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Archive for August, 2005

20050830 Coming back

I have been at two great parties this weekend. First it was playboymansionparty which rocked completely, and I am writing a little report about it, so stay tuned… and second it was the notting hill carnival, which has rocked so much too (although you can't even compare it with the pmp, of course). Past year I was only on the first day of carnival, which is the kids day, and this one I was only on the second day of carnival, the adults day.

This is an open air celebration. Everybody goes to the street and dances, sings, drinks and eats in there, in a very big party. Although, as it has some caribbean roots, there are plenty of stands with people selling caribbean food which is very very curious. I recommend you to taste it if you can. There are also lots of soundsystems in the streets, with some dj's in each one, most of them play an strange mix of rap, caribbean, reggae and black music, but some others are more dance/techno oriented. We prefer more that ones as you could expect ;-)

Also we took the opportunity of going to a pub which is by the side of the Grand Union Canal, an old canal used for transporting materials and now it's more of a touristic attraction as it's not needed anymore (it's faster to use a truck than this canal nowadays). So there we were enjoying some funk and pop music while having a beer and enjoying the sun. Who can ask for more?

Yes, we asked for more. When coming back to Portobello we found a little soundsystem that was playing dance music and we decided it was cool, so we hung there for a while, dancing with some other people which was "giving it all", specially an old man which was the star in that party with his weird dance movements. Ahhh you can see such strange behaviours in this party…

So I am very tired and tomorrow it's a working day… time to sleep! I'll finish that report in a while and will put it here. See u!

20050824 Ruby On Rails, round I

Lately I discovered that I am a bit fed up with certain things in the php world. Specially doing cms and all the stuff related to storing data, data models and blah blah. So I have finished taking a look at Ruby on rails. This is a framework built over Ruby, a language created by a japanese guy, Yukihiro Matsumoto, which wanted to do something better than perl.

And this framework was built by David Heinemeier Hansson, the main coder of Basecamp (one of the coolest products I have seen lately).

The video demo on the ruby on rails page is really impressive and interesting (although part of it is due to the use of that cool editor! I have to get that editor!).

After seeing it, I tried to install ruby and rails on my mac and I failed when trying to make it run as an apache module, although it worked with the default Webricks server. When I come back from this long week-end party + Notting Hill Carnival final party, and rest a bit, maybe I'll have a try again. That sentence about the ruby on rails philosophy -Do it once- has captivated me…

c'mon hurry hurry up!

Next Great Event is almost here, and I still haven't finished preparing all the materials for the stunning live performance that xplsv is going to offer there.

Yay!! why do I always have the best ideas at the last moment? :'(

anyway, time to sleep!

20050822 No more sudoku…

… please!!!

20050820 Spain owns half of London

Usually everybody complain about foreign investors buying properties and industries in Spain, saying they are going to dismantle the economical structures in Spain, blablah. The funny part here is that actually there are lots of businesses ran by Spanish entities here in London. Let's start with the most stunning of all: abbey bank. This one has recently been bought by Santander Central Hispano, a very well known bank in Spain, and they have given to it their own branding. It still surprises me when I see the flame icon in the middle of London streets!!

Also, an spanish enterprise (I don't remember the name) maintains several tube lines. That is, Jubilee and Northern Line. And another one which I don't remember now too (this is beginning to be a problem!). Casually, the Northern Line is known to have lots of problems with the infrastructure works and maintenance, having lots of delays and not been improved on time. Even more, they said they would have to close part of the line during some months to be able to finish everything just before it is too late. This is because usually maintenance works are done at night, when the tube is not working. But they are so delayed that they need the whole day, not only some hours at night. This news, of course, produced lots of agitated words in most of the newspapers here, blaming the managers of Northern Line!

We have discovered today the funniest part of all, while doing some shopping at primark. This is a big shop which has lots of clothes at a good price. Hence there's always full of people. You know how people react when something is very cheap! It's like being always on the sales season.

And I was holding a product in my hand while waiting for paying in the long queue, and a bit bored, turned it and then found something written in spanish on the label. Uh? What is this? We started looking at all labels of every product we had on sight, and they were all in spanish. It's even funnier than going to Zara… here the ownage is hidden! So, almost half of London is wearing clothes made in Spain, more concretely in Madrid. And they were worried about clothes industry in Spain! Hah! They just need to stablish themselves in another country, they don't even need to say where do they come from!

And I am pretty sure there are lots more examples like these ones!