Agile Software Development
Just had 2 great sessions with Angel Medinilla from Proyectalis. Highly recomendable if you ‘re looking for a good training on Scrum & Kanban methodologies. The guy has a lot of experience and helps you to implement it onsite.
Recommended book: “Miracle in the Andes”
In 1972 a plane transporting 45 people crashed in the Andes. Many of them died in the accident or some days after.
During 72 days the survivors had to fight against temperatures reaching -40º, with very few clothes, no food, no water, and knowing that nobody was searching for them anymore.
“Miracle in the Andes” tells this poignant story through the eyes of Fernando Parrado, one of the survivors that undertook a 10 days high-risk expedition trough the snowy mountains in order to find rescue. Fernando Parrado writes this story in 2005, 33 years after the crash.
You certainly know the famous movie “Alive” that was produced in 1992. But it’s only when you read this book that you begin to understand what really happened in the heart and minds of these guys, and how willpower, courage and love saved 16 of them.
Below is also a good documentary made in 2007: “Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains”, with interviews of the survivors.
WordPress tip – Page Template drop down box
If you create a new page in WordPress and you would like this page to have a custom template you’ll have to follow these steps.
If the Page Template’s drop down box doesn’t show up in the Admin Panel you just have to re-activate the template in the appearance menu.
Social Media Revolution…
It’s never too late…
What is sIFR?
In your website design if you want to use other fonts than the basic Verdana, Courier, Times,etc. sIFR can be of great help. sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) enables you to display fonts that are not in the user’s machine. sIFR is a mix of Flash, Javascript and CSS that enables you to display whatever font you need for more aestethic designs.
For example, in this wordpress blog the custom font typography used for date&time of each blog post is rendered with the help of sIFR.
Check Mike Davidson’s page for more info.
And for easy set up: sIFR Generator
Easy file sharing with Dropbox
If you’re looking for an easy way to share files with colleagues or friends you should give Dropbox a try.
Basically Dropbox is a storage area in the cloud.
Dropbox gives you 2 GB free space on an external server that you can access trhough any computer. It’s pretty useful if you have different machines in different places and need to have your files available and synchronized between them, anytime, everywhere.
Joomla: upgrading locally on Mac OSX
When it comes to upgrading a site to a new version of Joomla the process is different if you’re on a Mac or a PC. If you don’t know how MacOSx handles folder overwriting you can suffer from severe headaches!
Important:
On a Mac if you overwrite a folder it will replace it entirely leaving no trace of the old files.
On a PC if you overwrite a folder it will only overwrite files that have been modified and leave everything else untouched.
(see entire discussion here)
There are some solutions out there like “FileMerge” which allow you to compare folders on Mac and overwrites only the ones you need.
I personally prefer to do it on XP through VirtualBox as I’ve already set this up for crossbrowser testing.
Hope this helps…
French broadcast
“Complément d’enquête” is an interesting television program. Made of 90 minutes of investigations, reports and testimonies on current social themes, it gives a good overview on different economic, political & social issues.
Good interviews and deep investigations presented by French television broadcaster & commentator Benoît Duquesne.
See videos of “Complément d’enquête”
Recommended book: “The Selfish Gene”
“We are survival machines, robots blindly programmed in order to perpetuate the existence of selfish genes we hold in our cells.”
In his book “The Selfish Gene“ Richard Dawkins goes further in the theory of evolution and supports the gene-centred view of evolution which holds that evolution is best viewed as acting on genes and that selection at the level of organisms or populations almost never overrides selection based on genes.
Richard Dawkins is a zoologist specializing in animal behavior as well as evolutionary biologist. He’s also known as a militant atheist, strongly defending his rational views of existence. In 2006 he wrote “The God Delusion” where he explains with practical examples why a supernatural creator certainly doesn’t exist…
Gran Torino
A great movie from Clint eastwood…
Gran Torino
Wingsuit…
Icarus would have gone mad if he had seen these guys…
Visiting the Getty Villa
While in L.A. I had the opportunity to visit the Getty Villa which houses the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of approximately 44,000 Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities.
J.P Getty was the founder of the Getty Oil Company and one of the richest living American in the 50′s. He gathered an impressive collection of artwork and recreated a Roman villa which is now open to the public.
The villa is located here, between Santa Monica and Malibu.
One of the main piece may be the Victorious Youth (or Getty Bronze). Found in the sea off the coast of Italy, this statue is one of the few life-size Greek bronzes to have survived.
Buying musical instruments in Beijing
Great deals to do in Beijing for musical instruments!
The Xinjiekou South Street, not far from Tian’anmen square, is the place to be if you’re searching for good opportunities on musical instruments.
I’ve bought an acoustic guitar (Fender…copy) for only…75€!
Recommended book: “¿Y después del petróleo, Qué?”
In this book Juan Rosell gives a complete overview on the global energy supply as well as the economic and ecological issues for the countries.
…for a better understanding of the current debate on energy!
“¿Y después del petróleo, Qué?” Luces y sombras del futuro energético mundial
WorldWide Telescope
If you want to see the sky as never before, download the WorldWide Telescope. It is just like google earth but this time the map is the universe, you’ll discover some great shots from the Hubble telescope as well as guided tours on galaxies and black holes,…impressive!
China – A Century of Revolution
Back from China where I spent 2 weeks between Shanghai, Xian & Beijing (that was last October).
Two weeks in China in very short time but it is worth doing the trip!
For those who are interested in China, I found on Youtube a great documentary that gives a complete overview of the country in the 20th century.
“China – A Century of Revolution (2002) is a six-hour tour de force journey through the country’s most tumultuous period.”
Part One: China in Revolution 1911-1949
Part Two: The Mao Years 1949-1976
Part Three: Born Under The Flag 1976-2008
Team – Cabrinha Kiteboarding 2009 Season
Glad to be part of the Cabrinha Team in 2009!
Check the complete team here–> http://www.cabrinhakites.com/team
Google founders talk on TED
TED is a great place for thinkers to express their ideas and views, I found this interesting talk of google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page on the google machine… Video: Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Inside the Google machine
La Saga Pignon: Francis Veber artista de la risa
Great document in 6 parts (1h) on french cinema including interviews of Francis Veber, Pierre Richard, Gérard Depardieu, Jacques Villeret and much more… Francis Veber gives us his views on French & American cinema and explains who hides behind his famous Francois Pignon…
Video
Recommended book: “The World is Flat”
The World is Flat: The Globalized world in the twenty-first century, by Thomas L. Friedman.
Really interesting book on how IT is giving the world a new shape, interconnecting people and companies like never before…
Sunset on Castelldefels
Good to be back home after 4 days in Brussels,
A view from the beach today January 5th 2009.
