Titanas

New York, the city that never sleeps. The big apple. The place you really want to be. It’s like San Francisco on black tight suits and Sinatra melodies or at least that’s how it looked to me after visited. Oh yeah, i flew to and from New York for free. This is how i do it.

Let me take you back a few years, when a dear friend of mine invited me to New York. He actually invited me to his a la NYC birthday party and offered to pay half of the air fares when i replied i’m flattered by the offer but i was on a tight budget. Food and drinks would be free, half way ticket would be free, sleeping would be free. Did i mention i’d be hanging out with a New York Times No1 selling author all the time?

By now you’d be asking yourselves how was it, if i met any hot NYC girls and if what you see in the movies is true. The honest answer is i don’t know. I don’t know because i never flew to New York even when i was paid to do so. I was stupid and coward and childish and sissy.

Moving forward to 2011 and a chance to actually be in New York popped up again but this time my financial status was even worse. I wasn’t only on a tight budget but i was slowly recovering from a 7kg weight loss in 2 months ( i only had money to eat once a day ), knee injury, personal and business issues related to Greek crisis but not only. Around this time, my crappy but loyal laptop was dying and i have to buy a new one, like, immediately. I could hardly surf the web, Gmail and chat at the same time. Spending on buying a new laptop, pay the rent and fly to New York wasn’t an option even though i already had a place to crash.

Three weeks before the opportunity was lost again i booked a round trip ticket to NY. I knew i’d have no money to pay the rent, neither enough for food but i did it. I was going to New York no matter what; and i did for free.

By the time i landed in New York i’ve realized that my dying laptop could be replaced with a new one for way less than originally thought. The exchange rate between the USD and the EUR was in favor of a crazy idea: buying a new laptop in US would cost me nearly 40% off the European price. The extra 40% could easily substitute traveling costs and possible taxes.

Here i am, in New York without spending a buck. A much needed laptop upgrade and a 7 days stay proved to cost way less than initially thought. I didn’t only killed two birds with one stone but i met some amazing people, reunited with an old friend and made a dream come true. In the mean time, my bank account went four figures high when delayed payments finally cashed in.

You can tell the view from the Empire State Building is stunning.

Here are some random thoughts and assumptions about human evolution and the human brain in particular.

The human body is the most convenient and appropriate way for our species to evolve achieve two things: 1) reproduce fast and efficient enough in any terrain on the face of this planet 2) keep the human brain at its best shape possible and increase stimuli through feedback.

Axiom: the human brain bootstraps during birth and it’s only capable of survival through constant stimuli via feedback.

Humans’ inherent need for asking questions it’s just a mechanism to keep the neurons alive and firing. Why does the human brain function in slow but massive parallelism? Is the humans’ brain massive neuron parallelism a more efficient way for developing such a great and complex organ rather than having fewer but faster neural transactions?
Does parallelism brings greater feedback input via a greater number of synapses rather than fewer but way faster ones?

In a universe with high entropy, parallelism and a great number of synapses seems to be the best way to deal with unpredictability in a total unpredictable way among the neurons. Complexity and information grows and travels way more efficiently from brain to brain, aka along the course of time, in such a dynamic and universe ruled by entropy.

It would be a challenge for humans and machines to achieve singularity and build as complex and intelligent machines as the human brain; based on massive parallelism rather than blazing fast processing speed.

There are some astonishing facts and data about Android OS. Did you know that the current Android sales outnumber the US birth rate? We make more Androids than humans, isn’t that crazy? We produce far more machines than humans and we make them faster and cheaper day by day. There’s some irony in the Android brand name not matter if it’s just a mobile operating system (for now). How about you? How do do you use Android? What do you see in the future of the platform?

Update:Soon to follow up on how the idea turned into YouTube honors and thousands of views

So far, this is the farthest i’ve gone to understand a culture. Been Greek i’m used to warm weather, not snow neither frozen cold waters. Not to mention sauna of course. Dipping to literally frozen water (there was a thin icy crust on the surface) right after i walked out the 80C Finnish sauna was quite an experience; which i myself denied 45min earlier when i was shown around the spa facilities. Don’t expect me to tell you how it feels, i’m not going to spoil the experience. If you’re not a Finn, rest assured it’s a unique one.

Excuse my F bombs. Special thanks to Claire.

It’s out and it’s kicking ass, the The 4-Hour Body video trailer from Tim Ferriss. I wish i could pre-order and buy the book on Kindle right now.

Unboxing the Nokia N8 kinda slow mo and totally Greek style. Even Symbian is set to Greek language.

We get tons of emails and comments over at pestaola.gr every day. Lots of spam, a handful of friendly messages, product and services pitches, PR material, feedback and of haters’ email. We ignore all the stupid stuff and answer to every single email (sorry for the delay guys) even to the ones we don’t agree with. Here’s a comment we received today on a blog post about Hadoop:

What is it with you Greeks about not wanting to share with one another?

Although i don’t get how Hadoop is related to the topic this fine gentleman is bring up, for the last couple of years i’m wondering the same.

and as i noticed how stingy you are with your tweets only, following only 5, F %$#* sakes!!! Who do you think you are the queen of England??

We made decision with @pestaola twitter account to used it as broadcast mechanism with limited feedback and reporting functionality. I follow more than 1200 people on my personal twitter account @titanas.

Thats why Greece does not move forward, everybody is so selfish thinking they know “alot” and no willing to share with their fellow neighbor, and in that circle of sharing info, you going to learn. sh*t!!!!!!

There are quite a few examples i can come up with and prove you wrong. I’ve been actively helping the WordPress community (and not only) for years. Because of me people learned how to install plugins, people are making tens of thousands of dollars a month, people are paying attention to what duplicate content is, people started blogging, companies changed they’re PR and social media strategies etc. There’s a shit load of emails in my Gmail inbox to prove every single claim in this paragraph. I take pride in my contribution to the community, the same way others did to help me get started, move on and stand here.

And stick to what you learnt last year. Im telling you this stefanos as you seem to be a pioneer in the social IT community of greece.

Last year and this year i learned not to accept compliments from trolls like you; individuals who are willing to trash and are disconnected from reality big time.

You should be setting an example to you fellow social IT community. but you dont and shame on you!!!

I’m attached to the social IT community more than you can imagine and as much i can be of a help.

Yes dont get all defensive about it, instead take this message to heart, and learn from it. like very other bad comment.

You need to learn how to distinguish constrictive criticism from trolling

the email is fake so dont go bothering social guru ok.

No worries, it’s always fun to read comments from anonymous cowards

For those wondering, there is a pattern for this kind of behavior. Rather than trashing this fine gentleman had the option to email us and express his concerns. Instead he choose to say whatever he thought he had to say on an off topic comment, in a random blog post. There’s a disconnection from reality as sever as this example: You just got back home cheerfully saying announcing your arrival by saying, “Hey honey, i’m home” only to witness your loved one start yelling at you because of last week’s evening you spent with your buddies watching football. It’s out of context, it doesn’t make sense, it helps no one.

(all f and s bombs removed and replaced with *)

Starting or running a startup means a lot of things, living on a tight budget is one of them. Reading the The Startup Diet from the Parse.ly guys and they were able to get their food cost down to $4/person/day brought memories from my trip to San Francisco in late May 2009.

The sun was shining in San Francisco but it felt a bit chilly. The micro climate in SF is an amazing phenomenon but rather ranting about the weather i wanted to eat; i was starving. Tim Ferriss explained it’s all about the amount of exposure in direct sun light. This is how cold or warm San Francisco feels when having brunch which by the way cost only 6 bucks. Six dollars for full organic food or approximately €4.3 according to Google. Unfortunately the photo doesn’t help to understand the size of the portion but basically it was a 3/4 full kind of paper Ziploc container. Pretty decent amount of organic food for $6 from an open bar.

Any Greek knows that not only organic food is freakin expensive in Greece but with 4.3 euro you can only buy a coffee and half a sandwich of some sort, assuming the coffee costs 2 euro tops. A 4.3 euro sandwich does the job but it’s not as anything close to organic healthy or healthy enough. That said, you can’t be creative, productive and healthy while eating only sandwiches. The body and the mind knows better than you. Been there, done that and failed miserably.

Being Greek, i know for sure that until a very late period of time we Greek sons consider food as de facto. Having someone cooking for you (hello Greek mom) is not the issue here. Recipes are available online for free. The real issue is that no one, i mean no one, ever taught Greek boys and girls how to manage and balance their budget for a reasonably healthy life style (cooking included).

Starting or running a startup is crazy stuff but only for people alive, standing on their own feet and being able to manage and balance will, stamina and costs for covering even the most basic needs such as food. Greeks never learned to master any of these. Neither the Greek startups will.

Don’t get me wrong. e-Government is a great concept, lousy executed. It’s all nice and great for elected representatives to talk about open data, open source software, e-democracy and open access to governmental services and data but that’s all the greatness about it; The talking part. There are two problems with e-Government in its current state.

Pretty much all governments and governmental institutions are trying to move online all their current processes without refining or changing the process itself, maybe kill it. It’s all the old stuff and all the old habits in a shinny new e-box. Convenient maybe, useful no.

The other issue, is the benjamins. It’s all about the benjamins. Everybody is jumping on the e-Government bandwagon because it’s cheaper to manage, automate and operate processes on software compared to humans, short term at least. Plus, it makes a great press release in today’s tough financial environment.

Update: 20 days after this post Tim O’Reilly wrote on Open government and “next generation democracy. “The pieces are in place and the time is right for government to reinvent itself”.

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