Archive for the 'Random Stuff' Category

Call to an end of keys and locks as we know them

Thursday, May 30th, 2013

Screen Shot 2013-05-30 at 8.45.12 AM

I’m personally trying to simplify my life as much as possible, getting rid of the things I don’t need/enjoy. Keys are one of them. When you have too many locks in your life, this is particularly uncomfortable, and those few electronic locks in the mix that you find nowadays with fobs/passwords can only help so much, fobs still can be lost (lost my office’s key fob this week for example, it’s been a nightmare and it’ll cost me $50 to replace if I don’t find it)

In an ideal world, whoever solves this problem in a way that it’s cheap, safe, uses as little energy as possible (none would be sick so it can compete with regular keys, or at least human energy) wil have a billion dollar in his/her hands.

The ideal solution should work like magic, and these locks should be installable in doors, gates and vehicles. No passwords should be shared, and the lock magically opens to those who are authorized to use them.

These news by Motorola/Google are very promising, however I don’t buy the “pill” solution, but I’d definitively be willing to apply some sort of invisible electronic NFC tattoo in my hand or my arm, so that when my hand is near the lock it gives off a unique magnetic signature so I can be validated. Think NFC chips for your body.

For those of you who don’t want to have a tattoo, perhaps there could be a version of the NFC tag that we could place on the back of your watch if you wear one, or if you wear rings or some kind of jewelry at all times it could be attached there.

The idea is that you don’t have to carry your authentication mechanism in a wallet or a key ring, so that you can just go out not worrying about carrying keys with you because you are or have the keys on you all the time.

How to use Google’s calculator to convert Amps and Volts, to kWh

Sunday, May 26th, 2013

Say you have an electric engine that consumes 8 amps at 12 V, and you would like to know how much this would translate in kilowatt hours?

Go to Google’s search box and type

8 amps * 12 v * 1 hour

Screen Shot 2013-05-26 at 8.27.15 AM

And you will get the total output in Joules, which is 345,600 joules.

Then tell google

345600 joules to kwh

And google will tell you

0.096 kilowatt hours (which is what a small electric fan will consume in an hour), or the same as 8 * 12 = 96 watts * 1 hr, 96 Wh

Screen Shot 2013-05-26 at 8.29.47 AM

What do you carry in your backpack?

Saturday, April 27th, 2013

my backpack contents as of april 26 2013

I’m a software developer and this is everything I was carrying in my backpack today April 26th 2013 (from the top, left to right)

  1. A case for SD cards.
  2. Raspbery PI I’m toying with at the moment.
  3. A roll of #punsr stickers
  4. US Passport, you never know when you get a crazy invitation (or emergency) to fly out.
  5. Emergency Icebreaker underwear, you never know if your luggage might get lost, you can at least take a shower and have a fresh pair.
  6. Checkbooks, electronic bank keys.
  7. Snes-like USB gamepad (for the Raspberry PI video game console project)
  8. pens
  9. Microsoft USB wired optic mouse, still my favorite, never worry about not having batteries for it.
  10. Punsr business cards, Tech Consulting business cards.
  11. Amazon Kindle Fire HD
  12. iPad
  13. Beats Pro headphones
  14. toothpicks, so you never have to suffer with food between your teeth for hours.
  15. coins (I try to not have coins, I keep them in the car for parking meters)
  16. Nexus 4
  17. Galaxy SII
  18. USB power adapters
  19. WD My Passport 2TB backup drive (I keep another at home attached to my monitor for automatic backups)
  20. Macbook PRO Power adapter
  21. European power converters
  22. Ethernet cable for the raspberry pi and because you never know when you might need it.
  23. prescription sunglasses, needed in sunny florida.
  24. MacBook PRO 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB ram, 500GB SSD

Skiing tips for turns

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

Took a skiing lesson, I’ll write all these tips here so I can read it next year or the next time I go skiing now that it’s all fresh in my mind:

1. When it’s time to turn, don’t think about breaking with the turn, once you’ve turned the ending position of both skis will make you drop speed.

2. Always put your weight on the downhill ski, never on your uphill ski.

3. Don’t lift your uphill ski as you turn, it’s not necessary.

4. Don’t put them so close together as this will make you put weight on the uphill ski.

5. The uphill ski must barely be pressing against the snow, it should feel the same as when you slide two skis together down perpendicular to the slope from a standing position.

6. Your torso must always be facing the same way as your skis, don’t try to turn with your torso so much (as when you’re learning to turn with plows)

7. You can use your pole to turn when it’s steeper (if you don’t have to think about all the prior tips), still learning this one.

8. After you turn, try skiing on the edge of your skis.

9. If your legs start opening as you ski after the turn, shift your weight towards your downhill ski and bring your uphill closer, not the other way around (cause of falls)

10. After you can do all previous 9 without thinking, try to ski on the hill facing edges of your skis as soon as you make a turn, this is how you start training for carving. You should be leaving to thin lines of snow behind you.

Can the brain of a man be programmed by man-conceived language and programmers?

Saturday, December 1st, 2012

When you try to express thought, intent, backed behind some other abstract motivation as a way to cope with the boredom of “reality”, a.k.a. we’re just a bunch of fucking fancy monkeys on a spec of dust. playing a social mind/video game we that must of us somehow respect called “society”, it’s only because our advanced brains have managed to build common abstractions upon abstractions product of which we have things like the technologies that make our lives so much easier.

We’re so advanced now that we have created different conventions of thought to express ideas, some simple, some so genius that can only by understood by few but admired, adored and never really understood by the majority, e.g. nanoscale chip design, nobel prize winner discoveries, Mozart’s work, The Google Search Engine. These individuals managed to be WAY WAY more prominent than the rest, they’re so prominent in fact, that the product of their focus and work has managed to linger in the brains of many of us, ideas, constructs and abstractions so powerful that never die and that actually make it into the real world to change reality.

However, these minds of ours keep expressing their thoughts using the same conventions: Language, Math, Technology, Art, (I’ll even put Religion on this list), and languages, languages, languages, in my case the most amazing abstractions I’ve ever come up with are expressed using computer programming languages.

There’s a certain difficulty in expressing thought and logic through mathematical based logical expressions, tokens, and commands, upon which we start building all sort of high level abstractions, some that could never be matched to what most people realize reality is about.

A programming language is certainly a much lower language than the one that runs on the ultimate computer of all, the human brain.

The human brain runs such an amazing architecture that it can understand thought to such extent that we can collaborate or admire the thoughts of others, e.g. Musicians, Music Lovers, Artists, Art Lovers, Scientists, Science lovers (most geeks are in this group), Film.., you get it…

Once you realize this, you can begin to try and express what you feel or recognize from world with your own abstractions, most of them are probably impossible to expres unless someone is on your brain. I think these are the hidden lower levels, less secure levels of the programming language of the matrix. ;)

Eventually we realize that we can’t be programmed (ultimate human ego trip follows…) that we are like the center of the matrix, the one that runs that simulation, we’re just a special combination of matter in the center of the very universe, capable to start to describe itself, the more it can describe, based on what it learns, it’ll ultimate find out through the spread of thoughts like mine that WE are the creators of the universe, we’re just busy enjoying the moment a little too much now.

So life… if you are elsewhere out there, you’re just another awesome combination, confabulation of a massive amount of atoms to form conscience.

Then, if lower languages born out of such a capable computer, a computer that runs on any language and that learns instantly sometimes to repeat the motion of lots of atoms the same way (thought, cause, reaction), you must realize that it is your mind that programs the universe. Then you can control it.

Are you still up here with me? ;)

PS: And of course, you must start by trying your universe manipulating programming language (run in that brain of yours, what a cool “cpu architecture” eh?) by manipulating others to do as you please, just make sure to use them wisely. #hipnosys #massiveHipnosys

No more lame party tray ingredients, here’s my kick ass combination

Thursday, September 6th, 2012

Next time you have guests over, wow them with the following combination of snacks served on a party tray:

1. Your favorite chocolates (mine’s cheapest are Kit Kat, Milky Way, Snickers, M&Ms)
2. Peanuts.
3. Raisins.
4. Your favorite Cheese.
5. Your favorite Ham.
6. Hot Dog Sausages.
6. Sliced baguette (many cylindrical pieces)
7. Tequeños

What other things would you add?

It’s 2012 and elevator designers still haven’t put an UNDO button in panels

Thursday, April 26th, 2012


Don’t you hate when the wrong floor has been selected by someone and then everybody in the elevator has to pay with time for that error.

Enter the UNDO button for elevators. Such a simple idea.

It could work in 2 ways.

1. You press the button and it unselects the last button pressed, and so on.

2. You press the button, all selected buttons change color to hint the user you can undo any of them, and then press the floor you want to unselect.

Better yet! when are touchscreen elevator panels coming? that way we could update them, and even put ads on them (and even ads related to the floor you’re going to if you’re in a commercial building)

Infographic: Latinos in the USA

Friday, April 13th, 2012

Latinos in the US are…

  • 50.5 million people
  • 16.3% of the population
  • 1 in every 6 people
  • 1 in every 4 children
  • 56% of the population growth from 2000 to 2010
  • 1 trillion dollars in buying power
  • 65% mexican, 9.1% puerto rican, 3.6% salvadorian, 3.5% cuban, 2.8% dominican, 2.2% guatemalan, 1,9% colombian, and more.

Via LatinoBrandingPower.com

The Painter that learned to meditate

Friday, February 24th, 2012

It was almost 3:30am and his eyes had just opened from a short 10 second nap he didn’t foresee coming, The painter was exhausted

All day he was working on a very intricate painting, with hundreds of details to keep track off, he was a perfectionist and as he went to bed and lay in bed with his eyes closed, he was still planning the strokes he would take the next day to finish another portion of his painting, when all of a sudden he realized he was no longer in bed, he was in a dream, and he could remember being fully conscious and that this place wasn’t real.

It was almost as if he was holding on to a line used to send information from both sides of a black hole, only that this one doesn’t suck light, it sucked consciousness.

It seemed that in either of these states of consciousness the amount of information that was being processed by his brain was so much that it could hardly work in parallel, his dream state was borrowing enough brain power to render the graphically detailed context only the mind of a painter could render, he realized this was the reason his dream state of mind was more like a movie on which he had no control of what was going to happen next.

The painter thought of all this, and thought of how every time he was curious to try and see what meditation was about, it all seemed to him like a croak of shit, just a voice telling him to imagine all these things and to somehow feel them, that was too hard to achieve, at least for him it was.

But this, this was the real deal, so he would practice every night this self-taught form of lucid dream meditation, he’d just try to focus on something really hard just waiting for his body to give up and go to sleep, yet his conscious mind would end up in the dreamworld where he’d find all sorts of answers to life, nobody had to explain anything.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License by Gubatron http://gubatron.com

Breakfast extra Protein, Vitamin and other supplements

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

From left to right:

Ginkgo Biloba (just in case it actually works)

Calcium + D3 600mg.

Centrum multivitamin

Glucosamine HCI with MSM 1500mg x 2 (For cartilage and collagen development, no more pain in my knees, or ankles when running, stuff is awesome)

Whey Protein (24 grams of proteins, 1 gram of fat, 3 grams of carbs)

H20 300ml.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License by Gubatron http://gubatron.com




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