Coffee Artist Trainer

Is it true, as our moms always told us when we were little, that playing with food is bad? Or is it, maybe, part of the fun things that come with the freedom of adulthood?

Either way, people seem to be inclining to the latter. Lately, I’ve been seeing many pictures on the Internet about people making drawings inside cups of coffee. Whether it is making a simple shape or a complex portrait, they really seem to enjoy playing with their coffees.

I thought it was fun and started to think about getting into it, but it really left me wondering how many cups of coffee people had to waste before getting the perfect drawing. And since the kind of coffee you need as a canvas to make a really nice drawing needs to be particularly foamy and delicious-looking, it made me question if they are actually going to restaurants and ordering massive amounts of coffee to achieve perfection in their art. If this was the case, I would need to spend hundreds of dollars just in materials to become the ultimate coffee artist. There had to be a better way.

Sure, I could go and learn the ways of the coffee masters and after years, maybe even millenniums of trial and error, begin successfully making crafty, steamy and delicious cups of coffee. But for the most of us, savvy-but-not-that-masterful coffee fans, doing so can be quite a hassle. Fortunately, turns out there are easier ways.

This is when I found what I later begun calling my personal Coffee Artist Trainer. It’s a wonderful espresso machine, capable of producing the perfect canvas I needed to go full Picasso. And since the coffee comes out really tasty, I found myself drinking my pieces of art more often than I would like to admit.

So I set up the machine in my home kitchen and started practicing while instantly becoming the family favorite, as it was me who begun serving everyone their morning coffee. Eventually word got out about this to my office and they bought me an espresso machine too so I could continue on my path to become a true master coffee artist. Or maybe they just wanted me to make them their morning coffee too…?

Anyway, I wonder what would happen if everyone knew about this Coffee Artist Trainer. Would more people be encouraged to follow such a wonderful path? Would more moms be upset about their kids playing with food?

Piratería - Qué hacer?

Creo que la misma palabra "piratería" produce dolor de cabeza a la mayoría de creadores. Cineastas, escritores, músicos y desarrolladores de juegos se unen contra la piratería en una lucha constante que parece no tener cuándo terminar, lucha que pierden día a día con tristeza al ver sus valiosas creaciones colgadas en internet para que cualquiera venga y se la robe. Así de fácil.

La aparente respuesta lógica es luchar contra ella y es precisamente esto lo que nuestros queridos creadores intentan hacer, hasta que eventualmente se estrellan al darse cuenta que no pueden contra ella, que tiene tantas formas y es tan masiva que taparla por un lado sólo logra que se escape por otro. Algunos se frustran tanto que dejan de hacer lo que aman, dejan de crear por miedo a que los pirateen. Otros inventan nuevas formas de bloquear la piratería, restringen el acceso a sus creaciones... y nada parece funcionar. Piratería de mierda! No? No tanto. Propongo una alternativa.

La gente roba cuando no les importa la persona o marca a la que están robando. Nadie sensato le robaría a su familia o amigos, o a quienes pertenecen a ese muchas veces reducido círculo de gente que realmente les importa. Lo mismo pasa con la piratería. Pongo un ejemplo: tu mejor amigo saca su primer libro, está feliz! Qué haces, lo compras para ayudarlo o lo pirateas? De la misma manera, piratearías a tu creador favorito, si es que pone un precio justo para acceder a su creación y demuestra que realmente se preocupa por darte algo verdaderamente bueno?

Kevin Roberts habla sobre las Lovemarks, marcas que amas y sigues. Marcas a las que nunca traicionarías y menos robarías. Mi alternativa va por ese lado. Vemos todos los días que luchar contra la piratería es inútil. Entonces, por qué no intentar convertirnos en Lovemarks también? Creadores, demuéstrenle a sus seguidores que realmente los quieren y ellos los querrán de vuelta. Cómo lograrlo? Acérquense, relaciónense con ellos, escúchenlos, háganse sus amigos y pongan precios accesibles. No les robarán.

Wiki Dots

I call them the Wiki Dots. I think they would improve the way we interact with information, enriching the content available for everyone.

Context: We often get cool ideas when we read, but -as we lack the means- we sometimes just write them down on book pages that later get lost. Thoughts always lead to more thoughts, and that leads to more content. Wouldn't it be great to let the world (the Internet) read what a line of text made you think on a link placed next to it?

Idea: It would work like this: when you come up with an idea while reading on a digital device (hopefully everything will be a digital device in the future), you write it down next to the original text and it gets added as a dot next to the text that inspired you. This dot would be updated in the original version of the article/book that's available to everyone, so that everyone gets the chance to see your thought the first time they read the book. It would be great if people would be able to post not only thoughts but links to sites and photos next to what they read.

Benefits: Every single page of many articles/books would end up having tons of dots surrounding the original text, making them much richer and letting people share their ideas for others to see and build more content upon them. If this gets massified, we would be interacting with much richer material, creating some sort of wiki of every single text available everywhere.

Intelligence and information: a true relationship. (Ravenclaw entry #5)

The other day, I was discussing the relation between information and intelligence with one of my closest friends. I will present his thoughts on the topic as impartially as I can. Then, I'll add mine and try to draw a conclusion in the attempt to settle the matter, at least for the time being.

My friend stated that the intelligence is the ability someone has to solve a determined problem. Then, he added that when you get more information, your chances of solving any given problem get higher. Therefore, the more information you have, the more intelligent you are. I'll take the liberty to summarize his thoughts on a simple equation:

Information + 1 = Intelligence + 1

Information +1 -1 = Intelligence

Information is Intelligence.

As the equation above shows, if you think having more information makes you smarter, then you think information is intelligence. While I agree that having more information definitively helps you find a solution to an issue, I know for a fact that having more information doesn't make you cleverer.

Here is where my friend and I part ways, for I know that information and intelligence, even though always used together, are very different concepts: The information is raw, unprocessed data; the intelligence is the ability to use this data in many ways and for various purposes. This is very similar to what my friend said, but it does not mean the same thing. The resolution of problems, what you do with intelligence, is not intelligence, but a mere consequence of it. The intelligence is the means, the problem solving is the end.

Or at least that's what I think. What do you, reader, think?

EDIT: After talking a while (a couple hours?) with my friend Chris Wright, we finally agreed on a single definition of intelligence: "The intelligence is the ability to transform data into knowledge, to use it and retain it as knowledge. The faster you transform the data, the longer you retain it as knowledge and the better you use it for something, the smarter you are."

Cheers on our first agreement, Chris!

Cruzados.pe

Habiendo trabajado bien el para el primer curso, Kenneth Fukusaki, Jose Luis Martínez y yo volvímos a juntarnos para Nuevos Medios y Tecnologías 2, más conocido como Flash 2. Para el final de este segundo curso, presentamos la web Cruzados.pe

Cruzados.pe es, ante todo, un buscador gratuito de perros online por categorías como raza, edad y distrito. Es una página web que surge a modo de respuesta ante la dificultad de encontrar con quién cruzar a un perro, brindando a sus usuarios una herramienta práctica y sencilla para lograrlo. Mediante una amigable interfaz, lleva a sus usuarios a recorrer la base de datos canina y a interactuar entre sí, conociendo diferentes alternativas para cruzar a sus mascotas.

Aventura Culinaria (flash)

Este es el trabajo que, junto con Jose Luis Martínez y Kenneth Fukusaki, creamos como proyecto final para el curso de Nuevos Medios y Tecnologías 1 en la UPC. El propósito de esta aplicación en Adobe Flash es el de servir de guía interactiva para encontrar los mejores lugares para comer según lo recomienda Gastón Acurio en su programa Aventura Culinaria. Decidimos crearlo cuando nos dimos cuenta de que la mayoría de los que ven su programa no recuerdan los lugares (y sus direcciones) que recomienda, ya que menciona muchísimos. Pensábamos venderle la idea, pero, por demorones, nos ganó y sacó su guía con el BBVA.

Para los vagos en necesidad!

A todos mis queridos flojonetes en necesidad, ¿ya saben por cuánto se van a finales?

Averígüenlo!

SUERTE EN FINALES!!