Miguel On Life

Una de las noticias más sonadas la semana que pasada fue la “des-coordinación” entre el señor ministro Juan Manuel Santos con el presidente y el ministro de relaciones exteriores. Santos y la cúpula militar habían convocado (por medio una carta al presidente) una reunión para “unificar criterios” sobre la “legitima defensa” en relación a los grupos guerrilleros.

Técnicamente la tesis de Santos expone ( y que al parecer apoyan los militares) es que es “Justo” violar la soberanía de otro país para poder atacar a los enemigos (todo eso me recuerda a como a Bush).

Al parecer este no es el mensaje que quiere dar Uribe a nuestros vecinos, más cuando ciertos puntos se hablaron en Santo Domingo el año pasado. Entonces, no es un atrevimiento del ministro Santos hacer algo como esto?

El ministro Santos es una persona ligera para dar declaraciones públicas, declaraciones que muchas veces han sido que ser rectificadas por los voceros oficiales del gobierno. Mi impresión es que Santos se toma atribuciones de presidente sin serlo (y esperemos que no lo sea) además que no está en sincronía con el presidente en su manera de pensar, algo peligroso  para un ministro que maneja temas tan delicados. La verdad, creo que todo esto pasa por nombrar subalternos que no están en la misma linea y que solo buscan protagonismo.  Esto pasa por nombrar ministros para pagar “favorcitos” políticos.

If you try to run googleearth and you get:

[:~/installers]$ googleearth
googleearth-bin: relocation error:
/usr/lib32/i686/cmov/libssl.so.0.9.8: symbol BIO_test_flags,
version OPENSSL_0.9.8 not defined in file libcrypto.so.0.9.8
with link time reference

To fix it real quick go to the directory where you installed google earth a do something like this:

[~/installers/google-earth]$ mv libcrypto.so.0.9.8 libcrypto.disabled

Now you can enjoy Google Earth :-).

For more info:

it’s alive, it’s alive….

No voy a hablar de por que he demorado tanto en escribir, dudo mucho que haya sido por falta de tiempo, el tiempo está, es posible que haya sido más bien por que no tenga nada interesante que decir.

Eso quiere decir que ahora  planeo escribir porque sí tengo algo interesante que que decir? bueno, algo que decir, tal vez,   interesante, bueno se lo dejo a la persona que lea estas líneas.  Creo que este año que he pasado trabajando en el enterprise (Accenture), me ha servido bastante,  no he aprendido tecnología (lo que me tiene algo triste) pero si he aprendido a moverme en el mundo de caras lindas y trajes elegantes, como manejar los clientes y como desenvolverme en una reunión cuando te  tiran papas calientes.  También he aprendido como NO administrar un proyecto, gracias a varios problemas y falencias que tiene el proyecto desde estoy, ahora lo que me falta es saber cual es la manera correcta je je je. Adicionalmente me ha tocado tratar con gente que no Paisas, específicamente gente Bogota que bueno,  como buenos egresados de la de los Andes y Externado tienen en mayor o menor medida su feeling gomelo.

Técnicamente, he trabajo el año pasado mucho con una sistema de trading financiero (no puedo decir el nombre),  una herramienta grande y técnicamente compleja completamente desarrollada en Java, que usa muchas tecnologías desde Rhino pasando por el Spring Framework hasta su propio lenguaje de programación.  Obvio uno no “ve” muchas de estas tecnologías salvo en logs files, pero bueno, por lo menos he aprendido algo más de en tecnologías XML (XPath, XSLT,etc) odiadas por algunos y usada a la final por muchos. Lo malo que cada vez más me alejo de la parte tecnológica, y me centro más  en la herramienta (como un “experto SAP”, “experto Siebel”) en general esto no me gusta, por lo que me llama la atención de las tecnologías enterprise, es la Integración Enterprise y el desarrollo de software. Bueno, veremos a ver que pasa y que oportunidades se presentan.

Estuve en mi casa en vacaciones, compartí con mi familia que hace rato no la veía,  en el mes de vacaciones que tuve, la pasé muy relajado, mucho en casa, en el famoso bar La Puerta y en las muchas playas y sitios de interés de casa.

Anduve mucho con Nelson, un gran tipo, creo que teníamos en comun el hecho de ser Geek  y de haber pasado mucho tiempo sin ir a Santa Marta. Con Nelson tuvimos una sesión de astronomía, usamos  un telescopio muy potente gracias a Luis Felipe, amigo de Nelson. Nunca lo había hecho, al parecer Santa Marta es un buen lugar para ello.

Y bueno, ahora 2009, creo que por el momento continuaré en Accenture, creo que volverá a aplicar a las Universidades (por cierto,  le puse cosas adicionales a la tesis, y un artículo está en camino). Creo que esta vez tengo más chances de pasar.

Bueno, no siendo más, creo que me he de poner a trabajar

I’ve been busy like hell, that’s true.  I doubt that even with a lot of time available I would write something that is worth reading (besides this post of course hehe).

You have seen posts about training BJJ here in Medellin. Well, right now we were trying to create a group of interested people in the art. Since  we started training like three people have joined us.  Now, looking to publicize the group  I have set-up some online resources for the “Club”.

1. A web site using Google Sites (formerly Jotspot)  which allowed me to create the web very easily. You can see a initial version here:

http://sites.google.com/site/bjj-medellin/Home

2. also I have created a Google Group so anyone looking for information can write to the group or list and contact us:

bjj-medellin@googlegroups.com

3. And of course a Facebook group. Look for BJJ Medellin.

Now, about the training itself it has been good. Will traveled to USA and Brazil and his technique improved a lot. Now he can beat me more easily. That is very annoying :S.  I am worried about he’s gonna get bored :P. I think  the other guys are improving, we have now training with us a Judo Black Belt, which I is a very hard.  I have got a couple of nice chokes on him but the guy has a great base, and his Judo pinning  techniques  (Osaekomi-wasa) are very good.

It’s looks like Gracie Barra is coming to Medellin, the instructor would be a guy called Carlos Barreto, he’s a Purple Belt from GB Panama. I believe we are going to join to his academy when it’s open but in the mean time I would like to continue with the group. We are having so much fun training.

Ah, I forgot, we are going to start training an additional day in the week, Wednesday  at 7:30 PM Sol naciente Judo Club. Go to the BJJ Medellin Google site to get directions.

Well I guess it’s all for now.

I just found a hilarious comic strip based on Accenture (formerly known as Andersen Consulting).  The original comic name was Bigtime Consulting, after AC became Accenture it changed its name to Identure. Originally, the comic was run by anonimous Accenture empoyee that went public after leaving the company.

Some of the strips are really close to reality hehe. Here one of my favorites :

You can view more strips or check Wikipedia page about it.

Somewhere in 2007 I heard the phrase “Software is a commodity”.

3 Characteristics of it:

1.  Always demanded
2.  Interchangeable (well almost)
3.  No “Quality” measure.

That’s true for software? it was not, but know with the “Software Factories” it is becoming more like it. Now I am tired, but I promise to write more about it soon.

This bug is pervasive and common to al Web2.0ish social networking websites.

Generally, when you enter a social web, the application asks for your IM (GTALK, AIM, MSN)  Accounts to check if one of your contact is already in that sociual network and so automatically connect with him  (Examples, LikedIN,Facebook, Twitter,  and so).

So what is the bug? well it happens that for some IM Systems like MSN (and I think GMAIL) you can use your custom email. For example my MSN Messenger account is the same that my GMAIL e-mail addresses. So, what happens then? The system’s designers did not  consider it? Now,  I cannot import my MSN contacts into Facebook  or LinkedIn for that reason. They wrongly supposed that all MSN accounts “should” end in hotmail.com or msn.com

Changos.

It has been a month since I wrote in this piece of blog. Let’s see the highlights of this month:

•  I got a promotion in my Job, which is cool, but I still feel I am in the wrong place.

• In the previous post, I uploaded some vids of me training Brazilian JiuJitsu with my friend Fernando. Well, a Colombo-American guy,  named Will,  contacted me. He is now  living in Medellin, and was desperately looking for a place to train. He’s a blue belt and was training in U.S.A before moving to Colombia. I have been training with him for two weeks and it has been amazing. I   really excited about training Brazilian JiuJitsu for real.  I have learned some nice moves. We are planning to create a community of BJJ practitioners here in Medellin. First, we will be under the Umbrella of Sol Naciente Judo Club, but with the time, we plan to create our own Club. If you are an orphan BJJ practitioner here in Medellin, contact me about the time and place we are training.

• I’ve been struggling to close my thesis (I mean finishing it for real, the result submitted in the document are just the initial ones). It has been a pain in the ass getting the algorithm right. I chose to write it in Matlab, but now I repent, although, in that case I would have had to build my own version SMO Algorithm (or similar) for solving  QP problems, which  I think I  would’ve taken more time to do it.  I want to publish in an international conference, but without serious results I won’t be able to do it :(. help?

• I’ve been toying with Google Application Engine, I have a couple of Ideas that I want to try. It has been good so far, learning Python is easy when you have a little Ruby background. I like Python, but still my favorite one is Ruby.  I have been doing a lot of Java lately at work, with help of Eclipse, which makes my life so easy (but I still use Emacs at home though). I have been learning more Emacs these days. Setting it up is not that easy but the results are cool. Another software I’ve been trying is Git, which look very promising, I want to open an account on Github, and upload some real shitty code I have in my Hard-disk.

• Talking about hard-disks, one my disks  (the main one)  just failed along with my USB Flash Drive and cellphone. All in the same day. I really did not have the “backup”, but I had a copy of the important parts either in the other disk or in remote servers. I lost a lot of data, but not really essential one. I bought a new disk of 250 GB for only $120.000 COP (about 68 bucks). Very cheap thanks to the revaluation.

• I went to watch Ironman. Superb movie, very entertaining. I am looking forward for the Avengers saga to be released.

Well that is pretty much everything. One more month, the year is flying, and I mean it. In the college the time passed very, very slow.

As you guys may know, I ‘ve been training Judo  for like 2 years (but very irregularly, of those years I approximate 9-11 moths of regular training). Although Judo is a fine martial art , from the beginning I  wanted to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ),  a similar martial art focused in ground fighting (chokes, joint locks and son on) whereas Judo is focused mostly in takedowns and throws. The problem is that in Medellin (and I presume Colombia) there are not BJJ academies, so I train Judo instead,  which is considered for many as the father of this Brazilian martial art. Still,  In my Judo training  I focus my game in the ground fighting part of it (called ne-waza).

As there wasn’t a BJJ academy nearby, I begun to learn by myself by using instructional videos and then trying to apply those  techniques while training Judo. This was not always possible and I constantly got criticism from Judo purists. After some months of training, I recorded one of my fight with myJudo  sensei and posted it on YouTube. Through the commentaries of the video I met Fernando,  a Renzo Gracie’s Colombo-American BJJ purple Belt which was going  to fly to Medellin for Bossiness.   He came to our Dojo and train some of us on basic BJJ techniques. It was good finally to have a taste of real BJJ;  I  got more excited about the art.

Two weeks ago he came back to Medellin and we went to train together,  this time it was more one-on-one training, with just one guy from the Dojo staying to watch and learn.  After training some basic techniques we rolled (spar) for a while. I have to say that I was in no shape and I have stopped all Judo training due to time constraints. But that’s not the reason I lost, I mean, a white belt BJJ guy like me have no chances against a BJJ purple belt . Anyway it was very fun and  I am looking forward to train again (and hopefully have some rematchs!).

This time we trained without Gi’s, the uniforms with the color belts. This is called No-Gi BJJ or sometimes Submission Wrestiling. We recorded the two fights, I  lost both off course, but I learned a lot that day.  Below the videos of the fights. the Rashguard I am using in the videos was gift from Fernando, thanks dude!.

First Fight

In this first fight we started from the top, Fernando tried to get me in his guard, but I initially avoided  it but while trying to get him side-controlled I fell in his guard and then he tried to apply a triangle choke (from which I barely escaped), then he tried a Armbar from which also I escaped (I can belive I did it but it was neat). at that point of the fight I did a serious mistake: exposing my back to him, from there he tried a rear naked choke. Initially I was able to stop him, but while trying to scape I uncovered my neck and he finally applied it which made me tap out.

Rematch

It does not look like, but sparring is a very energy consuming activity and needs a lot of cardio. By the second fight (we rested like 30 secs) I was already tired.  We started clinching and I got the opportunity for the take down I and I took it, I did not  grabbed his legs properly so I ended up in his half guard. He did a excellent sweep and got me in his guard from which I stared to  look for ways of passing it. I eventually stood up but I was  really exhausted  and he took me down easily and got the mounted position. I taped out because I was really tired and I could not continue (we were training from 11:30 and it was like 2 PM when we stared to roll).

I had a really good time training BJJ with Fernando, it looks like he is going to come more often to Medellín, which will allow me to train BJJ more regularly and sharp my ground fighting skills. Thanks Fernando! Looking forward to get my ass kicked one more time hehehe :P.

PD. For some of my Judo frieds that say that I only post videos of me  winning I just posted two where I get defeated very easily. Nevertheless,  I can still kick your individual asses.

Okay, this is another personal blog. I have some technical related posts cooking, but that will have to wait.

I was supposed to write more often in this piece of Weblog, but well life is not always as you expected it to be… but in many ways life is good.

Let’s get started and be more concrete, I have been very busy at work and things in someways are getting better but on the other hand I have realized of some injustices and company practices that I am not really fond of. Anyway, I feel I am learning a lot and so far I’ve been given a very good feedback from my superiors.

Not all news are good though, I applied to some grad school (like 3, really) I sincerely believed I had a chance in one of them, But so far I have been rejected from the waitlist of one of my favorites. I still waiting for the answer of another, but I don’t really believe I’m gonna get in. Anyway, my plan keeps intact. I have good chances to enter in the Msc. program another world renowned University for next. This year I did not applied  because of time and financial issues.

Enterprise experience has been not as good as I expected, but I have learned a lot, not technical really, but how the things are done in Big Companies (The processes suck anyway). So, I will be in Colombia for at least another year. The objetive this year is to publish a article related to my thesis (link in a future) in a international journal so I will have a stronger CV.

As for the Job, I think will be using Java and JNI (so we can code some function in C). The client wanted speed but the lot of boilerplate and non-functional code needed to carry on the the tasks was just outrageous. (I bet you have never done a SQL-query from C to a Oracle database).

That’s all for the last month in my life. Well I got sick but I am better now. That’s something to be grateful for.