Steady As I Go

Andy Murray's lost Twin Brother

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0000

I knew I had seen his face somewhere...

ZUNE 4.0

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:20:00 +0000

WOW! this new version of Microsoft's Media Player is AMAZING. Considering buying a Zune HD now....

Andrés y Meli

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Andrés y Meli, originally uploaded by paiasoloco.

Built in Flash in Slow Synch + Remote SB600 on the top left of camera.

Windows Media Player won't stream

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Here's an issue with Windows Media Player in Vista that was driving me nuts!

After I installed VISTA 64bit Service Pack 2 WMP 11 stopped working with some online radios. There is no possibility of uninstalling or re-installing so couldn't even try that. I finally found the solution in a Microsoft TechNet Forum:

If you rename the "Windows Media" folder at: %appdata%\local\microsoft did the trick and it is working fine.

Weird. But works.

Cranky Macro HDR

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:06:00 +0000

Cranky Macro HDR, originally uploaded by paiasoloco.

Making use of my new photo equipment. Just got a AF-S Micro NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8G ED and an SB-600 SpeedLight

Airstream Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:48:00 +0000

This is seriously cool little trailer. I wish I had one. I would equip it with wireless and work off... ANYWHERE.

My Latest iStockPhoto addition

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:15:00 +0000

The goblins at iStockphoto just approved my newest addition to iStockphoto.com.

Check it out, it's a dusk photo of the Miami Skyline taken from the Rickenbacker causeway coming from Key Biscayne.

The truck lights where a little bit of a lucky shot. I had the tripod setup and my Nikon D200 setup on a 2 second release timer. So I heard something big coming behind me, closed my eyes and released the shutter. The camera started counting and it released just at the perfect time. Couldn't have done it if tried timing it manually.

Canon Easy-PhotoPrint Pro Ver. 2.0.0

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:14:00 +0000

There is a new version of the Easy-PhotoPrint Pro Photoshop Plugin.

You can find it here (USA Site)

Once there select your OS:

Then click the eppprowin200en.exe file, it's the first in the software section.

First thing that I noticed is that for Vista 64bit which I have, it correctly installs itself under program files and not program files (x86). Previous versions didn't do that and even though I selected Vista 64 in the dropdown box, it left me with doubts that it was actually a 64bit app.

The interface remains the same

The changes, fixes and updates are the following, from Canon:

-The Pattern Print button is added to the Color Adjustment dialog. The following five functions are enabled here:

(1) [Paper Size]:You can select the paper size for pattern print.
Old: Letter 8.5"x11" (fixed)
New: Letter 8.5" x 11", A4, A3, A3+, 13" x 19" 329x483mm
(2) [Pattern Size]:You can select the pattern size.
Old: Small (fixed)
New: Small, Medium, and Large
(3) [Preview]: You can view the pattern print result before printing.
(4) Preview area: The pattern print range can be specified arbitrarily by dragging the white square.
(5) Printing the specified setting: The following items can be printed:
- Printer
- Media Type
- Color Mode
- Printer Profile
- Rendering Intent

-Supports Ambient Light Collection. The operation environment is shown below.

[OS]:Windows Vista (32bit version), Windows Vista (64bit version)
[Supported printers]:Pro9500 Mark II, Pro9000 Mark II, Pro9500, and Pro9000
[Supported media]:Genuine Canon media below only:
Photo Paper Pro Platinum          (PT-101)
Photo Paper Pro PR-101            (PR-101)
Photo Paper Pro II                (PR-201)
Photo Paper Plus Glossy SP-101    (SP-101)
Photo Paper Plus Glossy II GL-101 (GL-101)
Photo Paper Plus Semi-gloss SG-201(SG-201)
Matte Photo Paper MP-101          (MP-101)
Fine Art Paper "Photo Rag"        (FA-PR1)
Fine Art Paper "Museum Etching"   (FA-ME1)
Fine Art Paper Premium Matte      (FA-PM1)

-The one of the following two functions can be enabled from the Print advanced info button:

(1) When selecting Print Photo Information:
- The print position of the photo information can be selected.
- The following three items are also selected when linking to Digital Photo Professional. Along with this, the same contents when linking to Photoshop are available:
"Lens" (Not displayed when linking to Digital Photo Professional v3.5 or before)"White Balance" (Not displayed when linking to Digital Photo Professional v3.5 or before)"Picture Style"
(2) When selecting Print Color Correction Information:
- The color correction information such as Printer, Color Balance, etc. is printed at the bottom.

"LA HABITACIÓN DE FERMAT" teaser

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:39:00 +0000


Este es el trailer de la película que recomendó Dolina el Martes. "La Habitación de Fermat" "LA HABITACIÓN DE FERMAT" teaser SINOPSIS: Cuatro matemáticos desconocidos entre sí son invitados por un misterioso anfitrión con el pretexto de resolver un gran enigma. La sala en que se encuentran resulta ser un cuarto menguante que les aplastará si no descubren a tiempo qué les une y por qué alguien quiere asesinarles. Protagonizada por Lluís Homar ("La mala educación"), Alejo Sauras ("Bienvenido a casa"), Elena Ballesteros ("Café solo o con ellas"), Santi Millán ("7 vidas") y Federico Luppi ("Martín Hache"). SYNOPSIS: Four mathematicians who do not know each other are invited by a mysterious host on the pretext of resolving a great enigma. The room in which they find themselves turns out to be a shrinking room that will crush them if they do not discover in time what connects them all and why someone might wish to murder them. Starring: Lluís Homar (Pedro Almodovar's "Bad education"), Federico Luppi ("Pan's labyrinth&qu... more
© 2009 YouTube, LLC

Lance Armstrong's amazing new Trek bike

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:22:00 +0000

What a beautiful thing that is. Be sure you read the story behind the numbers 1274 & 27.5.

Here it is! Lance Armstrong new Trek Madone:

Go Lance!

Follow his amazing comeback - comeback story in twitter:
http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong

VAMOS DELPO CARAJO!!!

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:30:00 +0000

Juan Martín Del Potro, originally uploaded by paiasoloco.

Qué partido increible! 6-4 3-6 7-6 Contra el Nº 1 Rafael Nadal. Cuando iba 0-3 en el tercero (2 breaks abajo) sinceramente pensé que ya se terminaba todo, igual era un progreso porque hasta aqui nunca le había ganado ni un set en 4 partidos a Nadal. Al final David Ferrer tenía razón cuando gritaba en su partido contra él que "Ni la Virgen le gana a este!" jajaja.

Vamos Delpo mañana contra Djokovic or Federer.

2009 Sony Ericsson Tennis Open Slideshow

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:22:00 +0000

These are some of my photos from this year's tournament.

This year I have seen the following players:
- Novak Djokovic
- Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
- Gilles Simon
- Agustín Calleri
- David Ferrer
- Juan Martín del Potro
- Gisela Dulko
- Rafael Nadal
- Feliciano Lopez
- Victor Troicki
- Tommy Robredo
- Thomas Berdych
- Kuznetsova
- Wozniacki
- Gisela Dulko

Shakira and Rafa Nadal

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:22:00 +0000

Shakira met Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the 2009 Sony Ericsson Tennis Open.

See the video:

Rafael Nadal

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:46:00 +0000

Rafael Nadal, originally uploaded by paiasoloco.

I'm getting nice compliments for this photo of Rafa Nadal. This was on his first match of the Miami Sony Ericsson Tennis Open. Because it was a doubles match he played in the Grandstands court which is smaller and you can get closer. It was late in the day and the sun was going down rapidly so I had to be quick and shoot during the warm ups. You can see that the lower half of him is under exposed and the light shines nicely on his upper body.

New Decemberists Album!

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Hazards Of Love - The December...

Search Engine Optimization and landing pages

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:40:00 +0000

Today I got anther thought provoking question from Mr. Phil. He asked about what I thought of a posting about SEO & Landing Pages and it made me think (like most Phil questions), so I decided to post my reply here also.

It's a great article and a good explanation of one way in which a website should be optimized. I have "issues" with the term "landing page" though. I like to work more with "entry points". This could be a personal thing I realize, because I got fed-up of seeing landing pages that had zero synergy with the rest of the site. It's like clients want or need to re-invent the wheel every time and not built-upon their already existing website content architecture. In this way they end up with a bunch of one-off pages that have a finite shelf-life and usually end up getting very high bounce rates (single page-view visits).

"Entry point" pages distance themselves from landing pages in that it implies, at least an evaluation of the current information architecture to find the best space through which to channel the desired highly targeted traffic. This is how I see them at least.

Although the concept is correct I'm just biased in this way against the term "landing pages", because if they are not understood and developed correctly they end up being not only "landing pages" but "take-off pages" above anything else.

The article describes all the right techniques for developing them though, which I can attest I have come across and use in my SEO compliant development as well. Namely using the actual keywords in page urls, using H title tags, metatags, "keyword centric" copy writing, etc. Which by the way, hold true for any page, not just landing pages. With search engine's ability to index almost all your pages and linking to them, all pages are potential landing pages, from the general (home page) to the particular (product leaf pages for example). They attract more or less targeted audience depending on the specificity of what you are talking about on a given page. The more you drill down on the specificity of any given subject that you talk about on your website, the more targeted your traffic will be, at least in theory and from traffic coming from search engines. Traditionally a traffic funnel has the wider end in the home page and the thinner end on the leaf pages, but also, these "entry points" will make traffic by-pass completely the wider mouth funnel which is a great time saver for users looking for specificity.

This brings me to the "long tail" concept that is mentioned also. It is a relatively new term in economics invented by Wired Editor Chris Anderson. The SEO article explains what it is as it relates to keywords but rather in an incomplete way in my opinion. Long Tail search phrases are called that way, not just because they have multiple words on them, which is what the article implies, but because the longer the phrase, the more targeted it is and the less people will search for it. This is why they are inexpensive to buy as adWrods, but if you add the complete volume of all the long tail search phrases that brought the site maybe one or two visits each, they add up to much more that the volume of hits gotten by highly popular keywords.

Very interesting economic concept that the internet help bring about with it's massive ability to reach millions and millions of customers at any given moment with millions of unique interests and needs. It has been the foundation of Amazon's success as we all know.

SEO & SEM

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:08:00 +0000

My good friend Phil Schwartz suggested I write something about the benefits of SEO & SEM. Not that it hasn't been written about (only just about a million times everywhere under the sun), but without searching I wanted to write about it on my own and based on my experience.

So here it is.

SEO Benefits
1. Immediate benefit of an optimized website is the improved page ranking in the search results list for a targeted keyword. This is very important because search engines can bring a lot of traffic to a website. 30,40 even 50% traffic sources from organic searches is what can be expected depending on the business category.
2. Another less apparent benefit is that it pushes developers, designers, webmasters, etc to a more semantic internet. A by-product of search engines implemented policies is that it if you care to be found by them (and pull those inbound traffic percentages), website owners / developers need to align the content that they put out with what people are searching for. Basically aligning their offering to people's needs. Website owners/developers need to make sure they really talk about what they offer or what they try to communicate in their websites. This seems like an obvious thing to do but more often than not, it doesn't happen in real life. There are many examples and anecdotes about this.

SEM Benefits
Also very simply to understand are the benefits of SEM
1. "Plug" the holes that you can't cover with SEO.
This means that if your website won't get enough or the desired visibility organically for a given keyword, it can be 'bought' or auctioned for in order to appear under the advertisement sections of search result listings.
2. Quicker turn-around times. Because SEO is slower to implement and slow to see the results, they are perfect for short lived campaigns or just as a bridge until SEO kicks in. People say that it also is needed as a support for SEO but if you are already in the top 3-5 organically for a given keyword, my advice would be to spend the moneys allocated to that keyword on another less organically successful.
3. All Search Engines have Advertising platforms that exceed search engine results. So, it is a way also to bring your brand/product to very well targeted audiences on websites, blogs, etc. that make use of adWords (in the case of Google).

There are more, but as I see it these are the most important ones.

Great Phrases

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:50:00 +0000

Obviously, the first one is the one that subtitles this blog:

1-"I am going to present you with the domain of your ignorance"-
I think I heard it on an audiobook of a lecture I heard on philosophy or something.

2- "Strong and wrong BEATS Weak and right" -
It was Bill Clinton who said this, in the context of the primaries, but the phrase might not be his originally.

3- "To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'" - Lao Tse

4- "Be fearful when others are greedy; be greedy when others are fearful" - Warren Buffet's maxim.

5- We don't know what we see, we see what we know instead. - Someone

Keep them coming!!

Everything's amazing, nobody is happy

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:47:00 +0000

Bruce Turkel shared this one and I think it's just hilarious. As a programmer I can relate to this. People working in any technology field has their standards set incredibly high these days. It's Conan O'Brien hosting comedian Louis CK on his TV Show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Sorry for the link, poster wouldn't enable embedding.

New Naimal Collective Album

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:42:00 +0000

Listen to it COMPLETE here. These guys are weird!

Merriweather Post Pavilion

Merriweather Post Pavilion - A...

Canon Easy PhotoPrint Pro 1.6

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:04:00 +0000

This post comes a little bit late but since 12/26/2008 there's a new version of the "still indispensable" Photoshop Plug-In from Canon, Easy PhotoPrint Pro.

It's version 1.6 and can be downloaded for free here. Just select the OS on the dropdown and second in the "software" section you'll find it.

It now supports Adobe Photoshop CS4 (32bit / 64bit versions).

I still cannot match the quality (specifically color gamut) that I get printing from PhotoPrint Pro to my Canon PIXMA Pro 9000 to that of printing directly from Lightroom. I suspect that it is because PP Pro can output in AdobeRGB as opposed to sRGB which is what I suspect Lightroom is doing. Given that The PIXMA can print in AdobeRGB it's a crime IMHO not to take advantage of that but I cannot actually determine by searches I've done, WHICH is the colorspace Lightroom outputs to the printer. I guess I'll research a little more and post what I find here.

My workflow right now for printing is opening the photo in Photoshop from Lightroom like if I was to edit it (which creates a copy of the file in disk) and then open up PhotoPrint Pro to print from there. Once I'm done, close out of PP Pro and Photoshop and delete the duplicate photo file (if I didn't edit it in PS). As you can see this is a pain, but it's the only thing that works the best for me.

An insight into the new organized crime

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:41:00 +0000

For sure this type of things must be going since the invention of the internet, but this time it got to the news. I wonder how can organizations/nations go after these type of organized crime.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/07/1657259&from=rss

What this article does which I think is new is tagging the term FLASH MOB to this type of operation which is certainly not new. It's a quite accurate & valid description IMO.

Bike rides around Miami

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:51:00 +0000

Here is the loop I've been doing lately. It's a 33 mile loop and it has room for expansion, the question is if I have enough stamina. I guess everything's possible with enough training. Last week I made it in 16.4mph, this week in 16.6mph

View Larger Map

Flex Builder - Actionscript Project 100% movie / stage size

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:26:00 +0000

For whatever reason, when you create an Actionscript project in Flex Builder 3, it doesn't let you set a percentage screen size in the Actionscript packages.

If you use the SWF metatag and do the following in the main or default AS class:

[SWF(width='100%', backgroundColor='#cccccc', frameRate='30')]

The compiler complains, it throughs the following error:

Could not parse '100%' as a number for width.

The quick workaround that I found for this is to open up the index.template.html template that's within the html-template folder and modify it by adding a percent character [%] after the width and/or height variable in all the places they appear:

AC_FL_RunContent(
...
"width", "${width}%",
"height", "${height}%",
"align", "middle",
...

Mugshot

noreply@blogger.com (PaiasoLoco) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:24:00 +0000

Mugshot, originally uploaded by paiasoloco.

Wanted by INTERPOL and the International Criminal Court.
Very dangerous individual, known to posses a very powerful scream and chemical weapons which he's not afraid to use.

NOTE: The person should be considered innocent until proven guilty.