Stockholm, Sweden - It feels like home to me

I just came back from Sweden. I visited Lund, Malmo, Helsinborg and of course, Stockholm. I must say I loved this country. It´s tolerant, prosperous, green and full of easy-going people.

My family and all time friends are still living in Caracas, but Caracas just does not feel like home anymore. It is really sad, it really is, but it´s also the awful true of having been born in a country where you actually feel like half of the people are your enemy -- consequences of Chavez rhetoric -- and I do not want to be dramatic, but I think that we, the good guys, already lost that war too many years ago. Revolution of the Apes  and the Apes won as simply as that. I know it sounds like I'm not being tolerant, but the problem with apes is that they are very aggressive, you cannot talk to them, they like 'jungle cities' and they all blindly follow a smart Ape who hates "good guys". Well, enough talking about Venezuela...

I've been living in Madrid for almost three years and I certainly like it here. I really do, so why thinking about moving to Sweden? The first thing to say is that I still have  pending things in Madrid that will take about two or three years to have them ready.  So not seriously thinking about moving to Sweden until I'm 30 (currently 27) that said, Madrid is great, Spain is great, economic projections of Spain not so great.

I have a terrific  life here, good friends, good job, nice weather, excellent food but -- there is always a but --  in some point of my life I am going to  need  to start making some real money. Of course you can do money anywhere, but the thing is, how big is the reward for the same effort.  I seriously do not like living to work, I'm really not that kind of person. Being and engineer -- and I am a good one -- should allow me to earn enough money to have quality of life and at the same time save enough money to buy a house to say something-- I think we all agree that I have a better chance to make money in countries like Germany, England or as I believe Sweden.

I've been in Berlin and London, word class cities, but they did not feel like home,  for some reason Stockholm did. I liked very much the food, being surrounded by water, perfect size, not so big without being small. It has subway of course,  the people are highly educated, and I have to say it great looking girls. Even the average girl is pretty, so yes, a girl just a little over the average looks like a Victoria Secret´s model and there are many of them. If I am single at 30s it would also be a great place to find the love of a blonde. Right now, lets just say I am focused on my MBA goals and financial audits if you know what I mean.

Another thing to add that makes Stockholm even greater you can do summer or winter sports in or very near the city. That´s a big plus to me.

You never know where life is going to take you, but I would not bother at all if it takes me to Sweden, it feels like home to me...

Josef Ajram - Where is the limit?

I know, I know. It is a little wear writing a post about a guy. I'm willing to accept the jokes whatsoever.

Josef Ajram, you have to read about this guy. In fact, you have to read his book Where is the limit? Whether you are an athlete, a trader  or a cook, you will find this personage fascinating.

I am not going to talk about his life, achievements, etc. That you can read in his page.  Josef is an example of how to enjoy life, about doing the things you love and being the best at it. Work, sacrifices and more work. Do it right and  you will enjoy the process as you will enjoy the reward.

I've been captivated by the stocks markets since I worked for the Colombia Stock Exchange in 2008. I was part of the development team of the website. Despite not working directly with transactions, I did get involved with stocks basic knowledge. Three years later I found myself  even more attracted to the financial economics.

It is hard to tell, but I think this guy, Josef, gave me the final push I needed to start studying again. I  am a software engineer, but I signed up for an MBA specialized in finance starting Sept of this year (2011) at the  Instituto de Estudios Bursátiles. It translates as something like Stock Market Studies Institute.  Even when I chose the MBA and not a specific degree in stocks, I wanted to be close to that world.

I'm still working for an IT Consultancy, but now I am also one step  closer to something I feel passionated about. Passion I've lost for the IT field. That's the main reason behind the MBA, I need a change, I need a new goal to feel I am moving forward.

The bad part,  the MBA costs a lot of money -- a least it is a lot to me --. To start investing, trading or whatever I need money. If you are curious I will need about 10.000 €. It is not betting, this amount is for operational purposes not to risk the whole thing.

My goal? Start trading sometime next year. Make a living out of trading? I don't think so, not in the near future. Just to have  something that is completely mine. Even if you own a company, you still need a team, clients, etc. You are not alone on it. What I find completely attracting in the trading world  is that it is only you "against" the world. Like running a marathon, achieving the goal lies on you and you only.

Skydiving Madrid

I am not afraid of heights so jumping from a plane was a really easy decision. I never did it before because until now I've never found the appropriate companion for it. Doing it alone should not be half as fun as jumping with good friends.

The experience itself, exciting of course, but I think I expected kind of more adrenaline running through my veins. The reason? Leaving aside the fact that you are falling from 4000 meters height, you still have a parachute  -- actually two -- and the whole situation is always under the control of a professional with proven experience. To say better, I had more chance to die in a car accident coming back home.

So I said it, excitement to me is much related to control and risk. Do not think about risk, like risking dying only. You can risk money, time, reputation, etc. Control or the lack of it is about facing unexpected situations  -- not necessarily dangerous ones --  Tandem skydiving you go up, you go down that's it. Speed sensation wasn't that great. I missed that really magical feeling that freefall is supposed to produce. Still this is the closest I'm gonna get to feel like flying so I'm glad I did it. I believe that jumping alone with a wingsuit should be the kind of  excitement I would appreciate, but of course that will happen when you can buy miscellaneous skills like buying pills. We all want to be skydivers, surfers, moto-riders, etc. But this kind of stuff requires commitment and sacrifices that aren't part of my genetic code.

I'll be happy with being able to try different things at least once. Rafting, climbing, motocross are on my wish list.

Would I do it again?  For free of course, for a really good friend maybe, for a really nice girl no doubt!. But come on, 300€/ 1 minute ride. Once is enough.

Guy Kawasaki "The Art of the Start" @ TiECon 2006

Flash, Web Services and Cross-domain restrictions

I am working on a game community portal called Jippii. This is the link to the Spanish version http://www.jippii.es/. There you can play flash skill games and earn actual prizes, like phones or movie tickets. Although, I haven't finished the development yet.  Just a  few more weeks  and you will be able to give it a try.

Today I wasted several hours in forum pages looking for the answer to a problem I had. Every day I am getting more and more used to immediately google my programming problems. On this occasion, I was having troubles with the communication of the flash game with the web services that handles the trials and the score records.
In a nutshell, the flash game is hosted on a different server than the web services, so of course, I needed a crossdomain file.  The problem was to make a correct one.  Let's back to the wasting hours part, I started to google and found many people having the same problem. This made me think that I would find the solution to mine soon enough by just reading the forums. I was wrong. None of the entries I found solved my problem. And then, suddenly I remembered RTFM (thanks to my friends JG and DO for teaching me that) and the enlightenment came to me.

In the Cross-domain policy file specification page 15, example 1.9:

<cross-domain-policy>
<allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="SOAPAction"/>
</cross-domain-policy>

Problem solved.  From now on, I will try googling a little bit less and RTFM instead.

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

EMT Madrid on my Blackberry Bold

My friend Pablo and I we both live in Madrid, we are both computer science engineers, which implies that neither of us earns enough money to buy a car and pay for gas, which is actually pretty expensive around here. Luckily for us, Madrid has an excellent transport system, in my opinion the best i know of from the cities i have visited. Barcelona,Berlin,London,Milan to name a few. I think this is due to the fact that Madrid has it all. There are excellent  train, subway (the Madrid Metro is the densest metro network in the world) and bus systems, they all so perfectly integrated. Even the Barajas Airport is not far away from the city center.

 All metro and train stations have signs indicating how much time is left till the next wagon arrives. But almost none of the bus stops has this kind of signs. If you think this is unnecessary, think again. Imagine that the next bus isn't coming for the next twenty minutes, you will probably then would like to consider taking the metro or simply walking home.

  If you google a bit you will easily find mobile applications for IPhone and Android which given a bus line and a bus stop number will tell you the corresponding waiting time. For blackberry you will find none. My friend Pablo who apparently has more free time than he is willing to accept decided several months ago he would build his own blackberry application for that purpose. Of course, he forgot that famous phrase about not reinventing the wheel. You will see why.

  Pablo's  initial approach, was to use this public service Waiting Times Bus Madrid , emulate a standard browser request, parse the response ( a whole html page with a lot of useless information) and extract the one line that he needed for his blackberry app. This worked well for a time, until the EMT redesigned its website and changed the http form params.

  Pablo asked for my help knowing i would be interested in getting the application working again. After taking a glance at the web page's source code,  i knew immediately it was going to be very tedious job in case of continuing with Pablo's initial approach. What i did was to download one of the free available Android applications and analyze how it was getting the bus waiting time information.

Step by Step:

1.  Android apps are  distributed as  .apk files. An .apk file can be opened and inspected using common archive tools such as unzip or unrar.
2. I found a classes.dex archive which as far as i know contains all the .class files.
3. I used a dedexer tool.  Dedexer is able to read the DEX format and turn into an "assembly-like format".
4. In one of the resulting files i found the following: 
   >> new-instance v4,org/apache/http/client/methods/HttpPost
   >> const-string    v10,"http://195.76.144.242/services/tespera2.asp"
   >>...
>>new-instance v10,org/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair const-string >>v11,"linea" >>....
5. As you can see I could get a "private" url, the method of the request and the params.

I said "private" url because it is a public service after all and I suppose that if I get in touch with the IT department of the EMT I could possibly get to talk to someone who would give me the url and the necessary info.  Or maybe I'll just get lost in bureaucracy or "i have no idea" people.

After getting the URL and the params, the update to Pablo's blackberry app was pretty straightforward. He made it himself. He did not have to parse the response anymore because the new service we are using is designed specially for mobile applications. For that same reason I suppose it wont be changing anytime soon.

If you are interested in building your own blackberry app this is a good start BlackBerry Developer Zone. I already read the guide and found it simple and easy to follow.