Growth

It’s been almost half my life now since I first felt this odd rush for knowledge. That sensation of absolute power once you acquire a new piece of knowledge that will forever change the way you are. I’m not sure why that happens. I just know that I love it.

And now it’s beginning to yield material results. Unfortunately, yes, I admit it. I like money. I like buying things. And now I was offered a new job, with a wider range of responsibilities and far better salary. I’m taking it, though I’ll greatly miss my current work team. Even though it’s been a month since I last saw them, I still have a lot of fun with them. I had an awesome boss that I’m not sure I’ll ever have again. A true digital warrior, he let me work the way I liked the best, knowing of course it would be the way I would achieve top productivity/performance/quality.

I was offered a job that’s more or less what he currently does for my current company. I’m quite excited about it. That same rush for knowledge I usually feel when fighting with a new programming language, a framework or anything big enough, I’m now feeling it for a job. I hope it will be worth it. Only time will tell.

On the other hand, I found it quite surprising to acknowledge that I can actually do a lot of things. I’ve been told a few thousand times that I’m quite capable, but that I should trust more of my abilities. I guess that was right. And it sounds great.

I’m so sorry for not posting more often. I just finished a new Arch Linux installation that ended up being a very nice system. I’ll post it this weekend, as I’ll do it once more, but with a hand-compiled kernel. I really want top speed. It’s an old computer again, but hell, it’s way faster than my previous computer and I can run XFCE 4 with a ton of nifty, shiny things atop.

I love Arch Linux. Every system should be like it. It simply lets you do whatever you want. If it fails, it’s your fault, not the system’s. It even made me think of changing my Macbook for a PC dual-booted with Windows 7 (or Windows 8, it’s coming this year!) and Arch Linux. It’s just that I love very much my Macbook and I’m not sure that I could leave her. She’s such a noble computer. I’ve worked a lot with her for the last two years and my battery still holds yields around 3 hours of continuous work, my keyboard is in a good state still, the trackpad seems almost new. It only has a couple of cracks in the screen’s joint which I think were my fault.

Quite awesome hardware. And I can run Windows 7 whenever I want, so I can develop in any operative system with any technology currently available. I love it so much. I don’t really know if I could leave her. Unless she totally broke down, it’s going to be quite hard to get a new laptop.

So I wrote another piece of post I don’t really know what means. Whatever. I really wanted to write once more. I like it a lot. Time to plan which posts I’m about to write.

Milestone 2012, Revisión 1

Oficialmente, el primer post del año. Esta vez no publiqué mi interminable serie de posts detallando parte por parte lo que fue del año. Este año fue un año muy bueno, estuvo lleno de éxitos, sueños, ilusiones, desilusiones y sobre todo, fue un año de iluminación. Pocas cosas hay tan satisfactorias como terminar un año y poder afirmar: Este año sé el doble de cosas que sabía el año pasado. No es mi caso. Este año aprendí de perdida unas tres veces más que el año pasado. Me llevé muchas lecciones muy importantes por todos lados.

Una de las cosas más importantes del año fue que conseguí mi primer trabajo relacionado a mi carrera. Estoy haciendo desarrollo web en una consultora. He aprendido muchas cosas, no todas han sido exactamente buenas pero sí considero que ha sido una buena experiencia. No sé por cuánto tiempo más vaya a trabajar ahí, sin embargo creo que ha valido la pena.

Esta vez el inicio de año me tomó por sorpresa. Me siento contento porque la mayor parte de mis propósitos del año pasado se cumplieron. Hay mucho que hacer aún, sin embargo creo que todo va bastante bien.

Y como este es un año nuevo, hay que tener proyectos nuevos. Ya empecé a inventar cosas nuevas, a ver qué sale de todo esto. Como de costumbre tengo mucho que leer. Estoy a menos de una semana de regresar a la escuela (lo cuál no me hace exactamente feliz) y necesito comenzar a organizarme.

Espero que este 2012 esté lleno de mejores cosas que el año pasado. Confío en que ahora que sé administrar el tiempo mejor, cumpliré mejor mis proyectos personales que el año pasado. Así es como comienza el inicio del fin de mi carrera profesional.

The HTML 5 game

For some time now, I’ve had the idea of developing a simple game based completely on HTML 5, using the so-famous <canvas>. To be completely honest, I don’t really have a lot of game development experience but hey, this is a nice place to start. A few loose ideas are more or less set since the beginning of its development which was… Yesterday.

Most developers in one way or another always have at least a slight overlook on gaming development. I’m not sure why does that happen. I think that it’s due to the geeky nature of writing code. I’ve always enjoyed developing applications, making everything work as I want it to. Games are not different. I’ve only written code for a couple of projects in my life, most of them have been pretty small, but I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

When this Canvas thing raged as HTML 5 came closer, everyone began thinking this would actually mean the end of the flash-based games era. While this is not completely truth, there’s one thing everyone knows is happening: HTML 5 games are closing in very fast and it’s only a matter of time now before serious game projects begin to rise. Think about it for a second. There are already a number of full-blown browser games available. Minecraft for example, can run from the browser. Some demos, which don’t exactly look like demos anymore on WebGL have risen and they look very, very nice.

There’s one important thing that is happening now, and it’s the fact that more and more libraries are being developed that are completely focused on game development. Making it easier for developers to actually write code focusing on a game’s features is practically the most important part of game development. That’s one of the big secrets (that are not that secret) to DirectX’s success.

So, here’s the catch: I’m writing an HTML 5 game. I hope I’ll be able to put together a nice team to work with and make something that can actually be played. Perhaps in the way, I’ll also make my own contributions to the open source libraries that are available. While there is nothing sure right now, I think I’ll give MelonJS a try. If it works for me, I’ll stick with it on the game’s development. I’ll be back with more news as soon as I test drive it. The demos actually look promising.

I’m playing the game. The one that will take me to my end.

It’s been years, literally, since the very first time I went across that particular track. It was a pretty standard day. I actually remember it. I was downloading music as every other moronic teenager did: Opened Limewire and double clicked everything that caught my eye. One of those fortunate track was I Wish, by Infected Mushroom. Little did I know at the time that I would almost be twice my then age and I would still be listening to it.

Maybe it’s just that it’s one of those tracks that carry within a timeless air. One of those infinite tracks. The ones that just don’t get old. I still love it, even though it’s not exactly a standard track by Infected Mushroom. I love it pretty much because it almost solidifies that little, shiny idea of what my life means. It’s all a game.

It’s been almost a year now since that particular month. I lost a lot, yet I learned even more. My life was pretty much based in the continuous day-to-day basis. Do what you must, get the fuck out of the way. And that’s it. It wasn’t exactly the best way to do it, but it was comfortable for a while. For a very long while, to be honest. I dragged down a lot of people during that period. I’m not proud about it.

Everything changed in September. My life as I knew it, just vanished into the air. To be honest, it felt like shit at the beginning. Then it gradually began to get better. It started when I started dating Thelxiepia (And well, she played a stellar role in everything else). Then my grades went disturbingly up. I just grew in every single aspect of my life. It wasn’t at all because something had been stuck in my life for long. It just came out that way of the pure desperation of putting the pieces together once again. And hell, it went very well. I was actually enjoying it.

As I got to that point I realized that feeling fear for almost everything was pretty dumb, but my life had to violently change for me to realize it. I’ve tried to live like that since then. Playing the game. Even if it takes me to my end. After all, I’m just seeking for the true limit. I haven’t felt yet that I’ve pushed myself to the limit. I haven’t given everything I can. Perhaps that’s because I don’t feel exactly happy. Guess that’s the next thing I need to get rid of.

I better get started. In less than two weeks, I’ll be taking the SCJP exam. I think it’s now called OCJP, as Sun was replaced by Oracle. So I’m taking the challenge. I’ll give my best. 100%. There will be no laziness, no irresponsible gaming or distractions. Just full blown effort. I’m getting that certification, no matter what it takes.

No matter what happens, I’m not going back. “Not even to gain momentum”. So I’m playing the game. The one that will take me to my end. I’m waiting for the rain, to wash who I am.

Ever Changing

Life is a very curious thing. It’s ever changing. Like fire. Like stars. Like every small piece of everything out there, just interacting and flowing away. I had another of those drastic changes so typical in my life. Once again, my life is turned upside down and I’m beginning to choke on every simple thought stumbling across my mind. Sometimes, I just can’t handle everything. This is one of those times.

While I won’t write about everything that happened, a lot went on. Severe changes are about to take place. Perhaps definitive. Perhaps not. The screwed up part is that I don’t have the least idea of what can possibly happen. Once again I’m in that specific scenario in which I don’t know how to react, what to do, what to think or what to expect. Once again I just want to lay low and wait for it to lift, but I just can’t do it because I wasn’t simply designed for that. I need to act.

Most recently, I have had the thought that I’m simply not fit enough to do a couple of things I’m really looking forward to. Social things. I’ve always tried to make it seem a low priority in my life but to be honest, I do care about it. I tend to pretend that I don’t care when I do. I do it that way because I’m afraid I’ll fail, just like now. I could handle a lie, to put into words, for half my college years. But I can’t take it anymore. It’s poisoning me.

Of course, this has to be with my separation with my dream girl. I miss her very much and to be honest, my life was quite simple with her. I fell in love and now that she’s gone, I don’t really know where to start putting the pieces together. These days haven’t been exactly the best ones, yet I’m doing it fairly well in my job. I need carry on, and quick. Summer classes are beginning soon and I just don’t want to be depressed anymore.

I need to order my ideas. Learn to be alone. And then, I’ll look for her. Hopefully, I’ll find her back. She is a fine woman I must say, and she’s definitely worth it. With this in mind, I’ll go on. I’ll try again. I fell. Right now, I’m laying on the floor. As usual, I’ll let this pain overrun me and shortly, I’ll shake it away and plan ahead once more.

The real deal: Getting a job

It’s been a while since I originally thought on writing this post. What follows is a very short summary of what happened in these time, perhaps the most crucial of my professional career.

I said a couple of times that I really wanted to get a job related to my career. Halfway through college, anxiety began to build. I wanted to see what was the real deal. State of the art violence. A Developer position in whatever company that stood before me, anything would do. That particular idea just stayed put in my mind for a couple of months, until I finally decided to write a resume and get it over-checked so it would be an effective weapon instead of a suicide card.

Saturday: An offer arrives at my mail. A very simple job, developing a web page. Four hours a week. There was no pay offer at sight, but after all what I was interested in was the experience it would give me, along with a first reference towards a bigger job.

Presunto Culpable

Español? Claro.

Hace un rato vi Presunto Culpable, una de esas películas (que técnicamente no es una película) mexicanas que, como en todo el mundo, son medianamente mencionadas, algunas personas hablan de ella, la intentan censurar y como diría el buen Max Kohler en Angels & Demons de Dan Brown: “Nada como la mala publicidad”. El punto es que todo el mundo comenzó a hablar de ella, se hizo mega famosa, intentaron quitarla de los cines (no lo consiguieron) y ahora es una película que todo mexicano tiene que ver.

Habrá spoilers así que si no la has visto, hazlo. Es un buen documental, está bien producida y más que nada, vale la pena invertirle la hora y media que dura, si eres mexicano, vives en México y aún si no, vale la pena si el sistema de justicia de tu país funciona peor que el promedio que ya de por sí es malo.

Resumiendo, la película cuenta la historia de Toño, un tianguista mexicano que se dedica a reparar computadoras y vender videojuegos. Su oficio es lo de menos, el asunto es que un día un tipo aparece muerto por una herida de bala, discutiblemente por una escuadra .22 y un par de policias lo detienen con la sonada frase “Ya te chingaste”.

Ahora, la problemática: Toño no tiene idea de sus derechos, cómo debe comportarse, qué hacer durante su juicio y por otras razones, entre abogados incompetentes y un juez corrupto (más detallitos adelante) termina preso con una sentencia de 15 años por homicidio calificado. En el 2005, Toño pasaría más de dos años en la cárcel por un crimen que no cometio, menos tiempo del que pasa mucha gente en México en el mismo caso.

Geek Press

I’ve had many blogs throughout my life. It all started years ago, when I realized I enjoyed writing. As I took it as a hobby, I moved across a ton of sites. Windows Live, Blogger, the pre-hipster Tumblr, and finally WordPress, which was the definite winner as soon as I tried it. The reason was plainly simple, the interface was beautiful, elegant, minimal and pretty straight-forward. Themes were beautiful too, and it made blogging an easy task.

I never expected to accomplish a lot with it, but as I wrote more and more I realized that I learned better about the topics I wrote. This drew my attention to the point that I began writing as often as I could, investigating about any single topic that seemed either interesting or useful. Soon enough, the blog started receiving hits.

I felt a huge motivation to keep writing. And so I did, writing small how-to’s on things I had to do and didn’t find a quick answer. The blog grew more and more, with readers from everywhere around. Eventually, I published also small pieces of code I thought that would prove particularly useful to other programmers. Then I wrote scripts for none programmers too, but for power users. As I had to script actions, I seldom published those little scripts.

School began to take over as I realized I had to push further my grades. I could no longer find free time to post on it and obviously, hits began to scarce. I haven’t posted a thing on it since last year, but now I want it back. I really enjoyed sharing whatever I though was interesting, so I plan to retake the blogging thing around Geek Press.

Even though time is scarce, I’ll try write daily, even if I post once a week only. That blog’s purpose was not to be personal (as this is) and posts were not supposed to be shallow, but detailed. The very first free second I have, will be surely devoted to that blog. I really want to be back on the whole blogging business.

Situations like these

Two exams to go. More than a couple of nights of poor sleep, without the expected results. I’m in trouble.

So, basically I feel way stressed, a number of unfinished things are to handed over by the end of this week (or should be, at least) and I just feel there’s not enough time. I don’t feel well, and that’s what bugs me the most. I was hoping to study hard and get fetch good results by the end of the week… But that’s not about to happen.

Third term is going to be the decisive one. Right now, I’ll score way underneath the 95 mark which I really wanted. I just got too stressed, studied heavily but late and now, I’m behind the lead. Shame on me. Things are about to be driven to the limit, which is just the plan. I don’t know how, but I’ll do it. That’s my commitment. Apart from the mere pleasure hitting it high, there’s a scholarship at hand. And I don’t plan to lose it.

I never thought I would end up writing again, just to relieve a bit the frustration I’m feeling right now. Writing is just too soothing. Even though I’d like to do it much more often (and that’s a lot more often) I just can’t find enough time and my body is finally giving over. Seems like I need to stop pushing it that much and start taking it easy, which is the main plan for the final weeks of this semester.

Time is dashing before me. Somehow, I’m more than halfway through systems engineering and yet I feel I have lot left to learn. That’s probably what stresses me the most. The amount of things I still don’t know and will be useful once I’m out.

I’ll be back by the end of the week. Hopefully, this awful week will have a happy ending and even if it doesn’t, I’m making the commitment that the third and final terms will be way better. I’m punching through, and leaving all the things that torment me behind.

So go away, mental bullshit.

Be still… Though chaos rains around you now

It’s been a while. Sorry about that dear blog, it’s just that life has been kind of absorbing. Even though I totally suck about school on this term, somehow I don’t ever have time to do what must be done. My birthday is on Monday and I noticed it only a week ago. Second term exams are here already and I don’t know a thing about most of my subjects. I wasted a lot of time, and invested some of it in other things I found way more productive. Even though, I’ll study as hard as I possibly can. I don’t want to go down the 90 mark. That previous 95 mark was not even nearly as hard as this is going to be.

Anyway, among the bunch of things I need to do are a number of posts I had to write, pretty much, last month. I was thinking in a “CHM to PDF How-to” and I never did it, although it is very simple. It was just a matter of reading through most of the man page of chm2pdf, a Python script that relies on bindings to HTMLDoc and CHMLib to do the nasty work and get a very good PDF version of any CHM book.

Somatoxin is something I regret greatly. That little poor blog has been abandoned for a long time and I just can’t get enough time to get an album, listen to it thoroughly and write a review. I suck blog-wise lately. Also, inspiration abandoned me for a long time. Even though I wanted to blog, I never found the correct topic. That’s why I decided to rant for the next few minutes before reading, reading, and reading a bit more before falling asleep.

A lot of stuff has been going on recently. Some things are quite interesting, others are merely plans, some others I wished that they had never happened. Hey, just the everyday stuff. Or so. Maybe not. Whatever. I’m blogging again. I miss it very much, and it was a huge motivation to strike through the to-do list as fast as possible in order to get accomplished the “Everyday challenge” which by the way, I broke. Drastically.

So, the goal of this week will be to study hard, to hit a 92+ mark at least, blog and finish a couple of books on security I recently started to read. And finish that Poe’s book which just recently became the lent book I have had for the longest possible time. Shame on me, and sorry @Pyzlnar.

Which reminds that I have an iPad now. The only two things I miss from real, physical books are the smell of them and the fact that they don’t run out of battery. I’m just a romantic that can’t accept completely that a small piece of screen is the evolution of printed books which have been around since ~1500 a.D. That’s another post I need to write, how to handle a book library (I know, sounds odd)

Wish me luck. This time, I’ll really need it.