Miquel Casas

I don’t know if you have heard about the name Rosetta Stone. Is the name given to the granite stone found in the Egyptian city of Rosetta that was crucial to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Pretty important I would say.

But it is also the name of a package of software I got recently as a present, which follows a system where you associate real-world images to words spoken by native speakers.

You start with these interactive exercises. They are very simple and are not boring. The feeling of failing is pretty low, so you feel constantly rewarded and as a consequence engaged with the process. Bit by bit you go ahead to accomplishing the milestone for each unit and having fun. Which to me this is a great success given the difficulty of being constant when learning something new that requires such a long time, like a language.

To be honest, I’m quite surprised of its effectiveness so far! If you are looking forward to learning a new language I suggest you start with Rosetta Stone!

Here is an interactive demo.

Miquel Languages

Now that I recently got a bike and started to cycle to the office I felt how dangerous is to ride a bike through the streets of London. Instead of being respected by the rest of the drivers, given that we are the most vulnerable users of the road, we are more considered rather an annoying abostacle.

And I put special attention on the bus drivers. It’s seems a very odd practice but instead of keeping the security distance they get very close from behind to you, so if unluckily you loose control of your bike and fall they won’t be able to stop the at least 15 tons of metal, fuel and passangers.

The total number of people killed on roads has been falling in recent years, but things aren’t so good for walkers and cyclists.
BBC News

This is defenitly a matter of ignorance. If you have a look at the following study one can find out that such things like wearing a helmet  or appearing male rather than female made the drivers overtake closer the cyclist:
Document

Interesting to see also what happened to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson whilst riding his bike.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8066461.stm

Miquel Society

Today I want to present the web development company I founded.

After being long and wild in the world of web programming I think it’s time to offer what I know best.

I’ve worked in companies and have done freelance jobs either in Barcelona and in London, and after having negotiated with incompetent project managers with no idea of online development whatsoever, companies that charge insolent prices for simple amends and offering not the adequate technology just for simple interest; I have the feeling that things can be done much better. I want to offer what I would like to get.

So Amanida Media arrives to offer the fare and efficient production, adjusted to tight budgets and on time. My colleagues, also developers, and I will offer advise at the time of choosing the best technology that suits your project independently of our interest. Because we think that what really matters is people’s trust.

I’ll give more details soon but if you are interested in the services offered (see website), you can contact us at: contact@amanidamedia.com

Miquel Startups

Did you know that first aid is the provision of initial care for an injured person until proper medical attention is received? So you don’t actually need to be a professional to assist someone who has been injured and that means that the survival chances are much higher when applied in seconds at the moment of the accident.

I had always thought that knowing basic emergency assistance would be always useful and a few years ago I did a course at the Red Cross’ headquarters in Barcelona. We were taught how to properly apply bandaging for injured limbs, correct cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), what steps to follow in an emergency, psychological support for a victim, etc. It was a quite complete and a very hands-on course.

Yesterday, when I was on my way home, I found myself in a situation that required first aid until proper medical attention could be applied. For some reason a woman had collapsed in the middle of Oxford St. and a bunch of girls were trying to stand her up.
I stood there watching the scene; I knew that what they were doing was utterly wrong, but nonetheless I remained passive until I saw a young man who swiftly removed these girls and took over the situation. He left the woman on the floor, put his bag under her head and accommodated her using the recovery position.

Then, this guy, asked if everyone could step back so as for her to have some space and air and also if anyone had called an ambulance already.

Everything had been masterfully executed. Basically the steps that have to be followed in a situation like this are:

1. Protect everyone in the scene including yourself from further danger.
2. Call up for help. Ambulance and so on.
3. Help the victims, putting in practice first aid, in order to keep them alive until proper medical assistance arrives.

They weren’t in a life threatening situation but after witnessed everything that had happened I could only be upset with myself. I thought about it for a while and I came at the conclusion that I indeed had the knowledge that could have allowed me to help that woman, as I could identify the good practice the guy had followed. But instead was the way I reacted in front of an emergency situation that wasn’t correct.

You can be taught how to rationally act in a given scenario, what’s best to do and what’s not. But when it comes down to act in an emergency, if there has not been previous exposures where you have been able to rationalize what happened, things are very different.

Have you ever wondered what would you do in an extreme situation? Maybe your instinct tells you to run away as fast as possible, living your kids behind. You don’t mean that, in fact you would protect them with your live, but you are already miles away and safe.

So, if you ever happen to take one of this courses don’t just learn the basics, push yourself psychologically by imagining a real situation and train your body to be under this kind of stress.

Miquel Education

Most of the people, after returning from a visit to the world famous heritage site Stonehenge, feel quite disappointed. Basically their expectations are too high; they have in mind all these postcard images of a mystic circle of stones in a magic place with the sun setting from behind and the reality is quite different.

You will arrive with your car in an overcrowded car park, you will pay £6.60 to be able to see the monument from inside the fence and will  immediately join all the tourists that are already looking at a bunch of rocks whilst listening to the audio tour.

Alright, lets not be too cynical; this was a monument I had wanted to see for a long time and I also agree to the statement that one can not leave England without having seen it, but I had already been warned and therefore I wasn’t expecting anything extraordinary. In fact we stoped there when my Mrs and I where going to Plymouth for Easter holidays.

More than the stone monument in itself what is engaging is the mystery that surrounds it. Was first build more than 5000 years ago and completed and re-constructed for different periods of time. The larger stones were brought from a place 30km away called Marlborough Downs and the smaller stones, known as Bluestones, are from the Preseli Mountains in Wales which is 385km away.

Why all that? Nobody knows for sure because Stonehenge was produced by a culture with no written language, so most of the aspects are subject to debate although they do agree that was a place for ancient worship and new evidences found reveal that it served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings.

Henge is the anciant english word for hanging. Stonehenge, the hanging stones.

But the multiplicity of theories, such as the one that says that the wizard Merlin had a giant who build it for him, or the ones that involve UFOs in the area, is known as the “mystery of Stonehenge”.

Miquel Tourism

Interesting video published by Jonathan Jarvis. It’s an already saturated topic you might loathe but I believe so far this is the most illustrative and entertaining video I’ve seen to understand the current economic situation.

Miquel Economy

I received an email a couple of days ago from Mike McCready, the CEO of the company Platinum Blue Music Intelligence (known by their service Music Xray), were he said he had published an article about the evolution of the music industry at The Huffington Post.

We personally met each other more than a year ago in London, when he was contacting possible investors to raise money for the company. Since then we have had a couple of online meetings and have crossed several emails.

My overall evaluation is that Mike has very clear ideas regarding the matter and this is something I appreciate in a person who’s leading a company I invested on. Transmitting confidence to people who have trusted you is as important as good communication. Specially if they are investing in your idea but they are not in constant contact with the environment the business is growing on.

Surprisingly this is not the kind of article people outside the music industry won’t understand, it’s a great review that comes from the hands of an expert to be understood by everyone.

We all are currently experiencing how the access to the music is changing so in my opinion it affects us all. Not everything is going to be illegal downloads, the industry will adapt to the new technologies and the new ways to understand this market:

Most agree that the currency of exchange for recorded music will be the attention of the fans instead of their money. If an artist can get attention they will be able to sell tickets to their shows, license songs to soundtracks and get money for endorsing products.

And despite the fact that now the costs of production have plummeted and also people can easily create songs due to the accessibility to the necessary technology:

It still requires enormous effort, time and resources to “push” and promote that song within the industry.

In the other hand, what Mike got back after publishing was the feedback from the general public. The comments have been in their majority positive which made us very happy and also reaffirmed that things are being correctly done.

You can’t miss it, read the article here.

Miquel Startups

This is an incredible 2h long documentary against the current economic system. It analyzes it in a very straight forward way putting in evidence how fucked up the situation is and what is the cause of the problem. I found it very educative but I think that along the documentary, sometimes, you can feel being brain washed. Still I think is awsome.

I would divide the documentary in to main parts. The first half or so shows how the US rules the world through the economic system, debt and inflation. And in the second half I would highlight the introduction of the Venus Project which is an extremely idealistic, not monetary, alternative to the current system.

I have to recognize that the idea is beautiful and lets be honest who wouldn’t like to live in a world the way they present it. But using the words of Jacque Fresco himself:

They are not going to give up the monetary system, the system has to fail and the people have to lose confidence in their elected leaders. That will be a major turning point.

What I mean by quoting that is that I see the integration of this alternative as quite difficult, not to mention impossible. But in any case I recommend its visualitzation, it’s really worthwhile.

By the way, having a quick look in the wikipedia I find that Zeitgeist comes from the German language and it’s literally translated to Zeit: time, Geist:spirit and describes the intellectual, cultural, ethical and political climate, ambience and morals of an era.

Miquel Economy

It’s been a couple of weeks already since I saw in action for the first time an Augmented Reality demo. It was very simple but it didn’t leave me indifferent. I perceived its potential as a marketing tool and how advertisement companies, such as the one I work for, could benefit from applying this technology out there, bringing the user experience to a new level of interactivity.

For those of you who don’t know what Augmented Reality is, here’s a simple way to define it:

It’s the combination of computer generated objects (like 3D) in the real world. So that means that we can mix real and virtual at the same time using computers or mobiles.

From that point on I started to find out more about how this technology was generated, what kind of requirements it had in terms of hardware, what companies where already selling this, etc.

Surprisingly enough, in my last visit to Barcelona I had been speaking with a very old friend of mine who is currently working at the Dynamic Simulations Department in the UPC. He told me that he had been recently working in projects that involved facial simulations, fluids simulations, image based modelling, amongst other things. So I didn’t hesitate to comment him my first experience with AR and how amazed I was with it. He brought me to the over-excitement with his answer - we’ve been working with such complicated software that for us this is something very easy to do.

At that point we started to consider the opportunity to present some demos to the company I work for, so that we could become their providers. That way they don’t need to worry about managing the production of this technology because we do it and we can benefit from their big client’s portfolio so we don’t need to go door to door selling this stuff. The benefit is mutual.

So, as I said, the last couple of weeks I’ve been talking with several people within the company trying to arrange a demonstration. Everybody seems to be very excited with the idea and we are already preparing these demos. I’ll give more details soon.

Miquel Technology

Two years back from today I started my adventure away from Barcelona. I travelled all along the British Islands discovering new places and new people.

I lived many different experiences; some good and some others not as good. But along the way what I’ve noticed above all is I’ve become a wiser and more tolerant person. I know people from many places around the globe and all of them have different cultures and different ways to do and understand things. This is what I find interesting and most like about London. The mixture of cultures makes a richer society which ultimately gets transferred to its people.

The opposite feeling I’ve got nonetheless is basically that not a lot of people really stays in London, either because they are going back home or because they are going to do something else somewhere else. It’s sort of a “pass by” city where people will arrive, live and eventually leave.

According to a study from the University College London that reveals where people of different ethnic backgrounds are choosing to live in London, 40% of Londoners are from an ethnic minority. Which makes me arrive at the conclusion that they have roots in other countries where they certainly could come back at one point.

Jewish population in London

Basically I’m just trying to transmit the feeling I’ve got when I meet new people in this city. The first two questions that come to my mind are: 1) Where are you from? and 2) Why are you here? The answers will allow me to have a clearer picture of this person background and how and when he or she is going to disappear from the scene.

Miquel General