Time of changes

Post #200, and time of changes.

– I’m unemployed now. Eventually I finish my last day in my company. It was somehow a sad day, with lots of “goodbye”, “good luck”, and such… but all my coworkers collect some money and gave me a 200eur voucher for buying a camera! I’ve learned a lot during these 2.6 years, but I felt it was time to advance… looking for another company (bigger, more software oriented) to continue learning. But first, I’m taking some months free to prepare and develop a web project I have had in my mind for some time.

– My English teacher went back to Wales. Due to some financial problems, he decided (in a quick way) to finish his stay in Barcelona, and go back home… and also to try to convince a publisher about the quality of his book. I hope to see his book published soon. During the last 2 years we have been meeting every week, to practice my English, to improve it, to speak about the world, the people, our life… becoming friends. I miss those Tuesday afternoons. See you soon, Vaughan.

– VIII Spanish Go Open in Alicante finished. Since February (when this tournament was announced), I’ve been looking forward to playing in this tournament (as I previously wrote in the last post). The event was a success, even we had a big problem with a mistake in the final results (the 3 first positions were exchanged). But I think all the players enjoyed the tournament and the sightseeing.

VIII Spanish Open in Alicante

Finally, this year’s Spanish Open is coming. Next weekend, more than 60 people from the whole Europe will play Go in the University of Alicante. I’m really excited… eager for hitting the first stone on the board.

This event is special for me. It’s the first tournament held in my homeland, and in the University where I studied. I remember the situation some years ago, when I was the only player of the province. But in the last 2 years a lot of people have started to play, and have eventually decided to organize a tournament. Of course, managing the problems of this kind of event is not an easy thing… it’s a headache creator! But the effort is worth it.

The top players are: Lluis 6 dan, our Korean teacher now living in Barcelona; Benjamin 5 dan, a young French champion; Boris 5 dan, a Russian who has been European champion; and all our Spanish dans. It’s not easy to guess the final results!

3 days to start… and I’m already sharpening my weapons!

Povertry and web 2.0

Thinking further about the subject of the previous post, I can claim that almost all tech companies produce things for the top richest population of the world (I mean, including the 3rd world). Look at Microsoft and their Vista O.S, that can only run in a really expensive machine (expensive even for the Western standards). Google and Yahoo develop new products (mail systems, news collectors, etc) that use a lot of the power of the user computer [basically there is a lot of javascript around to “improve” the user experience… this reminds me of a wise requirement from a Last.fm opening, which was “Javascript, and when not to use it”]. Well, Google Search (their top product) is fast, but for the rest of their products (and Yahoo’s and other companies’ ones) you need a good machine… obviously they don’t focus on the people with poor resources.

Another idea to keep in mind: the success of the web 2.0, in economical terms, is the equation “low instalment plus a lot of people equals a lot of money”. See examples like Flickr or Last.fm, that ask you for a small amount of money, to get a benefit based in the incredible amount of subscribers.

So, with these two ideas, I wonder why tech companies don’t look at the 3rd world as a possible market. Maybe they can’t pay 300 euros for a product, but maybe they can spend a small amount of money to increase their well-being… and there are millions of people in this situation. Maybe the reason is that this adventure is too risky… but “no risk, no return”.

Helping people from the past

Some time ago I was wondering how we would help the past civilizations if we had a time machine, and could travel to the past to help them. It’s just fantasy, but I daydreamed some ideas…

Imagine revealing gunpowder to the Greeks. Or showing a way to create and store electricity to the Roman Empire. Actually they didn’t have copper cables, so it wouldn’t be interesting at all. The good part of electricity is that it can be transported easily, with cables. But there are other methods to produce energy, like the water wheel. You can build a big water wheel near a river, and using some belts and axles to transport the energy to a factory, where you can convert this rotating movement into different kinds of processes. In the 19th century they used this method in real shotgun factories, for example. In fact, there were water wheels working alongside steam engines in the industrial revolution. Of course, a steam engine is a more interesting thing than a water wheel, but in a poor-tech civilization they can’t build an effective one.

Actually you don’t need a time machine to visit a poor-tech civilization, you can just have a look at the 3rd world. They don’t have modern technology, and they need to improve their lives.

I was happy to read that the people at MIT, are trying to invent cheap solutions to 3rd world problems. As it’s written in the article:

“Nearly 90 percent of research and development dollars are spent on creating technologies that serve the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s population… The point of the design revolution is to switch that.”

Inspiring!!

The big IEEE fault

Somebody sent me a link to an article about Computer Go, appeared in the “IEEE Spectrum” magazine. It’s quite unbelievable that the author (who was involved in the Deep Blue development) wrote this overall article about the subject, mostly focusing the solution in brute-force… “Brute-force computation has eclipsed humans in chess, and it could soon do the same in this ancient Asian game”. He is saying something like… “just wait 10 years”. He shows no idea about the real state-of-art of Computer Go, the new approaches, or the ways to almost avoid brute-force. While he waits for faster hardware, other people research in interesting ways to solve or simplify the problem, in a more real AI focus. Did I tell you he works for Microsoft? 😉

Even I totally disagree with the article, I thought for a moment about joining IEEE, just to receive this magazine. But when I was in the process of registering, after a silly survey, I suddenly read this:

We see you are using Firefox … Our site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows. We recommend you download now.

What? Are you telling me I can’t use Firefox? And you are recommending me an old browser… I can’t take these people seriously. They’ve spent some time developing a browser detector, instead of developing a cross-browser website. I’m not in… I’ll not join.

The 28 hours day

The first time I heard about a “28 hour day“, I thought it was just a joke. The thing is that I didn’t realize the fact: 28hours x 6days = 24hours x 7days… until I saw this morning this comic at xkcd.com.
A example schedule The basic idea is to be awake 20 hours, and then sleep 8 hours, ignoring the sun-night pattern (which rules our lives). Sometimes you have breakfast at night, sometimes at midday, sometimes at sunset, etc. And every week (a 6 day week) you repeat the pattern. You can work 4 days, and enjoy a longer weekend (2 days of 28 hours)… not a bad idea.

I’ve found some pages with pros and cons. In brief, you can have longer days, if you can cheat your internal bio-rhythms. The real problem is that you can’t ignore you are in a society, ruled with the standard 24 hours sun-night pattern.

I don’t think I’ll be able to ignore my bio-rhythms, but next month I may try so. I decided to quit from my company (due to “tech incompatibilites”), so I will have a lot of free time: the perfect moment to try this method, even I’m sure a normal person can’t live in this way.

It’s a shame that we can’t usually try all these ideas, that disrupt the standards of our society. This reminds me of “the perfect calendar” (I wrote about it in a previous post). Or the idea (from my grandfather) about stop using a 10-based numerical system and use instead a 12-base system, which has better properties… and it has nothing to do with our 10 fingers (actually we under-use them, because we can count until 1023 with 10 fingers and 2 positions for every finger). Maybe we need more world crisis, to adopt new ideas (this happened with the daylight saving time a century ago).

Lack of usability in old traffic signs

Old traffic sign with long description“By order of the goverment all carts that move on this street should exactly follow the direction that is showed in the drawn cart, otherwise they will be fined with 3 pounds” – From the Museum of Pottery in Barcelona.

Did anybody stop and read the whole text in those times?

I earn (net) 1150€ per month, and I am happy

The title should’ve been something like “why do people dislike to speak about their salaries?“, but Jakob Nielsen (a usability leader, but sometimes too radical) suggested to use numbers in the titles.

Coins from EuropeThe people avoid showing their pays to others because they are scared of being compared. It’s a quite silly idea, to use the money you earn as a measure of how good you are. But it’s a numerical, and this means: comparable! Of course, most of them forget the “rest” of things to consider: are you happy with your work, do you have free evenings, do you enjoy your work, etc, and the side benefits (discounts or free use of company’s installations). The thing is that we work just for earning money to live, so the first and big point to consider is the amount of your pay… and sometimes we don’t consider the rest.

Barry Schwartz, in his “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less” presentation caught my attention with some ideas, specially this one: “(if your basic needs are supplied) if you have a choice between x or making more money, almost certainly x is what you should choose” (around minute 45 of the video). You don’t need more money to be happier, so then the “rest” becomes more important than the salary.

But it’s difficult to avoid this human behavior which forces us to compare with others. For example, I got angry when I discovered that a coworker, who is IMHO a total incompetent, earns quite more money than me. Anyway I suggest you to consider not asking for more money, but for more “rest”. The first time I asked my boss for a rise, I changed my mind and instead, I asked for less work hours (with the same salary)… now I work 35h per week (the normal thing is 40h), and the other coworkers envy me, because I go home earlier. Enjoy life!

DIY level 2: cement

You know when you’ve passed to a new level on do-it-yourself… it’s when you feel able to manage cement.
You also know when you start becoming mad… it’s when you feel able to manage cement.

Bathroom floor step 1Last weekend I committed the biggest DIY project I have ever done. For some weird reason we had parquet floor in the bathroom. The house doesn’t have parquet anywhere but the bathroom, where you have just the moisture necessary to destroy the wood. I have been living 2’5 years here, and last week, suddenly, I decided that the wood was in a really bad state, so I ripped it up. Underneath I found the old floor.

I started looking for options to improving the floor aspect. One was installing a new PVC floor, a sort of plastic material, supposedly easy to install. The problem was that everybody suggest its use over a flat surface. And unluckily the topography of the old floor was a collection of hills and holes. So the option was using some kind of auto-levelling paste. The next day I went to a hardware store, bought the PVC floor, but there was a problem with the famous paste… they only had 25Kg bags. So I chose not to choose this, and instead I picked a 2Kg cement bag. It was written some instructions in the bag, so I thought it was going to be easy. Moreover, I bought a new tap.

Bathroom floor step 2After installing the new tap, I started to make the cement. And soon I realized I needed also sand! Where can I get some sand, a Saturday evening? I took some bags, and went to Montjuïc (the nearest hill). Luckily I stumbled with some street works not far from home, so I took the opportunity to steal some sand. I came back home, and made a cement layer. I was really tired, however I went to have dinner in an Indian restaurant (the best in Barcelona, according my flatmate’s guitarist’s former band) with Jordi. The next day I added another layer.

Bathroom floor step 3Finally, I installed the new floor. It was a bit annoying to cut the WC shape, and to discover that there wasn’t right angles anywhere. I used a special glue, really sticky! And at the middle of the installation, I ran out of glue. Hence, I had to wait until next day, Monday, to buy more. Eventually I bought it, and finish it. There was a minor problem… there were some places with too much glue, creating waves while you step on. So I’m cleaning the glue excess…

Conclusion: The result is quite nice, but if I have in the future some similar idea, please kill me!!