Carlos Domingo - Un poco de todo

I just finished reading Wall Street Meat from Andy Kesller and I am reading now his other book, Running Money. If you are interested in how the financial world is interrelated with high tech companies and the roles of analysts, hedge funds, etc. plus some good stories about well known characters that he worked with like Fran Quattrone or Henry Blodget, I recommend you his books. His style reminds me of Michael Lewis (I guess is the obvious comparison), pretty funny and ironic about the whole thing, with a good overview of financial topics but without getting into details (I can read that in an academic book, I am reading his books to have fun so I actually like that) and filled with anecdotes, some of them pretty unreal (but true nevertheless).

CD

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As promised, Andru is organizing the second edition of Seattle Mind Camp. I attended the first (actually, I started my blog right after attending it) so I will be attending this one again. It is just two weeks from now so hurry up, even though it will be bigger than previous one, it is still only open to 250 people. Btw, it is not sold out yet but if you go to the page, do not freak out since on the “recent posts” column on the right the first posts says “sold out” but it refers to the previous one.

Look forward to meet you there.

CD

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I do, actually, way too much, I get into a plane every week now and I have been acumulating way more miles than is healthy for the last several years. When you travel a lot, you become sort of obsses with small things like how to reduce waiting times, how to avoid lines, where to seat in each plane (you actually end up knowing the layout of the planes you take frequently), how to reduce jetlag, how to get upgrade, how to reduce tranfer times, best routes and airlines to go from one town to another, etc. The reason is that since you travel so frequently, you are just trying to make your life easier like with everything else.
So in case you are one of those, check out this Squidoo Lens on the topic and the related wiki page, there is not a ton of info yet but I like the idea of trying to gather all that information for frequent flyers that is dispersed on the Internet.

CD

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Can you recognize me?
Originally uploaded by carlosd - unpokodtodo.

The people I went to school with for 10 years (from 4 years old to 14) have been doing a reunion back in Barcelona (which obviously I missed since I am not living there now) as a result of that they have been exchanging old pictures. Can you recognize me on this one? It is actually a newspaper article about our class visiting a local newspaper when we were 10 years old.

CD

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A friend of mine just bought an adventure business in Taos, New Mexico so I thougth I will do him some free publicity.
If you are into whitewater rafting, kayaking or mountain biking, check Native Sons Adventure and they will give you all that and more in the wilderness of the Rio Grande river, Sangre de Cristo mountains, and other wild and scenic areas of northern New Mexico.
Sounds pretty cool and even though I am not too much into outdoors myself I will certainly go to visit my friend at some point.

CD

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I know is a Wednesday and I am not suppose to be blogging but I could not avoid posting something from 10,000 meters altitude while on my way to Europe with Lufthansa I am having my first Connection by Boeing experience. The days where you could enjoy a glass of wine and relax a bit on a plane while reading a book are over, now they have got Internet and it is pretty fast so I cannot avoid being on email and  working. I guess I have to stick to US airlines for a while since they typically take way longer to improve their planes if I want to avoid being working on the last place where I could not actually work (or not do email, I do in fact work on planes but without interruptions).

CD

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The latest craze in Japan are brain training games, specially one inspired by the work of a a neuroscientist called professor Kawashima, check an article about them here. As the article points out, this has boosted Nintendo DS sales to the point that when I was in Tokyo last week, it was impossible to buy it anywhere while PSP were getting dust on the shelves. Since I do not have a DS but a PSP I got the PSP version which, in spite of not having the touch screen which apparently makes the game easier to play and hence why is so popular on the DS, it is fairly addictive (plus it trains my brain!!!). The different games are broken into four categories (like numbers or memory) depending on the skill you are training and as you get good into each test, you get higher levels and new games for each category. Pretty cool, I am sure that it will be a hit outside Japan as well as Sudoku has been (the English version apparently will include Sudoku, I actually do not like to play Sudoku on the computer, I am much better at it with a paper and a pencil where I can freely annotate hints all over the place).

CD

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A couple of weeks ago my wife and I headed down to Australia for a friends wedding (love the fact that even though Australia is far away from Tokyo, since there is only 2 hours time difference you can make a short trip down there just by traveling during the night) so on we meet in Narita airport the evening we were leaving and go to the Quantas counter to check in.
When we are about to get the boarding passes, the person in the counter asks us about our visas. Our what? I did not know that I needed a visa to go to Australia!!! As a European, I tend to think that I do not need a visa to go anywhere and in January I almost missed my trip to India for the same reason. But this time it was 7pm, we were in the airport and the plane was leaving in an hour so no way to go get a visa on time. I totally freaked out so I called my friend Joe in Australia that was getting married and told him the bad news, we are in the airport and we cannot go (and I was in his bridal party!!!). So we are there trying to figure out what to do when he calls back with a URL where we can apply for a visa online and get it on the spot!! Don’t you love e-goverment? I opened up my laptop right there, got into the airport wifi hotstop, go to the Web site of the Australian Electronic Travel Authority and after filling some e-form and paying AUS$20 for each of us, I get our visas, the people from the Quantas counter can check on their computers that we have got them and handed us the boarding cards.
Not really sure what is the point of asking for visas if they do not do any checking on who is applying (which since it was granted inmediately I do not think that is possible) but thanks to the Web, e-govement, laptops and wifi in the airports, my wife and I managed to attend Joe and Rebecca’s wedding and spend a very nice weekend in Australia.

CD

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I have not blogged for three weeks, the longest black out period in my blog since I started it back in November. Does this making me a bad blogger? Where, not really. According to Technorati’s presentation at ETech 35% of all the blogs are dead (not updated in more than 3 months, so three weeks can probably considered just being sick with a cold in comparison), 50% stop blogging within the first 3 months since they start (I am heading towards my six month) and only 10% of the blogers updated their blog more than once a week (I have been regularly blogging most of the weekens since I am strictly a weekend blogger).
So why not blogging lately? Well, first, one weekend out on a wedding in Australia (more on this later as I have a good story about that trip and Australian e-goverment), another weekend in Tokyo busy with my wife, and then two other new entertainments that prevent me from blogging, buying a Mac and playing around with it and getting a new game on my PSP that is really cool (brain training, I will post about it even though is not release in the US I think).
I am also in the middle of another project which is to decide whether I move my blog out of here and put it into a .Mac account so I can use iWeb to blog (way cool even though a bit rigid and certainly missing some functionality that I like of my current blog software). I am also trying the new Typepad widgets that were announced last week.

CD

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