My thoughts on Pimp a butterfly

So I was excited when I just tweeted the editor of Rap – About telling him that the new Kendrick Lamar was a classic on the same night the album day viewed. His response was like: “damn, already”.

This threw me off on how soon I was crowning this album, did I believe the hype? Or do I just have a good ear for good hiphop?

Yes I believe I have a good ear for good hiphop. However most people do. The true test is if the people that made good reviews or at least review albums by the same standard as me, agree or disagree.

Later that day I saw that plenty did. And this leads me to believe on how my hiphop flow is nowadays. Thanks to getting more people online, I jump from blog to youtube channel keeping connected to what is hot.

Ironically radio, and music channels is something I don’t know specially living outside of the mecca of hiphop. (although that has changed as well)

Getting back on the train of thought of this album, the things that I feel is that I have been impressed with the passion of the rhymes. This is some 93 Wu-Tang shit. Having the emcee rhyme with an attitude is something that has chip away from modern hiphop, even raw groups like the Wu don’t rhyme like they were mad anymore. Even their anti-racism track, you want them to be on a more “I can’t go to sleep” mood.

And this is exactly what KDot do. Kendrick, takes a lot of attitude into a surprisingly very well thought scheme of an album. From the titles, to the theme, the sentiment of expressing himself through art, not just rap, but poetry to imagery is what makes the listener get truthfully inspire.

Everything from the cover, to the track list name, to the way they are ordered, and even to the intro to every song, the album is layout down like a book. And even more, it is also inspired like a book, from track titles like “The blacker the berry”, “How to kill a Mockingjay”, this is something that are not so obscure that the listener would never catch.

I think Kendrick better himself with this album and I most say his rhymes are witty enough to earn emceen points and the production with the blend of funk and reggea are definitely welcomed. If there is something that I most nag, is that Kendrick doesn’t seem to adjust to once style, so he doesn’t really have a sound. Like Immortal Technique, Talib Kweli, his sound is very diverse, something more like a Mos Def.

I don’t know if Kendrick is the new Nas, or if this album can be compared to Illmatic, definetly have the elements, the imagery but I would still hold my judgment on the bars.

Advertisement

Happy New Year!!!

Some minutes to go, but 2014 is almost done, before leaving this year I want to mention some of the things that have been going on with me in the past month and a half.

• Job is going great, learning new stuff.
• Soon to get a new laptop
• Got my raspberry Pi media center using OpenELEC
• Still looking for a project for my Arduino UNO
• Wu-Tang Clan drop a new album, still haven’t heard it like I should
• Looking forward to visit my gf at her hometown
• LeBron James is struggling, but I am not worried yet.
• My ChromeOS’ ArchLinux got the audio messed up and still haven’t found a way to fix it.
• My home network still needs to be consolidated into one domain.
• Want to get Nextflix on the new TV.

Hopefully next month I could make some more interesting and developed posts. Hopefully more Otaku stuff, and also more political stuff based on the podcasts and info I come across.

Blueberry Pie

Thinking about having blueberry pie for Xmas. I talked to my mom about plans to have it done with this stuffing since here in Mexico is a bit hard to come across a massive bag of blueberries.

Tales from the Kidnapped

Today dream was weird, I got a gang coming in my house with my family and basically kidnap us in our own house. The odd thing about that, is that we weren’t tortured, or threatened or any hardcore stuff. We only couldn’t leave nor make any phone calls this remind me of a movie: “Firewall“

However, as opposed to that movie, the kidnappers were complete technophobes and even if the phone was secured. I could easily chat with the police and the swat team about identifying the kidnappers and family members.

My dream unfortunately didn’t get to see the extraction operation, but the internal negotiation was most of the content of it. It was an exciting dream, and a bit bizarre.

Stormy Cancun

So this had happened but it wasn’t really about a real storm. Today I had a dream while I took a midday nap because I woke up way too early. The dream was short but intense and involved living in an apartment like I do now, but not really the one i live in. Also there was kind of like a massive house party and people were coming and going everywhere. Later I realize they were mostly my friends from back home. They started teasing at me since I wasn’t really informed of this party and I got a bit upset.
Eventually we just did some joking around, and I was nervous trying not to get the party break stuff up on their drunkness or games.
All of a sudden a storm broke up, and it wasn’t a tipical storm, but like the arrival of a hurricane. In the middle of the night the clouds soon covered the sky and a few lightnings could be see at the distance. While the rain start brushing the ground like a water curtain, and inside, it was pouring. A very diagonal rain as the winds were also quite intense. I found like a garage under the house where I could keep dry even if the rain was coming in on a diagonal shape. I got some kindergarten plastic chair, pretty low to the ground, and started watching.
Soon my friends came to join me with a few beers and watched the lightning show and expecting for the power to be cut off anytime soon because of the winds.
There was some noise coming from the things being pushed off the street by the wind and even if we got some projectiles being thrown at us by the wind, it never got to the point to be harmful.
Eventually the wind died down, with the expectation of new rain coming thru. It was already some light of day and then we saw a military squad coming down the street with a dronecopter taking a visual angle on some shots of the damage. Quickly they built like a fence around our house and told us to get it back to the city council after the storm.
BTW the guy managing the drone, seemed to be his first time because he slam it against some advertising. Something that made me laugh.

Sales and closing

During the week that I have been here, I have been going out with friends, and spend sometime in the pool. But to be honest, beside spending time with my parents and having a conference with my alma matter. I have no idea on what to do here, so as my mom was meeting with her friends, he came up with the idea to introduce me to one that has experience on selling insurance.

Nowadays I have been pretty open about connections and listening to what people have to say, specially when it comes to experiences.

So we went to have some coffee and eventually her friend arrived and start talking to me about the sales process. How to evolve from the first meeting and how to schedule meetings until the closing period. I have been very frustrated with the way I have dealt with people when they don’t say no ever, but always apply delaying tactics until you are just exhausted to keep going on.

Key issues regarding closing and dealing with multiple entitled and also transition to negotiation techniques. Prepare to offer deals but also offer contracts to sign.

The techniques go like this:

• Planning the meeting
• Break the ice
• Products
  • Offer benefits from the features
  • Regulate the voice
• Manage inquiries and objections
  • Anticipate by handling the most common ones
  • Assertive questions

The talk also had some tips like how to return to the questions and the value, and focus the value in a business reasoning. Applying strength to true business cases and also returning to the possible questions and defining the key drivers. Otherwise document it and propose an alternatives.  So is key to be able to understand and target the value of it.

As far as advice, trying to maximize the amount of clients that I am trying to gather. Practice some cold calling and be more out there through email and phone sales.

Here is some of the notes that I could gather from the conference although some further analysis should be involved.

1er Entrevsita is the first document of the interview on how to get the first meeting and key points

FLISOL 2013 – The experience

This post is dedicated more toward the actual event, having a great location in La Gran Plaza was a great way to start. Adding the wittiness of Sandy was a great help to organize the decoration of the venue. With many high quality flyers and also great ammount of projectors we were able to make a very lively and hip place.

balloons and fun

Awesome technology was exposed

Many people came to the event and was good to be able to chat with them and also see them gather around to learn about different areas of software and areas of discovery. The topics went from games to enterprise to educational involvements.

Some of the talks we had included:

• How to make money as a programmer
• Education in technology with free software

The installfest area,was the main area, which means that a lot of Free software was installed, from USB, to CDs. Many people was able to experience different distros and applications on education and such.

Finally we had some social media with tweets from across the globe, on different events across latin america.

I think the event acomplish it’s goal, we would have hope to see more students and such, but I think it was a great experience for everybody.

Ready for Europe

I am about to get on a plane to visit a long time friend that I have met since forever. But is also intersting how long I have taken to be back in Europe. Its those things you dont notice till you stal making the numbers. These past 2 years I have been traveling more to sotuh and north america than to Europe. However, it has been great the way things have been developed lately.

I mean I have been able to go anywhere I wanted, and even if there has been troubles along the way, it has never got to the point of true desperation.

Is not a fear of being broke, is the fear of not finding something strong enough to continue. However, this trip to europe I plan to make something worth it and help my cause and not just be aliability. So far I am very excited, confident and even eager to have a great time.

After a shitty xmass and new year I think I can make this count for good.

Now on the NL, well I love that country to be honest, is those countries that makes u feel like ur in the right place. Then again this comes from the vision of always chilling there during the summer time and everything is litten and people are everywhere. We’ll see how winter change things.

I’ll be chillin there for 10 days so is not so long that gets depressing or short that seems like a one night stand.

 

Election Day: Obamania

My facebook timeline exploded with pictures about Obama and Mitt, I even create my own, it was funny nevertheless. Some where a bit more insightful however.

Conference in Colombia

So here are my slides that I did for the conference in Colombia about Free Software communities. I blog about this in the past, but I think this should evolve into a whole new conference, and this is what I did. I had a conference specifically targeted at motivating students to get on their buts and start typing code, release it, and type some more.

In escense is simple:

• You are prepared
• Get coding
• Put it on a forge
• Approach developers

Then it get more interesting:

• Learn how to coo-mpete
• Fork as a way of life
• How to govern your community
• Setting the project free

Some questions however were more on the lines of doing code for money, but in reality you build code cuz you are that good. And code could make money if you are smart enough. Code will at least get you a job, or push you form a company.

Comunidades software libre from Alexandro Colorado