First time

There are some things that every person should do at least once. One of them is shaving your head, which I’ve done more than I would’ve wanted to. Another is creating a website. Although I’m not a developer, web designer or programmer I do enjoy spending time in front of a text editor writing code. Most of the time I’m actually debugging but in the end there’s always some sort of functional code.  My brother is a photographer and wanted to redesign his website so I decided to offer him my time and effort. Not my skills, since in the fields of HTML, CSS and web design they are non-existing.
The web is benevolent and resources such as w3schools provide most of the necessary things to get you started with both HTML and CSS. Skimming though the tutorials and googling what I could not grasp immediately I got to understand the basic structure of an HTML file:html, head, body.

The success criteria were properly defined from the beginning:

• Content before layout: its the pictures that are important, not the fancy flash animations
• Single-page design: navigation pane + display area
• Everything should be done with a text editor.

The process started with a reverse engineering approach. We had a list of websites that we liked so I looked at the code (Ctrl+U in Firefox). The use of tables was everywhere, so I decided that it was probably the best approach. I didn’t get too far before realizing that I was never going to be able to achieve what I wanted to with the use of tables. Welcome div. By using div I was able to control the exact positioning of the elements thing that I found extremely complicated to obtain with tables. I’m not saying it’s not possible, I’m just saying that for me it was not evident how to do it. Besides, tables should only be used for tabular data right? Well, you  might argue that the table tag is just meant for that but I used tables inside the divisions for the navigation pane (thumbnails)  and for the display window (where the content of each thumbnail is presented).
One of the most interesting challenges was how to change dynamically the content of the display window. I of course did not write the javascript myself, instead I googled it and the outcome, although cryptic, did its job.
After a couple of months working on and off in the design we ended up with something which we are pleased. Simple though useful. Enjoy juancamiloparedes.com

ps. I wish I had read this before starting this website design process.

twitter is down

It’s down and Tom Morello is answering geeky guitar questions. Damn !!!

Hay un daño en el baño

El viernes a las 21:30 Maite gritó: “Santi !!!”. Cuando llegué al baño, había un charco en el piso. No muy grande pero significativo. En ese momento se me paso por la cabeza la conversación que habíamos tenido el día anterior acerca de los seguros que tenemos y de cómo no teníamos muy claro que es lo que cubre cada uno. El agua venía del piso de arriba. Al subir a hablar con el vecino abrió la puerta su hijo de di tu más o menos 16 años. Estaba en boxers y un poc agitado. Depués de preguntarle si su madre o padre estaban en casa y de explicarle lo que había pasado, ya que no había ningún adulto en casa, el muchacho confeso que había tomado un baño largo. Que tan largo, no se, no le pregunte. El caso es que después de unas horas la vecina de abajo toca en nuestra puerta para decirnos que por el techo de ella también se f filtrando el agua.
Veremos que pasa cuando el dueño del apartamento de arriba llegue de su skiferie. Sea lo que sea el problema se originó arriba.

Filtering rubbish

Filter RSS feeds with Feed Rinse
I use Google Reader for my feeds and sometimes it’s extremely overwhelming the amount of items that I receive. Therefore I decided to filter the feeds. This is what I did:

In Google Reader export the feeds (opml file)

In Feed Rinse import the opml file

Apply rules. Filter by post, title, body or tag

Export the rinsed feeds (opml file)

Import the rinsed feeds in Google Reader

The result: No more rubbish.

ChucK

ChucK => Strongly-timed, On-the-fly Audio Programming Language

Three platforms; Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. It actually is on-the-fly programming, although the syntax is kind of strange, it starts to make sense when you think about connecting things like you would with an electric guitar.

To start ChucK:
%>chuck –loop &

To add a shred:
%>chuck + yourChuckFile.ck

To check the status:
%>chuck –status

To remove shred number 898
%>chuck – 898

To kill ChucK:
%>chuck –kill

From Blogo

This is created from blogo. It’s free to try it for 21 days and if you want to buy it you´re going to be $25 short. But the license allows you to use it on up to three computers. I only have one and most likely I’m not going to buy it. But its worth the free trial.

The user interface is very mac-os-x-ish, simple and elegant. Adding images is as simple as clicking a plus sign and editing either the thumbnail or the full size image is painless. You can edit the post in rich text format or if you prefer you can write your own HTML code. The formatting features include bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, cite and list. A handy link button helps in the process of directing readers to other websites.
The feature I like most is the fullscreen mode. It does help you focus on what you are writing, and the gray background is appealing.

Conclusion is, it’s nice, it’s elegant but in my case it’s probably not worth the $25.

Paredes-Tello v2.0 (beta)

Es oficial. Con ustedes la segunda versión de Paredes-Tello

traffic light

It started out as an excercise. A superellipse class that I didn’t use because never got it to work. However I’m kinda pleased with the outcome: a traffic light

acústico

Hoy me llego un correo muy grato. Trés canciones de Ultrágeno interpretadas de manera acústica por Amós Piñeros y Alfonso Espriella. El tiempo pasa, y eso vale para todos.

processing

Instead of a hello world I’ve decided to create a cardioid.

float r = 25.0;    //radius of circles
float x;           //x-coordinate cartesian cs
float y;           //x-coordinate cartesian cs

void setup(){
  size(200,200);
  frameRate(30);
  smooth();
  background(0);
}

void draw(){
  float i = 0;
  while (i<TWO_PI) {
    x = random(0)+(2*r*(cos(i)-0.5*cos(2*i)));
    y = random(0)+(2*r*(sin(i)-0.5*sin(2*i)));
    fill(random(255),random(255),random(255),random(255));
    noStroke();
    ellipse(width/2+x,height/2-y, r/3, r/3);
    noLoop();
    i+= (TWO_PI)/100;
  }
  saveFrame("cardioid.png");
}