Gabriel Saldaña's blog » personal

Resolutions for 2012

Gabriel Saldaña — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:11:00 +0000

At first, according to my last year’s resolutions post, I thought this year’s resolutions would look like the image above. Fortunately after reviewing a bit further, I did manage to accomplish 5 of 7 goals, so it’s not that bad.

I went to Google I/O
I got back into the open source community in Mexico giving talks in Puerto Vallarta
I traveled several times to San Francisco
I didn’t initiated my entrepreneurship with a startup, but I started freelancing and got some ideas around.
I lost some weight and did a bit more exercise than the year before.

This 2011 has been a year with lots of changes. The good times have been great, but the bad times have also been very deep. It’s been a year with a lot of travelling, learnings and experiences.

For this year, I’m still having trouble setting up my goals. I’ve been thinking about this post for the past two weeks and still things look blurry. Maybe because of all the things that happened last year and I still don’t have a clear mind to see where I want to go. Right now I feel this 2012 is a blank sheet of paper. Anything can happen.

Still, I don’t like having absolutely no plans. There’s a saying that has been sounding in my head for the last months: “If you don’t decide what to do with your life, life will decide for you…and it might not be what you wanted”. So I must set a few goals at least.

Improve health by getting fit.

I need to get closer to my ideal weight. I need to loose about 10kgs. I’ve been loosing weight with little effort following some tips from The 4-Hour Body . I interrupted my diet but I will restart it since it has given me good results.

Quantify and monitor life.

I would like to start monitoring and quantifying more the things I do in life so I can take decisions based on real numbers not just on appreciations of what I’ve done. For example, I just told you that I did more exercise last year than the year before. That’s just a hunch. I really can’t tell exactly by how much hours of exercise I exceeded the year before. Also because of my high cholesterol detected a few years back, I must test my blood regularly. I want to keep track of my health improvements and blood tests so I can motivate myself to keep making good health choices as I watch my progress. Things like that can be measured and tracked, and will aid me when taking decisions in health, financially and other aspects of life. Reading Sacha Chua’s blog has inspired me to start tracking and monitoring life.

Keep exploring startup ideas.

Release early, release often. Last year I did release the changes I had promised, but I’ve also had time to develop some new ideas but haven’t been published. I’ve been approached by a lot of people with ideas and the most common thing is that no one executes. I did some prototypes but nothing got published. And if it’s not published, it doesn’t exist. Those ideas must get out of my mind and my local machine and out there to gather feedback in hopes that one of them might also get some wings. If not, I still win, by learning what doesn’t work and why.

Keep the traveling going

It’s very refreshing and inspirational to travel around and change locations out of your routine. You know what they say, that sedentary life is bad for health. I think it not only applies to a sitting down in front of a computer kind of life, but also a not getting out and staying in the same places can age your mind.

Write more.

Even if it’s not a blog post to publish. I want to do writing as a mind exercise of setting my thought clearly and in order in a written form. Writing your thoughts, memories and ideas down helps organizing your mind and it’s cool to be able to go back and read what you’ve thought before, how you felt, etc. The mind can’t retain all the details. The book Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past was a very inspirational read about getting into writing, as well as a good guideline on how to start and what to do.

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Montecristo Signature Series Humi-Savor Travel Cigar Case

Gabriel Saldaña — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 08:38:13 +0000

A few weeks ago I received the Montecristo Singature Series Humi-Savor from Montecristo. It’s a very nice travel cigar case that holds one piece but has the added benefit of having humidity control.

It’s a hard metal case with an internal base and a coil that will adapt to the size of your cigar to hold it firmly inside. The overall length is 8 3/8 inches and it can hold up to a 6×60 sized cigar. The top cover is a hard transparent plastic cap that seals the case tightly.

On the bottom part, there’s a plastic container with humidity pearls that expand when added distilled water. Those pearls will hold the humidity in the case for several days, maybe even weeks.

I loved this gift, specially these days that I’m visiting my parent’s house and can’t bring my humidor with me. This case will protect my cigar from any damage in my backpack and will also keep it fresh for several days until I light it up.

Although I got it for free, I’ve found it on several online stores at around the $25 USD price, which is not bad at all. I really recommend it for travelling smokers. Before having this, I used to save the crystal containers some Cohiba Coronas come in, but one day one of the containers broke and I had glass all over my bag and a torn cigar wrap. The Montecristo humi-savor is a much better and safer way to transport your cigars. If you have other tips for travelling smokers, please share them in the comments.

I plan to receive the new year celebrating with this 75th anniversary limited edition tobacco cigar from Montecristo. What are you smoking for new years?

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Goodbye Christopher Hitchens

Gabriel Saldaña — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Yesterday (Dec. 16, 2011) I read in the news that Christopher Hitchens passed away after a long struggle with cancer. Although I didn’t know the man personally, nor I’m familiar with all his journalistic work, his books, talks and speeches on atheism and against religion illustrated and influenced me a lot on recent years. I admired his courage and aggressiveness when attacking religion and defending reason. Some may criticize him for precisely this, because people don’t like to be confronted in such direct way.

The world will miss Christopher Hitchens because we need someone as aggressive as him, now more than ever, at these times when world leaders are getting more religiously fanatic than before. We have Richard Dawkins who is very sophisticated, logical and well, proffessor-like to teach about the bad things of religion, we have Penn Gillette who’s very charismatic, tolerant and quite intelligent to be non-confrontational when arguing the subject, but with Christopher’s passing, we now lack the passionate aggressive and straight to the point guy, a role very well filled by Hitchens and for that, he will never be forgotten.

I’d like to share some of my favorite quotes from him and a video of the best Hitchslap moments.

“One day a decent candidate for high office will say that he is not a person of faith, and the sky will not fall.”
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
“An argument that can be used to prove anything is open to the objection that it proves nothing.”
“Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did”
“The bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not boud by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured, human mammals.”
“…great damage has been done, and continues to be done, by such (religious) people and by such (religious) ideas. You’re better off thinking for yourself and taking all the risks, and I might add all the pleasures that will come from that. The most overrated of the virtues is faith. The metaphysical claims of religion are untrue.”
“I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion and organized religion”
“religion poisons everything”

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Goodbye ACM Crossroads, Hello GNU

Grant’s Tobacco shop

Gabriel Saldaña — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:27:00 +0000

While walking in the financial district of San Francisco, I stopped by Grant’s Tobacco shop. It’s a traditional tobacco shop that’s been around since 1849. I usually don’t stop by any tobacco shops in the US because cuban cigars are illegal, and most of the cigars I smoke are cubans. But I got curious about some humidors and decided to step inside and take a look.

Turns out they were having a small event, thanks to Montecristo (my favorite cigar brand) and they were selling the Operation Hope package, a box with 5 cigars, two of them limited edition, a lighter and a cap for $50 USD and the profits would contribute to the Montecristo Relief Organization, helping victims of hurricanes and other natural and economic disasters in the Caribbean.

They also offered free drinks and snacks, and since it was a great deal and also a good cause, I bought the package. As if not all of that was pretty good already, there was also a raffle for a beautiful Montecristo cigar ash tray and a cutter.

That night I hanged at the shop for a while to smoke one of the cigars (the one missing in the picture) at the smoking corner they have, have some snacks, and met a few cool people. Later on I was hanging around at some clubs with some of them. It’s fun and interesting to meet new people when travelling, and Grant’s shop made it very easy for a shy foreigner like me to socialize and have a good time among strangers.

Later, while I was travelling back to Mexico, I checked my emails and to my surprise, I won the raffle! The guys at Grant’s Tobacco were so cool that they are even sending me my prize all the way to Monterrey, Mexico! I’ll post pictures of the prize as soon as I get it.

I really had a great time at the shop smoking a cigar and talking to people. Everyone is very friendly and the staff give you good tips and advice on cigar care and smoking. If you’re in San Francisco and enjoy tobacco, don’t forget to stop by Grant’s.

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Will be speaking at FSLVallarta 2011

Gabriel Saldaña — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:13:00 +0000

This year I’ll be giving two talks at the Festival del Software Libre in Puerto Vallarta. This time I got invited on two topics, I’ll give my talk about DRM and for the first time I’ll be talking about Free Network Services (FNS), a topic I’ve been interested since my problems with google services and the increasing move of personal (and server) computing to the cloud. Although I definately cannot say that I do not depend on any cloud service (I do enjoy them), I am very aware of the risks. It’s not a technical talk at all, but a more philosophical one (FSF style).

I’m very happy to be invited to the event. I miss hanging around with all the friends from across the country, interesting and smart people that are always at software libre events. The exchange of ideas and debates are motivation boosters for new projects and great learning experience-sharing moments. Also the partying gets to be very hard as well… if you hang out with the right people.

It’s been a while since I went to my last free software/open source event and it’s been also quite some time since I’ve given my last talk. So I’m exited and nervous. I’m sure there’s going to be lots of interesting things going on and good stories to tell afterwards.

If you’re interested in the event’s schedule and the topics of all talks, you can consult FSLVallarta’s program.

Don’t foget to say hi if you see me over there, it’s fun meeting new people.

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