Photo: El Zócalo el día del Bicentenario by Ana Eversbusch.
Today is Mexico’s 200th anniversary. I get to experience it while living abroad… not quite the same.
¡Viva México!
Bicentenario
Speedo
I often go swimming for exercise and I love it. With local treasures like Deep Eddy and Barton Springs, how wouldn’t I? So it was natural for me to buy a decent, appropriate, comfortable swimsuit. My choice of a new Speedo swimming suit has caused all sorts of unexpected controversy among my acquaintances. On one hand, some people want me to never show myself in public while wearing it. On the other hand, some people want my photo wearing it to grace my Facebook profile.
With all important matters such as Presidential elections, it is always better to let the uneducated and apathetic public decide. So cast your vote now…
n
n
8-bit Trolololo
This post is dedicated to Erika Himes.
In Mexico there is a saying: “Un clavo saca a otro clavo” (One nail pushes out another). It applies here…
For months you’ve been trying to get Eduard Khil’s beautiful rendition of “I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home” a.k.a. Trolololo out of your head. The saying applies:
In a stroke of Nobel-prize-caliber genius, YouTube user Robinerd created a chiptune version of said song. This means that it was made to sound like it was playing on an old-school machine, think a NES or a Commodore 64. For me this is a problem, because those types of songs have a tendency of sticking around inside my brain for a while.
Without further ado I present you: 8-bit Trolololo. Press play at your own risk.
Preserving childhood memories
You may or may not know this, but video quality in tapes (VHS more so, Beta a little less so) degrades with time. Photos too, and some kinds of photo paper degrade faster than others, and most people have no idea when they go out to have those rolls first developed.
We take those photos and make those videos because our memory fades with time. Little did we know that those old home videos and albums full of photos would fade too!
But you can put an end to this: Digitize. By digitizing your videos and scanning your photos you turn them into ones and zeros, and those don’t fade with time. I’ve been begging my mom to have our videos and photos digitized for years! I know it’s a lot of work… but maybe one day?
Shlomit decided to tackle this problem and just took all her family photos (about 5000) out of their albums and shipped them off in three boxes to ScanMyPhotos. In less than a week the photos came back along with three data DVDs. It was a lot of work, but well worth it!
The nice thing about digital photos (besides the fact that they don’t fade, you can copy without a loss of quality, you can email them, and they take up no physical space) is that even though the colors may be faded on the originals, you can always do a little bit of restoration on the computer without too much work.
I grabbed one random photo whose colors were badly faded and did some very quick color-correction using iPhoto‘s built-in tools – nothing terribly fancy. The results were better than I expected:
Not too bad, huh? So, mom… when are we doing this?
Fredericksburg
We went to the beautiful Fredericksburg, TX over the Labor day weekend. It’s a small town founded by German immigrants in 1846, so most of the population is of German descent and they’ve kept many traditions. 12.48% of the population actually speaks Texas German which is, I think, a form of German with the suffix “Y’All” added after every phrase. It’s less than two hours away from Austin.
While the town is no Las Vegas or Paris, I was happily surprised by its charm. Great for a weekend or so! Here are some trip highligts that you can use as recommendations for your upcoming visit to lovely Fredericksburg, Texas:
Stay at a charming Bed and Breakfast
Today’s quote: Anonymous Coward
I’m not sure who said this first. Apparently this comment on Metafilter.
“If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you are the product being sold.”
Think Facebook. Think almost every Google product including Android. Think Hulu. Interesting point of view, no? Where does this leave Open Source Software?
Happy 5771
How time flies! The staff of The MKX® wants to wish all our readers, friends, and family a very happy and sweet new year.
And many thanks to Eli and his parents and to Dalit and Carlos for feeding me these holidays. It was delicious.
!שנה טובה
Malkat haShakshuka
One of the many perks of dating an Israeli goddess is that she can make you delicious, nutritious, spicy shakshuka if you pester her enough!
Here’s another shakshuka related post. And here’s a photo of my one-hand egg breaking:
Hot Sauce Festival
The 20th Anual Austin Hot Sauce Festival was held on Sunday. Unfortunately, it was so hot and the lines were so long that I only got to try a few sauces before looking for air-conditioned refuge. My favorite this year: Don’t Panic Hispanic. Unlike past years, it does not seem that the press was alerted of my presence. Good, because I hate paparazzi.
Longhorn American Indian Council Powwow
As part of my ongoing investigation into my Native American lineage, Shlomit and I attended the Longhorn American Indian Council Powwow in the University of Texas last Saturday. The event was not as large as I expected, and I did not find any hints of having any Native American ancestry whatsoever. But it was an interesting and educational time. Here’s a little video of an interesting Cherokee dance to a catchy tune that I recorded: