So who will be in the Final? well I’m not sure, I haven’t picked beyond 4 because it’s tough.  My dream scenario would be England v Argentina because of the implications; who could forget the hand of God? or the best solo play ever? Just imagine how awesome it would be if they meet in the finals with Maradona as coach.

Now the more likely final scenario for me would be Brazil v Argentina, I really want Spain to win it all, but for some reason I don’t see them being able to get there.  It’s just that the South Americans have so much football history that they are the natural favorites.  In under a month we’ll see if my picks pan out and I will probably update my final pick once I see the first few games.

In any case here are my world cup picks:

I hope you all enjoy the month-long football event as much as I will enjoy it!

-Background image based on picture courtesy of Shine 2010

This situation is just another example of how “social” is changing the way businesses deal with the customer experience. For the last five years or so, the emergence of social tools like facebook, twitter, digg and the now-less-relevant myspace, has enabled people to have a stronger voice. All of the sudden people can voice their concerns, complaints and preferences to an audience that may or may not agree with them. This is the “new” word-of-mouth, same concept as before just faster, louder and therefore more effective. This kind of empowerment has increased people’s sense of entitlement. People feel more than ever that companies must treat them with more respect.

The question raised in class was whether the whole situation was to “punish” Boeing or just a publicity stunt by Harry’s father… or both.  I don’t think John (Harry’s dad), or the people involved in one way or another, want(ed) to put Boeing back in line per se. I believe that they expected a friendlier customer experience from Boeing, or any company for that matter. It’s hard to determine if John intended to use the situation as free publicity, but the situation sure fits what his company offers. He created content and engaged the community the right way to create a buzz, enough to get the New York Times interested in the issue. The way the issue developed definitely helped him promote his image and his company indirectly.

As for the other questions raised in class (would you change airlines? and would airlines boycott Boeing?), I don’t think they are too relevant. First, Boeing’s action wouldn’t make me or a normal people switch airlines to ones who do not use Boeing planes. I do not feel offended by their action and finding other airlines would cost too much of my time, more than my perceived benefits. Second, airlines have limited options when it comes to airplane suppliers, limited options means that there’s not much airlines are willing to do to “support” a boycott. Harry’s issue is trivial when compared to the issue of changing airplane suppliers; however it would be interesting to look at the issues again if more people around the world support Harry.

Whether we like or not, as consumers or businesses, the barriers separating customers from the corporate world have shrunken. However, we should understand that as customers we can’t get everything we want; and as businesses we can no longer treat customers the way we’ve been doing for the last fifty years.

• That insurers should accept customers who have preexisting conditions.
• Children can be under their parents’ insurance up to 26 instead of 21.
• No Lifetime cap.

I do understand that they cost money, however I do not mind paying a reasonable amount of money to have them.  Just as there are things that I like about the HCR (Health Care Reform) there are things that I do not like.  Many of the things that I’m against have been put in place to finance the operation i.e. everyone must have health insurance or else; penalties for employers who do not offer basic health care plans; etc.  Economically they make sense, it is a form to pay for health care without raising taxes directly.  However, it limits the options that a citizen has… it is in essence limiting the citizen’s freedom to choose.  This issue is being raised by many states (including my home state of Florida) who question the constitutionality of the new law.  Personally I think that the Supreme court will rule in favor of the bill.  Why? because they will see the current suit as a political move –plain ‘ol propaganda.  However, I see more suits down the road where they will bring a legitimate argument to the table and challenge specific sections of the bill rather than attacking it as a whole.  At least that’s what I expect/want to happen.

The changes:

1. Google’s logo has been updated
2. Search button has been updated
3. Location; it now tells you where you are searching from and it allows you to modify your location and apply it to searches.
4. Results count and query execution time has been moved to the top right just above location.
5. The search options on the left have been, slightly, updated (UI wise)

I went with two guests and we were escorted to our table within a minute, but it took them about 10 minutes to return to ask us about our drinks. We might have been an exception since some other guests got their waters almost immediately, but for some reason they “forgot” about us.

After we ordered, we got our salads and soup (for me), one of the guests found a piece of plastic on his salad, and we didn’t event get an apology.

The main dishes arrived fairly quick after we ordered (about 15-20 min), and we also got our water approximately 30 min after being seated. The food itself was alright, I’ve had better sushi than the one I had there. I had a “Matsu” (6pc sashimi and california roll), I replaced the roll with their “Ultimate Roll”. In addition my guests had the “Volcano Roll” and the “Lego My Ego Roll”. I tried a roll from each of my guests and I have to say that the Volcano was alright, a little too sweet for my taste but good, the Lego My Ego was alright, I wouldn’t order it again. My dish, the sushi was good but the fish didn’t seem as fresh and a bit too much wasabi which overpowered the taste of the fish. The Ultimate roll was supposed to have spicy mayo (which I didn’t feel), it also felt too sweet for my taste.

The dessert, fried cheesecake, was probably the best part of the night.

This place didn’t blow me away and I wouldn’t consider it a top-tier restaurant let alone a top-tier Japanese restaurant. I don’t think I was the only one that came in by good word-of-mouth, but left disappointed. An older couple sat beside us and they complained from the start until they left and with good reason. They didn’t get what they ordered and were charged for things they didn’t ordered. In addition another group of people were discussing rolls that appeared on their check when they didn’t have them.

Would I go again? maybe, if someone invites me, but I would try to suggest other places instead.

This is the latest “entry” level Ferrari, it replaces the current Ferrari 430 which is IMO the best looking Ferrari of the current crop.  I’m actually surprised with how the 458 ended up looking, I feel that it has a little Japanese influence in its lines.  But I like the fact that they decided to streamline the design and made the car more compact (at least visually).  Well enough rambling just hit play and listen to that engine scream.

Lamborghini Reventón Roadster

All I have to say is: this car is plain ridiculous.  The Reventón looks crazy and I love it; I wonder if I’ll ever see one in Miami…

Therefore I decided to write him a little class to perform a basic bandwidth test.  It is not complicated at all, which is probably why nobody bothered posting the code online, to write code to test for speed but I have to admit that is not extremely accurate.  The accuracy of the test depends on the size of the file being downloaded for the test, the larger the file the more accurate the test is but the longer it takes to complete.  This is where one has to decide between accuracy and waiting time,  I find that a file of about 32KB gives a reasonably accurate idea of the speed a client has.  Why? well most, if not all, broadband users will be able to download this in less than a second and the results will most likely be above 100KBps, which should be fast enough for most instances that you want to test for.  Worst case scenario you could write some sort of loop that will keep testing the speed against increasingly larger files until you are satisfied with the results.

So how does it work?

Create an instance of the BandwidthTest class, whose constructor takes one parameter, the URL for the image or swf to test against.  Once you have your instance, you need to attach an EventListener to check when the test is complete and the last step is to call the start() function to start the test.

import com.yeungus.utils.BandwidthTest;

StartButton.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, startTest );
var test:BandwidthTest = new BandwidthTest( "http://yeungus.com/images/sample_image.jpg" );

function startTest( e:MouseEvent ):void
{
	test.addEventListener( Event.COMPLETE, downloadComplete );
	test.start( );
}

function downloadComplete( e:Event ):void
{
	_results.text = "results: " + Math.round( test.speed ) + "KBps";
}

The Actual Class

Basically we measure the time it takes to download something and we divide the file size by said time.  The formula looks like:

KBps = filesize(in KB) / ( endtime - starttime )(in s)

The rest of the class just takes care of basic things like converting time into seconds and bytes into kilobytes.  The other thing that I would like to point out is that you can use the same image to do your tests.  The class attaches a random number at the end of the target URL in order to avoid caching the image.

package com.yeungus.utils
{
	import flash.display.Loader;
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.events.EventDispatcher;
	import flash.events.IOErrorEvent;
	import flash.net.URLRequest;

	public class BandwidthTest extends EventDispatcher
	{
		public var URL:String;
		public var debug:Boolean = false;
		private var _speed:Number;
		private var _startTime:Number;
		private var _loader:Loader;

		public function BandwidthTest( testFileLocation:String ):void
		{
			URL = testFileLocation;
		}

		public function get speed( ):Number{ return _speed; }

		public function start( ):void
		{
			URL += "?" + ( Math.random( ) * 100000 );
			_startTime = ( new Date( ) ).getTime( );

			_loader = new Loader( );
			_loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( Event.COMPLETE, downloadComplete );
			_loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener( IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, ioErrorHandler );
			_loader.load( new URLRequest( URL ) );
		}

		private function downloadComplete( e:Event ):void
		{
			var endTime:Number = ( new Date( ) ).getTime( );
			var totalTime:Number = ( endTime - _startTime ) / 1000;
			var totalKB:Number = e.currentTarget.bytesTotal / 1024;
			_speed = totalKB / totalTime;

			if( debug )
				trace( "total time: " + totalTime + " total KB: " + totalKB + " speed: " + speed + "KBps" );

			dispatchEvent( e );
		}

		private function ioErrorHandler( e:IOErrorEvent ):void
		{
			_speed = -1;
			trace( "URL not found" );
		}
	}
}

Demo

Summer School

During this semester (summer 09) I’ve been using this playlist to study and write papers for my financial analysis and marketing research classes.  I like these songs because they are very relaxing and they don’t disturb my studies, with them I actually read for longer periods of time.

Work

Well this playlist for work might seem awkward to some, but these songs give me the feeling, the energy to work.  I must say that a lot of these songs where introduced to me by someone else, I don’t think I would have heard them otherwise.

I’m currently working on a winter playlist so if anyone has a great tune to share let me know, I would like to hear.

The film opens with a big sequence that sets up the story and the tone for the rest of the movie and it also kick starts the introduction of our main characters. In fact most of the characters are introduced by the half hour point where the movie suddenly shifts gears and takes us inside the U.S.S. Enterprise.

I feel that Abrams’ and his team did a great job casting all the characters, again I do not know anything about Star Trek, but the actors sure knew how to act. But I have to single out our two main characters James T. Kirk and Spock. Both characters back stories where well written and well acted on screen.

I specially liked how Zachary Quinto’s Spock portrays the conflict he is dealing with for being half human and half vulcan. There are scenes in which I really felt the pain and anger Spock was experiencing, yet he seemed calmed and logical as well. I found the portrayal very interesting and I think that Spock is a good opposite for Kirk’s character.

Kirk is played by Chris Pine, who I’ve never heard of before this movie, and he does an incredible job. I liked Kirk’s arrogance, wittiness and overall badassery. One can feel that Kirk knows he is the best of all of them and he sure demonstrates he is.

Not only did I find the cast good but the film’s cinematography is also outstanding, I loved the realistic feel the film had. Quite the opposite of the latest Star War movies where everything seems “too clean” and CGIish. The film goes by fast for a two hour long movie, an indicator that the film as a whole is entertaining and that there are no scenes that feel out of place or dull.

One of the things that I found really interesting is the way the movie kind of acknowledges the Star Trek that most people know and yet this movie clearly lets us know that this is a reboot to the franchise.

However there are some flaws. First and foremost the romantic scenes between two characters, which I thought where OK at first but where kind of annoying and over the top as the film went on. The second flaw is something I thought could have been better and that is the antagonist, captain Nero. Nero’s character does have a good story but Nero himself has little screen time and he didn’t really feel that threatening. Maybe with some more screen time Nero would have come across as more of a villain than he did.

I think that this movie will be a success worldwide and it will probably be the best if not one of the best movies this summer. I personally hope Terminator Salvation is as good if not better than this movie, but that might be tough, we will find out in a couple of weeks. Star Trek is definitely worth the price of admission and I think that it deserves a solid 4 out of 5 star rating.

I went online to try to get some info on this P90X thing and all I could find was infomercial crap and some youtube videos of people’s transformations using the program. I said to myself “heck, got nothing to lose” and got the P90X Extreme Home Fitness with Tony Horton – DVD set @ Amazon. I have to admit I was very skeptical about the P90X program, but to my surprise it is really intense.

So far I’ve been on the program for 30 days and I feel very good both mentally and physically. My actual weight has not gone down dramatically (~7 lbs) but I attribute this to my decision of not following the program’s dietary strategy. I do know that the diet plan will help me shred more weight that the just the exercise routines, but it is really difficult for me to adhere to the plan. Anyhow I must say that I still have to master all the routines, ab-ripper, plyometrics and core synergistics are IMO a bitch, the rest of the routines I can manage well. From all the routines that come on the DVD set (12 routines in all) my favorite ones are: Kempo-X, Yoga-X and Cardio-X.

I have to say that I’m very happy with the program and there seems to be a lot of community support on the internet. For instance when I started tweeting about my P90X experience, other fellow users replied back offering help and support. I have to say though, some of them where actually “spamming”, but others where real people, interested in only helping. I’ll try to make posts when I reach days 60 and 90 to document my progress. I really want to reach my goal this year, lets see if P90X can help me reach it, as Tony Horton would say bring it! I know I’m up for it.

Some bloggers who document their P90X journey:

• Chris Fehnel
• Mike Stickel
• Orlando Saez