País descafeïnat

Estem en un país totalment descafeïnat (vegeu: La ofrenda a Casanova arranca con menos manifestantes de lo habitual)

1. A les celebracions del dia nacional hi ha poca gent i els pocs que hi han estan desavinguts.
2. Els polítics són incapaços de posar-se d'acord per tal de que els nostres impostos no vagin a parar a fons desconeguts. Ara està de moda fer servir l'argument de la mitjana. Es deuen pensar que no hem anat a escola per entendre que la mitjana és un molt mal indicador per a situacions de desequilibri com la nostra.

ESTIC PERPLEXE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cooliris (formely PicLens) plugin: a new way to look at pictures in the web

If you want to experience an immerse experience looking at images in the web give Cooliris a try. The image below shows my Flickr stream through the eyes of Cooliris.

Cool unblocking stuff: How to Use 43 Folders

Are you unhappy or stuck managing your current life, take a look at How to Use 43 Folders link, you might find your way in a few clicks. Look at what sucks and act accordingly.

El Vagabundo de la Terminal C

La meva preocupació per la fama també és compartida pel noi que ha decidit habitar a la Terminal C de l'aeroport de Barcelona (vegeu l'article de La Vanguardia: El Vagabundo de la Terminal C). Al llegir la notícia veiem que el noi està molt preocupat per sortir a "Gran Hermano". Aquesta admiració per "GH" no la comparteixo, però sí que comparteixo la necessitat d'acumular fama per tal de tenir una presència terrena més enllà de la mort del cos. Avui per avui, si ningú no em demostra el contrari, això només és factible acumulant fama i construint-se una imatge sostenible a la Xarxa. Al llegir l'article de la Vanguardia i els comentaris em queda un regust agre al veure que hom qualifica al pobre noi de poc autèntic i paparina però el seu comportament respon a necessitats bàsiques del ésser humà com són l'autoestima i l'afany de supervivència. No el podem pas culpar de ser tant humà :-)

Fame: the path to immortality

I am very concerned with what will happen to my online presence when I die, specially with my shots. I take for granted that nobody will take care of them (always think the worst scenario), so I have to account for that. That's why I replicate my shots in as many free online services as it is currently feasible and practical, hoping that some of them will last long enought (whatever that means). The Internet Archive Project is not enought for me, I like to have and active presence in the net even after death. Isn't that called immortality?

If one reaches a certain degree of fame he or she can expect that his works or acts will be preserved after death, but if someone, like me, has no fame whatsoever, he or she has to take care of his after death image by himself :-)

Cap al terminal que ens connecta al núvol

En Kevin Kelly i molts d'altres visionaris han predit fa temps que aviat farem servir terminals per connectar-nos a la Xarxa i abandonarem el concepte d'ordinador personal. Kelly prediu que cap al 2040 la Xarxa tindrà una capacitat de computació que superarà la de tots els cervells del habitants de la terra (vegeu: Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web). Doncs bé, sembla que la febre per obtenir un d'aquests terminals connectats a la Xarxa ja està començant a picar fort, mireu sinó com tots els fabricants estant traient portàtils i ultraportàtils i abandonant la producció d'ordinadors de sobretaula (vegeu l'article del El Pais: La familia crece: Dell venderá su miniportátil en España en octubre) .

New Microsoft advertisement

My last three posts are about Microsoft but I really can help it. Yesterday they aired a new ad apparently to give Vista a big bump. Well, the ad is pretty well done on the technical side, but it's too metaphorical. Once again Apple is leading the path, their ads have the exact amount of metaphore needed. Sorry Microsoft, I think you wasted your 10 million $ invest this time.

See the ad at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ (don't know if it will stay there or not). By the way, why do they make easy thngs so difficult: try to view the video twice and you'll sure be in trouble. Perhaps they don't whant us to look at it twice!

News in spanish:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internet/Microsoft/lanza/campana/mejorar/imagen/Vista/elpeputec/20080905elpepunet_5/Tes

How long does it take to fix an infected Windows XP computer?

I have a good friend that knows nothing about computer's intrincacies. He had erased many of the essential Widows XP operating system files by mistake and came to me for help. How came?, easy, because Windows permision system is not suited for mainstream home users. It complies with all military standards but sucks when it comes to home computers. Why? Easy, because every single Windows home computer user uses his computer with administrative rights and that's an open door to problems. It has taken me more than one day to fix my friend's computer (a huge amount of money if I was to charge him, but I won't because he's my friend and a nice guy)

Unix, Linux or Mac OSX BSDized operating systems have a much simpler rights management system (at least if you do not activate acls) but it turns to be much more effective for home use because the normal user only adquires administrative privileges when he has to install stuff. It's called impersonation, something that is pretty dumb difficult to achieve in Windows because of military compliance issues. Is it that difficult to keep things simple when they don't need to be sofisticated? I would recommend Steve Balmer to take some Zen lessons from the other Steve (I am thinking of Jobbs of course), maybe then the world would turn round more smoothly and I would devote my time to more pleasent issues.

Tought times coming for Microsoft

There is an unbroken law of nature: organisms are born and die sooner or later. Companies are no exception to this rule. Time seems to have come for Microsoft to fade out. Bill Gates used to say that if Microsoft stopped innovating it will not survive long. Well, don't know if Microsoft has ever innovated much, but tought times are coming for the company. Few people seem to be happy with Vista and the company can't stop selling XP operated computers (see: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/09/03/ms.lifts.xp.netbook.limits/). Internet Explorer is facing ever more competitors and Office is being fased out by OpenOffice and Google Docs because nobody needs such an amount of features to write a few lines of text at the speed of our slow human brains.

Don't worry, I don't expect anybody to agree with me.

Search by image similarity

Tineye image service allows you to search images similar to the one you feed them. So far I haven't been able to find any similar images to mines (just a few tests though). Bear in mind that the service only indexes a 900 million images but the amount keeps growing.

Meditate without hassels

Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

Media pre-production. Scripting skyrockets

http://celtx.com/

Great landscape photographer

Peter Eastway

The Nature-Nurture Debate By Stephen J. Ceci, Wendy Melissa Williams

The mith of talent deconstructed. See:
http://books.google.com/books?id=orvNvg5R06IC&pg=PA258&lpg=PA258&dq=Michael+J.+Howe,+Jane+W.+Davidson+and+John+A.+Sloboda&source=web&ots=9048vuN57B&sig=dqpKU9HfPNaEE5_JpYB8JIkRi9E&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA258,M1

DNS vulnerability

http://www.doxpara.com/

resize loop disk image

http://www.tehfear.com/2007/10/08/resize-loop-disk-image/

Multimedia design books

http://www.ryerson.ca/~ipederse/navigate.html#Semiotics_and_Grammars

Parcs naturals de Catalunya

http://www.diba.cat/parcsn/parcs/home.asp

"Con las nuevas tecnologías todo el mundo puede ser periodista"

See La Vanguardia article on Ben Hammersely (http://benhammersley.com/index.php)

Theoryzing art

See http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org