In the last 2 months I was going through all the episodes and movies of Star Trek the old series. I grew up with Star Trek, with Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk, and now I can look backwards and see how much it influenced my life. Star Trek was not an usual science fiction series. It was science fiction and morality and good values in action. Star Trek promoted friendship, cultural diversity, peace, understanding beyond oneself comprehension.
The series purpose wasn’t only entertainment. Star Trek was a carrier for ideas, meaning, good values and knowledge that was caught in the mind of kids and adults. It was a show that made you think about the reality and the ignorance we still have about this universe and about the possibility that something unusual could happen beyond our comprehension.

The series always tried to use scientific view of facts and, at the same time, it tried to make it understandable to everyone, it trained people’s minds to think that not only actual knowledge is the absolute truth. The characters always run into the possibility to go beyond their own believes to understand the amazing things that they found. Star Trek helped people to break those mental limitations indirectly.

I’m sure I got influenced when I was a kid and probably Mr. Spock stimulated my interest for science and mathematics. It was a show that offered entertainment, a dose of reasonable violence in terms of self defense and at the same time it was a carrier for moral values.

The pattern will be the same as before. I don’t translate posts, I just write the content again.

This time I promise! I won’t shutdown the Spanish site anymore… :)

The Spanish version is here: http://zuco.org/espanol/
And the RSS feed

The other way we are obtaining information is from natural evidences of the influence of mankind in the world. Like pollution, artificial reshaping of natural land and so forth. Also genetic research and the study of DNA is helping a lot to discover more about our history.

But let’s think about the future. Where are we storing our information nowadays? In digital formats on means that won’t last more than few years. The worst thing about all this is that nobody will be able to recover that information in case of a cataclysm or any other worldwide destruction. If I’m lost in an island and I have a hard drive, I will probably attach it into a stick and use it as a weapon to kill some animal and feed myself. I won’t be able to develop, by myself, the technology to recover that data, copy it and store it again in another “machine”.

Think about it, all your pictures, your documents, your own videos, everything lost just because digital storage won’t last more than a few years.
So just as ephemeral as human lives are, so our data is. Information dies as people do, and only some small pieces of that data remain, thanks to the unknown laws of fortune.

I suggest to keep some pictures in paper. Just print from time to time some of them, the one that you would like to last forever. Of course it’s a dream, nothing is eternal, but at least I can assure you that, those few pictures in paper will survive many more years that all your DVDs, Hard disks, memory cards, etc. In case I find myself lost in an island or as a survivor of a cataclysm, I can always look at some pictures in my wallet of beloved people or places. Your mobile phone is useless in such environment.

Also try to write sometimes some hand written letters. Email is ephemeral as well. It doesn’t even exist in our hard drive anymore. More and more people keep it in remote servers, so just imagine. Almost all your life is documented in emails. It’s like a personal diary. Everything lost forever. But remember that ancient books exist today because of paper: in proper conditions it can resists centuries. No data-center will survive more than 100 years without maintenance.

This post is just to remind you that technology is great but it’s still weak. We spend more money developing weapons and developing ways to increase profit than thinking about human inheritance. Knowledge is one of the first things that human will loose when mass scale disasters happen. People priority is survival. Everybody follows that instinct as a general rule. Knowledge is not so important when you are hungry. Let’s think about it :)

These are some of the phrases, please add more but don’t copy and paste from some other site. Let’s be creative:

1. You are the PID 1 of my mind
2. I will always keep in my mind every stack created for your threads.
3. You are the abstract class from where all my feelings come from
4. If we get married we will share our swaps!
5. Every time I look into your eyes, I try to initialize pointers to addresses beyond my architecture limit.
6. I’m not cheating you, I’m just load balancing!
7. Let me know more about you; don’t keep me on an unrouted VLAN!
8. I was a fool thinking that your feelings ran on a high availability and fault tolerance system…
9. I thought I was able to kill your process, but you are still a zombie in my mind, there is still a chance!
10. Give me one more chance to change! I’m not a redundant function!
11. Can you listen to that whisper? It’s the sound of my cmos fields one by one, broken by you…
12. Your hair is soft as the electron beam of a vacuum tube
13. iptables -A INPUT -s you -j DROP (put this as the body text in an email if you don’t want she/he to contact you again)
14. Understanding your feelings is like finding a sense in a corrupted packet
15. Let’s dream together laying down in a field of bits
16. I have a journal filesystem, I don’t forget my mistakes but I can learn from them.

More pics of the event here

Acabo de leer este artículo de “El País” sobre la manifestación que tuvo lugar en Barcelona en contra del recorte del estatuto por parte del tribunal constitucional. En él se asegura que a la manifestación asistieron unas 56.000 personas. Mientras la policía y los organizadores aseguran que se superó el millón de personas.

Incluso otros medios de información hablan de esta misma cifra, sea porque confían en los datos proporcionados por la policía o utilizando sus propios medios de cálculo.

The Washinton Post
France 24
Aljazeera

Basan sus cálculos en los datos proporcionados por una empresa, Lynce
La verdad es que el artículo sobre el cálculo me pareció muy razonable, así como la idea de usar tecnologías más avanzadas para computar, con más precisión, el número de participantes en las manifestaciones.

De todas formas al ver el número de personas y aplicando sentido común, es evidente que 56.000 personas es un número demasiado bajo! Así que decidí aplicar por mi cuenta tecnologías más avanzadas, como Google Earth y una calculadora.

No teniendo a un catalán a mano para medir cuanto espacio ocupa de pie, decidí medirme a mi mismo y aumentarme unos 5cm por cada lado para dejar algo de espacio. No creo que haya mucha diferencia entre un italiano y un catalán, digamos que no soy ni muy bajito ni muy alto. Esto da como resultado unos 60cm de ancho de espalda y unos 40 cm de ancho de pecho. Lo que da un area de 0.24m²

Esto sería un catalán visto desde lo alto :)

La gente no son robots y se mueven, pero teniendo en cuenta que la manifestación se colapsó y la gente no se podía mover, el número de personas que finalmente llenó las calles se mantuvo más o menos sin cambiar. Por lo tanto calculando el área que ocupaban las calles con Google Earth y haciendo un simple calculo de aritmética:

Click en la imagen para ver tamaño real

Calculemos el área

Simple cálculo del área, que hasta un niño de la EGB puede hacer

Tenemos que el área ocupada por esas calles es de 74400m² y dividiendo por el área que antes calculamos que ocuparía un catalán medio: 74400 / 0.24 = 310000 personas.

A todo esto no hemos calculado la gente que estaba en las calles paralelas, ni toda la gente amontonada en la plaza, ni la gente que intentó ir y no pudo dado que todo estaba colapsado.

Al cabo de unas horas tenemos una “rectificación” por parte de El País en la que dice que el número es de 425.000 personas… Curiosamente el aumento es de más de 7 veces la cifra inicial.

Muy bien habéis rectificado, pero igualmente no me gusto lo ocurrido.
Primero ponéis la cifra que políticamente más os interesa para quitarle peso al asunto. Pero no tenéis los dos dedos de frente suficientes para daros cuenta que la gente no es tan imbécil y que 56.000 es demasiado poco. Así que, venga a rectificar. Igualmente creo que la cifra está por debajo de lo real. Quizás no llegó al millón, pero seguramente se le acercó mucho.

Editores, a ver, la gente no es idiota y la tecnología no está al alcance de unos pocos. Por suerte cada día está en manos de todo el mundo y como podéis ver la gente puede bloguear y twitear. Las redes sociales e Internet están ahí para eliminar esa barrera de oscuridad que muchos medios utilizan indiscriminadamente para para intentar manipular la mentalidad de los lectores.

No estoy en ningún bando político, ni siquiera soy catalán, soy italiano pero tampoco me considero estúpido como para que me pongan en la cara sendas tonterías!

Even other media talk about this same amount of participants, may it be because the trust the data given by the police or even using their own methods of calculation.

The Washinton Post
France 24
Aljazeera

The newspaper called El País and Agencia F (media & information agency) use the services of a company called Lynce
The truth is that the calculation explained in the article seemed quite reasonable, as well as the idea of using new and more techniques for computing the number of participants in demonstrations and demostrations, being more able to be precise.

Anyway, if you take a look to the amount of participants (the number) and applying the common sense, it’s clear that 56.000 participants is a number which is too small!! That’s why I decided to apply by myself far advanced techniques like Google Earth and a calculator.

As I don’t have any real Catalan around to be able to measure how much space he/she takes standing on his/her feet, I decided to measure myself letting around 5cm by each side of myself to give some air around me. I don’t think that an Italian’s size and a Catalan’s size aren’t that different from each other, as I’m not that tall nor that short. This give us a result of 60cm back wide and 40cm chest wide. This gives an area of 0.24m²

This would be a Catalan seen from above :)

People aren’t robots and move around, but noting that the demo was literally collapsed and people couldn’t move, the number of participants that at the end were in the streets was more or less constant. Thus, calculating the area that the streets occupy in Google Earth and doing a simple arithmetical calculation we get:

Click the image if you want to see the original size

Calculating the area

Even a child can make this simple calculation of the area

The area taken by these streets is 74400m² thus, dividing the area which we calculated before of “how much space would a Catalan take” we get: 74400 / 0.24 = 310000 people.

In this we haven’t taking in mind all the people which were in parallel streets, nor all the people who where squeezed in the squares, and we also didn’t count all those who tried to go but couldn’t because of the collapse.

After some hours, the Spanish newspaper El País “rectified” the number of people attending this event, now with 425.000 participants… It is curious how they have increased the number around 7 times the initial given one.

Okay, you’ve rectified, but anyway I didn’t like what has happened. First of all, you put a number that’s closer to your preferred political view to take to the event strength. But you don’t have the intelligence enough to realize that people aren’t that stupid to stick with such a low number as 56.000 participants. So, no other choice but to rectify afterwards. Anyway, I do feel that the number is lower than the real one, closer to one million participants, but maybe not surpassing that number.

Editors, read carefully, people is not stupid and technology is not a means controlled by just a few. Luckily, means are used by people around the world every day, and as you can see, people can blog and tweet. Social networks as well as Internet are there to eliminate this barrier of darkness which use lots of media as they wish to try to manipulate the mentality of their readers.

I’m not in favor of any political party. I’m not Catalan, I’m Italian. But I don’t consider myself that stupid so that I have to believe such nonsense!

Access Map
Telephone: 03-3410-7700

And some pictures:

Peppe the Pizza Master!

More info in Japanese: here

Some pics:

Dean Fujii

Joseph Tame

Peter Van der Weeen

Steve Nagata

The entire set of pics here

Ryan Holmes

I went to that meeting to learn something new. I hoped I could learn some new formula, something that will give me the elements to start my own business. Is there a procedure? Something that I should do first? Some ancient book with the secret of success?

At the end, after listening to their experiences, the initial problems they had, some advices and the whole saga… the conclusion was so so simple!

Follow your dream, don’t stop, listen to people with common sense and run away from the negative ones. Adapt, learn, and remember that mistakes are good and let you learn more. Jump!

Well I knew all this before! Yes really, I knew it, well… Everybody knows, that’s what everybody say, but sometimes we refuse to follow simple things. We want to find something else, something special that will give us those secret elements to find the right path. Sorry but there is no such formula. Infinite paths could be chosen to reach the same point. How you do your own path, will determine a failure or a success. Of course you need investors and angels but as Ryan said, negative responses from one of the investors gave him the elements to approach the next one in a better way. It’s a learning process. Thus, you have to be ready to learn.

Pick up a book about “how to start-up” and just do it. But before you take any step, please, stop and think that you need 100% of self motivation. A 50% of your brain saying yes, the other 50% saying maybe and some spiritual part saying $#%&((!! is not enough. You will find the time, the resources, the advices while you are doing the path, but you need the determination to be sure what you want, and you will walk through it.

My good friend and fantastic photographer, Derek Arnwine

Vendono cappelle per 1000 yen :)

But what about the social networking side?

Before the digital era, photographers stored their pictures in a film and the broadcasting process of an image was a slow, difficult and expensive process. They depended on newspapers, magazines or other media to show their work to the world. When the digital era arrived in the photography world, things changed radically. Actually photographers can broadcast their work immediately using one of the hundred of ways and technologies available: email, blogs, social network communities like facebook, twitter, google buzz, flickr and many more.

So what else do I want in a camera?

Mobile devices incorporate the perfect combination of many technologies in just one device. With an iPhone, for example, I can take a picture, edit it, post it in twitter or facebook, send it by email, whatever. But actually my iPhone lacks of the quality and the response than a DSLR camera could provide. Can I shot with a 200mm/2.8F incorporated to my iPhone? NO. Can I shot at 8fps with my iPhone and then select the best shot to broadcast in that very moment? NO. Can I shot a 15MPx picture and crop a detail perfectly sharp creating a frame of 800px wide? NO. Can I shot a beautiful composition using a 50mm/1.2F lens obtaining a terrify bokeh? NO. Can I use a flash with an iPhone? NO and of course other phones have a flash, but I’m talking about a real flash. So mobile devices are smaller, the battery life is short and they are cheaper than a semi-pro or professional DSLR. So why not incorporate many of the possibilities that mobile technology offers to us in the body of a DSLR or a high end compact camera?

The DSLR camera that I want:

1. I want a camera with incorporated wifi and 3G card slot.

Ok you can tell me that I can obtain the same using an eye-fi but actually it has many limitations. It’s based on SD memory cards, so cameras that do not have an SD card slot cannot use it. It has a basic functionality compared with the computational power that the DSLR body could provide.
The battery of a DSLR is powerful enough to feed the energy demands of a simple, short range wifi card so I don’t need to depend on third party solutions.
I want that a menu that lets me configure automatic options for broadcasting my content, for example:

• Set a default resolution and compression ratio for the pictures to be broadcasted
• Configure if I want to FTP, email or tweet on the fly pictures that I take
• The option to send just the pictures that I want. For example I’m walking around taking pictures and I find an interesting story to show. I take many shots and then I browse and select the picture that actually is worth uploading. Select it, and send with the default compression, resolution or whatever parameters previously configured
• I want to load my tags menu and add it to the picture EXIF data or in twitter.
2. I want a camera with bluetooth!
• I want to plug a portable compact keyboard to add comments to some pictures. It could also be possible to use the iPhone to edit those parameters using bluetooth or wifi. I know that some cameras let me add comments but did you notice how painful is to write a comment with the control buttons?
• I want to plug a bluetooth headset to add voice comments to the pictures. I know that some cameras allow me to do that, but they have a microphone to record my voice. Just imagine the possibilities with bluetooth
• I want to send a picture from my camera to another device or even to another camera!
3. I want GPS incorporated!

I know that I can plug many GPS devices but if even crappy mobile phones are GPS enabled, why not incorporate it directly to the body of a $2000 or more DSLR body???

4. I want to install third party applications

Is it so hard to add a little bit more of computational power and a free OS like Android to a DSLR? Just imagine the possibilities to install applications to your camera. Tons of new options available! Image editing, games when I’m waiting in the train or taking a coffee to relax after after a photowalk, social media applications, localization applications like “how many people with a Nikon DSLR near a 100m radius?” and so forth.

5. I want a laser pointer

I know this is kind of geek and useless but sometimes, specially when I cannot lay down in the ground to see the viewfinder I would like to have an idea of where the lens is pointing. I already get used to the way it is, in fact it takes some time and them you are able to understand what the lens is viewing with no need to see through the viewfinder. Anyway, a laser could be annoying for people of course… well just a geek idea. I’m thinking to attach one to the hotshoe by the way :-)

6. I want infrared and other light spectrum

Is it so hard to enable more light spectrum? Actually almost all digital sensors are able to record infrared light but they have a filter to stop that radiation so only a small portion of all the spectrum could be recorded. If you want to make your camera, infrared friendly you can send it to a company like lifepixel.com or www.maxmax.com but you have to remember that I will never comeback the same.

Some of these ideas could be out of the scope of a DSLR but I just want to show an example that actually mobile technology has a lot to offer. I would love to see some of that technology strongly incorporated in the DSLR world. The possibilities are huge. If I have to carry with a big gear around, at least I want more options included inside it. I want to extend the possibilities of these cameras. Upgrading professional photography to the web2.0 doesn’t mean to downgrade the professionalism and the high technical standards that these cameras achieve.

People started to interact using the email as the main communication medium realizing strong and real long term stable relationships. Eventually they would meet, but that wasn’t a must to consider each other contacts, or even good friends.

Before the social network revolution era, that means before Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and so forth; the concept of followers wasn’t common in the internet slang. For an average non-tech-geek guy, the concept of having followers only had a relationship with celebrities, politicians or religious figures.

Actually the concept of “followers” has a similar importance as the concept of “contacts in my agenda”. Followers in facebook, in twitter, friendfeed, Google Buzz and so forth create a halo of charisma that wasn’t ever achieved even with hundreds of telephone numbers or email addresses in an agenda. The concept of followers already extrapolated the world of the fame, politics, celebrities and religion to become a common term. It’s already something that everybody has.

Why followers are so important, even more than contacts, as an indicator of your human influence coefficient?

They are important because how we achieve a follower or a contact does matter. One thing is going to some event and present our business card to everybody hopping to collect as many business cards as we can, and another thing is being a content generator, a charisma hot spot, a human magnet that in some way results attractive to be followed.

Actually everybody potentially can be famous and followed. Everybody has the potential to have a huge influence over thousands of people. The fact that everybody has this potential will change things in the future, and I advice you to start thinking about these future changes.

It’s already happening. The more followers we have, the more social networks we participate in, the better to determine our possibilities to find, or not, a job. Not just a job, but a good one. It will determinate our potential to influence people, to change trends, to be a marketing tool. And the most interesting thing is: you can do it by creating content, being somebody worthily to follow. This simple concept has a collateral effect: Cultural Enrichment

The effort to provide something interesting, to provide new ideas, be intellectually useful and the possibility that everyone can achieve it, is a strong motivation factor that will positively affect the cultural level of our society.