I haven’t been busy, I just haven’t been motivated to write. I was sick and yeah, I’m full of terrible excuses for not writing. I have also been dying my hair a lot, which is good because it looks AWESOME!

What have I been up to?

Besides being sick, I decided to delve into baking.

I started with apple pies because they’re easy to make. I have to say that they are quite tasty and very delicious. My boys can tell you, I got a delicious from all 7 of them and I wasn’t even in the room to evil eye them into saying that :D.

I also got a bunch of Vogue México Magazines. I think that I won a subscription or something. They just keep appearing on my doorstep.

And here’s part of an editorial I really liked (very badly photographed because I don’t have a scanner and orange lighting)

I’ve been playing Pokémon a LOT! I’m about to finish the Diamond version and I want to play the Black version next :D.

My friend Paco and I video chat a lot and we like to sing and make faces XD. Video chatting is extremely underrated.

Here we were singing the song from Robot Unicorn Attack.

Alekz got me into Marvel Blocks and I got Thor, I’m looking for Loki next.

That’s basically it, I’ve also been working but that’s really boring. The year is almost over and I think that next year will bring a lot of changes. I’m making a list of things I want to accomplish next year, or at least start working towards. I will post that next.

Kisses!

From where I stand there are only two main reasons why people use that crap:

1. They are at work and their work computer ONLY has IE installed
2. They are browsing a website that works ONLY in IE

Any other reason is not good enough to justify any IE use… EVER!

Why is IE so annoying?

IE as a browser that you use when you don’t do any web programming might not seem that bad. After all, it’s already there when you get your Windows computer (I refuse to call them PCs) and you don’t have to download everything else and all that stuff.

But then, you start browsing and you notice that sometimes things don’t look right. Some things are just off in some webpages and you are not sure why. Some things don’t work or look like the website had a tornado go over it because things are just scattered all over the place. No, it is not your fault, at least not entirely. It is IE’s fault.

I don’t really know why, but the folks at Microsoft like to make everything complicated. They come up with their own web standards and they like to do everything differently! Of course, this only results in headaches for both the developers and the users.

IE likes to measure things different from the other browsers, it doesn’t like layers or PNG images. IE doesn’t like rounded corners or shadows in your website. IE likes to be a unique butterfly and it fails at it!

Sure, there are many solutions to making websites look like they should on IE. What many don’t know is that those solutions are really hard to implement because IE refuses to do as told.

Personally, I don’t like IE. I think it is an ugly browser, it suggests that you uninstall add-ons (that you probably weren’t aware were installed) so that you can have a better experience, it is not as safe as others and it doesn’t work!

As a web developer, I have to make specific CSS for each and every one of IE’s current versions, except for IE 6 (I refuse to support that thing), add jQuery plugins to make things look right ONLY for IE and then cross my fingers and pray that my website won’t explode from jQuery overload.

To wrap this rant up, I just want to say that if you use IE, at least try to upgrade it and if you can definitely look into installing Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera (mainly, any of the modern browsers).

Out of curiosity, which is your favourite browser?

Kisses!

Lion is the new MAC OSX, it came out on July 20^th and I’ve heard a LOT of experienced and not-so experienced Mac users complain about it. This is my experience and the brief explanation that I got during Campus Party.

I had to adjust my payment setting on the App Store, so I couldn’t get Lion when it first came out. I was at the Campus Party, so I downloaded the whole thing in like 45 minutes. Installation took another 30-45 minutes (time is approximated since I wasn’t at my computer, I was looking for Maddog).

My Mac Book is old-ish. I got it second hand and refurbished from my super business partner Ale. While it is not brand new, the refurbishment left it with the same system characteristics as a new white Mac Book, so Lion shouldn’t be a problem for it.

After installation everything seemed fine. My apps were there, my pretty screensaver was there, and my files and DropBox were intact. That was until it asked me for a weird Java update. My Mac Book crashed while I was updating Java; it was horrible. My Mac Book had never crashed before.

I got the update in at the second try and then my computer was super slow! I’m talking about snail-slow, not even my net book is that slow. It took ages for it to start up and to get unblocked. It was a complete nightmare. I ended up shutting it down and going off to conferences and other things.

The next day, I was at the Titanium Conference and tried to install Xcode. The program itself downloaded super fast but the installation took hours! It was stuck over 5 hours and the computer crashed like 4 times in a day.  I just couldn’t deal with it and went on with my stuff and just left the Xcode installation there.

This was my Friday and Saturday. On Sunday it was all back to normal. I don’t like the Launchpad or Mission Control but now the computer is fine again.

The thing is that Lion needs time to get all its stuff together. It needs to check out where everything is located, make the changes it needs to work things out and just get the hang of how you organize your data. It is pretty much like a new tenant in a furnished apartment. They don’t bring many new things to the table but they do have to get to know their way around and that takes time.

I don’t see HUGE changes but I’ve grown fond of Mission Control (the Exposé replacement) and I like the little changes to the Finder interface.

One of the things I really, REALLY don’t like is that my “Plants vs. Zombies” doesn’t work at all, QuickTime doesn’t open many video files it did before and if you have Adobe CS5, you need to get CS5.5 for it to work properly.

If you are going to update to Lion, be patient. Your computer might end up suck-y for a day or two, depending on how much information you have, but it goes away. I promise it does.

So you want to have a website?

Before you even consider what you are going to put there, what CMS you’re going to use, the design and if you’re going to pay someone to do it you have to think where you are going to put your baby.

Websites might be digital entities, but the actual data and files that make them work need a physical place to stay and be available to everyone. This physical place is called “hosting” because it hosts your website.

The host is the physical hard drive where the files are stored and the “server” is the program that calls onto these files and data. The host is like the apartment and the server is like the marvellous butler who answers the door for you.

Don’t worry whether or not your hosting plan comes with a server. They all have to have it in order to give you the service.

There are loads of hosting plans; the most common ones give you a space inside a host (like a folder in your hard drive) with a certain amount of space, databases and email accounts. There are also hosting plans where you have your own hard drive to secure your files, this is useful if you have a store or a system that deals with very sensitive data.

Depending on the plan, the cost of the hosting can go either up or down. There are many expensive hosts and very cheap ones. Just remember that as with everything else, you get what you pay for and usually a dirt-cheap hosting plan comes with suck-y uptime and even suck-ier customer service.

I swear by Site5 (where this blog is hosted) and Dreamhost. I like Site5 the best because I find it easier to use.

Now, what about the domain? Aren’t the hosting and the domain the same thing?

No! They aren’t! Remember how the hosting is the physical place where all your files are? Well, these places come with an address, which is called an IP (Internet Protocol) address.

In order for people to know where your website is they have to know the address. However, IP’s in version 4 come like this: 168.192.19.3, this is kind of hard to remember isn’t it?

This is where the domain enters. The domain is like naming an estate, you know like “Uptown Court”, “Versailles” or even “The Burrow”. When you buy a domain, you are only buying the name to the estate that is your website, that’s it!

In order for people to find your estate through its name, you need a way to make a relation between the IP address and the domain. This is called a DNS or Domain Name Server (or name servers in GoDaddy.com).

DNSs are programs which tell the Internet that your website located at 192.168.19.3 can also be found by the name “http://yourwebsite.com”. The DNSs also take care of your domain email addresses and other things that are not really relevant to this post.

DNSs take care of things when you change hosting companies or have to upgrade your plan because you get too much traffic on your website. They are a bit slow to tell everyone where your website is located but give them a break, the Internet is a HUGE world.

Should I get my domain and hosting at the same time or should I get them separately?

If you are very new to these things and don’t have the patience to learn and deal with the problems and extra things you have to do in order to have your hosting and domain separate, then get it all in one place. It will save you headaches, I swear!

However, if you’re like me or like to test many services or plan to upgrade your service; it’s better to register your domain and get your hosting in different places. The only detail is that you have to update your DNSs every time you change hosting companies.

Changing your DNSs is super easy, you just have to log on to where you registered your domain and modify that information. Remember that you have to give it a few hours for it to show the changes. You just have to be patient.

I like to register my domains at GoDaddy.

That’s all you need to know about hosting and domains in order to get a website and a hosting plan. Think carefully about it and if you need any help don’t hesitate to ask! I have a contact form and many people can testify that I’m always online. Also, look for information online, there are loads of sources just at your fingertips.

Kisses!

A Campus Party is a massive event that takes place several times a year on different cities all over the world. Campus Party gets together thousands of “geeks” in a place that is full of conferences on diverse subjects (from astronomy and robotics to video games and social media), amazing broadband speed internet (downloads at 11 MB/s), cool expos and amazing people together for one week.

To know more about it, go after the jump n_n.

What is a Campus Party?

Campus Party is a concept that started in Spain by Paco Ragageles and Belinda Galiano. They organized a HUGE 6-day LAN party for a lot of geeks, then they added a lot of interesting conference on several subjects, add to that a huge load of bandwith and a camping zone and you’re ready to go.

Actually, here is a link to the Wikipedia article in case you want to know more.

 What happens at a Campus Party?

The answer to this question is EVERYTHING! There are 3 main zones to the Campus Party layout:

• Camping zone: where there are tents, showers and facilities for the “campuseros” who decide to stay
• Arena: where there are the workspace stations and the 11 stages where conferences and workshops take place
• Expo Zone: where people can go and learn about the sponsors and projects that are presented during Campus Party

The main activities always take place at the arena. The stages are divided in knowledge zones like: Innovation, Digital Culture, Fun and Games, Science and the main stage. Then each of the knowledge zones are divided in categories:

• Free culture
• Software Development
• Networks and Security
• Social Media
• Visual Arts
• Music
• Games
• Astronomy
• Hardware and Modding
• Robotics

According to the category there are different conferences and workshops, the main stage conferences feature the biggest personalities of the whole event and there are also concerts and other things that I will delve into later.

Apart from the conferences and workshops, “campuseros” like to get together to game in multiplayer, exchange stickers, follow droids and cows, get help pimping out their console units and sell food to eachother. There are many, many, many things to do during Campus Party. Believe me when I say that the last thing you do is download things at incredible speed. I barely stayed on my designated spot during the whole week.

So, what DID you do there?

This is the longest part of the post and I’m going to break it up in days according to the pictures and videos I have.

Day 1: The queue

As the good Mexican girl that I am, I forgot to get my credentials before the actual day at Campus Party. The first day is saved up to get there and get settled and the last day is reserved for everyone to leave. I got there at about 11:30 am and got in the queue which already went around the corner.

I stayed 5 hours there. 5 HOURS! Actually, they did go kind of fast because I met some guys from Veracruz and some others from Sinaloa and they were pretty cool. They made me laugh and we had a good time queueing.

The queue outside Expo Bancomer, this was the last segment before the tents.

The first thing you notice is that everyone has like 5 bags with them. If this was an airport everyone would have to pay for extra luggage. People brought desktop computers, huge screens, even bigger modded consoles, sleeping bags, food, clothes, everything! I don’t know how they managed to get it all inside specially since some of them came in public transportation, taxi or were just dropped off by friends and family. I had my car with me and I didn’t camp, so I only had my Macbook and the ID I needed to get my credentials with me.

Inside the tent, this was the last segment of the queue before getting your credentials.

Once I was actually in, I called my friend Pic (or yagarasu on Twitter) and he took me to our place in the workshop tables. I jut stayed a little while, tested the connection and made the list of things I needed for the next day and left.

Pic was kind enough to get my seat reserved for me, like this:

Day 2: Meeting the fathers of the internet and a bit of typography

On day 2 I arrived like at 12pm. There was an accident on the road there and I was stuck in traffic for a really long time. I missed my early morning workshop but I didn’t care as long as I got to see the fathers of the internet live.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf and Al Gore, spoke in a panel about technology and law moderated by Cory Doctorow. This was amazing, I never thought that I would get to see Tim Berners-Lee speak at a conference, much less see him together with Vinton Cerf.

For those of you who don’t know, Vinton Cerf helped creat the TCP/IP protocil, which allows us to connect with other computers around the world and Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the code we use for the web. It is true that without them we wouldn’t have any internet at all! Both of them were really cool and shared a lot of knowledge with us. It was truly inspiring for all of us to see them together.

No one cared about Al Gore, he just used any opportunity to talk about his projects. His participation was truly pure shameless self-promotion.

Cory Doctorow was really cool as well, he is one of the pioneers of the blogsphere and an advocate for the Creative Commons License. He asked really interesting questions and stopped Al Gore from ramling too much.

They covered things like ACTA, copyright laws, enviornmental effects from computers, new technology and Cory’s daughter’s name n_n.

In the afternoon, after I had a super healthy meal of a sandwich, I went to an Android conference given by Sebastian Delmont. You might not know about him but you surely know about his Twitter client HootSuite. He just gave us very useful tips, APIs, libraries and tricks to use when developing applications. It was very interesting n_n.

My last conference of the day was with Gabriel Martínez Meave, his workshop title was “From paper to pixel: Digital Typographer”. Gabriel is a graphic designer, typographer and illustrator. He has worked for huge mexican brands like Telcel and Mexicana.

In his workshop, he talked to us about the process he uses to make a certain type. It was very interesting, he always uses pencil and paper to sketch and then he digitalizes it in Illustrator. Finally he adjusts the font spacing and creates the font with Fontographer. Some types take from months to years to complete. Specially is he is including different weights for each one of them.

Day 3: “The Cake is a lie” and Marketing

Actually, I don’t remember much of what I did on day 3. I spent my day looking around with my friend Juan who was there too. I think I did end up at some conference but I can’t remember. I went to a Google+ conference and missed the Linux 20 anniversary conferece T_T.

I arrived to a Kinect conference. It was a workshop on how to use the Kinect API to make computer programs without using your Xbox. I got to meet Sergio from Apolorama and we talked for a little bit.

Juan and I spent the day yelling “The Cake is a lie”  while we searched for Portal 2 players. I remember that I had a lot of fun running around the arena, the camping and the Expo Zone with Juan. We were looking for codes to win an Xbox. We also got a job offer from a company and we went to eat with some of his friends. I also hanged out with another friend.

Pic and I helped Sergio with a WordPress theme. It was really fun because we spent half an hour trying to come up with a very complicated solution just to find out that the simplest solution worked best. It was a total DUH moment for us XD.

Day 3 was low on learning activity but it was full of fun. This was the day when the Driods started trolling people…

Day 4: A Cyborg, Akira Yamaoka, Dimished Reality and El Pop

On Day 4 I had a conference called “Electronic Invoices” which was about doing electronics invoicing in Mexico. This might sound boring and all that but it was very interesting for me. The speaker, El Pop, hacked into the Internal Revenue department and he showed us how to do it. It was really fun and he’s now one of my heroes. Plus, he sent me a link to understand why my MacBook was having spasms when I first installed Lion.

Pic and I fangirling with El Pop :D

 The next main conference was with Neil Harbisson. Neil is the first ever cyborg recognized by a government. He was born without the ability to see colour, so after going to art school and music school, he met a professor that helped him develop a device that would allow him to perceive colour.

He has a little antenna with a camera that connects to a sensor that lets him hear the colours. He has developed the sixth sense of hearing colour. He even makes sound portraits of famous people.

Neil started the Cyborg foundation which helps people become cyborgs. This is not for people who want some kind of prosthesis but for people who want to enhance their senses and perceptions. I really liked his talk. It was really fun and I’m going to relate it with more detail in other post.

I grabbed my sandwich and found out that Akira Yamaoka was going to sign autographs. I went to get in line with Pic and T1niebl4zz just because. I didn’t know who he was, I only knew that he made the music for Silent Hill. I got in line and waited.

While we were waiting, the Alpura cow came by to see us. I took a picture of it and it blew me kiss and left. The Alpura cow was the main attraction at Campus Party, it was super fun and was trolling the most out of everyone.

The Aplura cow is a natural troll

I got Akira Yamaoka to sign my Moleskine and I hugged him and said Thank You in Japanese :D

We also got posters for Shadow of the Damned but I’m giving mine to Alekz n_n.

While going to the Diminished Reality conference, I ran into one of my college professors. Pic and I sat with her, I was really happy to see her since she was key for me to finish my degree. We worked together in many Augmented Reality projects and I really missed her.

The Diminished Reality conference was given by Jan Herling. He is a German PhD student at the Ilmenau University of Technology. His talk was in English because he doesn’t speak Spanish at all. The translation is the only bad thing I saw about this conference. The girl who was translating lost a lot of important stuff and during the Q&A there were many repetitive questions because of it. I recognize that she did her best effort and that she did it in the spur of the moment.

Diminished Reality is a method with which you can make “disappear” parts of the reality. It uses an algorithm that I like to compare to using the healing brush in Photoshop at super high speed with super precision. You can combine both and actually virtually remove something from your reality and replace it with something else. Here is the video for Diminished Reality.

After the conference I approached Jan and asked him more about the algorithm to make Diminished reality come true. He gave me his card with his email and website and told me when I could get the info. He was really nice.

Day 5: Maddog, Tan Le and the habits of highly vulnerable people

On day 5 I had nothing planned. I was going to go to the blog writing workshop but I didn’t make it due to traffic. Pic and I decided to go looking for Jon “Maddog” Hall. He is a Linux legend and responsible for making Linux a viable and open source business. We asked him for a picture and he agreed. I don’t have that picture with me right now. But it’s okay because I got to take another one.

Maddog’s talk was about Project Cauã, an open source project which objective is to bring the Internet to everyone everywhere for free. It was really interesting and the numbers make sense. I like how crazy he got during his talk, he was really cool and a real “campusero”. He didn’t spend his day tucked away in the VIP area, he was in the arena taking pictures and talking to the guys from Hacking 4 Something Better.

After this talk, I grabbed my lunch and made my way to the Networks and Security stage to know about “The seven habits of highly vulnerable people”. This talk was given by David Schekaiban, he has a company that specializes in penetrating companies and then telling them about what they did and what they can do to up their security.

This talk was about what people do to make things vulnerable and it taught me that you could have the most sophisticated security hardware and software but that if you had a person that gave away their password or let someone in the building then it is all lost.

Security is not only about having an antivirus and a firewall installed on your computer. It is about being careful with your information, using different passwords for different accounts, not opening suspicious looking attachments and most importantly, not clicking on any Facebook applications.

After this conference, my dear Alekz arrived and we went to look for Maddog and ask him to take a picture with us again. Here’s mine:

Alekz’s DSLR does wonders for me n_n.

The last conference I attended was with Tan Le of project Emotiv. This was extremely interesting! Project Emotiv is a software and hardware interface that lets you use your brain waves to control programs.

Reading brainwaves using Emotiv

It consists of a Neuroheadset that has 16 electrodes (and it’s wireless) that connects to their software and it lets you see your brainwaves. The next part is that you train the program and your brain to move things and then you can play a game just using your mind.

The headset is a million times less expensive than a full EEG machine and it does the same thing in less time. Their demo shows people driving cars, playing games with their minds and just looking at their brain activity. You can get your own neuro headset and SDK for only $1000 USD which is not expensive at all for what it can do.

We met up again with our teacher and then we went to a Kinect conference. This time, it showed us how to use Kinect to move robots and research how things move. I was a volunteer to try making the robot move but the software didn’t recognize me :(. I had fun trying though, I rather try than stay in the audience doing nothing. I think that is a Leo thing n_n.

Day 6: Livestream, Titanium, trolling and Neil Harbisson

Day 6 was my last day at Campus Party :(. I arrived really early to go to my Titanium workshop. Sadly, it wasn’t anything that I didn’t know already, so I spent my time with Sergio looking at YouTube videos and reading the sad news about the terrorist attacks in Oslo and Amy Winehouse’s death.

We spent a good time tweeting and I tried to install Xcode on my Mac’s Lion. It was a mess! I spent the whole day with the installer on and it did nothing! I was so mad! Lucky for me, I had a lot of expert Mac users willing to help me with that and now it runs somewhat smoothly. My Mac is old-ish so it’s going to run a little bit slowly.

Once I returned to my seat, I met up with Pic and the guys and suddenly… we found THE NUN!! Now, there was a rumor running around Twitter that said that you had to find the Digital Nun and that she would give you a sticker that said: “I was looking for God and I found him on Twitter – @Dios_Padre”. Well, it turns out that it was a total hoax. The nun was real but she went to Campus Party to meet with the team of #h4sb that was developing a software for her orphanage. Well, sometimes you can’t trust what you see on Twitter.

I did get this picture out of it though:

The randomness of the Campus Party XD

Pic and I went looking for the Alpura cow but we never found it. Then T1niebl4zz joined us and we went to Campus Futuro to see the projects presented there. While we were waiting our turn, we starting NYAN-ing like this:

We spent the whole week doing that and annoying our fellow “campuseros”. We met again with Jan from the Diminished reality conference and he showed us an Augmented Reality demo on his Galaxy S II. Other projects included an Augmented reality store, a place where you could “paint” with a digital paint roll and a fully fledged ambiance room.

The place was packed with loads of children from schools around the country so we didn’t have much chance to try things out ourselves. After a while Alekz joined us and we went looking for food.

While Alekz was buying food I found Neil Harbisson! He was talking to some teachers and heard a student’s face. I called Pic and luckily, I had my camera with me.

I asked Neil to take a picture with me and he was really nice and agreed to it. I then thanked him for his talk and told him that I had learned a lot and that I admired what he was doing.

Pic says that I was as excited as Twilight Sparkle when I got my picture. I was really happy, I only missed a picture with Sir Tim Berners-Lee but that was next to impossible to achieve u_u.

Alekz and I went back to the expo area and we found the Gold Cup and the U-17 World Cup. They were there and no one was taking pictures, we had time and took the chance even if we’re not that into fangirling football stuff. Here’s my picture, it’s blurry but whatever. You can also see my outfit n_n.

The last thing Alekz and I did before going back to our spots on the workshop was trying out the Emotiv tool. Alekz did wonderfully, he managed to play the video game. I didn’t do so well :S. My hair got in the way of the electrodes and my concentration wasn’t that good.

You can see Alekz trying out the head set in this video. He was really good until he thought about the NYAN cat XDD.

Once we were back in our seats, Pic and I started setting up for our live stream. It is still live at Twitcam. You can see it but it is in Spanish. All our friends were there: Sergio, Alekz, Omar, Conejo, T1niebl4zz, Kissi, Eduardo and Aikas. We stopped people as asked them about what they liked the most about the Campus Party. We gave away chocolate covered cookies.

We got to talk to the guys from Hacking for Something Better. They were really nice and their projects are amazing! I really admired them, they got together to make those projects and one of them (a job hunting website for blind people) won a contest and they’re getting a lot of funding to finish it. Those guys really do show us that Campus Party is a huge platform to change the world.

With this, I end my chronicle about my stay in Campus Party. It was an amazing week and I won’t forget it. I made a lot of new friends, got to meet amazing personalities, learned a lot and did things I never thought I’d be capable of doing.

Any advice for us future “campuseros”?

Campus Party is having their first Campus Party USA next year at Silicon Valley. If you want to go to any Campus Party here are some tips and tricks that I lived/was told:

• Go in groups – While most of us geeks are decent persons, there are always bad people around that want to steal stuff. Go with a group so that you can keep an eye on each other.
• Make a downloads list – With a 11 Gbit connection, downloads take milliseconds! Make a list and stock up on external hard drives! You will need them!
• Take advantage of everything! – From how to make a light saber to talking to your fellow campuseros. Take advantage of it! Want to join someone in a WoW guild? Do it! Want to ask the guys at hardware at modding to help you with something? Do it! You have over 7,000 geeks in one place and believe me that they are extremely nice and they love to share what they know.
• Speak up! – The speakers LOOOVE questions, even if you think they are small and unimportant, the speakers love to hear what you have to say. If they don’t speak your language, translators are available so there is no excuse to get more knowledge.
• Stock up on food – There is catering available, but I didn’t hear anything good about it. There are microwaves available on site, as well as fast food joints. You can go out and go to the supermarket but believe me when I say that you don’t want to miss a thing to go and get food.
• Take loads of pictures – I was so into what I was living that I forgot to take pictures. I wish I did though, I wish I had more thing to remember this amazing week by.
• Stickers are currency – Go get them!
• Participate! – Campus Party had a part called BarCamp, where campuseros can talk about their ideas. Make use of it and make your presentation.
• Be ready for everything – I got numerous job offers, broke many hearts (according to Alekz) and spent my days running. It was incredible.

Anything else?

Don’t miss the opportunity to attend a Campus Party. It will totally change you and if you are a geek, you certainly need to experience it. Some people describe the experience as “going home”, there are loads of talented people just waiting to know you. I certainly can’t tell you how much I miss being there, running from conference to conference, making live streams with my friends, playing with the Droid and the Aplura cow… it’s just AWESOME!

I leave you with the goodbye video, you can find most of the content at the Campus Party YouTube channel.

 Kisses!

P.D.: Pictures by myself and Alekz :D