http://historyofaman.blogsome.com history of a spanish guy going to Japan for a year Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:49:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Introduction In the previous post I wrote a short introduction to Elgg, an open source social network engine. Elgg is initially meant for installing in a LAMP environment, but it is also possible to install it in Windows, although this is not recommended for production servers. In this post I’ll explain ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2009/10/23/installing-elgg-in-windows-with-xampp/ Official Elgg Website Introduction I’ve been playing the last few months with Elgg, an open-source social network engine that allows you to easily create your own social network. In this post I’ll try to give a general description of Elgg. Elgg itself is just an engine for a plugin system, and these ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2009/10/21/elgg-social-networks-for-everyone/ Well, it’s been some time since the last time I wrote, so I thing it’s time to summarize what I’ve been doing since the last post. After the problems in Thailand I got to Cambodia two days later than planned. I arrived to Siem Reap the night of the 19th, ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/12/11/in-laos/ First of all I want to calm down some people that has written me, the situation in general here in Thailand is of normality, apart from the fact that the two airports of Bangkok have been taken over by the government opponents. The terrorists attacks with hundreds of victims that ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/11/28/problems-in-thailand/ After the night flight from Kuala Lumpur and passing the usual controls of passport and luggage (taking out all my dirty clothes from my backpack is something I had to do everytime I travelled outside Japan during the year I lived there), I took the train to Ueno. I arrived ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/11/23/asia-2008-day-5-tokyo/ After a few days in Singapore, it was time to continue my trip to new lands. I had a night flight to Tokyo booked from Kuala Lumpur, and my idea was spending the day there before taking the flight, so Pier and me left early that morning. After the six ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/11/23/asia-2008-day-4-kuala-lumpur/ After two days going out at night, and possibly also influenced by the timezone and weather change , on Sunday I woke up exhausted, so we took the day really easy. The afternoon we walked around the Marina Bay and Esplanade area. The Esplanade Th “big durian” We went to the Merlion (the ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/11/22/asia-2008-day-3-singapore/ Even after the long trip and the party of the previous day, I didn’t have any jet-lag symptoms, so after a small brunch Brenda, Pier and me went to China Town and walked a bit around. I also bought the bus ticket for Kuala Lumpur that I would take a ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/11/21/asia-2008-day-2-singapore/ On October 30th I left Madrid direction Singapore. I had to make a transfer at Heathrow airport (London), and the flight there was delayed more than 2 hours, so after much walking around the airport I finally took the flight. The flight was quite long, 12 hours, and I spent ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/11/21/asia-2008-day-1-singapore/ Since I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my next trip I’ve been thinking a lot about the itinerary. Even if my intention is mainly to improvise on the way, I think it is also a good to have a general idea of the places I want to visit. Main ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/10/27/travel-plan/ One of my last hobbies is making HDR photos. The High dynamic range is a set of techniques consisting in combining different shots of the same static scene with different exposition values into one single image. This way it is possible to achieve an ideal illumination of the different parts ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/10/25/high-dynamic-range/ It is hard to believe that already four years have passed since I made my erasmus in Vienna, without doubt one of the best cities I’ve ever been to. Those were six of the best months of my life in almost every aspect, and ever since then I’ve been thinking ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/10/18/wien-wunderware-stadt/ Well, after reopening the blog I think it is a good idea to also start again with the tradition of posting each Friday a song or poem that I like. In this case is a “love” song by Rammstein. I hope you like it ;) Amour Love Die Liebe ist ein wildes Tier Sie ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/10/17/amour/ After deciding to quit my job and much thinking about what to do afterwards without reaching any clear decision, I thought that the best option was taking advantage of being free without job or other commitments and make a long trip. I’ve had for a long time the dream of ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/10/14/planning-a-new-trip/ More than two years have passed since the last time I wrote in this blog, and although I’ve often thought of writing again, I never found enough motivation for doing it. Many things have changed during this time, and now that I’m about to start a new adventure, I think ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2008/10/12/reopening-the-blog/ Already three months since I arrived at Tokyo, and i could keep on writing for hours and hours about all the things I’ve seen and lived in this strange country that is Japan. I have a strange feeling when I think about these last months, in a way the time ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2005/12/08/three-months-in-tokyo/ Yesterday I returned from Brussels, where I’ve been last days. The reason of the trip was attending the pre-departure briefing of the Vulcanus programme, I was selected for two months ago. I took a flight on Sunday, after sleeping less than 3 hours and packing everything in ten minutes. After 2 ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2005/07/13/back-from-brussels/ Last friday I presented my Final Term Project, the last step left in order to finish my degree, so from now on you can call me “Mr. Engineer” :p The presentation has been a little “surrealist”. I’ve done it in a record time, and luckily they have liked it very much ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2005/07/13/free/ The haiku is a kind of short poem, without rhyme, usually organized in 3 lines. This poetic form has it’s origin in Japan hundreds of years ago, although the term “haiko” was not used until the XIX century. This short poems use to capture a moment, situation or event, usually trivial, ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2005/06/28/haiku/ Yesterday I met a friend for teaching him how to play Go (囲碁 or 碁 in Japanese). It is a two-player strategic board game, originating in China thousands of years ago, and very popular in East ASia. The is played in a 18x18 cell board, but unlike more “occidental” ... http://historyofaman.blogsome.com/2005/06/27/go/