Darfur, Sudan and 3 Points

Today I saw a documentary about the social problems of Darfur, Sudan, really touching stuff, basketball superstar (Tracy McGrady) goes to the region and tries to understand the situation there to later compromise to help.

Darfur is a place due war is in a "humanitarian emergency" state, whatever that means it doesn't sounds like a "safe" or "happy" place.

I dunno, these kind of things make you think a little bit about how awesome your life is comparing yourself with other people. Even myself, I grew up in the hood of a 3rd world country, certainly a whole different situation than living in Miami (a lot!).

Tracy starts talking (before going to Darfur) about how hard is the life in the hood where he grew up (Florida), just to find out a very different (and harder) reality.

See the movie on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/3-points (too bad on Hulu for international readers).

Youtube user page of the Darfur Dream Team: http://www.youtube.com/user/darfurdreamteam

3 Points stands for: Peace, Protection, Punishment / what the people of Darfur want.

Just a reminder: "It's just a ride"

The World is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round, and it has thrills and chills and is very brightly colored, and it's very loud. And it's fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they've begun to question, 'Is this real, or is this just a ride?', and other people have remembered, and they've come back to us and they say 'Hey, don't worry. Don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.' and we KILL THOSE PEOPLE.

"Shut him up! We have alot invested in this ride! SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account, and my family. This just has to be real."

It's just a ride.

But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that. You ever noticed that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because ... It's just a ride.

And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear wants you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead see all of us as one.

Here's what we can do to change the world right now, to a better ride:

Take all that money we spent on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and WE CAN EXPLORE SPACE, TOGETHER, BOTH INNER AND OUTER, forever ... in peace.

-- Bill Hicks (1961 - 1994)

Generate your ctags and cscope db files in one script

I found myself generating the ctags db and the cscope db all the time, so I created a script to generate both in one single command... because I'm lazy ;):

"Cash For Clunkers" gov best idea ever!

For those of you that don't know yet, "Cash For Clunkers" is the most successful "economic help" program that the government has ever run!.

One more prof that if you give money to the people they *will* spend it, and more in the US, you don't have to be a smart guy to know that, instead of giving huge bailouts to GM do more of this type of initiatives, "Cash For Clunkers" is so awesome that ran out of money in just a couple of days!

The way it works (the program is likely to continue, obviously), is let say you own an old car (<1995) that does certain MPG (spend a lot of gas, basically american cars), in these economic times, you might not buy a new car, since, you know, it would hard to pay; but the government is running this program that will trade your old car for a 3,500USD - 4,500USD credit that way you can get the car you want at a more affordable price, and at the same time helping the economy, creating jobs (the industry need to produce more cars, the dealership to hire more salespeople), the environment (spend less gas), and you.

So this looks like a great deal right? hell yeah!, my brother had a car, bought it for 700USD, but the blue book says it value was 1,000USD, insurance for that type of car is expensive (bad car more accidents), also the car had a V8 engine thats like 50USD a week just on gas. So let say he goes and buy a Toyota Yaris with the CARS program, the Yaris starts on 12,205USD let say its 15,000USD after the dealer steal you some money ;) 11,500USD, even with the worse credit ever my brother would have to pay like 150USD a month for that car, and its more fuel efficient a Yaris today can live with 50 bucks a month on gas (I do that with my Scion TC), insurance is cheaper on that car, and the environment is happy and my bro has a new car :) that actually works! and has like -170,000 miles :D.

The program was supposed to run from July 1st to November 1st, but was delayed until July 24th, guess what? the program is out of funds already!!!, this is huge!, a billion of dollars just in days!

Ford and GM are the happiest kids of the month.

Now some politicians are skeptical with this program... is your obligation to send those people to STFU!

And BTW, my brother was in a accident 2 months ago (he is fine), and his car was totaled :(, the insurance company gave him not even a buck he ended trading the car for the towing ride, and guess what he doesn't have a car :(, and if you know Florida, you can't do nothing without a car.

If you wanna know more about the program go to www.cars.gov the program is likely to get more money.

Classy Firefox

Classy Firefox
Originally uploaded by igorgue

Firefox has been seriously sucking on Linux since 2.0... :(, sad thing lets move to Chrome!

Hashes and Dicts in Python and Ruby

*dicts or hashes are passed by reference in Python and Ruby*

That's it!

Python example:


Output:

[{'a': 1}, {'a': 1}, {'a': 1}, {'a': 1}]

Ruby example:


Output:

[{"a"=>1}, {"a"=>1}, {"a"=>1}, {"a"=>1}]

Terminator... I'll be back!

[LOLing with Terminator (my favorite terminal emulator)]

You can get and build terminator from here: https://launchpad.net/terminator/+download