that) we are talking about three external drives in which the books are stored in the format you chucked at it, and a bunch of XML files which take care of the library's organization, bookmarkers, etc. Nothing else. Sony's own library management software is... generally defficient and dissapointing. It does the bare minimum. But, of course, it's still early stages.

Another small detail you're not told because they want to increase sales of the battery charger (sold separately, of course) is that it requires the same charge (voltage, polarity and amperage) as the PSP battery charger, so if you have a PSP you can use it's charger for both.

For a much more practical (and useful) management of the library, format conversion and almost anything you need for the eBook, you're better off using Calibre. It is, of course, a child of the Linux culture, and therefore free and open source. The best thing is that it breaks no code, law, convention or anything like it and you can use it with your eBook without loss of warranty, dangerous patching, suspicious hacks nor anything like it.

PRS-505's native format is LRF. It is capable of reading other formats, too, such as PDF, ePub, TXT, RTF, DOC (no, not the new Word 2003/2007 format, but I'm sure it will in the near future...) as well as several picture and music formats. But let's stick with what is important: books.

There are plenty of sources for books (Sadrac's library, the Guttenberg project, eMule, etc). As soon as you do some testing with the PRS-505 you will see that not all come in formats "optimal" and comfortable for reading. Here is the conversion proces starting from a flat-text format. Obviously, you can adapt it to other formats (with a little thought).

As I say, we start with a flat-text file. We open it up in Word (or Open Office), we select the whole text (no worries here, flat text has no styles, but with other formats you will have to bear fonts in mind) and we set the whole thing to Arial 10. We set the margins to the bare minimum (0,5cm x 0,5cm x 0,6cm x 0,6cm) and the page size to about half an A4 (11cm x 15cm). For an easier management of the library, edit the document's properties (Title and Author). Then save as a Word Document (not the new format but the traditional one). From Calibre you can edit the doc's properties but they don't stick

Convert to PDF with Acrobat Pro (or better priced PDF converter).

... Small detail here. Acrobat sometimes (haven't been able to determine if due to version or configuration) will ask if you wish to save the accessibility markers. Strangely enough, in order to get the zoom to work propery on the eBook, you need to choose NO. Don't ask...

Drag and Drop over Calibre and transfer it to the eBook as indicated in the apps documentation (won't re-write a perfectly efficient help document).

Also, you don't have to kiss goodbye all those books you had in LIT format that you could "only read with Microsoft's Reader" on PDAs and (badly) on computers (due to back-illuminated screens). Calibre will allow you to import them "as is" (you then have to ask it to transform them and that's that) and you can enjoy them in your PRS. Of course, you can also export them to other formats for editting, if necessary.

There is also a PRS-700 model which is touch sensitive, but apparently the screen is clearly not as good and therefore not worth the extra dosh.

Any questions?

Latest deviances

2009-02-24T03:22:00.000-08:00

Primarily from this past weekend. I will upload the non-artistic photos to the blog of La Esquina probably this evening.

Of Justice and crisis

2009-02-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

It's not fair... I hear it so often...

It's not fair that he/she is not what you expected from him/her. Its not fair that he/she does not give you what you ask for without having to ask for it. Its not fair that you don't get all you wish for. Its not fair that the grass is always greener at the other side of the fence. Its not fair to push away someone just because he/she gave you what you needed.

It's not fair that it isn't fair.

What if everything was fair for everybody?

Nobody would ever win a match at any sport, ever.
Couples would not be couples at all, but networks of relationships but no-one would feel betrayed because we would all know it and we would all be doing the same.
We would all earn the same wages and everything we bought would cost the same no matter where you bought it or what make it was.

In movies, the good guys would always win because there would be no baddies! But they would also have nothing to win, either...

The world is not fair. Life is not fair. Justice is impossible when it depends on a point of view. That is why "justice is blind", but that blindness makes justice unjust. That is, assuming any justice is made at all!

And speaking of justice, is it fair that, with the justification (pun intended) of this crisis, the contributor's hard earned money is "given away" to banks? I got a Powerpoint this morning with a series of calculations and numbers which I will not reproduce here since I cannot verify them (Editted: as I thought, the numbers aren't quite as simple as real money being transferred but rather economical arrangements).

What I will mention is the "news piece" I heard this morning on how consumption has decreased an important and worrying percentage because of the crisis, which will only increase crisis. Let us analyze a little.

In Spain, for the last two years they've been critisizing on one side, defending on the other, but basically making plenty of noise about this crisis. Our dear John Doe, who knows little or none at all about national, european or world-wide economy only knows hard times are ahead. What is the normal reaction? One would think it's normal to remove unnecessary expenditures so when the crisis hits home we are at least half prepared, right?

Let's analize a little further...

Before this crisis, the problem was the ever-growing inflation, mainly due to the ever increasing price of homes... but everything has also risen since we got the euro. But right up to the crisis, consumption didn't descend. That means there was more consumption than was normal. But that also needed to stabilize!

You only have to take a walk up any High Street (or, in deed, any mall) to see that CONSUMISM hasn't stopped at all, but our dear John, terrified by the screams of "Crisis! Crisis!!!" has actually begun looking at price-tags.

So why are they surprised at the descent in consumism? Wasn't it what thet were expecting? Isn't it fair?

A little coherence would be welcome.

Everybody is free

2009-01-29T03:24:00.001-08:00

Every now and then I look back, in many ways. Today I (re)found a "song" (the guy doesn't actually sing) I heard a long long time ago. Every time I hear it, I hear something that makes me stop and think. See what you can find.

Everybody's free (to wear sunscreen) - Baz Luhrmann

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99
Wear sunscreen!
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience...

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked...
You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.

What ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you.

Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen...

Quotes from the shower (3... I think)

2009-01-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

"Only the simple believe they can learn nothing from the small. The wise learn from all."

(previous quote modified by my editor with the following quote)

"The subtleness of the knife cuts deeper than the strength of the ax"

Own and other stories

2009-01-23T03:01:00.000-08:00

I've often wondered about the lure of television as well as the lure that novels enjoyed in the past and going back even further, the lure of age-old stories transmitted from generation to generation by the only medium available then: orally.

Many people would simplify it with statements such as "The poor bastards havech empty lives they have to fill them with other people's lives". Well, if one doesn't stop to think a little it may seem a relatively "reasonable" explanation... but it doesn't really hold up then you apply a little logic. Otherwise, 90% (beware, I didn't look up this statistic) of world population could be classified as poor bastards with empty lives!

There must, then, be another explanation. The explanation is that men (as a species, not a sex, nobody jump) has the need to feed his imagination with stories, possibilities, impossibilities and dreams both own and foreign. No matter how full our life is, we will inevitably dwelve in an alternative world be it through television, cinema, books, comic books (graphic novels), heck! When you think about it, even catalogues! We may imagine outselves as owners of a product!

We have all had to suffer the talk about the idiot box, not without some part of reason. Although, if going to the cinema was free, I'm sure we'd spend loads more time there, too, lets be realistic. The fact is that man (see previous comment) is lazy by nature. It is preferrable to obtain the same benefit (a fed imagination) with less effort; reading implies, for example, having to scenify the situations in our head, whilst these are "just given to you" on the telly and the cinema.

I wonder if our ancestors had to endure the accusation about not using their imagination in something more productive like reading a book when they listened to the radio series. At the end of the day, they were also being given part of the job done already, too!

But getting back to the subject about why stories are so enjoyed, they drive us away from our daily worries and allow us, but for a while, to enjoy a holiday away from ourselves (however our lives may be). The only problem arises when people try to find in their daily lives that which they miss or most enjoy from these unreal lives: the drama, the unexpected turn of events, the euforia of success, etc. Or when they confuse reality and fiction and try to bring to normality certain reactions, attitudes or thoughts which are not normally found in real people.

A clear example of this is the world famous "american dream" which keeps capturing an ever growing portion of the world population, including our beloved politicians... But I'll go into that some other time...

I won't be as simplistic as to sat that television is to blame for certain dramas that really happen all to often. The blame cannot be laid on the gun but on the gunslinger. The blame is on who looses their sense of reality, on who doesn't have enough of a brain to separate reality from fiction, normal from fantasy, and tries to apply standards from novels to find everlasting happiness.

"Everlasting" happiness does not exist as such. It is an "american dream" whose only ultimate result is a constant depression caused by never arriving at an unreal goal. The successful attainment of small daily goals is our only way to reach satisfaction; to enjoy our achievements, at any level, to basically know when you are happy instead of worrying about trying to be happy. As my good friend and mentor, Guillermo, was saying to me yesterday, whilst talking about something else, if you only have one unrealistic goal in your project you are guaranteed a constant frustration. Setting attainable milestones guarantees a sense of progress, of achievement and therefore the realization you wish to achieve.

So, my friends, stop building movies, dramas, romantic comedies and senseless storylines. Reality is a lot simpler, easier, attainable and generally better. Crisis or no crisis, people still purchase, lovers keep loving, friends stay in touch and people still love, no matter what.

Life would be a lot simpler if we could only see how simple it really is...

Compromised... almost

2009-01-12T07:18:00.000-08:00

These days everybody wants to express their passion in the clearest possible way, being the best in their environment, the ritchest, the smartest, the tallest, the most femenine, the most tolerant, etc. But we find ourselves with pieces of news such as the one that caught my attention this morning, namely, The Atheist Bus (I have a link to a Spanish paper in my Spanish blog, but there are plenty of sources.

In a nutshell, there is a global movement by an group of atheists which call themselves the International Federation of Atheists which proudly communicate to the world to stop worrying because "there is probably no God". They are so convinced of their own doctrine that they had to put the word "probably" in it, which, to my understanding, reliquishes all credibility. What would we think if the Church said "there probably is a God out there"? Or if our own government said we'll probably be better off next year? What if your boss said you're probably gonna be considered for a promotion? What if he removed the word "probably"? Wouldn't it show a little more conviction?

The word has probably (hehehehe) been put in just to smooth things out with the other side, the believers, which is even more absurd because I doubt very much it will be less offensive because the offenders are less convinced (apart from the fact that the Bible forces believers to forgive their offenders... but that's a different matter entirely...).

The funny thing is that atheism, if one looks it up (ok, not Atheism because that's just "the doctrine of the atheist"; search "atheist") is the denial of God, but this feels more like an "Anti-God" campaign rather than a "No God" campaign. What do they expect to gain from this? To gain more atheists that don't believe in God? Isn't this Federation there to promote Free Thought? Woudn't it be better to actually back this up with some more conviction than "probably"?

Are they not commited to their own ideas? But, if they are not convinced, why are they trying to convince everybody else? Do they expect to gain conficence through social acceptance?

... or are they just trying to get their 15 minutes of fame the easy way, through scandal?

The new aquarium

2008-12-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

Not having enough with one aquarium where everything died (past) I decided I shouldn't have an aquarium just sitting in a corner gathering dust. Also, my Plecostomus, being the size it is, needed a new home... and I don't want to throw him out just because he's eating the other fish in the tank! So now I still have some time, I gathered the necessary materials...

... and after a couple of hours of labour (no rush, ok?), this is the result

So the new 40l tank is now installed and working and will be the new home of my Butterfly Plecostomus (and the Betta, of course)

As soon as it is mature (a couple of weeks) and the plants have rooted nicely, I will organize the transport. We'll continue to inform.

My travels (2)

2008-12-17T00:43:00.000-08:00

By popular demand, allow me to introduce a selection of photographs from another trip, this one from way back in October (yes, yes, it was about time, yes). It was the trip I took to the beautiful city of Valencia, for the MotoGP motorbike races in Cheste.

Cheste_2008

Please forgive for not extending myself here. I am not very wealthy in time today.

My travels

2008-11-25T03:17:00.001-08:00

Taking advantage of the new technologies made available to the general public by Google, I am using one of my very rare moments of spare time to publish the photos of my two latest travels:

My trip to the UK:

Uk 2008

There was time for friends, family, music projects, socio-cultural visits and everything. The only shame was the accident which made my uncle and auntie's 50th anniversary party be delayed for an extra week. At least I got to see a large portion of family and the friends I desperately wanted to see.

My trip with the guys from La Esquina de la Muerte (section 2) to Soria:

Soria 2008

See the comments on this trip in La Esquina de la Muerte

Quotes from the shower

2008-10-16T22:51:00.001-07:00

Life is a game but only you can decide the rules and if you're winning or losing.

Discovering geniuses

2008-10-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

Mi passion for the guitar in all it's expressions is well know by my people. Last friday, my good friend [Luisildur] "introduced" me to this virtuous guitarist, a resident in Topeka, Kansas. Whilst his style is the most spectacular feature to the non-initiated (and to the initiated, too), you will only need a couple of tracks to see that this character has his heart between those strings and his talent is the result of an obsessive love affair with the instrument.

May this little blog entry serve as a tribute and for him to be known just a little more. This artist will never be comercial, but he's bought me already. Oh, his name is Andy Mckee.

More videos of his performances [HERE] and you can visit [HIS WEBSITE] for more information.

Latest deviances

2008-10-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

Although I have not yet made the graffities entry (it's still in production), Now I can I will bring you the latest photos I've published (just in case you're too lazy to look for the link to my gallery...).

These are from my visit to Leon.

Also, as part of the visit, although they will never be part of my collection (for reasons that will be made obvious in the corresponding entry), it tickled me how such opposing feelings could be found so near to each other, only a few meters (though the pictures were taken at different times of day, hence the change in light).

Spiritualism and truths in life

2008-09-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

I imagine those of you who read this often get those precious Powerpoint presentations (you can read them legally and for free with [Open Office], but thats meat for another entry) full of those secrets of life and beautiful images.

The problem is that however good the intentios are, they often visit common sins such as self-complacency and traditionalisms and they lead to a thought path that guarantees depression, which is the opposite of what they want to accomplis.

So, yesterday I was thinking about spiritualism and how people see it and I decided to share some truths I've found about reality. But before I list them, today, a conversation with [Oshita] took me to something that's been on my mind for some time and it is how people often confuse spiritualism with religion, often negating the former in the process.

They entrust themselves to God to ask him and demand explanations and help. They charge him with the responsability of catastrophies, with what they don't understand and what they can't see how to change. They often say "God willing" without a thought of the spiritual and religious calling that is, asking of the spiritual what is lacking in the terrenal.

It seems that now a days, being conscious of the inherent part of reality that belongs to the spiritual terrein instantly tags you as a hippie and being a little "like that". But it's not necessary to be surrounded by incense, candles and images of Buda or the godess of the fall solstice in order to be in touch with your spiritual side.

"Funny, I was just thinking of you just before you called"; "My life is so unlucky"; "You seem to have an angel guarding you" and thousands of other similar phrases and thoughts are often relegated to chance and anecdote weakening our ever thinner contact with the spiritual. How often can you feel the feelings of a person close to you "just by looking into his/her eyes"? How much of that analisys of the facial expression is something much deeper? How many "chances" are the product of a friendly spirit that "protects us" or simply walks with us?

I could go on, but I'd rather "open the mikes" and let you think aloud for a while. These are the truths I've found so far:

- You cannot reach happiness. You can only see it when it's there and you have to enjoy it while it lasts. (Derived from the wise thought "Be happy knowing when you are").

- Pain is never forgotten, you just stop thinking about it.

- There is nothing you can't do if you set your mind to it... with all the consequences.

- That God exists or not is irrelevant to understand what is Good and what is Evil.

- The person you love will be as close to you as much as your doors are open.

- And, relating the last one with the next one, don't be so stupid as to think you are the only person he/she loves. The sooner you accept that, the easier you'll make it to be loved. Do you love just one person?

- There is always someone smarter, more intelligent, more successful, wiser, ritcher, more powerful, stroger, sexier, etc. but that doesn't make you any less unless you deny it.

- There is always a point in any negotiation in which you have all the power. Be watchful.

- You will never understand politics (nor politicians) by what is said about them in the news. Didn't you know there is a whole career dedicated to Politics?

- Whenever the best idea (melody, verse, concept, project, invention, etc.) comes to mind, there will be nothing around to write it down.

- Everybody at some stage will forget something of critical importance. Take that moment to think of those of us with memory problems and how we feel every day.

I have many others, but I'll leave them for another entry.

... The day I see any of these in a presentation I get by email, I'll crack up...

The dangers of Internet

2008-09-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

Now that information is so readily available to everyone, it often happens what has always happened to the human being: someone invents a new weapon and someone else comes along and uses it for evil purposes (since the very first pre-human being who decided it was a better idea to throw the rock to a fellow pre-human's head rather than using it to hunt prey).

Now-a-days the same kind of things happen, though in other situations, but it happens..

This is the case of stories about [Google Maps] and the subject of provacy. You only have to do a little searching to find plenty of stories about it. As an example, someone today threw [THIS ONE] my way (sorry, no translation. Basically, employers are using people's Facebook pages to decide wether or not to hire someone). Someone may consider this unethical or an invasion of privacy, but employers only use the gun. It's the Facebook users who shoot themselves in the head with it.

People don't seem to realise just how easy it is to find the traces each one can leave behing in blogs, social networks, etc. and the kind of image that may leave for employers, friends, family, etc. Also, there are many tools easily available to, for example, trace the source of blog comments to specific IP's, companies, towns and with the use of very little logic deduction, people can easily be identified.

So, boys and girls, beware when you have a loaded weapon in your hand and treat it with respect, lest you shoot yourself in the foot and make a boo-boo!!

Quotes at midnight

2008-09-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

Masclism and feminism are the same language spoken in two confronted countries.

Obituary for a hidden star

2008-09-17T08:13:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I found out, through a friend with similar musical taste to my own, of a very sad piece of news. Rick Wright, keyboard player for Pink Floyd, co-founder of the band, innovator of sounds, melancholic soul of their melodies and main base for the musicality of their tunes died on the 15th by the hand of a furious and quick cancer.

This news item, to my understanding, as important as the death of other renouned stars of the musical world, almost made no sound. Even requiems in Rolling Stone weren't big enough for his talent and career, but mostly just a small resume of his musical career.

To understand the profoundness of his talent, you have to carefully listen to the Pink Floyd tracks in which he played pianos, hammonds and other synths and keys which simply flow like a river of sound upon which Dave Gilmour did his guitar acrobatics, as well as that spectacular Clare Torry (mother of Sam Brown whom we remember for tracks like that single "Stop" and who also made her mother the honour of repeating her feat in Earl's Court's concert)'s blues solo in "The Great Gig in the Sky" (I've alwasy wanted that piece played in my funeral).

Little has also been heard his career in solitary, with just two albums (Wet dream and Broken China) and another team-up, but in my opinion his talent was "one of those" that achieves full potential when interacting with the other members of the band.

All the info on his life is out there on the net. What talent he has left us will allways be too little. When an artist dies, the loss cannot be measured.

Rick, you will live forever. Rest in peace.

New acquisition

2008-09-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

¿Veis como sí se puede?

Proselytism

2008-09-12T08:16:00.001-07:00

Lately, some of my friends have been moving towards the world of the engine and the two wheels. Whith this crisis and all there is a certain increase in the amount of bikes in the streets. With this and seing that people could actually attain the license without spending much in driving schools (hence not reinvesting in the taxman) so they've decided to reinvent the wheel (pun intended) and complicate matters so once more the owners of driving schools can reep to their heart's content.

I do agree that many "bikers" should be taken down from their rider's seat with a gentle smack on the head with a crash-helmet, but most of this could be solved by abolishing the loop-hole that allows car drivers to ride bikes up to 125cc and raising the insurance prices on those bikes (and leave the rest of us the hell alone). Sorry, driving a car for 25 years does NOT make you a good scooter rider.

[HERE] (sorry, link in spanish) you can find information on the details of the matter. But since an image is worth a thousand words, this is more or less where the Ministry of Transportation (is it still called that?) is trying to go. Notice, also, that examinations will be taken in group. It is unclear, though, if all will fail when just one bollocks up... We'll have to wait and see...

A question of motivation

2008-09-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

This simple sentence which sprung to mind at the beginning of the year in a moment that... well, be that as it may, it has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The fact is that a simple sentence that came out in a moment of almost humour is actually becoming a way to find meaning to things, a way to explain stuff many times. It's becoming my sentence of the year.

For example, I have a friend which has some doubts about how to confront certain issues in her relationship. That sentence was useful whilst trying to explain, to help her see that relationships are maintained through motivation in both partnerts, be it children, love, family, tradition, mortgage, sex or whatever. The thing is that when there is no motivation the relationship usually won't last that long. Of course there are other factors and this is a simplified view of the matter, but it served to illustrate the point.

Also, in a discussion with a different friend I tried to expose the fact that children are more a question of motivation than money, In this occasion, though, I have a feeling I didn't quite get across, but this is actually common with this particular person ;-) . The thing is that she insisted she wasn't earning enough money to raise a child and I insisted that her motivation to have the child was not strong enough. I tried to support this line of thought with the sentence and went on to explain how there are whole families that can live on what she said she earned. The motivation of raising a child would make her sacrifice other "commodities" in life. It's not an extravagant thought but more of a law in nature (though some *pejorative* may twist that).

... Sadly, as I say, I think I didn't get across.

Again, today, I had the need to use that sentence a couple of times. I have a friend who is in a bit of a pickle at work. It seems the crisis in her line of work is forcing her company to sack people like there is no tomorrow. I tried to reason that if she is so worried she should do something about it, try to move, etc. (please take into account that these are all shortened versions!) but if the worse came to the worse (without diminishing anybody's job), there's always jobs like store cashiers and so on which won't make you rich but will surely get you food.

It seems that ever more often, the average spaniard is not willing to take that kind of job (not something I've come up with but I totally agree) but we are ready to complain about these immigrants "coming here and taking our jobs". But this line of thought probably belongs in a very different blog entry...

I hope to have illustrated a very simple concept with these words: there is a large percentage of our lives in which It's all a matter of motivation. I have a good motivation every day.

Inverted economy

2008-09-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

This morning, whilst watching the news, I was once again surprised at the magnitude of human stupidity, or my own ignorance over the Big Picture. I'll ellaborate...

In two >apparently< unconnected articles, they announced economic measures consciously put into place. The first article spoke of those controlling the price of petrol and how they've decided to hold petrol production in order to stop the decrease of petrol prices. I still hadn't recovered from my amazement when the second article, (immediately after the first though relation was ever mentioned) several car manufacture corporations have decided to reduce production of their vehicles (hence reducing their staff and the routers) to combat the loss in sales and keep the price tag.

A good friend of mine was explaining to me how she thinks she remembers how a theory was explained to her by which under a very specific set of circumstances (which are not the current ones) this may actually work positively. This is what they call Inverted economy. I've searched but I've been unable to find almost anything on this.

I must be really dim on this subject (I've never studied any economy) but there's a few points in which are completely illogical. The first is on the law of supply and demand with respect to the manufacture of cars in today's economy.

The main reason why people are not buying cars is that there is an economical crisis (we'll argue that some other day), that is, the people who are supposed to buy these cars doesn't have the money they cost. The reasonable thing to do would be to lower the cost of cars to promote their sale. There are thousands of ways to do this, of course, from cheaper materials, cutting down profits, manufacturing optimizations, etc. But, of course, How could we possibly cut down our profit? yells the horrified CEO. Since they don't actually share the profits when the going is good, why do they share the debt by killing thousands of jobs, hence making the crisis worse? More jobless people means less money to buy cars. Remember that the pricetag has been mainained but we've ended up with a worse economy state. Sirs, I don't get it. How does that help sell more cars?

But the one about holding fuel production to stop the prices going down is a real cracker for me. Last time I filled my tank I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the price per litre. I saved almost 3 euros! 3 euros is not much, but multiply it for the amount of people getting gas! One would think that lowering the price promotes sales. More sales, more profit, right? So now the prices are dropping, lets hold production, we generate mass panic by making people think they will run out of petrol, queues on petrol stations of people filling up, we create an energy deficit and so we raise the prices. It is true sales go through the roof for a couple of days with those panic attacks (I usually just park my bike and wait for it to blow over... it allways does), but people are choosing to use the car less because of fuel prices. Just look at the numbers of dead people on the roads!

Oh! That's right, they've gone down because we're more consientious drivers and we are fearfull of fines... riiiiight...

Come on, dude!!!

iPhone: Also an e-book reader

2008-08-19T03:30:00.000-07:00

Yep. Now, apart from listening to music and do all the wonderfull things you can to with a 3G phone you can also read books whilst you're listening to music. How? With textReader!

textReader is a freeware application (free) you can download with Cydia (ergo, you need a jailbroken iPhone/iTouch) which enables you to read PDB files (originally designed as e-books for Palm).

The obvious follow-up question, of course, is how to get files on PDB. Couldn't be simpler. You use PDAConverter which can make PDB fiiles out of any DOC, PDF, HTML, TXT, etc.

Once you've obtained the PDB file, you upload it by SSH (using WinSCP and iPhone Tunnel Suite, as explained in yesterday's entry) to the /var/mobile/Media/textReader folder which you can then open directly from the installed application in our iPhone/iTouch. There you are. Now you can read whilst listening to music anywhere!

Too many gadgets? Never!

2008-08-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

This is the mess I had laid out in my living room this weekend. In the picture you can see all my gizmos, save my S200 which was elsewhere having a rest...

Well... they each have their function...

Although, the really interesting ones (they're all interesting, mind) are my two new toys (please forgive the quality of the images, they are blown up from the original pic... I'll upload others soon), are my new iPhone 3G 16Gb and it's table companion, the Mac Mini (Intel Dual Core 1.83Ghz version):

These two (specially the iPhone) will give rise to a new series of entries (a suggestion by Oshita) about tricks and tips and "deep knowledge that must not get lost" (hehehehehe).

So without further ado, here is the first trick.

How to upload images directly onto memory without iTunes (and how to extract them, of course, if you so wish to). We will need a jailbroken iPhone (plenty of info out there of how to do that, but I may address it later). This is basic since we will need access to the iPhone's filesystem.

Once jailbroken, we will need Makki's iPhone Tunnel Suite. It's basically a console-based program which opens a port to communicate with a cable-connected iPhone on IP 127.0.0.1. The suite carries a version of WinSCP in Italian. WinSCP is an SFtp (or FTP over SSH) graphical manager. If you know how to do all this through console commands, you won't need it. If you can't manage with the italian version you can always go download the latest version in the most convenient language. The tunnel can be directly launched using the Launcher.exe shortcut provided in the installation folder. The user and password needed to access the iPhone is root/alpine.

The images are stored in /private/var/mobile/Media/DCI. There you will find one or more folders such as 100APLE or 999APLE (this latter one is where screenshots are stored. We will address screenshots later).

As you can see in the image, each image is stored in two files: a JPG and a THM. Obviously, the JPG is the image itself and the one you upload has to have the subsequent name in the list. The THM is the thumbnail. If you don't want to work too much, you can just copy an existing one and rename it to correspond to your image's name (obviously, the thumbnail will appear "repeated"). You always have to have the pair, otherwise you won't "see" your picture in iPhone. If you are tidy, all you have to do is maje a 75x75 version of your image and rename the extension to THM.

Naturally, if what you want is to extract the images, all you have to do is copy them over to wherever you want them.

As an "easter egg" to this entry, I'll tell you that all the music you put in your iPhone is stored as MP3's (with the filenames obviously changed) in folders within /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music. You can extract it using WinSCP (or whatever SFtp tool you chose to use) and rename the files, say, with
MP3Tag, for example. However, don't try to upload them like this, it will not work (I'm still figuring that one out...)

Darn good ideas, yeah...

2008-07-30T06:45:00.000-07:00

This morning in the news I heard the latest "big idea" behind the attempt at controlling the traffic problems: to reduce the maximum speed limit in city circular highways down to 70KPH with the intention of reducing fuel consumption and therefore costs and also to reduce the number of accidents on the road and therefore the number of dead people.

Let's go through "the big idea" a little deeper..

To reduce the (maximum) speed from 90 KPH to 70 KPH in order to reduce consumption and cost. Well... that really depends on the vehicle, doesn't it? In some small cars, the best
performance is low and therefore the best effort/consumption point is optimal at low speeds. However, logically (and this is where the logic failure resides) in bigger/more powerful engines (ever more common), that nexus is found at higher speeds. In my experience, to be precise, on my bike that point is between 110KPH and 140KPH. In the Peugeot 307 I had that point was at 90 to 110 KPH. In both cases, the point was well above 70KPH.

When this happens, not only there is no "improvement" in the consumption, but whatever you save in fuel is redirected as a cost in other mechanical elements due to engine effort, breaks, etc.

Also, supposedly, the number of accidents are reduced since going slower there are less accidents. You only have to look out of your window when you drive and not the numbers written in some of those "studies", to see that indeed the accidents are less deadly, logically, though it depends on the vehicle involved, the situation, the elements involved, etc. But all in all, true, they are less deadly. But it is not true that there are less accidents. There are more! People, since they're going slower, pay less attention to the road, they switch lanes without looking, they don't keep their distance, they loose concentration, talk on their cellphones, fiddle with the radio, GPS, ... You don't need much speed in order to suffer cervical damage; it can happen from about 50KPH onwards. The real problem is the relativistic speed of the crash. It's not the same to crash against a fixed element at 70KPH than to crash agains a moving object 5, 10 or 15KPH faster or slower than ourselves at whatever speed we are doing

Therefore, it does not reduce the number of accidents, it increases them. But yes, the danger on those accidents is reduced.

But an accident (any accident) causes a traffic jam. And any vehicle multiplies its fuel consumption when stuck in a traffic jam. I've seen figures of up to 25L/100Km when stuck on a traffic jam. If you multiply that consumption over the amount of cars stuck with yours, all savings that day are out of the window... if not more depending on the size of the jam...

Also, they're not taking into account the human factor. Making people drive "so slowly" (I'm merely stating other's opinion there, too) they get stressed and therefore it affects their way of driving, which, again, increases chances of an accident. Less deadly, yes, but an accident nonetheless. There are some people out there with some some pretty strange ideas(Sorry, spanish only) to save the world by themselves... They're the ones getting themselves into risks... The best part are the numbers and figures they flaunt which have some dark origins...

Of course, the more accidents on the road, the less cars there will be around. It is a way to solve the traffic problem...

But if we apply a little logic, some respect and discipline we can accomplish at least the same goals without changing the rules. i.e.:

- Drive on your right (Spain, remember). Besides being in the highway code and the fact that it's mandatory except when overtaking (you can get fined for obstruction if you drive on the middle lane at 2am), it enables those who want to go faster to just go, without hard breakings nor overtaking on your right (remember no-one has the right to take justice into their hands nor to make anyone respect the law, only the law enforcement agents).

- RESPECT. Specially towards your peers. To jump the queue, to butt in, overtake carelessly, cut in front, to teach lessons by breaking in front of someone or to push them from behind, disconsideration using long beams at night, etc. They are all perfect recipies to cause accidents. Treat others as you want to be treated.

- Pay attention to the road. On the road, on the streets, driving. If you pay attention to your surroundings it greatly decreases the chances of an accident more than anything. Included are the subjects to do with cellphones, drinking, drugs, tiredness and other distractions such as GPSs, etc. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

- Car maintenance. A well mantained car, with the tyres properly inflated, an engine in optimal state and well cared for, making the propper use of it (no hard accelerations and so on) will all help to reduce fuel consumption. Of course, also keeping your speed down whilst taking into account the road and traffic conditions and traffic regulations.

- Adecuate use of transportation. What's the use of private transportation "to get there and back quicker" if you are going to be stuck in a traffic jam? Sometimes there's no other way, but we are generally addicted to the commodities, the luxury (remember the VAT type applied to cars corresponds to luxury items, not necessities), which is all well and good but then "don't complain about it!". Wanna reduce costs? Use public transports or share the car. You can't have your cake and eat it. And if you so care about the environment, there are hybrid cars. Expensive, yes, but they are less damaging to the environment. It's expensive to be environmentally friendly sometimes.

... But good ol' Daddy Country is always attentive to "our interests" and our lack of intelligence. We are all so stupid in the end...

The truth is that there is a surprising amount of idiots out there but, as I heard somewhere recently, putting people restrictions increases their rebeliousness. You can't have a completely open hand on things because (specially in thes country) we take advantage of that. But I would ask the authorities to make a better use of context and circumstances. The "cutting line" is usually, by definition, unjust.

No one is rational

2008-05-18T03:43:00.001-07:00

Some time ago I read a piece of text in a book that really got to me. This text is extracted from the book"Children of the mind", the fourth book in Ender's saga, by Orson Scott Card. Let each of you draw what you will.

"No one is rational - Said Miro -. We all act because we are convinced of what we want, and we believe tha through our actions we will attain it. But we never know anything with absolute certainty, so all our rationale are just inventions to justify what we wer going to do anyway before we thought up any reasons."

Thinking in perspective

2008-05-17T15:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have to put things in perspective...

How many of you can name a fact from fifty years ago? Many, I imagine. How about from the beginning of the last century? I'm sure some of you will think of something, even though it has to be important, like the sinking of the Titanic, in 1912. And of the previous century? Photography produced the first permanent photograph in 1826. What about two centuries back? three? The further back we go, the bigger the event needs to be for us to remember.

But lets think of a closer circle. How much do you know of your parent's life? How they met? And before that? And your grandparents? And how they met? Their previous girlfriends or boyfriends? Their childhood friends? How many can you name?

And of your great grandparents? Can you name anything further than their name? Their job? Some hobby? Their favourite colour? Someone may.

What about further back?

In the end, the percentage of people that trascend in history are minimal. The majority of facts that seem vital today, in some time (more or less time) will be of no importance whatsoever. Nothing of what we say or do will mean a thing in "the big picture". We have a major influence in all that surrounds us now; and our actions have major repercussions today, now, here, with the people that surround us.

They say we can join two people from anywhere in the world with less than 10 levels. I've found something like it in Xing. Almost any person in Xing is less than 5 levels away from me.

Where I'm going with this is that sometimes, to see the big picture you have to look at the details.

Lets think of the the world we know today and what it will be like in 2 or 3 centuries. We don't even need to imagine what the society will e like nor what the world will be like. None of that matters. If we could ask the people there, how many would remember Zapatero or Rajoy or Bush o any other political figures from today? How many writers will they be able to name? How many bands? With they be able to name the Pope? And what of us? Who from us will they remember?

And within our own families? n 4 generations, will they be able to name our favourite colour? The music we liked?

In the end, the only thing that counts is how we live today, for us, taking into account the people around us. Always looking towards the future, yes, butthe future doesn't exist, nor do we for it. Nor for the past, either. The past is gone. we musn't forget, but learn, but the past cannot rule us.

This is what Carpe Diem means. This is what it is to live today, to live now.

... but... Is there really any other way to live? In the end, no matter what we do, in 3 centuries, no-one will know we ver existed, so, worry about what really matters...

The BMW photos

2008-05-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

These are the pictures BMW took of the test ride mentioned below. They're a bit dark and I would have chosen another (any) bend, but, hey, they're free!

Enjoy!

The chosen one (report)

2008-05-08T02:34:00.001-07:00

A few too many days late (you will have to forgive me, but the last few days have been absolute mayhem...) I am here to report on the BMW test day at the Jarama racing circuit.

The day started with a short briefing in which we were given some notions on how to ride in a circuit (optimal track use, etc) and the basic rules of the "game" (no overtaking, follow the monitor, the group in which you ride will go as slow as the slowest one in it, there are four groups depending on speed - I chose the second fastest... just not to overstep my bounds... -, etc... the normal stuff). This briefing lasted for a half an hour.

After the briefing we were finally shown to our bikes, we each rode the one we had chosen and we placed ourselves in the groups.

... aaand we were off!!!! (remember... the one with the yellow crash-helmet)

This is what one looks like after riding (if only for a few laps) in a racing circuit.

This is the gang of good people, all good friends, who accompanied me in such a celebrated ocasion. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

The little ones also had their fun moment, of course!

... and the not so little, hehehehehehe

Naturally... after the effort, we need to replenish energies... with good food!!

The photos were taken by our great journalist, Oshita who naturally took advantage of the situation by staying well behind the camera. It was hard but we finally captured her...

... well... more or less...

And El Prenda was our (movie) camera extraordinaire for the ocasion and was kind enough to record some very good videos. These are a couple of the best.

In this one I'm riding second, just behind the monitor.

And in the penultimate lap (I think). In this one I'm sixth. Pay close attention to the sound of the bike as it exits the bend. 1200cc/165BHP sound this good...

And here you can see something like what I was seeing from my bike:

Naturally... I'm dying to repeat the experience. As soon as I can, which will be real soon...

Walkabout in the neighbourhood of the moon

2008-04-23T04:32:00.001-07:00

Today, about a week and a half after my trip there, I would like to take you to Barrios de Luna (literally, the neighbourhood of the moon) in the Leon provence, in Spain. It is a beautiful place with a rather unique geology.

The town itself sits, as you can see, right underneath a hidroelectric dam which dominates the views from its surroundings. But it also gives birth to a lake, at the other side of the dam, which makes for some wonderful views.

The mountains surrounding the immediate area of the lake are pretty bare of vegetation, but a little further up and a little further down, life explodes like a fire and vegetation and water dominate the view.

As you can see, it is a very romantic place, ideal for a weekend escape. It is only 350Km from Madrid. The only motel there, a very clean and cozy place, is not only very economic but also directed by a very amiable couple, Pepe and Mari, who will not hesitate to give you stories and kindness and food fit for a king.

Photographic oportunities are plentiful even with a murky sky, as you can see. The place breathes tranquility and peace and, naturally, it is best enjoyed off-season, when the only people around are the locals, whom I found friendly and kind.

There are interesting sights to see, and, if you are willing to move (which one would expect in such a setting), wonders creep at every corner. One such place you must visit is the restaurant Jose Luis, past Sena de Luna. The outside of such a restaurant is pretty average, but when you get inside, the coziness and the class blend together to also bring you the tastiests foods at more than reasonable prices. And don't forget to stop to see the chapel of Nuestra Señora de Pruneda and read it's story.

To sum up, an extremely romantic, beautiful and wonderful place to take a breath, relax, enjoy a walk, the views, the food, the air!

Of course, for me, the best way to move around is with my beloved (who behaved like a true champ):

Jerez 2008

2008-04-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

(Copied from my entry in L.E.D.L.M. because I haven't had the time to re-write. I may do it later)

With the last remains of winter and already tasting the spring to come, comes the time for our national celebration. No, I don't mean the blood and cruelty orgy of bull-fighting. I'm talking about the party down at Jerez. This, your local reporter of biker events, travelled there in good company.

I will report in chronological order. The trip was calm (caaaaaaalm) due to the fact we left with plenty of time and although we were eager, we had to adapt to female needs (for a wussy and a princess). Naturally, I have no pics of this because I was busy riding my bike.

Accomodation, far from modest, was the cherry on the cake. Comfort, luxury and far from the noise, in the shores of Rota. To be specific, in Costa Ballena. A place chosen for summer holidays which opened its doors to those attending the party that wanted a litle quiet and class for those well deserved hours of resting. Here are some examples of what you found in the rooms (Damn! I forgot an exterior shot!)

On saturday there was the practice sessions... which I took advantage of to practice my shooting with the camera, optimal expositions, etc...

Later in the afternoon we got together with some friends for a few good beers and some good company, Gady and Mara, make the necessary introductions (in the end there were several different groups meeting) and sharing of experiences, stories and melancholy, etc.)

And on sunday, the Main Event, RACING! Those of you who saw the races on TV know how good they were. Those of us living it up close there could experience the people's emotions (with the waves - the guy in the hat was the one organizing them on our area -, cheering, screaming, hand-held engines, ship horns, drums, etc.), some overtakings on our bend the cameras did not see, a visit of the King to our area, the heat from the sun, the smell of gunpowder from the fireworks, the sea of motorbikes in the carpark (bikepark!)... and you were lucky enough to miss the ride of honour of the "being" who will represent us in Eurovision... I'm without words... because I'm well-mannered...

And some pics set up as wallpapers (1600x1200, since nothing smaller is used now)

And yours truly

And, of course, there was other sites to enjoy...

Thoughtless

2008-03-27T02:57:00.000-07:00

In Madrid, Although it is actually legal to park a motorbike on the pavement (I think the only legal requirement is to leave sufficient passage, a meter or more), the council has started placing motorbike-specific parking spaces. There are very few of them and thet are usually located in places with a large affluence of bikes.

It is almost "normal" to find brutes who will park in double line without a care for the people affected. This subject you see below not only had the cheek to park as you can see, blocking not one but 3 bikes (4 if you count mine due to not being able to park it) but when he returned to his car and I told him off (though in a very polite tone) also had the gaw to beckome cocky and confrontive. Thoughtless, ill-mannered and bad driver. What more can you ask for?

Sadly, even with this picture, reporting to the police would be useless as it would lead no-where. That doesn't stop me reporting it here...

Chatting about all this with my friends, we've decided to open up a new blog where we can publicly report (within legal bounds) all those barbarians (and valkiries, as there are a lot...) drivers out there. You can find it (in spanish only, sorry) at [salvajesalvolante.blogspot.com] and, naturally, you can all report!

Happy biiirthdayyy!!

2008-03-25T02:09:00.000-07:00

A few miles into my return trip home from Barcelona, my little blue doll clocked her 70.000th Km like a champ. This year she'll be getting her dress (body) fixed as it is a little worn and she deserves to be treated like the lady she is.

Happy birthday, my darling!

Frankenstein was science fiction!

2008-03-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

Some days ago, a new bill of law was aproved to enable scientists to do investigation on Human hybrids. Naturally, if that is where you stay, the idea sounds terrible! We all think of the Island of Dr. Moreau or similar ficticious stories. Eventually, any evil scientists could create monsters and mutations. Imagine being surrounded by people with horns, hooves, feathers and other alterations!

At least that is the vision of simplistic moralists. The reality of it is much more positive. The idea is to do investigation on the union of genes to better understand how genetics work in the real world (and not just in paper), to really understand how things like cancer, Altzheimer's disease and other illnesses work; since, now a days, all we can do is treat them with a bare minimum effectiveness. To do so, they need to use human embryos either created in a lab (with no divine intervention nor any kind of bed) or embryos from in-vitro fertilizations that are destined for destruction. Therefore, is giving them a positive use worse than to simply discard them? No one would give them a christian burial, nor even a name! But the goal of these investigations is not to create mutated beings but to examine the cells and genetic combinations at the cellular level. There will be no people with horns (at least no more than there are)[untranslatable joke. In spanish, it is said someone carries horns when their couple has been unfaithful] nor feathers nor super-beings nor anything like that. What there may be is less sickness and death.

To come up with cures for illness, scientists of all times have had two ways to go: experimentation and investigation. The first is based in the "trial and error" process based on educated guesses with basic knowledge of the base and the desired effect and some means to provide it. The second, much more effective, is based in really understanding the process of an illness, all its causes and then find a way to interrupt or impede the process. For this method, the key is the to understand of the process.

In the case of cancer, we know very little of the process nor why some cells "decide" to turn against their own environment. The "cures" that exist consist of killing these rebelious cells with heavy radiation or to extract the lot and hence stop the advancement of the disease since we don't actually know how to stop the disease itself. Also, Altzheimer's and other neural diseases' patients are left with little more than our attempts at making their life a little more comfortable. Can you imagine what this means for their families? The feeling of helplessness, injustice... I know some of you have actually felt this first hand. I'm one of you.

Even though, moralists ride on their righteous horses of truth and sacred to defend these "human lives", these souls tortured in glass tubes. They say this goes against God. They say it's immoral. They say they will create "frankensteinean" monsters. That it will lead to genetic racism.

How little they remember that these kinds of investigations have allowed parents to give life where they couldn't previously generate it by themselves. How little they remember that diseases now considered "common" have killed thousands in the past. How little they think of the inmorality of saving lives and the reasons that push scientists to these lines of investigations. Of course! Scientists are all evil and set on the anihilation of the human race and their immortal souls.

Yes, obviously, there is a lot of money to be made with these investigations and there are people with low morals ready to sell themselves. As there are in every human circle! (Let us remind these moralists of the many church scandals, the abuses of the clergy, so often living in ritches whilst people around them died of hunger and the fact that if they auctioned all the treasures of the Vatican they would wipe off hunger from the face of the Earth). Back in the subject, this is the reason why there are legal regulations, inspections every 3 months, records of all the activities carried out as well as the origin and destination of all embryos used. Could this lead to a future like the one portrayed in Gattaca or Blade runner? Doubtfull. Possible, but doubtfull. Let us remember that the goal of Science Fiction is to take the possibilities to the extreem and then some; to stretch the imagination further than what is probable.

... And, why not, to teach us where we can go wrong (remember that next time you are offered some Science fiction and you think "Bah, rubbish").

DIY II (The Shoe)

2008-03-19T08:59:00.001-07:00

Due to a series of circumstances not relevant here, I found myself in posession of a camera tripod (that my good friend Yago gave me for my birthday) which I couldn't use, since the shoe (the piece that links the camera to the tripod for fast release) was lost.

Curiously, one would think such a piece would be cheap and easy to purchase since it is relatively simple to misplace it. Naturally, since Yago bought it in El Corte Ingles (the spanish Mark's and Spencer's), that was my first port of call. I was surprised to learn they don't have spares for this or any other tripod. My next step was to call up the oficial service company. To my amazement, they don't even import the piece because "it ain't worth it" (!!!). I was sugested a Universal shoe. Still dazed at all this, I shopped around a couple of photography stores and found that they not only had never heard of a Universal shoe, but also that the best course of action was to dump the tripod and buy a new one (!!!!!!).

Naturally, and specially considering the little use the tripod had had and that it was actually a birthday present from a friend, I was not willing to give up; and seing the world was not willing to help (I was quite willing to pay the postage from the US!), I decided that help should come from oneself first and that I would make myself one.

First we must observe the link in the tripod and analyze what shape it should be (as trying to remember it was difficult and useless).

With a paper template, I cut a metal soul from a can of a well known and enjoyed beer (niiiice)

Then, using the paper as a guide, plasticine and a metric 6 screw (the standard for camera links) kindly donated by my pal El Prenda, I made the mold in which I would later pour the bi-component resin. I also added the metal soul for reinforcement.

Once the piece is extracted, you clean off the plasticine (if you were enough of an idiot to not lubricate the mold) and you shave off the excess to obtain the first prototype.

As you can see, the piece fits perfectly on the trypod and could be used as it was without problems.

... buuuut, being a perfectionist, this prototype was full of bubles, the metal soul was not needed, the shape wasn't quite right (though it works fine), so we can use this as a template (so we can save on the use of papers and so on) for prototype 2.

... this time remembering to lubricate the plasticine adequately, of course...

Just so not to bore you, I did a couple of tests with black tints (a universal one for paint and some black spray paint) which were a disaster though also funny. The bi-component resin reacts with water (in the tint) and some other component (in the spray paint) which resulted in a completely useless black plastic foam.

So, back to basics, I did a piece in resin (pure and normal) and after extraction and shaving we obtain the following piece. We can paint it with some cheap black spray paint so it's a little more discrete (wouldn't want a white piece between the black camera and the black tripod).

The result, as you can see, is a perfect shoe we can screw on with a simple 1 or 2 cent coint (and leave it on, of course) which will allow us to enjoy our great present from a friend without anybody's help.

DIY I (LED back light)

2008-03-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, some time ago, fed up of paying 6€ a pop for each lightbulb of my bike's back light (and it carries 2) and the fact they only lasted a while, I decided to change the old tungsten filament system for a much more reliable and low-consumption LED system, which is now so highly in fashion they're using it on trafic lights, signs and yes, even back lights on trains, bikes and cars.

The problem is I commited a beginners mistake. I assumed (which makes an ass out of u and me) the voltage would be stable at 12 volts, but when on idle, it doesn't get higher than 11,3, which is inadecuate for the original circuit. Also, at full working voltage it ended up being less bright than I thought.

Here are some pics of the original light

So now, with a little more time and experience, and looking forward to my trip to Jerez, I decided to redo the light.

We start by making a bigger plaque, which will allow for more LEDs. As my good frien El Prenda says, measure twice, cut once.

You put in the LEDs and solder all the components (this is the most involved part and I didn't take many pictures because I was busy soldering)

Here is the completed circuit and the installed light:

And here it is, working, the difference between the position light and the brakeing light. Now noone will be able to say they didn't see me brake!

One of these days...

2008-03-11T10:13:00.001-07:00

We come and go. Busy in our days full of things that "need" to be done. We create a little space for ourselves and, soon enough, someone comes algong and fills it with some unsolicited task. Depending on who, we may even appreciate it, even with the loss of our space. Alas, someone needs us...

So we postpone that task, that project, that something we were going to do, for another moment.

Sometimes it doesn't even need another person's interaction to postpone things. That wardrobe that needs reorganizing. That room that needs sorting out. To place that carpet we have tucked away. Changing the clothes. Try to bring some logic to our library! Oofff... But life likes to throw spanners in our cogs and to design tangents to our roads. One day they need you a little more at work, the train is late, the weather conspires against you... and you get home and you really don't feel like attending those things you had set out to do today. Better do it on another of these days...

We have all received those pretty "carpe diem" powerpoints reinforced with the experiences of someone who's been on the brink of death. But in all truth, Carpe Diem is a hard motto to follow in the real world. We all have things we want to do and life sets out to deny them. In the wise words of John Lennon (I think) "Life is what happens while you're busy making plans".

But when one only has to answer to oneself, those failures, those delays seem less important. In the end, whatever you don't do today... you can do some other time. The importance seems to be acquired with someone's dissapointment. Thus we are one day faced with the thought "One of these days I gotta call X and see how he/she is doing...". We may even plan the call that evening. Doubtlessly, life will throw something at that one, too.

Someone (who deserves more importance than a simple "someone" expresses) recently took it upon themselves to remind me, also, that we can't lay all the blame on life.

Sometimes we are centered on the immediate, the easy, things or people that give us directly good moments. All that, in some manner or other, leaves us with a footprint in our lives is, in a sense, complex.

If you pay close attention, the footprints in life are the creases in our skin, more or less indeleble marks (funtionally directly proportional to the amount of botox used). Folds that don't hurt but, sometimes, when we see ourselves in the mirror, make us think.

Maybe that's why we leave what we can really say or do for "one of these days...". We wait for that day in which all will be easier, in which we will feel like talking about outselves or return to the past (with its fairies and its devils)

Thank you for the reminder. To my new set of intentions I add the one about not hiding from those who make me feel exposed (someone, again, someone who deserves much more importance than a simple "someone", also reminded me of the advantages of leaving yorself exposed; those who are trustworthy will make good use of it), call now instead of later, do today if I can. This year, not "some day".

So, what have you got planned for "one of these days"?

Memories

2008-02-26T02:26:00.001-08:00

When something happens to us, or we perveive it with our senses, wether through sight, smell, touch, taste or hearing, it generates something in our minds. An echo. That echo, which will sometimes return, even years later, is what we call memory.

Nobody is really sure how memories are stored. There are certain experts that assert that the brain can store as much as a terabyte. Some say more. In the end, I think, our similarities with our own creations (".. and God created Adam in his own image") are not really that close in the sense of how we remember things nor in the measurability in bits. Again, its probably more about how memory is conceptualized than how the data is stored.

We could be going down a highway we've travelled often and discover a smell that takes us back to our time in the military service (that happened to me in my recent trip to Barcelona). Or even listen a few notes of a song and remember a situation or feeling. Or that piece of poetry that we remember years and years later and still moves us like the first day. And the smell of someones skin which, one day, we smell again.

All these things and more strike chords in us and bring things from the past. Some good, some not so much.

However, that vital instrument can sometimes fail us at the worst possible time. Why? Those of you who know me will know what I'm talking about. Some "accuse" me of not paying due attention or not assigning the right priority, even though I've forgotten things that were only important (vital) to myself.

It's funny but I can recognize someone in a film, remember their movements, their phisonomy and place them in a radically different argumental environment. And I couldn't give you their name to save my life.

Writing these lines I am struck with a theory. Lets go back to the memory being like that of a computer. Whe computers store memory they do it by random allocation (actually, they follow an algorythm) of the space, thus the name RAM. Assume, then, that the mind does something similar, assigning space in the brain as well as synthesizing the concept to be stored. Naturally, humans being, we will assign a path to that memory, we will link it with others. A path that will later be reorganized and, of course, we will assign a priority to it in order to find it faster at a later stage. But, what would happen if, say, by a genetical flaw, the algorythm failed? What if the reorganization lost a path or misplaced it? what if the process was degenerative?

It offends some people. Others find it funny. Sometimes I worry...

... and then I forget...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

2008-02-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

Imagine yourselves pusing a trolley up-hill. The trolley is heavy, but you can push it and you really want to get home with it more than anything in the world. You've been climbing the hill for a while when you trip over and fall. The first time doesn't really matter. Your will to get home with the trolley is too strong. You get up and keep walking even though you scraped your knee.

A while later your arms start to ache and then you trip over again. The scraped knee gets bashed again and now the other one, too. The trolley was getting heavy by now, but you still want to get it home. Getting up is a little harder now, as your knees hurt and the arms have not rested, but you get up nonetheless.

The street still climbs up in an endless hill and you see up ahead that the pavement has some loose pieces that may be treacherous. But, actually, this is the only road home, so you carry on regardless of the pain on your knees, the pain in your arms and that dull ache at the end of your back. You've been pushing the trolley for a while and tiredness is setting in.

And yes, once again you trip over. Both knees are hurt, open, your arms are in pain and so is your back. And you're tired... so tired... And the trolly weighs so much... so much...

But you really really want to get the trolley home. It's the only thing that matters. And there is no other road. When is it right to decide it's enough? That there are enough scrapes, bumbs and bruises and that the trolley is really too heavy to take home? When is it right to decide it is better to abandon that trolley and try to find a new one possibly closer?

This, of course, means throwing away all the effort and disregard the walk so far...

But the trolley is what is important. To get home with it is the only thing that matters.

How do you do it?

Dedicated photo

2008-02-15T02:23:00.000-08:00

A promise is a promise.

Last weekend I was in Barcelona and, although the weather was good, I was planning to take a picture I wanted to take after some conversations I had with Edelweiss. It didn't quite end up as I wanted it. I didn't find the right subject, nor the right framing... and the camera was not really up to it (something I plan to solve soon).

However, here it is, in [my DeviantArt gallery] and, naturally, it is dedicated to Edelweiss for rightly earning the name.

Against nature

2008-02-14T12:49:00.000-08:00

We pride ourselves in being rational beings. We are "so far removed" from animals we can even use the term as an insult. We are so superior we can even class the rest of living beings into higher animals, lower animals, etc. But at the end of the day, we also pride ourselves in being able to enjoy our basic animal instincts.

But as the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it. Either we are rational or we are not.

Yes, the answer, of course, is that we are both. Ah, how nice to have double standards. To be able to choose when to be rational and when to react by instinct. We can decide when to see things with logic and when to... react!

Well then, as some of you know, after certain repeated experiences, certain recursve cycles, this is the moment in my life when I decide once more (once and for all) that logic, rationalism are what must prevail and to choose when instinct can have free run. Just because of this, a good friend of mine said I was going against nature. But ¿isn't that being human?

This morning, with the usual bombardment of a day like today, in the front page of a free newspaper, it said that 58% of couples break up. Its a statistic. And 97,3% of statistics are made up. No-one knows how many couples break up nor how long were they together for. The reasons are many and varied, simple, complex and a large portion of them are due to a lack of understanding, communication, differnt rules, deviations in knowledge... People change, as do the images we have of them as they evolve according to their changes. Action and reaction and sometimes intention is futile, promises are not kept... choose the sin and pick up a rock, you're sure to hit someone.

It's time to evaluate the lessons learned. How to act logically when there is no logic to be applied to a world where rational people don't decide when to be instinctive? Logic has its moments. Instincts have different ones. And it is rare when the combination is positive. It is therefore logical that the solution is to apply rational and instinct when it's their time. Set goals and ban roads, since some roads have proven not to be worth the trip regardless of who you walk them with. Those roads al end the same.

If there is an easy road and a hard one, why chose the hard one always? I'll miss things, yeah, sure. Am I contious of it? Yes. I've seen much and it hasn't given me as much as it was supposed to. Nature is not that pretty sometimes. Traditions aren't always valid to every one.

And if that is being anti-natural, if that is going against nature, someone should let ol'Cupid know:

Translation:
-So Cupid, how's life?
-I'm going to stay free and single. Some of the things I see in my work really get to me.

Real Guitar Hero

2008-02-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

Here is a discovery I did in the most unusual of places: The [FIV'07] (no, not the [FIB]). A good friend of mine, Alvarito, knowing of my passion for electric guitars, also self-erected DJ of the day, showed me this great guitarist whom I previously didn't know of but who captured me from the very beginning: [Kiko Loureiro]

The first piece I say, Enfermo ("Sick", see video below, which, funnily enough is the very same video I saw), I thought was a spectacular display of tehcnique and great musical taste. Apart from using "the tipical tricks" any lead self-respecting guitarist uses, such as tapping, false harmonics, sweep-picking and fast-picking, this master also combines techniques to do things like harmonic tapping slap-bang in the middle of a solo, chord tapping (see first video, my favourite), etc.

Also, being a brazilian by origin, you can hear the influences of his mother-land's music both in the rythms used as well as the chord sequences and scales used. Please note he has a blog right here, at Blogger:: [Blog Kiko Loureiro] (there is an [English] version).

He first "appeared" as a guitarist for [Angra], a (Power) metal band where, in my modest opinion, they used very little of this talented musician.

So without further ado (and not too deep today, it's friday), I'll let you get on with a couple of videos of his "No gravity" record (highly recommended!).

Tapping into my dark tranquility

Enfermo

Dilemma

And... strangely... the only Kiko Loureiro video I found on Stage6(!!?).

How things do change in 30 years

2008-02-05T07:01:00.003-08:00

A friend sent me this today. It was funny at the begining but as I read on I actually started feeling depressed. It quite sad, really.

(Translated)

Scenario:
John is planning to go to the forest after class. He enters school an shows his mate Peter the pen-knife with which he intends to make a slingshot.

1977: The principal sees it and asks where he they sell them and shows him his own, which is older but better.

2007: The school shuts down, the police is called and they take John away to the reformatory. The main channels start their news broadcast from the school's door.

Scenario:
Frank and Mark have a tiff and end up in fisticups after class.

1977: Their peers cheer. Mark wins. They shake on it and they end up playing billiards together.

2007: The school shuts down. CNN declares a month of anti-violence. the papers talk about the subject in 5-column width, and they bring Matias Prats (Spain's most famous journalist, sorry... no translation there) to the middle of the storm to present the news broadcast.

Scenario:
James won't sit still at school and disturbs his peers.

1977: They send James to the principal who tells him off. He returns to class, sits still and doesn't disturb the class again.

2007: They prescribe James some Ritalin. He is transformed into a zombi. The school gets a grant for schooling a disabled person.

Scenario:
Lou breaks the glass of a car in his street. His father takes his belt off and gives him a red bum.

1977: Lou learns to be more careful next time and grows normally, he goes to university and becomes a successfull businessman.

2007: Lou's father is arrested for child abuse. Without a father figure, Lou joins a street gang. The psichologists convince his sister that his father abused her, too and they put him in jail. Lou's mother hooks up with the psichologist. The final in Big Brother is started with a forum on the subject.

Scenario:
Joe falls in a race and scrapes his knee. His teacher, Mary, finds him crying at the edge of the field. She hugs him to comfort him.

1977: Shortly after, Joe feels better and carries on playing.

2007: Mary is acused for child abuse and is sacked. She may end up in jail for three years. The parents sue the school for negligence and the teacher for emotional distress and they win both cases. Mary, jobless and up to her ears in debt kills herself by jumping out of a window. She lands on a car and breaks a plant pot on the way down. The car owner and the plant pot owner sue the heirs for destruction of property, They win. Two main channels join in the production of the movie and the news broadcast officce is moved deffinitely to the street.

Scenario:
A white boy and a black boy fight because one called the other chocolate.

1977: They have fisticups for a while, get up and go home. The next day they are friends.

2007: CNN sends in the best reporters. The BBC with a team of reporters prepares an in-depth documentary of a day at school with the kids. Documentaries are broadcast on street gangs, racism, pseudo-hitlerian youths pretend to rise in revolution about this and the government instates new laws and they give the black kid's family a flat.

Scenario:
You are going to travel.

1977: You fly in an Iberia (ok, ok...BA), they feed you, they invite you to whatever you want to drink, all served by stewardesses that are a joy to look at and in your sit you could fit two of you.

2007: You enter the plane putting your belt back on, which you had to remove to pass the security check. They sit you in a seat that, if you were to breathe deep you'd poke your neighbour in the eye with your elbow. If you are thirsty a poofy steward will offer you a beverages price list in which all drinks are 50% more expensive just because. You don't complain just in case they later want to check you for drugs with the longest finger in the world...

Scenario:
Peter, aged 19, has a reputation for being hard, earned by hours at the billiards, leather jacket with metal studs and lighter caps and a supped-up moped; he lays Anna, a 15 year-old hiper-developed gal who stands out from her girlfriends on the street.

1977: Peter is the stud, the dude.

2007: After a national television level public lynching, specially by the usual criticists and progressive ministers, Mercedes Mila (look her up) obtains the reinstating of the death sentence in Spain. Peter has the honour of being the first one to be condemned by the retroactive quality of this new law.

Scenario:
Usual relationship between father and son:

1977: I ask him for money to go out.

2007: He asks me for money to keep the bank at bay.

Scenario:
School discipline:

1977: You misbehaved in class. The teacher gave you two well-deserved slaps. When you got home your dad gave you another two...

2007: You misbehave. The teacher apologizes. Your dad apologizes and buys you a motorbike.

Scenario:
October 28th.

1977: You change from summer-time to winter-time. Nothing happens.

2007: The time-change arrives. People suffer sleep disorders, depression and women loose the period.

Scenario:
End of holidays.

1977: After a major traffic jam with the whole family stuck in a Morris Minor after a 15 day holiday at the beach, the holidays are over. Everybody goes to work the next day and nothing happens.

2007: After returning from Cancun, a trip with all expenses paid. The holidays are over and people suffer sleep disorders, depression and seborrhea.

Traditions and religions

2008-02-05T02:46:00.001-08:00

I wasn't too sure what to write about today. I'm not actually an endless pit of ideas nor do I always feel like writing long monologues. But this morning, whilst enjoying a nice coffee with Mente Inquieta (Restless Mind, someone who commented several times in my spanish-version blog), we touched a subject with can generate lots of thoughts: traditions and religions.

Specifically, we spoke about how women are in this area (generalizing, of course) and what their points of view are with respect to couples. For various reasons I will not go into details on this in this post. Maybe some other day.

It's funny, however, to think of the amount of decisions and actions with are decided upon with the simple basis of tradition and religion. Parents teach their children their moral values thus perpetuating them. But, of course, those values get mixed up as families combine their members. And even in our "equalitarian" society (I'll go into that one some other time...) boys are not taught the same as girls.

But what is really a "tradition"? A tradition is something that we do because "it is always been done like that", though obviously the term "always" is relative. Sometimes it means a couple of years, sometimes centuries.

Some traditions, even evolve. Others, however "de-volve". In a society like ours there are traditions whose meaning is long lost or distorted, as there are also traditions which completely lack any sense.

Family values are not what they used to be. But neither is everything that surrounds a family. The "traditional family" is still plagued with concepts that, applied to today's society can even cause more harm than good.

This is also true with religions. Religious traditions, and I don't just mean rituals but also dogmas and concepts, are also distorted through time. As an example there is the well known phrase that describes a difficult situation: (...) as trying to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. Apparently, the original sentence, which appears in the Scriptures, said something along the lines of "(...) like passing a rope through the eye of a needle" (the type of rope to tie boats with) which naturally makes much more sense. There was apparently some confusion when it was translated since the words "camel" and "rope to tie boats with" (khamelos) were similar. A simple translation mistake that gave birth to an almost senseless saying.

Imagine, then, how many other traditions have been misinterpreted. After all, most religions were based on the idea of mutual comprehension and were created, in the beginning, with good intentions. There have been, however, uncountable wars, conflicts and fights even to this day because of them. All for tradition.

Yes, resentment also become a tradition.

But not all traditions nor all religions are negative. It all depends on the colour of the glass you look through, as it often is. Even though the meaning of traditions are lost, some can remain. We still give each other presents on Christmas with the intention of showing affection, even if that has degraded to the materialism Christmas seems to be based on now and that we are flooded with advertisements from october and evern earlier.

There are, however, traditions and religions I still find very hard to comprehend. I will never understand how a religion will give someone rights over someone else, for example. Nor how, by tradition, someone is erected above someone else (that should surely only come through merit, if anything!).

Religions, dogma and more sheep

2008-02-04T04:44:00.000-08:00

I'd been thinking for a couple of days now what to write about next without going into too personal subjects or whimping at the world again. So whilst I was thinking all this I started to think about God, and how people remember Him at certain moments and not the rest of the time, and what scientific basis there is for religious beliefs and all that.

There are people who will think that the subject is badly thought out, but if you look it up we can see that Religion is not the same as Dogma (great film by Silent Bob (Kevin Smith), though). I myself was uncertain untill I actually looked it up.

Since the beginning of time, the human beeing has sought the explanation for the unexplainable. Back from the discovery of fire (and even before) right up 'till today (and even further). It is, therefore, perfectly true to say that BELIEF is almost a genetic need for the human being.

However. As time has gone by, certain gods have lost the match against science, such as the god of thunder, the god of fire, the god of rain, etc. Some say even the christian god, Yaveh (please, no stoning) will go down the same road.

In the end, believers defend themselves by saying that even though unexplainable things can be scientifically explained, they don't deny, by themselves, the presence of a deity. Once all logical reasoning is exhausted, the believer always has the last ace at hand, the ace of Faith; since Faith is, by it's own definition, the fact of belief even in the face of demonstrations, proof, invisibility, incoherences, etc.

The need for belief has a (not very scientific) very logical basis: the person's own consciousness. It is very hard to conceptualize a beginning and an end of consciousness (even though we loose it every night). We have "first memories" we remember; those very early childhood memories (in my case, some from kindergarden). However, generally, we are not too bothered about not remembering anything prior to that. The reason for that is simple: it's in the past.

However, we all know death awaits in the future. And with it, the possibility that everything is over. It's hard to conceptuallize that: an end to consciousness. An end to I. No more thoughts. No more feelings. No more nothing. Some try to imagine, but it is a futile exercise. A friend of mine expressed it very well once: you cannot imagine consciousness outside consciousness itself.

Therefore, when confronted with a block like that, the human finds an "easy way out": life after death. Naturally, once that concept is created, we must administer it. It is not fair that both good and evil have the same chance to carry on. Naturally, the fair, the good, must receive their compensation. After all, that is what we were always taught: bee good and you shall be compensated, if not in this life then in the next (which is highly dissapointing to those being good in lives filled with injustice and where everything goes wrong). And, of course, we'll have to do something with the wicked: punish them for all eternity (which is a lot longer than you think... isn't that a bit like overkill?).

Btu true good is not in doing good so you get the compensarion, but do it because it is right. The problem is that, if we assume that dogma, we enter a logical conflict, since the moral values change from society to society and even from person to person. Just think, tere are killers out there believeing they're doing God's work. How will God judge them? Our morals and laws don't apply, remember, since man-made laws have no meaning in heaven.

In the end , then, logic reduces this to doing good because it is right, without expectations for compensation (and even expect punishment, since as the saying goes, "no good deed goes unpunished"); and we must take advantage of all the guidance at hand in order to define what is good and what is evil. This paradignm, however, if you deepen on it, invalidates the idea of a properly based religion.

So where are the sheep? The sheep obey the rules because they've been given them, withouth a thought as to why and never questioning their validity. Sheep go to church on sundays and then behave like savages in the road, they diminish their peers with pride and fill their lives with small sins which matter not because they'll be cleaned in the next confession.

There are very few Mother Teresa's out there, and even she got unfairly angry at some pont, had temptations and was even evil if viewed from a non-christian point of view.

So don't be a sheep, be good and love like you want to be loved... even if they don't love you... even if they strike against you... because it is right. And when you are unfair, don't beat yourself up about it, for when you know you've been unfair you are already doing the necessary pennance.

Before you have to ask, I'm a respetuous agnostic with a sufficiently open mind to believe, but I will ask no help from God for, if he really does exist, he's not there for that.

Facades, interpretations and sparks

2008-02-01T02:57:00.000-08:00

Following the great response obtained from the last two posts and meditating about the comments receives, as well as other details of life in general, not for the first time, I started thinking about the interpretation of words, the intentions of the expression and the usually unnecessary defences that people offer, making the already arduous task of understanding each other even harder.

As an example I present you with an imaginary though plausible situation: we are in a public place, a street, for example, and we see a man jumping on another to beat him furiously and relentlessly. Our first reaction will normally be to rescue the victim from his beating. We interpreted the attacker must be evil and therefore the victim represents the good we must defend.

Continuing with the imaginary situation, once separated, we question both about their reasons for the attack and we find out the "victim" had previously caused some harm to the attacker in a situation previously unknown to us. Assuming we believe it, the roles of both characters has suddenly become not so clear.

If a change in interpretation can happen in such a black and white image (henceforth B/W since I will be using it repeatedly) one must stop to think, how many grey situations in our life do we interpret correctly? After all, life is never B/W (we wish!), the ying-yang is actually a circle of chromatic variance between black and white, the good has its dark side and the evil has its goodness.

I am specially concerned in that sense with concepts such as "justice" and politics. Something like Law which should be B/W and provide the moral grounds on which to base our decisions (after all it IS written in white paper with black ink, how much more B/W can it get??) still requires an external agent to interpret it on the basis of the situation being evaluated (judged) and prior similar situations (jurisprudence). So, if the rules society demands of its members is something so dependant on interpretation... Imagine what happens with unwritten rules...

I am currently reading a book which contains many of these moral philosophical dilemmas, "Xenocide", the third book in the saga of Ender, by Orson Scott Card. I recommend it, if you want to swim in the philosophical moral waters.

All this, also, comes from the interpretation of the renowned sheep's pen in yesterday's post. Although my intention was, indeed, to expose a metaphor about escaping the rules set by society, the actual field on which I had the intention to refer to was not quite as broad and generic as it was later interpreted in the comments, but something much closer and personal: couple's relationships (there, now go and give the subject another twist see what comes out... just don't be frightened by what you find out...). However, since I wrote the whole thing from behind a facade of metaphors and partial meanings (after all I do have a patched-up little heart to protect), each one read, interpreted and understood something different.

Even though, people sidestepped part of that self-imposed facade to expose themselves; some remaining in semi-anonymity, others sprinkling their sincerity with drops of humour.

Yes, us boys we tend to build elaborate facades to protect ourselves. Society has taught us repeatedly that boys don't cry, when in fact, of course they do. Even though sometimes tears don't flow, we cry. Other traditions erect the female side as the sensitive side and the male side as the cold analytical calculating side of consciousness. They are, after all, part of the same ancestral teachings. Adults do not engage in banalities as there are more important issues to address (false). You have to be strong (why?!?). No Christian uses a preservative (hehehehe... sorry, I digress).

Returning to the subject of interpretations, as I was saying, another concept that worries me is politics. If interpreting mucho more open, known and "simpler" situations is already hard, I cannot help questioning how much I do not know, I do not understand and therefore I misinterpret in the field of politics. Due to my political ideas I've often been classed as left-winged (yeah, sorry ;-) ). However, the fact that people side with one or the other with very little information is something I find disturbing.

Think of your own job, the amount of knowledge you have of it, every small detail. Now imagine someone from your own environment (obviously not in the same job) who, without previous training, has to sit at your workplace and do your job. What degree of success would that person have? Even the substitution of someone in a chain of manufacture could have disastrous consequences. Why? Precisely because of the small details we know by heart of our own jobs.

How, then, can we possibly argue, judge and make decisions on the field of politics? We have a minute percentage of the information on these people's jobs. Just whatever we get from the media. How many of you actually contrast information from varied sources? I naturally mean not only reading from this or that paper, but also reading state reports, public accounts, registries, socio-economical studies and other publicly available documentation which politicians are required to publicise. Only knowing this much information could we consider ourselves capable of voting one or other party.

May, as an example, serve the following news-flash (not political) I heard this morning on the TV news. In a brawl between gipsies, a pregnant woman was shot, though thankfully with no grave consequences, in the small back. Several times they referred to this by saying the woman was shot (actually, the interpretation is lost in translation, sorry) rather than the fact that she received a stray bullet or was caught in the crossfire. Why? Because a pregnant woman being shot is naturally much more scandalous than the alternative; although the way they conveyed it is not true it was said in such an ambiguous way as to not be a lie, either.

In the end, the truth is not on the eye of the beholder since the poor guy is subject to his own interpretations and exposed to the facades of the actors involved.

Friends

2008-01-31T00:23:00.001-08:00

You go through life like the ol' circus artist, yeah, you know, the one with the chinese plates spinning on rods trying to keep them all spinning steadily, so no-one will fall. You try the best you can, but in the end, there is always one or two that fall.

You follow the rules of the game, those writen by education, manners, the way people around you are. In the end, who decides? Like the moral dilema goes, who watches the watcher? Who guards the guardian

So every now and then, the line dividing I want from I can from I should is slightly blurred and not knowing eactly how (or knowing but thinking "it's only a couple of steps") you end up hundreds of steps from these limits. And there are magical things out there. Good, bad, dangerous, innocent, interesting, boring, everything.

But the sheppard is always ready to send the dog to bring you back to the pen. And you return, of course, with your tail between your legs.

How did I stray this far? Whatever was I thinking about?

So once back in, you try to compensate (lets follow with the metaphore) being the best sheep you can, give the best wool, to bleat as musically as possible, walk without tripping over.

And one day you discover your wool is no better than the rest, your bleating cannot be heard in the crowd. Not only that but, who wants to be in a senseless useless pen? And then the sheep beside you bites you.

Bah! To hell with this! (More fool me - Genesis)

But of course, when you abandon this almost obsessive dedication you realise that you've neglected your surroundings. Yes, this free world where rules are different... stil has some rules, of course. The magic, the demons, the fairies, the witches, friends have followed down their own paths, of course.

Some of those people you had so close felt the coldness of abandonement and also some unexpected sudden storms which came at the worst time. And when people get cold they shroud themselves. Also these shrouds serve as shields.

So you walk down the forest, calling out left and right to see if there is anyone left.

The eco is nice...

But much nicer is the almost forgotten song of a precious bird who has the comfidence to sit on your shoulder again. And what's this? Well! A brand new anonimous Edelweiss in the snow. And I look to one side and what I thought was only a shadow is actually a companion walking by my side who I never noticed was always there. And at the other side another shadow? No. Another walking companion.

No! Not one, two, three... But how many are out there! My word!

This enchanted forest is full of people!

You know... I think winter is almost over. There is much less snow now and the sun actually gives off some heat.

Thank you, merci beaucoup, Gracias, danke... for making me see the magic has not vanished.

"... And so the sheep and men
as sheep remain inside their pen
though many times
they've seen the way to leave..."
The Lamb lies down - Genesis

... I think I'll never go back to a pen. The forest is so much prettier. Dangerous, yes, but precious.

Dreams

2008-01-30T02:53:00.003-08:00

Not long ago I read (though I had read that before) that dreams are nothing more than the random firing of brain synapses (mainly memories) that the brain works to chain together in a more or less meaningfull line (a story).

This is one of the reasons why things are so weird sometimes in dreams (a person becomes another, a place suddently changes or things are where they don't belong, etc.).

However sometimes I find it really hard to put together that scientific concept with the reality of what I feel when I dream.

Last night, for example, I dreamt of a dear friend who passed away some time ago. Naturally, in my drea, I didn't remember she had died and seeing her was a surprise and a pleasant moment. We had the chance to talk of things that were left hanging and she told me things I really needed to hear. Waking up this morning whas a bitter sweet moment because of the mixed feelings these dreams leave me with when I awake.

I have also dreamt of my father sometimes, who died 8 years and 6 days ago. I also don't remember he is not here anymore. However he keeps giving me sage advice as always and dedicating me his company so sorely missed.

When I wake up from those dreams I find it really hard to believe they were just rationalised sparks from an overworked machine. Maybe dreams are just the way for our subcontious to give our consciousness what we need (which doesn't explain nightmares nor obsessive chasing dreams). Or maybe our departed loved ones come to us in the only way they can be accepted without a blink (pun intended)(and maybe other more playful beings also torture us with their tricks).

... or maybe the wise man was right in that dreams are just dreams

The meaning of Life

2008-01-28T05:15:00.000-08:00

It's one of those days (a few, now) when you start thinking about what life is all about. You get up, you go to work, do an honest day's work and then home.

But in one of those moments you actually stop and listen to a song you already knew and it speaks to you. Today it was "Fitter happier", by Radiohead. Ever listened to it properly? Here's the lyrics:

"Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries,
at ease,
eating well
(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats),
a patient better driver,
a safer car
(baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well
(no bad dreams),
no paranoia,
careful to all animals
(never washing spiders down the plughole),
keep in contact with old friends
(enjoy a drink now and then),
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall),
favors for favors,
fond but not in love,
charity standing orders,
on Sundays ring road supermarket
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants),
car wash
(also on Sundays),
no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate,
nothing so childish - at a better pace,
slower and more calculated,
no chance of escape,
now self-employed,
concerned (but powerless),
an empowered and informed member of society
(pragmatism not idealism),
will not cry in public,
less chance of illness,
tires that grip in the wet
(shot of baby strapped in back seat),
a good memory,
still cries at a good film,
still kisses with saliva,
no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied to a stick,
that's driven into frozen winter shit
(the ability to laugh at weakness),
calm,
fitter,
healthier and more productive
a pig in a cage on antibiotics. "

- Radiohead (Ok Computer)

Speechless

2008-01-21T05:04:00.000-08:00

It says "No christian uses condoms. Yo may deny reality or look it in the eye." (ad for a christian magazine)

... hence their progress...

Artificial Inteligence (AI)

2008-01-14T03:00:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I studied [Artificial Inteligence] (AI) in uni (please insert easy jokes here) and, although my working life has taken me down a path away from all the knowledge I learned in uni, I have not lost interest in the subject.

The other day, in one of those brain meanderings that carries you away from the misery of daily life, I thought of a theory that is probably neither new nor specially revealing.

AI, as a subject, has been branching for some time in speciallised branches, such as Natural Language (as a base for the development of a form of comunication whether it be for programming purpouses or control, etc.), developments in Machine Vision (object detection algorythms, tracking, etc.), Genetic Algorythms (originally thought as the method to develop "learning" in an artificial inteligence), Logic and Scientific Method (as a form of analisys of the human thought) and a very long etcetera of side subjects.

All who know about AI know about the famous [Turing Test], a method invented by the mathematician [Alan Turing] (who is thought of as the father of AI even before the existance of computers as we know them today). The test dictated, in very few words, that a computer could be considered inteligent when, in a blind verbal interchange the examiner is not capable of differentiating the human subject from the machine subject. "Blind verbal interchange" basically means through keyboard and screen, whithout knowing who or what is at the other side.

Throughout the history of AI there have been several programs that pretended to be inteligent. The most famous one is probably [Eliza]. I personally had a copy and it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out how it worked, but thousands of people confessed the most outrageous intimacies to this little piece of software. This program is one of the reasons for the choice of my academic career. It was modelled on a psichoanalist and it replied to you with questions generated from the sentences you wrote into it, plus some "canned" replies.

The problem was that Eliza didn't really learn anything. That's where my theory starts.

In a nutshell, the program must learn to ask itself questions and learn from the replies it obtains. That is, for a program to be really inteligent it must learn, store the conceptual information it obtains, extrapolate knowledge from that data and be capable of finding doubts such knowledge supposes. It must also be able to understand when it receives an answer to such doubts.

This learning, naturally, cannot be limited to words, but must also extend to the concepts those words communicate. That is where the problem lies, since no one has been able to come up with a way to code those concepts in a coherent structure which is capable of containing the chaos of reality. All attempts made have ended up being poor subgroups uncapable of describing objects in more than a limited fashion, describe actions as a series of steps, etc.

However, we have programs that are capable of trajectory calculations of moving objects taking into account all (or most) of the variables existing in a real word, such as wind, air density, objects in the way, etc.

Will we be able to synthesise concepts such as "irritation" explaining all its implications? And, of course, similarities such as "itching" and "rash" and the relation of these concepts. How about more complex concepts such as feelings? How to synthesise happiness, sadness, love, loneliness, hate, anger? And how to synthesise the necessary explanations of how to go from one state to the other?

Is it just a question of stored memory space and processing power? The technical capabilities in that aspect are astronomically different than from when I started my career.. and that was "only" 14 years ago.

... and still, the research in this interesting field is meagre and badly funded. we instead develop data-crunching programs with prettier, more intuitive interfaces, but nevertheless, the same stuff we've been doing forever...

My mechanic in his favourite entertainment

2007-12-10T07:47:00.000-08:00

climbing towards Navalmoral with his custom car (includes a GSX-R
con su coche construido por él mismo (incluye el motor de una GSX-R 1000). Sobran las palabras...

Composition studies

2007-12-07T05:10:00.000-08:00

As some of you know, I'm knee deep in trying to do something with my music. For this, I've been equiping myself with several bits and pieces, a new guitar, a mic with its amp, a thousand cables and some very important software pieces such as Cubase and several VST instruments.

But all that is of little use if you don't dedicate the time (of which I have precious little) and effort.

Logically, it is also useful to lean on those who know this stuff, to see how they do it and see what you can learn. Naturally, one amongst those masters (although he uses other tools) is Master Vai. Here are some things I found in youtube about how he works:

New music control

2007-12-04T07:11:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my good pal [El Prenda] I have a new player for my music so I don't actually depend on any external site.

So, without further ado, if you look on the top of the right hand sidebar you will find a player. Just click the drop-down list, select a track and as soon as it is halfway loaded, it will start playing for you. No new necessary software needed (provided you have the flash player, of course!).

Enjoy!

The future, a little closer

2007-11-22T01:32:00.000-08:00

Much has been spoken about environmentally friendly engines and there is meant to be much investigation, though some rumours suggest that projects of the kind have died in their labs, murdered by petrol multinational corporations.

Even so, BMW lets us peak at a hopeful near future in the subject of environmental contamination, to which we all add with our dependence on cars.

I give you the BMW Hydrogen 7, a prototype which mixes two technologies, the "traditional" gasoline and the innovative hydrogen engine. Despite its multiple problems such as storage capacity, hydrogen distribution, efficiency, power, etc. and, foremost, of course, the cost! it is a promissing advance which may mean that, in the near future, we may be able to acquire vehicles comparable to our cars with the same contamination level as a pan of boiling water.

... this, obviously, poses the question... What effect do 30 million pans of boiling water have on the atmosphere?... Anyone care to guess?

Thanks to [JVADER] for the heads up!

And in the same line, take a look at [Negroogle]

The theater of dreams

2007-11-08T05:58:00.000-08:00

Last saturday, Madrid had the honour of featuring the spectacular concert of one of todays best progresive rock bands: Dream Theater.

Although the music style is not a commercial one, a load of people gathered in the Palacio de los deportes, where the seats were all full and the majority of the breathing space of the pit section (where I was you couldn't put your ellbows out withouth pushing someone, let alone swing a cat...).

Sons of varied influences, some of which are bands they have covered, such as Metalica, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Marillion, Yes, Deep purple and a very long etcetera, their virtuous music is characterized by long instrumental sections where each member rises as one of the best with their "weapons". One must, however, note specially on Mike Portnoy's excellent stage skills. As the band's drummer, he has one of the biggest broadest sets I've ever seen which includes a gong (sadly he didn't touch it on the concert) and punching ball - which he, of course, plays in rythm though it makes no sound - and of course, some headslapping for the audience's entertainment (I hope). I wonder how many drumsticks landed on distracted heads...

Despite the sadly inapropriate sound setting on the hall (more than inapropriate depending on where you were standing/sitting....) the concert was spectacular and recommendable to music lovers of all kinds and styles for an appropriate mind opening.

I recomend a visit to their [OFFICIAL WEB SITE]and vewing of the youtube videos they've hanged (on their own page).

Here's a little snippet:

Photo by Ternasco:

Stage 6 videos:

Kitties seek home

2007-11-08T02:22:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago a friend of mine, knowing I have cats, asked me where he could get an orange tabby. I immediately called my girl's dad, a vet, to ask him. But it was my girl who came up with the solution.

There is an assotiation, right here in Madrid, dedicated to try tom improve cat's lives in the city. They have a web with a section (two actually, since they separate males from females) for cat adoption.

All cats are given out in adoption for free, vaccinated, de-wormed and, if they are a certain age, nutered. There are small kittens, adult rescued kitties and basically revived kitties.

Are you seeking a kittie? If you want one but cannor decide, take a look at [THEIR SITE] and tell me those pics don't inspire any feelings. And if you think nothing can move you, take a lookd at their Angels section...

I'll let you know how my pal gets on with his kitty as soon as he has it.

New engineering feat

2007-10-28T03:55:00.000-07:00

As you all know, I have an acuarium (see the link on the right-hand menu). What you don't all know is that it had bee mistreated... I mean, used as a terrarium. It doesn't sound too bad, but ut implies the lid had been cut, ripped, the fluo tube supports eliminated, broken, etc.

It generally means I had to do fixes to be able to use it. Also, the lid only allowed me access to the front part of the acuarium, which meant I couldn't clean the back, etc.

Well, thanks to my pal El Prenda we designed a lid that would permit total access to the acuarium, that maintained the tubes in the propper position, etc etc.

So here's the result. A solid lid made from microfiber wood, aluminum adhesive tape, aluminum profiles, ... and a fair amount of time!

Soundbites

2007-10-26T05:54:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, like me, you need, for your compositions, to add some sounds of things (soundpainting). And let's face it. It's not always easy to put everything up to record the ticking sound of a clock or the birdsong of a limping red african pelican. In these cases, some source where to get this things from can be really useful.

This morning, though inadvertedly, a friend of mine, Jvader has brought light to a little problem I had with a particular piece. He showed me a website specialised in just that: soundbites. The best part is that it's FREE (no registry necessary, either!!).

Up 'till now, I'd been using another one that, although also free, demands you register in order to download the soundbites. Here are both:

(reg required)

Hope

2007-10-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday, whilst visiting a friend, I suggested we go out for a stroll and do some window shopping on a nearby CashConverters. As usual, as soon as I got in I headed for the musical instruments section. Almost immediately I saw a guitar with a distinctive shape (I already knew well) and, imagining it would be ridiculously expensive, I picked it up. The price, more than reasonable for this guitar, just 299€, was justified by a crack near the base, although after inspecting it, I saw it had been fixed. I decided to try it out to see if the sound was affected and (plugged or unplugged) it was unaffected.
It was covered with girlie sparkling stars and hearts stickers and there was a magazine cutout of some flowers showing through the center hole.

Even though, deciding it was a good investment (I always wanted one), I bought it. My friend, C, quite apropriately named her "Hope". Apropriately because, besides her own reasons, I was hoping it really was as OK as I saw it.

Took it home, re-strung it, corrected the neck truss rod,removed all the tacky stickers, cleaned it and dicovered that under the flower paper cutting was another cutting of a girl in B/W. Both cuttings were stuck with isolating tape. Worst of all, under them, the previous owner, in a supreme expression of stupidity and inneptitude, had ripped the original maker's sticker.

I am still to confirm it, but I think it's this one [LINK].

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Hope:

The quote of the week, month,...

2007-10-05T05:12:00.000-07:00

I am a fan of the show Medium. I was watching the episode "Joe day afternoon", episode 17 of the third season. It was a good episode, but what really got at me was the following quote, right at the end:

"Hope, like dread, it often comes unannounced and then thankfully intoxicates us and inoculates our feelings with an irrational sense of joy and optimism. Hope is the high. Dread is the low. I guess life is the stuff in-between."

For some reason, it struck a resonant chord inside of me. I will not spoil it by using it in a signature or anything like it, but it deffinitely deserves an entry.

... adendum requested by the audicence... From yesterday's IT crowd:

"Well, put some mustard on those words because you will have to eat them along with this piece of humble pie I have just taken out of the oven set on egg on your face" (Moss)

The power of Google

2007-10-01T08:29:00.001-07:00

Some days ago I was remembering, not for the first time, some friends I had a long time ago. Friends that, for reasons that don't belong here, I lost. And I thought to myself "Let's see what Google can find of them" and googled their names. It is amazing the results I got back. Even data that should be protected!

Sometimes the "power" of Google frightens me. At least my intentions were honourable.

Long story short. I found a piece of text I believe my friend wrote. I read it and was struck by it's profoundness and by how close it struck, from afar. It is lost in the immensity of the cyberspace and, in all honesty, it does it no justice.

So, even if not many people read this personal blog, I will reproduce it for its own merits which are not mine and I'll honour this discovery to it's own author (Translation mistakes are my own. It's originally written in Spanish):

Discovery

Discoveries are born on the threshold of exhaustion, on the most depressing tiredness, lies and a flavour of vinegar. We discover this new element and we quickly tell everyone, proud and blessed by the mysterious saint of happiness. We bore all known and unknown with the details of our fortuitous encounter with truth, we smile proudly at our own sapiency and, why not, our luck. And we flirt with the beauty of the eternal. Then comes the phase where we investigate this discovery, we understand its inner workings and discover all its mechanisms and nooks and crannies. We analyze, experiment, evaluate, compare and, in a word, we submit it to a cruel and desperate measure in our effort to prove we are the unique, inimitable and perfect discoverers. We lose track of time and space. We don't eat nor sleep and if we sleep, we do it keeping an eye open and our brain overchurning ideas and concepts related to our undefined marvel, both complex and irrational. We dream of our discovery and intimately tie ourselves to it. We are obsessed by it. Until one day, without warning, our discovery is stolen. Someone better, more intelligent, powerful. Someone who has something we don't have even though we may not admit it. So we fight to preserve our patent. Just to keep enjoying the pure and simple investigation, to stay in science's insanity. We fail. And our heart seeks another discovery. One for a lifetime, if possible.

David

Work is not life... right?

2007-09-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have a good steady cushy job, mainly. It pays well and it's not hard.

Having said that, that also means it's often uninteresting.

The workload has the habit of going from 0 to 100 and then back to 0 on minutes. The best attitude, I've learned, is not to care too much about any particular project. If it comes out, it comes out. If it don't, it don't. Sometimes I forget that and get terribly frustrated and angry at the red tape.

And sometimes the 0 is around a little too long. I try to fill the gaps with things I like to do. I've long lost the appetite to learn new programming languages, new algorythms, new applications,...

I have some benefits, too. Which is a deffinite bonus. Benefits I wouldn't have in a different job, and would deffinitely affect my life if I was to switch jobs.

In any case, jobs are meant to be a means to an end, right?

Well... Yes... and no.

We spend 8 hours a day at our worklaces (ok, some more, some less, details...). In short, 1/3 of 5 days a week. A large lump of our lives.

So, every so often I stop and these thoughts spring up onto me, make me question many things. And it's obviously frustrating.

But eventually, that goes away. I have a good job that pays well, it allows me to do things I like to do, it's not too demanding most of the time. I am very lucky in so many ways.

... but sometimes... just sometimes...

Misused word

2007-09-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a word I had completely wrong in my mind...

...and something that struck near home...

Procrastination

... we live and learn...

The Cube

2007-09-07T03:29:00.001-07:00

I imagine you all know the movie "The Cube", a 1997 film in which a man wakes up trapped in a cubic room. The story is all about his attempt at exiting the cube.

Original as the movie and the argument are, I found out yesterday it was not that original. The original version, also called "the cube" is a 1969 TV play written by Jim Henson (the creator of the Muppets) and Jerry Juhl. This play carries all the undertones of the great sci-fi classics such as the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury or Larry Niven's Ringworld.

Having seen both versions and differences notwithstanding, I consider this black and white verion the better (and the most disturbing) one of the two.

Thanks to the technological magic of Stage6, you can now enjoy this play (which would otherwise be impossible to get) whenever you want.

HERE IS THE LINK to watch the movie. Enjoy!

New Deviance

2007-09-06T02:38:00.001-07:00

The other day, at home, we looked out the window and there was the best full moon I've seen in ages (which actually explained my mood, too...). We rapidly took out our camera and took a series of pictures of it.

I've hung one of them as a deviance, this one

But there were more. I couldn't actually decide which one I liked best, so I chose just the one for DeviantArt and here are the rest:

Eragon Skywalker

2007-08-30T01:35:00.000-07:00

SPOILER ALERT:

If you intend to read Eragon, don't read any further. Main sections of the books are spoiled by what follows.

No, I've made no mistake with the title. Eragon, although well written and pretty good in itself, would be a lot better if it was original. The problem is that it follows the very same storyline as the original Star Wars trilogy. Allow me to elaborate:

Eragon (Luke Skywalker) lives in a farm with his uncle Garrow (Owen Lars), untill he discovers an artifact, a blue dragon egg (a blue and white robot with a rounded head). The story then carries him to an old town's sage, Brom (Obi-Wan Kenobi) who will initiate him in the ways of Magic (the Force) whilst they leave town in a hurry because the Empire (the Empire) is after them. In this attack by the Empire, uncle Garrow (uncle Owen) ends up dead by the Ra'zac (storm troopers). Thus, Eragon(Luke)'s mission is one of vengeance for the death of his uncle.

He escapes with his dragon, Saphira (who acts as Han Solo with the voice of experience - a role shareseia sometimes for the love they share).

Of course, on the way, Brom (bi-Wan) ends up dead by the Empire's hands, although not by Darth Vader himself but the Ra'zac, up till then, the most fearsome enemies, save Durza and Galbatorix (the Emperor).

It's not all the same, of course, since in this case the Empire is who attacks the Varden (rebel) base and noth the other way around. The Varden take Eragon as the New Hope. And even though the Death Star is represented by Durza, the first book ends with his death (the Death Star's destruction), which is a big victory for the rebels. Although you can clearly see it is not the end of the road for Luke... I mean Eragon.

In the second book, Eldest, we are presented with an Eragon that discovers he is not the only Jedi, sorry, Rider left alive. There is another. An old knight, a Master in Magic, Oromis (Yoda) who will first teach him to have the patience to perceive all the force, I mean Magic, around him, in all things alive, and to channel it. But careflully, since abusing Magic is bad (it may take you to the dark side...), as you can kill by draininig life around you.

Naturally, Master Oromis (Yoda) cannot help Eragon on his crusade, since he is really old and suffers his age. During his training in Ellesmera (Pagodah), a place where plant life is clearly important, Eragons is transformed into a real (jedi) warrior. Naturally, he has to leave Ellesmera before finishing his training since he senses his friends are in danger because the Empire is moving towards their hiding place.

During a bloody battle in Endor, Eragon fights another Rider, which we later discover is Murtagh, son of Morzan, one of the baddie Riders taken to the dark side by the Emperor. So, any ol' Darth Vader... and... are you ready?? The misterious Rider is discovered as Eragon's brother!!

... Clearly, all big epic stories have to stay in the family...

Of course, the battle is nearly lost, until, in the last minute, they are saved by the Ewoks... sorry, the dwarves. We are also saddened when the king of the Ewoks... dwarves!! is killed...

The re-write of this storyline is actually, as I say, pretty good. The book is entertaining (except for some of the passages where the long treks remind you of Frodo's trips through the plains...) and the endings are both pretty engaging... if it weren't for the fact I've seen Star Wars so many times I could actually re-write the script from scratch...

Also, one has to take into account that the author, Christopher Paolini, was 19 years old when he finished writting Eragon and, truth be said, after reading George Lucas' original books, Eragon is written much much better than the SW books. Although, Lucas' films are much better than Eragon, in my opinion.

New deviances

2007-08-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't had much time to think up a new entry, but since I published some more pictures at DeviantArt. Here they are:

New piece

2007-07-27T02:53:00.000-07:00

Yes... I've added a new piece. It's the first of two instrumental parts "inspired" on Mike Oldfield works, though with varied influences. It's called Spirals for the fact that the track goes in cicles. It tries to represent the passage of a day and the emotion one goes through.

It is available in the music section on your right.

I am also hoping to add some of my older pieces, with lower quality and all that but, hey, it's just a laugh... I may re-do some od them.

New Music section

2007-07-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, besides an IT techie, in my soul, I'm a musician.

I have at las dared to open a new section dedicated to my music. It's on the right-side menu. There isn't much to show you. I have opened a new account in BroadJam where you can listen to the tracks directly by streaming and even buy them. Also, as soon as I can, I will make them available from my ISP's web space in MP3 (for free). Alas, I don't intend to earn money with my music but rather, make something someone might like. And express myself.

Naturally, I welcome critique, suggestions, opinions and ideas so long as they are constructive.

For the moment, my file in [BroadJam], where the first track, Washed Over, is already available.

Steve Vai is God!

2007-07-20T09:24:00.001-07:00

Last wednesday the 11th my pals Yorch, Juanito and I went to an exceptional concert: Steve Vai's Sound theories tour '07.

(I apologize for the pic's quality but I only had my Qtek with me... Besides, there are official pics about. See the links)

You guys know I've been a Steve Vai fan since his Passion and Warfare, the record that made him "famous" (in the world of rock and virtuous guitars) and, whenever I can and I know about it, I go to his concerts, and those of his teacher: Joe Satriani. Many would argue but I consider them to be the apex of electric guitar playing .

Steve Siro Vai, american of italian ascent, was born on June 6th, 1960 (11 days and 13 years before I was) in Carle Place, New York and, as the legend goes, in 1978 he turned up at his fiend and teacher-to-be home with a new electric guitar and a set of strings and showing them he said "please teach me to play the guitar". Today, I think it's safe to say the pupil has outdone his teacher.

After studying at Berkley and working in multiple projects and bands, amongst which was his famous joining with Frank Zappa (nice story there, since he started working for him transcribing his impossible compositions... not an easy task...), lately he's more dedicated to composing. I say lately, since he seems to be seriously exploiting that facet, with an orchestra and everything. According to his own words, he feels more of a composer than a guitarist.

I, personally, "met" him through TV, at the famous Sevilla guitar concert of '92 where, during 4 (or 5) days, there were guitar concerts, divided in styles: classical, flamenco, jazz, rock... It was in this last one, the "night of the crazy guitars" as named by the celebrity presenter/collaborator, Brian May. He started off with "liberty", followed by "the audience is listening" but the arrow struck with "For the love of God", a piece I've spent years analyzing, studying and trying to emulate (failing miserably, of course...). With him I've learned about tapping, false harmonics, fast picking and of course, feedbacks and duets. With him I understood what a floating tremolo (or Flkoyd Rose) was, a concept that has taken me to choose my new guitar... but that is for a different blog entry. Lets go back to the other day's concert.

the concert was one of the best I've ever been to. It was almost three hours though he didn't play alone. As a starter, a boy came out, which I'm sure is one of Vai's apprentices. The audience didn't know what to make of his extravaganza of this apprentice namedZack Wiesinger. His eclectic style, however, is loaded with technique, good rythm sense and lots of talent. We'll have to keep track of him.

Of course, Vais's entrance was, to say the least, spectacular. The whole place dissapeared under a cloud of smoke and we saw a green glow appear, which later we discovered is his new guitar, with a translucent tinted body with LEDs on the inside, blazing chords of The Animal. Shortly after, he took out the Mojo (almost this one), with blue leds instead of fretboard dots... to poor Yorch's dismay who had to look away because he got dizzy ;-)

The star of the night, however, was his famed modified JEM7VWH modificada similar to this one. The "original" is sold for a mere 2500 euros, but his guitar has a few improvements which he showed on the hing, together with his usual showmanship, blowing onto the strings to create a feedback during a solo (effect which I spoiled for poor Yorch by telling him he was doing it "artificially" by pressing on a button near the bridge. The button enables a component called the Fernandes Sustainer).

The staging was simple but effective and pleasing. However, (please excuse the pun) the proberbial cherry on the cake was the new violinist (of classical training) Ann Marie Calhounque, which, as Vai put it "Hey! I know how to pick'em" (please look up). The girl, though clearly shy, really gives a new flavour to Vai's sound (though I think Alex dePue was who the one recorded in the album).

The climax of the evening was during the performance of "Whispering a prayer", during a pause in the track in which the audience gave him a over-4-minutes stand-up ovation (I kid you not) during which Mr. Vai's face was a poem. It was only a show of what he makes us feel though his music.

The concert's full kit was:

Jeremy Colson: drum kit and all sorts of things that you hit. (not so new member either)
Dave Weiner: Rhythm guitar, sitar, acoustic guitar and smile. (The longest member besides Steve)
Bryan Beller: Bass and impossible ears.
Alex DePue: Electric and acoustic violin, keyboards, the new fast fingers.
Ann Marie Calhoun: Electric and acoustic violin, Viola, Banjo and keyboards, confidence personified.
Zack Wiesinger: Solo opening act guitar extravaganza and perhaps a few saxophone honks here and there with the band.

The comments on the official site

Addendum that struck very near home: We saw a little green thing next to the neck pickup which we though was a pick store, but lo and behold, it's a piece of tape that is there to prevent the string from getting stuck when he plays it as it apparently did frequently. This can be seen here. The VERY SAME THING happens to me with my Ibanez guitar. I HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON WITH STEVE VAI!! (needless to say, I will place a bit of tape on my guitar. Great idea, Steve!)

Videos videos videos

2007-05-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

These videos are a little out of this blog's league, but, honestly, they are worth it.

This one, specially, is priceless:

A classic returns. The quality is a little crap, but yes, Rambo returns, with more blood than ever, more explosions, more gore, and more gut... and age, and grey hairs end... Look, look:

Shrek3 seems set to dissapoint a little, but I'm still intent on seing it:

Learning to fly

2007-04-27T00:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Stephen Hawking flew in 0-gravity.

This "ordinary" feat for anybody is an even bigger feat for Mr. Hawking who, since the early age of 21 started developing Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (colloquially known as Lou Gehrig's disease), a degenerative disease that would slowly and painfully cripple him. Join the back of your hands (more like the exterior part of your wrists) and keep them joined for 15 minutes and imagine that same pain all over your body all the time.

We have all seen him in his well know wheel-chair (actually, he's had several, designed by himself) and a little apparatus similar to a computer mouse with which he was able to form sentences to talk with the help of his speech. When I saw the news today, that device had dissapeared and he was left with a device attached to his face, to capture facial movements in order to implement all those functions.

But when he was released into 0-gravity his smile covered most of his face. His twisted body floated gracefully in mid-air and you could easily see this moment was going to be one of the high-points of his life.

He is planning a low-orbit space-trip for next year. Keep it up, Steve!

A little inspiration

2007-04-24T02:45:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs. Almost no-one will recognize this name. However, we all will recognize the Macintosh corporation name, creators of the very first computer with a graphical interface operating system: the Mac. Also, we all know the name Pixar, creators of films such asToy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, etc.

So who is behind these feats? An inspiration. Take a while, connect your earphones and listen:

Steve Job's welcome speech to Stanford University students

THE works

2007-04-19T07:23:00.001-07:00

If I wait till I get the time to actually write down the whole process, I'll never publish this... so here it is. Any questions, just ask!

The most incredible instrument in the world

2007-04-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu 7.04 out today!

2007-04-19T04:55:00.000-07:00

Today I will introduce you to the best free operating system out there: Linux. So what else is new, yes, I know. But to say "linux" is like saying "DOS" (Disk Operating System). In it's time there were several "flavours" of DOS: MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS... there were several... but I digress. LINUX!

Linux, "son" (not literal, just in some way) of the ginormous UNIX. Just like DOS, it comes in several flavours: Red Hat, Fedora (de Red Hat, tb...), Mandrake, Debian, etc. Many of these versions or "flavours" as they are known in our world (since versions imply evolution and many are based around the same kernel ("heart" of the system) and the same package versions, but differently organised, etc.), many of these flavours, as I say, are difficult to manage, install and use. Some are really obscure even for the most knowledgeable in computer alchemy (reaching even the point of only having a console, without any graphical interface!! HERESY!!).

Ubuntu linux, is different in that sense. Derived from the Debian flavour, is a flavour deffinitely designed for maximum profit in man(or woman)-machine relation. Installation is really easy; it's use, with a minimum know-how is very similar to other graphical operating systems such as (brrrrr) windows (brrrrr).

Instalation procedure

From the Ubuntu download page we can download, absolutely for free, naturally, an ISO image. After burning it with any ol' Nero or similar, we will have a fully operational system disk. There is also the option to apply for an original (physical) disk and I think they only charge for the p&p... if that...

When you boot the PC with that disk, an Ubuntu session is automatically initiate, as if had already been installed in the computer. That will allow us to play, see, mess with it, without having to actually install a thing!! (I think it is the only operating system which allows for this).

Before all that, of course, we must free a section of our hard disk with, for example, Partition Magic. You do not have to worry about how to partition for Linux. Simply leave a section un-partitioned. I left 10Gb; more than enough.

Once the kickstart session is initiated, we click on the "install Ubuntu" icon on the desktop. It will ask us wether we want to manage the partition where to install or to just use any available un-partitioned space. And that's it! Except in rare situations, all the hardware will be ready for its use as soon as the installation is finished. The installation time will depend on the disk reader.

I understand that for version 7.04, the evolution from Windows is even simpler. I, honestly, will update it directly with its magnificent (Synaptic) Update Manager. Contrary to Windows Update, I can guarantee you can leave the automatic updates turned on (the latest Windows update checks the autenticity of your installation and if it is not original... better pray it is...).

The graphical interface also comes in several flavours: Gnome, KDE, FVWM, etc.; all of them highly modifiable. There are P2P download programs (such as eMule - aMule). There is a Windows emulator for your games and programs. There are programs for playing your MP3, DVD, MPG, AVI, MP4,... whatever you want! All of this, naturally, free and legal!

And, like any good computer package... the more you dig, the more you find beneath. You may, if you feel so inclined and you have the knowledge, re-program your favourite application to do just that little thing it was missing. They will not only let you, but will also allow you to have the source files. That is, Open Source.

In fact, you don't even need to uninstall your Windows since it will automatically create a dual-boot so you may choose which operating system to work with at every booting and Windows will be none the wiser (this is not so if you reverse the installation order, that is, first Ubuntu and then Windows... windows will happily KILL your Ubuntu boot and think nothing of it...).

And, I inisist: FREE AND LEGAL. Do you want to know more? -> Wiki Ubuntu

CATS! (Part deux)

2007-04-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

CATS!
CATS!
CATS!

Musicians

2007-04-18T03:20:00.000-07:00

No words:

And a selection of solos by Tom Morello (guitarist in Rage against the machine and Audioslave)

And of course, some Queen!!!

Another MUST that I cant embed: Terriffic drummer

And do yourselves a favour. Search Youtube for Andres Segovia... and enjoy!

Some other musicians: SlideSpoon master - Impossible Guitar

A different route

2007-04-15T07:10:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, my pal Jorge and I decided to go out for a ride and, for the most part, it was our usual round trip: Las Rozas, Puerto de Galapagar, Embalse de Valmayor, Cruz Verde, Robledo de Chavela, Cruz Verde (de nuevo), Navas del Marqués.

That is where the trip varied, partly by mistake and partly because we wanted to explore. From Navas del Marqués we went to Peguerinos through the AV-P-308. Peguerinos is a cute little town in La Sierra. From there we followed the road that just went straight through. Shortly after, the tarmac degraded a little. Halfway through, more or less, there was a crossing that would lead us to either the Alto de los Leones or to El Escorial. We decided for the former and the road climbed further and further up until we reached a point, near the top, in which the road became little more than a forest track. Even so, we followed it and after a few miles we got to the main road at the Alto de los Leones again.

This is the route:

Apart from how uncomfortable the road was, all ups and downs, bumps, puddles and sand, we went through some beautiful forests, near some streams and, close to the top, some amazing views. There were numerous places to stop for a picnic. Anyway, if we hadn't gone with out bikes but with our girls, it would have been grand. Here are some pics of the route:

Ignorant protests

2007-03-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

Let's move swiftly through the fact that the kid who wrote this wasn't conceived nor even imagined when the spanish "FaLange" was in power and so has no idea what he's asking for nor what he is praising.

... but, dude... At least learn how to spell the party's name!!!

PS: Sorry... I had to put a word verification control on comments. I was getting spam on my blog!