Anniversaries…
Time goes by really fast, and when you turn around and look you realize how much has happened… how much you’ve changed, how much you’ve learned and how much you’ve had fun. Well, it turns out it has been already a year since I came to Spain and although I have a great time here I also miss many many things and people. Life outside home changes… a lot, and although you try to build a new home for yourself, it is not an easy task, specially living so far away. But you try and manage to do the best you can…
In a happier note, there is also another anniversary… my father has just celebrated his 30th year working at 3M, for which I want to congratulate him. My respect for him is only surpassed by my love to him (yeah, I know it sounds cheesy but its true). So congrats! and on top of that, he has appeared on the Mexican newspaper Reforma… so below you can read the article 
Running to stand still
Well, today sunday I participated in the race organized by BBVA bank. It was a 5 km race for beginners (obviously) and I went with the only purpose to exercise and have some fun… and it was! Although the idea of waking up Sunday at 7:30am is not very appealing, it was really nice to see the streets of Madrid empty.
The race was good also… with a lot of people: 5,400 people registered for Madrid. It started from Paseo de la Castellana and I finished the 3km in about 30 minutes (the official times are not yet posted). Also, testing Nokia’s technology 
I tracked the race using the application Sports Tracker and a GPS device. I have to say I really like the application, and professional runners should find it really useful. However, there is still the inconvenience of having to carry the phone and GPS receiver, or a bulky phone with integrated GPS. So below you can see the route of the race, with low, high’s and fast points, as well as a graph and the summary. And yes I know… there is a lot of noise specially on speed measurement… unfortunately GPS is not extremely accurate at low speeds (needs more precision) and even less in the city.
Kent – Ingenting
Kent’s new album, Tillbaka till samtiden, will be released soon and they will start touring Scandinavia… so keep your fingers crossed so I can go or they come to Spain!
Below is the video for the new single: Ingenting.
Eurobasket and more…
Well, a few weeks ago there was a contest at work in which the person that made the best pictures (with a Nokia phone obviously ) would win tickets for the Eurobasket tournament here in Madrid. And yes, you guessed right, I did win tickets for 2 quarter-final games! My pictures were not that great, but considering not many people participated hehe, I won 7th place! With this, I won two tickets for the two games on thursday: Russia-France, Spain-Germany.
The first game, Russia-France, was not that good… but the two teams were very close to each other and the match was decided on the last few seconds, which made it quite interesting. Finally Russia won and is today playing the final The second game, obviously Spain won… It was a great game, and at one point Spain had a lead of almost 40 points! Great plays and a great atmosphere!
(You can see the pictures in orginal size at my Flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/jlecanda/ )
In other news… work at Nokia is going ok. This was a tough week with a lot of work, and as always some tasks are better than others but overall it is going good. Now, I am also taking charge of organizing Nokia’s participation at the Movilforum event of Telefonica. It is something completely new for me (which doesn’t drive me crazy), but I think I will learn a lot from it.
And finally, as you should know, today is Mexican Independence day!! Unfortunately I didn’t had the chance to celebrate it properly (although I did had a lot of fun), but instead I got (a bit) drunk with caipirihnas and surrounded by Spanish people saying stupid comments about Mexico… así que ¡Viva México Cabrones!
Google Earth Flight Sim
Well, as it has recently been published on several sites around the Internet, there is an easter egg which has been discovered in Google Earth that enables a flight simulator. Well, I have been trying it and although it is very basic, it is absolutely amazing. To start it, you need to press Ctrl-Alt-A (or Cmd-Ald-A in a mac) and it will show you a dialog box to pick the plane and starting location. And that is basically all that its needed.
Although not a very advanced flight simulator, it is extremely fun to fly over cities with all the real satellite imagery, and what’s best, with all the 3D buildings directly from Google Earth! I think it is very easy to switch from a “mapping” application and just add some movement and physics functions to turn it into a flight sim, but the result is absolutely amazing. Check out the pics!
And why not fly over your house? or on top of the Aztec stadium? and land on Av. Reforma!
And what amazes me the most, is how the flexibility of Google and the power of communities is enabling it to release all of this cool stuff, but at the same time it is starting to compete with a new set of players… If they only add a bit more code and make it a little more complete, why buy a flight sim game if you can play this for free and with real, updated data!? Only God knows what will happen with Google as it keeps on groing.