I found many similarities between London life and New York life, but as I went outside every day I tried to put together a small list of things that I found curious from the perspective of a 4 year old New Yorker.

CCTV, CCTV, CCTV! From the moment you step foot in the city there’s a very clear message put into your head. CCTV!, Big brother’s watching!. The scare tactic seems to work, all my friends seemed to tell me, don’t do this, don’t do that, they’re watching. I personally think it’s more of a deterrent than anything. Nobody can possibly be watching so many cameras, they are probably used for “forensic” purposes.

Pound Currency design FAIL. I understand having different widths for blind people, but they made them way too wide to fit on a wallet. Also they don’t have their denomination shown on all 4 corners, for the tourist, if you insert bills backwards you have to take them out to see how much each bill is, slowing cashier lines with tourists.

They just don’t fit on my “American Sized” wallet. I guess you have to either have a bigger wallet, or fold them twice. Notice how you can’t tell what bills are what (If you’re a noob with the currency of course), no numbers on all corners.

One thing I loved though on the 10 pound bill, freaking Charles Darwin is in it!

Now see the mighty dollar (Euros have the numbers on all 4 corner) how good the “user experience” is (at least for the non blind)

London.Underground = NewYork.Subway;
London.Subway = NewYork.UnderPass
What the New Yorker calls the “Subway”, the Londoneer calls the “Underground”. Whoever designed the Logo of their system was a genius, it’s a very versatile logo. Now, here comes a weird thing, Waht we New Yorkers call an “Underpass” The Londoneer calls “Subway”. This little detail had me J-Walking a couple of big avenues with all my luggage right after I came out of the “Underground” , and I couldn’t find for the life of me a pedestrian area to cross, and I kept thinking that some parts of the city weren’t that pedestrian-friendly… Me and other tourists just had gotten out of what we call “Subway” when we saw a sign for the “Subway” again we didn’t use it and we J-Walked it baby. Then it was easy to cross big avenues. In london Underpass = Subway.

Nokia > iPhone
Most people have Nokia phones there. Didn’t see a single iphone among my friends. Saw an Android though

The underground has no exits, only ways out.

When you cross the street they always make you waste time on this buffer zone, many of the times lots of pedestrians end up waiting in the middle. Maybe its a combination of making car traffic flow faster, and also to help tourists remember cars are coming the other way.

It seems that the city is a very democratic place and that it has lots of issues, during the 6 days I was there I saw protests from very different groups. It also seems that there’s this love for Rollerblading like nowhere else, saw big crowds of Rollerbladers (wearing funny customs some times) in several occasions. Not sure if they were also protesting.

Maybe I’m just used to it, but I think the water in New York tastes 1000 times better than the water in London. There’s something in the London water after you swallow, it never seems to quench my thirst, it has to be extremely cold for it to feel the same way, and it was my experience that everywhere that I went I had to ask for a lot of ice. It must be an european thing (my wife doesn’t drink iced water either, nor does her family, they can even drink room temperature beer, yuck) drinking water at its natural temperature, maybe it’s part of the energy culture in America that we don’t give a crap to spend energy in cooling water?

Overall, I loved the experience, the night life seems very much alive and real. Heard some stories of pickpocketing and of areas that I shouldn’t dare visit and this made me think that it may be a city a little more dangerous than New York.

Maybe it’s the week dollar, I don’t know, but everything felt to me that it was double or triple the price than in New York. I only spent money on food, transportation and internet connectivity, other than that I don’t think it was worth it for someone who comes from New York to do any shopping over there and I certainly didn’t spend a “p” on anything outside my most basic needs.

                          

Me and my family saw this (and laughed hard as I took out the camera without hesitation) on our way into the first G car on Court Sq. (headed towards Greenpoint of course) First thing that came to my mind. “This is so NewYorkShitty.com material”

If you find the image funny, wait until you read the post by Miss Heather, which made this very “Dear Reader” have a real LOL.

Please Digg Up Miss Heather’s Post

About NewYorkShitty.com
Taken from it’s About Page:

As you can probably deduce from the title of this blog, I live in Green Brownpoint, Brooklyn. During my one block trek to the Franklin Corner Store one April day (in 2006) to get a sandwich, I was astonished at the sheer quantity of dog shit I encountered.

Green Street is not the easiest sidewalk to negotiate: the sidewalks are uneven and pock-marked with holes. Dodging piles of dog shit every five feet does not make this task any easier, much less when carrying delicious Cuban sandwiches. It was during this adventure through Poopland that I had the following epiphany:

1. This is ridiculous.

2. I wonder if the people who see fit to use my block as a pissoir would like it if I took a shit in the middle of their living room? Probably not.

3. This is like walking through a fucking mine field, so maybe…

4. if Queen Noor (and Lady Diana before her) can lobby against the use of land mines, perhaps I can raise awareness about the plague of unattended dog shit in my neighborhood. Call me the Dog Shit Queen of Greenpoint New York Shitty. I’ve been called worse.

                          

With your help, we can deliver high-speed Internet access to more New Yorkers.

What if I told you we could use empty TV channels to connect tens of thousands of New Yorkers to the Internet?

The technology exists today. But some members of the New York City Council are trying to stop us from using it.

The Council has bought into a corporate misinformation campaign, and is now holding a public hearing next Monday to consider a resolution that would keep this technology from the New Yorkers who need it most.

You can help the Council make the right decision by speaking out at the hearing:

WHAT: NYC City Council Hearing on White Spaces
WHEN: Monday, Sept. 29, 10 a.m.
WHERE: City Hall Committee Room, enter at the Intersection of Centre and Worth Streets

The latest front in the battle over universal Internet access is “white spaces” — empty frequencies between TV channels on the public airwaves. In New York City, 20 percent of these television airwaves sit idle. New technology can open this unused spectrum to powerful high-speed Internet services, bringing ubiquitous and affordable broadband to tens of thousands of New Yorkers now left off the grid.

Here’s the problem: Councilmember Gale Brewer and Speaker Christine Quinn have sponsored a draft resolution claiming white space devices could harm the Broadway industry in New York City. They, along with the Broadway League, maintain that white space devices will disrupt the wireless microphones used for Broadway shows. Numerous tests conducted by the FCC show, however, that this is not true.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for the National Association of Broadcasters and cell phone companies have been blitzing federal, state and local governments with misinformation to prevent white spaces from bringing the benefits of broadband to millions of people. They want to hoard this spectrum to stifle innovation and competition. If they win, we all lose.

Too many in this city have been left on the wrong side of the digital divide. The answer to getting New Yorkers connected is right in front of us:

Attend Monday’s Hearing

The hearing will be open to public testimony. Please come and urge the City Council to reject the resolution and speak out for opening up white spaces for a better Internet.

With your help on Monday, we can help deliver the Internet for everyone in New York City.

Thank you,

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
http://www.freepress.net/
http://www.savetheinternet.com/

1. Learn more about white spaces at www.freepress.net/whitespaces

                          

This playlist is courtesy of El Blogo who could find this album somewhere in Mexico and was kind enough to share it with us at MyBloop.com

About DJ Afro (taken from his official website)

DJ Afro (A.K.A. Jose Luis Pardo)

If you go to a Los Amigos Invisibles (LAI), you will never listen to any Shakira or Enrique Iglesias because DJ Afro, the band’s guitar player, is in charge of heating up the party and making sure the night starts well enough to move your feet with really funky rhythms.

Time has passed and Dj Afro (a.k.a Jose Luis Pardo) has managed to get the party going even when LAI are not playing after him.

He is responsible for writing more than 80% LAI’s music, as well as playing guitar, keyboard and background vocals for all five albums. He has also been featured on Louie Vega’s “Elements of life” and Dimitri from Paris’ “Cruising attitude”.

Aside from his work with the band, DJ Afro also enjoys a respected career as a remix producer. He just released his first solo track, “Mala Idea” (look at you records). He has published several remixes for Dimitri from Paris, and in his remix’ reel you can find tracks of Beastie Boys, Fantastic Plastic Machine, David Byrne, Radio Zumbido, Fundación Tony Manero, Sonorama, Soul Coughing, Los Amigos Invisibles, John Scofield and others.

As a DJ with a bag full of records that can go from Samba to Boogaloo, from Rare Grooves to Organic House to Disco, he can make people smile and start dancing almost anywhere.

DJ Afro has been spinning all around New York City since he moved here. He has been a guest behind the decks in parties like Turntables on the Hudson, Giant Step, PS-1, Shelter, Cielo, Suba, Remote lounge, Nublu, Pink (SF), Knitting Factory (LA), La santanera (playa del Carmen), O bar (Dallas), Sala Arena (Madrid), The Basement (Australia) and others. He has opened for Dimitri from Paris and Little Louie Vega. Nowadays, DJ Afro’s afterparties in local clubs following LAI’s gigs are becoming a standard in every city they perform.

Afro is also part of expansion team, a prestigious agency of top of the line producers that create music for commercial spots and films. He has produced original music for brands like Mazda, Sears, Miller, General Motors, AT&T and Sony, among others.

He was also the mind behind CHILL OUT VENEZUELA (Gozadera Records, 2004), a compilation featuring the new scene of young Venezuelan producers that has been very well received by music lovers. He is now finalizing details on its follow up, “DANCE VENEZUELA”.

DJ Afro recently composed the soundtrack for “Sed en los Pies,” a short film that opened in Venezuela in late 2005, and he will be working on the music for Mexican director Luis Sanchez’ new film. Afro’s music will also accompany Crimanesa Amoroso’s new art piece.

For the past two years, he has recorded a weekly radio show, DJ AFRO Y SU RUMBA BARATA, which airs in Caracas every Friday on ATENEO 100.7 FM, with great feedback. Afro is also in charge of choosing the playlists at SUBA, one of the most prestigious restaurants in downtown Manhattan.

Jose Luis also has a life as a journalist. He writes a column for two magazines: PLAY (Venezuela) and EL HUEVO (México) and he contributes frequently to other Venezuelan magazines like TODO EN DOMINGO and URBE.

More About DJ Afro
You can read his curious blog (in spanish) at http://elafro.com/blog/, which he seems to often update whenever he sits at the airport, given the titles of “Airport Chronicles” in some of his posts.

Support this artist if you enjoyed this playlist.

Pictures courtesy of Juan Galvan Adriana Gutierrez Varela

                          

Whenever I see the temperature go above 65F I feel a sudden urge to leave the house. Yesterday I decided to take a bike trip to the city and back.

On the way there, my ipod blasted two prodigy records, then while in Central Park I listened to a wonderful podcast called E01 (spanish) which judges TV shows based on their first aired episode, the E01.

After the trip I have one request for Mayor Bloomberg, please add bike lanes in midtown on 2nd Av. it’s really scary to bike anywhere up above 34th st, definitively lot better once you ride south of 14th st.

My next trip will be to Park Slope right here in Brooklyn.

Do you have any favorite bike routes in your city? Please share

                          

Project Indiana
I must say at the beginning of the presentation he switched from talking about the MySQL acquisition to selling us a new version of Open Solaris called Project Indiana, which seems to be led by no less than Ian Murdock creator of Debian. I suppose its his job now to sell sun and he had to do it, but things got a lot more interesting specially in the Q&A.

So for Project Indiana, as you can imagine having someone like Ian Murdock there means Open Solaris will have apt capabilities (like Debian or Ubuntu).

The other thing that caught my eye about Project Indiana (coming from the Linux world) is that Sun will require all drivers to be open sourced, otherwise they won’t be accepted to the distribution. I’m not sure if this has done anything for projects like Debian where they’re really strict, but Sun is a monster with a lot of corporate influence, maybe their new Open source approach will help things change (manufacturers releasing drivers with open licenses), and finally we’ll get lots of drivers available for Linux as well.

They also mentioned an “open source” license called CDDL (“cuddle” as they call it), no clue about its differences, if its good or bad, it seems to me there might be something weird behind it, but I’m just talking out of my ass here, I’ve not read it yet. It’d be good if someone could complement this article with their thoughts on CDDL vs GPL2 vs LGPL vs others…

How things have changed

Quoting Antoniades:

“Basically we have an influx of cash”

MySQL AB went from a 400 employee company to being part of an organization of about 34,000 employees, and now they have a lot more cash, the purchase according to Antoniades was mostly paid in cash (and you know cash is king baby!).

Philip even mentioned they’re hiring 2 SysAdmins for their New York office, (contact him if you’re interested), also, when they need a feature, they just don’t put it in the wish list, if its important enough they get 30 engineers from Sun to help them.

He made a lot of emphasis about how they already got a guru focused on optimization of MySQL and how they’re pushing for more threading (parallel programming) on MySQL. He said that Sun has a lot of DB experience, that they basically helped Oracle in getting their DB to run spotless on Solaris and they have the knowledge about DB development problems as well as a lot of smart people to help them.

On the Q&A session I finally learned that Yes there’s plans between Java/MySQL integration (stored procedures in java could be a project to come, and they mentioned that a couple of the MySQL AB engineers had already done something along those lines, and as the acquisition was happening the people from Sun brought up the fact they knew about such efforts. MySQL AB has always been a good Java shop, and they claimed their jdbc driver was always one of their best products). MySQL basically wants to learn a little more of that engineering discipline from Sun, and it seems like a nice blend between 2 very different cultures.

Other interesting topics of conversation during Q&A were about using Memcached as a storage Engine, so that you can use MySQL as a client for Memcached, maybe it sounds as an extra layer with a certain overhead, but you could certainly do a lot of more complex stuff just by using SQL, seems interesting, didn’t know you could actually do that (actually opens a lot of possibilities in my mind for stuff we need in MyBloop.com that we were planning to use raw key-value-approach on memcached)

Also learned about a new storage engine called Maria, that will be the successor of Innodb.

So I think that now, we can be sure that MySQL will be churning out a lot more fixes (in shorter periods, maybe MySQL 6.0 will come out sooner now) given the cash and new added man power, probably the folks using MySQL enterprise will be even more benefited by this, they talked about a lot of enterprise tools to optimize queries, analyze queries, very interesting stuff.

                          

This post is to share with you my favorite pictures. Feel free to share them, they show the spirit of many New Yorkers, and they’re quite a good idea of something to do for free with lots of strangers of your own town.

The very start, in color, for your context

Girl smiling over someone’s shoulders

V for Vendetta

Yes, it’s a Macbook

Air full of feathers

Floor covered in feathers

Now the B&W’s

The battlefield

The arm of evil

Breathing from the top of the Pole

A Beautiful face

Luchador

Probably allergic to feathers

Come and get me, I’m dressed as a chicken (most hilarious moment, they beat him to the ground)

Gas Mask

Pure Joy

                          

Click here for all the pictures.

We went yesterday on a school field trip to the Yankee stadium for a tour. The stadium is being torn down
they will open a New One next year (right across the street).

If you’re in New York and have the time, be sure to visit the stadium before its gone, its a great piece of history of this city and of this country’s culture, it’s awesome being there, a truly magical place where unbelievable things always happen, go soon if you haven’t done it before.

                          

On our way back from the museum, back in January, I had to sneak out my camera to take a picture of the first Amazon Kindle I got to put my eyes on.

She was an asian girl who probably has something to do with amazon, cause this devices were sold out the minute they came out.

The device is pretty amazing, but I’m not sure If I’d spend $400 on it.

Eventually this is what the subway will be like in the future, everybody holding digital books, to read books, blogs, news… no more deciding which book to bring with us today.

                          

It’s all organized it seems by a group called Improv Everywhere Global, they like to create scenes.

                          

There’s been a discussion this week on the New York Tech Meetup mailing list, and this guy’s answer (Allan Benamer) has to be documented somewhere. Check this out.

“…find it difficult to understand why a Stanford can achieve such great town-and-gown synergies that brought the world Yahoo!, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Google, Silicon Graphics, etc., and a Columbia or a Rutgers or a Cornell or a SUNY cannot.”

I’m from the West Coast and got to see the dotcom boom up close. I think it’s not just Stanford but my alma mater, Berkeley, and a host of other great schools on the West Coast like UCLA and Cal-Tech that are also helping out. The truth of the matter is that much of NY Metro’s inherent “nerd power” is sucked up by financial services firms. An engineer being paid upwards of $100k a year to do crappy Oracle SQL calls for some financial services Intranet app is pretty much the average around here. There’s no incentive to innovate as a result. Plus, there’s a cultural problem. If you go on BART, you’ll see people reading programming books all the time. Here, it’s just multiple copies of Kite Runner on the subway, (not that there’s anything wrong with that, that’s why I moved out here.)

The nerd infrastructure is just not supported well either — nerds need Fry’s and great tech book stores like they do in the Bay Area. Here, all we’ve got is J&R, a host of cheesy grey market electronics retailers and Barnes and Noble. It’s hard out here for a nerd. ;)

That said, I would more than welcome whatever energies are poured into a Silicon Alley. I just hope that the infrastructure gets better as a result.

                          

Plaza Venezuela Subway Station, Caracas, Venezuela – Any weekday starting at 6:30am

And I don’t think its due to bad subway planning (of course it could be better), but Caracas subway is way more frequent than NY subway, wait times are really short specially at rush hour.

No subway station in New York is that full at 6-7am, at least I haven’t seen one. It seems New Yorkers sleep a little more late, try to get on the subway on Bedford Av towards Manhattan at 9am… is everyone late for work? does everybody start work at 9:30 or 10am? I only see the immigrants (probably illegal) going to work early in the morning here in New York.

Photo courtesy of zethanx

                          

They gave out an amazing concert last night, the crowd went nuts and at the end people were screaming “OTRA OTRA OTRA OTRA”.

Se la comieron.

That’s me with my Leones del Caracas Baseball Cap – just a discrete sign to signal that I’m a Caraqueño

It’s awesome to see LAI first timers around you go nuts and repeat over and over how good they are. If Los Amigos Invisibles are coming to your town, don’t miss it.

If you want to get a taste of what they sound like, click here, you can get all of their albums in Amazon.com

                          

Tonight, July 31st of 2007 I had the privilege of attending a talk by the man himself, the creator of the C++ language, Bjarne Stroustrup.

He was sharing with us how things are going for the next version of C++0x – The 0x stands for a possible year of this decade where it will be released.

One of the interesting things that happened to me at this meeting was to finally have the honor of meeting Sebastian Delmont, and oh, those 3 geeky Red Hat guys, wonder if they were actually part of Red Hat or just hardcore fans, good thing I was wearing my Ubuntu shirt to represent for the Ubunteros.

As for C++0x, I guess my thoughts aren’t that deep, I honestly don’t care much about C++ at this point in my life, and it seems it’s an old language striving hard to keep the pace with newer features found in new languages. It seems its very hard to reach consensus on the C++ board, and its very hard to accept new features given the language is already too big, its also funny to see that everything that gets hughe (millions of people use it), will always have problems in terms of adapting to new conditions or injecting innovation to itself. Bjarne created the language around 25 years ago, and there are features that only now he’s finally been able to get accepted for this version. C++ however, we must admit is a language that’s heavily used, (but I think by end users, not the software engineering community), on software like Photoshop, Google search engine, and the Mars rovers (these were the examples Bjarnes kept bringing again and again, I would also be proud of course).

For me, I’ll stick to Python, Nasa’s been using it too for quite a while, the same with Google and many other applications, hey, YouTube’s backend runs in python.

                          

When we moved out of our ghetto latin neighborhood, my wife told me “You’re going to miss the food”, but today, I discovered one supermarket in Manhattan Ave. here in Greenpoint which has the best of both worlds.

Not only they have all the polish stuff that you can get in this neighborhood (which makes my wife’s life a lot better), but they also have latin food and best of all they have Harina Pan, to make the best arepas a Venezuelan guy could eat.

If you’re a Venezuelan and you’re planning to marry a polish person, get your ass to Greenpoint in Brooklyn, NY.

                          

If you’re about to make a release of your new tech product and you’re in the New York City area, maybe you should bump your elbow to these sites:

That’s it for my list now, please comment to contribute more links and I’ll update with your links.

                          

Click here for QuickTime Trailer

Or what I’d call, the Last Man Standing. I saw this trailer in the movie theater last night and really felt like going to see this movie. Being a New York resident its always impressive to see the city you live getting destroyed or changed so much after something that seems world war three or some kind of mankind elimination, specially when the trailer tells you something you often joke about with friends, which is “What would you do if you were the last man on earth?” (I like to put it more if it was me being the last man on earth with other 10 women and it was up to me to populate the earth)

If you don’t have quicktime, just hit play below to see it right here:

The misterious trailer right before transformers

But then I saw another trailer, which I could not get the name of the movie. It was shot with a home video camera, people were at an apartment somewhere in Broadway (Manhattan), they were basically like saying goodbye to a guy that was going to leave to Japan, and if I remember correctly, the lights go out, it feels like an earthquake, the camera goes to the window (it’s night time), and then there’w a HUGHE explosion coming from South Manhattan, people start running out of the apartment, sound goes in and out (the sound gets a lot better in the theater at this point If I remember correctly), then they go out the street, and swarms of people are running from south broadway, and you can see like a bunch of balls of fire falling everywhere, the camera runs, its really scary (I couldn’t help to think how scary it’d be if we were at war, the trailer with that camera made it feel more real), and then a Big metal piece, like the size of car falls on broadway, the camera turns, its the head of the statue of liberty, then I was so amazed I couldn’t tell the name of the movie, but a friend told me they didn’t put it, if somebody knows, please let me know what the name is.

UPDATE

So this is why the internet is beautiful, yesterday at lunch I told my friends about this trailer, and they were like, ah sure, whatever, but with the internet you get geeks like you that get excited about these really cool things, that in the end will make billions of dollars (like for example, the same thing happened to me the first time I read about The Matrix and nobody gave a shit when I told them about it, and now its a classic trilogy), so maybe this will be one of those things.

Thanks to RoRRO, Sebastian and JM for the info. They tell us this misterious trailer is an unwrapped project by J.J. Abrams, people have begun to take their cellphones to record the trailer on the movie theather, and all we have is this misterious website.

                          

If you travel on the subway like me, you can travel forward in time if you use the correct doors from train to train, I think you actually travel forward in time, instead of wasting time, if you for example need to Switch to L on 14st and you’re at Canal St, all you need to do, is take the express Yellow Line (I think it’s the R), but to make the best of your time, you need to walk to the very last cart of that platform, you make use of your “waiting time” to travel forward in time (or save time) once you get to 14st, since you get off, and the stairs to the L transfer will be right on the end of the track, then you go down stairs, and if you’re lucky enough, you can make it to the L without waiting.

I say you travel forward in time, cause if you get on the first car of the R, you will loose all your “waiting time” sitting at the beginnnig, and then you will have to do the walk you didn’t do in Canal St, when you get to Union Square…

so… in short, after this absurd, but “clear” example (yeah right), what’s the solution?

Make everybody travel like this…

If you do, and you have a well designed system, based on mining patterns on how your metro users travel every day, you could design the metro system to have people ride in certain cars.

You could either… mark cars of the train to say:

“This car will give you an optimum get off time if you get off at:
- station blah, blah, blah
or if you need to transfer to: L, 1,2,3″

So, you don’t stand in the way for people that actually need to get off and run for their next transfer…
anyway… just the thought of a maniac of traveling optimally on the subway.

Not sure if this made any sense gramatically, and I don’t think its even worth revising it… just ventilating my frustration with slow people…

Oh, and another thing, there should be “Staircases for People in a Hurry”, or “Fast Lanes in Staircases”, not just Up and Down directions, but actual, fast stair cases, so we don’t have to smell people’s asses going up the stairs like they’re doing a walk on the zoo on a sunday, please move your ass on the stairs people, you can make people loose transfers.

                          

Double Feature Finder

Esta pagina fue creada por un genio macabro de la trampa y la flojera, trabaja en Meetup.com, y creo que recibio standing ovation en el NewTech New York Meetup cuando la presento delante de los geeks de New York.

La idea de la pagina es brillante, buscas una pelicula, o cine, y te muestra todas las funciones en los diferentes cines… con la funcionalidad mas brillante para todos aquellos que vemos una pelicula y nos metemos luego en otra sala, y otra sala, hasta que cierrran el cine…

Ahora podras planificar tu triple tanda de peliculas cuando vayas al cine, ve a doublefeaturefinder.com, busca tu pelicula, haz click en “Click for Double Features!” y te saldran las peliculas a las cuales te puedes meter en ese mismo multiplex, la interfaz parece hecha en honor a un diagrama gantt.

Ahora podre ver Transformers, Harry Potter, Live Free or Die Hard, Sicko, 1408 y Evan Almighty quizas en solo 2 visitas a los cines correctos en las horas correctas, todo gracias a DoubleFeatureFinder.com

Nota: solo funciona para cines en USA.

                          

This is the MyBloop.com founding team.

                          

Supongo que en Venezuela y otros paises como Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru, etc. hay mucho talento mal pagado, esclavizado por menos de $1000 al mes, creo que si estas leyendo esto y quieres aprovechar tu talento al maximo, deberias empezar por unirte a la lista de correos que he creado, donde todas las semanas envio las descripciones de las oportunidades e informacion de contacto.

La lista de correos te servira ademas para ver que competencias debes pulir o aprender si quieres venir a USA, mas especificamente a New York a trabajar como desarrollador. Con 1 o 2 anos de experiencia puedes aspirar sueldos que empiezan por $50mil al ano, el limite del sueldo depende de lo pilas que seas, pero ya con unos 3 anos de experiencia aqui, estaras rondando facilmente los $100mil anuales o mas, todo depende la dificultad de lo que desees hacer. Se que si te metes en el area de finanzas (que es lo que mas se consigue aqui en NY), programando en lenguajes como C++ (multihilos), o en J2EE las pagas llegan facilmente a los $150k anuales. De todos modos hay muchas oportunidades para otras tecnologias mas suaves y practicas como Python, Ruby, PHP, y por supuesto para otras no tan practicas como .NET ;)

Aqui la direccion del grupo
http://groups.google.com/group/nycsoftwarejobs

Solo unete y empezaras a recibir los mensajes, supongo que tambien puedes suscribirte al feed RSS.

                          

Cuando me estoy comiendo mi cachito, escucho un carajo saliendo de la panaderia despidiendose de los empleados en espanol y con acento Venezolano… empiezo a pensar… verga si ese carajo es el dueno, entonces esta panaderia tiene que ser de Venezolanos.

Anoche voy a la panaderia de nuevo, y pregunto a la cajera si sabe de que pais son los duenos de la panaderia…

“They’re from Venezuela”

Al parecer son duenos de esa panaderia, y de otro cafe mas al este de la panaderia, tengo que averiguar cual es. Si alguien sabe pasenme el dato, es bien curioso descubrir negocios Venezolanos que no son publicitados como negocios Venezolanos y poder disfrutar de esos detalles que habia dado por perdidos como comerme un cachito y un jugo de naranja en la manana antes de ir a la oficina. Ahora puedo tener algo sabroso que desayunar.

Meibell.com habla tambien de Tisserie, una Venezolana computista que vive en Harlem.

                          

About us:

Temboo is a New York-based software company. We have developed a new software model which uses a powerful graphical interface to allow non-programmers to quickly build complex workflows enabling disparate databases, web services, and applications to communicate and interact. Think of our technology as an “inter-operating system,” a visual tool for developing advanced information services applications that actually works.

We are a small but well-funded company with versions of our product currently live; some of our first customers are leading financial institutions. Our company culture promotes individual contribution, innovation, excellence, and the belief that work should also be fun.

About you:
We are looking for developers with experience building complex but user-friendly interfaces. In this position, you’ll help us think creatively about how users interact with technology and find ways of creating systems that simplify compex processes.

Ideally, you possess most or all of the following traits/skills:

* Experience with Qt4, Python, and PyQt4
* Experience with AJAX development
* Broad familiarity with OO design patterns
* Understanding of good user interface design principles
* Experience working with information architects

Additional bonus points for:

* Familiarity with agile methods like XP and test-driven development
* Experience developing games
* Experience developing tools that use visual metaphors
* Interests outside of work (in your email, please tell us what they are!)
* Sense of humor

We are most interested in candidates who are in the New York area, or willing to relocate. However, telecommuting may be an option for the right individual.

If this sounds like you, please email your resume and a cover letter introducing yourself to jobs@temboo.com

                          

Mas fotos de Brooklyn y Manhattan tomadas ayer aqui.

                          

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).

                          

These are the pictures of a building size banner that has the letters “IV”. To someone that’s not in the scene of Grand Theft Auto, this is absolutely irrelevant, it might bring some curious people, but for those of us that know about it, we’re like, damn, Rockstar’s marketers are starting to play with my head, they want my $50.

The Teaser has a countdown for the Trailer of the game, I repeat FOR THE TRAILER, not even the launch date…

Talk about creating Hype.

By the end of the marketing campaign for this game, I bet some people are gonna be sleeping by the video game shops the night before it’s released.

                          

Creo que fue bien, pero no como para verla dos veces.

Los graficos muy arrechos, la pelea brutal, excelentes slow motions, pero no veo motivo para volverla a ver en el cine de pana. No te deja picado en lo absoluto, es una historia muy sencilla, supongo que es lo que se espera de una pelicula de batalla.

En algunas partes pude hacer analogias de contexto politico, pero nada que ver, cualquier debate o rumor que sale en las noticias que la pelicula tiene tinte politico me parece que son interpretaciones de fanaticos.

Mi veredicto seria el siguiente para cerrar:

Buenos efectos especiales, composicion y fotografia

Buena Pelea

El publico gay se va dar banquete, puro macho papeao y depilado corriendo en interiores, y el rey de los persas es un rolo e negro marico que se saca las cejas.

PS: Una anecdota al mejor estilo Larry David en Curb Your Enthusiasm. Cuando venia de vuelta, entra un pordiosero a pedir real en el metro, se para en frente de mi, y pillo que en un bolsillo del pantalon el carajo tiene un celular, le digo a mi novia, pilla la vaina, tiene un celular, cono e su madre, para verificar que es la parte de arriba del celular se me ocurre sacarme el celular del bolsillo, justo en ese momento, el carajo voltea y me dice “Thank you brother”, y yo no tenia ni un centavo en el bolsillo y le digo “Sorry, I’m just taking out my cellphone”, y en eso el carajo me dice “Another Fucking Pretender”… y yo por dentro “EL CONO DE TU MADRE MALDITO MOJONERO TIENES UN CELULAR TU TAMBIEN”, en eso el tren se mueve, y se le caen los reales en mis pies… jeje, recojo los reales y se los pongo en la mano, y el hijo de puta no me da las gracias, me vuelve a decir “Fucking Pretender”… de vaina empieza a sonar el theme song de Curb Your Enthusiasm.

                          

Esto es en Tribeca, en Franklin St. y Hudson St. New York

(Haz click en la imagen para ver mas fotos)

                          

La exposicion de las nuevas caracteristicas de Java 6, code name “Mustang”, va a ser dictada por La Ingeniera del Staff de Sun Microsystems Rima Patel Sriganesh.

Vamos a ver si puedo tomar asi sea una foto de las nuevas oficinas, y bueno, voy emocionado de escuchar los avances y las posibilidades de lo que se puede hacer con el nuevo Java 6, vamos a ver si se habla un poco de la apertura a GPL de Java. Entre las cosas que mas me interesan del nuevo Java 6 esta el tema de Scripting, la plataforma proveera soporte nativo a JavaScript y otros lenguajes (quizas custom)

When:
Thursday, January 18, 2007
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Where:
New Google Engineering Offices
76 Ninth Avenue (between 15th/16th St), 4th Floor
New York, NY 10011

ACTUALIZACION:

Fui a la reunion, estuvo muy buena, aprendi sobre como va a funcionar el Scripting, sobre mejoras considerables para Swing, y sobre herramientas de monitoreo como jconsole, que te permiten ver el estado de la maquina virtual, tambien hay un analizador de dumps de memoria, puedes detectar si hay deadlocks o donde pudieron haber memory leaks, tiene un lenguaje de busqueda de objetos, algo similar a un SQL pero para buscar dentro de un dump del stack, bien interesante lo que trae Java SE 6, creo que vale la pena totalmente actualizar. Tambien se discutio al comienzo de la charla sobre la movida de Java hacia GPL, y porque Sun decidio hacerlo ahora y no antes, la opinion de la audiencia es que fue demasiado tarde, 10 anos muy tarde :)

Haz click en la foto para ver mas imagenes del evento.

                          

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.

                          

Let’s see how many we are and lets share pictures.

We as Venezuelans need to start learning how to live abroad as fellows. Other cultures tend to help each other, I barely know 3 venezuelan friends here in New York, and that’s because I knew them back in Caracas.

Join the Venezuelans in New York Flickr Group

If there are more Venezuelan bloggers, it’d be great to start joining forces, just like Venezuelan bloggers do in Miami.

                          

Ya “Bote”, y espero que mi voto haya contribuido a “botarlo”, y que mi voto no haya sido “votado” a la basura despues que me fui, pq no me dieron ningun comprobante.

Me vesti de traje y corbata porque por lo menos para mi, es toda una ocasion poder dar mi voto para ver si ayudo a sacar a mi familia de tanta tension politica y tanta pasadera de trabajo.

No me encontre a KodeGeek que por cierto me gano publicando primero sus fotos (Sus fotos al parecer fueron a las 10:17am, las mias a las 10:00am), no se si las tomo despues de votar o antes, pero eso fue despues que yo vote), pero si me encontre a un amigo que conoci en Venezuela en la cola lo cual fue muy curioso porque vive en Venezuela pero esta registrado para votar aqui :p

Debo decir que por lo menos a las 10am, que fue cuando vote, solo espere 10minutos para votar. El ambiente era muy amigable y todos las personas organizando las votaciones me trataron muy bien, inclusive despues de votar y mojar el dedo, una muchacha en la mesa de votacion me enrojecio diciendome que mojara “el chiquito”, me pude mear de la risa, y recordar la jodedera de nosotros los venezolanos.

Chequeando en que mesa me tocaba votar, muy amables y educadas todas las personas que organizaban el evento.

No habian maquinas de votacion, simplemente agarrabas tu papeleta, marcabas tu voto con un lapizero en un circulo del lado derecho de tu candidato, doblabas el papel, y lo introducias en una cajita de carton, esperemos que no voten mi papeleta, pq no me quedo ningun comprobante de que vote, mas que mi dedo marcado de tinta y una toallita de esas de avion en una bolsita que tenia impresa la bandera de USA, lol.

Foto dentro de la embajada, no habian sino 2 personas en la cola.

Mi dedo manchado.

Y despues de votar, nos fuimos a caminar por el vecindario, pillamos el Arbolote de Navidad en Rockefeller Center, y luego pillamos que trajeron un monton de Nintendos Wii a Toys R Us.

                          

Thanks for the pictures Tati

Habibi Lounge
114 E 1st street (Houston)
New York, NY 10009
(212) 982-0932

                          

“What if for some odd reason, there was a nuclear explosion or something, or this wagon ended up in another dimension where the only survivors are the people within that wagon?”

Then I start looking at everybody around me and start thinking of:
- Who would I fuck?
- Who could be the love for the rest of my life?
- Who could be a sicko?
- Who would be lame?
- Who wouldn’t survive a few days?
- Who would we eat in case there’s no food?
- What’s the racial distribution?
- Who would be a pain in the ass?
- Are there any lesbos?
- Are there any gay couples? would we force them to fuck the available women? since we need to keep the species alive
- Would there be +3 women per man? or Would there be +3 men per woman? (The latter would suck, we’d have to share wifes, yes I’m not a feminist, so sue me)
- What If I’m the only man in this wagon and I can’t have children?
- Should we allow ugly people to reproduce?
- Should we allow dumb people to reproduce?
- Should we allow sick/weak people to reproduce?

Endless questions will arise, try it next time you hop on the subway, if you’re bored.

Certainly I’d prefer being on an L train if this happened to me, definitively not on the A train after 9pm.

And come to think about it, I started playing this game every day on my head after I started watching lost.

You don’t want to end up in a wagon like this…

Maybe something a little more like this:

                          

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

                          

Fui al mercado de las pulgas en Queens, echenle un ojo, muy parecido a comprar en Cementerio en Caracas, o en el mercado de las pulgas en Maracaibo.

                          

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)

                          

Turn up the Volume!!!

Turn up the Volume all the way, the music will be cool

Download in high resolution (Needs Quicktime or VLC with Quicktime codec Share it with Frostwire)

Anyways, this is just a test of what I can do with iMovie and a crappy cam, I already have over 20 minutes of footage of all Manhattan which I recorded a couple months ago, and I’m putting something much better for you guys to appreciate why I love New York.

Produced, Filmed, Edited and Distributed by Gubatron.

This video is licensed under the Creative Commons License, you can copy it and share it however you want as long as you don’t make a dime out of it, and as long as you give credit to Gubatron and wedoit4you.com

Donations are welcome by paypal, I need to buy a minidv cam, it’s just $350, it’d be cool if you could help me get half, just send paypal money to gubatron@gmail.com (Just in case that there’s a good soul out there who’ll give at least $1 for the entertainment)

                          

I saw this yesterday in Central Park. Several groups of over 5-10 guys aged 16-20 something had gathered on one of the hughe rocks of central park and they were training jumps, stunts and acrobatics.

After they practiced, they roamed through the park like a pack of wolves, wearing nothing but black shorts/black pants and snickers, they traversed the urban obstacles with Parkour/Tricking movements.

(These are the guys practicing in central park, this one is about to do a frontal backflip)

It’s nice to see how these new urban sports spread in big cities, I would say this social trends now travel faster thanks to kids publishing short flics on the internet.

Check out a great sample of Parkour (It get’s good when the french rap soundtrack kicks in)

Wikipedia defines Parkour as:

Parkour (pron. IPA /paʁ.’kuʁ/, often abreviated to PK) is a physical discipline of French origin in which participants attempt to pass obstacles in the fastest and most direct manner possible, using skills such as jumping and climbing, or the more specific parkour moves. The obstacles can be anything in one’s environment, so parkour is often seen practiced in urban areas because of many suitable public structures that are accessible to most people, such as buildings, rails and walls.

A traceur (/tʁa.’sœʁ/) is a participant of parkour.

Tricking

Now, there seems to be another similar trend called Tricking, defined in Wikipedia as:

Tricking is a comparatively new sport with roots in different forms of Martial Arts and Gymnastics. According to Tricks Tutorials’ Jon Call “Tricking can be described as an aesthetic blend of flips, kicks, and twists.” Tricking can be viewed as martial arts power tumbling.

Tricking has only recently come into its own as a recognised activity, although the various skills practiced have existed much longer and a variety of theories have been put forward as to where the term originated.

It incorporates and variates moves from different arts such as the Backtuck from Gymnastics, 540 kick from Tae Kwon Do, Butterfly Twist from Wushu and Double Leg from Capoeira. In general, practitioners are capable of performing the majority of their tricks on grass, regular flooring or even concrete, without the requirement for mats or plyometric flooring.

If you want to see a real good example of Parkour mixed with Tricking, See this video, from 3Run, a “Tricking” group from UK.

                          

Click on Read more to see credits

Shot on a Cannon PowerShot SD110 (so bear with me until I get a dv camera)
Edited with iMovie (so bear with me until I get the hang of Final Cut Pro, the subtitles could’ve been better, but I lost them and had to do them again, and I didn’t have time to do them the way I wanted so I could show it before than anyone else)
Camera by Gubatron
Voice by Gubatron
Edited by Gubatron
Music Loops mixed by Gubatron using the basic GarageBand loops (I’m gonna get the Jampacks soon, don’t worry)

                          

Thanks to Tati who told me about this particular happening in New York. I followed her advice and here’s a Gallery of pictures.

I’ll be posting a video report in the next minutes hours.

                          

I found this group of musicians today on my way back home at the Columbus Circle subway station, around 7pm, on the Blue line platform.

If you guys get to see this, I was the first person to put some cash on your cello cover, then I started recording this.

I wish I would’ve gotten more footage but I ran out of battery (thank you Murphey!)

PS: For some reason the video stalls towards the end on my computer, in case you can’t see the URL of their site, please go to BreakOfReality.com