Author Archives: caislas

Living on the cloud: “Ciao: del.icio.us” , “Hello: pocket”

Week 31
Tuku, Finland

Since 2011 I am member of del.icio.us.  I would say I am a frequent user of it, as in this time I have collected there 8,482 links. The last link I saved was on July 4th, 2017.

Today I decided to startto declutter my browser. This implies to save some links.  Then, surprise!!!  Del.icio.us button on my browser did not allow me to save 🙁   Calm people! It is not the first time Del.icio.us has a problem.

What do next? of course, to research what it is going on. After some challenges, I was able to log in on my browser. I start to explore inside my account how to save my link and then I got the following message:

Delicious finalized

Delicious finalized

NEWS (for me)  del.icio.us has been bought by Pinboard. According to Wikipedia this happened on  June 1st.  Honestly I had not idea about this.  Perhaps I will dig on my emails to see if I was informed somehow….

Nevertheless, now my direct challenge is: what I will use?

Researching again, I found pocket. Apparently it is a nice tool. The following video sold it to me:

Now starting on pocket. Hopefully I can export my links from delicious! New task for my TODO list.

However all this adventure brings me back to a topic I am often think about: be aware if your life depends only of a cloud!

— cais

Europeade 2017 Turku

Week 30
Tuku, Finland

First some updates.  On May 19th I moved to Turku, but I haven’t been really here. My things have been. It is until last Sunday, 23.7.2017, were I “landed” in Turku, so adventures ahead….

While being in a new city, a habit I am building up is:  after work go to discover.
At the moment we are doing this discovering by biking, so far so good. :).
Btw, this habit should be well build up and permanent, it is amazing what one can find.

On Tuesday while returning back home, we hear someone testing a microphone on a street. It was loud for a Finnish context, this was a bit odd.  Also during this day we saw small stages and people dancing on them.

Rehersal at Europeade 2017

Rehersal at Europeade 2017

It was on  Wednesday,  after we saw a sign on a street about Europeade 2017 that we realized something was going on.  Then, I decided to stop at the tourist information office and I was informed about the Europeade 2017 schedule. We were just on time for the opening ceremony.

We biked to the main stage where the opening was programmed and surprise!  I saw the following regional dresses:

Germany / Austria at the Europeade

Germany / Austria at the Europeade

The official opening include over 300 dancers from Turku region, it was something special to watch. Here a small clip of it:

The event include individuals of ALL ages groups, and this is literal, from infants to grandpas.  All ages have a space in here.  As the commentator mentioned:

“More than 6000 dancers got together from 24 countries, and no matter their age, weight or wehre you come from. The most important thing is the spirit!”

Indeed one could feel a magical spirit. 🙂

Diversity of ages at the Europeade

Diversity of ages at the Europeade

Once the ceremony finalized, as you can imagine the dancing floor was open for EVERYBODY:

So what is Europeade?  Let me copy the following text from the Europeade’s website: We are committed to the preservation of our intangible heritage of regional folk culture, be it music, dance, song, or costume.  To reach this goal, we spend five days together sharing our dance and music with our friends and performing in the shows.

Next a summary of this rich experience!

— cais

Startup. Today’s lesson: moving towards visibility

Week 11
Joensuu, Finland

Sometimes, to be honest, I get paralyzed. In particular when my life is in at least one of the following situations:

a) When there is MUCH to do, it is just overwhelming. It is worse when I do not know how to start, result I get paralyzed.
b) When I do not know how to start to tackle a problem, then it gets HUGE and I do not know how to start, result I get paralyzed.
c) When I feel down, confused, lost…. then everything turns challenging, and I get paralyzed.

The challenge when one gets paralyzed is, at least me,  I feel I am dying inside. I am not a stagnant type. I want life, and I am aware that life brings life.

There is one topic that has been really on my shoulders for years now, ant that is to be visible. I am not the type of person to be in the center of the stage. However in our era, we should make to some noise so that others can listen.

Thus, finally today I took “the bull by the horns” in reference to the visibility topic and I start to setup the “visibility-infrastructure” for our startup.  The result, it has been interesting and entertaining in a positive way.

Since long, I wanted to try the steps given on the blog: ” How I got my First Customers without having a product“, and now I  will do it.  As I read elsewhere: STOP waiting.  So let’s do it!

Week 0:  Monday 13.3. I started to do the investigation.

Note: I have no idea about marketing and similar. 

Last year we have a student doing his master with us in reference to marketing and I read something of his thesis to illustrate myself as well. There I learned that it important to pay attention where the servers of your providers are located, mainly for law regulations. I am oversimplifying this, but it is wise to keep in the same region. Thus, in my case I want to stay in Europe.

Next, I needed to “understand”  the different types of companies that offer marketing emails. There are interesting reviews out there of different services providers as you can see in  this post: the top 10 MailChimp Alternatives for Small Buisness Email Marketing. Also I looked for wordpress alternatives and I found this: 7 Free WordPress Plugins to Build Your Email List  (Note:  I feel more confident to use WordPress than Joomla to play around).  In quora I found a very good thread related to: Is there and EU-based alternative to MailChimp? which was relevant for me due to privacy issues.

Then after some enlightening time on this topic I decide myself to use: SendinBlue.

Next to make things work in the way I wanted, I downloaded Ninja Forms,  which works smoothly and this a good video to guide you in the basics.  It works fine, but its connection with SendinBlue was not as smooth as I wished. So after playing around with it, I decided myself to stick with SendinBlue and I download that plugin.

ah! in this journey I also learned new terms such as:  Opt-in_email.

There is much things out-there in this world to make you “visible”.

Then after almost the whole day online and can say that 50% of the
visibility-infraestructure is there.  Need to figure it out how things work, create the content, and… do it!

Also in my list of tasks for “visibility” is to check google-analytics.  Somehow as I learn more about this, I get more excited as a researcher! it sound crazy, but it is true, is so much interesting things to research out there!

It has been a very interesting learning day!!!  🙂  confirming the importance of moving!!!

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”  – Pablo Picasso

Current present into: “World Politics”

Week 4
Joensuu, Finland

My Thursday’s night 26.1.2017 was full of internet reading due to the last orders of the new USA president at that particular moment. The topics there are being discussed at the moment are relevant for me because I am a female who loves science, enjoys traveling, believes in cooperation and collaboration, thinks that everybody should have a minimum right of shelter, health and education, believes in freedom and I am an immigrant. Additionally, I am proud to say that my “heimat” is Mexico.

So, I was reading this analysis of this column El viaje es una trampa, when suddenly, as if I was  watching a film everything changed because I got the article  el primer mandatario que dice no. The international press was also writing about the current conversation between two neighbor countries, for example in the  bbc and euronews.

I felt I needed to say something and I needed to digest, so I only could say this in my  forgotten FB’s wall:

We are transforming our “real world” in an INTENSE rollercoaster.
It is time to play wisely.
Wish to be listening more to historians and chess players. They are needed!

The new president of the USA is making us think, which in itself is a good thing. We were given a lot for granted lately.  The wall between USA and Mex already exist, the interesting fact is to reflect upon his approach to divide which imho might be short sighted. Yes, for Mexico USA is an important customer, but also for USA Mexico is the second important customer after China. The following infographic is quite interesting in terms on how USA could be affected if the borders are changed without thinking.

The topic of the wall is short sighted as there are all the topics I have heard so far, but ok, one has to respect. However what happen when topics actual relate to all humans on earth as:

a) Denied human influence into climate change

b) Forbid the communication between researchers and laypeople. (note here and here)

Time to think and ACT!

This reminds me, I remember, some years ago at a seminar in Tampere, were one of the papers we were discussing was about LARPs. For me, it is a difficult to get into the LARP world, real life is very immersive for me. I am not a larper, it is a fact.

However now I wouldn’t mind “playing” on a futuristic “LARP” where different scenarios can be created of our current rollercoaster.

Let’s  keep constructing our future,

— cais

PS.  Historians, where are you? We need you! Please remind us several things from our human past to be able to see the future.

 

We are learning Finnish – Me opimme suomea — 002

Week 4
Joensuu, Finland

Koli’s story (presented in October) serves its goal to make me practice Finnish. In addition, I have shown it a couple of time, and it seems other like it too.  🙂  So, I hope it helps!

Now it is time for the second story. This second story has vocabulary related to a hairdresser. This is not such a good story, but it has a lot of vocabulary that I know I need.

SIDE NOTE:  A personal goal is to be able to interact in Finnish in this 2017, thus I need to look for different support sources, To guide me on the language structure, I use an “old” book of mine entitle: “From Start to Finnish” by Leila White. I am NOT starting from zero. At the moment I am in Unit 5. Thus some exercises on my story are related to that particular unit.

To see the story on a full screen click here.

*** Vocabulary:
Leikata -to cut, to trim
Tarvitsen — I need something
Minun pitää — I need to (do something)
Lyhentää — to cut (hair )
Johdatus — introduction
varten — for
nopea — fast
käynti — visit
suositella — to recommend
usein — often
ennen — before
etukäteen — before hand
tapaaminen — appointment
lyhyt — short
halula – to want
vaalea — blond
Käyttää — to use

And the negative conjugation.