Robert Marcano's blog

Skydiving - Parachuting

robert — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:13:27 -0500

Yea, finally did it. Impossible to describe, everyone must try this at least one time

Cambio a Plan ABA 256 forzado

robert — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:00:11 -0400

Estoy teniendo problemas con CANTV debido a que han decidido cambiarme al plan 256, bajándome del que estoy pagando que es el de 1024 (Zona: Carrizal). En el Call Center solo se dedican a leerme un comunicado que solo lo leen, nunca lo env�an oficialmente que dice que están cambiando los planes para "brindar un mejor servicio". He consultado con muchas personas y no tienen este problema, por lo que estoy creyendo que alguna lotería interna han hecho para reducir el número de subscriptores con planes de alta velocidad. Por favor si pueden regar esta información para medio averiguar que tan grande sea el porcentaje de cambios forzosos, y ver que se puede hacer contra esta discriminación aparentemente aleatoria

Nota: Es increíble que cuando uno pide un supervisor ahora cortan la llamada, cuando anteriormente era regla de nunca hacerlo aunque el cliente se quedara una hora completa pidiendo una explicación, y lo se por experiencia

Nokia - do you know what is Exif?

robert — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:36:30 -0400

Maybe I will have the luck that someday some Nokia developer visit this remote page, so I will ask them a little favor, please take your time to learn what is Exif. A long time ago I decided to not use more Nokia phones, but still sometimes when I meet with friends they take photos with their phones and sent them to me, I classify all of them by folders and dates so I have a chronological structure on disk. Yesterday I imported all my photos to my Playstation 3 to be able to show them more easily to family and friends and what i found, no Nokia phone I have received photos store complete Exif information, specially the date and time the photo was taken, and the PS3 uses a lot that info. The workaround was to add the metadata using exiv2 to all those photos

�Qu�???? �derechos de autor? �con que se come eso?

robert — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:45:30 -0400

Esto es lo que corre por mi mente que deben estar pensando algunos "profesionales" trabajando para el actual gobierno venezolano (o ser� desgobierno). �Por qu� lo digo? solo revisen la rese�a de mi amigo Igvir de como una foto de su autor�a es usada en una publicidad impresa sin su autorizaci�n, y mucho menos de la persona en la foto.

�Ser� posible ejercer alguna acci�n legal? donde los m�s seguro es que se gaste m�s dinero tratando de defender tus derechos que obteniendo resultados satisfactorios.

�Ser� que est�n escasos los cerebros que entiendan lo que es respetar los derechos de autor? o ser� que en Venezuela estamos tan acostumbrados a ver vendedores informales vendiendo cuanta copia ilegal posible, y ver hasta a la polic�a comprando, o escuchar a personas que todos los d�as dicen haber visto una pel�cula nueva porque se la bajaron de internet, que hasta algunos publicistas o dise�adores creen poder hacer lo mismo impunemente

December 2006

robert — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:43:55 -0500

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!! I have been a lot disconnected from this blog, so this is a condensed list of events in the last month

Family that hacks together, remains together :-), you can see to my father, two uncles and me hacking as a family

My latest acquisition, a Sony Ericsson M600i, a Symbian and UIQ based phone. I already have the SDK installed and I have written a few test apps, but I am still learning, reading docs and sample code. The first thing I want on this phone is an Ogg Vorbis plugin, there is one example but in order to learn I need to write it from scratch (except the tremor decoder library)

I added Psiloc Japanese localization to it, it allows me to read Japanese text on the web, mail, sms, mms, im and any other application, It supports writing too:

and finally, I played as a child too, building this little model of an Apache AH-64D

on YouTube

robert — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 13:27:13 -0500

Anyone can publish a photo or video, even without permission from the photographer or the people involved :-(.

A point for Lenovo

robert — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:05:15 -0400

The last thusrday I was ready to burn the CD images of the recently released Fedora Core 6 (Zod) but my laptop CD/DVD burner was dead. That was an opportunity to test the Lenovo support in order to know if is better or worse than the one that IBM provided. I called the support number in my country and notified them about the problem (my laptop is from the IBM era so it is not Lenovo branded), they checked that the warranty was not expired, and I only needed to give the drive FRU and the support person told me to wait for 5 days for the replacement delivery. I was amazed with that, but it was better, I received the replacement the next day, in less than 24 hours.

Lenovo wins a point for my next laptop purchase decission.

A friend's paper and LaTeX

robert — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:26:54 -0400

I have been helping a friend that need to write a paper with complex mathematical equations, so I am remembering a lot of what I learned of LaTeX. I did not needed to convince him to dump traditional word processors because he was experiencing a lot of crashes and performance problems with MS Word. To recommend him to use OpenOffice is not the solution either because, like MS Word, it is not designed for this kind of job. I only needed to show him a few samples made with LaTeX: Physics and Mathematics Formularies.

Those formularies make me remember that I learned a lot of that stuff; I specially breathed the Electricity & Magnetism chapter, but my fixation on computer sciences forced me to store all that important knowledge deep in my brain, not forgotten, just stored on very slow RAM. I am beginning to think that I must pursue a degree in physics, that was always what I wanted to study, but one day a honest and short conversation with my physics teacher on high school convinced me to take other option. Things in the office are begining to slow down, not because there is less work, but because I needed to do something not easy for me, manage the bigger picture and let the details to others, so I hope to be in the situation where I can really dedicate time to the physics degree, well a few years ago I never thought to be able to have time to study the Japanese language, but now I am studying it, so time will tell.

Mirror Japanese blog

robert — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 15:22:06 -0500

I am opening a new blog written on japanese, the idea is to mirror this one in order to practice a little more what I have learned. I still need to make the current LifeType template locale independent, until that happens visitors will see some words written on english.

Japanese course final test (Level B)

robert — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 11:30:00 -0500

I am ready to be knock down on this test on a few hours, I have not had enough spare time to study, so I am not sure if I will be able to pass it. Maybe if I pass it with the lowest score needed, I will decide to repeat the entire level because I do not feel ready for the advanced Level C.