Gaming in Spanish

Woot, I'm not dead!

Recently I started to replay Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, a DS RPG I had played a couple of years ago. For a while now, my 3DS has been set to Spanish, I don't really know why, and I don't really mind. And just for shits and giggles, I decided to play the text-heavy game in Spanish...

Spanish may be my mother tongue, but I have ALWAYS played video games in English. Because of that, I found reading the text in Spanish for an RPG game to be way harder than it should for a person that almost only speaks Spanish.

I'm so used to names in English, that seeing "HP" (hit points) replaced with "PV" (puntos de vida) was very weird. Even something like "Somebody gained 3 exp. points" replaced with "Alguien ha ganado 3 puntos de exp." seems strange. It took me almost 3 times as much time to read it. And then some lines just become too long (e.g. "Matthew mastered Vulcan Axe's Fire Strike" to "Matthew ha perfeccionado el golpe de fuego del hacha vulcánica").

It is fun though, because I find languages very interesting

Change

Change keeps piling up. I don't like having change because it's like I don't have that money anymore. I don't take it into account when I'm counting how much money I have available. And it goes little by little, but fast.

I try to put it all in my giang Save key, but sometimes I have to take just a little bit out and it all comes out...and then it'll be gone. That's like 10 dollars in the picture, I'm pretty sure I'm going to spend it without knowing what I spent it on.

Oh well, I put it all back in the Save key...but I don't know how much that'll help.

Have a good day :D

Catching Up

First of all, I apologize for not posting for like 4 days in a row. I have no excuse for that. It was simply forgetfulness. Whenever I remember to post I wasn't near the computer or couldn't make time to do it on the phone ('cause it takes way longer on the phone than on the computer). I usually remember before going to bed, or when reading other blogs, but I haven't been up to date with those either.

I had like 60+ emails in my account, not spam. I almost never let it go over 5 unread emails. I like to keep my inbox clean. I read and archive everything. And the more emails that kept coming, the more I hesitated to read them.

I also had over 700 unread feeds. I also don't like to have feeds over 2 days old, preferably some 12 hours old before reading them.

It all went to hell over a week ago when I got sick and I couldn't even sit up or look at my phone without it hurting, so I just read important emails. I didn't even reply to them, I just read them.

Then I got some work that I did right after I got better, and somehow I didn't catch up on stuff.

I have just caught up on email. Feeds are next. That's where I read all the other blogs, which is the reason why I haven't been commenting on other blogs.

Well, have a good day :D.

Word Search

I used to play this game a lot when I was a kid. I like it. I use it to kill shorter periods of time than sudoku. I never play more than one in a row.

This post means I had absolutely no idea of what to post.

Have a good day :D

"New" Chair

Check out this 70's office chair that I'm using right now:

+Angelica and +Marisol's grandpa gave it to my mom for some reason, and I thought I'd try it out. It's more comfy than it looks. And it's sturdy. And it makes me sit up straight, I can't lean back like my other chair. It looks...old, yeah, but I don't care. This is not a permanent chair, though. I keep forgetting to look up new cheap chairs.

Have a good day :D.

Signing In...

For some strange reason, my phone has been reluctant to consistently connect to Google Talk when I'm on Wi-Fi. It just stays on this screen:

It's very frustrating. I chat more time on the phone than on the computer, mainly because I'm lazy. At least when I'm connected to 3G it does connect to Talk.

If it hasn't sorted itself out by tomorrow I'll look more deeply into it, I'm sure it's got something to do with my home network or the DNS servers from our ISP or something.

Anyway, I'm feeling way better, still not 100%, but I'm confident that by tomorrow I'll be superb :).

Have a good day :D.

Recovery

These past couple of days I've been pretty much laying in bed. I think it was a combination of not sleeping well with not eating well. I've been waking up in the middle of the night all sweaty and with headaches. And I get very cold, which I usually don't that easily.

I feel much better right now. It'll probably be all over by tomorrow, so here's hoping :)

Anyway, have a good day :D.

Under the Weather

I've got a fever right now...it sucks. My head hurts. This is like the 4th time in my life I've gotten a headache.

I can barely move, I'm half dead lying in bed. Even the phone's light hurts. I had to turn down the brightness to almost black.

I hope tomorrow I'll feel better, right now I'm going to go to sleep for like 12 straight hours. If I don't make it, donate my body to science or to feed poor cannibals.

Have a good day :D.

Vim to the Rescue

I knew learning Vim would pay off.

I learned to use Vim efficiently in my last job. It wasn't a requirement or anything, I just thought it would be cool. I forced myself to stick with it. It was hard. I messed up files several times (never beyond repair) because I didn't know what was going on at first. So I practiced, and practiced and practiced some more. I could move quickly in the documents and edit text. However working with multiple files took some more time. Then came the extensions and the custom commands and life was good. I finally saw why some programmers like it so much and I'm one of them now.

I use Vim almost exclusively to program these days and I'm pretty efficient with it. However, I never really thought of another thing that I would benefit from knowing Vim. Sometimes I need to modify files quickly and right now I don't have set hours to work, sometimes I receive a call in the morning to make some changes, sometimes in the evenings, and I usually work in the middle of the night. And since I don't have set hours, every now and then when they call me, I'm not even home. I'm out somewhere. And if the change is urgent, I have to stop what I'm doing and make the change...in my phone. I log in remotely through my phone to the web server where the changes need to be made and open up Vim. Most smartphone keyboards don't have arrows, so moving with the keyboard comes in handy in those situations. Sure, it may not be ideal, and I've only really had to do it a couple of times, but it saved time and the trouble of going someplace with a computer and an internet connection.

Anyway, it's pretty cool :). Have a good day :D

Faulty Scroll

My mouse's scroll wheel is acting up. When I scroll, about 1 of every 4 times it scrolls in the opposite direction of the intended one. It is such a pain browsing stuff like that. I guess it's not that bad for a $40 wireless mouse that I bought like 3 years ago. Other than that the mouse has worked really well. It's a Microsoft mouse. I guess they really do make hardware besides the Xbox, haha.

I'm probably going to buy a new one in the next couple of months and I don't intend to buy an expensive one. There are a shit ton of mice with a bunch of buttons and all kinds of sizes and stuff. I don't mind having a good 'ol mouse with just two buttons and a scroll wheel (I guess 3 buttons counting the middle click). I'm more of a keyboard man, so most of the additional stuff I could do with extra buttons in the mouse I prefer doing on the keyboard.

Have a good day :D

Risk

Today the cousins and I got together to hang out. We played some Risk, the world conquest board game. We didn't play world domination, which can take several hours to complete. We played a mission based type. We each have a different mission which the other players don't know, and whoever completes the mission first, wins. Mission can be to eliminate a player, or occupy certain number of territories.

I won :). My mission was to occupy 18 territories and have at least 2 units in each territory. I had forgotten about that last part when I first conquered my 18th territory and I told everybody that I won, but then I read my mission card again and realized I didn't have 2 units in every territory so everybody knew what my mission was, haha. It took me a couple more turns to actually win. +Marisol was about to win, because her mission was to destroy +Diego and he had a single unit left in the game, if anybody killed him, she would've won, but he got lucky. +Paulina too was about to win, her mission was to occupy all of Australia and North America, she was missing two territories. +Gabriel and +Diego weren't so lucky, they both were about to be destroyed and both their missions were to occupy 24 territories.

Anyway, it was fun.

Have a good day :D.

No Anticipation Surprise

Isn't it cool when something comes out that you knew you were expecting but didn't remember that it was coming out? For example, I know Dream Theater's going to release an album this year and I know that I will buy it, but I don't know when it's going to come out, and I don't plan on making note of the date when they announce it. I'm not even going to listen to song previews or anything like that, because one day I'll wake up and I'm going to find out that it's out and it's going to be a happy day.

On the last four weeks at least three games that I really wanted came out and I didn't anticipate then, they just came out and it was awesome when I read they had been released. No anxiety the previous days just thinking about it.

It also happens for movies, but a little different. Every Friday I check the showtimes for the movie theaters and sometimes movies with good ratings come out that I didn't know about.

Maybe it's just me though...I don't know.

Have a good day :D

German Final

Oh yes, Real Madrid and Barcelona are out of the UEFA Champions League, beaten by Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich respectively. I like it :).

The second game between Real Madrid and Borussia yesterday got tense at the end, because Real needed to win by 3 goals and they scored 2 goals in the last 10 minutes and they were close to scoring the 3rd that would put them in the final. It was pretty cool, but in the end they fell short and won 2-0, but were out of the competition.

The game that ended minutes ago, Barcelona-Bayern, was awesome. Bayern won 3-0...in Barcelona...for an aggregate score of 7-0...against one of the best teams in the world. Wow, I like Bayern's chances in the final. I'm extremely happy right now :D.

I'm very much looking forward to the final on May 25th. If Bayern loses again, for the second year in a row, I'm going to be depressed..........haha, not really, but it'll be a bummer.

Have a good day :D

Oreo

That's my mom's dog. He's a little Chihuahua. He sleeps a lot...but he also plays a lot. He makes you play with him, he guilt trips you. That's his little stuffed dog in the pic, which is actually kind of like his size. He likes playing fetch with it, though sometimes he can barely carry it. And he can't jump with it in his mouth. He jumps pretty high, thanks to his long legs, but the few times he did try to jump with the dog in his mouth, he just fell down, haha. He didn't hurt himself.

I spend a good portion of my day playing with him, running from one room to the other chasing him or being chased by him.

Have a good day :D.

Running and Reading

I found another activity to do while listening to an audio book: running. I've gone walking/running a couple of times in the evenings. I'm reading "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". I had that book for a couple of years when I first subscribed to Audible, but never listened to it. Now I started listening to it last week when I finished "the Gunslinger".

Have a good day :D

The Room

In one of the podcasts I listen to, they were talking about this game called The Room. It's an iOS and (as of recently) Android game. It's a puzzle game. I'm not talking Tetris kind of puzzle, I mean real head scratching puzzle. You get clues and things to help you get more hints and more stuff. I don't really know how to explain it, maybe a YouTube video will explain it better:

That is the actual gameplay.

I was going to buy it right away, it's $2 dollars in the Play Store, but I found out that I already had it from one of the Humble Bundles I had previously bought...I seriously need to play some of those games at least once...

You really have to see and examine everything you see. I really enjoyed it, although I felt it was a little short. Maybe I'm just asking for much.

Have a good day :D.

House of Cards

Today I watched the first episode of House of Cards, the Netflix show. I'm not big on politics or drama shows, but I gotta say I was left intrigued, so I will probably watch the rest. After all, they're only 13 episodes, and it's not like I have to wait a whole week for each episode. I really like that. I don't normally watch TV series when they're airing, I wait 'til they're on Netflix or someplace else I can watch them, but I can't wait a week to watch the next episode, I like how Netflix releases entire seasons at a time, at least they've done so with their 3 series so far, and I don't see them doing it differently in the future.

I had been hesitant to watch it because the shows are almost an hour long each. So pretty much like any HBO series because there are no ads. I like to watch series when I eat, but I eat in 5-10 minutes, so an hour is on the long side. But everybody that talks about it says only good stuff so I decided to give it a shot, and I'm not disappointed.

Have a good day :D

Jícama

I had no idea that jícama in english was jicama, haha. There are a bunch of words (usually food related) that I've heard both in english and in spanish, but I don't know that one is the translation of the other. There are other words that I simply don't know how to say in english. I consider myself pretty good at english, but I don't talk about food all the time so I don't know a bunch of food words.

Anyway, I had a jícama today, and I can't remember the last time I had one, but I fucking love it. With lime and chile.

Have a good day :D.

Free Movie

Last Saturday the cousins and me went to the movies. One of them, Daniel, didn't have money for the ticket, but he had a free ticket to to see a movie any day in April from Mon-Fri. I paid for his ticket on Saturday and he gave me the free ticket. I was trying to save the ticket for when Iron Man 3 came out (it comes out this Friday in México), but I just couldn't, so I went today. And I didn't spend any money because I have this card that generates 10% of all expenses made in the theater, I had enough money to buy the popcorn and coke :). Saw Olympus Has Fallen, I liked it.

Also, Borussia Dortmund beat Real Madrid 4-1...it was a pretty good game. Nothing is written in stone yet, but I would like to see a German final.

Have a good day :D

What A Game

Today was the first leg of the UEFA Champions League semifinals. Bayern Munich vs Barcelona. You can't go wrong with two of the best clubs in the world facing each other. The game just ended and I'm extremely happy. Bayern won 4-0...four...zero! Any game with four goals is entertaining. And also, it means that Barcelona needs at least 4 goals in the second leg, so they will probably give it their all, which will result in a super fun game. But a single Bayern Munich goal will mean Barcelona would have to score 6, damn!!! If somehow that were to happen, I would really want Barcelona to win the final too.

The other semifinal is promising too. Real Madrid vs Borussia Dortmund. I don't really have a favorite, but I like it when Real Madrid loses...

These kind of games are the reason why I just can't watch Mexican league games...they always leave me wanting more...

Have a good day :D

Drawing A Blank

I can't really think of what to blog about. I know I have to write a post, but usually after thinking for some time, something comes to mind. Not today, I have absolutely no idea what to write about, except for the fact that I don't know what to write about, so that's what I'm writing about.

I'm going to look through my phone pictures to get ideas for posts, but I'm very tired right now, so that'll have to wait.

Have a good day :D.

Low Internet Speed

Apparently, México has the lowest average internet speed on Netflix (well, out of the countries they release data for, which aren't really that many):

I know I don't contribute positively to that number, because my internet connection rarely ever is what it should be. And for the past few weeks, as soon as I do something that requires some consistent bandwidth, the connection drops for some seconds, something between 1-10 seconds. That's usually not a problem when browsing a website, but just try to watch a video, any video, any quality and it's fucking buffering more time than it's actually playing. Every so often the connection drops, and it's back to buffering. Downloading something larger than 5MB? Yeah, the internet is probably going to disconnect and odds are, the download won't finish and I'll have to restart it. The most annoying thing is I can't play always online games (like Diablo III or Starcraft II). I'll be monitoring the connection, and it'll seem fine. But some 3 minutes after I connect to the game server, the connection will drop, and the game will kick me off. THAT is why those kind of games shouldn't make you be always online (I know they have their reasons, but I don't care).

Anyway, have a good day :D.

Playing Some Cards

I love playing cards. It's one of my favorite things to do to pass the time with a small group of people. I also love board games and puzzles. But there's a history of playing cards in the family so at family gatherings it's usually easy to find enough people to play cards.

I'm not taking Texas Hold 'Em or Black Jack or Vegas games. I guess the games we play are Mexican, but I'm not sure, they were taught to us when we were younger by our grandmother. They have names like Conquian, Viuda, Sangre, Patada... but that doesn't mean I don't like Vegas games.

I say that because today we played some cards :). $1 peso each game... more for fun than for money, because it's not that much money.

Have a good day :D.

New Blog Theme

Today Google announced that now you can use Google+ comments on your Blogger posts. Of course I enabled it. I've always thought that the comments were broken the way they were. There's a bunch of stuff wrong with them, but the one that always annoyed the hell out of me is the page refresh after you comment. That was acceptable like 10 years ago...maybe 5, not now. Not on a Google product.

But anyway, I couldn't see the changes to the comments in my blog, it was probably just a matter of waiting some minutes for it to appear, but I didn't want to wait. So I just applied one of the themes they have there to the blog and now I see the changes. I felt too lazy to do any kind of customization. I just left it like it was...maybe in the future +Angelica will give me hand with it :).

Have a good day :D.

What Kind Of Review Is That?

I was browsing the movies in Google Play and I notice that a lot of movies have a bunch of 1 star ratings, even movies that usually have high ratings elsewhere.

Naturally, I was intrigued. So I go to read the reviews and I found out why. I'm not kidding when I say half of the reviews are among the lines of "it's too expensive, you can download it for free in the computer", meaning, of course, downloading a pirated copy (I'm talking about the Mexican store, I don't know about other markets). Other reviews are something like "I think they should offer some movies for free like in the internet", meaning sites where you can stream movies illegally. I think about 1 percent of the 1 star reviews I read were actually legitimate reviews.

I am so very disappointed. First of all, because of piracy. I admit, in the past I did download things like that. But not anymore. People worked hard on making the movie or album or book or video game, and I want to support them.

Second of all, because apparently people don't know that downloading movies through bit torrent or stuff like that is illegal, or they do know but it has become an acceptable way to acquire things. I mean, to give a bad review to a movie because it's too expensive compared to the illegal copy is just incredibly stupid. If you say, "it's too expensive, I found it cheaper at [other store]", then that's okay, I have no problem with that.

Third of all, because they weren't even that expensive to begin with. They just want to pay like $1 dollar to own the movie. No manchen!

I'm afraid of what this will mean for Google Music. Because that's the one service I'm waiting to be available in México.

Anyway, have a good day :D.

Pricing BS

I like digital media. If I have the option I'll buy an album or a movie or a video game in digital form. Except when the pricing is total bullshit.

Let me explain. As I had mentioned before I want to buy the new Luigi's Mansion. So I go to the 3DS eShop and attempt to buy the game. It's $40 dollars, same as in retail. I put my credit card info and it tells me to fuck off. Hmmm...oh yeah, I have the DS in US region, I'm going to change it to Mexico and try again. I change the settings and come back to the store. I find the game...it costs $800 pesos (about $65 dollars)...what the fuck!!! Why? It's the same game. You're not importing it. I know games at retail cost a lot here in Mexico but it's a digital copy! Take your fucking game and shove it up your ass!.... could you tell I'm pissed off? OK, that was my little rant.

But I really do want to play the game so I bought it on Amazon haha...and now I have to wait for it to arrive...

Anyway, have a good day :D

Got My Mom Hooked On Plants vs. Zombies

I think I've talked about this game before.

This game was part of one of the many Humble Bundles I've bought. I showed it to my mom, and she found it interesting enough to make me install it on her tablet. She's been playing it non-stop. It's cool to see how she plays it, because it's a strategy game, and she plays it very different than I do, she uses different plants and placement, and I admit I've stolen a couple of her moves, haha.

It reminds me of the time I got her obsessed with Tetris for the Game Boy.

My day was pretty uneventful. Worked a little, which apparently is a thing I do now on Sundays. And I'm now halfway through the first Dark Tower book. At this pace, I'll finish it in the middle of the week, and I'll have to wait half a month to get my next credit in Audible to get the second one...

Anyway, have a good day :D

Tennis Once Again

Today we played tennis for the first time in at least some 3 months. Our lack of practice really showed. It was still fun though.

The bad thing about playing in daylight savings time is that the sun is infernal even at 6 PM. The good thing is that we can play later in the day. We a have been playing in a court with no lights, so sunlight is a must. However, I would actually prefer to play with no sun and artificial light, just because of the heat.

Have a good day :D

Snake

I downloaded this game for my phone called "Snake. Payback." It's the old snake game where you eat little dots and the snake keeps growing. Brings back memories.

Have a good day :D

Karaoke Night

Tonight I went to a karaoke. And I sang, oh yes :).

I sang a total of 5 songs: "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da" and "Help" by The Beatles, "I Want It All" and "I Want To Break Free" by Queen and "Hotel California" by The Eagles. I also did backup vocals for "Ciega Sordomuda" by Shakira, haha... don't ask.

I really enjoy singing :)

Have a good day :D

Borderlands 2

One of the games I played while we weren't blogging was Borderlands 2. It's like a first person action RPG, if that makes sense at all. One of the things I like the most about the game is the loot. Searching for better weapons and shields is very addicting to me.

Amazon recently had a sale for the Borderlands 2 Season Pass (which includes all the DLC for the game) so I will probably start playing soon again.

I launched the game just to see if I remembered how to play and everything and I recorded a 30 second clip of me playing (it's like 800MB in 1080p, damn!):

Have a good day :D.

Audio Books

I have a subscription to audible.com because Gabrisol and me are supposed to read books together. I bought "Dammed" by Chuck Palahniuk so we could listen to it along with Mari's physical copy of the book, but we've only read a couple of chapters.

That was over a month ago, so now I have a credit for another book and I'm thinking of getting "The Dark Tower" series by Stephen King.

What I love about audio books is I can listen to them while doing other stuff like driving or cleaning, hell, even while playing Diablo III.

Have a good day :D.

Nice And Cool

There's finally A/C in my room... it is now livable in here. That was the most interesting thing that happened today.

I spent most of the day working. Also, I went to the movies after two weeks, which for me is a very long time. Saw G.I. Joe, it was ok.

Have a good day :D.

Played Some Needed Pool

Today I went out with the cousins to play some pool. It had been a while since I last played and I really missed it. I was a little rusty but I still enjoy the hell out of it :).

Car Breakdown

I was going to talk about how we played some Monopoly (a game I hadn't played in years) tonight and how Gabrisol totally kicked our asses.

But as I was on my way to drop off the Duartes, my fucking car died. It was 4 in the morning so I didn't feel like bothering anyone. I guess the good thing was that it was only a couple of blocks from their house. We just pushed the car up to their house. And I'm going to spend the night here.

Have a good day :D

Phone Is Here

I finally have my new phone in my hands. In fact, I'm posting this from it.

Have a good day :D

I Wish There Was...

...a 24-hour movie theater.

I would totally go at 3 or 4 in the morning to the movie theater. Sometimes I actually look at the movie times and go "crap, the last showing is at 10:30pm, it's too early" haha.

And think of the emptiness! I like it when there aren't lots of people in the theater (though I'm sure the theater doesn't like it as much). But at 3 in the morning? It would actually be a surprise to see somebody else there.

I know, I know, it makes no sense...but I can still dream :).

Have a good day :D.

Computer and Heater

My bedroom is kind of small, which I like, everything is reachable very easy. And it can be a good thing when trying to control the temperature. If it's too hot, turn on the A/C and it cools in minutes. Same goes for a heater, it warms up the room pretty quick. However when you're NOT trying to control the temperature, it can be a problem.

My laptop gets very hot when playing games or doing something that's processor-heavy, and it starts spitting out all this very hot air. This actually makes my room very very hot in a couple of hours. And since I use the computer most of the day, it's almost always on. The A/C doesn't work right now, so that pretty much makes my room a sauna...I don't like that...

On another note, I just read Angélica's blog post where she links to this very interesting article about procrastination: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/procrastination-is-not-laziness/. And just like her, it also pretty much describes my life. It blew my mind.

Anyway, have a good day :D.

Not Browsing the Web Tomorrow

I don't like April fools'... I very much dislike it that I'm not going to read a single thing tomorrow on the internet. I'm just going to wait 'til the next day and read about what things were fake and what things weren't. I don't even think the pranks are funny or that clever. Well, I don't really like pranks in general, not only if I'm on the receiving end of it, just in general.

But I guess some people like it, which means other people make way too big of an effort on fake things...that's my opinion at least.

Anyway, have a good day :D.

Home Alone

Today I had to stay home so as to not leave the house empty. It had been a while since I had to do that. I usually go out on Fridays and/or Saturdays (more than likely with Gabrisol). But not this weekend.

This time it was my turn to do it. Although, I didn't really stay alone in the house. Because my brother came home like at 2pm and I was asleep because I had slept like at 8am. So technically I was alone only while I was asleep, which means me being here was pretty much useless haha. But it was cool having a realxing weekend :).

Have a good day :D.

New Phone Ordered

Last Decemeber, or November or something like that I sold my Galaxy Nexus to my brother to help me pay for a debt that I have, and I got a way worse phone as a temporary replacement (the Motorola Defy+) with my contract renewal for free. I was going to use it while I gathered the money to buy a new one. I thought that was going to be like 2 or 3 weeks tops, but I still have that phone so I didn't stick to that plan.

But recently I've been doing some extra work and as a result I'll have enough money to buy the Nexus 4. In fact, I already ordered it, it should arrive sometime next week. I am very very excited about it :).

Going back to a high-end phone is going to be sweeeeet. I know some of you guys wouldn't spend the money to buy something like that, but I like it :D.

Anyway, have a good day :D.

This Can't Be Good

My dad came home today with a bunch of cokes:

The other ones were already in the fridge

I don't drink soda that much at home, but how can I turn them down? How would my dad feel? Yeah, I'm just making excuses, because I love coca-cola :). But Diego is here in my house so they probably won't last a lot.

Have a good day :D.

Growing Wishlist

In the past few months there have been some video games I've been wanting to play but I just haven't had the money to buy any. The last big game I bought was Borderlands 2 and that was back in September (I actually preordered it in August, but who cares). I'm probably going to have money for one game early next month, so I'm kind of torn as to which game buy. Probably StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm...or maybe Dead Space 3...or maybe the new Luigi's Mansion which has had killer reviews (that is of course, if I ever get my 3DS back from Gabrisol).

Also, they added movies to Google Play in México :). This is a screen from my phone:

Now I smell music coming soon :). I really am excited about it.

Have a good day :D.

Books in Google Play

Books finally arrived in Google Play México. I'm not that utterly excited about it, because I already have some books in Kindle but mostly because I like my books in English rather than Spanish if it's a book that wasn't written in Spanish and I think they only have books in Spanish in Google Play.

What I am excited about though, is the fact that they're finally bringing more stuff other than apps to México. What I really want is Music to be available here. As far as I know, the only way to buy digital music is here is through iTunes, and I've had some bad experiences before. I would definitely start buying music through Google Play if it became available. Hopefully it'll be sooner than later.

Have a good day :D.

SEO?

I once titled a blog post "US keyboard vs Latin American keyboard" and apparently people search for that, because that post has gotten more than 10 times more than the next most viewed post, haha.

Check it out:

I really like looking into stats, even if I get like 4 views a post, it's pretty cool :).

Have a good day :D.

Took Their Sweet Time

I hate how some movies take forever to get released in theaters in México.

Case in point, "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Zero Dark Thirty" just got released today in Juárez. I like going to the movies a lot, and for movies like these I like to wait until they come to theaters to watch them. I waited over three months, and they both come out at the same time, that's crazy. It makes it harder not reading spoilers on the internet....so, you better not fucking spoil these movies!!!

Anyway, have a good day :D.

Learning Python Basics

Python is one of the programming languages I read so much about, but have never really used it.

I've been using Codecademy for the last couple of months to take courses on learning different topics from different languages, but so far, I've only done courses from languages I already knew very well (Ruby and JavaScript), because I like to stay fresh and to see how they do things that I might do differently.

But now I'm doing some courses on Python, I just started with the basics like variables, functions, classes and stuff like that.

When I'm finished with more advanced courses, I will make myself write some scripts in Python to get practice :).

Have a good day :D.

I Broke the Chain!

I totally forgot to blog yesterday! I blame my body. I fell asleep at 12am...well before my sleeping time :P.

I had a really nice streak going...

It's going to look ugly...

Anyway, have a good day :D

I Broke Gmail

I was replying to an email and I pasted in some text in the reply, and everything in the page went up a little...so I tried doing it again, and I could manage to reproduce it, haha. Check it, it's not easy to spot at a simple glance:

You'll see that the black bar on top is gone, and the reply box is out of it's container and there's a pending thingy at the bottom. You can see that by the lack of scroll bars on the side, I couldn't scroll the page up. Pretty weird :P.

Have a good day :D.

Falling Into Old Habits

For some reason, I can't seem to last very long sleeping early and waking up early. I always manage at least a couple of weeks when school starts, but little by little I start sleeping later and later each day.

Right now, I'm in that sleeping super late phase. Hopefully it won't last long.

I know it's like 7am, but since I haven't slept, it still counts for Sunday :).

Have a good day :D.

Graph Search

I just got the Facebook Graph Search thingy. It's a pretty cool tool, but I can't really seem to put it to good use. I don't really think they built that tool for the likes of me. Because I can't really think of what to do with the information it gives me. If I find people that like a band that I like too, or that plays a video game that I like, I'm not going to add them as friends or anything. I barely add people that I know from a long time ago.

Maybe I just couldn't think of what to use it for. Maybe in the future I'll find a good use for it... but being optimistic, I do like is the new look it gives to the header in Facebook :).

Anyways, have a good day :D

I Really Like Rice

Mari, Gabe, Mono and me went to a Japanese restaurant. I ordered a big bowl of fried rice...it was delicious. I could seriously eat rice every day...pasta too.

They should make a rice restaurant...OK, not really.

Have a good day :D

I Bid You Farewell

Google decided to shut down Reader....that makes me sad.

I've been using Reader for at least 6 years, maybe more. I had just discovered what RSS was back then, and it seemed a cool thing to keep up with sites. At first I didn't really use it right, I just subscribed to anything that seemed remotely cool, and ended up having thousands of unread items in mere days, which is impossible to keep up with unless you want to make it a full time job. But I got better with time.

And I was making a good job keeping up with the feeds

I don't really go to a website's home page that often. If I find a site that interests me and has good content, I subscribe to it's RSS feed and only visit that site again to read the articles I'm interested in. And I usually find those sites through web searches or from referrals from other sites.

I have read how you can use Twitter and Facebook to consume content, but that's not really my style. I just can't seem to use Twitter when I'm following more than like 10 people that actually post stuff. If I check Twitter one day, and then the next, there's like 3 million tweets in between that I didn't read. As for Facebook...the only content I seem to be able to consume there are pictures with big captions on it, or pictures with quotes.

Anyway...it will be missed...

Also, have a good π day :D.

The Loser Wins

For reasons unknown to me, my favorite football (soccer) club is Bayern Munich.

I was watching the second leg of the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League between Bayern Munich and Arsenal. I don't usually watch football, but I do watch Bayern's matches of the Champions League when I can.

Bayern lost 2-0 in their home. However, they still advanced to the next round because the aggregate score was 3-3 and they won the tiebreaker with away goals (they won 3-1 in Arsenal's field on the first leg).

I'm glad they advanced, but if they keep playing like they did today, they're going to have trouble in the quarterfinals, because they could face Barcelona or Real Madrid or Juventus.

Anyway....have a good day :D.

Ice Cream Sandwich

For once, I'm not talking about the Android version. I'm talking about an actual ice cream sandwich.

I had one today, and it was probably the highlight of my day...that sounds very depressing. But I fucking love them. Even though the last one I ate was probably 2 years ago, because I always forget that they exist.

It's weird. Why don't I buy them more often? It's not like it's an exotic product, or a season product. You can go to the store any day, at any time and you can get one...if I like them so much, how come I forget they exist?

Well, I guess that's good, because I don't want to start eating ice cream every day.

Have a good day :D

Insomnia

I like the fact that there's a couple of stores that are open all night close to my house, because my sleeping habits are weird and I'm usually awake at 3 or 4 in the morning.

And when I'm working I'm usually drinking some juice, so having a store comes in handy.

This is what an aisle looks like at 3 am in the market

Work on Sunday?

Who works on Sunday? It's the lord's day...lord Sergio, that is.

Okay, I know lots of people work on Sundays, but to me, Sunday means wake up, eat, go to the movies, eat, catch up on my feeds, snack, football (if the season's on), play with the dog, stare at nothing, play a video game and go to sleep (everything between waking up and going to sleep in no particular order).

But today, much like last Sunday, I spent the whole day working. I'm working on a project with Diego (my brother, for the one person out there reading this that doesn't know), and it needed to be good enough for a demo by tomorrow morning.

And I'm not complaining, I'm just not used to it. It's actually cool, because it's the kind of work I enjoy, which is web development. The day flew by, but I think the project is ready to be shown...hopefully.

I know my posts have been lacking pictures, but my phone takes super dark pictures that I wouldn't dare publish here because they're disgusting, but I'll make a better effort in the future.

Have a good day :D

When Will DST End?

Nowadays it's useless, what good does changing the hour actually make in this time and day? Are we really going to use less power because the day lasts longer? I know I won't. I still use my computer, I still charge my phone, I still turn on the light and my TV. Or maybe it does make a difference but I just don't see it. I don't know.

I'm probably just angry about the fact that just I found out DST entered into effect tonight. I mean, if I knew beforehand I would've prepared psychologically, but when you find out the moment it's supposed to change, a whole hour has been taken from you and there's nothing you can do.

It could also be that I like night more than I like day, I like my days to end sooner (I know the days are actually longer in the summer, but come on, 9pm and the sun is still out in the summer? That's crazy).

Anyway, that's just my opinion...

Have a good day :D

Super Hexagon

I recently bought the Humble Indie Bundle for Android 5. It came with 6 games. One of those games was Super Hexagon. And I've been obsessing with it. I could tell you what the game is about, but I'll post a video instead of me playing so you know what it's about, because it's kind of hard to explain. Just know that I'm the little triangle moving from left to right and I'm trying to avoid getting hit.

The difficulty is brutal! That video is of the easiest level. And you "pass" it by lasting 60 seconds, but I lasted "so long" because I've been playing several times a day. In the second level I can only do like 40 seconds and in the third I can't do more than 15. But I like the fact that I can play for 10 minutes and I did like 30 tries, so it's not like I've been playing for hours. And since it's for Android too, I play it on my phone at times.

I really enjoy these type of games. It's not exactly trial & error (because it changes every time), but there are definitely some patterns you can learn.

Have a good day :D

Project 1: Calendar

I could not think of a single thing that happened today that's worth talking about, so I might as well talk about one of my projects. It doesn't have a name yet, it's just a calendar. It's based on this.

The point of the calendar is to keep track of various activities you would like to do on a daily basis, be it for learning how to do something, lose a bad habit or get better at something you already know. For every day that you do the activity, you mark the day in the calendar, it's so simple and a no brainer. But the important part is the consistency, actually doing it every day, make it a habit of doing it. That's the way to really improve on what you already know.

It's not even close to being complete, but it does it's main function already. You can create activities and mark the days when you did the activity. I'm planning a bunch of stuff still, I'll talk about it more when the time comes.

I marked the 7th as having done the blog in advance, so I kind of cheated :P

I would like to mention that +Angelica is helping me with the design. As of this moment, the actual app is hosted on sevaor.com, but it's not going to stay there forever, I'll probably use the domain for something else. And the code is hosted on GitHub in case anybody reading this wants to see it and maybe even contribute to it. I'm using Rails 3.2, but I'll probably upgrade to Rails 4 when the final version comes out.

Have a good day :D

I Want a New Chair

I decided that I want to buy a new desk chair, because I don't like very much the one that I have right now.

This is my current chair.

However, I don't like the idea of going to the store and just buying one, because I'm going to be thinking the whole time that there's probably a better and cheaper one online. In fact, I wouldn't really know where to go to buy a desk chair.

But I'm not sold on the idea of buying it online because I wouldn't be able to try it out beforehand.

Is there a brand that always makes good chairs? Is there something I should look for besides the cost and the shape?

What do you guys do when you're going to buy a chair?

Anyways, have a good day :D

Pulling an All Nighter

People usually ditch sleep when they're either partying or studying for a test or finishing an essay. Not this guy, though. I pull an all nighter because I can, even though I shouldn't.

Last night I didn't sleep the whole fucking night. I went to bed at midnight and I needed to wake up at 7am. 7 hours of sleep is pretty good. But I couldn't sleep. For the life of me, I just couldn't sleep. I should probably have tried reading (a physical book), but I didn't think of it then.

After an hour, I said "fuck it, I'm wasting time," so I started working. Half an hour passed by and it was 5:30 am already... yes, that's how it felt. That's when I started getting drowsy. But I can't sleep less than 2 hours, I will just not wake up, so a struggle began to try to stay awake. I emerged triumphant from that battle :).

I went to school and I dropped dead when I came back home. But I could only sleep 2 hours because I had plans. Waking up from that "nap" was way harder than it is when sleeping just 2 hours at night.

And here I am. It's 9:30pm, I'm going to bed now (I'm pretty sure I won't have trouble sleeping tonight), and I'll wake up when my body and mind say it's okay :D.

Have a good day :D.

Keeping the streak alive

Lately, I've been obsessed with keeping a coding streak.

I discovered a couple of months ago that GitHub keeps track of your current and your longest coding streaks. Being a person who enjoys a little competition (especially with myself), I wondered how many days in a row I could contribute to a project in GitHub. I started on January 14th, and as this picture shows...

...I haven't missed a day :). Granted, some days my contributions have been a little on the weak side, but most days I do make significant contributions to my projects.

This method really motivates me. Time will tell how long I can extend my streak :).

Have a good day :D.

I Couldn't C For a While

No, I haven't gotten lazy writing, I wasn't blind or anything. My laptop's C key didn't work.

I never really though about how important almost every key in a computer keyboard is until today. Especially if you're spend a good portion of your day coding.

I first noticed it while trying to change directories in the Terminal. I typed the command "cd projects" only to have an error message sent back to me "-bash: d: command not found". d? Sure enough, I looked at what I typed and it said "d projets". From that moment, every time I hit the C key and nothing happened, a little part of me died. I restarted the computer a couple of times. Booted Windows. Booted Ubuntu again. It did not work.

Even if it was only a key, it felt horrible. Could this be just the begging followed by other parts of hardware failing? The hard drive? The memory? *gasp* The processor??? It's not a new laptop, but it is by no means that old. I bought it almost 3 years ago.

So naturally, I opened it up. The thought of finding the problem in plain sight was very present in my mind, you know how very little reason you can have when you're freaking out. I had never taken out the keyboard off of my laptop before, so I took off every piece of cover I could find trying to find a big label that said "take off keyboard here" or something like that. There was no such thing, of course. So I had to google it. After finally taking it off, I still believed the problem was going to be right in front of my eyes. It wasn't. The back of the keyboard was all covered up. All I could do was blow on it and clean it.... and amazingly, that did the trick.

Long story short, it wasn't hardware failure, it was probably just accumulated dust. But that was a horrible hour. I actually started thinking that I was going to need to take a separate keyboard with me everywhere I took my laptop.

Anyway... have a good day :D

Third time's the charm...

...hopefully.

This is the third time we're going to try to make this 365 blog. By we I mean, +Jesus Ruiz, +Marisol Chacon, +Angelica Chacon, +Raymundo Gutiérrez and me (I just wanted to mention someone from Google+ :D).

The first time it was kind of successful, we lasted over half a year writing posts almost every single day, but we couldn't manage to do the whole year, which is the original goal. We started in April of 2011 and we stopped in December of the same year.

The second time...was a total failure. I couldn't even manage to do a whole month. I did 11 posts in July of 2012, that's it.

Now this is the third time. Hopefully we can break our record, if not, at least do a couple of months.

A lot of things have surely happened to every one of us in the last 7 months, but let's save all the bits and pieces for future posts, because it gets hard to think of things to talk about every day.

Have a good day :D.