Fuck new year´s resolutions... what about the questions ?

For me, it is normal that a great experience leaves more questions than to come and solve some shit.... so, with no more delay, here are the great questions I have thought during 2009 and that I am hoping to solve in the following years:

When are you really sure about it ?
are you sure ?
Why audio cassettes are no longer available ?
Why didn´t the clothes manufacturer created a real standard yet ?
If best things in life are free... why the bastards complain about not having decent education housing and others ??
Where does the lost day that people loose by flying to another part of the globe goes ?
Are they really older ?
Then which one is the reference of time ?
Is Dr. Dre going to release Detox?
Is it going to be out before Im 80 ?
Am I going to reach 80 ?
Does coffee really wake you up ?
Will I ? (I will !!!)
Always ? (I hope)
When is enough of something ?
Where the fuck is that voice coming from ?
Ok, so there is no God, then who created the unlimited parallel realities and the model ?
Even tough reality bites sucks ass, do we still just need coffee and a cigarette to live by ?
Will I reach comfort ?
2010 is kind of a big name for next year... don´t you agree ?

anyways... too much to think about but the list keeps getting longer.

Feliz Navidad

Como pasa el tiempo... todavia recuerdo cuando empece esta pagina antes de irme a estudiar el master...

Increible la cantidad de cosas que han pasado, sin embargo si hubiese que listarlas no juntaria mas de 10. No importando el paso del tiempo, y el pobre diseno del template usado, que no ha sido cambiado aun, este "humirde" blog se suma a los buenos deseos de toda la gente que en este momento esta cargando la red de tarjetas electronicas para no perder plata en correos... JajajAja

Un abrazo para todos, paz y amor para los cristianos, el infierno para los que no :P
JAjajaja

Looking for the perfect laptop

**Afrika Bambaataa beats on the background**

Universal people, looking for the perfect laptop !

Now getting serious.... I have to switch my 1.5 years HP Pavillion dv2000...
What do I need / want ???

I want the just the option just in between a netbook and a notebook
Portability: 4.5 lbs max
Screen: from 12'' - 14'' max, 1280 x 800 min
Battery life: min 5 hours
HDMI
no CD rom... rather have a external one and gain in space/volume


What models I been looking:

HP DM3T: Intel Core Duo SP9300, 4 GB DDR3 ram, 13'3 screen, 4.2 lbs Decent Nvidia graphics (the AMD version has DDR2 ram but a better ATI video card) PRICE ~ 1100

HP ENVY 13: 4 GB DDR3, 3.74 lbs light, Battery life ~12hrs (thats what the web says so it should be around 7-8 hours) PRICE ~ 2000 (OMFG)

Toshiba Satellite T135-S1307 TruBrite 13.3-Inch

Sager NP8410
http://www.sagernotebook.com/product_customed.php?pid=234739


HAAHAHAHA so many option... not too much money :S
Any recommendations ?? suggestions ?

10 Great Things about the US... one year after

It is really easy to fall into the hype of feeling that all of the new that a country can offer is better than what you already have... The grass is greener on the other side of the fence... you know. Previous posts present some of the details that I found cool some months after settled

-El ABC de USA (Dec 08)
-Extremely Necessary (Feb 09)

Now, more than a year after, I thought that re-thinking it could be a good exercise... NOTICE: JUST DUMB SHIT ! no deep thoughts but only consumer based goodies... top 10, in random order, here we go:

1) The F****ing internet !!!!! for every geek, having the basic cable internet sounds as the minimum... but when the common is 15 MBPS... OMFG, it's like heaven... stream, skype torrent and more on one of the (probably) fastest internet connections available for cheap clients :P

2) HD Television... Watching the NFL Red Zone channel almost makes you cry of how cool and real the image can be.

3) Concerts... Almost every band drops by the ATL while in the states... that gives us a nice chance to watch tons of good bands.

4) Cell phones + Wireless Internet Network... Decently reliable, omnipresent access to limitless information !!! yezzzzz.

5) Honest, consumer-oriented services and commerce. I miss that everyday I have to buy something at home... everybody is trying to trick you.

6) Driving. People it is not as aggressive, at least behind the steering wheel... in Chile you have to drive and of course add all of the body language you can to tell the other drivers to go to hell or to screw themselves.

7) Comedy Central... need to say more ?? it is not included by any cable provider in Chile

8) Well maintained Public Parks... Basically this is something about the ATL. They have the advantage of being the Olympics host back in 96, so the sports infrastructure and the public parks are still flawless.

9) Decent sized salads ! finally salads that come in a kilo-sized bucket !

10) Stores like ross, tjmax, marshalls and every extremely cheap store including probably out of season, but nice quality brands...

Sleeping mechanics 101 - Part 3: The quality

Well, after reading the comment left in my last post I realize that there is a bunch of parameters that of course affect the quality and that they where not taken into consideration. Nevertheless, I got some insights not in the causes for my sleeping quality, but only of the effects.... I might be able to find the thin line between feeling like shit and waking up sharp as a knife....
I divided the sleeping quality into 2 groups: positive nights (including Fair, Good and Fully Awake nights) and negative nights (Sleepy & Like shit).

First, an overview of the quality, with their amount of hours slept and the number of nights I experience them order by quantity:

hours slept	#	quality
07:37	7	Good
07:51	7	Sleepy
05:48	5	Like shit
07:08	4	Fully awake
08:32	4	Fair
07:30	3	No records

Hmmm... it's like the negative and positive nights are pretty even. Let's look at the same data but now ordered by the amounts of hours slept, giving quality levels a simple value: Fully Awake=5, Good =4, Fair=3, Sleepy=2 and Like shit=1. Let's see :

hours slept	#		quality
05:48	5	1	Like shit
07:08	4	5	Fully awake
07:30	3	---	No records
07:37	7	4	Good
07:51	7	2	Sleepy
08:32	4	3	Fair

Now it seems more clearer that the best quality sleep for ME (of course these values should change between individuals) should be around 7 hours. Let's give them a +- 30mins, because near 7:40 minutes there is already information of a lower quality sleep (from Fully awake to Good). So from 6:30 to 7:30 I should consider it my hours_slept target zone. For weekdays, since I have to be at work at 8:30am then my latest sleeping hour shouldn't be later than 1:30am, considering 30 minutes to wake-shower-drive (yes, I don't get any breakfast and I live really close to work :P... screw you commuters ! ).

After the mentioned logical exercise, it is no surprise that the average time I went to sleep for the most positive nights are 1:21am (Fully awake mornings) and 1:38am (Good mornings).

On the other hand... How can I know that my weekend behavior does not affect the presented averages ?? they should, since they are pretty messed up. Well easy, by checking the average time I woke up on each of those optimal nights:

#	hours slept	quality	avg(went to bed)	avg(woke up at)
3	06:38	Fully awake	01:21	07:06
7	07:37	Good	01:38	09:07

Looks like good nights have some bias to my weekend-waking-up-hours.... but anyways, I am interested in knowing the time range... independently of the day :P

Insights:

• The distribution between the number of "positive nights" and the negative ones is pretty even...
• On weekdays, my perfect time-to-go-to-bed is around 1:20am, to optimize my sleeping quality
• The curve shows that there is a high quality sleep range which starts to decrease after more than 7.5 hours of sleep
• Along with that, since the worst quality of sleep I had has an average of slept hours of 5 hours and 48 minutes, I would suspect that below that time range there should be another high quality sleep range, due to the sleeping cycles... so I might start sleeping some 5 just as a test....
  

Interesting, now I know myself better and I can push myself to bed with a better excuse... more experiments to come ? we'll see...

Sleeping mechanics 101 - Part 2: The Data

Ok, The data set is a sleeping log of 30 days (with some days missing, just because... :S ). They contain the time I went to bed, not the exact time I fell asleep, but is the best measuring point... I assume you agree. Also, there are few days where I woke up and could not sleep right after going to the bathroom or setting up the alarm for next day... whatever... you get the picture: the sleep times are quite 'optimistic' in terms that are biased towards the highest sleeping time possible.

Day of the week	hours slept
Monday	06:52
Tuesday	06:59
Wednesday	06:23
Thursday	07:19
Friday	08:45
Saturday	08:13
Sunday	07:22

The median of the data: 7 hours and 5 minutes

Insights:

• First of all, it was impressive to see that my normal perception of the hours I sleep where underestimated, normally responding "I sleep around 6 hours", while my average time is: 7 hours and 25 minutes (app).
  
• I wonder what makes me sleep less during the middle of the week (Wednesday, min value of 6 hours and 23 minutes, one hour less than my average)
• It was easy to predict that even though Friday and Saturday nights are the ones that I went to bed the latest (average of 2:30 am, 1:15 am on Fridays and 3:50am on Saturdays) , they where the ones I slept the most...
• Since I am playing soccer on Saturday "dawns" (9:30am) I have changed a little the party-routines and try to start messin' around earlier (9 pm more or less) to be able to wake up for the matches.
  
• The average time I went to bed during weekdays (or nights before I have to go to work) is around 12:45 - 12:50 am, something I would expect, considering that after a late dinner (9pm) I normally watch one or two movies or something like that.

Finally, no too many discoveries but interesting values and trends. My next post will be related to the quality of sleep and what are the conditions when I defined my sleep time as "positive"

Cheers and keep dreaming :P

Sleeping mechanics 101

Intro

Ok. To get the basic context on this blog post you have to understand my mechanics (for the last 15 years more or less).
I normally have trouble going to sleep early, I am a more active person during the evenings and night... just not a morning person, I suppose. Well, the whole "growing up thing" about working kills me because of the so called **office hours**. Ok, so you need to be completely aware and concentrated from 9 to 5 but on the other hand I can't go to sleep earlier than 12 - 1 am...
So the classic comment I've heard was "Just go to bed earlier", BUT ! of course the need to have my nightly-happy-time pushed me to ask me the questions:

• How can I optimize my sleep time ?
• Can I even reduce my sleeping hours and feel active and awake ?

The journey

First... to understand the sleeping mechanics I surf the net and read a few ebooks. The overall knowledge and tunable parameters that I learned about will be presented (just the 'meat', btw) in the following paragraphs:

Melatonine: Hormone which is highly related to the day-cycles (the so called circadian cycle). Our exposure to sun light is the main way to control his levels. Conclusion: get sunlight -> melatonin -> deep sleep (or at least, the urge of sleeping)

Day temperature cycle: During normal operation, the body has a daily cycle of temperature which ranges between 36 and 38 Celsius. By the time that we want to go to sleep our body should be closer to the lower limit (thus, avoid doing sports at night if you want to go to sleep in the following hour)

Sleep Stages: There are 5 sleep stages defined by the common wisdom: REM and Stages 1,2,3 and 4, where stages 3 and 4 are known as deep sleep. The order in which their appear is 1,2,3,4,3,2,REM,2,3,4,3,2,REM and so on.... The important variable for each is the time they take on each cycle during sleep. During deep sleep stages (longer in the early cycles) our body does the most of his muscle regeneration and rest. REM stage on the other hand presents a high brain activity, is the stage where we dream on... and is the easiest stage to wake up from, or at least the one from you will feel more awake rested and ready (<--Goal). Then.... when are my REM stages and how long are they ??

My data collection stage was to log nightly for approximately a month the hours I slept, the time I went to bed and intensity or feeling after waking up (tired - sleepy - like crap - really awake - hyperactive, etc...)

On my next post I will share the data with you, I am still trying to find more angles to conclude something that can help me optimize my sleeping time. I know that it is not a sample highly representative but I hope it will be enough to draw some suggestions at the end.

Attached to this introductory post is a screenshot of the hours of sleep per night...

Esta viejito... pero todavia me rio !

JAAJAJ "y ese weon de riveros tiene como 50 agnos" !!! AJAJAJA

Experimenting with my sleep time... the unconscious part - INTRO

After some time of sleeping awfully, probably due to work, getting used to a different culture and high stress levels (which I think they are messed up because I am smoking less) I got the idea of optimizing my sleep time... no "I need to get more sleep" crap, but the "I want to sleep the same (or less even better) but still have tons of energy and awareness"

The project then it's simple...

1) study a bit the mechanics of sleeping
2) data acquiring (30 days of basic sleep-data logging)
3) analysis
4) results and steps fwd...

Tomorrow I'll finally end task #2, meaning that I can try to catch my best sleep time intervals, Identifying approximately the length for each of my sleeping cycle stages.

More to come in the next days...

The dr. is back !

Streaming and/or Peer2Peer Television

It was about time !!!

One of my passion's is soccer, no doubt, and to follow the Chilean league or other big games from elsewhere was really difficult... basically it was listening to the local radio's through the internet... until streaming and P2P video transmission started.
For the world cup of 2006 (Germany) I watched almost every game in Singapore. It was fair in quality, and allowed me to watch the games at 3am at my dorm... So thanks to SOPCAST for that.

After some years of taking advantage of the different software available in order to watch sports, the distribution model has changed. The stand alone programs have been replaced by simple Flash-based peer 2 peer and the question was all the time in my mind... Why the hell the TV channels did not provide their programs based on a subscription, or in pay-per-view methods ???
Is incredible how in the internet people and the open source/ pirates/ hackers/ developers go one (or in fact 2 or 3) steps ahead than the industry... where are the visionary managers ??

Well all of this thoughts came to me because I was really happy to see that the "soccer channel" (www.cdf.cl) from Chile is creating an international subscription package in
order to watch the games.

Why should I pay for something that is already available for free ?
Well the quality I assume is going to be different, much better. It should be reliable and not too expensive I hope. It is nice to see that mid-size companies are taking advantage of technology.

quik & kurupt !

The elephant never forgets

asi dicen... al menos en la cancion.
Saludos a Don Ernesto y a Don Alfonso... se les extraña !

LBS y lo que se viene en mi empresa...

Bueno, trabajo en una empresa chica (chica, 15 Mill. USD, www.airsage.com) y estamos ultimamente planeando con vision de guerrilla como se juntara plata para el mes siguiente.
Ampliar nuestro negocio central (info de trafico) es necesario por lo que estariamos saltando a proveer servicios basados en locacion (LBS) orientados a inteligencia de negocios, planificacion y/o marketing...
Echenle el looking al siguiente video que genero un colega con informacion de Washington DC durante el dia en que Obama juro para la presidencia...



Ta weno !

La historia de la vaca..

Mis viejos llegaron a Atlanta hace un par de dias de visita... todo un agrado tenerlos cerca de nuevo, aunque sea por un rato.
Mientras viajabamos del aeropuerto a mi casa para almorzar, mi viejo me contaba sobre lo estresante de los ultimos dias en Viña del Mar, preparando todo para salir de viaje...
El asunto es que entre sus obligaciones, debido a un error en el pago de las imposiciones de una trabajadora despedida (le pago las imposiciones por otra empresa), lo obligaron a pagar una multa y a ir a un curso de "conciliacion laboral"... algo asi como un curso de "anger management" AJAJaJaJajA
Despues de un par de minutos, separaron a los asistentes en grupos para hacer un ejercicio, donde les preguntaron:

"Ustedes, como se ven como empresarios ?? con que animal se identificarian ??"

La respuesta que me obligo a postear fue la de un tipo en el grupo de mi viejo...

"La Vaca... porque le doy leche a todos (municipalidades, inspeccion del trabajo, mis propios trabajadores, etc, etc...), me empujan sin cesar y al final todos me quieren faenar (matar)"

JAJAAa lo encontre genial...

Media Center en el Wii

Ya que me pitie mi play 3, estaba buscando algunas opciones para tener un media center y transmitir peliculas al Wii... aqui hay un buen video con la recomendacion de TVersity... un programa bastante decente y facil de usar... ahi enviare mas info

Bobby Fischer vs Gary Kasparov

I could not thought about it with other characters... but the intention of this is to try to understand which one of the approaches to greatness is more valuable... better... I don't really know...

In one side, you have a really bright, talented human being for a specific discipline. But it is not able to share it... so he drowns in his own greatness. Is the same picture as the tormented artist, the suicidal rock star...

And on the other hand you can face greatness with an attitude. Being a dick, and happy about it... moving masses and sharing with the world how fantastic little things can be done by a single individual.

There are so many people who inspires me to try to reach for greatness, so many situations that are in my memory as written in stone, and I am so afraid of forgetting just because life passes by so fucking fast 'til you reach the point where everything is over.

Cobain - Tupac - Bukowski - Pryor - Marin - Feynman.... soooo many fields of expertise, so many interesting examples.

My path to greatness could be the bastard child of the two extreme approaches ? some could say that I'm just confused... but as MURS said, I'm 10.000 different dudes rolled into 1.

Extremely Necessary

I was thinking about the stuff that any middle-age MUST HAVE while living in the U S and A (with Borat's accent, please...)

1. A car: This $^(^%^@$# country doesn't rely on public transportation... at all... After an excellent experience in Europe and South-East Asia, I arrived at a place that doesn't have sidewalks !!! at least in part of the suburbs.... that sucks ass.
   
   
2. If you have a car, a GPS or navigation system is a MUST too. If you don't want to find yourself killing your girlfriend while trying to get to a specific bar or tavern, concert or park, then you have to consider it... it avoids lame arguments and annoyances.
   
   
3. A laptop. Does it need an explanation ?
   
   
4. Wine opener, shot glasses and long glasses for pisco or rum... and a blender if you are more fancy.
   
   
5. Electronic gadgets... a house is not a home without them... I'm talking about a decent TV, a console, a good sound system and dvd player (who can read downloades movies, of course :P)
   
   
6. Health insurance or health program... you never know, don't ya ?
   
   
7. Get a desk and a desk chair... nothing worst than working in the dinning table.
   
   
8. A set of Tupperware's or any recipient for food, unless you can live out of frozen food.
   
   
9. A good Chinese restaurant's or pizza place phone and a nearby McDonald's, for the munchie's.

As soon as I get some more I'll share them with you... :P