Cough in your sleve

I've been coughing in my sleeve since I worked at Magoo's Hamburgers. Not sure why, just seemed smarter.. Well, here is a tacky video about it.. Enjoy

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Macbreak weekly pics site

Finally, there is now a couple of websites that list the pics of the week from one of my favorite podcasts Macbreak Weekly.

They are; MBW Picks of Week and MBW Picks. Thanks for the sites. I usually listen while walking  (or some other activity that lasts an hour) that leavs me without internet connection. And blasted web 2.0 names are creative, but a pain in the bus to remember!

via: targuman

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Pot legal in Mexico?!

Well, not really, but it is less of a crime. This law seems similar to what passed in Canada, where small amounts (personal stash) is not illegal.

Under the bill, it would be legal to have 25 milligrams of heroin, a fifth of an ounce of marijuana or half a gram of cocaine. The bill also makes it legal to possess small amounts of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines and peyote.

This way people with large amounts are called dealers, and can be treated more harshly. I like to think that this law as well will allow for the legalization of all drugs where to sell requires a licence. Personally, legalize drugs, charge lots of tax, and force the Mafia either out of business through competition, or make them into mainstream businesses. From a use point of view, this would also allow for open competition of growers, and better control of product; i.e. protecting the citizen better. Only thing left is for the US to change its policy as well, and all of North America will be finally leaving the puritan experiment started in the early 20th century!

via NY times

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1ra paseo ciclista en Ensenada

Around 50 bike enthusiasts gathered at Ensenada's city hall and rode from there to CEARTE yesterday as a show of support for the city's new plan of a bike lane network in the city.

The bikers arrived at CEARTE in time to see an out door jazz concert. The ride, more symbolic then exercise, was well organized and full of smiles. The group will meet every Thursday at 7 and ride to CEARTE to finish by talking drinking coffee and enjoying the state art center has to offer.

Photos of the ride are posted on my flickr account. Take a look, and see you next week!

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UABC Gastronomy presents deserts

This week we were invited to see the presentation of UABC students in the gastronomy program, and their work with deserts. I must admit, that this is study that I can really sink my teeth into.. Check out the pictures on flickr.

Mina; USB input output device

This seems like a useful device for computer control/monitoring. It looks a little simpler than the arduino. I'm thinking it would be good for simple prototypes.

Minia Open HArdware from Servando Barreiro on Vimeo.

Minia is an Usb, plug n play & multiplatform device that allows the computer to comunicate with the external /physical world. Since it´s open hardware, you can customize it and use in many ways with different kind of sensors, with differents softwares and for different applications such Audio, video, measurement of phisical parameters, etc.

Minia comes with 6 analog inputs at 10 bit of resolution (1024 steps) Minia uses the Hid protocol, this is a high speed protocol that runs directly over USB so, no drivers needed for this device in any platform (linux, macosX, windows) and no more pain with ancient protocols like “serial”. Hid has extremely low latency so the sensor response is inmediate.

via Harkopen

Natural Homes

A cool link to many homes made of natural materials (cob, adobe, etc..)

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Fotos de Feria de Taco y Platillo Mexicano

Tengo fotos de la excelente feria que passo la domingo passado. Todo estan en mi quiente de flickr en una set. Algunos de mis favoritos estan aqui.

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Festival de Taco y Platillo Mexicana

This Sunday, starting at 12 pm till 7pm at the Civic Plaza de la Patria (three heads, tres cabezas), there will be some of the best tacos, burritos, mole, gorditas, etc...



With live music and dancing, with Enenada businesses; Corona, Santo Tomas, L.A. Cetto, Tortillaria Renteria, and other local greats showing their best.


The format will be similar to other CANIRAC events (Mushroom festival, Seafood and fish...) with books of tickets that can be exchanged for delicious assortment of local gastronomic delights.


see you there; Hogaza will be bringing Mexican sweet bread, traditional cookies, and specially designed deserts. With us will be Dona Esperanza who prepares our Mole and rustic chocolate.

Snacking on great Mexcan food while drinking wine and watching live music and dance; sounds like one of the best things to do this Sunday in Ensenada. Should be full of people from the Roserito-Ensenada fun ride too...

Kepler first light

A friend of mine working at NASA just tweeted about the first images from the Kepler space telescope. Orbiting the sun in an earth trailing orbit, the Kepler telescope will be taking constant images with its 95 megapixel CCD camera for the next three and a half years looking for changes in the brightness of stars that signal the presence of an orbiting planet in that system passing between the star and us. This is a cool mission, but I also see the potential to find something new. Science often finds what it is not looking for, and this would be an opportunity to do just that. It would be great if NASA releases the images for outside people to perform their own analysis!. via NASA

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A better place: electric cars-an idea that makes sense!

This is a great way to approach the problem, and done with a sound economic viewpoint! What do I see, the need for small (1 MW) power plants to charge batteries. Home charges, fleets of tow trucks with battery changers, etc... Come on Federal Gov. of Mexico. Start supporting this! Now is your opportunity to make the beautiful country that should be here!!!

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$7 solar oven wins $75000 prize

via Bong Boing

I'll be making this next weekend. I'm surprized that the cardboard doesn't burn...

The Kyto Box is a cardboard box, with an interior that's painted black, aluminum foil-covered top panels, and covered with clear acrylic. It gets hot enough to boil water. Its inventor, Kenyan-based Jon Bohmer, won a £51,000 prize from the Forum for the Future.

The box will be produced in a factory in Nairobi. He told CNN: "This took me about a weekend, and it worked on the first try. It's mind-boggling how simple it is."

Xeriscaping

Its a common feeling of people from northeastern parts of the content, we miss green, and find the dust bowl that is California, a little sad. The San Diego, and well off Ensenada, solution is to plant grass, and irrigate. But this is not only wastefully, but not practical. California (Alta and Baja) have a rich variety of plants that need little water, and are very pleasing to the eye.

Xeriscaping is landscaping with low water consumption plants. There are many links on how and what plants to use. Of course, they are in English, and with English names. Transferring this to Spanish has been difficult, and the people in garden centers and landscaping know very little about this.

In this post I have a list of resources that I have found in the US/world. If you have translations for these plants, or know of a good garden center, please leave a comment, or mail me and I'll make a post in the future.

Drought resistant plant overview from about.com

Arizona Municipal water users association on plants for the Arizona Desert.

A great introduction to California plants from Las Pilitas Nursery; their printable guide to drought resistant planting, and a guide to designing your garden (very useful!)

Drought-Tolerant Gardening: The Cheaper Landscaping Alternative

A simple D.R. landscape plan

A well known plant is the Yucca. Here are articles on Yuccas and their care in the garden.

I would love to make an Ensenada plant guide. If you find this interesting, and have information, or a garden that you wold like to share, write me or leave a comment. I can come take pictures and add links.

Happy gardening

Paseo ciclista este domingo en Ensenada

UNIDOS POR ENSENADA invitan

PASEO FAMILIAR CICLISTA

LUGAR: frente a la VENTANA DEL MAR en ENSENADA B.C.
RECORRIDO: BLVD.COSTERO IDA Y VUELTA.

Asiste con bicicleta,patines,carreola o a pie. TE DIVERTIRAS.

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Pedal Powered Business

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On the list of projects that we have planned for Hogaza Hogaza is to start delivery in Ensenada by bike. I knew a bunch bike couriers back in Toronto, but it is nice to see that other businesses have been taking the idea of bike transportation more seriously.

Jed Lazar doesn't ride an average bike. Then again, he’s not riding it for average reasons. Although many of us don a helmet and mount our cycles in order to get to work, pick up groceries or just spend an afternoon outside, Lazar’s reason for cycling is all business. Co-founder of Soupcycle, Lazar rides his bike around the streets of Portland delivering handmade, organic soup. But because of a multitude of reasons, Lazar’s business isn't the only one that’s harnessing the power of pedaling.

What Ensenada is experiencing in the recent push for a bike lane by groups like Grupo Pro Ciclovía is a trend throughout North America;

“I think the recent explosion in biking is both a return on our communities’ investments in encouragement programs and infrastructure - bike lanes, paths, bike boulevards, etc. - and a sign of increasing concern about economics, health, and the environment. We are seeing a much greater diversity of people out biking and even bike commuting these days,” says Stephanie Noll, Bicycle Transportation Alliance Programs Manager. Noll also points out that the reason for choosing cycles over cars is multi-faceted. “The increasing cost of driving or concern about the environment alone are generally not enough for most of our communities’ members to imagine themselves on a bike.”

This trend can be in all types of business;

Another Portland based company, Q19, operates its sustainable cleaning service (they use 100% ecological and petrochemical-free cleaning agents) with the help of bikes for the same reason. “Q19 came about out of a local property management firm’s need for an accountable, high quality, consistent service provider… Utilizing Bakfiets, or Dutch work bikes, became a vital way to achieve all of our objectives- creating happy, healthy, empowered work environments, limiting our impact on the environment, and building a financial viable company,” says Hannah Sandmeyer, Q19’s Managing Director.

In an eco-conscious era, both Q19 and Soupcycle have seen a positive customer response; running operations with bikes proves the companies’ commitments to responsible business plans. “People are drawn to Q19 because we provide a high quality sustainable service in addition to representing change they can believe in,” says Sandmeyer

But it is important to note that all these businesses have come about thanks to infrastructure that exists in Portland. I hope that the Ensenada city hall can see the economic benefits to the city by bicycle based infrastructure.

story via Boing Boing and Wend Magazine;

Pedaling to Profit: The Upswing of Bike Powered Business

Learning HTML and CSS

I've been meaning for year to learn how to make my own web pages, but it has just not been that important yet. When I first made the Hogaza Hogaza web page I did it with iWeb. This was... ok.. but not very powerful, and when iWeb 2 came out, I could not modify the old web page. So I got my hands on Dreamweaver, but never really understood what was going on. I also started playing with flash, but did not get too far (I wanted to make presentations and cartoons).

Finally I have some time and I was shown a great trick on how to use photoshop to export to Dreamweaver. Hopefully I'll combine that with a sliding effect done through jQuery, but this is all done in the code, so I needed to at least learn the basics.

I found a great tutorial on HTML. I feel much more confident, and also finally understand what CSS is!

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Idea Lab and Makani

I remember when I was just entering grad school and I thought that the coolest job would be to work in a company that was think tank that used creativity, and science to approach current challenges. Like all great ideas, many people have similar ones, so when I saw the TED talk by Bill Gross I was excited to see what they were working on.

The talk focuses on a solar thermal power generator, using a sterling engine combined with a small heliostat array. They used evolutionary algorithms to help in the design (something that I've been interested in for while as well, but never tried).

His company, Idea Lab, is full of great work, and seem to have produced a lot of good technologies; well worth a few minuets to go through their projects.

Another great talk is given by Saul Griffith, who started one of my favorite sites Instructables. He talks about kites and their use as a renewable resource; there is an earlier talk on self replication, also well worth the watch. He has some interesting companies that are also worth a look; Makani Power, SQUID Labs;

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Confusing tyranny with losing

I try to stay out of US politics (at least formally) by there were a couple of good jokes in this one.. tyranny definition. Really, did these people not go to school? Sure, complain all you want, but please try not to change the meanings of words.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Periodismo ambiental en Mexico

This seems like a well done blog on enviormental concerns. Written in spanish; there are not many of these. I'll keep posting interesting stories here.

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CANIRAC national assembly in Ensenada

After a great year, increasing the amount of restaurants in the local chapter from 27 to 150, and extremely successful food fairs (Mushroom festival, Ensenada se viste de vino, and Feria de Pescado y Mariscos), the CANIRAC (restaurant association) National meeting is set to be held here later this year right after this year seafood festival.

La intención del evento, comentó, es vincular al sector restaurantero nacional con los productores pecuarios, acuícolas y vitivinícolas de la región, por lo que el domingo 19 de septiembre se llevará a cabo la Feria del Pescado y el Marisco, y la asamblea será el lunes 20 y martes 21.

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CANIRAC national assembly in Ensenada

After a great year, increasing the amount of restaurants in the local chapter from 27 to 150, and extremely successful food fairs (Mushroom festival, Ensenada se viste de vino, and Feria de Pescado y Mariscos), the National meeting is set to be held here later this year right after this year seafood festival.

La intención del evento, comentó, es vincular al sector restaurantero nacional con los productores pecuarios, acuícolas y vitivinícolas de la región, por lo que el domingo 19 de septiembre se llevará a cabo la Feria del Pescado y el Marisco, y la asamblea será el lunes 20 y martes 21.

from ensenadahoy.com

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Ensenada Cruisers

In Ensenada I've gotten to know the science community, the wine makers and drinkers, the restaurateurs, the bike riders, and the hippy surfers. But thanks to being at Le Petit every night I've gotten to know the sailors (not the type that first comes to mind!) People that live, or travel extensively on their ships. A very interesting subculture in this exciting city!

For anyone interested, they have a website with listings that seem quite useful; Ensenada Cruisers.

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Bike Week; Day one; build a bike

Building your own form of transportation seems very Mad Maxian, and I'm sure what little I've seen of the Baja Mil has effected my point of view, if not a little.

There are large groups interested in human powered vehicles such as the International Human Powered Vehicle Association. I wont go to into this, but a search on HPV in del.icio.us gives good results (also known as velomobile). Shown is the Go-One.

An open engineering design for a simple recumbent bike where the steering is controlled by shifting your center of gravity called the python has a good following of makers and builders (a great read is their Python Wiki.) There are other designs like the build your own recumbent trike designs. But I want to avoid excessive wheels, again it comes to portability, and a big trike is more to lock up ect... Here are some good videos of pythons in action; vid1, vid2. (right click and hit 'save linked file'.)

To make a bike truly care free it needs to be portable. This needs some bicycle origami like that used to make the Brompton Bike or the Dahon Bikes Flo folding mountain bike (the best of the folding bikes that I could find; the Brompton just doesn't look cool good, sorry.) I have a couple of ideas of what I'd like to try. Part of my problem is that the bike needs to be able to ride off-road, and do it comfortably.

Also I'd like to address the drive train. Ideally the gearing is very important. I would like some type of continuous gearing. Designs exist like the NuVinci, aimed at geriatrics. I've also been thinking about the need to use a chain drive, and if something different could be tried.

As well I would like to add in a type of regenerative braking and motor assistance. I've been thinking a great deal about compressed air propulsion, and paying attention to compressed air powered cars; MDI. The use of pistons does seem antiquated and the tesla turbine seems to be an interesting type of turbine for a DIY project; youtube is full of interesting videos presented by gyroscope.com (see video below.) Here is a great video with a tesla pump as well; the fun starts at about 6min in.

Untill I have a work space to make some prototypes I'll be in the planning stage, here is to hoping for a lab soon!

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Knight rider striptease

Gotta love sexy geek...

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