Fran Llorente leaves the informative services of tve

For many years, the informative services of the public television in Spain were a model of independence. This was thanks to many professionals, led by Fran Llorente, who made a truly independent television, regardless of who was ruling the government in Spain. This has been acknowledged by multiple awards, and is widely recognized by people in Spain.

Now Julio Somoano, someone whose political independence is doubtful at best, has been put in the position previously held by Fran Llorent. And it seems safe to infer that independence ended in the public Spanish television.

Shame on the Partido Popular for finishing a period which should have continued: it required the consensus of 2/3 of the parliament to decide who would run the public television. Now we go back to the old times, when the public Spanish tv was in fact the tv supporting the party which was in the power at the time.

What a shame.

Is it possible the end of euro?

The very hypothesis of imagining the end of euro as the common currency in most of Europe was nonsense, only months ago. But lately, I am finding more and more articles from serious analysts who consider it could actually happen, if things continue the way they go.

I really don't know what to think anymore, since the only clear idea in my mind is that economists are only good to predict the past. And that the current leaders of the European Union are nowhere near their ancestors, and comparing Merkel to Kohl, or Rajoy to González, is pure intelectual masochism.

What I do know, from painful facts in my country, is that the recessions is happily advancing, salaries are going down, and there is no time for many more catastrophic actions from governments. It's time for united action by the two main countries, and it's time to evidence to Merkel and Brussels that you can't let the fourth economy in Europe die without deleterious consequences for everybody.

But this, which is obvious for someone without economy knowledge like me, seems to be far from obvious for the guys who take the big decisions, and I mean in Spain and out of Spain.

Nokie 808 PureView: Can a phone be used as a serious camera?

I tried to investigate a little bit with my own phone some months ago. But here you have an in depth review of the new Nokia 808 PureView phone with a 41 megapixels camera (yes: you've read it right, 41 megapixels camera in a phone), posted by The Verge.

One thing is clear: the rate things are going, the concept of "compact camera" is going to disappear in a matter of months. There will have cameras used casually from phones, and then dedicated cameras under the form of mirrorless models, or fully fledged reflex models.

By the way, the reviewers are, ahem, less than impressed by the quality of the operating system used by this phone, which is Symbian...

A dream show of Manolo García in Córdoba

Last friday, we had the pleasure of attending Manolo García's show at Teatro de la Axerquía, as I said recently.

It was all one could expect: the venue is just perfect for such a kind of open air show, and the picture above illustrate the magnificent view we had, with the stage and the Mezquita down in the distance. The wheather was warm, the atmosphere during the show very lively, and the performance stunning: Manolo has always been a master onstage. He gets into the heart of people very quickly, and his lively character convinces you quickly to participate and enjoy the show.

The sound was amazingly good (and more, taking into account the awful acoustics of his last show in Córdoba, in the "Pabellón Vistalegre", which is intended for sports), to the point I missed an audio recording devoce. His voice remains in full shape, and he's got a catalogue of songs to die for, derived from his very long career in music (back from his days in Los Rápidos/Los Burros, later at his peak in El Último de la Fila, and finally as an independent singer). So the public was raving about the music, and the venue was completely full, in another demonstration of the strong following Manolo has in Córdoba.

I had tears in my eyes more than once, since many of his songs are deeply moving and remind me of some unforgettable personal moments. And we all were singing aloud during most of the show, which became a crowd celebration, admittedly of thirty-to-fiftysomethings, since the majority of Manolo García fans knew him in the mid 80s.

The icing on the cake was to discover that, given the warm welcome of public from Córdoba to Manolo García, the show was selected as one of the three in the current tour to be recorded for a future release on DVD, possibly. So maybe we will have access to the show in the future, to remind one more a memorable night.

Surface: An underwhelming presentation of half baked hardware

After watching the Surface introduction event, I couldn't avoid a feeling of an underwhelming presentation. There were many bits suggesting this was planned to be a Big Product Announcement, but  it turned out to be a classical Microsoft introduction: a supposedly fantastic product, which is introduced well before its actual availability, and what's worse: it is introduced in such a beta stage that even well prepared professionasl are incapable of hiding some flaws.

The key, and in fact only, innovative feature in Surface is the cover keyboard. And it was not shown to work, in some detail, during the whole introduction, if I recall correct. It was used a couple of times in ways suggesting that something was not fully functional.

Besides, there is a dual approach: the fully mobile device (which I presume will be the actual competitor of the iPad) running on ARM processors, and a professional device running fully fledged Windows 8 and is supposed to be a desktop class computer. As many otheres before, I think this approach is flawed, because it is impossible to combine in a single device the two holy grails: full computing power and full mobility. You go one way or the other, but in the current state of technology, pretending to be both things at the same time is only a route to confuse people.

All in all, I think this is a valuable effort of Microsoft to become, once and for all, a real player in mobility. But I smell they are going to fail, just like they failed to actually compete with the iPod despite their best attempts.

Going to the Manolo García show, today

Sometime ago, I mentioned in this blog one of my favourite Spanish musicians: Manolo García.

Today he is going to play here in my town, Córdoba, and I was unhappy as the tickets were sold out before I expected, so apparently it would be impossible for me and my wife to go to his show. Fortunately, a weird turning of events led to the availability of two tickets for the show. So we are going to watch the show tonight, at the Teatro de la Axerquía, which is the best place in Córdoba for live shows.

Manolo García has an excellent reputation as live performer. I've seen him like five or six times in the last 25 years or so, if we add his period in El Último de la Fila and later, as independent player. He's a fantastic singer, he's enthusiastic with the crowd, and he's got the capability to make you feel you're living a special event. So I'm all hyped for tonight show and I expect we're going to have a terrific show.

The end of House

Three years ago or so, after listening many people speaking about the House tv series, I decided to have a look and watch an episode. I found it interesting and fun, so I got the whole series, and then started watching it weekly on tv.

After some time, I was fearing it wold become the usual boring repetition of stories, but they managed to change the turnings in the story, to add some meat via personal relationships, or to the visit of House to the psychiatric hospital. And on, and on: the writers were capable to maintain the story entertaining, and catchy, and overall attracting for its public.

Last week we watched the final episode, and we were not disappointed.

House is nowhere near my two favourite series ever, which are The Soprano and The Wire, which are really hard to beat. But in the territory of fiction to spend a nice evening, and have some fun, and follow interesting trames that made you think more than once, House was a really excellent example. I will miss it in the future and will keep a nice momory of the bad tempered but always intelligent Dr. Gregory House.

Short tv documentary on Córdoba in May

This is nothing important: just a short tv documentary broadcasted by Spanish tv channel 24 h, and dealing with Córdoba and its many charms in May.

I've been living in this town since 1984, I made my family here and overall I very much feel at home. I'm aware of the beautiful and also the ugly sides of Córdoba, yet I am very happy to live in a place where you can buy fruits at two minutes from home, where the owner knows your name. And where kids can go to a small place near home to play with other kids. And where I can hang around on weekends with friends I made thirty years ago.

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Cordoba

By Catet0

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New Seat Toledo 2012

The Spanish brand Seat has a quite complicated story: from its beginnings tightly linked to Fiat, to a short period of independence, and then the acquisition by the Volkswagen group.

Design wise, their story is similarly unclear: Seat cars were direct copies of Fait models for years. Then they did a strong smash with the first Ibiza design, which was a beauty drawn by Giuggiaro:

But lately, under the Volkwsagen moniker, their design seems to be a badly recooked flavour of Volkswagen cars, which initially were supposed to be Alfa Romeo-like reconstructions of the basic Volkwagens (say, Polo and Golf at different sizes). Yet later efforts seem to be plainly lost, going nowhere and with an alarming lack of personality. And sadly, this seems to be the case of the new Seat Toledo 2012, which can only be qualified as boring:

Microsoft Surface tablet

In principle it looks cool and with interesting ideas; yet it remains to be seen if it will be accepted by the market:

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Microsoft Surface Tablets Unveiled (10.6", 9.3mm, 1080p HD, Windows 8 Pro & RT Models & Much More!)

By playinfinite

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Full frame Pentax using Sony CMOS in the making?

That is what this rumour suggests, although of course we better hold our horses until we see actual evidence indicating this is founded on facts. They say that an extremely compact Pentax full frame dSLR might be in the makings, to use a full frame CMOS Sony sensor, and with the agreement that the Pentax model will only be released after its Sony counterpart is in the market.

We will see; yet, truth be told, I am quite unsure on whether the Pentax customers are "anxious" to get this kind of camera, in the current context.

There might be hope for politics in Spain

In an unexpected movement (to me, at least), Julio Anguita, an old leader of the left parties in Spain, and one of the most respected among politicians in Spain, announced he is ready to head an alternative to the current parties. This sounds like excellent news to my ears, since I think there are too many corrupts and too many professionals in politics, and too few real people trying to change things for the better.

Anyway, here you have a manifest he made recently, in the introduction of his last book, "Combates del presente". Of course it is in Spanish, and sorry, no subtitles this time:

I've seen the future

... and it will be:

I'm so happy about Spanish bailout that I could cry

And more so, after having a look at the covers of the most important Spanish newspapers on the right side: according to them, the bailout must be close to paradise, since we are offered € 100,000 million without conditions for Spain:

Curiously enough, it seems that most international newspapers disagree big time:

Paul Buchanan at BBC's Review show

Paul Buchanan performed Mid Air at a recent Review show in BBC. Here you have the video:

The iPhone 5 will be a bit bigger with new smaller dock

This video has made loads of rounds, and if the parts shown in it are for real, then it seems that the new iPhone 5 will be slightly bigger than the iPhone 4 and it will use a new, smaller dock.

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iPhone 5 Back Cover or Middle Plate/A new iPhone Part Leaked

By etradesupply

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Garnachas of Spain

Being an amateur of good wines, I have been developing in the last twenty years my own tastes for specific kinds of wines, and for specific types of grapes. And this within the widest inculture regarding the scientific side of wineries, or on methods and other information of connoisseurs: mine is a simple love, I love the wine or not, but don't ask me to describe with with complicated expressions: I could not do it.

So, in this context, I became years ago a lover of a kind of grape which is quite typical of Spain: it is called Garnacha, and apparently it became very popular around 1850, when the epidemy of filoxera invaded Spain and many grape plants were killed, then replaced by more resistant varieties, like Garnacha.

In the past I have been very impressed by some wines made by Garnacha, even if the general reputation is that they are not very good, and many consider them to be less than soft enough in the mouth. Yet I could not avoid to become enamoured by its body, its consistent flavours, and overall a charm of good old wines without trendy manufacturing.

So I received in awe the gift made by my brother this year: a box of wine from a project entitled "Garnachas de España", illustrated above. When I opened the box, I discovered this project is the labour of love from an enologist , R. Acha, who is also enamoured of Garnachas, and who has been persistent enough to find out a number of very old Garnacha plantations around Spain, and to contact the owners in order to make wines in some of them.

The results are three different wines, all made with Garnacha 100 %, but with different features in each case. R. Acha made a documentary, available here, which widely describes the background and making of the project Garnachas de España, and is in my opinion well worth to watch. Thanks to Dennis, I found a version of the video with subtitles in English:

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Flaming Lips featuring Erykah Badu: controversial video

Judge by yourself; it's a version of Roberta Flack's "The first time I ever saw your face":



The lady shown in this video is not Erykah, but her sister Nayrok.

Apparently Erykah is not happy at all that this video was originally posted at Pitchfork, submitted to them by Flaming Lips without previous permission from Erykah. And this seems to be developping into a very ugly story between Erykah and Flaming Lips.

It doesn't take a big effort to enlighten your day

It seems this guy, a garbage collector, goes every day next to the school and sings along the Spongebob song for the kids:

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Barrendero canta todos los dias a los preescolares con Bob Esponja!

By blackstrike4lifee

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Richmen don't create jobs

Against the old myth:

Fear and loathing and Windows 8

This is an extensive overview on Windows 8 (as of now); I've not read it in full as it is huge, but the conclusions are quite interesting, and somehow shocking to me:

 Here's what I'd like you to take away from this article:

 -Windows 8 is not Windows, it's a new operating system with Windows 7 compatibility tacked onto it. 

 -Although Windows 8 looks pretty and is great for tablet-style content consumption, I question its benefits for traditional PC productivity tasks.  

 -Big OS transitions like this one traditionally cause users to reconsider their OS decision and potentially switch to something else.  

 -Microsoft has worsened the risk that people will migrate away from Windows 8, by disabling some key features of Windows 7, and mishandling the consumer "preview" program.  

 -However, people won't necessarily abandon Windows because it's not clear if they have a good alternative to it.  

 -Apple could provide the best alternative if it chooses to. This might be Apple's best chance ever to stick a fork in Windows.  

 -If Windows 8 is even moderately successful, it could weaken Google and the big web services companies. The trend toward bundling web services into the OS is potentially very disruptive to the web community, and they should be quite worried about it.  

 -If you're a PC app developer, you should probably hold off on Metro because it's not clear how quickly its user base will grow.