Coding My Thoughts » General

Seven Things You Don’t Know About Me (MEME)

mariano — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:52:00 +0000

An interesting meme, I was tagged by Jeff Loiselle

I once worked a full day serving beverages and hamburguers to a lot of people who were attending the agricultural exposition at La Rural. The issue was that out of every burger / soda we served, me and my friends would get one for ourselves. Not too productive.
I can’t sleep without a fan. I’m not kidding. Even if it’s freezing, I would turn on the heat and still power on the fan. Just two days ago (I’m currently on vacations at a beach location south of BA), I had to buy a fan since the house I rent doesn’t have one.
I spent almost two years helping out local Rock / Reggae bands, including Todos Tus Muertos & Actitud Maria Marta. I started there because I faxed the manager of AMM telling him if he wanted to build a website. I think this was 1996 or something. Needless to say it was an interesting experience.
I don’t know how to drive, nor I can’t because of an eye condition. In reality, they would give me the license if I wanted to, but I firmly believe I would be a danger to other drivers (even in Argentina, where drivers suck big time.)
I absolutely hate politicians. With strong passion. I mean, seriously, if you are a politician, get the hell out of my way. I would tap dance on your ass if you don’t.
When I was on my last year of high school, I stopped going to class and instead would spend my time at the school bar. I ended up not going for over 7 months to class, so obviously I had to take a test in March for every subject (I think we had over 20), otherwise I wouldn’t graduate. Since I didn’t tell my parents what I did, they only thought I had to take just one test, for one class. I had to take them all *while* I was taking the exams to enter University. Somehow it all worked out, and I managed to pass those over 20 exams for high school and 4 university subjects in less than a month. Crazy.
I absolutely love the new Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy. I haven’t bought a music CD since 1993, but I decided to buy this one. Totally worth it. If you don’t think so, you are clueless about rock.

Tagees:

Clauz: the coolest person to have near you
Tim Koschützki: someone who needs help figuring out how to play soccer and not cut his leg in the process
Chris Hartjes: one of the coolest canucks I’ve ever met. He gets grumpy though.
Martín Bavio: a fellow baker from argentina, who knows a thing or two about design
Mark Story: the other awesome canuck, this one is almost the opposite of the grumpy one: he’s strong with the force, since he never seems to loose his coolness
Lorena Iglesias: my fellow sister, a prolific writer (if you don’t know spanish, she’s worth the trouble to learn it)
Dennis Hennen: someone who I’ve been working with for a long time now, so I happen to know him quite well

Here are the MEME rules:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post — some random, some weird.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

How a one week getaway turns into a month vacation

mariano — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:53:00 +0000

So there we were, planning a one week getaway to Munich for Oktoberfest. Drinking all that fine beer and coming back to wonderful Germany sounded like a great idea. So great, that we’ve been extending our plan by days at a time.

If we can change our return flight, we are now looking at a one month stay. The idea is to set initial camp in Bad Wiesseen, then Munich, Esslingen, and then even visit Prague and other locations. Are you in the area? We’d love to share a beer!

CakeFest #3: CakePHP in Berlin, July 9-12

A german in Cricava

mariano — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:21:00 +0000

Up until yesterday, and for the last month, we’ve been housing a fellow IT geek from Germany. He goes by the name of Daniel, and he’s quite an energetic and fun person to hang out with. Here you can see him with yours truly (and a very nice caipirinha waiting for me)

That same night I gave him a lesson of how pool should be played. Look at this awesome picture of me shooting, taken by the very talented Claudia (who kicked my ass once or twice during that night):

Understanding LOST sequence of numbers

mariano — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:38:00 +0000

Anyone who’s a fan of LOST is familiar with a sequence of numbers: 4 8 15 16 23 42. These are the numbers that almost connect all strange things in the series. During the second season of LOST it was revealed that the numbers are the code that must be entered into the computer located inside The Swan every 108 minutes (by the way 4 + 8 + 15 + 16 + 23 + 42 = 108). Entering the numbers resets the countdown timer to 108 minutes. If an individual does not push the button in time, the numbers flip to a series of glyphs . While the numeric sequence is flipping into these icons, an individual can still finish typing in the numbers, press execute, and return the counter to 108 minutes. Where do these numbers come from? In mathematics, there’s something known as the Shaw-Basho Polynomial. It’s an equation that reads:

There’s also something known as Pascal’s triangle. It is a geometric arrangement of the binomial coefficients in a triangle. In simple terms, Pascal’s triangle can be constructed in the following manner. On the first row, write only the number 1. Then, to construct the elements of following rows, add the number directly above and to the left and the number directly above and to the right to find the new value. If either the one to the right or left is not present, substitute a zero in its place. For example, the numbers 1 and 3 in the fourth row are added to produce 4 in the fifth row. Doing this to fill 11 rows gives you the following:

Now, take into account only the first six rows of Pascal’s triangle. That is:

1
1   1
1   2   1
1   3   3   1
1   4   6   4   1
1   5  10  10   5   1

Next, alternate signs for the above triangle, leaving it as follows (bolded numbers are those which sign changed):

1
-1   1
1   -2   1
-1   3   3   1
1   -4   6   -4   1
-1   5  -10  10   -5   1

Go back to the Shaw-Basho polynomial and fill a vector with s(0), s(1), s(2), s(3), s(4), s(5), where s(x) is the result of calculating the polynomial replacing the value of x. When you fill in a matrix with above changed version of Pascal’s triangle (replacing with 0 missing columns), and then multiply with this vector, you’ll get something interesting:

That is, the result is a vector consisting of LOST numbers: 4 8 15 16 23 42.

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Argentina on the Basketball World Championship

mariano — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:09:00 +0000

Argentina has started the basketball world championship the best way possible. They finished first in their zone with a perfect 5-0 record, and are currently waiting to play New Zealand on the first match of the play offs this Friday.

Yesterday, Carlos Delfino led a fourth quarter rally by Argentina as they recovered from a five point deficit at the end of the third period to take a 83-79 win over Serbia & Montenegro. Argentina, last Olympic champions, are currently ranked the 3rd team on the FIBA ranking, and four years after a close loss in the finale, Argentina’s golden generation is looking for the title that could have been theirs long ago.

New Zealand, a strong yet not very difficult team, is going to be the first step in Argentina’s way to the finals. Two teams appear to be strong contendents to Argentina’s champisonship intentions: United States, and the very strong Spanish team.

Loose Change 2nd Edition, a documentary about 9/11

mariano — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:31:00 +0000

Thanks to Diego, I have just finished watching a very interesting documentary called Loose Change, produced by Korey Rowe, Dylan Avery, and Jason Bermas. It certainly raises some serious questions about the real facts of what happend before, during, and after September 11, 2001. I strongly recommend you take a look, even if you are not from the United States.

Loose Change, 2nd Edition – 1 hr 21 min 50 sec

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An interesting way to protest against pulpmill pollution

mariano — Fri, 12 May 2006 16:17:00 +0000

The picture you can see below is traveling the world. A woman wearing a bikini and knee-high boots disrupted the shooting of a group photo of EU and Latin American leaders at a summit in Vienna on Friday. The woman, who identified herself as Evangelina Carrozo, was protesting the construction of two wood pulp plants that are being built in Uruguay near a river border with Argentina. Read more about this.

While the form of protest may appear frivolous to the naked eye, the issue is quite serious. Uruguay has agreed to the contruction of two wood pulp plants that have failed to demonstrate that their day to day activities won’t have a major impact on the Uruguay river. It is such a serious issue that two nations that have been historically united (Uruguay and Argentina), are now facing their worst diplomatic conflict.

I do believe that the plants should not be built. It is an extreme position (the politically correct statement would be just to ask for serious studies showing the impact on the environment), but it is a well founded one. It is A FACT that such factories have a HUGE negative impact on the environment. Argentina knows about this, since we have our own share of paper mills destroying natural life.

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Argentina: 3.71 % of its population affected by traffic accidents every 10 years

mariano — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:28:00 +0000

I am shocked. I just read a study saying that in Argentina, during 2005, 14,526 people died and more than 120,000 were injured just by traffic accidents. That is: 39 deaths and 328 injured per day. This sickening high number puts Argentina as the country with by far the most number of traffic accidents. Between January and March of 2006, 1,777 people died as a result of a traffic accident.

Consider that Argentina has a population of 36,260,130. This means that 0.37 % of our population gets affected (either killed or injured) by a traffic accident, per year. After 10 years, 3.71 % of the population would be affected. Take that number, and apply it to a country like the US, with a population of 295,734,134 people, and you would get: 1,097,181 affected per year, and 10,971,811 affected after 10 years. Yes, the numbers are correct. Over one million people per year, and over ten million people every 10 years. Iraq’s war and the World Trade Center are starting to seem acceptable casualties, right?

I sincerely hope that argentinians realize that we can no longer continue like this. Because if we do, we just might not have anything to continue.

I want to go back to Miramar

mariano — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:04:00 +0000

Just a few days ago (February the 3rd) I came back from my 31 days vacation I took in Miramar, a city on the southern east part of Buenos Aires, a trully beautiful beach location.

I spend most of my days resting, just hanging out. However, I did find the time to get on a rowing boat a few times, doing a little exercise.

I’ve also spent my nights drinking good wine at some bar in the pedestrian street, which is considered the “downtown” part of Miramar.

I miss my vacations. I can’t wait to go back to Miramar. No place like it.

My desk at the office

mariano — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 22:00:00 +0000

Thanks to Claudia, who so generously took the picture, here’s a shot of my desk.

You can see my omnipresent mug (with coffee on it), the smooth mouse pad, and the LOTR wallpaper (that’s a picture of Sam & Gollum making Bunny soup)

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