Omar's Blog

My buddy Iulius sent us this video, and I want to share it with you. It’s just awesome!

It seems that no matter how much I try to keep my blog updated, something comes up that takes my time away. When I started podcasting I stopped blogging, but I decided that since podcasting is a form of blogging (lies I tell myself) then it was OK to have my blogging frequency reduced. When I started playing online games I justified my lack of blogging with the benefits of gaming to my psychi and release of stress.

This year I resolved to write a short blog post daily on any of my blogs. But alas, I bought a new game called Skyrim, that has really captured my imagination, and my free time. The game has beautiful graphics, a detailed environment and what seems like endless quests to go on. I’m hooked.

After playing it for a while, you start to discover the game’s little nuances. The best example of this is that all the game’s guards (no matter how advanced or what part of the game’s geography you are in) have limited lines of dialog they say to you. Perhaps the funniest of these lines of dialogue is: “I was an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.” After playing Skyrim for a a while you start to realize that there is a world-wide epidemic of arrows to the knee.

Due to the game’s popularity, this little phrase has turned into an internet meme in which you say you would have accomplished something, or affirm something, then you follow it up with the now fatalistic, “then I took an arrow to the knee”.

At a meta level, I guess it rather fitting that I affirm that I was going to be a Blogger this year, then I took an arrow to the knee.

The last few years I’ve been working a lot on making our company an accesible and safe place to work for people from all walks of life. Ever since we embarked on this endeavour, with help from my friend David Reyes, I’ve noticed that El Salvador has a lot of work to do to include people with disabilities into society. We’re way behind, and there is a lot of work to be done. I hope my work at Caricia will help somehow to inspire other companies to do the same, and make David’s work come to fruition. Maybe someday in El Salvador we will see something as beautiful as this video:

I’m very sad today. It seems our country values only the bad guys’ rights. People who don’t pay taxes, people who work outside the law, people who make a lot of noise, make a lot of threats, people who basically hold the country hostage with terror.

I can’t get to work today. I’m stuck at home. Why? Well, bus owners all over El Salvador decided they had to protest a veto to a law that would benefit them. So they took the country hostage by not letting anyone leave their homes. Clogging up the main streets and throughways of El Salvador. People can’t get to work anywhere. I just read on the local newpapers’ websites that a bus driver, on his way to the “protest” driving recklessly, ran over and killed a woman.

These bus owners, who pay little or no taxes, who recieve government subsidies, who don’t really contribute anything to the country except for corruption, pollution, and death (the number of people who die on busses, get robbed on bussed, who get run over on busses each year is staggering), somehow manage to get fantastic special treatment from the government.

However, company owners, entrepenuers, and corporations, who pay taxes, create jobs, create safe working conditions, pay social security… we get our taxes raised. We don’t really get anything in exchange for this raise in taxes. We don’t get safer streets. We don’t get special protection from potesters to get to our work in time. Quite the opposite, we get attacked in the media for not paying enough taxes. We get attacked every chance the government gets to speak in public for not doing enough for the country.

Meanwhile, our government officials get caught drunk while working, and get “pardoned” because of some bullshit about being medicated. They give themselves raises, and they get exempted from taxes.

Maybe what El Salvador needs is that all corporations, all business owners, everyone who pays taxes; get together and protest the government by simply not paying taxes for a month. No IVA, no Income Tax, no nothing! And we maintain this cease of payment until we get a serious commitment from the govrenment. Until we get a plan of how they are going to fix things and somehow guarantee justice for all.

I’m not saying we should do this. Because even when the laws are dumb, they are still the law, and we must obey the law. But if protesters can get away with murder, why shouldn’t we?

I’m hoping to write a little more this year. but I feel guilty writing here rather than writing for my other blogs.. so I’ll try to keep them short and sweet. My plan is to write an article every day… if not on each of the blogs, at least on once post a day on any of them.

Happy New Years!

BTW.. does anybody know how to install Ubuntu properly on a MacBook Pro?

Well… what can I say… I don’t really feel any more artistic now that I’ve been using a MacBook for over a month.

But seriously, I love that it’s a no hassle machine (so far). I like that it boots up and shuts down quickly. I like the very solid construction and quality feel of the hardware. I am really enjoying figuring out all the little design conventions that Mac users have known for so long. Not everything is perfect though…

I really hate that for some reason end END and HOME keys work completely different than the rest of the computerized world. I hate that the friggin CTRL key and the COMMAND key are screwed up. I hate that everywhere else CTRL-F is fullscreen, but in Mac Land it’s CTRL-SHIFT-F… it feels like they went out of their way to complicate things, for what?

I’m still getting used to it… and learning new things about the Mac Os… but it’s been a fun ride… now I just have to figure out a way to make Ubuntu run natively on the machine, and I’ll be very happy!

There are a bunch of things that I love about Ubuntu and Open Source software. In general I find Ubuntu to be headed in the right direction: they’re trying new designs in user interfaces, they’re pushing development to make life easier for the consumer (and make some money while they’re at it) the Ubuntu music store, the Ubuntu One cloud storage offering, etc. But there’s still one thing that needs to be addressed, style.

What I’m about to say may be interpreted as heresy to most open source advocates, but bear with me and see if what I’m thinking about makes any sense.

What’s made Apple such a successful company lately? Why does it seem they can get away with murder when pricing their newest products? What is the secret sauce they’re using?

style.

Apple has defined for itself a very concise definition of what the Apple style is all about. It blurs the distinction of software and hardware… it’s actually both. How can it be both, when traditionally Hardware and Software companies are very different beasts?

Well, that’s the secret sauce! Apple has been able to design their products as just that: a concrete and unified product that conforms to a well defined standard of quality in both hardware and software. To many it may seem as “picky”, but the fact that Apple hardware and build quality is exceptional reflects the execution of that well defined style.

The software, which also conforms to the same high standards (mostly) as the hardware… in most cases, the idea of the product encompasses both hardware and software – at the end of the day the product is that magic mix of hardware and software that catches our fancy and makes life easier or more wondrous for us.

Build quality, usability, simplicity, speed. Products that are designed to fit well (software and hardware). Not skimping on materials. Cases that don’t creak or feel plasticky.. even at the expense of feeling a little heavy at times.. all of this makes the Apple world very enticing.

Expensive products that people WANT to buy. People stand in line to buy. People DEFEND, once they have bought it.. people recommend it to their friends. How come we don’t have that in the Open Source community?

Software-wise.. I think we’re very close to being there, and the latest versions of Ubuntu give me hope that we’ll be there very soon. But we need better hardware and much better integration between the OS and the Hardware base it runs on.

Just as Ubuntu has made giant leaps in hiding much of the complexity of the OS from the regular user, when will we get a Machine that feels wonderful (not plasticky) that looks incredible, and that integrates really well with Ubuntu and that comes pre-built with the best Ubuntu Hardware for gaming graphics, network, Bluetooth, Wifi, etc. All built in, and ready to run right out of the box?

Maybe it’s coming. I really hope so. Because for the time being I’m so tempted to keep using Mac Hardware to run Ubuntu. It just feels better to use.

A new chapter in the battle of the social networks has started. Google Plus is a worthy opponent to Facebook. Out of the gate, it has captured the imagination of tech nerds everywhere, with innovative offerings, like hangouts and circles (which is a fun way to organize your friends).

Google Plus is like a cross between Twitter and Facebook, bringing new perspective to both paradigms. It has a stream which allows you to “subscribe” to other people, whether they acknowledge you or not, very similar to Twitter, but also lets you publish things to people of certain circles… which is like a superset of Facebook’s model.

Every day I’m thinking Facebook has a lot to worry about. At first I thought it would take longer for G+ to overtake Facebook… but now I think it will be sooner than later. All it will take, I think, is a killer mobile app. And if you really want to kill Facebook quicker, make the app work on iPhones, Android and BB.

I’m on a TV ad that’s playing. It’s really fun cause a lot of my friends keep asking me, “Hey, is that you on the TV ad?”. I’m also on billboards. The funny thing is that I’m not promoting any of my projects with the ad. The ad is for the Industrial Association of El Salvador. And it promotes entrepreneurship.