More than a month without updating

Hi folks, if there's someone out there who still reads me. It has been a long time since my last update here. I have been thru personal things that took away my strengths, so I only update my Spanish blog, it's easier to write in my own language so don't be angry to me. Life is not a straight line and I'm getting over some things.

Now I don't know if I want to continue writing in English. I love English, it was hard to learn but I achieve level enough to write quite properly a blog. I have improved a lot making so, but now, I don't know if it's worth to have my blog split in two, English and Spanish. I'm not going to have enough time to write and translate things so I'm thinking about mixing all together and whenever I want to write something in English just write it down in the blog... it will keep everything together.

I still don't know what to do.

The War Of The Worlds

Just commenting something I found curious in this great film.

The worlds went to hell because a bunch of stupid aliens. At the beginning, a voice explains something about the superior intelligence of these aliens that has been watching us like ants. Well, they must be blind or they hired a fool for the job, because it ends in the most stupid possible way. It's obvious that those SO intelligent beings didn't meet a NASA scientist to learn some advices about how to invade a planet. Anyone with some scientific knowledge knows that what happened at the end means that the aliens weren't very smart. Just take a look at what our researchers do for a space mission.

The aliens didn't plan the things so well, at least in the film. ^^

Something to read

Wow! It has been twenty days since last update and I think is time to return to the old habit. I'm so damn lazy, but if I don't write in English how I'm supposed to improve. Well, not so much to tell at the moment, I think I have written most of my thoughts in spanish so I'm not going to write them again. I would like to recommend you reading two interesting post I found, but they are in Spanish, so how I can recommend you those text. Anyway I will, you never know if one of your visitors can read Spanish.

The first one is De cabeza al cenagal. Pilindrina, the author, describes how was everything when she surrender to his emotions and stop listening to his conscience by having a romance with a married man.

The other text is 2005: Una odisea playera by Gonzo. A hilarious description of what happened to him and his friends when they went to the beach and they saw a gorgeous girl sunbathing before them. Lot of fun in those lines.

Drivers

They are those little portions of code without them our shiny operative system and his thousand utilities would be nothing. Working with Windows Vista Beta has reminded me how important drivers are. When everything is perfectly configured it's easy to forget they exits but Windows Vista gives me problems so I was put before the fact that they are extremely necessary. After installation, many pieces of hardware weren't configured, I was aware of it, but I didn't realize how I would miss some things.

From everything I couldn't "drive", Ethernet adaptor and sound card were on top of the list I needed to get working. Nowadays, a computer without Internet access is useless, and the Ethernet adaptor connects my PC with my router, which is connected to Internet, so I have nothing. Without Internet I wouldn't be able to fix these drivers problems. I needed it to not having to switch between Windows XP and Windows Longhorn (I mean... Vista), every time I wanted to search and try drivers. After many hours I found the solution in a page that recommends trying a specific Windows 2000 driver, so I do and the way to Internet got opened.

About the sound matter I will prefer not to talk, there's nothing, nothing at all. So what is the point of new wonderful functionality to organize music files, if I can't listen to them?

We are in the hands of the companies that made our hardware.

Weekend on the beach

Sorry for the absence of updating these days, I went to the beach and there I didn't have Internet, I didn't look for it either, I wanted to unplug, like Neo in Matrix. I love the beach, it's relaxing, you enjoy the see, the sand, the slowly pass of time, and in my case, the family.

My grandmother rent a house in the coast every year and we all visit her in waves. This time I have been there with my little cousins, they have changed a lot, and of course their parents, my uncles. Playing with the little ones is really funny, you forget about the things from the world of adults. Sea waves and a little bit of Pressing-Water to laugh out loud and finish, me, exhausted, to be honest, they are tireless and I'm older. XDD

The world of children fascinates me, it's simpler, less stupid than sometimes looks mine. Yesterday, when we were having a drink, a girl about the same age as my little cousin, 8 years old, came to her and, without known her she ask her, "will you come to play with me?". My cousin asked her father, that agrees, and they both went to play. That reminded us how the fear to make a fool we don't ask what we want. Looking at the possibility of fail block us.

I think I will change my attitude about many things.

Quicksilver_mx's system.

My friend Quicksilver_mx is an experienced user that has been using PC for several years since his first Pentium 166MHz. Since then, he has been in a constant war to make his computer works properly.

He, as many others, suffers all the problems that Windows can offer. His computer, a Pentium 4 3GHz, is always about to collapse. I don't know what he does, but the fact is that his crashing statistics are high, very high. I have experimented some of his problems, but not so many times. In his case, the problems are recurrent and if you fix something, the system got broken somewhere else.

Spyware is now the enemy that he's fighting to. Some programs have been installed in his system, and I think that nether god can uninstall them. No matter how many different antivirus, spyware remover tools, and other stuff like that he will use. The problems will persist.

As a result, his computer, in spite of being faster, works several times slower than mine.

The only solution will be reinstalling the operative system, but as I told, uff, how wants to do that mess?

May the luck be with you.

Windows Vista

Finally, this is the name chose by Microsoft for his new Operative System, previously know by his code name Longhorn. A promising system that before its release has been the target of many critics. If only Microsoft would have a legion of fanatics like those from Apple life will be easier for them. Microsoft's new Operative System is a gigantic labour and I think that they are in the good path.

Windows systems from Microsoft have evolved during the years, but not in a radical way. Microsoft tries to make the changes as less traumatic as possible to his users. Doing so, the overall user experience has been always the same or at least the user didn't feel a great leap between Windows. But changes have been made and, without notice it, we are used to them. Lot of people says that Windows XP is practically equal to Windows 98 or, even more, Windows 95, but if we use them again, quickly we're going to realize that they are not the same. Alike, but different.

I have to remember that is a first Beta and there is a long run to the final product.

Oficial Website

Some reviews:
Paul Thurrott's Supersite
Wincustomize

HTP - Devil's Road

What a mess with programs

It gets difficult, or impossible, after a system cleaning up, to put all the programs back. Every time we reinstall the Operative System is the same. A little for the OS, and weeks for the programs, at least in my case. From audio and video codecs to watch the films, to the programs for working. Video and Mother Board drivers, MS Office 2003, restoring the mail and contacts data, ActiveSync for the PDA, Firefox, the Firefox bookmarks, Picassa, Google Desktop Search, Java SDK, Flash plugins, QuickTime, WinAmp, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Foobar2000, MSN Messenger, BitTorrent, eMule, Guitar Pro, Skype, and very important, the updates for Windows. Sure that if I take a look in my pc the list will grow more.

It's incredible, but if our computer got broken, we will never be able to put it back exactly as we had it previously, unless we use some backup method. I decline using full backup methods in my system because it requires a lot of memory and, because I keep my system up to date, a backup will be valid only for two weeks. But installing the programs is the less of our problems. The worst is to reconfigure the applications.

Firefox, in my case, require reinstalling plug-ins, extensions, configuring each extension, and reorganizing the buttons. In outlook I have to organize emails accounts and the folders. In the system, user accounts, net configurations, wallpaper (not essential, but it's cool). And here it is where all programs fail. You can configure them but they are no that easy to make a backup of the configuration. So for our applications list, the amount of work is multiplied.

No operative system, at the moment, offers solutions to this problem. There are programs that help us to make a backup. There are for Firefox and Thunderbird. Outlook can make its own backup copies of mails and contacts, but not the email accounts. So we have a backup program for each we have installed.

In the end I understand why people are so lazy to clean up and reinstall the system. It's better to not have to reconfigure anything. ^_^U