Possibly the best article about Real Sporting ever

Thanks to The Guardian for this wonderful article.

Fundamentos Web 2008

October is almost here and a new edition of Fundamentos Web is coming to town. Web 2.0, user preferences, standards and accessibility in CMS solutions, WAI-Aria, Marketing 2.0, a workshop on development of unobtrusive AJAX solutions in the real world, another one on design of mental models, instant English and Spanish translations available, participation of web gurus like Chaals, Jesse James Garrett, Eric Fain, Steve Faulkner, Becky Gibson or Peter-Paul Koch.

It happens here, in Gijón, on the 27th and 28th of October. The web site of the event has all the information you need (location, agenda, hotel recommendations). What are you waiting for? Sign up!

Real Sporting, I believe

Since my last post about the football team of my soul, three losses in a row (Sevilla 4 - Sporting 3, Sporting 1 - FC Barcelona 6 and Real Madrid 7 - Sporting 1) have made the team being in the media very often in the last days.

The last time when Sporting was in Spanish First Division, we beat the record of fewest points ever (13). The prophets claim that we are going for a new record.

The fact is that, while we are playing against the big ones, other teams have had not so difficult rivals and they are only 4 or 5 points away. Yes, we have zero points, but I will list in the future the amount of points achieved (by the last ten teams so far in the league) in the series of matches between Getafe and Villarreal. Many will get zero too and some others... three? four? That only means that league to avoid relegation to Second Division will be played in the direct duels between contenders.

I have deeply analyzed the game of a lot of teams that I bet that will be fighting to avoid relegation. They all lack of the offensive skills of Real Sporting. I know that the defensive play of the team will be strengthen after facing the great teams we have been fighting so far.

The next challenge is tomorrow, against Villarreal, another team to be feared. They were second last season, with many chances to be first until the very end. This season they have started in even better shape. This is not the league of Real Sporting yet so 1 or 3 points would be a gift.

Our league starts next week: Mallorca, Osasuna, ... If we get 4 or 6 points against them we might get out of the relegation positions. I am sure, we can. I am sure we will.

The differences between the richest and the poorest is bigger than ever this year. But among the poorest, a decent defense that I know that we will achieve and our powerful attack will make us prevail.

And you will see...

¡Siempre Sporting!

G1 looks good to me

There have been different and opposite opinions about the new Android phone, but this video makes me think that android phones will rock. I want one.

Bluetooth interaction in El Molinon

I have just read in a post of the official web page of Real Sporting de Gijón that a network of Bluetooth hotspots is being deployed in El Molinón in order to push content to users during football matches.

I hope the system is working soon and I will report about it right after I try it. The post says that El Molinón is the second football stadium in Spain and the third in Europe (are you sure?) using this technology, after Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu and Bayern Munich's Allianz Arena.

The creators of this system are AdsMedia and it looks like they will be the developers of the WAP Portal (isn't this a deprecated expression?) of the club.

Finding in Nokia Maps via Google Maps

If you are a user of Nokia Maps, you'll probably have realized that in no way it matches the searching capabilities of Google Maps. One thing that I did not know is that you can search in the s60 GMaps client and save the result as a favorite. now you'll find it in My Places inside the Nokia Maps app. More details and screenshots in The Nokia Blog.

Fring on maemo

Some weeks ago, the guys at Fring released a new version of their popular multi-IM and VoIP client, but now for the maemo platform. It crashed when I tried it in the N810 but a few days ago they launched a revision of this wonderful software, and now it works perfectly.

You will find the same experience as in the s60 and the rest of mobile platforms having this nice communication tool available. The user experience is worse in what regards to IM if compared to Pidgin, for example. But, on the other hand, it allows multi-IM connectivity plus VoIP, reducing a lot the memory fingerprint needed when using the options available until now (nokia IM client plus pidgin, pidgin plus gizmo or whatever other combination of software tools to be logged in yahoo, msn, icq, aim and any VoIP provider).

Great piece of software to be followed!

Maemo's new generation

The Maemo Summit is bringing a lot of good news. The most commented ones are cellular connectivity (great!), high definition camera (wondering the impact to the price) and OMAP TI3 support (will this mean less battery autonomy?). I would also like to point out some other ones:

- Meta Tracker: content search and metadata tools (with Frade being part of the dev team, btw).
- gUPnP (I am still looking for complete UPnP support on the N810).
- upstart: faster system bootup and shutdown process.

...

And last but not least... bluez with A2DP support... Yayyyyy!

More promised changes to the maemo platform here.

Evolution of global warming

I have just received a greeting card in Facebook containing the pic below. No comments :-)

SequoiaView

I am writing this post to recommend you this great free tool for Windows that I have been using since last year. It is called SequoiaView and creates a map that pictures an image of your hard disk divided into blocks. Each block represents a file in your hard disk and its size in the map is set accordingly to the proportional size it takes. So you can visually detect big files and thus be able to move it to another disk or delete it.

I have the laptop I use for work with its disk almost full and I could not guess how to get more free space. I left SequoiaView running while I went for lunch (it takes some minutes to complete the map in this laptop) and now I found a big number of tech videocasts that I had downloaded long and that were in a folder that I did not remember that existed in the disk.

Absolutely recommended! Thanks to the University of Technology of Eindhoven for this wonderful tool.

You can find below a screenshot showing the map of my disk while highlighting the 2 GB pagefile.sys file.

2007 Office System SDK

Microsoft has just released -in their Download Center- the 2007 Office System SDK: Open XML Format SDK 2.0.

This SDK allows you to create and manage Open XML documents programmatically, offering a set of .NET classes that create a high-level abstraction layer instead of forcing you to know the details of the XML formats used in Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007.

It is great that this is available as a free download as, in the past, it was a commercial add-on for Visual Studio.

Fotmob

For a guy crazy about football like me, this is a must!. FotMob allows you to have online real time information about the main football leagues in Europe. It works on Windows Mobile and Java phones now, with Android and iPhone coming soon. There is even a Windows Vista gadget :)

It is already installed in my mobile phone and it'll be used a lot ;)

Google Chrome: First experiences

Everything is fine with Google Chrome and I am in love with it, but... how is it possible that it was born to enhance web user experience in what regards to web services and applications and it does not support an important service built in the Google Bar for IE and Firefox such as bookmarks?

I bookmark URIs in Google Chrome and it does not sync with the bookmarks in Google Bookmarks. Bad thing which I hope it is fixed soon.

And I also miss several Firefox extensions that I am in love with (ForecastFox or TwitterFox, for example). Maybe the open community of developers will port them soon. In the meantime, Google Chrome will not be my default browser.

Enough complaining. It is true that this is a beta (and a top-quality beta, I must add) so it is only a matter of waiting a little and it will be improved as Google always does with their inventions :)

Google Chrome

We have a new browser in town. If everything in the comic book is true, I think I'll change my default browser. Already waiting for it on Linux. And on maemo? :-) I wonder how a tab-model and plugin-model based on processes suits to a resource-limited machine. All my life in the university teaching me about how good multithreading is and in the end they sell that everything in its own process is better. Jokes asides, it is the same old story, more usage of resources for the sake of security and stability. I bet that a good multi-threading model would be able to do the same with no bugs is the best, but I guess we have all surrendered to the idea of making software without any bugs.

I'll test it in depth in the next days and then see whether I change the default to Chrome.

Ah, and it is great that it is based on open-source and it is open-source itself. Other browsers can take benefit of it, as Chrome has taken benefit from other open-source browsers. Will V8 become the "de-facto" standard in Javascript VMs?

Time will tell about all of this.

Sporting 1 - Getafe 2

Yesterday, my dearest Real Sporting de Gijón debuted in the Spanish Liga BBVA. They lost 1-2 against Getafe CF, twice finalist of the King's Cup and having been eliminated from UEFA Cup by Bayern Múnchen. Sporting did not deserve the result as they were the only team on the field that tried to play good football.

In the first half, Sporting started with speed, accuracy in the pass, pressing on the strikers and midfielders of the rival and only lack of precision shooting on goal stopped them from scoring before Getafe did. This happenned on minute 14, when Perez Burrull signalled an unexisting foul by Diego Castro. Albin kicked hard from the frontside of the area defended by Sporting. A visitor player embedded in the barrier moved away and Pedro and Kike Mateo also moved (inexplicably). The fast ball of Albin found no opposition and Sergio Sánchez could barely touch the ball. Lesson 1: Never get away of the barrier even if the ball is going to break your teeth.

The next five minutes belonged to Getafe but it was only a mirage. Sporting showed their decision to go for the match and went on with the good play based on speed and good treatment of the ball. The reward came on minute 35 as Diego Castro kicked hard from the outside of the area with no good results but he got the clearance and hit the ball hard again close to the opposite post of the goal.

In the second half, Sporting paid the effort done in the first part of the match. Getafe had the possesion of the ball but did not play vertically. Positional dominion of Getafe most of the time and few chances to score from both teams. On minute 86, the referee did not signal a clear foul to Diego Castro when counterattacking and in the next play Getafe scored their second goal. Although this decision had its importance in the final result, it is relative, as the red-white defense gave three chances for Getafe to score in that play. The last one was a clearance towards the center of the border of the area which Casquero took benefit of to score with a great and unstoppable kick. Lesson 2: Never clear the ball to the center, always to the sides and -if possible- out of bounds.

Although I mentioned the referee twice, he did well all over the match trying not to stop the game vey much. This is the opposite to the whistle concerts of the referees in the Second Division. But it is true that his only two mistakes cost two goals in the end and that he did not use the same judgment to book Sporting and Getafe players with yellow cards.

I am proud of the way in which Sporting played against one if the best football teams in Spain. As they get in better physical shape, this team will do great things in Spanish First Division. Of course, I bet against anyone who dares that they will remain as a First Division team at least in next season. They suffered in the end due to the energy spend in the first half. No player has been on the grass for 90 minutes all over the pre-season. This means that games are still very long for their legs. If Sporting players manage to play at least 60 minutes with that pace, they will do a lot of harm to most of the teams in the league.