Thursday, November 25, 2010

Back after a huge blogging break

Hi all!
First of all, I'd like to apologize for not writing anything in here for the last god-only-knows months. I've been pretty busy (lousy excuse, I know) with university and everything. Let me explain:
First of all, on the last 15 days of August (yeah, August, we're in November) I went to Santoña as a group leader for a summer camp. It was great, had lots of fun, worked a lot, slept nothing... the usual.
Then I came back to Madrid, had a few days off and enjoyed a nice, pleasant start of the new year that was supposed to be a little harder but much more interesting.
It wasn't.
I mean, it is interesting but it's SO demanding! I study almost all the time and still struggle a bit in some subjects. Sure I enjoy my free time and all but it takes most of my time everyday: I wake up, go to uni, study, have lunch, classes, home, dinner, study, bedtime.
So yeah, other than that, nothing really interesting is going on.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Cadiz 2010

I didn't actually think that I'd end up posting this a month later, but that's life.
Well, here are some of the pictures I took with my (again) crappy HTC Touch Diamond They are not much but sort of reflect the incredible place I got to be for 5 days.
On August 11th we took of from Ronda to Cadiz for a few days of holidays. My parents were to stay there for 10 days and I got to stay for 5 since I had to be in Madrid on august 16th for Santoña summer camp.
And it was fun... well not really fun, it was more relaxing and doing nothing at all for 5 days. wake up, breakfast, beach, lunch, beach, shower, dinner, bed and start again.
Would have been better with friends though. 

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Back online!

Wow, It really has been a lot of time since I last updated this, but oh well, here I am!
Its been a great month (almost) since I last updated: I went to Cadiz fo 5 days, then to Santoña until the 30th and in Madrid since that (uni started on Sept 6th)
I'll try to write a post about it with more detail, specially about Santoña, other than that, not much else to say!
hope you all had a great summer!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

My new MacBook Pro and iPod touch!

It's here! finally!
Well, to be honest it actually arrived on the 9th, but I've been a little busy getting used to it so I didn't post anything before.
Attached you can all se some of the pictures of the unboxing. At first I thought of making a video, but I guess I was so nervous I completely forgot, and by the time I had it open it was too late. I guess you can all live without it.
Ok, so for those that don't know, I ordered a 13" MacBook Pro (2.66 GHz) with an iPod Touch a few days ago from the apple store. The story is here. Anyways it finally arrived and opened it and before even turning it on, I turned it over and opened the lid to change the HDD to a 500 Gb SATA disk instead of the 320 HDD that came with it, which means that after the mechanics were done, I had to format it and install OSX from scratch (which was, in my opinion, dead easy) and iLife from the other DVD that came with the laptop.
After a few days playing with it I finally managed to get used to the keyboard and interface, here are the things I like and I don't-like-so-much:
  • Things I love:
  • The UI: Simple, useful and smooth, everything fits and everything works like its supposed to.
  • Trackpad: synaptics has a looong way to go if they wan't to catch up
  • Virtual Machines and bootcamp: great way to have Windows 7 and Linux all in one. Works perfectly.
  • Things I like:
    • The keyboard: different but quite confortable to use, specially the F keys
    • The DVD reader/writter: instead of clicking a button on the side for a plastic thing to pop out, you simply insert it in a hole and everything is done inside.
    • Adium: the closest thing in Windows/Linux is pidgin, and it's still far from adium
    • Many, many more
  • Things I don't like:
    •  Small little things, like iTunes not syncing properly my calendars to the iPod and so on.
  • Things I hate:
    • USB: TWO USBs? and they're SO close together almost no pendrive or thick USB fits with anything else
    • Audio Jack: Just one? I know Apple has this system where mic and speakers are together, but this is such a pain... I definitely do NOT like that at all
    • Were-is-my-Delete-key? and no, command-backspace doesn't work for me.
    Anyways, hate aside, it's totally worth it, both the MacBook and the iPod Touch.

    Monday, August 2, 2010

    Patatas de lux

    Cuanto mal ha hecho McDonald's

    My first call to the Apple Store

    As some of you might know, I am planning on buying a 13" MacBook Pro with a 2.66 GHz processor, so today I decided to call about the student discount and how many days would it take to get here.
    I called the apple today around 18:15 prepared to be stuck there talking to some useless person, like in Vodafone (yeah, I hate them). Anyways, I called and had to answer some typical "press 1 if you are a student, press 4 if you like codfish..." you know, typical stuff. After 3 or 4 questions and a minute of music, I heard a voice of a guys saying with quite a cheerful voice "Welcome to the Apple store line! my name is *****! what can I help you with?" I told him my problem and, all the time being cheerful and nice, answered my questions straight to the point. In the end he told me that he was going to send me an email with all the information we discussed in case I wanted it for reference.
    Wow. I mean: WOW. Really, why can't other companies copy this? I am sure it's not hard being nice on the phone! Vodafone (¬¬) lines are always answered by useless people that have NO IDEA what they're talking about and always answer inappropriately. People, learn from Apple.

    Another Summer day

    Here I am, another summer day, exactly like yesterday, exactly like the day before (and so on).
    I haven't updated in quite a while now, but that's mainly because there is not much to update. I'm now in Ronda, Malaga, Spain for a few days (and I'll be here for 10 more), at home. Even though it's really nice coming back home, seeing your parents after so many months and so on, there is a little problem that kind of makes this a less pleasant stay. I don't know anyone here so I stay home most of the time online, watching One Piece, playing Civilization IV or modelling my website.
    So that's all I get to do until August 11th, when I go to Cadiz for 5 days and then to Santoña (Summer Camp).
    I hope you are all having a great summer!

    Monday, July 19, 2010

    250Gb de potencia?

    suena raro, ¿no? el HDD no se suele usar como medidor de potencia de un PC... probablemente es de lo ultimo que usaria yo si me preguntaran.

    Eso y que 250Gb es un poco castaña a estas alturas.
    Tambien es todo un detalle el que tenga Windows 7 Original

    Monday, July 12, 2010

    Gamers are not impressed by World Cup Final

    As you can see, the World Cup final game (Spain vs. Holland) not decreased, but rather increased the number of people logged into Steam.

    Sunday, July 11, 2010

    Ronda (Spain) a few minutes after World Cup victory

    I apologize for my camera quality... first of all its from my HTC Touch Diamond (crappy camera), secondly, I had the wrong light mode.
    anyways I think you get the picture

    Tuesday, July 6, 2010

    Year's over, here are the results...

    I can't believe it myself! I managed to get through the first year of telecommunications engineering with all subjects passed!

    I have to say, I've been really lucky and I've had to resit two exams (Calculus II and Linear Algebra), but everything turned out pretty good in the end.
    My average for this year is 66.95%

    Friday, July 2, 2010

    This is how long I've lived in Madrid

    I'm not usually all that sentimentalist about things, but I keep all the Metro monthly tickets so every year I get to have a look at this and remember the awesome days I've lived here 

    Tuesday, June 29, 2010

    Facebook fail: Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number

    Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number, Not a Number...

    8,59€ for 4 awesome games. This is what the gaming industry should do

    Today I purchased 4 awesome games that were on sale on Steam: Team Fortress 2 for 5,09 EUR and commandos pack for 3,50€.

    See? this is what the gaming industry should do, use a very simple platform like steam, where you simply buy the license and download the game anytime you want. Very simple and (since a few days) cross platform!
    Dear Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Game-making companies: want to reduce piracy? make games affordable. I don't mind spending 10€ a month on games, but I'm not going to pay 50€ for I game I might not like. (and my math are not all that good, but getting 10€ a month is more than... nothing if I download the games).
    Same goes for the movie and music industry.

    Strike in Madrid's underground

    Ever since the economic crisis started we've had some strikes every now and then, but none as serious as the one we're having today.
    All employees of Madrid's metro are on complete strike today and tomorrow. They were supposed to keep minimum services (50% of trains) but some of them are going inside and blocking the way, so its completely closed. This of course means that the city is almost collapsed: huge queues in bus stops, taxis everywhere traffic jams in every single road... and unfortunately seems like tomorrow won't be any different.
    In my opinion, I think they should fire the ones that are causing all the trouble. I'm pretty sure that with 20% unemployment, a lot of people are very willing to take their jobs.
    I swear I'm losing faith in my own country...

    Sunday, June 27, 2010

    Tuesday, June 22, 2010

    Preparing the beta of http://www.kadakiworld.com/

    Yesterday, I bought my first domain, http://www.kadakiworld.com/

    I'm thinking about making my own little site with a bit of info about myself, some tips and tricks that might be useful and a project section, where I'll keep both Hardware and software projects I work on.
    attached is an early beta of the design I'd like it to have. also, I'd like to mention that I plan on making the entire site from scratch, no templates, just code.
    Let's see how this ends.
    Note: special thanks to Zenitram for his awesome advice and support, I would be really lost if it wasn't for him

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Friday, June 18, 2010

    Sevillanas in front of my dorm

    (3483 KB)
    Watch on posterous

    Right after coming out of the metro, I saw this huge crowd, got curious and sneaked in to see what was going on.

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Sunday, June 6, 2010

    Baja fotos de Tuenti

    Bueno, este en Español, no tiene mucho sentido hablar de el en Ingles...
    Y aqui, damas y caballitos, esta... ¡mi primer script de Python!
    Es bastante sencillo lo que hace: convierte una foto chiquitaja a una grande y visible de alguna perona que no nos tenga agregada, esta explicado con mas detalle en el link
    Espero que os sea util!

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Saturday, June 5, 2010

    Pool Party!

    Wohoo pool time!
    Last Tuesday we had scheduled the handing of the invisible friends gift (for those that don't know what the is, it consists of you getting a random person playing the game and you have to give them a gift) and a friend of ours decided to lend us her house so we could also have some awesome times (that, we had) in her pool!
    And it was so much fun! first we went to this buffet and ate so much! (hmm pasta...) once we were done, we drove to her (awesome) house for some fun times!
    in the pictures:
    Yes, thats me upside down,
    yes, thats me 3 times,
    yes thats the present I got, a xkcd shirt (sweet!)
    and yes, that's us!
    Thanks to all for such wonderful day!

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Friday, May 28, 2010

    Painting the swimming pool

    I hope we get to use it soon

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Exams are over (with a not-so-pleasant result, but whatever...)

    Yay! It's all over! finally!
    Of all 4 exams, I think I got 2 with a grade above 7, Unfortunately the other 2 (calculus and systems and circuits) didn't turn out so good.
    Anyways, now I get to have some free time for a few days. Re-sitting 3 subjects isn't going to be nice, Especially calculus 2 and systems...Thevenin, convolutions of x(t) into the system H(t), Electricity... Boring
    I'm not sure what I'll be doing this summer... Earning some money as Summer camp again (fun times), Time with my family... we'll see.

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Wednesday, May 26, 2010

    Happy oranges and my life

    I just realized, today is my last day of exams! which means summer, a little break and sun!

    Love it man!
    you should also know that I still have to re-sit some exams in July... but oh well its time to be happy, like these oranges

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Thursday, May 20, 2010

    This is what we do in Digital Electronics lab

    I found these pictures I took of this lab we had to do on CPLDs (Complex Programmable Logic Devices).
    This project in particular was about making a dice. We had to set the CPLD such that a random LED from 1 to 6 would turn on when the switch was closed. Fun times

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Building site in front of my window

    Summer (Finally) is here!

    I think this year we've had the worst weather since... October in history, not a single sunny day 'until 3 days ago.
    OK, so nice weather. now, swimming pool! the only problem is that people in my residence wanted to make the pool's floor a little higher so, they're building it right now, in exam period. oh well...

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Wednesday, April 28, 2010

    Wonderful afternoon at university

    Although we should be studying, taking 1 hour after lunch for relaxing can't do any harm, Here are some pics of some of lying in the grass on a sunny afternoon.

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous

    Monday, April 26, 2010

    Jornadas Deportivas 2010

    Same as last year, on the third Saturday of April we have the Sports games in my residence!
    This has been going on for a quite a few years now (for me its the third one) and it mainly consists on us calling all students dorms around Spain and having them playing Soccer, Basketball, Running and some other games against all of us.
    I guess you can imagine all the organizing this requires.
    This year around 500 people showed up overall for the games. 300 from other cities in Spain and around 200 from Madrid alone. all 300 that came from outside Madrid had to sleep in our residence so we brought 300 mattresses and bed for all of them. We also had to take care of the food and all other necessities.
    It all started on Friday, when everyone from outside Madrid came and we had to show them around, give them info and so on... the thing is that this year we were only 3 people to greet them all, the rest were partying outside. Oh well... then we gave all the T-shirts and everything and while everyone went partying (again) I went to bed (soooo tired).
    On Saturday we all woke up at 08:00 to have some breakfast and get started with the whole thing, which began with the rising of the Spanish flag and ended around 23:00 with a super-awesome concert by some of the musicians we have living with us.
    Overall it was an awesome day, I had lots of fun and I hope to see you in 2011!

    Posted via email from Juanlu's posterous