This is the personal weBlog of Mexican Multimedia Developer Lozbo.
Here I share anecdotes and nonsense with friends and family, if you do not know me, you probably won't find it interesting, but do try my academic site, maybe you'll find it more useful.
Beloved fans:
Lack of posting in my journal is due to a creative strike I am currently casting upon my dear self. It will come to an end as soon as I finish a dissertation I’m working on, and hopefully when I take leave from the forlorn realm of the unemployed.
…All the saints take me away…
Kind regards, and best of lucks (if such device is to exist). Your loyal composer of wild and binary mischief:
- Lozbo
La mitad de un siglo, partida por la mitad.
The world ever twisting, and a new age dawns for me. Rediscover myself, I must.
I thought I had sorted it out, but in Ireland, my thoughts shake again. Loneliness and solitude: my loyal companions. Fear and doubt, my best friends. Guiness, in its birthdplace, the original brewing building: a fuel that holds engines together.
A dark beer in a dark age. What kind of importance can a small pawn bear in a huge, vast world like this? So much to do, and to see, it is overwhelming. I can not begin to understand nor believe it.
Y asi, la vispera de un Octubre 13, en un inusualmente calido Otonio Dublines, I despair and ask questions of future and past, immortality and oblivion…
Well, I finished all my lectures, now it is time for some holidays and a crazy Eurotrip.
Sure, you need money, but with things like Ryanair and Couchsurfing, you can really understand the true meaning of traveling cheap.
And Couchsurfing is more than traveling cheap (staying for free in other people´s couches or extra beds), it is about knowing cool people, getting inside the culture and sharing your experience with a friend in times of lonely journeys.
Anyway, this is the path I will be following (if everything goes according to plan): Karlsruhe > London > Dublin > Belfast > Amsterdam > The Hague > Brussels ( > hopefully also Brugge) > Luxembourg > Metz > Paris > Rome > Venice > Milan > Budapest > Bratislava > Vienna > Ljubljana > Konstanz > Zurich > Basel > …
Well I havent decided it yet all the path, it might change in between, I only have booked a couple of flights, then I have to find out how to get from one place to the next one. And where to stay in each city. But I wouldnt mind missing the last flight (Milan to Bratislava) for which I only paid 11 euros. Yeah, 11 euros for an international flight, it is really amazing.
Gotta go now, have a plane to catch!
I remember once, arguing about México’s independence anniversary party with a friend (I was stating that I don’t believe that México is independent) he came to a conclusion that I think was more accurate: we celebrate Mexico’s independence from Spain (back then). Continue reading
El otro día iba en la bici muy campante con mi iPod escuchando mi metal, cuando de pronto, como una bendición, me cayó del cielo un presente, obsequio de vigilantes entidades aéreas.
It was good to know you all, I bid you a very fond farewell, and I guess I’ll see you, I’ll see you in the other side.
Looks like CERN (that crazy European Organization for Nuclear Research thing) will perform this next Wednesday some wacky tests with their first beam of protons or something, and some people believe it will create a black hole that will suck all existence into it. And they will be even broadcasting it live.
There is some who believe it will be much worse, that the tests will generate an infinite time loop and we’ll be stuck in 2004, the golden year of Reggaeton.
St. Martin street is the name of the street where the student’s residence is located, which was also refered to as just “St. Martin”.
I feel strange, very strange. Not only because of the fact that I had to leave all of a sudden, as I expected to have 3 more days, pack my garbage and clean the mess and kick out, but because a lot of different feelings.
I feel like it’s been a life time I spent there. Yet it happened so fast. I feel so nostalgic and melancholic, like depressed, and it’s only been some hours since I closed “my” door for the last time.
And now I’m homeless.
I grew so much there, I learned so many things, I became a better, and more independent person. I had to find my way alone through a lot of situations, may be too simple things, but that I’ve never experienced before. It’s so strange… how can so much time go by so fast, in just six months? How can I be attached to such a small appartment and such a tiny room, in such an “insecure” neighborhood? How can I already miss this much, that little thing, that I used to call home?
I didn’t have “all” kinds of experiences there, but quite a different few I may say. It was a little bunker (with wired Internet access) where I found shelter from the unwelcoming latin american culture in Offenburg University and also from the reserved German culture (I’ll talk more about this later).
But it was mine… my own:
My Precioussssssss…
I can’t describe how strange is this feeling. I can’t understand it. I feel so lonely, without a way, without a friend, without anything! And it was only a few weeks or months ago that I just found myself a new person, so much progress, so secure, so much better… It’s hard to tell.
Maybe it also has to do with that little room piece of … Germany.
And I could probably just come anytime I want in the coming semester and just ask for the new student living there to allow me to see my room, but it just won’t be the same. It is not longer “mine” to use as a shelter.
It is a shame nobody who told me that they would come to meet me and greet “the Europes” had a chance to meet St. Martin. I am already missing it… so fast and yet so long… What’s wrong with me? How can a few months have such an impact? Yet I am happy, for all that I lived here helped me become a better self.
And I can’t stop talking about it. Over and over it goes in my mind, how can so many days fit in so few months. Only half a god damn year!
It is precious to me, so I leave it with a great pain.
And I closed the door for the last time :’( …
Days are growing darker in these parts of the world.
Some weeks ago, at 5:00 in the morning the sun was already beginning to shine, and now, it’s being pushed one hour later.
Night covers us sooner, lit were the streets up until 22:00, but it’s all turning dark earlier.
Cold winter approaches.
El otro día estaba platicando con Haime, comentándole que se me antojaba una torta aguada, de las de la esquina. Pero como que acá no venden tortas en la esquina. De hecho no venden nada en la esquina.
Y desconozco algún lugar de este continente donde pudieran vender. Claro, que yo no lo conozca no quiere decir que no exista. Quizá exista, quizás no, but then again, maybe Elvis is still alive, in another crazy planet.
Como sea, le dije que, para saciar mi hambre, me iba a preparar una exquisita tortuga de las que estoy acostumbrado a saborear por allá en Wanatos. Pero él insistía en contrariarme, que acá no consigo los ingredientes, que las estrellas no están alineadas, que no puedo cocinar sin manos (me las amputó Anakin Skywalker en una intervención siderúrgica de emergencia).
Pues yo les demostraré que puedo preparar las mejores tortas ahogadas del mundo, con arroz y mostaza como mis únicos ingredientes.
I have come to realize that I am good at writing.
Yes, that is not so modest but I think I am, at least a bit, mind you.
And it is not only my own assumption, I’ve been told that, since my early primary school days (I won a few reading and declamation contests) to my secondary and high school projects. I remember teachers telling me stuff like:
If you continue to produce assignments like this, I can help you skip the final test
or stuff like that. I remember I even entered a story contest or two, didn’t won anything though, but the more that time went by, I found less and less time to put into it. I also used to write a lot of poetry, mostly in English but also in Spanish, and even a couple of songs.
But I’m sick of all that, not making out room for it. I want to keep up with this hobby and maybe even try to make a little profit out of it, if possible, for all the time I will be dedicating to it. I have a couple of blogs already published which aim at making profit, one being LozBlogger and other my Academic project. In the first one I post only Google related stuff or news, and in the later, I post all kinds of Multimedia development - related content (articles, tutorials and freebies). I also have other projects in mind which I plan to develop, but are not ready yet.
I plan to get some revenue out of Google adSense, which is already running in the afore mentioned sites.
But this is not about making money as my first goal. My first goal is to have fun, to be happy. My hobbies make me happy. Writing is a hobby of mine. As Yoda would say:
Creative thinking leads to writing, writing leads to hobbies, hobbies lead to happiness, happiness leads to suffering…
A path to the dark side, writing is.
Anyway, I was saying: writing not only blogs, but poetry and stories or tales, and screenplays and markup (XHTML and CSS). It is all fun for me, and I enjoy it very much, so if I can make a living out of that, I will be really happy.
Como siempre, las cosas al último. Un día antes de que cierre la convocatoria al premio Julio Verne 2008 (de ciencia ficción) me pondré a escribir.
Sehr Schlecht.
I already have a few notes, quite a few by the way, general overviews of crazy stories I want to develop. And I will, even if (surely) I can’t put them to this year’s contest.
I don’t know how I ended up among this blogs, I don’t really understand what they are but have a look at some extracts of their posts…
(Master Yoda, having some drinks with Mace Windu and watching a football game):
“Strong running game leads to play action, play action leads to touchdown, touchdown leads to victory,” said Yoda watching the screen.
I think it’s some kind of community in which each member has adopted a character role and they just post crazy entries:
“I am ready, too,” said Yoda. “I hear that it is a very good show.”
“Master Yoda, you’re talking… backwards,” I said.
“I am, ahem,” Yoda cleared his throat and regained some composure. “Drunk I am.”
But these folks really get inside their characters, and they are extremely fun to me, hope you enjoy them also!
Jar Jar, narrator:
“(…) Jam Jar! You have to get with the spirit of the season! (…)”
“Issen Jar Jar, Mister Chancellor.”
“Yes, yes, what was I thinking? Jar Jar. Mind if I call you Marmalade for short?”
Links to some of these blogs (more on each blog’s sidebar):
I am very excited to announce the upcoming new design for my family of websites. It has taken so many hours of photoshopping and coding (among other things) and it is not even finished! Furthermore: I am releasing it as a beta, as it still needs a lot of additional tweaking.
Since I installed WordPress on this subdomain, I have had the intention of releasing a custom template design totally made by me, from the graphic side to the advanced WP template tag tweaking. Almost a hundred thousand years ago!
And it is finally coming to an end! Though I must admit I had a lot of help from the internet, the silk icons from fam fam fam, the theme toolkit, some scripts from here and there, and a bit of twisting the sandbox WordPress theme.
All credits of the template will be shown on in the about page, once the final version is done, and as soon as that happens I will make it available to download from my (not so) new academic site.
I spent a lot of time in the development of this theme, I added a theme options menu to show or hide content, set customized logo or background, edit custom information for the footer and a lot more.
This is a beta, and it might have some errors here and there, please if you note something wrong, get back to me.
For those who don’t understand what I’m saying: It’s about technical stuff related to web development, another hobby of mine.
Please note that this beta does not currently support Internet Explorer 6 (nor 7 for that matter). Actually it’s more like IE does not support my theme (and Web Standards). So if this site looks all ugly to you, please upgrade or install a better browser! It’s really easy!
This is the film I put to the Flimmernacht 2008 contest, it didn’t win anything =( there were really good films and mine was obviously not the best. But it was not the worst either, here I share. I wrote, produced, directed and played both characters of the film, hope you enjoy it.
I will be reworking the sound when I finish some other projects, I want to add my point of view to it. The sound was designed by someone else, as the contest said.
I really thought I could win something in the contest, because, besides this entry, I delivered three more projects, for which I worked on the sound design, and that magnifies my defeat, because I was involved on 4 of 15 projects, and I couldn’t win anything.
But…! In my defense, I must say that most (or maybe all) other entries were worked by a group of people, and I did everything myself (except the camera handling in the film). For the sound design I got some special fx from a very cool free sound effects website, I recorded my own voice and I think a couple of other fx, and I even composed a small song and some musical background.
I’d like to upload those but the copyright is not mine, so I will ask the film makers if it’s ok…
I was highly disappointed in the Flimmernacht contest. I expected to win something. I worked very hard and put a lot of effort into it. I must admit there were really cool films and soundtracks, and mine was not the best.
Pero no gané ni una hostia partida por la mitad. Dos días, es decir noches, no dormí trabajando en los proyectos, los demás días no me dormí antes de las 3 am, cuando muy temprano. A pesar de que esto sólo me motiva a seguir adelante y luchando, sí me siento algo tristón.
Aber ich habe etwas erreichen: Erfahrung und eine Menge lernen…
El otro día, leyendo un comentario de alguien respecto a cierto tipo de música, me puse a escribir una respuesta al comentario, pero me quedó muy largo y decidí publicarlo como entrada. Quiero compartir mi punto de vista sobre la música, que creo que ha ido evolucionando sanamente desde hace varios años, ahora lo tengo mucho más claro, espero seguir aprendiendo y evolucionando.
Antes creía que toda la música que no me gustaba era basura, y pues no es así.
A pesar de que no me gusta el raeguetonto, digo raegueton y la música pop, y la banda y cosas así, hay gente a la que sí le gusta, y aunque yo antes decía que eso no era arte, pues hay gente que así lo considera, y no se puede cambiar.
Por más adjetivos que le pudiéramos poner, esa música seguirá existiendo y seguirá siendo consumida por quien quiera en este planeta, y no creo que tenga nada de malo, dice un amigo: “en gustos se rompen madres”.
Yo por ejemplo, no sé nada de música y sin embargo ahí estoy haciendo rolitas, ¿por qué? Porque quiero, porque puedo, porque me gusta, ¿quién me va a detener? Obviamente hay músicos de verdad que saben hacer música muy chida, los admiro, pero a mí nadie me puede detener de hacer lo que me gusta hacer, lo mismo con otros grupos o artistas. Mi música no es buena ni virtuosa, pero a mí me gusta y me divierte, me entretiene y me satisface personalmente.
A otros artistas los respeto en una postura mucho más abierta, a pesar de que no me gusten (la música para mí era antes como la tabla química periódica de los elementos: metal y no metal =P ).
Que existan todos los géneros, que se haga todo lo que la gente quiera y pueda (mientras no nos matemos entre nosotros, ni exista violencia física real). Que cada quien tenga sus gustos sean plásticos o comerciales, ¿por qué tienen que estar mal? Si una canción está diseñada únicamente para ser un producto comercial, ¿qué tiene eso de malo? Es su rollo y es una forma viable de vida. A mí no me gusta, pero hay personas a las que sí. Que haya artistas que expresan mucho mejor sentimientos y que esta música sea genuina e infinitamente más virtuosa es algo totalmente distinto…
La música ha servido y seguirá sirviendo a distintos propósitos a lo largo de la historia de la humanidad (que a veces pienso que no será muy larga, ¡tanto odio en este mundo! Pero ésa es otra historia). Hay música que sirve a diferentes fines de acuerdo a muchas cosas, tiene tantas funciones en la sociedad que me parece erróneo descalificar, discriminar u odiar música que no me guste, a pesar de que no esté bien compuesta, o interpretada, o a pesar de que haya música mucho más profunda y virtuosa. Considero que antes estaba equivocado, me da gusto haber aprendido y espero seguir aprendiendo nuevas cosas y siendo mejor persona.
Que las personas decidan (o, debatiblemente, dejen de decidir porque se lo impone la sociedad, la radio o empty-b), eso es algo que no podremos y no sé si debamos querer cambiar. Que las personas hagan de su mmm… vida, un papalote. Si alguien decide no tener consciencia musical y escuchar sólo lo que ponen en la radio o en la tele, pues es su problema, yo siempre intentaré compartir mi postura e invitar de la música que me guste a las personas cercanas a mí, pero si no les gusta pues está bien, a mí tampoco me van a convencer de que me guste el raegueton.
Creo que, a pesar de todo, es válida la decisión de poner la música que les guste (o, como digo, debatiblemente, que creen que les gusta porque desconocen o no entienden otros géneros), en sus carros o casas o fiestas o lo que sea. Creo que hay asuntos de mayor relevancia social que buscar educar los sentidos auditivos de las personas, hay gente que simplemente no le importa la música, y no tiene por qué. Cada uno tenemos prioridades distintas. Pero hay problemas mucho más graves en el planeta, muerte y odio… contaminación, destrucción de la vida.
Pero en fin… ahora lo que busco es el respeto a toda la música, incluyendo obviamente mi metal, pero también la que no me gusta, y nunca me gustará, y seguiré pensando que es música mala, pero no podemos ni tenemos que gustar todos de la misma ¿o qué? ¿se awitan?
Yesterday I was listening to Maldita Vecindad, a Mexican alternative rock band, which dates back to 1985 (actually, in that Wikipedia article they tag Maldita as ska, though I kind of disagree, are they ska? Maybe a bit but I would rather label them as alternative, although I don’t know that much about music). Their last record seems to have been published on 1998 though. I am not really fan of this kind of music, but I used to listen to it when I was a child.
En realidad yo sólo escuchaba lo que mi carnal ponía en su radiograbadora, no tenía consciencia musical. Ahora lo que más escucho es heavy metal, un poco de jazz y música clásica (académica, según un profesor de música que tuve), y muy de vez en cuando un poco de electrónica y otras cosas, soundtracks de películas, rock pop, o incluso viejo pop.
Aber ich fühlte wieder die Gefühle und Emotionen, es ist so seltsam, ich genoss hören Maldita wieder.
Here are the bloopers of the Eisenbahn project shooting. They are fun!
And in other news, my first short film is coming… Murderer! The premiere is on the 19th of July, then I will post it here on my blog.
Beware!
Me encontré con Nel Telcel, sitio que busca protestar por el precio de las tarifas de iPhone en Telcel (Mexican mobile phone company). Interesante…
Today I dreamt that I was back in México. And I was sad because I didn’t finished traveling and visiting countries, and I wanted to go back.
But it felt so real, I thought that I was already living there! I even remember I went to sleep and woke up again in the morning (all inside the dream!), and was starting to have breakfast or something, still sleepy and so on…
Weird…
Here’s one more video I hadn’t finished, until now! It’s almost the same as the part 2…
Leía un artículo de Los Tubos, y me llegó una pregunta a la mente: ¿qué sucede? Una triste historia que desafortunadamente se repite en todo el mundo.
Me empujaron varias veces… me querían tirar al sueño para patearme o pegarme con palos que traían, yo no quería pelear
¿Qué pasa? ¿Qué tenemos en la cabeza? ¿Es esto normal?
Me hallé este video por ahí y decidí compartirlo, si tú eres Felipe, un saludito.
I have just received an email from Paypal, that states they now accept Mexican pesos as a currency for transactions. It is surely a step forward, though it makes me think also of the implications of Globalization, will all forms of Globalization be positive?
At least now we have one more way to spend away our precious money.
Fifth and final part of the Flimmernacht post series.
Context: didn’t finish on Sunday, had to finish that day (deadline for the contest had been already postponed once or twice before, and it was the last time it was going to be postponed), Enam wouldn’t be available, what will I do? Continue reading
De Mural…
Emilio González rechazó ofrecer, de nueva cuenta, disculpas públicas por los insultos debido al tema del Santuario como se lo pidió la CEDHJ.
¿Qué pierde con disculparse de nuevo? ¿Qué tanto trabajo le cuesta? Por otro lado, ¿de qué le sirven a cualquier persona dicha disculpa? El donativo ya se regresó (o por lo menos se aprobó regresarlo), y el pasado no regresará y no se puede cambiar.
PRD y PT dijeron que presentarán un recurso de apelación en el Tribunal Electoral contra la prohibición de que se use en spots presidente legítimo.
Otro ejemplo de qué tan linda es la política en México. ¿De qué sirve usar en spots el título de presidente legítimo? El hecho en sí de usar o dejar de usar esa frase en un spot no hace ninguna diferencia, hay cosas más importantes…
