Category: Me Myself&I

This is how I feel when I compare 7 and 8. I haven’t even used 8 with touch yet.

Your browser, everything-in-tabs paradigm is terrible in every way. Sometimes it crashes and if you say it’s not much of a problem, you are lying. I have virtually never lost anything using native apps. A browser? Enough to never do that again.

The desktop is terrible. You only use it because like the 20+ tabs BS, it makes you look like “busy”. OMG icons everywhere, menus everywhere, notifications everywhere JUST LOOK AT HOW BUSY AND IMPORTANT I AM PLUS LOOK AT MY COMPLEX SHINY COMPUTER UI I HAVE ARRIVED. I did it too.

The desktop is the symbol of 2000s office procrastination and vegetative evenings browsing Digg. It’s still there, and neat when  going down the memory lane using 35 years of software history without breaking a sweat but experience wise? Fuck that.

Fuck your systray and your start menu. Let’s get real and let’s get shit done, that’s how I see Win8 UI after 12 months of usage.

Full screen by default is great. Yes you can’t fake work now, you can’t do the old window switcheroo but you’re not supposed to anyway. I know, it hurts. I feel like in a game with Win8: getting in/out fun-to-use-and-yet-serious apps like I’m Mario in a warp zone.

If I compare the best apps in both Win8 Metro and Win7 Desktop, Win8 wins by far (simplicity, stability, speed) and looking at how much the entire tech industry is copying MS design since WP7 is out (who would have known in 07 that Apple would copy MS design in 13? Not even me), I’m not the only one convinced that that flat, clear as hell, unobstructed UI is awesome. Fuck your chrome, fuck your ugly ass drop down shadow.

No, Win8 is not perfect because nothing is. Two things that need to change: OEMs and developers.

Dear OEMs, you are so bad! Trying to sell netbook-class, atom powered tablets at $800 is like shitting in my mouth directly. WTF. Those touchscreen laptops? You can tell 5 miles away that it’s going to feel stupid. How the fuck can you not put the goddamn trackpad in the middle of the fucking computer like that brand, is beyond me. Is there a patent you don’t want to pay or you all are morons or what? Fucking embarrassing. Where the fuck is my 20” tablet? Of course you have to have a 24” with 4K display like anyone would give a damn about an extremely expensive device. It’s pathetic.

And you developers, shut the hell up about the store. You can’t jerk off on your Apple sales and condemn MS, that’s being a fucking hypocrite. Plus as a user, app stores are quite awesome (easy to check, easy to uninstall, sync). Stop trying to scam people (and fuck up the market that is, your own ass) with free apps and ads, that’s lame. Make great apps with trial. Yes if your app is not great, trials are not going to help but will demonstrate how unpolished your stuff is. Stop focusing on the business model and make awesome shit, that’s like the #1 rule for any business and it’s like you developers are constantly forgetting that.

You guys want app ideas?

How about the ultimate GIF maker with which you can capture from stills or videos and export perfectly sized GIFs to social networks?

How about a distraction-free blog app that connects to blog services and allows you to drag and drop pictures in your post without the need of using any FTP shit or annoying services?

Foobar8 anyone? Flickr with all the features? Musician uploader, one interface to upload to Soundcloud Bandcamp et all? Get on this!!

The only reason that I’m using the desktop outside gamedev and obscure old software is because you guys have yet to deliver better apps in the store (so many are pathetic). There’s room, I have some bucks, you guys are missing out I’m just saying.

Hey I don’t know, I’m six.

You might be reading Derek’s blog and this sums up my value system, pretty much perfectly:

The samurai adhered to a way of life, ethics, rules, and a code that spread to all branches of society, and even today affects the way Japanese think.

• Buddhism taught them to stay calm and patient.
• Confucianism taught them that relationships between people are the basis of society – to respect our ancestors, relatives, and superiors.
• Loyalty, justice, and honor are central.
• Sincerity, compassion, courtesy, and honesty are important key values.

Though the samurai no longer exist, this way of viewing life is ever-present in society. Students are loyal to their teachers. Workers are loyal to their companies, putting in long overtime hours. Japanese are loyal, honest, sincere, and disciplined at work. They follow rules and try to improve themselves every day, just as the samurai did in their time.

I know it’s dumb, I’m not living in Japan. The Samurai way makes so much sense to me. People don’t understand the importance of relationships, humility and modesty and then wonder why the fuck the richest 85 people hold as much wealth as the 3.2B poorer. It’s because there’s no relationship at all. Like kings in the past having giant structures being built for someone that doesn’t exist while people around are dying by the hundreds. It’s dumb. I’d rather have had less cathedrals and cleaner villages.

The individualistic society is BS, we depend on each other from the maid to the air traffic control tower. Companies forge contracts with the state all the time, everything is subsidized, if a factory burns in China your phone might get delayed etc. I don’t understand why people don’t see this. Meanwhile well, I guess I should get some cornrows and start a “cleaning” business.

Loved that movie, obviously. Am I that dude but with a bass and wifi instead of a sword and pigeons? SHIT.

I’m cold. I’m fighting. I close my eyes, I see that beautiful building on Wilshire or that laundry at the corner of Benton and Beverly. I open them, I feel like in 2009. I’m going to rip off this wallpaper and it’s going to feel so good.

I’m fighting, asking. Telling all the motherfuckers who owe me money that they need to do what they’re supposed to do, again and again. I make some room on my computers, find pictures, remember all the fucks given to emails I sent to my family showing things around: none.

I’m cold on my chair, fighting tears or am I trying to get them out? I can’t do it. I’m mad. I read about police brutality, have minutes of silence. Is it hours? God that poor kid.

I’m either cold of have enough heat in me to power five stars.

So I’m sharing it with you guys.

But way more crazy and painful. Working my ass off, I feel like a zombies with a s, yes.

Little restaurant with that amazing French food.

I went to see my foster mom who took me to the restaurant for the first time ever. Just the two of us. She told me she did it with all her kids so you know, humidity in my eyes. Sometimes she talks to me and I can’t really hear her –honestly not that interesting either- because I’m loving her so much at that moment. That woman. That bond.

She asked me if I wanted my picture when “she’ll not be around” and told me that I could get anything from the house to keep, even getting priority over her six kids. I’m thinking that I’d rather have her keep her stuff and live a little bit forever? No?

She’s alive and well for now though, just a bit of arthritis. Like she says “it was a very small weekend” but I always have to jump on the road early. It takes me a while to go back to my own life, parking at my parents, talking a hour while they watch CSI:Miami with terrible voiceover and finally sit here, breathing deeply and trying to stretch out as much as I can.

Next time it’s on me Mèmère.

Still modifying little bits here and there but mostly there, thanks to Boilerplate and HTML5Bones. I still think css and html should be one and only damn file called .website or .html6 whatever with strict rules for formatting things and one and only one way to present your structure. People say “learn to code!” and I say “make that shit simpler, way more unified and consistent how about that”. No one would read or write if grammar and spelling were like computer languages.

Sorry. Design mind problem.

On 8 December 1919 he wrote in his diary “ I shall never live with fewer worries, never have time to develop ideas, I wish I could get out of Europe and get to an idyllic tropical island where one does not have to fear the winter, where one does not have to slave, but find time to think and more importantly to be a free spirit.”

Richard Neutra (got this very nice book for Christmas!). Fine, it’s kind of a romantic vision but I’m from Paris, romantic shit is what I ate breakfast lunch and dinner.

Outside love I’m realizing what culture brought me and keep sending me to California:

-music (rock)

-sound design

-skateboard

-game development

-music (funk)

-bike

That’s like all my life, man. And now modern architecture. It’s only been a couple of months that I dig and realize how much that attracts me, deeply. Architecture really modifies your perception of the world: seeing modern buildings make me feel in such a progressive world, the future now, even if it’s a bit of an illusion. It’s an illusion until it’s not. The modernism that happens in Paris is tucked in 200 year old buildings, you can feel the weight, the dissonance as if France was transitioning from a flamboyant past to a bland future.

Anyway mister Neutra, same feeling here in 2014. I don’t have a Frank Lloyd Wright to work for yet though but I’m working on it. *badly needs LA job*

One day I’ll build my modern, affordable and simple passive house in Compton. I’ll call it “Big White Mansion”, jam on my bass in it and it will be awesome.

So I’m making an erotic game. There are enough platformers around, I think.

Which means, sex research. Everything, from physiology to history to businesses. Getting some ideas, feeling how much I’m on something or if it’s rubbish etc. Good news is, I’m on something.

Bad news is, holy fuck is sex the subject where you see the most vile and ignorant human behavior. Race, hitting me hard when I never thought of interracial sex as “something” nor did I have physical preferences except for having kind of the same height/width that I have. Black women. Oh my, I didn’t know (fourth graphic). There’s way more depressing stuff, trust me.

(this is a very good example of how racism and race issues are always, always there somewhere even if I don’t search for them; and then they hit me with a cane the size of Jupiter.)

The ignorance and the shame around sex that I see all around, web or real world makes me realize the luck I had growing up as I did and how I’m pretty much a sexpert today.

So excitement, huge depression, hope, I got it all. Moving on.

I might reuse this picture a lot.

These days I’m realizing that one of the most powerful weapon to change things around –learning from others- is not used at all.

You know, whatever your beliefs are I always thought that when the real world shows you that there’s a better way, you go for it. I mean, this is what we did post WWII, making progress.

Today though it’s increasingly something people not only don’t want, but are against! Healthcare in the US is still a raging debate, despite Europe, despite Germany, despite Sweden, despite France, despite Costa Rica, the US will not copy something that works somewhere else and apply it to its people. Not even something as basic and crucial as healthcare. Mind blowing.

The same can be said for all cultures, France can’t structurally change despite having Germany perform a ton better and three decades of economic analysis coming from everywhere stipulating over and over what needs to change so real growth comes back. Nope.

Not knowing is one thing. Not applying is I suppose, a right albeit a dumb one. But not acknowledging that something else is better or “refusing” that it is the case is plain denial and goes against everything we went through and built up to the past thirty years. We now have to fight hard just to allow common sense to be heard (yes, end the drug war, yes, right to die etc).

It’s just fucking weird. It’s like we benefit progress everyday but don’t care about future progress that we enable now, with changes. Well, I’m craving for them changes.