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Some pictures of my first full marathon.

Miami, January 31st 2010.
26.2 miles (18 miles of fun, 8.2 miles of torture)

Miles Trained since July 2009: ~650 miles

Chip Time: 4:41:03
Average Pace: 10:44 per mile
Overall: 1636th
Sex Total: 1869 Sex Place: 1179th
Division Total: 300 runners Division Place: 199th
Age Grade: 44.4%
10 KM time: 56:01
Half Marathon: 2:04:50
30 KM time: 3:06:44

                          

After working with Fitim and the crew at MyBloop, them being avid Starcraft, Diablo, WOW, Warhammer and many other RPG style games, they instilled in me the phrase “To Pwn” or “Pwnage” whenever we did something difficult in terms of programming or linux hacking when working on MyBloop.com. It was a way to say that we’d be superior to other developers who had no clue about the shit we were pulling off on that bare-bones-cheap-custom-hardware-file-server-cluster-web-app of ours.

When something was over the top we’d say “Sick Pnwage”. If we’d be coding during the weekend we’d say “I’ll be Pwning this weekend”, and so on.

I liked the phrase so much that had to make a t-shirt to commemorate it for years to come.

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- My beautiful wife
- Laura Borman [uk] (It was great to see you this year in London)
- Erika Acosta [es]
- Adelaida Moubayyed [es]
- Jonathan Mujica [ve]
- Gustavo Tovar [ve]
- My mom
- My sister Nicole
- My dad
- All the Swaman [ve,usa,uk,china]
- My aunt Kata
- My aunt Yennis
- My grandma Avelina
- My grandpa/uncle Juan
- My aunt Goya
- My aunt Rosa who took so much care of me during my teen years and I’ll never forget it
- My cousin Angel Eloy who this year made some cool videos
- My parents in law
- Katay Santos [called from China this year]
- Jairo Boudewyn [ve]
- Abigail Reyes [ve]
- Jose Molina [co]
- Fitim Blaku [es]
- Helena Hui [ny]
- Hania Bednarski [ny]
- Antonio Jordana
- Sabrina Quintero
- Josmig Farreras
- Gabe Perez
- Alejandra Aparicio
- La Tati [mia]
- Mariuber Torres [ve]
- Zlatin Balevsky
- Marcelina Knitter [ny]
- El Titi [ve]
- Nancy Molina [co]
- Victor M Filippini Jr [mia]
- Aixela Valentin [ve]
- Eduardo Filacchione
- Glevys Malaguera
- Jeir Martinez Molina [co]
- Ana Gabriela [ve]
- Wayka Marino [ve]
- Mariela de Baron [ve]
- Jessica Leon [ve]
- Jose Ramon Godoy [mia]
- Daniel Pons [es]
- Ciro Duran
- Dave Nicponski [ny]
- Carlos Javier Carbonell [uk]
- Maura Patricia Murgas [co]
- Sinnis Espinoza [ve]
- Ale Penichet [ve]
- Stefano De Chicchis [ny]
- Pablo Moubayyed [ve]
- Maria Angelica Guevara [ve]
- María Cione [it]
- Cynthia Villoria [es]
- “Huguito” Londoño
- El @Infelix
- @vampy
- @luisraa
- @Niro
- @edgar
- @croncho
- @martin_twelve
- @DobleD
- @musicaymas
- @tesne
- @JoseManuel
- @Marole
- @GilCVV
- @HernanGarcia
- @R4mcst3r
- @rom
- @jamvtw
- Valeri Martinez [co]
- Roger Kapsi [ny]

                          

From Joost. Internal (bad) joke about their competition. I don’t think this joke is very funny now.

At Hulu I bet they say “Whoost?”, specially after you see the recent numbers from comScore.

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This is an oldie that I still keep from when I used to work at LimeWire back in 2005. I had another one that said “search me”, not sure where it is now.

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It was sent to me back in December 2007, the group takes pictures of things that happen only because of Venezuelan people living on this planet. Thanks a lot for the gift.

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This T-shirt I got thanks to my wife, it was sitting at their office for some reasons I should probably not disclose.

The thing is that I’ve been a fan of last.fm for a very long time (my account says it has 5800 plays since 2005) and I wear this t-shirt with a lot of pride.

I actually had the chance to meet Michael Breidenbruecker one of the founders of Last.fm in 2006 during the Plone code-sprint in Austria. Michael and his team (some of which I also met during that sprint) are now working on RJDJ, a very interesting music application for the iPhone.

About Last.fm
From Wikipedia:

Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).

Using a music recommendation system called “Audioscrobbler”, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s computer or some portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm’s database (“scrobbled”) via a plugin installed into the user’s music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user’s profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user’s favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm’s music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.

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This is one of the oldest self made t-shirts. I was constantly pissed at the amount of spam email I was receiving, and I thought some of the subjects were really eye catching for t-shirts.

For a few months I thought maybe I could make money on the creativity of spammers by mocking them with t-shirts, called, SpamTShirts, but nobody caught on my joke, and I desisted from the business idea.

If you can appreciate it, the icon/logo of the website is a Trash can, honoring junk mail.

I believe I made this t-shirt at cafepress.com

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wedoit4you.com was one of my personal efforts from school, with it I learned a lot about web development, technology, news, and the tech industry since it was a blog before the term was even invented.

During those times, I was learning CSS, and I had to learn about centering elements, I always found it very annoying that you could float elements to the left, or to the right, but there was no “float:center”, and you had to go through all this hoops to do what in the past, we could do just by using the <center/> tag.

This is a self made tshirt, ordered at spreadshirt.com

About wedoit4you.com

More recently wedoit4you.com became a spanish podcast that reviewed the latest happenings in the Internet, Technology and entertainment industries. Me along La Tati did a series of 75 weekly episodes, until the end of the spring of 2008 where my work got pretty hectic and I couldn’t find more time to continue recording, editing, and distributing the podcasts. It reached well over 1500 weekly subscribers listening to it, and we still get mails from users asking for the podcast to come back. Maybe in 2009 :)

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If you are an internet or technology company, feel welcome to send me a t-shirt, If I haven’t done a review of your company/product, I’ll do a review for you in return and I’ll take a picture of myself wearing it.

The Ubuntu Upgrade T-Shirt

Front – “sudo apt-get upgrade”

Back – Ubuntu logo

This T-shirt I made as an homage to Ubuntu and the mantra of easy updates, as well as a mantra of always keeping yourself up to date in life with whatever you do.

Nowadays updating Ubuntu is even easier, but some people like me still might do it old style, updating manually the /etc/apt/sources.list file, and running sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get upgrade dist, the t-shirt reads sudo apt-get upgrade which will basically upgrade those packages on your machine that need to do so.

The T-shirt was made at my favorite T-shirt-making website, (here goes the free ad) SpreadShirt.com

Photographed by Paulina Leon at 5 Points in Long Island City, NY.

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About Strands

Strands is a life streaming service that helps users discover new things based on what their friends like and do, and allows them to see what’s hot among the people they care about.

                          

I just got a new Apple Wireless Keyboad.

My laptop currently sits atop a Griffin Elevator, this keeps it cool and also helps keep my neck at a healthy angle, something I need given how many hours I spend on the computer.

The problem with the Elevator is that after a while, your arms get tired and you end up resting your arms over your elbows, causing you elbow dryness and sometimes pain.

To rest my elbows and have an ergonomic posture, I needed a keyboard that was small enough to fit on my tight desk.

The other reason I got it was that the MacBook keyboard is extremely worn out.

Getting used to the new keyboard
The function keyboard layout is a bit different from the one on the MacBook. It took me a couple hours getting used to the spacing between the keys, but now I’m fully used to it. The feeling of the keys going down is very addictive.

Since the keyboard is wireless, I’m planning on getting another one to put it in front of the TV. Once Boxee integrates Joost and Hulu perfectly into the system, getting an Apple TV or a cheap custom built computer as a media center will make a lot of sense.

I’ve been hooking up the laptop via HDMI to the TV, and it sucks every time an episode ends in Hulu, or when there are commercial breaks on the ABC.com HD player because you have to get up and click on continue, or select the next episode to watch (unless you have setup playlists previously).

A wireless mouse and keyboard solve that problem.

Useful for Internet TV
Another plus, it can work like a remote control, for your HDMI-TV/Laptop setup.

I can proudly say we’ve been Cable-TV free for over 10 months now (saving probably around $200), I “survive” on Netflix DVDs & Streaming (can’t wait for the Xbox Live upgrade), Joost and Hulu.

Given my past history of doing things 2-3 years before regular people, I can see a big future for the Internet TV/Video companies that survive this “crisis” (bullshit crisis really, go to Venezuela and see what a real crisis is), eventually the whole thing will be packed on little boxes and CableTV companies will be in trouble if they don’t jump on the I-watch-what-I-want-whenever-I-want-via-internet boat.

                          

It’s been kept on the pouch of my HP 48G calculator for all this time, today I thought it’d be probably a good idea to scan it and upload it.

Click on the images to see in high resolution, maybe one they they’ll be worth something and they’ll lay on a museum, or at least, a family vault.

Page 1

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Give it a try at MyBloop.com

                          

Created by my good friend Alex Martinez

                          

Escucha lo que dijeron aqui

De aquel entonces a ahora, ya subimos el limite de tamano por archivo a 1Gb, y tengan por seguro que siempre brindaremos el servicio de forma gratuita, solo necesitamos su apoyo y que lo usen para poder crecer.

Muchas gracias al equipo de Makina, estamos a la orden.

                          

- Les gusta experimentar en cuanto a diseno en su decoracion
- La comida es excelente, sobre todo la mantequilla
- Nunca habia visto tantos gringos fuera de USA juntos, a veces dudo que estoy en Paris porque escucho puro acento americano a mi alrededor
- La ciudad es hermosa pero esta bandalizada con mucho graffiti por todas partes
- El metro es demasiado arrecho, tambien los buses, el transporte publico es excelente.
- El metro es caro, pero se nota que mucha gente no paga (mas que todo en las afueras)
- Es una ciudad llena de jovenes (muchos gringuitos y canadienses en edades entre 15-21 por las calles, quizas en campamentos o programas de intercambio) que hacen lo que le da la gana
- En frente de la torre Eiffel hay un jardin donde muchos jovenes van (inclusive un lunes por la noche) a tomar vino y champana al aire libre, nadie dice nada si tomas en la calle, la juventud es muy libre
- Cuando camine por mi primera avenida me acorde mucho de partes de Caracas que tienen arquitectura europea. Caracas debio ser hermosa en los 60,70, seria bueno recuperar nuestra arquitectura y remodelar los edificios viejos.
- Caracas tiene Sabor a muchas Ciudades, a veces New York me recuerda a Caracas, y ciertamente Paris me recuerda a Caracas
- Los tickets del metro son iguales que los de caracas
- Tambien hay que meter el puto ticket para salir del metro, pero mucha gente sale, y hay aveces puertas abiertas. Si te agarran sin ticket, supuestamente son mas de 30 euros de multa.
- Estan invadidos de africanos y arabes
- No hay tantos asiaticos como en New York, pero hay
- Tambien hay gente de la india por aca
- Hay muchos franceses ostinados pero otros son amigables, como en todos lados. Al parecer no les gusta el ingles mucho, arrugan la cara
- Aun no entiendo como funciona la cuestion en los “Brasseries” para que te atiendan si te sientas afuera, vere hoy otra vez
- Es una ciudad en la que se disfruta caminar
- La avenida que esta pegada al rio Siena, en su parte sur, muy cerca de Notre-Dame, me recordo mucho a la avenida que esta pegada al banco sur del rio Guaire en las mercedes… solo que el Rio Siena es navegable y no esta lleno exclusivamente de mierda. Pero veo la similitud de esa avenida de las mercedes… la que esta del otro lado de la autopista Fco Fajardo antes de llegar al CCCT.

Nuevos pensamientos sobre la ciudad:
– Los telefonos celulares funcionan en el metro, inclusive en las estaciones mas profundas, y estando en movimiento dentro de un vagon.
– Hay muchos fumadores, y aun permiten fumar dentro de restaurantes y cafes. Ya habia olvidado lo desagradable que es comer dentro de un restaurant con olor a cigarro.
- Ahorran energia, aqui en el estudio donde me estoy quedando existen muchas luces que se apagan solas, supongo que utilizan timers con sensores de movimiento. Tambien tienen muchos carros “Smart” que deben ser bien economicos en cuanto a gasolina. Otro ejemplo son escaleras mecanicas que disminuyen su velocidad considerablemente cuando no hay nadie montado encima, pero luego aceleran cuando te montas.
- Es raro ver mujeres gordas. Creo que se debe a que la comida no es procesada, ademas de la cultura de que las mujeres se cuidan, se arreglan, etc. es Paris.
- Que aun ni estando en Paris las mujeres son mas lindas que en Venezuela. En Venezuela las mujeres se cuidan como en paris pero su belleza es natural. Hoy vi una mujer preciosa en Sacre Cour, y cuando le hablo al marido, era Venezolana :) I rest my case.

En las fotos del dia martes, tome algunos detalles interesantes de sus diferentes vagones de metro, por ejemplo, las columnas para que se agarre la gente, se dividen en 3 sub-columnas, asi puedes poner mas manos sin que se solapen. Tambien tienen trenes cuyos vagones no tienen divisiones, hacen un gran vagon. Y lo mas curioso es que algunas lineas son hibridos entre rieles y llantas.

                          

My name is Mitsu Hadeishi. I’m looking for an experienced Software Engineer with an interest in advanced GUI development to join our team.

Over the last fifteen years, I’ve led a series of engineering teams to design and implement innovative, successful software products. My past projects have included complex virtual communities, advanced multimedia development platforms, object-oriented integrated development environments, websites, and interactive video stories built with a custom domain-specific language. In addition to software architecture and development, my background and interests include AI, art, meditation, film, and philosophy.

Now, as the VP of Engineering for Temboo Inc., I’ve assembled a group of innovators and gifted problem-solvers to join me in creating and extending a revolutionary new kind of technology.

Our team currently includes a Network Architect who was responsible for the infrastructure systems behind Intuit’s online applications; a Project Manager who taught Creative Writing at NYU, and developers who have played key roles at IBM, Limewire, and major open-source projects like ANTLR.

Temboo is a young, cutting-edge New York company. We have developed a new software model which uses a simple, intuitive graphical interface to allow non-programmers to quickly build complex workflows and applications comprised of disparate interacting components such as databases, web services, and web applications. By allowing businesses to focus on what their information systems should do, instead of worrying about how to do it, our technology paves the way for a new paradigm of software development. We have versions of our product currently live; some of our first customers are leading financial institutions.

We are looking for a Software Engineer with experience developing complex interfaces, either on the desktop or using AJAX technologies. This person will play a key role in designing and building the tools that our customers use to interact with the Temboo system.

Ideal candidates will possess the following traits/skills:
• Experience with a range of front-end development technologies
• Intuitive grasp of OO design patterns and killer software architecture instincts
• Solid knowledge of at least one of the following: Python, Qt, Swing/SWT, or MFC
• Understanding of good user interface design principles
• Excellent communication and organizational skills
• Enjoys working in a high-energy environment with a small, talented team

Additional bonus points for candidates with:

• Familiarity with agile methods like XP and test-driven development
• Experience developing games
• Experience developing tools that use visual metaphors
• Experience developing applications with Flash and/or AJAX
• Experience working with information architects or interaction designers
• Interests outside of work (in your cover letter, please tell us what they are!)
• Sense of humor

Our unique company culture promotes individual contribution, innovation, excellence, and the belief that work should also be fun. We offer competitive compensation, flexible working hours, a casual office environment, and respect for individual contribution and autonomy. We’re looking for people who have interests outside of work as well (please mention some of these in your cover letter if you like).

Does this sound like you? If so, there may be a place for you at Temboo. Candidates outside the New York area will also be considered for employment on a remote basis, or for relocation to NYC (where everyone should experience living for at least part of their lives).

                          

Si quieres ver archivos de ayuda en HTML compilado tipo Windows, pero en Linux, es decir abrir archivos .CHM en Linux, utiliza xchm.

Para instalar en Ubuntu, es tan sencillo como hacer sudo apt-get install xchm, luego solo invocas el programa y abres tus archivos .CHM.

El segundo consejo lo escuche de Deepak Chopra en un canal de Joost. El dice que una definicion de Neurosis es hacer una misma cosa una y otra vez y esperar tener diferentes resultados… (para mi esto es correr Unit Tests ;) ), pero llevandolo a la vida el consejo lo que te dice es que intentes hacer cosas diferentes todos los dias, que tomes nuevos riesgos y evalues sus impactos. Has cosas diferentes y tendras resultados diferentes.

                          

Damn it, I was good but took too long, If you don’t put the time penalization my General IQ is 146. I feel limited, I wanted to be above 150 :(

I get to be a bit special but not too much, since I read this somewhere on the internet:

“Only approximately 1% of the people in the world have an IQ of 135 or over”

Here’s the explanation of my results:

Your General IQ Score of 139 shows how able your mind is in general. Anyone with a General IQ Score this high is considered to be gifted. This score is better than 99.53% of all persons taking this test. Virtually all occupations can be comprehended with a General IQ this high. You should be able to handle almost all academic challenges.

You scored higher than your General IQ Score in 12 individual ability categories. 5 of these better scores could be called statistically significant and may indicate special abilities, or that you were distracted on those parts of the IQ Test that counted more heavily in the other ability categories.
Arithmetic

Solving many of the IQ Test’s problems required the ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers mentally. Many mental tasks require arithmetical operations even though numbers may not be involved, and thus number manipulation abilities can strongly indicate general intelligence.

Your Arithmetic IQ score of 149 is exceptionally higher than your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.95% of all persons taking this test.
Spatial Skill

Understanding what changes will occur when conditions vary is a deep and powerful ability of the mind. All invention and creativity of every sort is based upon this ability. Although test problems usually involve manipulation of objects in space, persons with a stronger ability to spatially manipulate can also be expected to use this ability to be able to better predict how social and psychological situations would change due to variation.

Your Spatial Skill IQ score of 144 is not significantly different from your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.83% of all persons taking this test.
Logical

This is the ability to determine if a set of rules has been correctly followed. This ability is most useful in combination with other mental skills listed above. Those with strong logical ability are quicker to see where a given set of conditions is going to lead, have a strong sense of justice, and better understand–from an intellectual analysis–the benefits of harmony.

Your Logical IQ score of 148 is exceptionally higher than your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.93% of all persons taking this test.
Spelling

The ability to spell can indicate general intelligence. Remembering a set sequence of letters indicates the mind’s ability to retrieve remembered facts. Learning how to spell and use the words of a language is almost a complete IQ test in itself. Although poor spellers with high IQ scores can be found, it is rare, and in general–everything else being equal–the better spellers have higher IQ scores.

Your Spelling IQ score of 149 is exceptionally higher than your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.95% of all persons taking this test.
Short Term Memory

The ability to remember things for a short period of time allows the mind to check back and retrieve facts needed to complete a problem solving operation. This ability becomes more critical when problems have many aspects that need consideration and/or need to be solved mentally. This ability strongly determines how efficiently one handles the many aspects of normal life. If your short term memory ability is strong you are much less likely to seem inattentive or “slow to get it” to others.

Your Short Term Memory IQ score of 144 is not significantly different from your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.83% of all persons taking this test.
Rote Utilization

This is the ability to take a set of memorized facts and mentally extract and/or operate with or upon the facts within the set that are pertinent to the problem at hand. Persons with more of this ability can be expected to spell well, remember telephone and other numbers easily, be more adroit in procedural operations, and have a stronger foundation for tasks that require the use of memorized material.

Your Rote Utilization IQ score of 151 is exceptionally higher than your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.97% of all persons taking this test.
Algebraic

This is the ability of the mind to abstractly handle quantities and qualities. Persons who are strong in this ability can more quickly and more deeply understand analogies, stories, derivations, equalities, and hierarchical structures.

Your Algebraic IQ score of 149 is exceptionally higher than your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.95% of all persons taking this test.
General Knowledge

Knowledge that is casually picked up and remembered can indicate intelligence, because persons with higher intelligence will exhibit greater retention of those pieces of information that are encountered less often. Because higher intelligence allows a person to have a deeper appreciation of the connectivity of facts that may seem disparate to others of lesser intelligence, memory of such facts becomes easier.

Your General Knowledge IQ score of 147 is exceptionally higher than your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.91% of all persons taking this test.
Visual Apprehension

This is the ability of the mind to mentally picture visual information and to be able to extract portions of that information for separate use. A person whose visual apprehension is strong enjoys a richer, more creative appreciation of visual aspects of experiences.

Your Visual Apprehension IQ score of 145 is not significantly different from your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.87% of all persons taking this test.
Geometric

How well one can comprehend geometric relationships of lines, sides, planes, angles, and topological properties strongly determines one’s ability to make sense of visual information. The strength of one’s geometric ability can strongly determine how quickly knowledge can be absorbed if it is presented visually.

Your Geometric IQ score of 142 is not significantly different from your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.74% of all persons taking this test.
Vocabulary

Knowing the meaning of words is an ability that directly increases along with the increase of general intelligence. The meaning of a word is more easily remembered with higher intelligence, because it takes more intelligence to understand and correctly use words based upon the subtle differences between words with similar meanings and to comprehend difficult concepts which are sometimes symbolized by a single word.

Your Vocabulary IQ score of 144 is not significantly different from your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.83% of all persons taking this test.
Intuition

Intuition is defined as that ability of the mind to develop answers to questions without consciously dealing with the problem at hand. Often a question will provoke your mind to answer without using conscious processing time, and the answer is said to come “out of the blue” or “suddenly, it just struck me”. Of all the many abilities of the mind, this is one of the most often used. Just knowing what to do is often an automatic process that occurs without much conscious figuring. Those with stronger intuition make less mistakes and can seem luckier, wiser, or more mature.

Your Intuition IQ score of 143 is not significantly different from your General IQ score.This score is better than 99.79% of all persons taking this test.
Computational Speed

If you can correctly solve a variety of problems faster than another person, you may be demonstrating a generally more orderly internal arrangement of your mind’s problem solving methods. While speed cannot be the sole factor in determining overall superiority in one mental operations, in general faster computational speed will often indicate that a problem’s comprehension was more complete. With everything else being equal, a person with faster computational speed than another person’s will be better at tasks that require the synthesis of many bits of information.

Your Computational Speed IQ score of 53 is significantly lower than your General IQ score.This score is better than 0.09% of all persons taking this test.

I did the test at www.iqtest.com

                          

Los seres humanos, somos probablemente la unica especie (aunque no se si los delfines, o chimpanceses tengan conciencia de existencia, quizas si, pero no tan clara como nosotros) con la suerte de saber que estamos aqui, y tenemos la responsabilidad de hacer lo mas que podamos mientras vivimos.

Si piensas que no hay vida despues de la muerte, y que la conciencia esta en tu cerebro, no tomaras la vida como un periodo temporal, donde hay muchos que piensan que solo “arrastran una cruz”, para ir al cielo, o cualquier otra fabula de otras religiones… entonces te daras cuenta de todo lo que tienes alrededor, de lo fabuloso que es el mundo y todo lo que aun debemos explorar y aprender para transmitirle a los futuros suertudos que dado un complejo arrejo de probabilidades llegaran un dia a estar en este mundo tal como tu y yo lo estamos hoy.

Piensa cuanta suerte tienes de estar vivo, de todos los eventos que sucedieron para que tus ancestros existieran y tu combinacion genetica actual te de la capacidad de estar leyendo estas lineas que llegan a ti por un medio electronico creado por otros como tu.

Aprovecha tu periodo de conciencia, exprimelo al maximo.

                          

Acabo de ver unos 10 minutos de opinion en Fox news, con 6 panelistas, 3 de derecha, 3 de izquierda.
Ni los de izquierda estaban a favor con lo que paso esta semana en venezuela en cuanto al presidente mandando por decreto.

Algunas de las cosas que me alarmo es lo siguiente:

- Mostraron una entrevista con el mismisimo Bush, y el carajo vino con el discursito
“I only care about the venezuelan people, since this industry nationalization will not let them realize their full potential”

Despues lo veremos diciendo que tiene que liberarlos y la cosa se puede poner fea.

Luego los panelistas uno dice:

“Cuando veo lo que sucede en Venezuela esta semana, me recuerdo a Alemania en 1933,
si eres venezolano, y no eres bruto, ciego, sordo o mudo, GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE”

luego otro panelista, un ingles dice

“Yo mas bien compararia lo que sucede ahorita en venezuela con Cuba en 1959″

Comentaron sobre si debemos dejar de comprarle petroleo a venezuela, o si mas bien Chavez
va a dejar de vendernos, aunque Chavez juega los dos equipos pq tiene 40mil bombas de gasolina Citgo
que venden a 2 centavos mas barato, y conociendo los gringos prefieren cruzar la autopista por ahorrarse
los 2 centavos.

Pero luego otro carajo, un izquierdista… dice
“Yo creo que esto no es cuestion de si le compramos o no el petroleo, si lo boicoteamos o no,
yo pienso que esto podria ser una amenaza militar en un futuro, ya que el carajo es pana de
Kim en korea, y mantiene a cuba a flote ahora que la union sovietica no lo hace, su mensaje
se esparce por latinoamerica, y quizas en un futuro diremos que porque no hicimos nada cuando estabamos
a tiempo, aunque lo que Chavez quiere, es quizas usarnos como Chivo expiatorio”

Despues otros panelistas dijeron que definitivamente se espera un exodo masivo de la “middle class” en Venezuela,
y que es una lastima que pase esto en venezuela pq en Venezuela aman los productos americanos, son un buen
cliente, que por ejemplo la marca de autos en venezuela mas vendida es GM.

Un poco tensa la cosa cuando escuchas de este tema aqui, y no por blogs o noticias venezolanas, y de expertos politicos.

Germany 1933, Cuba 1959, ya no es cuestion de Yo si creo en Venezuela pq soy muy optimista, piensenlo de pana,
ya estan en dictadura por si no se habian dado cuenta, al menos de aqui hasta Julio de 2008 es autocracia declarada
y ya ahorita este mismo mes empiezan a cerrar empresas para hacerlas del gobierno.

Espero poder verlos de nuevo en libertad my friends.

                          

You are currently using 2653 MB (94%) of your 2812 MB.

Creo que si no empiezo a borrar correos (que mal recuerdo de cuando usaba hotmail o yahoo) pronto me quedo sin espacio.

Y a ti cuanto te queda?

                          

Lo peor es que luego pense el primer problema y lo pude hacer en unas 8 lineas de codigo y en mucho menor tiempo, maldicion, hubiera pensado igual en ese momento y hubiera podido terminar el segundo. You live and you learn, entrenare durante este ano y vere si participo en la proxima competencia el ano que viene. Suerte y Felicitaciones a quienes calificaron.

Posicion 41 en la ronda calificatoria de la division#4 del Latin Google Code Jam 2007…
dudo que haya calificado resolviendo solo un problema, vamos a ver.

No me dio chance de terminar el segundo, hay que entrenar mas. De todas maneras me contenta saber que sabia como resolver ambos, atribuyo mi perdida a:
- Haber querido echar el codigo en otra PC donde no tenia abierto el applet, y luego no poder pegar.
- Un error estupido de indentacion que no se veia en Emacs
- Estaba en la oficina con un gentio al rededor hablando mientras resolvia esto.

                          

Con LaTati y Marco Martinelli de TiempoApple.com

Con referencias a:

KodeGeek, Tecnochica, PlanetaMac, Imakinaria, David Pogue

Detalles (Links) de este podcast en el Google Doc de la semana
(Haz click en este link si quieres saber como se calcula el dolar paralelo en Venezuela a diario)

                          

Se trata de un monologo contado por Jose Rafael Briceno, en el cual nos cuenta aquellas anectodas que explican por que Venezuela es el pais mas arrecho del mundo. Excelente para reirse con los audifonos puestos en la oficina, o para la cola al salir del trabajo.

Este es el feed del podcast: http://www.lunacrecienteradio.com/podcast/quesevayantodos.xml

“Dedicado a toda esa cuerda de gente que se quiere ir del pais” :)

                          

Esto fue en diciembre de 2006

                          

New York State Driver License!

I can rent a car!!!!! Yay!!!

BTW, I’m pissed that I got my upgrade in New Jersey instantly, then I go to NY to switch it, and it took them 2 weeks to send me the license. BULLCRAP!

                          

We’re ok with telecommuting, but it’d be better if you worked with us here in New York.

                          

1996, I want to be an engineer

I’m 16 years old, finished high school and got accepted to study Software Engineering at the UCAB in Caracas, Venezuela. The university just opened up the career that year so I was there for the first classes ever given to software engineering students in the faculty, we had a lot of responsability into being the best we could be to make a name for the school, and so far I think we’ve been doing a great job, in our country and out.

During these years my parents sold their accounting firm and bought a liquor store, in 98 Chavez wins the president and things start getting worse and worse economically for us.

After a lot of hard work, sacrifices and being really really broke for many years I finished school and got my engineering degree in 6 years.

During this time I worked for Microsoft Venezuela doing marketing and product launch support, then I worked for the venezuelan Java Center with great java engineers, I might say the best java engineers in the country at that time (Ing. Sergio Fernandez), then I worked for a consulting company called DKV Asociados along engineer Angel Olivera doing my internship and thesis under his tutorship.

2002, I’m an Engineer

Here’s a picture of the group on the graduation day, most of us started on the first promotion but ended on the third one, things in school in Venezuela aren’t as easy as in the US where you pretty much know what’s gonna happen on your exams.

So right after graduation, that december the country goes on a full stop for over a month so that Chavez would quit, but he won’t do it, even the oil industry goes along with it, Mr. Chavez just fired almost every executive wasting millions of dollars in human capital, as a consequence many other companies that work with the companie loose all the contracts, including the one where I worked for, so I pretty much lost my job…

2003, Flirt with the US, then leave my country
So I get a call from a friend in the oil industry telling me there’s a startup in Miami that needs a pocket pc developer, I start working for them off shore, and a few months later…

I’m off to Miami. I travel back and forth until the company decides to take me in for good.

After a year of work and learning all what I needed to learn about the job and developing a larger scale system and the american culture…

Up to this point… from 2000 till like aug 2004, Marjorie was very much part of my life, but everything has an end and so did my chapter in Miami, I went on a trip to New York for the first time I believe in May 2004, this trip absolutely changed my perception of life and I felt I was completely wasting my time in Miami, I saw the people in the city and thought to myself, what do you have to do to live in such an expensive place, its so cool, they’re so lucky to live here, I wish one day I may come to live here.

Me for the first time in New York

I went back to Miami, and found out about a website that put a lot of doubt into what I should do with my life if I wanted to go live in New York, the site is Craigslist, in it, I saw over 50 New York job offers on Information technology when in Miami I’d only would see no more than 5 posts a day, plus the pay was way better.

So, I took a weekend off with my friend Tati and we went to Orlando to do all the parks, during the long lines I made the decision and told Tati that I’m leaving to New York.

2004, New York, New York

On September 2nd 2004, one day after my birthday, I came with my suitcases to New York where my friend Maritza received me for one night and helped me get up on my feet.

I had my employer pay me all the money they owed me, and I went to New York with $9000, my logic was this. I just turned 25, If I go back to my country with $9000 they will be spent anyway, so why not go and give it a try in New York while I’m still processing the VISA. I had no place to stay, so I had to look for a place asap, I had no source of income so I had to save until my last penny to stretch those $9000 as much as I could, and I gotta move fast because I don’t want to be illegal. Being optimistic and following my dreams will always be one of my premises.

I lived in West New York, NJ, paid $100 a week on a very small room, tried to live on $5 to $10 a day and the only thing I did was send resume’s to postings on craigslist and monster. I learned everything about resume’s, cover letter’s and interviews (the hard way), and a month and a half after I found my second employer in the US willing to sponsor my H1B visa. I worked as a consultant and I only did one project for one of their clients, Nielsen Entertainment in White Plains, NY, here I learned a lot about Unix, Linux, Perl, and above all, I learned how to use emacs under the teachings of David Link, one great engineer who used to work for Oracle and at the time developed an amazing dataware house system written in perl for Nielsen, my props to this great hacker.

I wasn’t contempt still with my first success in the city, finally recovering financially from moving away and no longer living on $5 a day, I kept looking for jobs, and I found a little company named “LimeWire” :), which creates a P2P application, and I thought it’d be the most amazing thing to work with these java hackers and learn about the world of P2P.

Next thing you know…

2005, LimeWire

I’m working for LimeWire as their web developer, here I learned a lot about running a high traffic website, and above all I learned a lot of what it means to be an open source developer and the culture around this.

This is probably one of the best things that has ever happened to me career wise, I got to learn a lot and I was surrounded by people of an amazing level of intelligence and computer software knowledge, I’m very thankful for this.

2006, Year of big changes, and trips

At this point I’m still working for LimeWire and thanks to them I went to Austria

Egg, Austria

there I came in contact with python, which I believe is a tool that’s changing my professional life, plus I enjoy coding in it a lot, there I started writing an RSS engine which I called “SnowRSS” since I started writing it there sitting with all that snow around me. SnowRSS runs everyday as the core of wedoit4you.com rss fetching engine.

Also after leaving LimeWire I was free to join FrostWire, and we recently launched a new version on which I learned a hell of a lot more on what comes in to play about releasing client software for the masses in multiple operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux)

2006 was a year of many changes and trips, this year I:

- Switched jobs twice, worked for Flycell.com, and now I’ve settled at Temboo where I feel super lucky and happy doing many exciting things and surrounded by the most amazing team of engineers

- Started the wedoit4you.com podcast and blog directory, its has been one of the most rewarding hobbies which allows me to be in contact with technology and with my good friend Tati.

- Since the change of visa, I couldn’t leave the country so I decided to get to know the country with my girlfriend, I went to:

Jim Thorpe, PA

San Francisco, CA

Chicago, IL

Cleveland, OH

Bear Mountain, NY

Washington DC

Las Vegas, NV

Grand Canyon, AZ

Also, my girlfriend graduates in Syracuse (after one year of a long distance relationship)

and we finally moved in together in Brooklyn, NY

so what now in 2007? what will be of the next decade?

Hopefully everything will be even better this year, I just hope me and my family have health to accomplish all the goals, and maybe this year things will keep moving at a fast pace, I expect to launch my own piece of software, finally have the visa stamped on my passport so that I can travel outside the country and visit europe or asia, and maybe who knows, I might even get married with my princess.

So for the next decade, I hope to become an even better person, professionally and personally, I hope to achieve my goal of making my first million during this decade, and hopefully will be able to get closer to my family somehow, at this moment I guess that part of my life is a bit broken, everyone lives at a different place, but what are you gonna do, everything to live free without the menace of a communist government.

Happy New Year 2007, now let’s make all our dreams happen so let’s not waste any time and get to work on them.

                          

Pasaron muchas otras cosas en el sueno, y estaba en una casa de playa en puerto la cruz, y en eso empezo a sonar durisimo, y yo lo que pensaba era, maldicion, estoy en Pto. La Cruz, donde peor son los terremotos en Venezuela. Lo bueno del sueno es que apenas empezo a temblar yo estaba enseguida bajo el marco de una puerta.

Segun el diccionario de los suenos, este sueno representa miedo o inseguridad sobre mis negocios, de salir herido en el terremoto quiere decir que seria susceptible a no adaptarme a los cambios, de cubrirme, tal como lo hice gracias a Dios, voy a superar cualquier dificultad.

So, a adaptarse a cualquier cambio que pudiera venir, y todo saldra bien.

                          

See the entire flickr set here

I got Gears of War and Need for Speed = Carbon.

My Xbox live gamer tag is GUBATRON.

Cheers to the people of Planeta Ligero podcast, I sure gave them a lot of shit for talking and defending this product, I must say I consider them being right about it after trying it.

                          

Click on the images to enlarge

                          

Este fin de semana, agarramos el carrito y le dimos un ultimo paseo antes de venderlo. Nos fuimos 45 minutos al norte de Manhattan
a un lugar llamado Bear Mountain, NY. Simplemente hermoso, fuimos en la mejor semana del ano para ver el foleaje de otono.

Ve la galeria de fotos completa

(Esto me recordo a las ardillitas Chip n Dale de Disney, primera vez que tengo unas de estas en mis manos)

Ve la galeria de fotos completa

                          

My best wishes to Flycell.com in their new projects.

Its time for me to move on to new challenges as a software developer (new people have to fill in for the geeks that make all the goodies right?), so I’ll be joining from tomorrow a great company from which I can’t tell you much, otherwise I’d have to kill you, but just know I’ll be doing the most amazing things I’ve ever done.

                          

En esta foto estoy en la azotea del edificio donde LimeWire tiene sus oficinas. Es la primera vez que me entrevistan por ser un desarrollador Open Source (Vease proyecto FrostWire).

Poniendo a los desarrolladores de software venezolanos en alto (espero pq hoy lamentablemente la industria disquera norteamericana RIAA, demando a LimeWire)

                          

Instale el VirtueDesktops para cambiar de escritorios con efectos especiales, y el otro video mientras instalo Windows XP SP2 en un disco duro virtual con un ISO torrenteado. La version de Parallels es un trial de 15 dias, si funciona al pelo creo que vale la pena comprarlo, es preferible que comprar una PC nueva.

                          

Click to see screenshots

Now I’m trusting google with our @wedoit4you.com email hosting.

what the hell man… it’s free…

First of all, let me say this was Kakei’s Idea (for good or for worse cracksito!), and the result is that after over a year without our loved @wedoit4you.com email addresses we’re finally getting them back.

I just have a question for all you named. We were asked to change our MX records. This is what we put on our /var/named/wedoit4you.com.db file:


ASPMX.GOOGLE.COM. 14400 IN MX 1 wedoit4you.com.
ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 14400 IN MX 5 wedoit4you.com.
ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 14400 IN MX 5 wedoit4you.com.
ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 14400 IN MX 10 wedoit4you.com.
ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 14400 IN MX 10 wedoit4you.com.
ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 14400 IN MX 10 wedoit4you.com.
ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 14400 IN MX 10 wedoit4you.com.


Think there might be something wrong with our MX records?

UPDATE: yes, there was something horribly wrong… I was putting the whole thing backwards..
it had to be:


wedoit4you.com. in MX 0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
wedoit4you.com. in MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
wedoit4you.com. in MX 5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
wedoit4you.com. in MX 10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
wedoit4you.com. in MX 10 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
wedoit4you.com. in MX 10 ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
wedoit4you.com. in MX 10 ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.


                          

So many work arounds to center divs, that I was almost getting to the point where I was about to start selling black t-shirts with the words

float:center

If you’re a web developer, web designer, and you have to deal with CSS, and CSS not working properly on IE (cause of it’s stupid box model conception and endless ilogic behaviour bugs) then I’m sure you have always wanted to be able to do something like “float:center”

I don’t really get why the people that made the CSS standards, didn’t include stupid float:center… there’s float:left, float:right… it’s only obvious. And worst of all, you know centering is one very important thing…

so we have to go around doing stuff like

margin:0 auto;

but that won’t really work on all occasions, you have to think of the size of the parent elements too, so that the auto margins will work correctly.

The other day a friend that’s a graphic designer even came up with his own trick of using percentages to add correct margins to center divs.

But look no more (at least until they decide to give us float:center), if you use Prototype, maybe you also use Scriptaculous…

Just add this to your effects.js file:


Effect.Center = function(element)
{
try
{
element = $(element);
}
catch(e)
{
return;
}

var my_width = 0;
var my_height = 0;

if ( typeof( window.innerWidth ) == 'number' )
{

my_width = window.innerWidth;
my_height = window.innerHeight;
}
else if ( document.documentElement && ( document.documentElement.clientWidth || document.documentElement.clientHeight ) )
{

my_width = document.documentElement.clientWidth;
my_height = document.documentElement.clientHeight;
}
else if ( document.body && ( document.body.clientWidth || document.body.clientHeight ) )
{

my_width = document.body.clientWidth;
my_height = document.body.clientHeight;
}

element.style.position = 'absolute';
element.style.display = 'block';
element.style.zIndex = 99;

var scrollY = 0;

if ( document.documentElement && document.documentElement.scrollTop )
{
scrollY = document.documentElement.scrollTop;
}
else if ( document.body && document.body.scrollTop )
{
scrollY = document.body.scrollTop;
}
else if ( window.pageYOffset )
{
scrollY = window.pageYOffset;
}
else if ( window.scrollY )
{
scrollY = window.scrollY;
}

var elementDimensions = Element.getDimensions(element);

var setX = ( my_width - elementDimensions.width ) / 2;
var setY = ( my_height - elementDimensions.height ) / 2 + scrollY;

setX = ( setX

This will center your div if you do something like this on Javascript to the div in question:


Effect.Center('idOfMyDiv')


Try it, it works.
You might want to hack the function in case you don't want this effect to center vertically.

Also, if you want to keep centering the div even on window resize or scroll, you'll have to add
callbacks to window.onresize and window.onscroll

And remember, Linux Rules.

                          

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