“When I grow up, I want to work in a circus”
Joelle Kirsch, lion tamer
Apologize for the fake posts
Faithful RSS and email subscribers may have noticed a bunch of posts that came up and went away last night.
I’ve been testing a new (but not ready for prime time) very cool feature for The MKX® that will automatically insert my del.icio.us links as posts, instead of secluding them to the no-man’s-land that is the sidebar (does anyone notice those links on the side?).
I apologize for the fake entries you may have been notified of. Stay tuned for this to go live very soon. I hope.
SXSW 2008
They released the (subject to changes) list of concerts for the yearly Film, Interactive and Music Festival South By Soutwhest (SXSW).
The list seems huge to me, and there are more international (especially Mexican) bands than I can recall ever being.
Here are the bands from Latin American countries. Some I’ve seen, some I’d like to see, some I’ve never heard of:
Carnaval Brasileiro
For the first time since I moved to Austin I went to the yearly Carnaval Brasileiro. They have it every year for 31 years now. I kept hearing about it but never actually made it there for one reason or another.
Carnaval-Nice 156 by RickyRicky.
The Carnaval has gotten so big that now they have to hold it at the Palmer Events Center. I was told this is the biggest indoor Carnaval party outside of Brazil (around 6,000 people) but I can’t verify that. The eclectic crowd includes a smaller-than-usual percentage of students, surely due to the $35 ticket price.
They had a really good samba band playing the whole time, and lots of people in full Carnaval attire -which means anything but full attire. Lots of very attractive girls wherever you looked (there was this skinny topless chick dressed as a Hawaiian hula dancer… unbelievable!).
In order to maintain The MKX®‘s PG13 rating, I have uploaded a censored subset of photos from the party to The MKX® Photo Central.
Photos at The MKX@ Photo Central
Video of Capoeira dancing at the Carnaval
Other people’s photos at Flickr
Enjoy!
U2 3D
I went to see the new U2 3D movie at The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. It’s not a traditional movie with a storyline and a plot; but full songs from a concert (in Buenos Aires) recorded in 3d IMAX glory. The sound is fantastic and way louder than your average movie, and the visuals are amazing. The music you already know it.
I recommend you check this one out, if only for the audio/visual experience. To my surprise, even my mom liked it, and she hates “loud music with drums“.
The smallest digital cameras
I’m asked for advice on what digital camera to buy quite often. I’m no photographer, but here’s my philosophy:
I’d rather have lots of decent photos taken with a small camera I take everywhere than few or no great photos taken with a camera so big that’s always left at home.
Marcos and his trusty Optio S, beer
With this in mind, my advice is to get the smallest digital camera you can find that provides adequate quality. If you must get a big, high quality, professional SLR camera, go ahead; but complement it with a really small camera (this is exactly what Jaramillo did).
Adequate is a very subjective word, and comparing digital cameras is not easy. To me, adequate would mean a real flash (not the toy flashes that come in cellphones) and at least 3x optical zoom. The number of Megapixels I’d rather not nail down, as that changes very quickly. Ignore the digital zoom spec. But be careful, numbers by themselves often don’t mean much: some older 3 MP cameras can take better photos than some newer 10 MP cameras because they have better quality lenses and sensors. For a detailed comparison of the quality of photos taken by different digital cameras, Google is your friend. Do keep in mind that the small lenses on small cameras impact quality quite a bit.
Personally, I’ve only owned two digital cameras. They were the smallest decent cameras available when I bought them and I took thousands of photos with them, because I did not mind bringing them everywhere.
The first one: the now discontinued Pentax Optio S. This camera was famous because you could fit it inside an Altoids tin, which is exactly what I used to carry it around. I didn’t come up with the idea, but people though I was clever. Many of my friends later bought the same or a newer model. Great little camera.
Pentax Optio S
The second one, the Casio Exilim S600. This one is slightly longer and taller than the Optio S but considerably thinner, so it’s more comfortable in your pocket. It can also record VGA video, which is cool.
Casio Exilim S600
Even years after these came out, there aren’t many cameras of similar size. Their quality was pretty decent and so was the battery life. Even so, I’m always on the lookout for smaller things. Most of the photos on The MKX® Photo Central were taken using one of these two cameras, so feel free to see for yourself.
Pentax Optio S VS Casio Exilim S600 (side by side)
If you want to find a good comparison of different digital cameras by size, you won’t have much luck (as I learned when I was looking for a new digital camera) – until now. I fired up Google Docs and started making a table. Check it out, and if you think I should add a model or correct something, let me know through the comments!
Feed me: An introduction to RSS
Feed Aggregator. Feed Reader. RSS Reader. News Reader. It’s all the same thing.
You’ve probably heard the term before but there is a decent chance you don’t know what it is or how to use them. If you regularly read news and/or blogs on the internet and aren’t using an RSS Reader, you don’t know what you’re missing. Read on.
Latin American members of the Knesset
My brother Jacobo was wondering about Latin American members of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament). We knew of only one. So we looked it up. Being such a young country with a high level of immigration, a high percentage of the population was born in the Diaspora, so it’s only natural that it reflects in the government.
As far as we could tell, there have been only three:
Eliezer Ronnen (Mexico, 8th Knesset)
Benny Temkin (Mexico, 13th Knesset)
Yehuda Gilad (Brazil, 15th Knesset)
Let’s put things into perspective:
Argentina is the Latin American country with the largest Jewish population (about five times as much as Mexico) yet no Argentinians have been in the Knesset.
The United States has the largest Jewish population in the Diaspora (twelve times as many as Mexico!) yet only three members of the Knesset were born there (although former Primer Minister Golda Meir grew up in the U.S.).
Another interesting fact is that Benny Temkin was not only born in Mexico, but more specifically in Monterrey (my hometown). This is noteworthy (and a source of pride) because Monterrey has one of the smallest Jewish communities in the world (under 500). I’ve met Benny several times. He and his wife would take us out to lunch a few times while I lived in Israel (and he was in the Knesset and ruling coalition) and at parties back home.
Many thanks – keep’em coming
One of the advantages of having my own blog and writing about whatever pleases me (and pretend like I know something about the subject at hand), is that you can let other people know what sort of things you like. Last June I wrote about chocolate. This January, Daniela Totah and Eva Noyola each brought me a bar of very special and unique chocolate. Beautiful. Many many thanks.
Eva brought a bar of Jahrgangs-Schokolade 2006 (link takes you to the 2004 edition). Say that ten time very fast and you can win your own. This is a 99% pure cocoa goodness as far as I can tell given how rusty my German is.
Totah brought a new bar by Israeli company Elite (makers of the Cadbury Flake clone known as Mekupelet): The Elite Creme Brulee.
Yummy. A full review of each bar will be posted right after pigs can fly. If you feel like giving me a present but don’t know what to give me, you can always follow this link for a few hints.
Meir in Austin
My good pal Meir Sasson stopped by in town last weekend for some work related thing. We were co-madrichim in CYJ, summer of 1997. We were in Las Vegas in the summer of 1998 and in the beginning of 1999, while in Jerusalem, he introduced me to the wonderful world of Sachlav for which I’m eternally grateful. He’s now older and wiser and looks like a serious person (but he’s still the same). It had been six years since I last saw him. Last weekend we mostly ate a lot. It was fun.
Who wouldn’t do business with this guy?