Grupo Porto Diao Cultura en Digital

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?

Image Courtesy of Work Is Play

Abstract art Test @ BBC
Of the styles of art we picked for the experiment, your answers suggest you like abstract art.

Composition 17
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)

Arithmetic composition
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)

Furioso 9
Rudolf Bauer (1889-1953)

Composition IX, opus 18
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)

Abstract art often leaves people asking: “Is this art?” And that’s precisely the reaction many artists want to provoke.

In its purest form, abstract art doesn’t show recognisable objects or figures. The artist represents his inner thoughts and feelings with shapes, lines, colours and tones.

Abstract art originates in the 19th century. Some say it is a response to the invention of photography, which freed artists from their traditional role as portrayers of reality.

The rapid changes in society affected many artists in the early 1900s. The abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky once wrote: “When religion, science and morality are shaken … then man’s gaze turns away from the external towards himself.”

Your favourite type of art is Abstract.

/* === Personality : Main Trait he=high emotional intelligence hs=high emotional stability hi=high intellectualism hx=high extraversion hc=high conscientiousness ha=high agreeableness le=low emotional intelligence ls=low emotional stability li=low intellectualism lx=low extraversion lc=low conscientiousness la=low agreeableness */ // > // -->
In the personality profile you had a high intellectualism score, which suggests you like to think about abstract ideas and have a creative imagination.

Find out more about your personality test results
People who are the same age and sex as you are most likely to prefer Impressionism.
People who also score highly in your dominant personality trait are most likely to prefer Impressionism.
See the art in the experiment and find out more

1. DO ONE THING AT THE TIME
2. KNOW THE PROBLEM
3. LEARN TO LISTEN
4. LEARN TO ASK QUESTIONS
5. DISTINGUISH SENSE FROM NONSENSE
6. ACCEPT CHANGE AS INVEITABLE
7. ADMIT MiSTAKES
8. SAY IT SIMPLE
9. BE CALM
10. SMILE

How to Work Better by Fischli/Weiss (1991)

“Taped to the wall of my studio is an A4 photocopy of a short ten-point manifesto by Fischli/Weiss entitled “How to work better”. I don’t know who put it there, but it has been in place for at least three years. It’s a tongue-in-cheek work using a motivational statement, which is a piece of found text they subsequently enlarged and had painted on the exterior of a building as part of a public commission. I sometimes show it to students at the beginning of slide lectures, and always point it out to assistants who come to the studio. I like it quite simply because it acknowledges their awareness of the idea of practice rather than production”.

(Ryan Gander, from Dexter Sinister Library)

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Creo que este es uno de los videos de Radiohead menos weird que he visto, no creen?

Radiohead - Reckoner - by Clement Picon

Pero si esperabas ver algo mas weird, pueden ver el video de Reckoner que hice el año pasado, promocionando el ZombieWalk, este año no hemos tenido tiempo para preparar algo, pero no duden que el ZombieWalk va a ocurrir, como todos los años empezando en el Parque Urraca este 31 de octubre y ahora finalizando con un toque del Crimsom Ghost en 3Way.

Behind the Scenes - Zombie Walk 2007 Web Commercial from Jorge Yau on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: videos, radiohead, reckoner, zombies

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• ruby-mp3info-0.6.8 Documentation ruby-mp3info read low-level informations and manipulate tags on mp3 files. (tags: tags scripting ruby programming mp3 metadata library rubyonrails gem)

As an aside to this piece, I feel compelled to share this tidbit with you: I got to work this morning and after settling in and the like, I decided to peruse Facebook. The social netwroking website has been vital to Porto Diao’s current marketing ventures, especifically talking about the Zombie Walk and I’m the type of guy that likes to know everything that’s going on at all times so it works out in the end. Anyway, recently I’ve been getting a lot of friend requests and overall activity in my profile page almost certainly due to the Porto Diao-organized event (my adventures as a devilishly charming man of mystery are just fine being speculation and rumors) and I mean, sure, I’m open to anyone that wants to be friends and all… I just don’t like it when people add friendss just to have them. Look, I could break down the 200+ people I have as friends in the following way: 20% are friends I see on a regular basis, 45% are people that have either guest-starred in one of my adventures, I see every so often yet the memories bind us together (include high school folks in this category), 20% are girls I’ve been intimate with on a myriad of levels I’m not about to discuss with you at the moment, you cheeky bastard, and the remaining 15% are either girls I have poked and talked to a few times or guys that want to get it on with said girls. These percentages arent set in stone, as many people I know fall into several of the afformentioned categories anyway but for the sake of order, well there you go.

And then, there’s Ricardo Martinelli. All I know from the guy is that he ran for president in the last panamanian elections where Martin Torrijos won in a landslide victory, he owns one of the bigger supermarket chains in the country (Super99) and, according to my deranged father, is a certified schizofrenic. The latter, I’m willing to believe judging from the times I’ve seen him on TV but it doesn’t diminish my opinion of the guy; in fact, considering that in the big race for the presidency, the hopefuls I was presented with so that I could give one of them my vote were all fucked up in some way, shape or form: Martin Torrijos was a puppet powered by nostalgia for the only nice dictator Panama’s ever had, Guillermo Endara was a clown and he already took office once a long time ago, Martinelli was a schizo and the rest were insignificant because I don’t remember who they were at this moment. Still, out of all of them, it was Martinelli that seemed like the best choice to take over, so I gave him my vote. Sadly, everyone else in the country was overcomed by the notion of him being a loon rather than president and, well, the rest is history.

Now he’s on Facebook, wanting to be my friend.

I’m not of one singular political party (in fact, I’m more in tune with being a libertarian but that’s neither here nor there) rather than I am all for the best man/woman for the job, so I don’t like to get into political discussions because they get as nasty as the discussions I have whenever some moron waltzes in here and calls me a “gringo” (like it was an insult, which is even sadder) because I call my countrymen out on their shit. I’m not even North-American. I’m a Latin Lover with geek cred. Whatever. Getting out of the full-of-myself snark, it seems that this politician/businessman wants to be my friend and I’ve had the browser tab open all morning trying to figure out what this guy’s intentions are. Does he really want to be my friend, I wonder? Is he lonely? Does he want some comfort? I think I’m the last guy to ask comfort for, because I’m like Dolemite, shooting out torpedos out my mouth left and right. Then I wonder “hell, he probably heard of the Zombie Walk and he wants to, well… walk.”

I tried looking for videos on the subject but came up empty: during his presidential campaign, he was known as a man who “walks in the shoes of the people,” in reality a series of commercials that showed him shoveling, building homes and pretty much getting down and dirty with the working class. It was a pretty commendable campaign, certainly original but it quickly derailed into mockery. Fact of the matter is, this guy is going at it from all angles to get the bigger demographics of people living in Panama today: the working class and youngsters. This last one leads me to Facebook, and the predicament at hand. I walked into his profile page to further investigate and I read the following message in ALL CAPS, which I hate because I see those fucking messages pop up at the AlmanaqueAzul.org comments all the time and I’m the dork that has to “de-cap” everything:

HOLA A TODOS, AHORA COMO NO PUEDO TENER MAS AMISTADES POR TENER 5000 PERSONAS EN MI PRIMER FACEBOOK
SE PUEDE SER AMIGO MIO TAMBIEN EN RICARDO ALBERTO MARTINELLI
ESTE ES UN NUEVO FACEBOOK PARA PODER ACOMODAR MAS AMISTADES!
SALUDOS,
RICARDO MARTINELLI

What that reads, dear non-Spanish-speaking reader, is that he had a previous profile page and had too many friends. So many friends, in fact, that he couldn’t have any more. According to facebook, no other person in the known world can have more than 5,000 friends at a time, so Rick over here decided to open another profile to accomodate more friends. If I accept to be in his troupe, that would make me a second-wave friend. Ricardo Martinelli has too many friends. Let it sink for a minute.

Apparently he’s one of the two Panamanian polliticians lurking around Facebook (as TuPolitica.com tells me, current Panama City mayor and presidential hopeful Juan Carlos Navarro being Player 2. He doesn’t have as many friends) and he wants to be acquainted with the potty-mouthed writer. Well, Porto Diao could use finantial backing. Look, that’s the thing about associating yourself with politicians: for some societal reason I fail to comprehend, working or being remotely related to a politician somehow adheres you to their cause and you’ll be shunned by your peers if you don’t bask in it… much like religion. Oh, dear Marley, I know people that are active cells of youth Christian movement Generacion Sin Limite that are cool folks and all, but I went to their latest attempt to attract lost souls (a rock concert called Rock En Tu Calle, on its third edition) and it was such a blatant display of hipocrisy I felt like I was in enemy territory the whole time I was there. We produced a BFTV about it, so check it out when you have the time to see how much of a joke it is. The inititiave is great and, just like politics, a necessary evil every society needs in order to keep some degree of order. Still, what about me? What about the guy who would rather believe in 1 person doing things right rather than someone representing a political agenda?

As likeable as the guy may be, and he seems to be a hoot to talk if only for the constant nervous ticks and bloodshot eyes, I’m not quite sure I want to associate myself to this guy. Hell, I like Navarro too but you don’t see me doing a digital dash to add him as my friend. I think I’ll add myself to his potentially bogus Facebook experiment to connect with me. You can never trust politicians, but this guy was a businessman first, so it can’t be THAT bad… right?

Let me begin by saying that I am not an economist and the rabbit hole goes much deeper than I’ve managed to crawl myself into regarding the following, and this thesis is open for discussion in and out of my chunk of the internet. Having said that, I was having lunch writing down facts to put in the Jean Caca page (he’s The Source of Manhood… in Man) and around 30 yards from where I was in the mall’s food court I could see a video game store, next to a Converse shoe store and some department store thrown in the corner. It was around 2PM on a Wednesday, so the influx of clientele wasn’t massive by any means. Pondering on the sight before my eyes, I came to the realization that yes, I have in fact bought something in all three stores, and in two out of three cases I felt I was being raped as a consumer by how ridiculously overpriced the items I purchased were (the department store was saved from my overpricing guillotine). At first I thought the overpricing was because they’re specialty stores, focused on their particular niches (video games and Chuck Taylor’s, respectively), but then I remembered that the items I purchased or wanted to buy from said stores could be gotten cheaper in a sweet Candy Land I like to call “The Internet.” This epiphany saved me from paying $50 for a new pair of Chuck Taylor’s, something that to this day makes my blood boil because it represents everything that’s wrong with consumerism, but it did not save me when I was caught on the hype of Halo 3. You can’t bat .500 all the time and the game is very fun, but knowing I could’ve bought the game for $20 less on Amazon doesn’t exactly keep me warm at night. Recently, doors to internet commerce have opened up that drive my thesis even further home (at first it was on the porch, but now it’s made its way into the kitchen), one that I will share with you today.

The premise is simple, and even though you might or might not be able to connect with the analogy I use to illustrate my point, hopefully I’ll make you see the underlying principle of it. So, I brought back the gamer in me back from the dead, and we’re both happy about it. Problem is that being a gamer in this day and age is expensive as all hell. Every game is $60 and up, controllers are $40, and in order to juice out a video game console’s full potential you have to buy a bunch of little gadgets, nuts and bolts in order to really feel like you’re in the cutting edge of technology. Well, even if you have been told otherwise, I don’t shit cocaine bricks that I then sell for $2,000 per white, powdery turd. I write my witty fingers off and earn my keep, the one that keeps this boat rockin’. Now, because all work and no play is an act punishable by death in the House of Rob, there must always be a distraction and said distraction, at the moment, is video games. But alas, we return to the conundrum for the ages: it’s all too expensive. Now, imagine yourself as a Panamanian gamer that’s in college, working a regular job that gets you buy and have passive knowledge of how the Internet works. You save up, sacrificing yourself for that hulk of pixel goodness brought to you by Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony (whichever you prefer) and when you finally have the money to spend on the console and a game, you play it until you beat it. So, what now? Onto another game. But how, if every game is worth $80-$90 in Panama?

Since Panama is the land of the “Juega Vivo” and will forever be known for it, what a lot of people do is they hack into their consoles and place all-region chips so that they can play pirated games. It voids the warranty, but sending off the console from Panama to the manufacturer in the United States if the console check out in a firey blaze is cost-productive anyway. The sacrifice for doing that though, is getting banned from each console’s online playing community… FOR LIFE. Being that online play is one of the better aspects of the VG deal, the average gamer is up shit creek without a paddle. This very predicament was one that yours truly was presented by right after beating his first game. What to do, then? Even in Amazon, $60 bucks for a new game seems a bit pricey.

Enter PayPal.

PayPal recently opened its digital doors to accept Panamanian users, rolling out the myriad of features that make the service great one drip at a time. Now, having PayPal allowed me to forego Step 2 of my consumer nirvana: eBay. Within the first 3 weeks of using eBay, my game library expanded to 5 games, the eBay games in mint condition. The combined value of the 3 games from 3 different sellers add up to the grand total of $87.03, shipping included. Now compare this to the $84.50 I ponied up for Halo 3: Poor Man’s Edition. Something is amiss!

As Panama steadily becomes the darling of both tourists and businessmen alike, my country has been adding services in order to bypass the shoots and ladders US commerce has placed upon us. In my particular case, I don’t buy a thing off retail stores… I buy everything online. I can state several reasons why that is a monumentally bad idea, prime among them being that I’m the poster boy for consumerism, but the benefit here is that I can get exactly what I want, cheaper. This is particularly so when it comes to electronics: ask any person living in Latin America how much an iPod will ring them and they’ll tell you that you’re better off buying one in the US, if you get a chance to go sometime.

What I’m trying to get to here is that, and I’m sure of this, the Internet will eventually phase out retail in Panama (not to mention the world), just like DVD phased out the VHS. Yes, this is a no-brainer for a lot of you out there on the Internet, but that’s because the Internet, believe it or not, is still a niche market. The latest surveys say that around 17-21% of the world’s population uses the Internet on a daily basis, and even though that percentage is growing steadily over the passage of time, there’s still a lot of people in that demographic that don’t even understand the world wide web that well. They have no idea of its full potential, and since most people fear what they don’t understand, they stick to what they know. What they know is celebrity gossip sites, YouTube, e-mail and Facebook. In regards to the Panamanian number of that demographic, it’s a pretty big one considering we’re a couple of years behind in the technology bandwagon: I look at Panama’s network page on Facebook and am amazed that it registers more than 28,000 people, and that’s without counting the other thousands that are subscribed in college networks and the like. Even though the numbers are remarkable, I still get asked where I get my wonderful toys all the time, and every other month I instruct some poor sir or madam on how to shop online because they have been presented with the huge array of possibilities online stores offer to the consumer.

The more people wise up, the less sales retail stores will ring up. Aside from the fact that half of the stores I see in these malls are empty more often than not (and I could provide a thesis for why they’re still in business regardless as hell. Here’s a hint: money laundering) and aside from supermarkets and department stores, I really don’t see specialized business venture doing anything else that’s not going the way of the Dodo. Of course, there is much to consider and the intricacies of Panamanian commerce are much more complex than the picture I’m painting for you now, but Panama still has some road to travel before it can truly call itself First World. We’re certainly on our way up, though.

People will always like the notion of trying before buying. This is especially true when it comes to clothes; I buy all of my shirts online, but everything else is bought here at department stores, because they’re dirt cheap and I can try them on beforehand. In a lot of cases you get what you pay for, but I’m not going to go mountain climbing to fight dingos wearing my $4.99 denim jeans. The knockoff market is huge here, and unless you’re a fashionista (we have them too, and even when Panama is not 3 million people full they still manage to come across as complete douchebags) nobody will bat an eye if your jeans are real or not. Again, the “juega vivo” factor comes into play. The overall sentiment is that “we’re all on the same boat and I’ll be a damn fool if I pay more than $15 for a decent pair of pants when I know I can get them for a third of the price somewhere else.” This principle, my friends, is the exact one I apply in terms of online shopping and that’s why I believe that eventually everyone will jump on the digital bandwagon of commerce… once everyone knows how to work with the system, that is.

Getting stuff faster, better and cheaper. It’s the Panamanian way. It’s also why our traffic system is screwed, drug lords love to use our tax haven sensibilities to store their goods/money, why being a politician is so blatantly lucrative as it is corrupt, why people hack into their game consoles to play games for free, why knock-off products are sold as novelty and no one cares, why pirated movies, music and porn is sold on the street and nobody denounces the sellers, why our beaches are slowly being sold off to multinational companies that have a morbid fascination with resorts, and, ironically, it’s also why there is a company that allows me to comply with said Panamanian way to a T. This is the part of my thesis where I state that the Internet and Panamanians have a lot more in common than I thought.

With the Panama-United States free trade deal all but a given, I’m curious to know if it’ll affect fees in terms of shipping to-and-from Panama. It’s a toss-up, but I imagine I would want to slip something of the sort into the negotiations if my country and yours will be exchanging goods on a regular basis. As our quest for getting and accomplishing faster, better and cheaper becomes increasingly easier thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I imagine that the online-saavy Panamanian (like me! Hi, mom!) will find it irresistible to migrate and leave retail behind. The prospect of having more than 28,000 buying their stuff online though, a lot of them the same people that go to malls and consume there, could bring the economy to a choke-inducing collapse. Of course, it might take us a number of years at the least to be up with the times, considering that Cable & Wireless, our de facto telephone/internet provider despite the “free market” facade they’ve set up for themselves, sells their high bandwidth internet for a ludicrous price. In fact, Panama has the highest internet connection fees in the region, and we’re supposed to be the Mack Daddy of every country in the continent that speaks Spanish (I’m still on the fence about Mexico). There’s so much injustice coming at the regular Joe from all angles that it’s easy to develop a Tom Joad complex… but that’s a fight for another day.

Yes, and thanks to Rob and the PD network here we are ~ hopefully staying and receiving a lot of feedback and support!

Cache(507) tiene un nuevo hogar!
Así es, y aquí estamos gracias a Rob y Portodiao. Esperamos quedarnos y recibir apoyo al igual que criticas constructivas y sugerencias!