Other write-ups

Today I was playing with a few social networking applications that offer location services. Why? I want to stop posting only cryptic status messages in Facebook and sometimes really say what am I doing as my friends do (real friends, not only facebook friends), plus I also want to post some location information in my profile and keep track of trips.

One of the most important features to me was compatibility with FireEagle, which is a broker of location information to be used by other applications and social networking sites, that will give me a low entry/exit barrier. I also wanted something that can write to my Facebook profile, as I use Facebook a lot. The resulting setting was a non-trivial data flow that I had to draw to understand:

There are a few sites that are designed to handle location information in a social networking setting. The one I liked the most, from the ones I visited, is Dopplr which is a place for frequent travellers to boast about how many places they have been and where are they going next. Dopplr can read/write from FireEagle and has a nice application for Facebook. The Dopplr site is also pretty neat, I must say, and the Raumzeitgeist has a very cool look.

15 years ago in this same month I was completely focused in studying for the PAA/PCE, which was like the SAT exam in the US. It had two main subjects in the PAA part: maths and Spanish, and several subjects in the PCE part: maths, physics, chemistry, biology, history, etc. I studied like crazy for the maths part using an old physics book that included a lot of math problems.

I knew I had a chance for getting a top score at this test, I just had to focus and avoid making stupid mistakes. But I failed. I said that -1 had 1 square root: i and failed to count -i, so I had one of the 90 or so questions wrong. There were 2 or 3 guys who tied in the first place in maths and I was not one of them.

As a consolation price, I got the best score in physics, answering all 50 questions or so without errors. It was a consequence of studying maths with a physics book.

In the interview clipped here, I say that I work at the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) with children -- at that time I thought you could be a Christian-Atheist, but that's a long story :-). I also say that the PAA/PCE favors rich students as they are able to pay for lessons outside the high school to prepare themselves better.

I also say that I want to study to become an Engineer (I did) and I say --and I did not remember this-- that I would like to work independently as an entrepreneur.

In retrospective, these 15 years make sense. I did not want to study more physics, and I am OK with that. I wanted to become an Engineer, and I did. I also wanted to become an entrepreneur, and I also did, but at some point I had to leave that to focus on finishing my PhD. Academia was not in my plans 15 years ago, it appeared later on, and that's fine too. With 16 years, you cannot predict so well your future :-)

The Travelogue of Chile 2007 is ready and available. This time and as many suggested, I've written a bit more details about the places.

In August 2007 I traveled to Chile for holidays; these were five very intense weeks including a couple of weeks of work and three weeks of holidays with friends and family. At the beginning I'm always quite nervous because of all the long time spent without seeing each other, but after a moment you can feel at home very quickly more >>

Si encontramos que La Gioconda (La "Mona Lisa") de Da Vinci es un bello cuadro, o que el David de Michelangelo es una bella escultura ... los encontramos bellos porque los expertos dicen que son bellos, porque están en famosos museos, porque son obras famosas, ¿o porque realmente son bellos?. Si no fuera por todo lo que rodea a estas obras ¿las apreciaríamos?. Puesto de otro modo: ¿podemos apreciar el arte sin el contexto apropiado?.

El Washington Post hizo un interesante experimento para esto. Los protagonistas: el metro de Washington y uno de los más prodigiosos intérpretes de violín vivos.

Existen 61 tipos de persona de acuerdo a la clasificación usada por Mosaic-UK de Experian. Los tipos principales mezclan aspectos económicos y culturales muy interesantes. Estos tipos son mucho más detallados que la típica definición de clases sociales que se usa en Chile (A=ricos, B=profesionales, C-D=técnicos, E=obreros, F=pobres) siendo ABC1 en nuestro caso el segmento a que la mayoría del marketing apunta.

La lista de 61 perfiles de Mosaic-UK, junto con estadísticas de cuántos votantes/compradores hay en cada grupo, dónde están y cómo convencerlos, es usada por políticos, marketeros, y cualquiera que quiera vender algo y quiera saber cómo y a quién dirigirse.