It’s really fucking beautiful. (thanks la blogotheque & kottke) ]]> http://www.madeincr.com/notes/this-is-art/feed/ 2 http://www.madeincr.com/notes/studio-60/ http://www.madeincr.com/notes/studio-60/#comments Mon, 30 Oct 2006 08:40:33 +0000 Josue Salazar http://www.madeincr.com/2006/10/30/#note-105 Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is one of the new shows I really like. And I mean really. But everything points to it’s demise. I’m still hoping it’ll make a comeback and people will start to appreciate it for what it is though. The cast is amazing, the drama within the show is well done, the chemistry, everything is perfect, yet people don’t watch it, apparently wasting time with Ugly Betty is what TV viewers prefer.

I’m doing an experiment here, I’m going to let you download an entire album that isn’t out, it’s the new The Shins album called Wincing the Night Away. It’s scheduled to be released in January 23, 2007, that’s a few months away, but it’s leaked so if you want to listen to it, you’ve come to the right place.

The album has 10 tracks, 128kb/s MP3’s. So here it is, download it, seed it, do whatever you want with it. I’m seeding the torrent from my own local tracker:

If you download this torrent, you are therefore going to buy the album when it comes out (and not on allofmp3.com). I will post the results of this experiment in a few weeks, so please, link to this post from your blogs, let’s spread this baby.

If you work for the RIAA and don’t like this, please let me know, I’m sure I have more albums I can share.

Update: A reader emailed me to let me know there was a problem with the torrent, and he was right. Sorry about that. The torrent is working fine now though, so grab it again to get The Shins album.

There’s also a great conversation over at the gapingvoid blog about this, and I wanted to highlight this comment from Doug Karr, I couldn’t of said it better myself:

There is no proof of a god, nor is there proof of no god. Therefore, each belief takes faith.
In the end, the belief in no god is as much of a religion as the belief in a god. Each takes justification to believe.

Hello,
Compliment of the season to you,I am Thelma Britney from CA USA,but Presently in London,UK for a church seminal.I saw your product item and i am really intrested in buying it for my Daugther as a surprise gift for her in school(university of lagos)at Nigeria. . Expecting your reply so as to immediately make out the payment. like to hear from u soon..
Regards, Thelma

Awesome, I’d love to help your daughter Thelma!:

Hi Thelma,
Sounds good, how would I send you the iMac? And how would you pay me?
Cheers!, Josue

Thelma was prompt to reply:

hello Josue Salazar,
thanx for ur mail,i am sending the item instant after the payment or the comfirmation has been made to u ..so plzz tell me the price of the imac and the shippment to west africa..so tat i can comtiune my payment ….i am
paying u with stormpay payment account or paypal account..ok so like to hear from u soon ..
Regards thelma

Man I’m going to help a US student in Nigeria, how cool is that!

Hi,
Shipping will be $500 since it’s a big computer and the price is $2000, so the total is $2500. Please send it to my paypal account, email@paypal.com
As soon as I receive the payment I will send the computer.
Cheers, Josue

I’m hoping everything works out because I seriously cannot wait to help this poor kid stuck in Nigeria.

Sidenote: I’m a fucking dictator.

On a more personal note, I worked my ass off two nights ago and managed to do this, The SKD Ultimate Roll, it’s basically a joint made with 3 papers. It was big and very hard to pull off but I did it.

I hope everyone is having a great day.

I was driving home and figured this would make for a nice picture. I was right.

Let’s get on the car:

We’re going to the ATM, so we need to make a left turn here:

YES! We have the cash:

Now it’s time to hit the liquor store and we need to turn left here too:

Fuck! They closed at 2pm WTF?! Let’s calm down, they sell booze at bars too so let’s hit that:

Sweet, they have lots of beers, let’s get a few Coronas:

There’s no sense in drinking without smoking so we got two packs of smokes too:

We’re heading home, it’s just one more left turn away:

Time to get drunk (click and watch the how-to-drink-a-beer tutorial):

I’m running late so consider this my pink.

Update: I managed to restore a weekly backup and then restore a database backup I did before restoring the weekly one, so the site is back to normality. I still do support the cancer thing and the pink stuff, but I just couldn’t get it to work. Pink for october.

I’ll do my own thing and list 7 songs I like that are 7 minutes long:

1. Hello Every Body – Manuel Obregon
2. Good to know that if i ever need attention all i have to do is die – Brand New
3. Motion Picture Soundtrack – Radiohead
4. Wherever I may roam – Metallica
5. Believe (feat Kele Okereke) – The Chemical Brothers
6. The Rolling People – The Verve
7. The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders Part I: The Great Frontier Part II: Come To Me Only With Playthings Now – Sufjan Stevens

The iMac has had a bunch of dead pixels for a few months, I didn’t care much for them though, and I never did anything about it. Now to add salt to the injury, about two months ago, the firewire ports stopped working, and that almost made me take the computer in for repairs, but I figured I could go without video chats for a while. And I kept using it, as if everything was fine, or I tried to at least, until it started to shut itself down, rendering the machine pretty much useless. I guess having it on, for almost 300 days, was not exactly what Apple expected it would be used for, being a consumer product.

It was time to take it to Apple, extend the AppleCare warranty, and let them work their magic on it. So that’s where it’s at right now, I’m just crossing my fingers for them not to format my hard drive, since most of my shit is in there.

And yeah, I’m still alive and kicking, thank you for asking.

The electric service we get here is fantastic. Sure, we might be out of power for a few hours every once in a while, but for what we pay it’s more than logical. The average house in this country, with 4-5 family members, pays monthly around $20. Which to many people here is expensive. I’m here to tell every Costa Rican that it’s not. If a private company were providing electrical services, the prices would be a lot higher. From what I’ve been told, in California, an apartment with 2 people has to pay at least $100 a month.  5 fucking times what we pay here for the same thing. Another thing would be that a private company simply wouldn’t offer the services in the entire country because the investment would be too high and the actual revenue would be a joke. ICE’s electrical offerings are incredibly good. They’re not in it for the money.

The phone service here is pretty good. Yeah, there are zones with no coverage, but I’d say that’s about 5% of the country. The prices? People complain about that too. I have a cellphone, and I pay monthly between $15-20. I’m happy with the service, we might not have all the features people in Europe do, but really we shouldn’t complain. We have SMS, Multimedia messages, GPRS, Routing, etc. etc.. We can buy a cellphone anywhere and simply put the SIM card from ICE in it and it’ll work. No contracts, nothing. It just works. Now if a private company (or several) offered phone services, you would have to pick a monthly plan, pay at least double what you’re paying, and coverage wouldn’t be as good. Sure, you could buy phones directly from the company but you’d also be locked down to their network, your phone would be locked, etc. etc.. So again, we have a great service.

Internet? It’s unbelievably good. Really. Up until one week ago, 1mbit costed $100/month. Expensive compared to the U.S., but consider this: you can get that DSL service almost anywhere in the country. Click here, this is Google Maps pointing to Turrialba, where I live. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere, I think I’m the only one paying for such a connection here, so obviously ICE isn’t making any money off of this, and yet the service is there for anyone who wants it. Now as of last week, Internet services just got a lot better. Prices dropped by almost 65%. I’m now paying $62/month for 2mbits down and 1mbit up, in the middle of fucking nowhere. How fucking awesome is that? The service is perfect as well, completely open, all the ports, and I’ve not experienced any downtime in over a year now. Hell yeah.

So if you’re a Costa Rican, basically, shut the fuck up. You’re lucky to be living here and you don’t have a clue what it really is like in other countries. If you’re from any other country, you’ll probably agree that we are getting a fucking sweet deal here in almost every service. ICE is amazing, and yet people keep pushing for it to be privatized and all the services be opened to other private companies. That would fucking suck for us Costa Ricans. Long live ICE. Long live my beautiful country. I would not fucking change it for anything else. Costa Rica es mi patria querida.

Two things that suck though, my camera doesn’t work anymore so there are no pictures, and two the wifi is dead slow, I can’t do video chats with it.

If I’m doing any projects for you, I’ll upload whatever I was working on tomorrow, since my connection here isn’t the best.

Anyway, this is the perfect place to be in. It’s amazing to just sit here with some coffee, smokes, the JediBook and chill.

If you can get away from your house and hit the beach, or somewhere else that you love, go ahead and do it. You know you won’t regret it.

1. “Good morning my children”.
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2. “Did God create evil?”.
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3. “The Lord Almighty created evil then, we know Lucifer/Satan used to be an Angel with a high position in Heaven and then he got jealous of God and that’s how it all started. So what do you think of that, The Lord creating evil?”.
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4. “Where was God on September 11th?”.
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5. “And how do you judge whether it’s people’s time to go”.
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6. “Is there a specific reason or judgment for the time when someone dies or is it just fate?”.
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7. “Why would God create a certain person if he knew that person would end up in hell?”.
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8. “What was God doing before he created the Universe?”.
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9. “What exactly does the statement “God is love” mean?”.
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10. “Why was God so evident in the times the Bible was written, and why is he so hidden nowadays?”.
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Stay tuned for Part 2 of the interview with questions that were a lot more controversial.

I would’ve kicked Materazzi’s ass, but according to the french a headbutt is manlier.

What did Materazzi say to Zidane?

It let’s you do a lot of stuff with your pictures, like have audio clips on each one, add people to the pics, locations, and the killer is that you can have trackbacks on each picture. Sweet!. They have free and Pro accounts just like Flickr and they’re giving away Pro accounts to bloggers, so here’s me trying to snatch one of those, and here’s a picture from my Zooomr stream, check it out it has an audio clip.

I have no idea what happened this weekend, but today I haven’t been able to smoke as usual. I’ve only had 5 cigarettes (that’s remarkable for me) and I didn’t finish any of them, in fact I almost got sick after smoking each one. I felt bad, not mentally because I did want to smoke, but my body was somehow refusing the nicotine and making me feel like shit after having one. Since I didn’t really smoke today, I can now notice how fucking bad my room smells.

To be honest, I’m sick of cigarettes, they don’t do me any good and it’s just stupid to do it. I can’t tell why all of a sudden I feel like I never want to see a smoke for the rest of my life, but I’m not letting this go. I’ve known I’d quit someday since I started. I can’t fucking stand the smell, the feeling, the pure action of doing this anymore, so I’m making one of the biggest decisions in my life and I’m going to quit this shit right here and now.

I’m getting rid of all the packs I have and will not smoke again for two weeks. If after that I want to smoke, it will mean I’m a fucking pussy, I’ll give in though and smoke but I will change the name of this site to “The Costa Rican Pussy”. If on the other hand, after two weeks I still don’t want to smoke, I will be the fucking greatest Tico of all time and I’ll take down the pictures I have here. Fuck you cigarretes.

Update (two days after): I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry everyone, thanks for the comments, but I just couldn’t. I will get patches the next time i try to quit. Thanks again and sorry.

Maren is an old friend, we lived together for about a year and she is visiting Costa Rica for a few weeks. Anyway, this is really stupid, so feel free to just skip this shit. The video is embedded below.

I do not celebrate them. And so, I was really bored when a friend phoned me and went: “so what are we doing to celebrate this! we’ve got to go out tonight and get drunk”, but only because he’s been the 20th to say it. It’s all bullshit, they will never get drunk with me, and if they were going to, they would not brag about it. Seriously, all these people who wanted to go out, they will not literally go out, if I don’t pick them up, they will not be up for anything. What the fuck is up with them?.

I actually do celebrate my birthday, in my own way, this time it was a few joints, good food, and great music. That’s what I’ve done all day. And I’m having a blast. So fuck you if you asked me out tonight.

A few months ago, I went out with my friend and his girlfriend, it was his birthday, and we decided to go do some Tequila shots at this bar, we were originally going to do 2 shots each, but after the first one, my friend the birthday boy challenged me:

friend: Who’s the man here?, let’s have 10 shots at once, you go first, I go after you. Haha you’re such a pussy you won’t do it.
me: Fuck you. [to the waiter:]20 Tequila shots please.

He thought I’d never do it, but quite the contrary, I had my shots and he was a pussy about it. I ended up having a great night, and this famous flickr photoset proves it.

Tonight, I was out again, this time with a girl, we were having a good time, and I started ordering shots, I ended up having like 7, plus the beers and the weed. She mentioned I was a heavy drinker. And she was right. I can handle loads of alcohol without a problem, and I’m pretty sure it’s because I’ve grown accustomed to it thanks to those stupid challenges with my buddies.

So I want to know if I’m an idiot, or if anyone else can’t simply let a drinking challenge go by without proving everyone wrong. You a pussy or a man?!. Oh and girls, does this happen with your girlfriends?.

Down here, it’s not very common to be introduced, I don’t why, and I really don’t like that, so I try to be nice and introduce myself, but for some reason people act weird when I do. Just last sunday, I was saying hi to my friend at this bar, and as expected, he was hanging out with another guy, I said hi to the guy and this is how the conversation went:

me: Hi dude, I’m josue, what’s your name?
some guy: alejandro
me: nice to meet you, I see you around a lot and figured it wouldn’t hurt to say hi for a change
alejandro: uh ok
me: well see you around dude
alejandro: …

He then gave me this look like “why did you do that, I don’t know you”, well duh! that’s exactly why I said hi you dick, hello!. Fuck you, I’m having a good time, I try to be polite and that’s what I get?. I’m a cool guy, I’m not weird, I look good and I’m usually hanging out with girls, so why the hell wouldn’t you want to talk to me at least?.

When I’m actually introduced though, it’s a lot different, it goes like this:

my friend: hey Mark, this is my friend Josue
me: nice to meet you Mark
mark: you too, so who’re you with?
me: [pointing at some girls] them
mark: cool, the bar’s packed tonight huh?

Small talk is going on, and that’s nice!.

I guess it comes down to how you meet people, from my experiences people don’t like to meet anyone when they’re with a friend, but if a friend introduces them to someone then they’re interested in the new person, since it’s a friend of a friend. Now, it’s a lot different when I introduce myself to someone who’s alone, it goes like this:

me: hey there, this is a nice place isn’t it?
woman: it sure is, I like it a lot
me: me too, looks like you just finished your drink, what did you have?
woman: scotch
me: classy, well I’m going to get a cocktail, can I get you one?
woman: I’d love one! thanks!
me: [after ordering] i hear this one is very good, umm, hey I think i didn’t catch your name, what was it?

See? She was cool and was interested in meeting someone, who knows, we might even hook up. I do think it would be quite different if it was a guy though, so my conclusion is that girls are always more open to meet people than guys, or at least guys are only interested in meeting women, but that’s not my case though, I don’t care who I meet, so who the hell knows.

What are your experiences? Are guys just looking for women all the time? Would you mind meeting a guy if you were with a friend already? Would it be any different if you were introduced by a friend? Or am I just a weirdo?.

Lately I’ve been staying up all night, this past week I only slept one night, and it’s not like I slept all day on the all nighters, I stayed up until around 10-11am, took a nap and was awake by 3-4pm, and then up until the next day. It’s not like I’m doing this on purpose though, I just can’t get any sleep, it’s probably all the nicotine I have in my system, and the caffeine, but whatever it is it’s not letting me sleep, during the day or at night.

I’m not complaining though, I usually get more work done during the very early mornings (not late nights, on late nights I can’t do anything) since everything is so quiet. And so far my body hasn’t complained either. I do wonder if this is bad for me, I mean I do sleep in the day, but does the body rest as if it were a night? Yea, probably not.

I actually would love to go to bed at night everyday, like the rest of the world, but I just don’t see that happening any time soon. So, what about you? Do you find yourself awake when the sun rises? Have you noticed any improvements in your work? Let me know.

Smoking is the name of this version of made in costa rica. First off, before you get confused, yes this is based on the superb ChaoticSoul theme by the talented Bryan Veloso. There are a lot of difference between the theme and this site though, mainly the two equally narrow columns. Then there’s the dark color of the site, brownish/dark red is what I went for, mainly because another site I love has a similar color scheme. The new design you might say promotes smoking, it doesn’t, but that’s who I am so the images are staying. The header is the image I use when I leave comments on other blogs, it’s my avatar on a lot of forums, my Flickr image and my iChat icon, so visitors will make the connection between that and me easily, or so I hope.

We all know content is very important, but I wanted my personal information just as visible as the posts, and thus I went with an equal amount of real state for both sections. The reason behind this is that I do a lot of other stuff online, people see me and they see the link here, but on the old design it was very hard for them to find out who I was, hopefully that’s very clear now. I also wanted to let people know what I’m into, and that’s why you see my Flickr pictures, my last.fm songs and who my friends are.

I really didn’t want to write this, seeing as I hate this kind of posts on other blogs, with no real content and just boring I’m stopping here. Hope you like the new look, and if you don’t, well, just use my feed.

See I go out a lot, and I’m not interested in a real relationship (not yet anyway), so I end up with girls who basically put out, quickly. Yes, call me a bastard all you want. The thing is, I’ve realized some women don’t understand what a one night stand means. To me it means hooking up with a girl, probably dance (in a hot latino way), and then get it on in the car, motel or the girls house.
Now the problem starts when the girl wants more, and this happens a lot when we end up having sex in her place, I mean I consider myself a generous guy, I cuddle godammit!; but when I notice a weird look when I’m getting dressed, I know it’s not good. I’m not one to spend the night, I hate spending the night with some girl I don’t know, I like my cozy bed. Anyhow it gets worse when I give out my number (which every girl asks for down here) and get a call the next day, most of the time they want to know if I’m busy a certain night, or if I want to go out with her again, which I won’t if it was just a one night stand. Hell, the girl should not be calling me anyway, if I want to go out again, I will call.

A one night stand is that, a one night thing, not a recurring thing. So please, if you’re looking for your next boyfriend don’t put out the moment you meet a nice guy, you’ll be doing both a favor. And if the guy only wants sex, then he’s a prick.

If you are with me, pass this along to two friends that aren’t usually included in memes either.

Mike tagged me, so i’m passing it to Danny and LeAnna.

I’ve noticed that season 2 of a show called “Living with Fran” is just starting, and decided to watch an episode just to see what Fran Drescher was up since “The Nanny“. I remember her as a hot nanny in short skirts, with a terrible yet funny voice working for Mr. Sheffield. Now, while watching an episode of this new show, i noticed that she’s old. She’s 49 years old now, definitely not hot, and the voice is not funny anymore, which contradicts the whole new show since she’s playing the role of a “hot old mother”.
There are a few similarities between the two shows, mostly that she’s got two kids and the father is the same actor who played her boss in The Nanny. Couldn’t they get someone else for the role?. Anyway, the show is a comedy, around her love life. The love life of a 49 years old ugly woman with a voice completely fucking annoying. But whatever. It turns out that she just broke up with her boyfriend, because she figured in the long term he’d dump her for a hot chick (she is so right). As i previously said, she is ugly. The boyfriend in the show, is some young hot blonde guy, i’d say the guy is 25. Why the fuck would he date that bitch?. I mean seriously, WTF!. I know old women go out with younger kids, but fuck, she is fucking fat and ugly and the voice…oh god that voice.

Well, i figured ok she broke up with the guy, so he’ll definitely find someone much, much, much, much better than her. And he does, but at the end of the episode he realizes he’s in love with Fran, and she is obviously into him. And fuck me mate, the show is so stupid that she no longer worries about him dumping her later, and the guy is so in love that he says, “will you marry me?”. People, WHAT THE FUCK!. The chick is so fucking ugly she wouldn’t get a date if she paid $100/hour!.

So yeah, that’s basically what i wanted to get out. I’m so pissed at this stupid show. Don’t ever watch it, and would somebody please shoot her, and the producers who think this is a good show?

I switched to Macs after that, and had a 250GB hard drive, which i thought i’d never fill up. A few months passed, and now I’m looking at 13GB of space left. 160GB are videos, 35GB music and then some documents.

I need to move the videos somewhere else. And this is my dilemma.

Internal drive for my PC

The problem with an internal drive and the Windows computer, is that they’re not in the same network. I can easily fix that with an ethernet hub, but the cable mess would be painful. Setting up a wireless network at home is out of the question, the speed breaks the deal.
Not to mention, the PC would have to be on whenever i want to access the data.

Burn to DVD

Burning all the videos on DVD is something i’ve considered, the discs are cheap enough, but it would be a very time consuming process, which quite frankly, i can’t be bothered with. However, this is probably what i will end up doing. I could easily burn the shows by season (90% of the video content are TV shows) and order them nicely somewhere.
It’s just painful to think about the process of burning it all.

External drive for my Mac

The last option, is to buy a FireWire drive for the iMac. It would certainly be useful, but it’s quite the investment, a 250GB drive is about $200. In the end, i will probably buy one, i’m just not sure it’s something i really need right now, or something i can’t do without for a while.

Bye Bye Birdie

The other solution, is to simply delete all of the videos i’ve already watched. Most of the videos are plain episodes of a certain show, which i will probably never watch again. But still, i can’t quite do that. I like knowing they’re there if i were to go over them.

With broadband speeds getting higher, and content on the web as well, storage is really moving forwards. I remember my first computer, i had a 3.2GB hard drive. Oh the good old days.

I’m afraid i may no longer be cool or stylish, but whatever, it’s not like i care. Here.

It’s all good though, I’m not complaining. However, the blogger in me has fallen behind. I can’t keep up writing articles for this blog, as often as I’d like to.

I’ve wanted to post a few things here, but for some reason, i feel it’s not relevant, or no one will be interested in reading it, or it’s just complete shit (too short, irrelevant, etc.). I basically need more time, to find myself in the blogging world.

What I’ve been meaning to post, would fall in a quick links category. And so, I’ve decided to use del.icio.us (a very good bookmarking service) to keep track of things, and dump all the links with my comments here.

I think it’s a good way to give me some time to figure out where I’m standing (regarding blogging), and keep the site with fresh content.

Also, feel free to browse my Flickr photos, i upload pictures regularly.

The Newsvine team sent invites to the people who registered to the launch mailing list. I was one of those, and i’ve been playing with the service for a few hours now, i’ll try to explain a some of the features it has.

First off, Newsvine is an old idea done right. The basics of it, are that you’re able to browse user submitted or user written stories/content, and the stories they pull from services like the AP and such.
There are other sites that’ve done something like this for a while now, one of the newest sites that has gone big time is Digg, which i’m sure you’ve heard about. Newsvine is not another Digg/Slashdot though, it takes a different approach, which i believe will be they key to it becoming succesful.

So, this are some of the features that i believe will make Newsvine stand out.

Design

Coming from Mike Davidson, an experienced big time designer (who’s done sites like ESPN.com), it’s no surprise that the design is superb. It’s extremely well done, attractive, and very easy to use. They couldn’t have done a better job.

Column, sort of Blog

Something which i’ve not seen elsewhere, is the ability users have to write content, blog, on Newsvine. You can easily write about anything, tag it, and have it shown up on the site. You’re given a subdomain, which you can use basically as your personal blog. Now, this is not to replace your existing website or anything, but it let’s you easily write about whatever you want, and hopefully, have it read by many within Newsvine.
The killer feature here, is that they will put ads in your subdomain, and you will get 90% of the profit from the ads (more on this below). How great is this?

Seeding

This is what they call stories submitted by users. It’s really easy and fast. With a bookmarklet you can submit whatever you want in the blink of an eye. You’re able to add info to whatever you’re submitting, the basic categories, tags, and something new, location (more on this below).

Comments/Chat

Users are able to comment on every story, again with a great interface.
And something kind of new, chat. Pretty much like the live chat on Riffs, you’re able to chat with other people about the story you’re reading. Awesome.

Browsing

You can browse the site from the front page, with the most read stories, or you can select any category you want to read about. You’re also able to browse by tags, and see what’s new on a certain tag. This is made easy with Watchlists, which let you keep an eye on certain tags while you browse the site.
And a new feature, is that you can browse by location. Say you want to see what’s new on San Francisco, just pick the city from the Newsvine Region drop down menu (top right of any page), and you’ll see then all the stories which have the city as the location.

Get Paid

You’re given a subdomain, where you can write/add content, and you will earn 90% of the advertising revenue for your subdomain. Petty damn cool.
Though i believe there aren’t ads yet, but i’m sure they’ll show up when they go out of beta.
You’re also able to invite friends to Newsvine, if you do, you will earn 10% of the profits made from your friend’s subdomain. Great.

They’re in what they call “Private Beta”, and i believe sign ups are not available, unless you’ve been invited. Which i can do, so just leave a comment and i’ll see what i can do.

So far Newsvine is looking pretty hot, and i’m sure it’ll only get hotter with time.

Here’s the Flickr photoset i created with screenshots.

Here’s a more in depth review of Newsvine.

I started this blog last year, i had modified the famous Kubrick design with a picture of two birds, and a nice color scheme, which looked pretty nice, and everyone liked. Though what most people noticed was that my blog was running on Movable Type, and Kubrick was a WordPress theme. So, i decided to create a how to port it to MT article (with some help). After i created it, i was linked by Michael Heilemann from the Kubrick homepage, and overnight it became a hit. A lot of people found the article useful, and it brought me thousands of visitors and hundreds of readers. It was great. But, my old blog went offline in april this year, i lost the content, and i stayed off the internet for a few months. Everything died, Kubrick was replaced by K2, and all my visitors were gone.

I finally came back online around september of this year, and brought back my blog, with a new domain, but since i had lost my content, i started off with a basic K2/WordPress installation. A few months have passed, and i finally sat down and re did the design. What you’re looking at now is basically the same theme i had when this blog started, over a year ago.

It’s pretty much the same design, same header image/logo, same colors. But, i’ve added images, and some other things in it to make the site look nice. The old design looked a bit plain. So, i’m back where i started.

I don’t have the Kubrick on MT article anymore, and i found no need to do it again. I’m not getting that many visitors right now, but the reader base is slowly growing. Recently i wrote an article explaining how to buy songs on iTunes US from anywhere in the world with PayPal, which has seen a good response. And so, i will now be focusing on creating articles explaining how to do certain things, which will hopefully bring in more readers. Content is the most important thing you can add to your site.

I have setup Adsense, hopefully i’ll be earning something with it. But that’s not the idea, i want to publish and have my material read by as many people as possible. I would love to write about the TV shows i watch, i’m a huge TV fan, and i believe that’s something i can write a lot about. I also want to publish more about my lovely country, Costa Rica. I travel a lot, and take a lot of pictures, the idea is to blog about each trip, kind of like a travel blog. Time will tell if people like that.

Basically, i want more readers, to write more, and well, make some money.

If you happen to have any suggestions on how to improve the site, or ideas on what kind of content i should add, feel free to post a comment.

Happy Holidays.

As i’ve previously blogged, Apple doesn’t care much for the rest of the world.

All the cool stuff is on the US music store. There are 20 countries with an iTMS (iTunes Music Store from now on), but only the one for the United States has TV shows, and other features, probably for legal reasons.

The rest of us living on the other 180+ countries in the world have had to either get what we want illegally, or using a prepaid music card from iTunes that a friend has to buy, it’s a mess, and not all have friends in the US.

I’ve lost hope for Apple to open an iTMS in Latin America, and a couple of weeks ago, i decided to do my research and find out if there was a way for me to open an account on the US iTMS. And i’m happy to report that i was able to do it. This article will explain how i did it, and how you can do it aswell.

This is what you will need:

• International Credit Card (it does not matter where it is from)
• Address in the US (from a friend, it really doesn’t matter since you will not be receiving anything, it’s needed to open Paypal and iTMS accounts)
• US PayPal account (which anyone can open with a US address)

A few months ago, Apple introduced PayPal as a payment method for the US iTMS. It never worked for me since my PayPal (PP from now on) was from a different country.
After some tests, i found out anyone can open a US PP account, and that’s the only thing needed to create an iTMS account (PP will be your funding source).

1. Opening a US PayPal account

Go to PayPal, and follow the steps to create a new account. It can be Personal, Premier or Business, it really doesn’t matter. Just make sure you’re opening a US PP account. Here’s where you will first need the US address, PP uses it to verify you’re actually in the US, so just enter the address of your friend, and complete the sign up process. Once you’re done, you will need a funding source for your PayPal account (if you don’t add a funding source, you will not be able to open the iTMS account). Sign in to your new PP account, and click “Add Credit Card”, follow the steps, and give PP your credit card information. They will ask you for the Credit Card (CC from now on) billing address, but it doesn’t matter, just put the same address you used to open the account. I’m not sure if this step is needed, but i enrolled in the Expanded Use Program, which allows you to send more money, if you don’t you will have a spending limit on your account of $300 i believe.
You should have your new US PP account with your CC as the funding source (the CC can very well be from your country, i used a Costa Rican CC). That’s all we’ll do at PP for now.

2. Opening a US iTMS account

Open iTunes and go to the Music Store. Click sign in, hit create account, you will have a screen with a legal agreement, you will have to agree with it, hit continue, it will ask you for your email which will become your Apple ID, a password, a secret question, and your birthday, click continue, and you will be taken to a 3rd page, where it will ask you for your US CC information, there is a line which says “If your billing address is not in the US click here”, don’t click there, that will take you to your country’s iTMS (which we don’t have), so it’s useless. Just select PP and you will be taken to another page, which will ask you to verify your PP account, click where it says “To validate your PP account…”, that will take you to PP’s website, sign in, and you will then create a billing contract between your PP account and Apple, so they can take money from your PP when you purchase songs. Follow the easy steps, once done, PP will let you “Return to Merchant”, click that, it will take you back to the iTMS, and now your PP will be ready, just follow the last step, and you should be done. You should see something like this:



Congratulations, you are now able to shop on the US iTMS using your CC via PayPal.

Each time you buy something, PP will take the money from your CC, unless you have a positive balance in your account.

Notes:

• I believe this is illegal, content in the US iTMS is only for US residents, Apple or PayPal might track you down and put you in jail for the rest of your life if you do this.
• If you have any other PP accounts, make sure you’re not using the CC. When you add it to the new US PP account, it cannot be used in any other PP accounts.
• You might actually be forced to enroll in PP’s Expanded Use Program. The way it works is they charge $1.95 to your CC, and you have to wait a few days and ask your bank for a number that PP will put on the charge, with that 4 digit number you will be able to complete the enrollment. PP will then give you a credit for $1.95

It’s impressive to wake up everyday, look out the window, and see that right next to you.

I had always wanted to switch to the mac, but always put it off, because i didn’t have enough experience using one, and getting a new one used to mean i’d have to sell my laptop. Well, that wasn’t an issue anymore, so i went ahead and made the switch and kept my old laptop.

The experience has been great. OS X is such a pleasure to use. I do not regret switching, and in fact, i’m planning on buying an iBook any day now. It’s that much better.

It’s not that Windows is bad. It’s just a lot less stable, a lot uglier, and a lot slower. I came to the conclusion that using a Windows computer, is what The Flinsones did. And a Mac is what The Jetsons have. It’s years ahead of the Windows OS.

Features OS X has and Windows lacks abound. Expose, Dashboard, Spotlight, etc.. The suite of software it comes with, iLife, is outstanding. iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, GarageBand, they all rock. Plus there’s Address Book, iChat, Calendar, and so on. You don’t get that with Windows.

I’ve made my point. OS X is better, and i will never go back to Windows.

With that out of the way, i’ll review the hardware the iMac has. It came with a 2.0Ghz G5 processor, which is more than enough for pretty much anything, and with 2GB ram, it only gets better. The SuperDrive burns dvd’s at 8x, dual layer, i could not ask for more. The video card is average i guess, it’s a 128mb ATI something, and since i don’t do computer games, it’s enough for HD video and the 3D effects in OS X. Bluetooth works perfectly, i’m able to use the internet via GPRS on my t68i, send and receive SMS messages, and sync it. Airport works flawlessly aswell, i setup a test wireless network with a friend’s Airport Express and it was good, but I’m not going to be using it, still, it works really well. The 250GB 7200rpm hard drive doesn’t make any noise, it’s quiet, and fast. The screen, oh my god the screen: 20″, 1680×1050 resolution, crystal clear, just perfect. Single button mouse, i’ve unexpectedly gotten used to it, it’s dead simple, and somehow it’s just fun to use.

Overall, i couldn’t have switched to a better computer (PowerMac being the exception).

After a lot of hours spent browsing craigslist-costarica, and writing a decent cover letter for the very few jobs i was interested in, i ended up with a good offer. And i took it.

But i also happen to be running a hosting company, so i need to focus on what is more important, and what needs more time. Guess all that time reading blogs will have to be cut down.

I’m also doing some work for other hosting sites, mainly answering support tickets, and when i’m available, doing live chats. As well as being an editor for a spanish tech blog. And on top of that, there’s this blog which i have to keep updating.

All that means i’m online pretty much daily. Which reminds me how much the only ISP here sucks. They’ve yet to setup my ADSL line (it’s been over 2 weeks). I’m stuck with dial up from my university (which blocks every port but 80, so i’m also stuck with web-based IM services, namely, meebo.com). It’s going to be one huge phone bill next month.

And to work from home, i needed a powerful computer, with great screen real state. And that’s when the iPod experience took over me. If i didn’t have an iPod, i wouldn’t've considered buying a mac, but well, fortunately enough i bought a 30gb photo back in june, and decided to buy a mac (to become a high profile blogger, i needed it, sigh, damn apple cult), and ended up with a 20″ iMac G5 (details to come in another entry).

It’s a big challenge for me to actually have working hours, and non-working hours, besides, staying home doesn’t help.

All in all, it’s a new experience, one i’m looking forwards to.

I recently switched to mac, and I needed to transfer my iTunes library from windows. I wanted to keep everything but the os it was running on. I did not want to move all the music manually and then create playlists, work with new play counts, ratings, and so on.

I googled around but could not find anything useful, so I thought I could map the mac as an extra drive in windows, after that, consolidate the music library to that drive, then copy the “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “iTunes Music Library.itl” files to the mac and edit them to update the location of the songs.

Right now, iTunes on the mac looks just as i wanted it (see screenshot above). It’s like looking at my old windows-itunes, it updates my ipod (without the need to even update or restore the firmware, or format the drive), it’s perfect. And the process was kinda what I had figured.

This is what i did to put all my music in the new iMac:

• Connected the iMac to Gina (toshiba laptop)
• Mapped the mac to a drive in windows (easy, just right click on the network folder and click on “map as drive..”)
• Opened up iTunes and changed the itunes music folder location to the mapped drive (user:music:itunes:itunes music)
• Consolidated the library (this copies all the music to the new itunes music folder

I had the music on the iMac. But i wanted to have the same playlists, playcounts, ratings, etc, aswell. So:

• I copied the “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “.itl” files from windows

And then opened up the xml file, and started replacing each song’s location from z://documents..(windows) to user:itunes..(mac), but i have almost 6000 songs, and after a few minutes I cancelled everything. It would take me forever to finish replacing every location for every file.
Note: I had deleted the “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “.itl” original files from the mac, and had replaced them with the windows counterparts, even though the location of the songs was wrong for the mac in the “.xml” library i had just copied.
And the music was copied to the iTunes Music folder on the mac. The folder iTunes created for music. The default folder.

Then I opened iTunes to see what could be done to import the music with all the info. And to my suprise, iTunes was “updating the libray” and after a few minutes, all my music was there, with playlists, playcounts, ratings etc. Everything had been read from the library files i copied from the windows machine.
That is awesome. I really thought it wouldn’t be as easy. OS X is blowing me away.

And another thing which impressed me, after this, I plugged my iPod photo (which had a bunch of music i had copied back on the windows laptop) and iTunes on the mac recognized it, mounted it and added an album I had just ripped. No need to format the iPod or anything.

Mac = Ease of use.

I had a copy of a previous Flock, but it was just not stable enough to test it. This new build on the other hand, feels much more solid.

I don’t pretend to review such an early build, but i can deffinitely say it feels better and it’s now looking much more like a good Firefox replacement.

I’m in love with the Favourites, and how it’s all linked to my Del.icio.us account. The Flickr topbar is also nice.

But the best thing here, is the blogging tool, being able to blog in the browser is something new, and i quite like it. It’s still to early to count on, but i can see myself blogging with Flock.

Awesome work Flock team! I’m looking forward to the first build open to the public.

Here are a couple of screenshots from the new Flock.

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