Abandoning blogger

Hi all (if there is any "all" to address to anyways):

I'm abandoning posting here, from now on I will post only to my posterous account:

http://juanlu.posterous.com/

It's essentially the same thing and it's not only faster but simpler. If you read this and want to continue please go to the link above.

Sorry in advance.

Christmas 2010

Sadly, Christmas is over.

Tomorrow I'm taking my flight back to Madrid, where I'll spend the next two weeks studying like a maniac.

Anyways I've had lots of fun this christmas here in Melilla, a city on the northern part of Africa (still Spain) where everything seems to be so different and so marvelous.

Here, things are not big-scale like everything in Madrid: you don't have to take the underground to go to the center, you just walk for a few minutes. Want to go to the beach? a 3 minute walk will do. Something that I really loved: the weather. C'mon its been 15ºC on average! Also people here seem to frown less than in Madrid... kind of feels like Maastricht (small city, nicer people than in Madrid. Nothing else)

Anyways, I got some of my Christmas presents: A marvelous mirror Rubik's cube (pic attached) and some other things. Unfortunately Vodafone hates me and managed to cancel my HTC Desire HD 2 times for no reason, so we've decided to leave the company and go somewhere else. Orange will do for me.

Anyways I hope you all had a wonderful 2010 and have an incredible 2011!

See the full gallery on posterous

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.

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo

via youtube.com

Impressive, VERY impressive

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. 

See the full gallery on posterous

¿Leche con chocolate o chocolate con leche?

Curioso, ¿verdad? yo no sabria con cual quedarme.

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!

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.

See the full gallery on posterous

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!

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

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.

Ronda (Spain) a few minutes after World Cup victory

via youtube.com

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

Cada dia estos anuncios son peores

Gracias a zenitraM!

http://blog.zen.itram.es/2010/07/tiene-un-nuevo-mensaje-¿del-amor-de-su-vida-¡no/

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%

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 

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...