129 posts tagged with "in-English"

Sometimes that pseudonewspaper for commuters called “Metro” really makes me laugh.

Two quotes from today's issue:

“I got a satnav for Christmas but had to switch it to the male voice after the female voice kept sending me the wrong way.”

“Peter Griffin from `Family Guy´ […] and his son Chris while they're looking at some killer whales. Chris: `Dad, what's the blowhole for?´ Peter: `I'll tell you what it's not for. And when I do, you'll understand why I can never go back to Sea World´.”

One of my tasks during the development of Smart Zones Beta 2 is the HRM communication module, that allows users to import data about their training sessions to the application. Those cyclist or joggers who use HRM's know what it means. For the rest, let me briefly explain it.

“HRM” stands for “Heart Rate Monitor”. HRM's are small portable devices that measure and keep a log of your heart rate, i.e. the pace of your heart beats. Typically, you attach a strap to your chest and it detects the small electrical voltages that your heart produces when it's working. The other component is a radio receiver that usually has the appearance of a wrist watch. This device computes your current HR, shows that value on its small display, and records the whole sequence of values during your training session. It often polls the strap at intervals of five seconds. The information gathered may be shown in a heart rate graph.

Nowadays you don't need to be a pro to have one of these gadgets — they are sold with prices around £100 (~ €150) or even less. They are useful to keep your workouts at a high level without overtraining. Also, when you run or cycle, the messages that your body sends to you (about how tired you are, or how intense is the pain in your limbs) are pretty subjective, and highly influenced by psychological factors (e.g. you tolerance and perceptions are not quite the same if you train when you feel like shit). HRM's, on the other hand, always give you steel-cold measures that you can trust (damn) and let you know in which of your heart rate zones you are putting your heart.

An application like Smart Zones must integrate with HRM's to let users feed Trainsmart's database with accurate data about their training. The more accurate that feedback is, the better their suggested training programme will be.

Polar, a Finnish company, virtually invented HRM's. At this stage of Smart Zones, I have been working with their IrDA API to make some of their HRM's talk to Smart Zones via an infrared port (or an USB-to-IrDA device). I started working with the version 1.40 of their DLL and later upgraded to version 1.60. Everything worked fine, except that the progress bar that usually was shown during the whole synchronization process (see the image beside) was missing in the latest version. The sequence of commands that I was using was this one:

fnHRMCom_ResetIRCommunication (0)
    fnHRMCom_StartIRCommunication (HRMCOM_PARAM_IRDA, "IR")
    fnHRMCom_ReadMonitorInfo (&psg, &psmi)
    fnHRMCom_ReadExercisesData (hWnd, FALSE)

    for (int i = 0; i < psmi.iTotalFiles; i ++) {
        fnHRMCom_GetExeFileInfo (i, &pef)
        fnHRMCom_AnalyzeFile (i, 0)
        fnHRMCom_SaveExerciseHRM (hDlg, szOutputFile, 0)
    }

I knew that not having that progress bar would be a pain for users since infrared communication is infamous because of its low bandwidth. If a user tries to send data about all his 100 or 200 training sessions in the last year, it may take a few minutes to complete. So some feedback is vital to let them know that the synchronization is in progress. After spending far too long trying to find out why that dialog box was missing in the new version of the DLL, I did what software engineers sometimes do in such circumstances: undo the last changes and try to find out at what exact point things changed so badly. In that case, that meant reverting Polar's DLL to its previous version (1.40).

It worked, exactly as it should. There it was that nice dialog box with its progress bar.

Eventually I discovered that the parent window handle that I was passing to the function fnHRMCom_ReadExercisesData was NULL, and this function is supposed to receive a valid parent window. But even bearing that in mind, I don't understand why it needs another window handle if it works the same without it!

Never mind. Smart Zones is now accepting heart rate data from a wide range of Polar IrDA watches. And more Polar interfaces and other HRM brands are to come in the next weeks — we are pushing upgrades more or less once a week.

The article “consumerism” in Wikipedia should contain just #REDIRECT: [[London]].

Since I came here I've been curious about Christmas in London. Last Wednesday when I left the office I went by tube to Oxford Circus. At the beginning I thought that there was some accident, or maybe a demonstration on the street, because there were those long queues inside the underground station, and the crowd was pushing trying to make their way up the stairs to Oxford Street.

But, alas! When I went off the station I found what you see in these pictures: an amazing packed tide of people just… shopping. The flow of shoppers coming from Piccadilly Circus via Regent Street was colliding with people walking down Oxford Street. As a result there was that thick and dense swarm, far worse than the worst crowd that you could find in any trendy club at 3am. It took me a few minutes just to turn left, walk 50 metres and cross the road. And that was still nineteen days to Christmas day!

It's a shame that I'm not going to be in London by Christmas day — I've been told that 24th December the evening is a spectacle in that area.

It's great going to the cinema (or staying at home in front of the TV) and watching any film in its original language, without dubbing; either in English, in Spanish, in German… But it's a pain in the ass paying £8 (~ €12) ─or even more─ for that and swallowing 20' of trailers and ads before the film begins.

I can't get used to pubs just closing at midnight and bars being shut about 3 am. But I do appreciate being allowed to enter most bars and clubs wearing sneakers, a sweatshirt and a rucksack.

I like the fact that I'm not living among Spaniards, Andalusians, people from Madrid, Granada or Seville. Even if it's annoying finding so many Spaniards, Andalusians, people from Madrid, Granada and Seville living in London.

It is a pain having just eight public holidays a year. But I love being supposed to finish work at 5 or 6 pm and actually leaving the office at 5 or 6 pm.

It's great hearing every day from perfect strangers expressions like “that's lovely”, “I'm terribly sorry” or “how can I help”. If only you didn't keep wondering on some of those occasions how much of hypocrisy and cynicism there was in that sentence…

It pisses me off spending 2h30' of my day just commuting; waking up at 6:45, sweating inside the packed carriages of the tube, spending £11.50 a day on train fares. Fortunately, it makes me read books or newspapers, observe the people, and take notes (like these).

I love the possibility of grabbing (anywhere, at any time, in a few seconds) a huge, hotter-than-hot, freshly-made coffee to take away. I guess that I'm getting used to that disgusting dim taste as of plain hot water without enough coffee in it.

This vast diversity and infinite offer here can be oppressive; you cannot help feeling as if you were a foreigner; all of them seem to belong here, while you never will; too many things to do, too many ways to be. But it's still really wonderful contemplating Irish, black and Asian children playing football together in my estate; or women inside hijabs and women in bikinis all sitting together on the grass in the park.

I'm enjoying my life in London. I loathe my life here.

I happen to have two tickets to see Placebo at Wembley Arena (London) on Saturday 9th December this year. According to my statistics since I entered Last.fm, you could say it's my favourite band. It's definitely one of my favourites.

If anyone out there fancies coming to this gig to listen to Brian Molko's voice, please tell me before the end of November.

I have just finished my read-some-old-presents period. The last casualty has been this “All my friends are going to be strangers” by Larry McMurtry. McMurtry is, among other things, the winner of a Pulitzer prize and co-author of the screenplay for “Brokeback Mountain”. My uncle gave this book to me three years ago.

Even if I'm not as capable of a good review as malglam, here follows a brief opinion on the novel.

I found it difficult at the beginning to identify myself with the main character, or any of the other characters; the main reason being their exaggerated impulsiveness and ability to switch from love to anger and back. I'm very cerebral and sometimes take ages to make decisions; so reading about people who get married one week after meeting their partner for the first time or give away their car to a couple of hitchhikers, that tinged a bit the story with irreality. Characters that were being friendly the minute before, become suddenly crazy and start insulting or beating each other. Complete strangers seem open and generous as if they were good old friends of the main character's. There are surrealistic situations and dialogs, too; but I laughed with some of those.

“I have no real resistance to temptation, drunk or sober. […] I just don't have any moral coordination.”

“I had known all along that my brain was not going to win any fights ─ or impress any girls.”

Despite of this, I discovered that I was glad to read again about credible feelings of human beings in a realistic story. I had been missing that before. I had been lately going out with elves, spiders and psychokinetic teens. But this is a novel whose ingredients are writers, literature, friends, girlfriends, love, sex, loneliness and the search for happiness. And it's easy to read. So I got hooked.

Now the interesting thing is that by the middle of the book I started to feel empathetic with the main character, this young writer-to-be divided between his love for things (books, of course) and his love for people (women, no doubt), feeling utterly alone and more and more different from anyone he knows, without a clue about where he will be in a few days time, nor about how to find happiness.

“He had long ago concluded that I didn' lead a normal life.”

“All the furniture of my life had been changed around.”

“All the people I had things in common with were thousands of miles away.”

I liked the in crescendo that are the last chapters, and the end of the book, too. In general, I think I liked this book.

Reading others' presents before tackling the pila may let you discover books that otherwise you would had missed.

Thanks to the visit of my friends Helio & Puri last month, I went at last to Forbidden Planet, a shop (the shop) for scifi/fantasy/comic/manganime/figure/game-flavoured freaks in London :¬)

It's blissful, a nerdy paradise. Two pretty large floors full up with books, graphic novels, manga, magazines, figures, games and DVD's. Fortunately, photos are allowed (as long as you don't take any photo of the tills [?]) so here there are some images of the interior of the store.

I reassert my early appreciation about London: the best things it has are its parks and its bookshops.

Via Chewie's well-formed strings I discover “Even Stevphen”, the section that Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert have in “The Daily Show” (Comedy Central). It's a delightful exercise of intelligent humour in an elegant format.

I was just about to post their wonderful debate on medical marihuana, but I decided that this rational discussion about Islam vs. Christianity is even better.

BTW, Colbert is that one famous journalist that spoke for 24 minutes during the last White House Correspondents Dinner, corageously making so much fun of Bush and his administration. Chewie and I recommend not to miss that video, neither. (If you did read last month's “Wired”, you already know who he is).

Politics in Spain is dead boring. At least this is so when comparing with other countries.

I first realized this fact the year I lived in Italy. Italian politicians and parties are more diverse, brave and spontaneous than their Spanish counterparts. The ideological range is much wider, from the communists and radicals (Pannella, Bonino) to the nostalgic xenophobic neofascists (Bossi, Berlusconi). Not to mention the permanent inner fights in the leftish and Catholic parties (L'ulivo, La margherita, Prodi) and the fascinating tentacles of the Catholic Church. Many topics that in Spain are sort of taboo or understood ─civil war, gay rights, laicism vs. Catholicism, manipulation in the media─ are passionately discussed in Italy.

Now I find this George Galloway, a British MP that reminds me of Marco Pannella. Via my new flatmate I discovered this TV clip in which Galloway is interviewed in Sky News on the Lebanon vs. Israel crisis.

From Galloway's very first answer it's crystal clear that the interview is going to be anything but boring. This is a completely different point of view on international politics than the one the mainstream media show in their news. And Galloway puts forward his ideas in such a simple and passionate way that you can't but feel empathic with him. (And pity the newsreader who interviews him).

I also found a rough transcript of the debate.

Stimulating at the least, definitely you don't see these things in Spanish TV.