Nieve, pico y pala

Ayer visitamos a una amiga de mi abuela. Era su santo. Y estaba molesta por que los camiones que quitan la nieve en invierno la habían amontonado inclinando un árbol que ella plantó hace 10 años.

Aunque le dije que podía llamar a los que se encargan del cuidado de la zona, esta mañana decidí ir a quitar la nieve yo mismo. Al llegar me di cuenta que no era el primero. Otro vecino que también escuchó las quejas estaba allí con su pala. La montaña de nieve tenía unos dos metros en su lugar más alto, y toda la superficie de la montaña era hielo que había que picar. Nada que no pudiera solucionar hora y media de ejercicio. A mitad de la operación, cuando ya había quitado bastante nieve, el árbol se enderezó. Me dio gusto ver como se movía.

De camino a casa me dio por comparar árboles con personas, y las aportaciones de cada uno a este planeta.

I didn't like OS X

This list has been sitting on my computer for a long time. It's from a text file where I collected all the things that annoyed me about OS X. These are some of the reasons why I sold my "designed in California" computer. Some of them may no longer be valid, or may as well happen with other operating systems. If this Mac had been my first computer this list would probably not exist. But it wasn't, so here it is:

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Learning to type with a Dvorak keyboard

During the last year I didn't share much on my blog, even I have a list of posts that I would like to write. For instance: how was it to switch from Mac to a GNU/Linux system, why didn't I enjoy using OS X, what is Fun Programming, why did I move to Finland, how is it to live here, why did I refuse to work for almost two years...

Much to tell, but for some reason it didn't happen. I think writing in three different social networks takes time away from blogging. Another reason may be that I never received much feedback, and since I'm already subscribed to my own thoughts, I didn't feel the need to digitize them. A third reason might be that I didn't want to contribute to the info-pollution :)

But enough excuses.

A few seconds ago I broke my own typing speed record using a Dvorak keyboard layout. It's probably a strange hobby which can be put in the same category as speedcubing, or standing still on a bicycle.

I started three months ago typing on a text editor for a few minutes every day. After some weeks, I started a more serious training using a program called Klavaro, still investing 5 or 10 minutes per day. In January I began to feel I was stuck and not really improving, so I decided to dump the Qwerty layout altogether. Since that day, all typing was on Dvorak. No more switching back to Qwerty. In the image you can see that this has helped me double the speed in less than two months.

But what's the point? The answer is that I like experiments, and this is one of them. I wanted to know how long it takes to replace a habit which I trained for almost 30 years. I've heard it's good for the brain to do things in different ways, and I wanted to know if I could do it. I'm changing my profession, I changed the operating system I work with, why not my keyboard layout? :)

I'm not yet as fast as I used to be, but I'm not far behind. In the past I used mostly 6 fingers for typing. Now I use all of them. Another reason for switching is that one should be able to type code faster with this layout, since $&[{}(=*)+]!#@\ and - are all just one key press away, unlike with some European Qwerty layouts, which force you to do strange key combinations to get those same characters. I'll tell you in a few months.

But for now, I can tell you that rewiring your brain is possible.

Bajo nieve

El viernes por fin jugué a ping pong. No se cuanto tiempo había pasado desde la última, pero tenía muchas ganas. El polideportivo me sorprendió por la cantidad de gente y ruido. Había muchas mesas de tenis de mesa, gente que jugaba a volley, baloncesto, chicas que entrenaban para cheerleaders, máquinas para hacer deporte, trampolines, camas elásticas, gente haciendo piruetas. Nunca había visto a tanta gente practicando deportes a la vez.

Hace casi un año en Phnom Penh

Estación de autobuses, esperando a que nos movamos. Fuera veo a una niña pequeña llevando a una niña aún más pequeña. Quizás de 4 y 1 años. Hombres esperando para meter sus bicis en la bodega del autobús. Niña probablemente vestida con su mejor ropa. Desde que vi el documental cada vez que veo a una persona mayor que yo siento respeto y me pregunto qué habrá sufrido.

Aquí primero se suben los pasajeros y a continuación se reposta en la gasolinera. El conductor se pone su cinturón, el único que puede hacerlo. Veo una chica con cara seria que mira desde fuera. Hace un momento estaba sentada aquí dentro. Me pregunto si hay pasajeros que solo van si no hay otros que paguen más.

En Phnom Penh hay semáforos y se suelen respetar.

El bus se detiene un segundo, se sube una chica. Como no quedan asientos libres el ayudante saca de la bodega un taburete de plástico para ella.

Runkeeper's poor privacy settings

I decided to Google my own name a few weeks ago. Most of what I found was expected, but one thing called my attention. I found my own profile at Runkeeper.com. It was a surprise because I had no intention of sharing that information with anyone except one friend. But there it was: my name, exercise times, distances, even the exact route in a map. I'm usually very aware of privacy issues and think before sharing, so I found this extremely annoying.

I immediately went and changed my name. I tried to change my photo but it didn't work. There is no button to delete my photo either. After many attempts I tried using Firefox. It allowed me to replace the photo in my profile, but not in their forums.

It came to my mind that if my profile was there, others' were too. I went to Google and restricted my search to their domain: google.com/search?q=site:runkeeper.com. Have a look at it yourself: over a million profiles waiting to be downloaded. Most of them with name, last name, city, sometimes weight, and often a very detailed map of where exactly this person was running or cycling. I would say most users do not know this information is there for everybody to see. I think there is more than one way this information can be abused. Maybe by health insurance companies or by someone wanting to enter your home. Just as an experiment, I searched in Google+ some of the names on that list. I felt tempted to write them a message and ask if they knew their details are online, but decided to write this post first.

There is a discussion in their forums about this issue. I made a copy here in case it's taken down. In comment #22 someone from support claims they can not do anything about Google indexing their page, which is not true. He even says we should contact Google about this, which is ridiculous.

If you use Runkeeper, watch out and let your friends know about this.

No es China, es la eficiencia la que está acabando con nuestros empleos

Este artículo me pareció tan interesante que decidí traducirlo y compartirlo aquí con permiso de su autor, Dyske Suematsu. Puedes leer el original en http://dyske.com/paper/945.

La mayor parte de la riqueza se concentra ahora en la parte superior de la escala social. Esto ocurre en los EEUU y la brecha se amplía cada año. Creo que se debe a la eficiencia y no a China. Hoy en día las mejores ideas pueden propagarse por el mundo de manera rápida y eficiente, y todos pueden encontrarlas y comprarlas de manera eficiente, lo que convierte a los propietarios de esas ideas en personas asquerosamente ricas y hace que las ideas que no son las mejores apenas puedan sobrevivir. No solo es rápida la transferencia de información, la riqueza también se transfiere rápida y eficientemente.

Imagina que en el futuro existe algo similar al teletransportador de Star Trek que nos permite servir comida recién cocinada a cualquier persona del mundo. La eficiencia de un dispositivo así probablemente acabaría con los restaurantes locales que no son los mejores. La eficiencia de esta cocina del futuro permitiría a un cocinero servir a millones de comensales cada día. Probablemente solo necesitaríamos unos pocos cocineros por cocina en todo el mundo. La razón por la que muchos cocineros aún tienen trabajo es por que el mundo aún no es tan eficiente. En otras industrias mucha gente ha perdido su trabajo debido a la invasión de la eficiencia en sus campos.

Cuando alguien es propietario de un medio de producción más eficiente puede eliminar un gran número de puestos de trabajo y obtener unos grandes beneficios con el dinero que ahorra. En otras palabras, no es tanto que los empleos estadounidenses estén yéndose al extranjero, sino que los propietarios de medios de producción eficientes se están embolsando el dinero que gastaban en la contratación de empleados.

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Gravity acceleration

I remember discussing with my math and physics teacher. I was about sixteen years old. She argued that the attraction the Earth exerts on any bodies around it increases as we get closer to the center. My intuition was telling me that if gravity acceleration is caused by mass, the point of maximum gravity should be the surface of the planet, not the center. At the center of the earth we would be surrounded by mass, so nothing would be pulling us towards the center of the Earth anymore. I believe she probably had this formula in her head: F = G*m1*m2/r*r. That's Newton's law of universal gravitation. In that formula, as the distance between the two masses decreases, the force gets stronger. If the distance (r) would approach 0, the force (F) would increase towards infinite. This formula is useful if we consider the two masses (m1 and m2) to be points. But the Earth is not a point. Points have no inside and outside, but this planet does.

Somehow a few days ago, twenty years after that discussion, these ideas came back to me. So I went and asked Mr. Internet. It turns out we were both partially right. The gravity acceleration does not immediately decrease as we move towards the center of the Earth, as my intuition had told me. In fact, it first increases a little as we go down. There are at least two reasons. One, the effect of the planet rotation, which tries to throw us up into space, is stronger on the surface than down below. And two, density of the matter inside the planet is not always the same: it changes depending on the depth.

That means that as we start digging towards the center of the planet, the gravity acceleration initially increases, reaching the maximum at about half way through our trip to the center of the Earth. But after that it decreases down to zero, as I had suspected.

My teacher did not appreciate so much my ability to get the right answers without knowing or remembering all the theorems and rules. At least publicly she didn't, I don't know what she thought about it. In any case I believe it was an ability to be promoted, not something to get rid of. My feeling is that teachers wanted students who were able to memorize things, not understand them. That's why I find this video important: Changing Education Paradigms, why I enjoyed the book Hackers and Painters. And maybe one reason why I'm interested in the Khan Academy and recorded almost 100 episodes of Fun Programming.

The two images are Creative Commons material. You can find the license and author information here and here.

Android phones used as a computer interface

As far as I know, there isn't much interaction between smart phones and computers today. They are mostly used as two independent devices. I can access the files in my phone from my PC, sync contacts and music, but not much more.

When I'm in front of my computer I usually have my phone plugged into it. This phone can detect acceleration and has a hi-res touch screen. Why not use the phone to augment the computer?

It would be great if my laptop could read all phone sensors in real time. Then it could be used as a game controller. A mouse in one hand, and my phone in the other. I could tilt it, touch the screen and even see information about the game in my phone's display. Maybe it would be even possible to use the phone for aiming, using the phone camera to track objects in my computer's screen (registration points).

But as I don't play much, I'm more interested in productivity than in games. I'd like to use the phone's display as an external display for my laptop. For instance the Gimp's toolbar or a color selector could be shown in my phone, leaving more free pixels in my laptops display. As I'm working with my Wacom tablet on my right hand, I'd like to use my left hand tilting the phone to control color, opacity or brush width. If I'm creating music, I'd like to tilt the phone to control the filter frequency or the amount of effect in a certain audio track. If latency is low enough it would be a much better interface than a mouse and a keyboard, something that could complement other MIDI controllers.

I think there are some experiments in this direction, but if Google (or someone else) added the required APIs and libraries to Android it would become much easier to experiment in this field. Hopefully some developers and artists find this concept interesting enough to work on it.

DDOS

Acabo de leer este artículo de Enrique Dans sobre la detención de la "supuesta" cúpula de Anonymous en España. En general estoy de acuerdo, pero el ejemplo de que un "ataque" DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) es "equivalente a la sentada en las escaleras de un local" no me convence del todo. Quizás el ejemplo del vídeo se acerca más a lo que es un ataque distribuido de denegación de servicio. Lo hacen en la conferencia del Chaos Communication Congress en Berlín y consiste en simplemente irse a comprar donuts. Todos. Al Dunkin Donuts. Y claro, se quedan sin donuts. Es distribuido por que lo realiza mucha gente. Cada uno va y compra uno o más donuts. Y es de denegación de servicio, por que la empresa ya no puede prestar el servicio que normalmente da, que consiste en vender donuts. Si te sientas en las escaleras estás impidiendo el paso a otros consumidores. Pero aquí no bloqueas, sino que coordinas a muchos para que hagan algo normal, consumir.

Siendo quisquilloso, no me gusta la palabra "ataque". Suena violenta. Aquí no hay armas. Lo único que se hace es poner de acuerdo a muchas personas para que hagan lo mismo, y hacer así que deje de funcionar. Puede ser una página web, o cualquier empresa o servicio en tu ciudad.

Llamarlo terrorismo y hablar de Al Qaeda me parece muy fuerte, ridículo, absurdo, manipulación. Una vez más, como sacado de 1984. Me parece que es miedo a que Internet democratice, repartiendo entre muchos el poder de unos pocos.

Thoughts, early 21st century

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