Using the Blog in the English Class

This is the last task that involves writing in the blog for the english class. So as a finishing work we are supossed to evaluate this precise activity: to use this blog as a tool for learning and practicing english.

How do i feel about it? I think it is a great way to improve our learning, because when you write you have to check yourself using dictionaries or translators to be sure that you are writing in the right way. It is your task to assure that you are doing it fine, because the teacher will correct it once you have finished the post that you have been indicated to write. It is like having little tests every week, but it is not that hard (you don't have that much pressure on you). It is, indeed, a great way to practice your english writing, to make sure how to write all those words that you know only by how it sounds, and definitively to win some confidence in how much english you mannage, because when you practice with your classmates, i usually get to know them and lost my shame of not having a perfect english, but anyway i will feel embarrassed talking in english to people i don't know, or that i know they speak perfect.

Another thing that i like a lot about this kind of activities is the fact that you have to visit some websites with really interesing topics, like that TED webpage with all those short videos with an incredible ammount of information, or that crazy futuristic view of perfect life you can find in the Victory City's website.

It was a fine experience, i think. Simon should keep this activity in his future classes and find new ways of making the new learners more confident about their capacity to understand and speak the language.

The New EVO X GSR

Well, this is the new version of the Mitsubishi Lancer EVO X (one of my favourite cars in the world), that arrives from Japan, with a distinctive name: GSR Premium Edition. It has a lot of improvements and changes in equipment and aesthetics, keeping the original engine from the GSR model (the 2.0 turbocharged engine with 291 horsepower).

In the exterior, besides the style that gives the great painting job in black, it has 18 inches BBS wheels, anti-fog tinted lights and little details painted in the body color.

The most interesting of this special edition is to be found in the interior, in both equipment and aesthetics. Recaro seats, satelite navigator, curtain airbags and a Rockford Fosgate audio system with 9 speakers.

The price in this country should be something between 30 - 32 million pesos, depending if you choose the five speeds manual gear, or the SST gear, with double clutch and six speeds. Unfortunately, this edition will not leave his homeland. Bad luck for us (or the people that has the money to buy it).

TED: Rethinking the Music Video

Jakob Trollback is the one speaking. Rethinking the music video is the talk i choose from the TED website.
Jakob Trollback is a pioneering designer that works in the New York-based creative studio Trollbäck+Company, a great referent in the world of motion graphics, movie title and credits sequences, music videos and a bunch of other audiovisual design. Trollback is besides a designer, a musician and a dj, so he speaks in his talk about how we can merge the world of the music and the video into one that works naturally and organically.
The idea of the whole thing is how a music video functions only as a conceptual vision of the music, making dissapear the feeling of watching a movie where music lost importance. The music video he shows integrate graphic interventions in the perfect moments, exactly when the sounds need it, boosting the feelings and the intentions of the music, rather than diminish them.

A film you enjoyed: A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly is a movie written for the big screen and directed by Richard Linklanter, as an adaptation based on the novel of the same name, written by Phillip K. Dick (author of other stories that have been turned into a movie like Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report).
I saw it for the first time maybe around june or july in 2005. I was watching on the internet some pages about design, about portraits made of superposed layers of solid color in the computer, when i found that in this movie was used this technique, along with another animation technique called rotoscoping, in which animator trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use mainly in animated films and publicity.

The story is set in the near future, where a powerful drug know as substance D has become a great problem in the United States, a drug that makes split the conections between both user's brain hemispheres causing multiple personalities. In the movie, the main character is an undercover member of the police who is directed to spy his friends, being all of them included the cop, substance D users.
I like it a lot because of the visual treatment and the great story that has, you should watch it sometime.

Beautiful Chile: Death Valley

One of the most beautiful places in Chile i visited in my life is the Death Valley, near San Pedro de Atacama. I went twice, once about six years ago and the other about two years ago. Both times i went with my family, but the last time, besides my parents and my brother, my cousin Camila went also. That time we went sandboarding to the Valley and was awesome so we spend hours and hours there. The sand dunes were soft and so high that when sandboarding we pick a really great speed.
The landscapes are amazing, the Death Valley is made of a mixture of orange sand and gigantic spacelike brown stone. The rocks and the cliffs have forms that have been twisted through time by the winds of the desert and the sunsets are a beautiful sight indeed.
I recommend this place to everyone, it is located less than an hour from San Pedro and it's one of the places that is still free of charge to visit. To acces most of the other famous places in the area now you have to pay some money because of some laws about national patrimony and tourism. So that's it about the desertic north of Chile.

A Work of Art: Roger Garland.

Two Trees of Valinor is the name of his piece of art. The Artist name is Roger Garland, a great fantasy artist who painted some art rellated to the J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth novels. He collaborated around 1980s in some illustrated calendars and some say that he has a style in his drawings that look pretty simmilar to what Tolkien himself imagined when he wrote books like The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and The Hobbit. This painting i posted is one of those used in the calendars and precisely in one of this calendars i saw it maybe about ten years ago in the annual book fair that takes place in La Serena, in the fourth region. It brings to my mind those times when i was little and went to the book fairs with some fammily and spent hours watching from here to there, trying to decide wich book to buy, because unfortunately in Chile books are really expensive.
Well, back to the picture,this one is basically about this two sacred trees that are suposed to be in a paradise lost in time and place at the beggining of the times. I really like the colors in it, they give to the painting that sort of "being dreaming" effect.

Catching Up: The City of the Future

Victory City is just crazy!!! I mean, it's all right with the incredible organization of the space, the really clever ways to improve life quality of the people who are suposed to live there and how the city works on maximum efficiency... but what will happen if entire cities dissapear. I am not talking about the buildings, i'm talking about the population. If this "small" Victory Cities can hold so much people, suddenly a great percentange of an old city's population will be gone. I think that will affect deeply the economy of the old cities, because of the sudden lack of workers or professionals, the hospitals and other public services can not afford to be understaffed. Besides, i don't know if it could be a beatiful sight to live in a city that is different to another Victory City as is different one mall from another. The particular character of a city will be replaced with a beatiful and sterile picture of life. I maybe prefer to live in my old and scratched city.

Catching up: The Best

In this post i'm supossed to write about who i think it's the best designer or architect. The fact is that being a designer myself, i don't have a favourite one, so i'll write about one of my favourite artist: H.R. Giger.
Hans Ruedi Giger is a graphic artist and a sculptor born in 1940 in Chur, Switzerland. He is well known for his design work in the movie "Alien", and his particular graphic style. His style it's a mix of surreal imaginary, nightmarish landscapes, fetichism and creatures known as biomechanoids (some kind of mix between humans and machines), resulting in a dark work that he has shaped in the form of tables, chairs, mirrors, sculptures, album covers, paintings and books. In his work you can see the influence of artists like Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau and Erns Fuchs. He has his own museum in the city of Gruyères and has opened thematic bars around the world (New York, Tokio, Switzerland). His work can be seen in movies like Alien the eight passenger, Species, Alien 3 y Poltergeist 2.
I think he is just great because he started his paintings as an art therapy for a sleep disorder he has, called night terrors, characterized by extreme terror (screams, moaning) and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness (usually people with this disorder can't even recall they have this episodes). He has turned his problem into a marvelous and original form of art, turning himself into an icon of modern surrealism.
Right now i have some posters of his art, because buy an original is just impossible (the prices are too high!) and i'm saving to buy a book about his work and his life.

Catching up: Good Technology

My favourite piece of technology? I got to say, my mp3 player and my headphones, definitely. They are the most appraised devices i own. Although they are not really expensive, with the best sound and lots of memory like an ipod, they are a piece of vital importance in my daily routine. I use them every single day when i go out, walking in the streets, traveling in the subway, on the bus, flying on an airplane, everywhere. I like to listen music a lot, to listen while watching the place i'm passing by, while thinking about the university, domestic things, life or anything, enjoying being isolated from other noises. I can go everywhere with a couple of albums and usually it takes me like a week to listen all songs.
Sometimes when i'm out in the street and the mp3 player runs out of battery, it's chaos, i hate when that happens because it's like the magic world i'm immersed suddenly disappears and i'm back in the noisy and grey city, and my journey becomes bored. Given the situation, i try not to forget to charge it everyday when i get home.
It has happened, anyway, that music distract me so much sometimes i almost die because of not listening to the cars when im crossing the street jajajajaja.

Spending money on some rags

Buying clothes was my topic for this week's activity, in wich we have to write at first fifteen questions about the topic that was given to each one of us. After struggling for a few minutes without completing the fifteen required, the task was reduced to ten (uf!! jaja) Then we were suposed to interview three of our classmates with the famous ten questions. Those are posted here:

1) What was the last piece of cloth you bought?
2) What kind of clothes you like to wear?
3) What is your favourite clothing to buy?
4) How often do you buy clothes for yourself?
5) Do you have any favourite store where you buy clothes?
6) Do you like people to bou clothes for you on your birthdays?
7) What's the best clothing you have ever bought?
8) What was the most expensive clothes you have bought?
9) Do you prefer to buy clothes on retail stores or boutiques?
10)Who do you like to buy clothes with?

Well, the three classmates i interview were Nicolas, Aileen and Nancy, of whom i wrote their answers so i can wrote a little bit about their lives and how they relates themselves with the art of getting dressed. The three of them appeared to be cool people with their clothes, using nothing really fancy and shiny, where t-shirts, jeans and trainers were the common answer to many of the questions. As usual anyway, i can conclude Nicolas, as many man, spend less money than the girls on clothes, declaring himself to look for the cheap clothes rather than the expensive and exclusive ones.
With regards to the last question, about who they like to go out with them to buy clothes (the three of them didn't understand it well so probably i wrote it wrong) their answers varied from going alone to going with a brother, mom or an exboyfriend.

It was a good day

My favourite song right now is "It was a good day" by the north-american rapper Ice Cube. It isn't a recent song, it dates from 1992 album "The Predator" and has an even old beat, sampled from an old song that belong to the Isley Brothers called Footsteps in the dark" (1977).
I hear it for the first time hanging out with my brother, listening to some of his music back in my house in Antofagasta. We were checking some music to get on my pendrive before i went out with some friends and it was just like -heey this stuff is good!! i got to have it!!- and so on.
I think i like it so much because it gets me relaxed with it's beat and the lyrics talking about a near perfect day for the main character in the song, where a bunch of simple things that worked out just fine make a perfect journey.


It was a good day

[break me]
[shit..]
[yo..]

Just waking up in the morning gotta thank god
I dont know but today seems kinda odd
No barking from the dogs, no smog
And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog
I got my grub on, but didnt pig out
Finally got a call from a girl wanna dig out
Hooked it up on later as I hit the do
Thinking will I live, another twenty-fo
I gotta go cause I got me a drop top
And if I hit the switch, I can make the ass drop
Had to stop at a red light
Looking in my mirror not a jacker in sight
And everything is alright
I got a beep from kim and she can fuck all night
Called up the homies and Im askin yall
Which court, are yall playin basketball?
Get me on the court and Im trouble
Last week fucked around and got a triple double
Freaking brothers everyway like m.j.
I cant believe, today was a good day

Drove to the pad and hit the showers
Didnt even get no static from the cowards
Cause just yesterday them fools tried to blast me
Saw the police and they rolled right past me
No flexin, didnt even look in a niggaz direction
As I ran the intersection
Went to $hort dogs house, they was watchin yo! mtv raps
Whats the haps on the craps
Shake em up, shake em up, shake em up, shake em
Roll em in a circle of niggaz and watch me break em
With the seven, seven-eleven, seven-eleven
Seven even back do joe
I picked up the cash flow
Then we played bones, and Im yellin domino
And now I am yelling dominoes
Plus nobody I know got killed in south central l.a.
Today was a good day

Left my niggaz house paid
Picked up a girl been tryin to fuck since the twelve grade
Its ironic, I had the brew she had the chronic
The lakers beat the supersonics
I felt on the big fat fanny
Pulled out the jammy, and killed the punanny
And my dick runs deep so deep so deep
Put her ass to sleep
Woke her up around one
She didnt hesitate, to call ice cube the top gun
Drove her to the pad and Im coasting
Took another sip of the potion hit the three-wheel motion
I was glad everything had worked out
Dropped her ass off, then I chirped out
Today was like one of those fly dreams
Didnt even see a berry flashing those high beams
No helicopter looking for a murder
Two in the morning got the fat burger
Even saw the lights of the goodyear blimp
And it read ice cubes a pimp
Drunk as hell but no throwing up
Half way home and my pager still blowing up
Today I didnt even have to use my a.k.
I got to say it was a good day.

Hey wait, wait a minute fool
Stop the shit
What the fuck am I thinking about?

This is That

... or something.