Just came across this short video from TED. It’s Renny Gleeson on the “culture of availability” @ TED.

My head just exploded. How is it that there are some people that see so clearly the implications of the apparently obvious?

Pay attention to what he says. I had to replay it to capture the enormity of what he is saying.

Renny Gleeson on the "culture of availability" @ TED

This is a short (and very well done) documentary about Buenos Aires’ electronic music scene, it’s beginnning in the late 80’s and development through the 90’s and first years of the 00’s.

A number of very well known argentinean djs tell this story through their eyes, and share with us what makes Buenos Aires one of the most wanted venues for international djs.

If you were part of the scene through those years,  you’ll certainly agree with a lot of what they say and you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Directed by Paulino Estela. Filmed during 2000-2001. Edited during 2003-2004.

These are the flyer and ticket I made recently for a “Carnaval” themed party organized by the LAHIMA club at Kellogg.

Let me know if you need something done for a party YOU are organizing.

Ticket

Flyer

Simfonik.com

Early 90’s mixtapes from the electronic underground. free. so awsome.

This is Buenos Aires

A teaser I recently designed for a costume party we are organizing…before we changed the party’s theme.

Guys, wanted to share this new set with you.

Back form a friend’s birthday on Saturday, I plugged in the cables, opened a Stella and this is what came out at 4am.

If you are into dark, driving, floor filling progressive house, you’ll like this.
Would love to hear your feedback or rating.
Enjoy!

Democrat states and bailout money

Mash-up between the results of the last presidential election and destination for bailout funds. Intended as a funny or curious excercise, as there are population considerations that distort the correlation.

Courtesy of our friends in Economista Serial Cronico (spanish).

A cold afternoon of the first day of 2009. Picked up the cameras and went for a long due photography outing with my friend Carlos.
Lake Michigan shore is fantastic and surreal during winter.

I wish we had similar rollercoaster in my country. The park was amazing, and the coasters thrilling.

Monday, Oct 6th 2008
2.15pm CT

CIM Ball 26 Sept 2008, originally uploaded by dlev1979.

Once more I had the amazing opportunity to be in a party in the Field Museum. Last year it was my first formal in Kellogg, this time as a photographer.

The place is simply surreal.

Something remarkable about the night: it was the first time I photographed an event, and I am still stunned by the power that a camera brings. I never felt it so strongly, and I am thinking about writing in more detail about this experience in the future.

For those that have never experienced it, go…grab a camera and do it.

I actually like Matt Maroon’s interpretation of the new Microsoft ads.

Microsoft’s main objective with these ads is to get back the mindshare that Apple has totally stolen from them in the last 5 years. They can’t do it by just splashing some ads up that say “Vista is good.” They’re targeting consumers (and businessmen, but businessmen with their consumer hat on watching a football game) so to get any attention at all they have to come out of left field, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

I think there’s a very good chance that we’re seeing the sort of marketing campaign that will be studied in universities for years to come. I’m not sure which way it will go.

Yup, he nails it here.

Mountains, originally uploaded by dlev1979.

Memorias con textura

Wow! I’ve just found out one of my class mates here at Kellogg does this incredible artwork, which she hosts in her own website. It’s interesting to discover we have some artists in the class, especially given my absolute lack of drawing abilities.

Much more of her work here. Check it out.

Pure stark raving mad, 130 bpm, driving, deep, groovy, oldschool progressive. Some of the tunes here go back all the way to 1996, some others are quite contemporary (as difficult as is to find that kind of material recently), but each of them is a piece of candy that remembers me of the scene’s prime time some years ago. I am sure this style is still being played in some underground clubs around the world, hidden from mainstream’s spotlight.

Although it is only a ~75 min segment from a longer mix I played a couple of days ago, I believe it really captures the feeling I was looking for. It started on a more trancey side, which helped reach the 130 bpm easily.

This is probably the best mix I’ve ever made.

First quick mix with my new Behringer. After a dissapointing experience with Traktor 3 (jittering, stuttering, even with a workhorse laptop), I’ve switched back to PCDJ Dex…which has the most horrible GUI but functioned flawlessly.

Enjoy!

Finally. I have to say the BCD 3000 is not the easiest digital dj system to set-up, especially if you run Vista (Behringer is yet to provide Vista compatibility, drivers & support), but is up and running now so expect new sets up.

Hopefully I’ll be able to spin some house during the next United Beats of Kellogg.

laptop + behringer BCD 3000 + external hd + sony mdr-v300 + traktor 3 LE + CUBE CM-30 monitor

youtube video: random tracks

7′ 40″ – Jobs: ”If you look what the iPod is…is software; if you look in what a Mac is, it’s OS X…it’s in a beautiful box, but it’s OS X, right? And if you look in what an iPhone would hopefully be…it’s software. And so, the big secret of Apple is that Apple views itself as a software company.”

Imperdible. Gates & Jobs face to face, talking about the ol’ times during All Things Digital.

 dlev – Hair
Quality: 128 kbps
Duration: 1hr 17′ 30″ 
Recorded: July 18th. 2005
Where: Hairdressing saloon in the argentine neighbourhood of Agronomia, if my memory is correct.

Style: This only a part of the full mix (aprox 2hrs 30′). Begins quite groovy on a general progressive house style, as the mix goes on, transits some trippy places and tends to go on the electronic side (depeche mode – happiest girl (leftfield & lydon)). Trying to regain beat momentum, I drop some house and move to some oldskool jumping (depeche mode vs. deep dish – future dream (james zabiela) and some version of Moby - Go which I can’t remember.

People were having fun! Customers where actually dancing and I believe the saloon even had a bar (it was Saturday). Overall quite an eclectic mix, non traditional progressive house and not as smooth as I would like, yet very enjoyable.

…and early forties Friedrich Hayek turned to the debate about whether socialist planning could work. He argued that it could not. The reason socialist economists thought central planning could work, argued Hayek, was that they thought planners could take the given economic data and allocate resources accordingly. But Hayek pointed out that the data are not “given.” The data do not exist, and cannot exist, in any one mind or small number of minds. Rather, each individual has knowledge about particular resources and potential opportunities for using these resources that a central planner can never have. The virtue of the free market, argued Hayek, is that it gives the maximum latitude for people to use information that only they have. In short, the market process generates the data. Without markets, data are almost nonexistent. Mainstream economists and even many socialist economists now accept Hayek’s argument. Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs has stated: “If you ask an economist where’s a good place to invest, which industries are going to grow, where the specialization is going to occur, the track record is pretty miserable. Economists don’t collect the on-the-ground information businessmen do. Every time Poland asks, Well, what are we going to be able to produce? I say I don’t know.”

The Concise Enciclopedia of Economics on Friedrich August Hayek (1899-1992) – Economics Nobel Price 1974

“Friedrick Hayek, intelectual austríaco y premio Nobel de Economía en 1974, advertía que los nuevos planificadores nos prometen una libertad colectiva que, en el fondo, no es otra cosa que la libertad del planificador para manejar la sociedad a su antojo, restringiendo las libertades individuales.”

Fernando Laborda – La Nacion.com.ar

 Enough politics…next post is music.

1. Apple is distributing its Safari for Windows (“Winfari”) disguising it bundled with an iTunes update. So if you have anykind of *pod device, unless you actually read what iTunes’ update pop-up said and unchecked the default installation option, you now have a brand new (and completely underperforming) new browser.

What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad — not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web. What they did yesterday was to use their updater for iTunes to also install their Safari Web browser –what follows is some background and analysis.

More

2. Somewhy countries needed the Tibet events to remember China’s attitude on human rights, or freedom of speech. Meanwhile zombies stare in awe at the magnificent stadium constructions. Geeeezzz…

3. The person in the photograph, Luis D’Elia, represents the worst of my country, Argentina. During recent days has been protagonizing (with his task force) violent incidents in Plaza de Mayo, trying to scare people (and quiet them) that where expressing their dissentment with our government recent economic measures. Economic measures that only reflect the profound misunderstanding of the economic principles that lead to developement.

The man in the black shirt is Luis D’Elia. He incarnates the worst aspect of the “old politics”: the hatred and resentment for being an utterly unaccomplished person, the bullying and intolerance, the violent task force of an irresponsible, improvised and immature government, the manipulation and dreadful use of the uneducated mass. He is the impersonation of the class that benefits from our society’s lack of education, progress and horizon. This man violently coped a police station for yet to be clarified and obscure reasons while he was a government official; he was even appointed by Kirchner’s government for some official position in the past.

Though he is not the only one, our congress and lower political levels have plenty of this kind; while the higher levels (and even our Supreme Court) account an even more nefarious element: the leftist “intellectual class”, which sometimes is frank dishonestly manipulative and selfish, and sometimes might even honestly believe itself represents the beacon light destined to point salvation for the uneducated flock.

Both this classes have plagued the Argentine society for decades, and reading about them makes me feel grateful of my present in the United States, until I remember my family and friends are still enduring that harsh reality. But, to change that reality, is one of my motivations to be here, studying, learning about how the rest of the world (or at least one of its’ leaders) operates and behave. I will go back, when the time is right, and do my share to help my country.

Aprovecho este spring break para recorrer todo lo que no pude ver de Chicago hasta ahora. Estas son algunas fotos de nuestra visita al Art Insitute of Chicago.

Mas fotos en mi flickr

DSC_0008, originally uploaded by dlev1979.

Me quedo con un poco del invierno, que ya se esta yendo.

Esta vez con una estructura centralizada y una nueva estetica. Sigue en construccion pero me tome un tiempo mientras estudio para hacer una apertura a las apuradas de esta nueva etapa en dlev.com.ar

Van seguir apareciendo:

- pensamientos e ideas…a medida que encuentre tiempo para estructurarlos y hacerlos relativamente interesantes. Leo todo el tiempo, lo que me deja poco tiempo para escribir. En realidad, hay mucho para decir, pero a menos que pueda hacer algo, encuentro el ejercicio de escribir…algo futil.

- mixes: anteriores que valgan la pena y nuevos, en cuanto tenga tiempo para mezclar. Linda musica para quienes quieran escuchar un poco de progressive house, oscuro y atemporal

- fotos. es lo que mas activamente estoy haciendo. voy a unir esta pagina con mi cuenta de flickr.

Bienvenidos.

No tiene desperdicio…

Journalism rules: Here are the secrets

by Michael Rosenberg

After reading my last Break Room column, some people concluded that I think we should kill pilots who talk too much over the loudspeaker. I honestly don’t know what gave them that idea. But it might have been the part where I said we should kill pilots who talk too much over the loudspeaker.

I was kidding, of course, but it was still a remarkably dumb thing to write. I know what you’re thinking: “What a moron. Threatening to kill the readers — that must violate the first rule of journalism.” Shows what you know. “Don’t threaten to kill the readers” is actually the ninth rule of journalism.

The rules, in order:

1. Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted; then, after the afflicted become comfortable, afflict them again. This should provide an endless supply of news stories.

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Situacion. Tipica Nota de CQC sobre las largas colas que tenemos que soportar al renovar el DNI en la Direccion General de Personas, algunos incluso desde la noche anterior para recibir un turno, que a su vez les permitira sacar otro turno (y mas demora) para pagar y otra cola para: firmar y poner huellas dactilares en una tarjeta de carton en un box y en otro box les sacaran la foto.
Al mismo tiempo se pasan notas similares realizadas por CQC local en España y Chile, contrastando las situaciones (en España el costo monetario es similar, pero todo el proceso demora 15 minutos; en Chile el costo es inferior, el proceso demora unos minutos y todas las acciones se realizan en el mismo box. En ambos casos el tiempo de entrega del documento se reduce a la mitad que el argentino.)
Luego se “confronta” al Ministro del Interior, Anibal (?!?) Fernandez, con esta situacion. Fernandez dice que la situacion no le es desconocida ya que el pasa por la zona diariamente, que esta mal que ocurra eso pero se defiende diciendo que ellos han reducido los documentos atrasados de 2 millones a 500 mil (o algo asi…).

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You probably know the concept of using “wasted processor cycles” to aid other people’s processing needs (ie. Human Genome Project, Human Proteome Project, FightAIDS), where you donate your idle computer time and certain calculations are performed in your pc and sent to the project owners (check World Community Grid for a handful of them.)

Well, some people are trying to put “idle human computation” to a use. That’s the subject of this video at Google TechTalks. Luis von Ahn (Microsoft research fellowship, B.S. Mathematic Duke Univ, P.h.D Carnegie Mellon Univ.) leads a developer group and talks about “games with a purpose” and every time he stresses that they can be FUN. You can watch the video for a full description of their released games: The ESP Game and Peekaboom, and a preview of “Verbosity”, their next one.

Though simple, the part that called my attention is this schematic used to develop symetric / assymetric verification guessing games. This is: a 2 player game that given an INPUT, results in an OUTPUT which at the same time results VERIFIED; and is FUN.

Ie. “Verbosity” assymetric game mechanism:

• Player 1 is given a word (ie. “milk”).
• Player 1 generates a common sense fact about the word (“it is liquid” or/and “it is white”) and sends it to Player 2.
• Player 2 has to guess Player 1’s word with only the given common sense facts. If Player 2 guesses the word, he is in a way, verificating Player 1’s association.
• Data obtained from correct guessings by Player 2 result in verified association of words to common sense facts (Thousands of Player 2 guess the word “milk” with the common sense facts “it is white” / “it is liquid” / “it is near cereal”, so the word must be associated with the facts.)

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El post disparador lo escribe Jason {Signal vs Noise, 37 Signals}, el que me hizo recordar una reflexion que hace rato no hacia y que escribi en el post anterior: Como sobrevive tal o cual negocio?

Comenta acerca de una investigacion que realiza Edward Glaeser, urban economist para New York Magazine, acerca de la increible economia de esa ciudad. (Estuve en New York unos dias en Oct ‘06, la actividad comercial que vi solo puedo compararla con el microcentro o quiza Av. Santa Fe, Callao, Cordoba y Juan B. Justo. Tenga la sensacion que es mas una cuestion de actitud que de efervescencia)

You can’t live in New York—arguably, you can’t spend an hour in New York—and remain oblivious to the machinery of profit pumping away under every surface. This city makes money, loses money, houses money; lately, with luxe condos stacking up like casino chips along the waterfront, the city looks like money. What’s amazing, then, is how little we truly know about the inner workings of this beast we feed, and milk, daily: How does New York make its money?

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Hace unos minutos encontre un articulo que me hizo recordar un pensamiento que habitualmente tengo cuando camino por la vereda y veo comercios parcial o totalmente vacios: Como hace esta gente para ganar plata? A quien le venden estos productos-no-interesantes? Como pagan sueldos y alquileres? Cuantos peluches de $ 1.30 tienen que vender para pagar + $ 150 de luz?

Parece que no soy el unico que a veces no entiende esto. Esta es la primer parte.

Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business

FORT WORTH, TX—After a thorough review of its operations, RadioShack CEO Julian Day could provide no real explanation for the analog- riddled company’s staying power.

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Entre en este Test del Candidato que propone La Nacion, frente a las elecciones para Jefe de Gobierno de Cap. Fed. del Domingo; y estilo multiple choice me pidio que eligiera las propuestas que me convencen para los distintos temas electorales.

Los dos ultimos candidatos que hubiera votado (si, antes que a Walsh, lo voto a Cherasny, por lo menos esta claro que esta completamente loco), son los que salieron con mas coincidencias con lo que dije. WTF?! Filmus?! Walsh!?

Ven? Yo tengo mi corazoncito socialista.

Here is the excerpt and some Chi points about what Steve Jobs was talking a during D conference in Wall Street…just a momento ago!

Don’t miss this.
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Esta es una de la razones por las que existe este blog. Es por esto que existe espacio para la innovacion en una realidad que a veces me hace creer que ya esta todo hecho.
El resaltado es mio.

La Nacion – 30/05/2007

Desventuras de un científico argentino

Hace dos años, Luis Juanicó, doctor en ingeniería nuclear especializado en diseños avanzados y evaluaciones económicas (multipremiado en el país y en el exterior), levanta el teléfono de su laboratorio en el Centro Atómico Bariloche (CAB) para llamar al ingeniero Carlos Mourelle, delegado de la región sur del Enargas. Quiere pedirle un subsidio para estudiar la eficiencia de los calefactores que se venden en el país.

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Acabo de colgar el telefono. Era la voz grabada de Carlos Heller (candidato a vice-jefe de gobierno, junto con Daniel Filmus) que interrumpio mientras miraba los Simpsons mi ocio creativo, queria comentarme las grandes cosas que promete va a hacer en caso que gane las elecciones de Junio.

Lo curioso es que consigue exactamente lo opuesto a lo que intentó, me causa rechazo en lugar de capturar mi voto….y ni siquiera es candidato a Jefe de Gobierno, sino solamente que acompaña a Filmus. Lo que es claro es que hay mucho lugar para desarrollar comunicacion / marketing en politica.

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