Our laurel is growing bougainvilleas!

Or so it seems:

But no, in fact the laurel is being invaded, starting by the top side, by our bougainvillea, whose vitality is neverending:


But no, in fact the laurel is being invaded, starting by the top side, by our bougainvillea, whose vitality is neverending:

Video overview of yesterday's manifestations in Madrid

No comments needed; suffice to say I am more and more ashamed of our government.

↵ Use original player

25S crónica 2 25 septiembre 2012

By Juan robles gonzalez

YouTube

• 1080p
• 720p
• 360p
• 240p FLV

← Replay

X

i

Anti-politicians manifestations in Madrid, today

This is the front picture of the manifestation, with the goal of expressing disgust against the behaviour of politicians, and I wholeheartedly cosign it:

Carpe diem 2012

Although with a bit of delay, here you have some snapshots of our summer holidays in 2012. Most of you know about this little personal traidition of mine, so no further descriptions: They are far from a model of technical perfection, but I do like them for one reason or another. I hope you will also enjoy some of them. :D

This is my hometown:

The following pics were taken at Pedroches, a nice village near Córdoba, on September 7, during the celebration of "Los Piostros". During this celebration, loads of people with horses go to accompany the virgin to a little church close to the village, and they are using their best costumes.

After spending some time at that little church, people returns to the village, and in the last part, they start running as fast as they can on their horses. It is quite spectacular, and I managed to get a few nice pictures; btw, what I am showing here are jpegs straight out of the camera, no manipulation whatsoever. And I say this because some of the following pictures seem to me like the product of two different shots, but it is not the case:

A few more pictures, from the days at the beach, and later from the yearly celebrations at my hometown:

"Old friends 4 sale": the horns mojo in full effect

Sometimes you hear people say that Prince's mojo left for good, but in recordings like this, it's clear the guy knows how to sound great. This is a rehearsal recording, posted by Dr. Funkenberry, of the old classic "Old friends 4 sale", with the new horns section of the NPG playing in their full glory. I think this recording is truly delicious and promises the very best for the Chicago shows:

http://soundcloud.com/drfunkenberry/old-friends-4-sale

Interview with Prince published by Chicago Tribune

The forthcoming shows of Prince in Chicago are being promoted lately, first with an interview at the talk show The View, and more recently with some interviews in newspapers.

Prince interviews have proved to be mostly a boring affair in recent years, being full of cliches and promotional, meaningless comments.

And that's why I was surprised to read this piece, written by Greg Kot, music critic of Chicago Tribune. It is nicely written, insightful, and it depicts a sane Prince. I think it is one of the best recent pieces on Prince I have read. I wonder if Prince sounding so focused and reasonable comes from hard edition from Greg on the actual comments from Prince, or if that was for real. But beyond the JW bullshittery (and the surprisingly few comments on Andy), it gives the impression of Prince in 2004: a guy ready to play in the major league, who has not lost his mind, and who is a bit crazy about religion. Not sure if that reflects the real Prince of today (I'm afraid it's not the case), but I guess this works when you have products to sell and you want to sell tons of them.

Antony & the Johnsons: "Cut the world" video

Antony & the Johnsons have released a video for the song that gives title to their last album, "Cut the world", which was released in August. I have not seen it yet, although from comments it seems it contains some images that are not for everybody's tastes.



Pitchfork has published an article dealing with this new video, including another video (the "director's cut") with comments from Antony and the video director on the making of this movie.

Córdoba, life and genius

I found out this stunning promotional video for my city, Córdoba. Enjoy!

Sufjan Stevens and Rosie Thomas: Hit & Run Vol. 1

Here you have the most recent music release involving Sufjan Stevens, in collaboration this time with Rosie Thomas. More info from Asthmatic Kitty Records:

Sufjan Stevens  BUY ITUNES $1.98 BUY 7INCH $7 BUY MP3 $2.50 Hit & Run Vol. 1 Catalog: SAL003 Singer-songwriter Rosie Thomas has paired up with long time friend and collaborator Sufjan Stevens for the first entry in the Hit & Run series of split 7” vinyl collaborations. Hit & Run Vol. 1 consists of Thomas’ “Where Were You?”—a thoroughly re-imagined version of the track “Where Was I” from Thomas’ new full length record With Love (out now on Sing-A-Long Records) recorded, mixed and featuring a performance by Sufjan Stevens— alongside Steven’s “Here I Am!” which in turn features vocals by Thomas. Recorded in Brooklyn, the songs brim with questions – both lyrically stated, and implicitly begged: “Where was I?” Where were you?” “ Can you hear me?” “Does this face mask make me look younger?” “Could there possibly be any more auto-tune?”

But this was released last Spring; according to Pitchfork, Sufjan possibly is preparing a new Christmas album for 2012, of which nothing has been released thus far.

"Rock & roll love affair", new Prince song

In a rather weird move, Prince appeared in yesterday's The View talk show, yet did not say a word on the forthcoming Chicago gigs, or on the new album "Superconductor" from his protegee Andy Allo, or on any new album from Prince himself. Yet he showed his current look which is, to put it mildly, controversial to say the least.

Yet, a radio station started broadcasting very often a new song, entitled "Rock & roll love affair", which has an unremarkable melody, simple production and little else to attract people. I'm not sure what the plans are behind this new release to radio, but honestly it adds very little (if anything at all) to the catalogue of Prince songs, and certainly does not seem to be any smash hit in the making, to promote either a new album or a new big tour.

We will see what happens; some popcorn is needed to watch this unfold.

New µ4/3 flagship camera from Panasonic: GH3

In the new entry regarding the new cameras introduced at Photokina 2012, here you have the new flagship in the field of µ4/3 cameras: the new Panasonic GH3. It improves on its virtues while stressing the video capabilities. Yet the size and shape are quite close to traditional DSLR cameras, hence making difficult to outline what is the main advantage of this format: its compactness.

Further information from Panasonic here, and for an insightful take, I suggest again to read this article at DSLR Magazine.

The other full frame for the rest of us: Canon 6D

As was expectable, the Canon reply to the brand new D600 from Nikon arrived quickly: the new Canon 6D, offering full frame at an affordable price.

Beyond the countless articles introducing the new camera, I suggest to read quietly the nice reflections posted by DSLR Magazine on this topic. Further info from Canon here.

Nikon shoots: the new D600

In a previous entry, I mentioned that we are waiting for the Big Gorilla announcements, before Photokina 2012.

And one of the gorillas, Nikon, has made the big announcent: the new Nikon D600, a full frame model for the rest of us, as they say.

Further information here.

Massive Attack to release remastered "Blue Lines"

From Massive Attack's facebook page:

Blue Lines has been rebuilt from the original tapes, remixed and remastered and will be available from November 19th. Deluxe vinyl in original screen printed mailer including hi-def audio DVD, hi-def digital file and standard formats. We'll have more news soon plus pre-order links.

This is one of the most impressing albums I heard in the early 90s, although later I remember reading it had be more than inspired by some obscure records from the past. If anybody missed it back in the day, now it would a great opportunity to discover it.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich running on Sony Xperia Neo V: first impressions

After months and months waiting in vane for Orange to update my Sony Xperia Neo V to Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), I decided to look for information to flash the latest ICS version on my Neo V. And after some small issues, I did it yesterday. The methods are explained in full detail at different places, but the best explanations I found are here (in English), and here (in Spanish). There you will find links to download flastools and also a large range of ROMs to flash, including the most recent ones.

Thus far all seems to be working fine, after updating to Android version 4.0.4 (ROM 4.1.B.0587). Contrary to some reports I have read, I have no wifi problems, and the front camera works just fine. I will go there later.

Certainly ICS does bring little additional functionality compared to Giberbread. In my case, the only clear advantage has been the installation of Chrome, which allowed me to sync the bookmarks I use at my main computer. The browsing quality is clearly improved with respect to "Navigator", the stock browser used in Gingerbread.

Overall, I agree with multiple previous reviews on ICS being a much more polished OS than Gingerbread. What I found surprising is to see that the Xperia Neo V runs really smoothly, which is something I did not expect, taken into account the somehow limited hardware of the Neo V (particularly in the case of RAM memory, 512 Kb). I had no issues thus far, the transitions between apps work fine, and the experience is that of a finer phone, with an OS which is truly an alternative for iOS. By contrast, when it was running Gingerbread, the difference in favour of iOS was overwhelming, and mind you: my comparisons come from an iPod Touch second generation, using iOS 4.2.3; in other words, one generation behind the current version of iOS (or two, if we consider that iOS 6 will be introduced today, together with the new iPhone).

Going to two of the most widely reported issues after updating Xperia phones to ICS:

- Wifi works fine, and I tried both a private network at home, and an eduroam network at my workplace. Thus far I have seen not unexpected stops in its functioning.

 - Front camera is widely reported to stop working after the update. Yet I discovered that, contrary to reports, it does work fine. The only problem is that a previous button to skip from back to front camera (shown in Gingerbread) does not exist in ICS. You need to go to the options of camera, click on "SCN", and there select the front camera. No problem at all.

- Another supposed problem: If you want to take a screenshot, hold the down volume button and the power button EXACTLY at the same time, for about 1 second. And it's done. In fact, I used this function to take the picture shown above.

- Finally, some people complain about bad quality video playback in HD. I have not tested this possible problem, but I will do it soon.

Regarding the flashing experience, I found it surprisingly simple, after getting the right information (see my comments above). The flashing was done quickly, and restarting the phone gave place to the new OS without a single problem, from scratch. If you are going to do it, pay attention to install the right drivers to connect the phone to the computer, and you can do that by using a little app which is bound to flashtools.

What I found annoying is the lack of any flash software for Mac. I tried hard to find an alternative to flashtools for Mac, but no way: it seems nobody has taken the work to make such an app, despite existing an version for Linux which should not be too difficult to port. Yet I could find an app, working on Mac, which allows to root many phones running Android. It's called Breakdroid, and you can download it here. Although truth be told, I did not root my phone, since I only wanted to update the OS, which does not require rooting.

All in all, I should have done this update before summer, instead of wasting my time waiting for the miserable team of Orange to do their job. Orange has been a most disappointing company thus far, starting with some lies when I signed with them, and continuing with a lack of support that is truly shameless. But as I have written in their forums, I will stay as Orange user strictly for the signed period, and I will never again spend a cent with them.


Update on February 21, 2013: Today I posted a fairly detailed comparison between the use of an Xperia Neo V running Android Icecream Sandwich vs iPod Touch 2nd generation running iOS 4.2.3. If you are interested by this post, maybe you would like reading it as well.

Coming to Photokina 2012

Not all forthcoming cameras have been introduced or leaked yet, but still we have a few strong contenders:

From Pentax: besides the K-3, there seems to be confirmation about the K-5 II:

There's also the new Q10:

Sony has two different, but both very compelling, proposals:

The RX1, a full frame mirrorless:

And the a99:

Now waiting for Olympus to shoot, and of course the two big gorillas...

Where the European money is going

I found another, very enlightening picture. It shows the net balance of money going from/to banks in different countries. The lines increasing mean net income of money. And the decreasing lines mean net loss of money.

I think this is quite self explanatory, but in short, if these trends continue, Spain (and later Italy) will quickly go to bankrupcy, and the clear winner is one country, whose net income of money is getting huge since August 2008. Hence it's hardly surprising that the bank authorities of that country, Germany, find uninteresting to support Spain and Italy.

The new Pentax K3

A Chinese website, apparently affiliated to the CNet chain, posted what seem to be the first actual information on the forthcoming Pentax K3: in short, APS-C  DSLR camera with 24 megapixels. It's supposed to be the successor of the Pentax K5, at the top range of the APS-C range in Pentax. I'll post more information when available. This fits with multiple previous rumours from websites and forums.

Back home

There we go again: a new season, new expectations, and hopefully an end for the crisis.

This summer was a mixed bag of happy times with the family, and some bad news for people close to me.

But life goes on: let's try to look at the bright side.