All posts by kirsch

My Blog

Thank you, come again!

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To be honest, The MKX® Gift Shop has not exactly overtaken Wal-Mart in sheer sales volume yet.

However, a big step in the right direction happened this morning when I received an invoice for and order of one of our most popular items: Ugly Nun Thon (pictured below), placed by a Susan from California… whom I’ve never met but is listed in IMDB as an actress (could it be the same Susan?).

That’s pretty cool by itself, but there’s more: This order was not for 1, but for 7 (yes, seven) thongs. The mere idea of Susan and six of her Hollywood actresses or Victoria’s Secret model friends wearing underwear with my face on it is mind blowing. The idea that maybe she bought them all for herself so she can wear them every day is, frankly, creeping me out, but exciting nonetheless.

Susan, I’m not revealing your full name here but if you ever happen to bump into this blog, we’d love to hear what you thought of our fine products.

Incidentally, last Saturday the Ugly Nun herself re-emerged at a Brazilian party (proof).

Note from the Editor: The staff of The MKX® is held to the highest journalistic standards. The information presented here is authentic and not a ploy to generate more sales.

Tech

Gmail and IMAP

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Starting yesterday, Google started adding IMAP access to their free Gmail webmail service (my account is not upgraded yet).

What does this mean?

It means you can read your email from your Gmail account directly in most email clients (Apple’s Mail.app at home and Mozilla Thunderbird at work, in my case) as well as from iPhone without the need for any plugins or third party software – and your mailbox stays synchronized all the time no matter where you access it from. This is something I’ve wanted to do for years.

This way, if you’re in front of your new and shiny MacBook you can use Mail, but if you are traveling or don’t have your computer with you, you can keep using the web interface. Not bad

Google answers some questions you may have here.

[Update 10/29/2007] Today I was finally able to enable IMAP in my Gmail account, but neither Mail.app nor Thunderbird work with it. I’ll let it rest for a couple of days to see if it’s something Google needs to sort out on their end or if I screwed up on my side.

Keep Austin Weird

Austin’s Dr. Sketchy

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On Saturday I went attended for the first time the Austin Chapter of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School.It combines two of my favorite things: drawing and beer (on this occasion, new local favorite Fireman’s #4). The only thing missing was the game, but then again, given how embarrasingly poorly we’re doing, maybe not.This session was held downtown at Beerland, and of course was Halloween themed. It featured Midwest Monster‘s bassist and The Search For the Next Elvira finalist Kitty Korvette (who also happens to be both very nice and very good looking). What can I say, some people like them scary. Which reminds me:

CALL 1-888-SCARY-02 NOW (before 2 PM)!!!

To my surprise, my drawing actually improved after a few beers, It’s just like my dancing! (Disclaimer: I couldn’t find scientific proof backing my claims- nor have I seen videos of myself dancing at weddings).

In any case, it was a blast. The guy on the microphone was hilarious (name?), Kitty Korvette was amazing, I had an awesome second row table, the beer was refreshing, the crowd was fun, and the contests at the end were great. Some really good looking sketches were drawn, some of which Miss Korvette will post eventually on her MySpace profile (I will update this post when/if that happens). Also, photos and drawings will surely start popping up in the Austin Sketchy Flickr group.

And remember:

CALL 1-888-SCARY-02 NOW (before 2 PM)!!!

[Update 10/23/2007] For the few hundreds of you that don’t check this website compulsively every 10 minutes, I have good news: I’ve been informed through the comments that you can vote up until October 28th. If you’re in the U.S., it’s free and it takes only 10 seconds… vote now and help fight war, poverty, corruption and global warming.

Falafel and more

The Iraqi reactor

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I was sent a link to this interesting History Channel report about the Israeli airstrike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.

At the time, the operation was internationally condemned. Today, most of the world is quietly thankful for Israel’s actions, as it is known that the reactor was indeed being built for the sole purpose of creating an Iraqi nuclear bomb. It is impossible to know how history would have been different had Israel not destroyed this reactor, but it’s very clear that it would have indeed been very different

This piece of history seems more relevant today than ever, given North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear ambitions; and the recent operation Israel carried out over Syria (of which many details are still unknown):

Around the world

Disneyworld

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Jacobo, Joelle, Liat and myself headed down (East? North?) to Orlando last weekend to visit old pal Mickey and some of the others.

While it’s tough to travel in a group in which only 75% of the people are potty trained, it was a lot of fun. Of all the Disney characters, Pocahontas and Cinderella were the hottest – although I suspect Pluto felt a lot hotter inside that costume.

Cute photos of the many adventures can be seen in The MKX® Photo Central.

Photo of the day

Photo of the day #12

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Hotel Roosevelt
Originally uploaded by Miguel.Sanchez.

This is the Roosevelt Hotel. Surprisingly, I cannot link to its website because apparently there isn’t one.

Why is this photo featured in The MKX®, you might ask? Excellent question.

This hotel is located right behind the legendary Hotel Son-Mar, where I spent many, many, many weekends as a kid (my dad, later my mom, worked there… now my uncle), debating with my brothers whether the Roosevelt has beds or hammocks in its rooms (it was never settled). It brings back tons of childhood memories (I may one day write about them). And before you ask: No, I never actually set foot in there.

As far as I remember (which is a good 25+ years), the Roosevelt has always looked exactly the same, except for that fancy “México es Primero” sign that some marketing genius put there in the 80’s.

Around the world

Cerro de la Silla

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Cerro de la Silla 1

Cerro de la Silla 2

I was forwarded these breathtaking photos of the famous Cerro de la Silla, symbol of my hometown Monterrey. They were taken by my friend JW. from an airplane as he was flying back into town. Amazing. If you’ve seen this mountain before, you will be able to recognize its characteristic shape very clearly in this picture.

For another, more classical view, check out the QTVR panorama of Monterrey that Moi and I shot last year. Look around and you’ll find the Cerro de La Silla.

Or see many other cool photos of the mountain in flickr, like this one or this one.

Reality Distortion Field

Skitch beta

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A while ago I signed up to beta test this new little application being developed by the folks at plasq called Skitch.

They are the same guys that make Comic Life, and like Comic Life, Skitch has a really nice, really innovative user interface. It’s hard to describe, so you should watch their short intro video.

In about 2 minutes, the first time I used the little program, I captured this little screenshot, added a watermark, drew a little arrow and uploaded to my server this little image:

skitch test

Not too shabby… as you can see, this is a really useful tool for a blogger. Expect lots of images with cool watermarks and little arrows from now on.

Oh, yes, before I forget: I got 2 (two, that’s it) invites for people who want to try Skitch. If you think you deserve one of them (i.e. you are a Mac-using blogger who posts regularly) please leave a comment and try to convince me why you should get one of my precious invites.

Mundo Dilbert

NI Latin-American Picnic

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National Instruments Latin-American Picnic (by Jaramillo)
(gigantic version here)

On Saturday, all (ok, not everyone made it) Latin-American employees of National Instruments got together for a little and absolutely non-official get together complete with BBQ’ing, kite-flying, high performance beach volleyball, and more.

I thought I already knew everyone, or at least a large majority… but I actually got to meet a lot of new people I didn’t know, especially those who started at the company recently.

It was a lot of fun, even though the meat I bought for grilling tasted like rubber (but it was soooo cheap).

We had people from Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Spain, Dominican Republic, the U.S… None of the Brazilians or Venezuelans showed up, the cowards.

Since I’m the one who started the whole thing, got the list of people together and sent out the invitations (although Nestor helped out a lot finding a really nice place to have it), I hope everyone had a great time and we can do it again soon.

Note to self: Don’t fall for the low meat prices. Buy good stuff next time.