27 February 2006

ich habe mein deutsch vergessen!

which means "i have forgotten my german" and i desperately need to find it before this summer. as i mentioned in an earlier post, i am going to the world cup this summer. we still haven't found tickets for other matches, besides the ones for the iran-mexico and the portugal-mexico games that we originally won. but preparations are underway... and i've started to contact youth hostels by e-mail... in german! of course i could write in english, but why did i study german for 2.5 years then? although i haven't actually practiced in about 7 years! but i guess it'll come back quickly...

to complement the fun summer activities, i needed a more intellectual environment -- life is not just fun after all. just last week, i was informed that i have been admitted to the european science days summer school in steyr, austria! this year, the conference will be devoted to the economics of education, which is currently one of my areas of research. every year they focus on different topics, from the theory of the firm to the growth and welfare, and the academics who attend are always high-calibre scholars like philippe aghion, kevin murphy, daron acemoglu, tim besley, avinash dixit, etc. so i'm very excited about this opportunity.

if i get a teaching assistantship for the second half of the summer, then i'll be all set. but that i won't know until april or may...

24 February 2006

i'm old...

... or so says my middle sister, who is 14. i'm also in shock and here's why.

for a couple of years now i've seen my little cousins, friends' siblings, nephews, etc. spell words in messenger nicknames or even short e-mails with mixed caps and small letters like this:

wAzZuP dUdE

and that's actually a very good example because the mixing of caps and small letters also involves misspellings and random agglutination and separation of words as in "wazzup."

however, i think the misspellings in spanish are way more severe than they are in english. they would write things like "television" as "telivishon" and things like "hello" as "wallooss".

it's very difficult to explain in english how this deformation of the language takes place in spanish but here is an example taken directly from fany's flog (which is also another shock to me, i explain below):

WoOLaSS GeNtE pSs K RoShIoO JEJE pSs IO AkI NOMaSS SuBiEnDOLE PiKa A fAnY WeNoO PsS lE FiRmAN bIN mOniTO OkAsS wEnOo.

i'm sure most spanish speakers will understand, even with the slang and the misspellings. for english speakers, i won't even bother translating. but it's crazy. many times these kids can't tell any more whether the way they write the word is the correct one or not. and i don't get how uncomfortable it should be for those kids to write mixing up small and cap letters. sErIoUsLy. and i can't understand why it would be cool to misspell words. is it the actual process of finding a creative way of fucking up a word that's cool enough and deviates as much as possible from the actual spelling yet it is still understandable? i don't know.

and this seems to me an unstoppable phenomenon that will change the spanish language like no other event ever before.

and my sister calls me old-fashioned, not en vogue.

puh-lease! me?

dead chinchilla, not feathers (thanks, perro).

please tell me if this is an exclusive phenomenon in mexico or if it happens in other spanish-speaking countries or amongst teenagers in other countries.


anyway, i kept browsing my sister's flog, where i found aberrations like the one above and others. for those of you who, like me, don't know what a flog is, let me explain -- because i can explain now. a flog is a fotolog, the latest trend among mexican teens (or at least kids in my sister's school in sAn NiKo). they upload pictures to a website relatively frequently and post greetings addressed to their classmates... even though they see each other every day and their circle of friends consists of only these other 10-12 friends who also send them greetings in their flogs. it's very weird. but it's cool.

however, there is an uncool part to it. these are 14-year-olds!!

iM n sHoK!

21 February 2006

the mac-pc controversy: resolved

after giving it much thought, i decided the mac is not for me... at least for now. it makes no sense to own a pc and use it as my primary computer and then use a mac as my secondary computer, since i'm planning on synchronizing files between them, etc. also, i already own all of the software i use for work and for my personal entertainment and i don't really have the money to spend on all of this extra software... plus the effort that it'll take me to familiarize myself with the mac's operative system. and plus, macs have as of late become target to new viruses and business week tells me the true power of mac won't show until the software designed for the new hardware comes out.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060221_730128.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/@@O82mboUQrf3qDREA/magazine/content/06_07/b3971032.htm

someone sent me this funny video on why macs suck and it's hilarious:

http://thedraftingtable.blogspot.com/2006/02/mac-crash-different.html

in the meantime, i have purchased a brand new sony vaio sz series! production just started this week so it is brand brand new!! can't wait to get it!

04 February 2006

¡nos vamos al mundial!













... which is a famous cheer that's heard every four years in mexico after the national team qualifies for the world cup -- and means "we are going to the world cup!"

well, now i cheer because WE -- i.e., my friends and I -- are going to the world cup! i applied for tickets in the fifa lottery and today i got an e-mail saying that my draw had been successful and we got 8 tix total! that means we'll be supporting el tri, as the national team is known worldwide, in nuremberg on 11. june against iran and then in gelsenkirchen on 21. june against portugal. i'm pretty sure that we will be able to get tickets for the 16. june match against angola in hannover... and if not, just hanging out in the world cup atmosphere and seeing chiquitibums all over the place like my friend above, that should make the trip to hannover worthwhile!

now, we need to start finding cheap lodging and plane tickets... anyone who would like to host 4 stranded mexicans for a day or two, just e-mail me! ;-)

03 February 2006

federer's 7th
















i can't believe i let almost a week go by without posting this. last sunday, i stayed up until 7h30 to watch the great roger federer win his 7th grand slam. oh, boy, was it worth it! it was impressive how baghdatis was, literally, on the ball and how clean his game was. but, as usual, roger came back just in time and crushed his rival in the end.

i feel bad because i actually like baghdatis, i think he'll be a terrific player provided he starts to train harder and stops going out and drinking grappa until 4h when he wins one match in a grand slam.

but then again, you can never feel really bad when your favorite player in the world has just won one of the biggest championships in the sport. watching his flawless game was sublime. seeing cry after receiving the cup from rod laver was priceless.

01 February 2006

the mac vs. pc controversy (from the pov of a techie-wannabe)

i've always considered myself a rather technologically-savvy early adopter. i had atari and nintendo consoles way before my friends did. while my 3rd-grade classmates asked for the full collection of thundercats and he-man action figures (let us not forget the grandiose castle greyskull!) in their letters to santa, i dreamed of a personal computer. santa listened, and on christmas of 1987, i got a us$500-check along with a note that read "give this check to your parents and they will get you that computer you want." i still remember the long nights i spent on this ultramodern computer (a zenith 286-processor, 20mb hard drive, and a vga monitor!! -- also, let me point out this is mexico in the mid-80s) playing the very first edition of sim city... and larry!! ooooh!! what a great game was the very first larry!!

thanks to my super zenith, i was at one point the only one in my class that handed in homeworks typed up in wordstar, as opposed to a traditional typewriter. also, thanks to our exclusive access to the next computers as ib-ers, i was amongst the first mexican teenagers that exchanged e-mails with the world, chatted on irc, and got excited when playing one of the first interactive computer games: mudd (no graphics, sorry!). and as soon as they came out (and became affordable to the general public, of course), i bought a palm pilot (nobody had ever heard of the term pda back then), a digital camera, and an ipod.

i never succumbed to the charms of the color-striped, half-bitten apple. the next computers, although designed by the great steve jobs, had a more windows-like environment. and my high school macs' only advantage over the pcs was hypercard. go figure!

it is definitely true that over the years macs have much improved and many people have converted. not me. not even the ibook, memo's most precious treasure, made me even consider the possibility of yielding to the dark side. truth is, since the powerbook g4, it's been harder and harder to simply ignore macs. and now the macbook pro, with its intel processor, is just like a magnet -- at least in terms of looks. i still haven't used any of these machines extensively (other than the 3-minute use you give it at the apple store and that hasn't been enough to show me any of its so-told super cool features).

now, a year and a half after i bought my dell desktop for grad school, i need to buy a laptop and am considering my options. many have tried to persuade me to take the big leap and convert to mac and, yes, reluctant me has played with the idea for a while. however, i just decided yesterday that it's not a good idea. although i need a laptop because i go away from home for extended periods and i still need to work, it would only be my secondary computer, and it won't be easy to synchronize the files between my desktop and my apple laptop. plus, i already own much of the software i need for my desktop and, as a student, i won't be able to purchase this software also for my mac os. so, the mac is not becoming part of my life right at this juncture.

uh-huh.

and just as i decisively concluded that, i downloaded a new skin for my mozilla browser and it's got the most simple, cleanest feel ever. guess what? it's called ifox and it's reminiscent of apple's safari browser.

it seems like sooner or later, we'll all convert...