Lots of new places!

I recently saw that there was a new version for Google Earth, so I wanted to check it out if new places had arrived. My surprise is that now I can see the building I live on, and there are plenty of other places inside Venezuela. Puerto La Cruz, Barcelona, Margarita, Punto Fijo, Valencia, and a lot of others. On top there is a screenshot of the Dunes resort in Margarita Island. It's nice.

Oh, and I installed Ubuntu Dapper at home, just to get the hang of Linux. It's nice, but I'm definitely not convinced. More on that later... Or not...

Testing the new Office 2007

I decided to download the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2. Let me tell you that it is incredibly elegant and way, way more superior tan the previous products. How I hope I could have the Money to spend on an Office product (for home use).

If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a shot. It’s definitely worth it.

Actually, this post was created with Word 2007 and uploaded into the blog. It’s a new feature, and very Handy. I’ll even add a screenshot.

Edit: the image didn't upload itself, so I had to do it manually. I still have to figure that out.

Angra & The Rudess Morgenstein Project

I just got home from Angra's concert tonight. As always (in concerts in Venezuela), the sound isn't perfect, and usually sucks in the first songs, but later it recovers. Angra gave a great performance of near two hours, and I enjoyed it a lot. But as a prog-head that I am, I enjoyed Rudess a hell lot more.

Jordan is simply God among all keyboard players, and he performed flawlessly (that I could hear) tonight. Some great music he played with Rod Morgenstein, who was dripping wet at the end. Here's a song they played. Enjoy!

Gmail Chat belongs to All Mail?

Certainly not.

Let's be clear, I love Gmail Chat... BUT... I just clicked All Mail and I see all my chats there... That's not cool... That's not even a nice feature... It's 'All Mail', it doesn't say chat there... Damn it...

Sending big files

I had been using YouSendIt to send big files over the internet (RAR'ed albums mostly), and I was happy for a while. But then I noticed it was crap. You had no way of knowing how much you had uploaded and usually the transfer ended in an error, so I had to start all over again.

The best thing that happened to me was finding out about SendSpace which is a sort of clone of yousendit, but way better than it (not sure which one is which's clone). You have a meter to know how the transfer is going, complete with transfer rate and estimated time (besides %)

So there you go... Use SendSpace if you need to transfer something bigger for email. Up to 1.3GB!

Bored at home

Well, without computer at home it would have been worse, thank God my dad brought his computer over the (long) weekend.

First let me tell you about the long weekend. In my country we celebrate Carnival. Not like in Brazil, but still we celebrate that we don't go to school or work. One way people celebrate it over here is throwing eggs, water balloons and other stuff to passerbies, cars or whatever it seems like fun. So don't try to walk on an empty street and if you're in your car, be sure to keep your windows up. This is the most fun when you're a kid of course, when you're an adult you become a lot less fun and bitter, or maybe that's just me.

About the computer... Well, I'm still not sure what's wrong with it, if it's the power supply or the processor. I left it with someone to check it out, but I guess I'll have to wait until Wednesday when everyone gets back to work. One thing I know from sure is that I'm not going to put the PC on the same spot it was, because it's way too small and gathers a lot of heat.

I wanted to talk about my day a little, I am too bored to not talk about it. I woke up and searched for my dad's laptop. Good thing he brought it, and when I wanted to log on Valheru, the site was down... What a surprise, when I have nothing better to do, it's always down. So I'm way too bored to make me some food and I just ate bread with nothing else. I went to the barber shop and when I got back I was hoping Valheru to be back up, but it seems that the destiny is not on my side today, so I just went to the fridge and got onto drinking beer. My count is 3 beers until now, and I've been chatting on MSN, playing Sudoku and just having a boring time in Hot Or Not.

I think I'm going out to Burger King before I die or something. Later.

Crap

As a friend well put it: 'Your computer had a fever and you told it STFU!'.

That's what happened to me last night. So now I have to find out what burnt. My best hope is the Power Supply. I hope everything else is fine.

Sigh.

FIFA World Cup 2006

Today I got an email from a friend about a nifty program made in MS Excel. It's basically a 'multi-language automatized scheduler' for the World Cup.

It's a very nice program made by a Salvadorean. Visit his site in English or Spanish.

Birthday

Today's my birthday. Nothing much has happened, other than I went to eat on a fancy restaurant with my parents. The food was awesome, and I got to stay some time off work :)

Later I guess the usual suspects will go to my house and we'll just talk and drink and stuff. If you're one of the usual suspects (which I doubt), and see this before we get together (which I doubt) then I'll see you there.

Later...

The Dilbert Blog

My friend Guille just made me aware of a really cool blog to read. It's called The Dilbert Blog, and it's written by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert (surprise!). I recommend it for a funny read, especially if you like intelligent humour. Go have a read!

Constant change

I've been away from blogging for a while now, because I really didn't feel like writing anything. The holidays passed, good and bad things happened, and the year is over. And I didn't have any vacation because I still don't have a full year working with the company.

But mainly, the reason I'm writing this post is to get the hang of it again. It's a good habit to write in a foreign language also (even if noone reads it).

I recently got pushed to create a MySpace account (you can check it here) and started looking into HTML and CSS. So I changed the look of this page, and it will probably undergo a few more changes (Blogger is easy to customize through CSS compared to MySpace... and MySpace's layout is horrible).

Well, that's it for now. I'll write later.

Tomorrow @ 8...

...is the Dream Theater concert!

I've been listening to the whole discography... I'll probably write a short review after the concert :)

I have a new cell phone!

When I wrote about the ringtones I did it on purpose, because I knew I was close on getting another cell phone. I got a Nokia 2600, and I think it's very good, and one of the reasons I bought it was that it has a ringtone composer. When I first started trying the phone (after buying it and at home) I couldn't find the composer, and begun to panic. I even desisted from trying to find it and I was a bit left down, but I guessed that the rest of the phone was good enough for me. Lucky me, while I was at Diego's house trying the phone, I found the best feature.... the composer!

I'll write a small comparison between the 2600 and the 3310. I'll only write about the stuff I care.

Things the 2600 has and the 3310 doesn't:

• Smaller and lighter (but not way too much).
• Polyphonic ringtones.
• Color display (only 4096 colors).
• The battery runs for longer periods of time.
• It has a memory of 200 phones apart from the SIM card memory.
• SMS counter. This way I can control myself.
  

Things that they have in common:

• Single button navigation (no SEND or END buttons).
  
• Ringtone composer (yeah!).
• Navigation very much alike.

Things I preferred from the 3310

• The buttons were separate and easier to use. On the 2600 they are too close from each other, thus easier to mistouch them.
  
• As with every color display, they can't be seen too well on the sun when lit up, and when they turn off, you can barely see the date and time that's displayed; most of the time you can't see anything.
• It had the best game ever. Snake 2. Actually I liked the first version more, but Snake still rules.
  

I'm sure there are other things (better and worse) that I will discover, but these are the basics from 2 day using it. A ringtone composer is almost all I need. I don't need GPRS, EDGE, data transfer, Internet, mp3 (but it would be nice to have an mp3 ringtone), digital camera... Just give me a basic phone with a ringtone composer, and not the shitty composer on some Motorola's, on which you 'create' a ringtone by combining different already made rythms and melodies.


My cell phone history is like this (I'm almost sure of the years):
Nokia 2110 (1999 - 2000), Nokia 5110 (2000 - 2002), Motorola Talkabout T2288 (piece of shit, I'm never buying a Motorola ever again) (2002 - 2003), Nokia 3310 (2003 - 2005), Nokia 2600 (just bought it). I was going to post a picture of it, but the sizes wouldn't be accurate next to each other.

Dream Theater Ringtones

As the date for the concert keeps coming closer and closer I get more anxious with every passing moment, so I'm posting some self made Dream Theater ringtones.

I own a Nokia 3310, and it has a ringtone composer (which is one of the reasons I bought the cellphone, being a musician and all) included. I created some nice tunes, not full songs because there's a limit of 50 notes, but they're good enough to make a catchy part of a song.

I have ringtones of different bands including Dream Theater, Pain Of Salvation, Transatlantic, Opeth and John Petrucci & Jordan Rudess. I'm gonna post the Dream Theater ones because I have a lot of those, and they're the best (In my opinion).

If you own a Nokia cell phone with a ringtone composer you should know what to press to obtain what I'm writing. If you don't know, then let me know and I'll add the keypresses. If you own a cellphone that's not Nokia let me know and I'll help if you need. Not that anyone will be reading this, but still, you never know.

1. The Dance Of Eternity (1)
16e3 16b2 16e2 16#d3 16g2 16e2 16- 16d3 16#c3 16e2 16c3 16b2 16e2 16#a2 16a2 16#f2 16g2 16#d2 16e2 16#f2 16g2 16b2 16#f3 16g3 16e3 16#a2 16e3 16#a2 16a2 16e3 16g2 16#f2 16e3 16b2 16e2 16#d3 16b2 16e2 16- 16d3 16#c3 16e2 16c3 16b2 16e2 16#a2 16g2 16#f2 8e2


2. The Dance Of Eternity (2)
16g1 16#g1 16#a1 16c2 16d2 16#d2 16d2 16c2 16d2 16g1 16b1 16d2 16f2 16g2 16g1 16d2 16f2 16g1 16#g1 16d2 16#d2 16f2 16#d2 16d2 16#d2 16g1 16#d2 16d2 16c2 16g1 16f1 16d1


3. The Dance Of Eternity (3)
8a1 16g1 16f1 8e1 16a1 8b1 16g1 8e1 16e1 16g1 16f1 16e1 8a1 16g1 16f1 8e1 16b1 8c2 16f1 8e1 16d2 16e2 16d2 16e2 8a1 16g1 16f1 8e1 16a1 8b1 16g1 8e1 16e1 16g1 16f1 16e1 16- 16a1 8b1 16f1 8e1 16d2 8e2 16f2 8e2


4. About To Crash
8#g1 8a1 8b1 4d2 8#c2 8b1 4a1 16b1 16#c2 2b1 8e1 8#f1 8#g1 4a1 4#g1 4#f1 8e1 2e1 8#g1 8a1 8b1 4d2 8e2 8#f2 4e2 16#c2 16a1 2b1 8e1 8#f1 8#g1 4a1 8d2 8#c2 8b1 8a1 8#g1 8#f1 8#g1 2e1


5. A Change Of Seasons
8b1 8#c2 8b1 8#f1 8d2 8#c2 8b1 8#f1 8#g1 8b1 8e2 8b1 8f1 8b1 8f2 8#c2 8b1 8#c2 8b1 8#f1 8d2 8#c2 8b1 8#f1 4#g1 4d2 4g1 4d2


6. Honor Thy Father
8#f1 8f1 8#d1 8#a1 8#d1 8f1 8#f1 8#g1 8#a1 32.#f1 32.#g1 32#f1 8f1 8#d1 8#f1 8f1 8#d1 8a1 8#d1 8f1 8#f1 8#g1 8#d1 8f1 8a1 8#g1 8#f1 8#c2 8#f1 8#g1 8a1 8b1 8#c2 32.a1 32.b1 32a1 8#g1 8#f1 8a1 8#g1 8#f1 8c2 8#f1 8#g1 8a1 8#g1 8a1 4#f1 4#d1

Perhaps I'll post the others some other time.

Domino

I went to play domino with my co-workers. Jon and I won 4 times and left unbeaten. In the first game we beat Wilson and Ronald, and the game was 93 - 37 to their favour at one point. In all the games we caught up in the score coming from behind, it was a great night. Funny thing is that Wilson was saying "I don't want any crying", but I guess he was referring to himself, because we didn't lose :)

It was a great night, and a lot of fun. I'm gonna search for some rules on dominoes to post them here. Or at least the rules of the game we play here in Venezuela using the dominoes.

Weekend in the middle of the week

I'm gonna cheat in this post and pretend I did it on Monday and then pretend that I updated it on Wednesday.

So I was working today just like I always do (playing Kung Fu Chess with my coworkers) and suddenly a turmoil starts to happen. Rumors that the Seniat (a sort of IRS over here) is closing the company for the next 48 hours started to come and go throughout the office. So I went to my boss and asked him what was happening, and finally after half an hour of finding out, I was told that I didn't have to come to work on Tuesday and Wednesday. So, I had a special weekend in the middle of the week!

That alone made my day in a selfish kind of way (it's bad for the company, but not bad for me). So I'm going to go and enjoy these days playing F.E.A.R., Kung Fu Chess and Sumo Volleyball, and of course, watching TV. And maybe a little Valheru here and there, I always like to go and talk to friends.

Update:

It's Wednesday, and my boss called me and said that we didn't have to work tomorrow. The Seniat added 24 hours because some people infringed the order and went to work (yeah I know, who would do that?). But well, I'm happy again for the same selfish reasons.

Home alone

Last Friday my parents went on vacation for a week. In fact, this update took me so long that my parents are already here, and I'm doing it in a different way. I planned to make a review of each day, but I'm starting to forget what I did some days, so I'll go with the highlights.

• Friday 14th: First day without my parents. I went to work, and afterwards went home. Cusi arrived with a couple of movies (The Cube 2 and another one that we didn't watch). The guys at the office had planned something for the night because one of our Colombian friends' (Carlos) contract with the company finished.
  We went to the San Ignacio Mall to a place called Gusanos & Ranas (Worms & Frogs). It was a group of about 20 people; we occupied like 5 tables and the place was full. The Indian friends from the office tried the Tequila and of course they liked it! I didn't drink a shot myself, and afterwards I was thankful I didn't: each shot cost Bs. 10.000, which is very expensive, trust me. That's the price of a full bottle of Rum. Aftwerwards we went home, and I drove like a maniac (I was almost pissing on my pants because the bathrooms at the mall were closed). Cusi stayed over for the whole week, so that was fun. Plus she cooked a few times and I took some food to work, so I didn't have to spend money on food.
  


• Saturday 15th: I planned to fix my left rear view mirror, cut my hair, go and get my graduation photos and wash my car. I did nothing. At night I got together with the guys and just drank beer and talked.


• All the other days (except for the last one) I went to work and then go home and wait for Cusi to watch TV... We're currently following Nip/Tuck season 2 and Prison Break. Very good TV. Still waiting for 24 season 5 and Lost season 2 to arrive over here (Venezuela), but my guess is that they will come some time in March.


• Friday 21st: We went to a party at the Cubo Negro (Black Cube). It was a party commemorating the 200 years of Johny Walker Red Label, it was really good, I'll see if I can post a link to some photos.


• Saturday 22nd: Last day. I did almost everything I intended to do last Saturday but getting a hair cut and washing my car. I also bought a mouse for Cusi's laptop and a fan cooler for my PC (it's on a closed space and it gets really hot when I play).
  Yogi came to help me change my rear view mirror... It was an Odissey. First we didn't have the necessary tool to get the screws off, so we went to buy one. One of the stores was closed and the other one didn't have any of the size needed. So we went to Yogi's place to see if he had one, which he didn't. So we decided to buy some beers and go home, but on the way back Yogi suggested we go to my grandmother's house (there's a workshop there) to see if we could find the tool. There was one that worked, but not too well, but we decided to take our chances. At the end almost everything went ok except for the last screw which we couldn't finish putting because the tool was being damaged by the head. But it was good enough... Better than nothing.
  Later that night I invited the guys over and Nanu, Diego, Yogi and me played Civilization the Board Game until 3:30 am. Very entertaining, we can't wait to play again!

That was it. On Sunday my parents arrived late at night, and I went to Francisco's house to play Risk: Lord of the Rings. Very good and different from Risk. Evil won this time (Francisco & Cusi), but we'll see next time what happens. Now there are two games I want to play again!

I think some of this post may feel uninspired, because I didn't have the fresh memories of the days... Oh well, until next time.

Updating soon

I've been busy this week, and haven't had the chance to update you with my life. Not like you care or anything.
I'm working on a post called home alone. I wasn't exactly alone this week, but my parents weren't there.

My sister in Belgium

She's been there since August. I really miss her, but lately we've been seeing each other through webcams, and a friend over there posts pictures frequently. So as a reminder of the site, I'll link through here, and you can check it out if you want.

http://helebelgique.skyblog.com/

Río Chico

Well, I had a nice weekend at the beach. On Friday after work I went out with my colleagues (I won't say where to avoid problems, I may erase this parenthesis later :P). We were all drinking whiskey, and I had to go to my girlfriend's (Cusi) sister (Maribel) house at 5 am. So we drank a Buchanan's 12 between 5 people, and I arrived home at 2:20 am. I put everything I was going to take into my suitcase, put the alarm clock at 4:40 am and went to sleep.

I woke up from a familiar sound, it was my cellphone ringing. I desperately get up and see that Cusi is calling me, and I check the time... It's 5:20 am... I had overslept. So I get the call and she asks me what happened, I tell her that I was sleeping and didn't know what happened to the alarm clock (I still don't know). So I woke up, get everything and go out, but before I brush my teeth, to disguise my firebreath from the night before.

The minute I arrive at Maribel's house the first thing Cusi tells me is: "You smell like drunk!". Yeah, it's impossible to disguise it. I felt bad... not for her, but because I was going with Cusi, Maribel and her husband (Francisco). Well, I just apologized for my stench and we left. It was no problem that I had overslept, because they had also. And we parted in Francisco's SUV.

So we arrived. I slept through the whole one and a half hours. We got to Francisco's uncle's apartment at Rio Chico - a beach town. It has one bedroom, air conditioner, and DirecTV. You could almost stay inside the whole day. Then we went to have a breakfast by the pool. We had some arepas and afterwards to the pool! Cusi and Maribel where sun tanning, and I went inside the pool. It was really great, a long time since I went inside one. And it's great to forget all about work.

Maribel and Francisco went to get some beers and after they arrived they came inside the pool. After we got bored (and the sun was too hot) we played Rummikub and drank some beers. And that was basically what we did every day. Eat chips and doritos, swim in the pool, play Rummikub and Citadel, watch TV, eat food and drink lots of beers.

The only bad thing is that I got sunburnt on my shoulders. But taking that aside it was a great trip. Yogi, I hope you get good grades on your oncoming tests, because if not, you could have come :P

That's all for now...