Elvis Montero

Back at the US and writing for Reporter

I’ve been in the US for a little bit over a week now. I’m taking the last 2 courses of the MS IT degree at RIT. After that, it’ll be a matter of the final project (usually called capstone project).

My latest Reporter article is out! Here’s an extract:

We are used to thinking that internet applications are always and everlasting. If it’s online, it’s going to be there forever. Period. What if, all of the sudden, your favored site goes offline indefinitely? Do you have a backup strategy? Oh, you think that’s nonsensical? Jocular perhaps? Not for the many people who tried to access Gmail a few weeks ago, just to realize Google’s famous free mail service was unavailable.

The downtime lasted several hours. As one would expect, the public outcry was rampant and merciless. How is it possible that Google, arguably one of the most powerful IT companies in the world, experienced such an abnormal, incredibly long downtime? Alas, they are not alone in this department.

You can get the entire piece here (if you like it, please vote for it). You can also get this week’s Reporter as a PDF file.

Posted in Reading Material, Travel | No Comments »

Hiatus and good reading

The blogging interlude will probably continue for a few more days. My writing time has become nonexistent since I traveled back to Dominican Republic a week ago.

In the interim, here’s a list containing a few articles I think are worthwhile (I’m not writing as much, but I’m still reading voraciously whenever I happen to have a break from family and friends):

• Cryptography - How to Keep Your Secrets Safe: An excellent and thorough reading about cryptography and its many uses. Once you’re done with this article, you’ll wonder how and why you’ve been blissfully browsing the web without minding how safe you are.
• Making waves in Beijing - Why Speedo’s new swimsuit is a record breaker: Without taking any merit away from Michael Phelps, it’s definitely good to know he had some “extra help” on his way to Olympic immortality. 8 gold medals and 7 world records in Beijing? Spectacular!
• Don’t have your head in the clouds about online services: GMail is down? Amazon’s S3 offline!? We’ve all read the recent headlines. The author puts forward a prospect I find myself in agreement with: the cloud is in no position to entirely supplant desktop applications yet.
• Georgia cuts access to Russian sites, TV news: Cyber-warfare is a very real concern for countries involved in a military conflict nowadays. Georgia’s and Russia’s recent virtual feud provides a superb illustration of contemporary cyberwar to other countries.

I also read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. One word came to mind after reading Cory’s captivating work: amazing. I highly recommend this book (you can download the text for free). I guarantee your perception of the post 9-11 world will change after you’re through with Little Brother.

Posted in Life, Reading Material | 2 Comments »

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Carr seems to think so

Nicholas Carr’s article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, is a far-reaching piece of reading regardless of your field of study or work:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

Mr. Carr is putting forward the idea that the duration and intensity of our concentration spans have suffered greatly because of the Internet (and the peculiar reading patterns that have emerged because of it):

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.

The Google Effect?

Source: stupid-humans.com

The article may seem long for current Internet standards. But trust me on this one: this cake is totally worth the candle.

Posted in Life, Technology | 3 Comments »

Technology, every slacker’s utopia, is now a disease

That’s right. As stated by a recent article in the UK’s Guardian web site, technology has made it so easy for people to waste time that many doctors and researchers believe procrastination should be treated as a serious medical condition:

Time-wasting is not just an irritating habit. It is an affliction that ruins millions of lives and often requires therapy and other treatment for sufferers, psychologists have warned.

According to new research, one person in five now suffers from the problem so badly that their careers, relationships and health are threatened. Many researchers blame computers and mobile phones for providing too many distractions for people.

The art of doing nothing at all (at least nothing productive) has taken a new form thanks to our present-day gadgets, the Internet and our insatiable appetite for the latest news and information.

If you spend many hours in front of your computer screen and yet struggle to accomplish your daily tasks because you keep running out of time, you may have caught the disease already.

My good friend Dave recently blogged about his inability to remain offline and unplugged for more than a few minutes. I quickly chimed in and exposed my own Internet-dependency problems. I think this 2 seemingly unrelated issues (i.e. always-online obsession and chronic procrastination) are actually interrelated. Most of us have this urge, this inexplicable desire, of being online and a few clicks away 24/7. I believe therein lies the problem.

Is your constant Twittering consuming too much of your time?

Source: Stepcase Lifehack

You are online. You feel relieved. Now what? What are you doing during your recurrent Internet expeditions? Are you maximizing your time in front of the computer to achieve meaningful, constructive goals? Are you sure you are not Facebooking too much?

Lately, I’ve realized I usually spend most of my online time doing nothing relevant. Frequently, I just browse, read, watch videos, play chess, read, browse, watch some more videos, read, read, read, read, read… You could argue all that reading is a good thing. However, I focus exclusively on RSS feeds (e.g. technology, finance, writing and blogging) and the traditional news sources. Evidently, there’s hardly anything you could consider productive work from this list (although this can easily be attributed to the fact that I’m not taking classes during summer and I’ve found myself with lots of free time after work).

This illness could affect anyone. Even someone like Chris Guillebeau is not impervious to it (and the occasional kick in the behind is oftentimes required in order to rectify the situation):

In my case, some days I am hopelessly distracted. The Gmail window is open, and I’m eagerly watching for any sign of the next message. There it is! Oh… it’s just a notice from a mailing list. Then I go over to CNN.com, which in many ways is worse than being completely uninformed, to spend more minutes reading the latest non-news.

This is called WASTING PRECIOUS TIME. I could be doing all kinds of productive stuff like writing and planning my world takeover. Instead I am reading the same things over and over and daydreaming about my Frequent Flyer miles.

Obviously, you and I are not alone, dear reader (yes, I know you are sick too!). Rest assured though. There is hope! We can fight off technology-induced procrastination in many ways (starting by eliminating distractions and working in bursts to get more done).

Do you have any tips? How do you fend off procrastination in these modern, constanly-in-flux times? Please, share!

Posted in News, Technology | 2 Comments »

Mind map: Objet d’art

I love mind maps! Ok, maybe that was an overstatement (I usually get carried away when I’m excited). I do think mind maps are an elegant, straightforward manner to easily convey seemingly-complicated ideas and concepts. I was totally elated when I ran into Mindmeister.com, a site that allows you to create and share your mind maps with the online community.

Take a look at one of the public maps submitted by one of the site’s members (What Smart Students Know - 12 Principles):

Source: Mindmeister’s public maps (click on the picture for a higher resolution)

If you have never tried out mind maps, make sure you do so the next time you are explaining any new subject to a novice. I have noticed complicated subjects tend to be easier to grasp when you present them with the help of graphic elements. A picture is worth a thousand words, right?

Posted in Education | 4 Comments »