September 30, 2010

By Autodesk

Designed with...

I've used AutoCAD for most of my life. Learned back in high school, and I've been toying with it ever since. In fact it surprises me how mainstream it's become in the past 5 years or so. Before you used to have 5 hardcopies of your blueprints so you could calculate on one, redline on another, have a backup just in case, etc. Now you just get the files on a CD, print up one or two hardcopies, and the rest is digital.

So of course it amused me the day I was adjusting my gearshift and I saw a little sticker promoting Autodesk on my bike. Of all the places you'd expect to see one of their ads.

I guess way too many engineers ride to work, and Autodesk figured a bike frame would be a good place to put a sticker with their name on it.

Still raining, so no bike to work. =(

Maybe tomorrow. For the mean time, it's a good opportunity to adjust and maintain.

September 29, 2010

Raining... again

Raining... again

It's raining... again. We've been getting rain and more rain. It all started last thursday, lightly though. But these past 3 days, it just started coming down. I can't complain because it mostly rains at night and at dawn, still, the rain and cold just makes it that much harder to get up when the alarm goes off.

Plus, I haven´t been able to ride my bike to work, which is probably my biggest complaint this week =)

Typically the rain starts around 2 PM and goes away around 4, which works out really well for me, I ride to work at 7 and 5. But this past week, no such luck: rain, the entire day through.

The weather man promised the rain would calm down by tomorrow, we'll have to see how right he is.

September 28, 2010

Soda #FAIL

Epic Fail

Is a screencap a photo? Not really, at least not in my book, given that the only skill required to properly execute a screencap is knowing how to press PrtScrn and then paste into Photoshop. So nope, this wouldn´t really be me trying to demonstrate my artistic abilities.

But, in the context of my Photo-A-Day project, in the sense that this would be a journal of important life events.. hell yeah, this screencap makes it 110% into my project =D

It was around 5 pm today when I got home and turned on my computer. I logged on to Twitter, only to see the awful news tweet by: a local newspaper was informing that Gustavo Cerati, lead singer of Soda Estereo, had passed away. That´s the kind of news you really don't want to start your evening with.

If you recall, Cerati is one of the most influential singers in ibero-american rock. He suffered a stroke back in May and has been in a coma ever since, and all of Latin America has been anxious to hear about any improvements in his condition.

People retweeted and retweeted the news, and 15 minutes later the tweet had snowballed into an international incident and trending topic (for those not familiar with the term, a topic goes trending on Twitter when a serious buttload of people are talking about it worldwide). All of Latin America was in shock, looking for whatever information they could find on the topic.

But something weird happened. 30 minutes later, no other bureau was mentioning the issue. Reuters, CNN, AFP... they were all silent. Even in Argentina, no news office had said a word. Weird.

Millions of people were going hysterical, on a single tweet done by our local newspaper. Just to get this into perspective, this is a newspaper that probably has 1/10th the subscribers of any local mom-and-pop newspaper in the US or anywhere else, and all of a sudden it had the attention of all of Latin America.

Of course by that time we all started to get suspicious. Nobody was saying a word about the issue, even the local paper that started it all had gone silent. Calls were made to the argentinian papers, to Cerati's medical center, to his agents... and that's when it all fell down like a ton of bricks.

It seems someone at the local paper had been a little too trigger happy, and had taken an unconfirmed rumor and put it on the digital edition and tweeted it. Cerati was still alive and in the ICU, his condition unchanged, which was confirmed via his Twitter account at 6:15 PM local time (00:15 GMT).

And despite the hoax having been debunked, the fallout on Twitter hasn´t died down yet. Almost 4 hours later  the tweets just keep coming and coming and coming.

Our local paper hasn't said a peep on the issue yet. I figure they're probably waiting for the crisis to die down,  either that or the whole editorial staff has been lynched by an angry mob.xD

September 27, 2010

Maps from way back when

Back in 1970

Looking for a map, I remembered that way back when there used to be a world atlas at the house. A big old thing, must have been at least 11x17", hardcover and all. I started going through the shelves, and what do you know... it's still there after all this time. Turning the first page, the publication date was 1970.

We´re all getting old =D

On a side note, I decided to turn over to Asia. And would you look at that kids, there really was a Soviet Union despite what Google Maps says xD

Back in 1970...

September 26, 2010

Inspir...on.

My Inspiron 1520 has been with me, if I recall correctly, about 3 years now. It's getting to be a bit of a clunker, but it works. Probably the best thing I did to it was downgrade to Windows XP from Windows Vista. From there on, it's been smooth sailing ever since. I never made the jump to Windows 7, and at least on this laptop I'm not gonna.

Inspir...on.


This morning the cooling fan started spinning on things as simple as Youtube, which I found unusual. I figured that it was worth a look, in any case during those 3 years of travelling with me into all sorts of environments, not once has it been cleaned on the inside. I completely took the thing apart, expecting to find a colony of dust bunnies climbing all over the innards. But the dust situation was surprisingly tame. Sure it was all over the place, but not as bad as I thought. What I did find was that the thermal paste on the CPU had turned into a rubbery, awful mess. So I put in a dab of new thermal paste and reassembled the whole thing. And here I am, hours later, the fan hasn´t made a peep.

I hate how chromed surfaces look under direct flash. Should have probably used a light tent for this one, but that would have meant getting out my D80 and the strobes, and that´s a whole other story for another day.

September 25, 2010

Math problems

Spent the day solving grade school math, just for the heck of it.


Math problems

September 21, 2010

September 20, 2010

Oh my GAWD...

Oh my GAWD... what is that... what is THAT... 


Ok, I knew it... I just knew it... it couldn´t be anything else...


It IS... it´s a gray hair, no, not even gray... it's white. There´s a big old white hair on my face... right smack up in front. Oh my GAWD it´s a grey hair... god help us all.