domingo, 28 de noviembre de 2010

Real Gone – Sheryl Crow y Yo

Usando varias tomas de batería acústica y electrónica, armé el diálogo con esta canción. Sigo experimentando con Reaper...



Para escuchar mis otras grabaciones, podés hacerlo acá.

I Am The Walrus – The Beatles y Yo

Hoy empecé a experimentar con la grabación de varias pistas de batería y percusión, sobre esta maravillosa canción con la que intento dialogar, como siempre, con todo respeto y cariño por la versión original y los artistas que la compusieron y grabaron en su momento, y que son parte de la inspiración que me trajo a elegir la música, como uno de mis medios de expresión :)




13/11 - Actualización:
Gracias a Pablo Maronna que consiguió la grabación original, sin batería ni percusión de ningún tipo, les acerco la mezcla de ésta, con mi grabación de batería y percusión, usada anteriormente :)




Podés también bajarlas acá la primera  y acá la segunda.


Para escuchar mis otras grabaciones, podés hacerlo acá.

Esto es Android

Para los que quieren saber más sobre éste sistema operativo, éste informe que lo detalla de forma muy interesante.

What Android Is

Being an illustrated run through the basics.

What happened was, for our recent South American tour I wanted an Android architecture overview graphic. I ran across, among the Android SDK documentation, a page entitled What is Android?, and it’s perfectly OK. Except for, I really disliked the picture — on purely aesthetic grounds, just not my kind of lettering and gradients and layouts — so I decided to make another one.

I thought I’d run it here and, since I’ve been spending a lot of time recently explaining What Android Is to people, I thought I’d provide my version of that as well, in narrative rather than point form.


First of all, as Dan Morrill memorably explained in On Android Compatibility, “Android is not a specification, or a distribution in the traditional Linux sense. It’s not a collection of replaceable components. Android is a chunk of software that you port to a device.”

Top-level view of Android

Linux · Underneath everything is a reasonably up-to-date Linux kernel (2.6.32 in my current Nexus One running Froyo), with some power-saving extensions we cooked up; the process of trying to merge this stuff into upstream Linux has been extended and public and is by no means over.

Android runs on Linux, but I’d be nervous about calling it a distro because it leaves out so much that people expect in one of those: libraries and shells and editors and GUIs and programming frameworks. It’s a pretty naked kernel, which becomes obvious the first time you find yourself using a shell on an Android device.

If it were a distro it’d be one of the higher-volume ones, shipping at 200K units a day in late 2010. But nobody counts these things, and then there are a ton of embedded flavors of Linux shipping in unremarkable pieces of consumer electronics, so there’s a refreshing absence of anyone claiming to be “the most popular Linux”. I like that.

Dalvik · The next big piece is Dalvik, comprising the VM and a whole bunch of basic runtime essentials. Its design is fairly unique, and judging by recent history, seems to be working out pretty well as a mobile-device app substrate.

All the standard APIs that you use to create Android apps are defined in terms of Dalvik classes and interfaces and objects and methods. In fact, some of them are thin layers of Dalvik code over native implementations.

It’s possible, and common practice, to call back and forth between Dalvik and native code using the JNI protocol, which is a neat trick since what’s running on Dalvik isn’t anything like Java bytecodes on a Java VM.

How It’s Generated · Native code is currently produced more or less exclusively by compiling C or C++ code; but there’s no reason it has to be that way. Dalvik code is currently produced by generating Java bytecodes and translating them; but there’s no reason it has to be that way.

I want to emphasize this point a little. Android apps are defined as code that runs on the platform and uses the APIs. As long as an app does these things properly, it’s really nobody’s concern how it got generated.

Special Apps · The picture is a little misleading, because some of those Dalvik-based apps are provided by Google and sometimes are seen as “part of Android”. I’m talking about the Dialer and Contacts and Calendar and Gmail and Chat and so on. Most of them are open-source and replaceable (and have been replaced by handset makers); a few are closed-source and proprietary, like Google Maps and Android Market.

That Open-Source Thing · In the big picture above, most of the stuff in green is Apache-licensed. The rest is a mixture of GPL and LGPL and BSD, with some Apache in there too. This excludes some low-level device drivers and of course the majority of non-Google apps, which are closed-source.

The Android Application Framework

The Framework · This is the stuff that uniquely defines Android; more or less everything that Google wrote and you wouldn’t expect to find on a reasonably-configured GNU/Linux box. Its proper use is the subject of all the many pages on display at developer.android.com and of endless mailing lists, sample sites, and a growing number of books.

I like it; but you already knew that.

The standard libraries that ship with Android

Libraries · The word “standard” here means “generally available to programmers working in an open-source environment”. The picture isn’t comprehensive.

Quite a few people, including me, have over-emphasized the role of the Harmony libraries. To start with, the Android selection excludes lots of stuff, for example AWT and Swing and OMG CORBA; all superfluous for apps using the Android framework.

Also, just counting roughly by code bulk of all the sort of stuff in this picture, the Harmony code comprises less than half the total. I don’t want to diss Harmony, they’re a wonderful project and I’m a huge fan; but it’s inaccurate to give the impression that Android is just Dalvik plus Harmony.

What’s in an Android SDK app

· · ·

What’s in an Android NDK app

What’s In an App? · An Android app lives in what’s called an APK, which is simply a ZIP file, with a particular internal file layout that allows it to be run in place, without unpacking. There’s nothing magic about them, you can email them around and drop them on USB keys and extract pieces with unzip.

The Android Manifest is the interface between an app and the Android system, and that’s all I’m going to say here because it’s a key piece of the puzzle and deserves lengthy discussion if any at all.

The resource bundle contains your audio and video and graphics and so on, the pieces that come with the app as opposed to being fetched over the network.

Native or Not · Most apps these days are written for Dalvik. When I say “most apps” I mean “everything that isn’t a game”; game developers typically want to code in C/C++ and that’s it. Dalvik offers a nice fast gateway to OpenGL and all the phone’s hardware, but game devs just don’t want to hear about virtual machines, so they use the Android NDK.

If you’re writing code in the Java programming language you can use Eclipse and a pretty nice toolchain that makes the barrier to entry remarkably low. If you’re coding to the NDK, you’re going to be doing a lot of the build-time machinery yourself and living without some of the nice debugging and profiling candy, not to mention signing up to port your code to other CPU architectures if they run Android and have lots of users. But game developers revel in pain.

Fuente: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/11/14/What-Android-Is

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Las diez cosas que jamás se deben probar cuando se come afuera

Gracias a Eldespabilador por mandar estos breves y útiles datos, aunque sinceramente, no sé si en lo personal vaya a seguirlos…

A la hora de ir a un restaurante, hay que saber pedir. Los tips que hay que tener en cuenta para optar por las mejores propuestas del menú y evitar los platos que no están frescos

La confianza digestiva nace en la milanesa con fritas y los ravioles con tuco, y muere en el bife con mixta y la muzza media masa. Para todo lo demás, se tiene miedo.

Salir a comer afuera puede ser un acto de arrojo: cualquiera sea el lugar elegido, siempre se confía en un estómago a manos ajenas, con resultado incierto.

Los amantes de la cocina de la abuela tuvieron que aceptar la moda de la cocina moderna: pero en nombre de la modernidad, muchas veces, se cometen sacrilegios. Estas son las 10 cosas que se deberían evitar cuando se come afuera.

1. No comer empanadas en una parrillas. Cuando vas a una parrilla, pedí sólo platos que provengan de las brasas. Y para ir picando, chori, morci o achuras. Jamás pidas una empanada, ya que muchos locales utilizan los recortes de carne asada para su relleno.

2. No untar el paté. Te lo dejan en tu mesa no bien llegás, pero lo que meten ese bol es una tristeza: procesan un rejunte de verduras sobrecocidas con algún caldillo o crema y las sobras que van pasando de mesa en mesa. Siempre mejor pedir manteca.

3. No pedir ensalada Caesar. La salsa en su receta original lleva yema de huevos crudos y con ellos, el riesgo de contraer salmonella.

4. No probar el pescado del día. La pesca del día no es otra cosa que una trampa literal -y literaria- del menú. La oferta nunca suele ser muy variada. En los bodegones medio pelo siempre será la merluza. Y el proveedor aparece una vez por semana. De frescura, nada.

5. No pedir ceviche si el restaurante no es peruano. La cocina peruana es pandemia. Y contagia con el síndrome de la mosca: aparece hasta en la sopa. Hoy todos los “restó” –palabra aborrecible- ofrecen ceviche, pero muy pocos hacen lo único que se debe hacer para prepararlo: hacerlo al momento con pescado bien fresco y, dentro de lo posible, con sus ingredientes originales. Entre los restaurante “no peruanos” sólo pedirlo si el local inspira mucha confianza, o estarás comiendo pescado crudo con sabor a nada y arriesgado a todo.

6. No pedir aceite de oliva Extra Virgen. Estamos sentados en un bodegón. Todo pinta bien: ambiente, platos, pan y vino. Hasta que pedimos que nos traigan el aceite de oliva para condimentar la ensalada verde. Entonces, acercan un líquido opaco, espeso y rancio: lubricante digestivo de aroma fiel a su lóbrego aspecto que arruina todo lo que toca, sentidos incluidos. ¿Tiene sentido arruinar la rúcula con aceite de maíz o girasol? Para nada.

7. No pedir mariscos. Los mariscos, cuanto más frescos mejor. Incluso vivos, si es posible. Del mar a la olla. ¿Cómo adivinar la edad y suerte de ese mejillón gratinado? ¿Hace cuánto abandonó su océano y transita por el patíbulo gastronómico, la dudosa cadena de frío a la que cada tanto se le pianta un eslabón? Una vez, en tránsito hacia el toilette de El Obrero, en La Boca (del lobo), este cronista pudo ver bajo el sol del mediodía de verano, una gran bolsa de red repleta de mejillones vivos, secándose al sol, ya moribundos. Si tan solo uno es suficiente para descomponer a una familia entera, eso era la bomba atómica. ¿La solución? Pedirlos a la provenzal.

8. Evitar el volcán de chocolate. El almendrado de los 80 y el tiramisú de los 90. Pareciera que esta década para abrir un restaurante la AFIP solicita en su formulario que el chef sepa hacer el volcán de chocolate. ¡Vaya suerte! ¿Y nosotros qué somos, conejillos de indias? Auque no es fácil replicar el postre más interpretado del mundo, hoy cualquiera se le anima. Para concebirlo con la dignidad de un traductor es necesario manipular con talento la mejor materia prima. Deporte en extinción. El fenómeno original se revela a corte de cuchara. Exterior templado y airoso: cónico, seco y opaco, del color del cacao. E interior activo: oscuro, denso, amargo, y caliente.

9. Evitar la "sugerencia del chef". Siempre hay que almorzar a la carta. El menú ejecutivo será la opción más económica, pero si se puede, lo mejor es esquivar las pizarras con la trilogía garabateada en tizas de colores. “Plato + bebida + postre = peligro de temporada”. Por lo genera, las propuestas de hoy, son las sobras de ayer. Lo barato al plato sale caro en digestión. La fuente de inspiración de los famosos menú ejecutivo proviene de lo primero que el cocinero tiene a mano, lo que no sale, aquello que está por vencer. A costa de nuestra salud.

10. No pedir vino por copa. Pedir vino por copas nos expone a tintos sobreoxigenados y blancos muertos. Tan muertos como la imagen de la marca. Esquivar el vino en copa hoy es fácil, pudiendo alguna buena botella de 375cl. que muchas bodegas han comenzado a comercializar.

Fuente: http://www.planetajoy.com/?Peligro:_10_cosas_que_jamas_tenes_que_probar_cuando_salis_a_comer_afuera&page=ampliada&id=719

Buy One, Get One 50% off Cookbook Sale!

Gran Turismo 5: Primeras impresiones

Finalmente y después de 5 años de desarrollo, el GT5 es una realidad… Y como pueden ver en las imágenes, más real que nunca!

Gran Turismo 5: First DriveAfter five years of development, Gran Turismo 5 is finally here. For three days we've ignored family, friends and hygiene test driving it to see if it's the most realistic racing game ever. It is. But should you buy it?

Full Disclosure: Sony wanted us to try out a copy of GT5 so badly they sent us a PS3, a copy of the game, and a Logitech Driving Force Gran Turismo Racing Wheel. The PS3 never arrived, the copy of the game was sent to the wrong address, and the wheel — well, I got the wheel. It worked very well with the PS3 and copy of GT5 I bought at Best Buy early Wednesday morning.

The vehicle graphics of GT5 are amazing on any of the 200 "premium" cars that are new to the game (on the 800 cars ported over from previous games in the franchise? Not as much). But the star here isn't the visuals. It's the driving dynamics, where the rubber meets the road. Moreso for Gran Turismo 5 as the franchise has long prided itself in its claim of having the most true-to-life driving dynamics of any other game on the market. Given how long GT5's been in development — five years — the gaming public's got some high expectations.

Jalopnik Reader Tip #1:
Level up quickly in the beginning of the game by doing the "Special Challenges" as they dispense experience and credits faster than the Spec races.
Jodark

The expectation bar's been met. Polyphony Digital's built a driving game with the most accurate individual vehicle driving dynamics mapping I've ever seen. That's right, Gran Turismo 5 is the most life-like racing game ever.

Go ahead, dump the clutch in a Camaro SS for a devastatingly stable tire-shredding burnout. Skitter around a corner like an excited puppy dog in a Mini Cooper S. Take off in a GT-R with launch control. It all feels spot on.

Gran Turismo 5: First Drive

And when I mean spot on, I mean it causes flashbacks. I took a level left-hand corner hard in the 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8 (no driving aids on other than ABS brakes) on a city course and felt the same sloppy steer-with-your-right-foot cornering I last remembered feeling driving around a Michigan left on Metro Detroit's Woodward Avenue. Entering the corner a touch too fast, I actually felt, through the controller, the rear end shift out from underneath me and start to slip sideways. Applying throttle while exiting the corner corrected the muscle car's big back end just like in real life.

But, for a real treat — and after eight hours of continuous play turned my thumbs raw and blistered from numb-on/off button-controlled acceleration and braking — I decided to pair the game with a Logitech Driving Force Gran Turismo Racing Wheel provided for me by Sony's PR team. The result was a driving experience that let me feel a car's weight, suspension set-up, and road surface in a way I've never felt before in anything but a multi-million dollar automaker simulator. The wheel changed the entire feel of the game, sucking me in for another 12 hours of gameplay.

Jalopnik Reader Tip #2::
Having trouble with the Top Gear Test Track Samba bus race? Try ignoring the racing line and follow these rules: Tap the brake at Wilson. Take the inside at Chicago and tap the brake, Take the inside at the hammerhead and tap the brake, then cut the corner when you start turning right, then flat out until you hit Bacharach start outside of the racing line, don't cut the inside so much that you go off the track, but come close, and just tap the brakes, then let off the gas a bit through Gambon, and across the line!

Remember if you hit another bus or try to pull a Tom Cruise you'll be disqualified. You are allowed to sideswipe buses as long they are turning into you also.

After a few tries you should be able to pass them all in one lap.
MikeHTiger

So, after a Thanksgiving Day 20-hour marathon gaming session, I can conclusively say that the phenomenally realistic driving dynamics and true-to-life individual vehicular profiles make Gran Turismo 5 a must-drive. The game's so real you'll cringe at the thought of trading paint with the other cars on the track.

That's a good thing because other areas weren't quite as straight-forward and realistic — like vehicle "interaction" — an odd puppy for GT5. You don't start the game in GT mode with vehicle damage unlocked. We've been told once you reach level 20 (we're only at level 11), you'll get access to realistic damage including mechanical problems and then, when you reach level 40, you get access to simulation-level damage where parts can fall off and cars can be completely totaled. But, for the first few levels you get a bumper car-like effect that's almost comical. Instead of wrecking, you just sort of smack into each other and bounce off. It doesn't matter whether the car you're driving is one of the 200 "premium" cars or one of the 800 "standard" ones.

But, damage works from the start of the game in Arcade mode. So, after smacking the front end of a Camaro into the rear bumper of my friend's Camaro in front of me in two player mode, I was satisfied to see a crumpled plastic rear end after we disengaged. Sadly, however, after shifting my camera view, I saw my front end was none the worse for wear. So it doesn't seem to be quite perfected.

Jalopnik Reader Tip #3:
To get the Penniless trophy, buy a Dhiatsu Copen Active Top and then go to the "Gran Turismo" Dealership and buy a Go-Kart. MAKE SURE you do this before buying any cars or doing any races, otherwise it will probably be a lot harder getting to zero credits.
jakebonz

Still, there's weird times where vehicle interaction works realistically — even before you've unlocked damage mode. For instance, while finishing the second level of the go-karting special event (go-karting, by the way, is far and away the most enjoyable part of the game — with the exception perhaps of Schwimmwagen and Kubelwagen racing), I found that when I smacked another kart in between its wheels with my driver's side front wheel well, it got snagged on the side of it until I braked to break away. Then, just like what I've had happen to me when I've been karting in real life, my opponent spun away in front of me, sending me spinning in the opposite direction.

Nagging problems with vehicle interaction are one thing, but given the time Polyphony Digital's had to put together this game, you'd think they'd have put together a better process for upgrading vehicles. For starters, Gran Turismo 5's menus are like the love child of a first generation iDrive and Jaguar's last-gen non-touchscreen interface — it's a terribly frustrating combination of being ridiculously time-intensive to navigate and completely unhelpful. But I'll let our friends at Kotaku smack them around for those type of user interface complaints.

Jalopnik Reader Tip #4::
When you've finished your License tests, turn off "User BGM" and disable "Race BGM" in order to save precious RAM bandwith. Trust us, Gran Turismo 5 needs it.

Instead, let's focus on how realistic it is to upgrade and maintain your cars. To begin with, the 800 "standard" cars — the vehicles ported over from the last generation of Gran Turismo — can't change rims or some body parts.

Although that's silly, there's a more glaring issue we've found with the upgrade function that affects both "standard" and "premium" cars — the ability to upgrade brakes is conspicuously absent. That's right, you can't swap in a set of Brembos or super size them.

Jalopnik Reader Tip #5:
The oil change glitch is still present.

When you buy a brand-new car, IMMEDIATELY take it to the shop and get the oil changed. It's only 250 credits, and you can get a significant power bump—on an Audi R8 5.2 FSI it's around 30HP, but it'll be different with each car.
rebeldevil

And speaking of where the rubber meets the road, there's also a lack of brands on tires. No Conti SportContacts, no Michelin Pilot Sport PS2s. Instead you're given three options — Comfort, Sports or Racing tires. While that's better than the old N, S and R naming for tire upgrades from the rest of the Gran Turismo franchise, it's still a far cry from realistic.

Still, these are somewhat minor issues given the massive addition of functions available once you unlock the more simulator-like option levels. You can choose a "fuel/tire depletion" mode that allows you to actually run out of gas and burn through your tires. There's a repair shop that's separate from the upgrade store that does everything from car washes all the way up to engine rebuilds and body work.

Gran Turismo 5: First Drive

So what's the verdict? Three days in — and with many more days left to go — I have to say that while Gran Turismo 5's driving dynamics are better than any other racing game on the market, Forza Motorsport 3's nipping closely at its heels*. And given some of the latter's better (and more clearly labeled) vehicular upgrade options, smoother interaction with AI vehicles, and GT5's installation "challenges" (like a 133 MB required update to make multiplayer mode somewhat usable), Forza Motorsport 3 provides a much more compelling option for a car enthusiast looking to jump into a realistic and entertaining video racing game.

But, if you want to lose yourself for days in the most utterly realistic yet overly-complex driving game ever, pausing only to defecate, urinate, sleep and eat (in no particular order), buy Gran Turismo 5.

Or, do what I did. Buy both.

*Full Disclosure: There's been one Jalopnik car pack for FM3 and one more on the way. But that doesn't mean we're biased. We'd love a GT5 car pack as well. Apparently Kazunori Yamauchi, GT5's cultish scion, said he'd like to see one happen too.

Note: Thank you to our readers who provided us with tips in Wednesday night's Gran Turismo 5 Open Thread and here in the comments of this post. We've peppered some of them in the sidebar. We hope they help.

Send an email to Ray Wert, the author of this post, at ray@jalopnik.com.

Fuente: http://jalopnik.com/5699667/gran-turismo-5-first-drive

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Impresionante 6850 Silent de PowerColor

El incremento en el rendimiento, conlleva a un incremento en el consumo y por ende, en la cantidad de calor disipada por las placas de video, en mayor o menor medida, depende de su diseño y del diseño de la solución térmica. Para solucionar el factor ruido, Powercolor presenta esta placa de gama media-alta, en donde implementa un gran disipador, que se vale únicamente del flujo de aire circulante en el gabinete para cumplir su trabajo. Lo notable es la categoría de la placa, ya que bien éstas soluciones, son fáciles de implementar en placas de menor orden. Bien por PowerColor!

PowerColor Readies First Passive-Cooled HD 6850 Graphics Card

PowerColor is readying the first AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics card that features a passive cooler, a completely silent cooling solution. The company is currently evaluating a new design that makes use of a large GPU heatsink featuring an aluminum fin array that ensures the card occupies just two expansion slots, while adding surface area by propagating to the top of the card, in an L-shape. The heatsink uses no less than five heat pipes to convey heat to the fins. PowerColor's card will be branded under the company's "SCS3" line of silent graphics cards. Based on the 40 nm "Barts" silicon, the AMD Radeon HD 6850 features 960 stream processors, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Availability and pricing is unknown as the design is yet to be finalized.

Fuente: http://www.techpowerup.com/135146/PowerColor-Readies-First-Passive-Cooled-HD-6850-Graphics-Card.html

Dungeons & Dragons Turbine Points

El porno 3D “a la carta” desembarca en Europa

La fiebre 3D, claramente no podía dejar a ningún género afuera, y mucho menos, a uno de los más rentables!

marc dorcel 3d porn El porno 3D a la carta desembarca en Europa

Aunque la verdad es que personalmente el porno ni me va ni me viene si que admiro a esa industria y sus profesionales, y los admiro principalmente por una razón sobre todas las demás: tienen unacapacidad asombrosa para incorporar al sector las nuevas tecnologías que van saliendo. En su día fueron de los primeros en subirse al VHS, después a los DVDs, de ahí pasaron a Internet, y ahora le ha tocado el turno al tan de moda 3D.

Casi al mismo tiempo que Hollywood variosproductores porno anunciaron que ellos también estaban rodando cintas en 3D pero como era de esperar esta industria no se ha quedado solamente en eso y va a ir más allá. “Bueno sí, ¿y qué más pueden hacer que rodar?” se estarán preguntando algunos. Pues ni más ni menos que lanzar un canal de video bajo demanda (VoD por sus siglas en inglés) de películas pornográficas en 3D.

Justamente eso es lo que ha anunciado en las últimas horas el prestigioso productor porno francés Marc Dorcel. De momento dicho canal, que se convertirá en el primero de su clase en todos los sentidos, solamente estará disponible en Francia y para empezar contará con una oferta de sesenta películas XXX producidas por el propio Dorcel a las que se irán añadiendo más. Para rematar la jugada el profesional del porno que nos ocupa ya ha dicho también que en un futuro cercano pretenden extenderlo por otros países europeos.

Dejando de lado el tema de si funcionará o no el mentando canal porno 3D (lo dudo, no por el porno sino por el 3D), lo que está claro es que otra vez más esta industria vuelve a sorprender y se pone a la cabeza de la innovación. Chapó por ellos y me quito el sombrero.

Fuente: http://alt1040.com/2010/11/porno-3d-europa