Sometimes I am so worried about doing something that I ended up forgetting one very important thing: to enjoy it. My actual instructor once said that I am perfectionist but I don't agree with him. I try my best, I try not to regret and the last thing that would concern me is about a perfect execution. Sometimes I forget that no matter how much I try it is very important to have fun. Sometimes I fail, sometimes I am scolded and that's life, it's unavoidable. Am I supposed to get mad or to be sad on every step that went wrong? Pay attention to complains? No, I will not be upset about it. I am aware that each lesson is important to lead me to the place that I am now. Sometimes I know that I am heading to the right path, but am I feeling the joy of getting what I want? I mean joy in every little thing, in every breath I waste during day and night. The least I can do is to transform or to get rid of the things that annoys me. I know that I can be a very positive influence, but in the same time, I can be a very negative one. But destroying is easy.
I don't think that I need to proof what I can do to others all the time. I do persevere and try hard sometimes, but that's part of the process of creation. The world is like a spinning wheel. We never know what lies ahead, so we need to be prepared to deal with what is about to come. I need to remind myself to not to hurry and to live the present moment. Time is responsible to put things in their right place. Like Shakespeare would say, the more you struggle, the faster you sink.
I yearn to get what I want. I don't have patience, am I terrible but what can I do? Watch time goes by while getting old? I am controlling myself to give one step at a time and I am about to explode, but oh boy, a day does not have 30 hours. I guess I will try to enjoy while I do the home work and exercise my patience and wait the moment to do what I have to. Life is meant to be fun.

Recently, I have been feeling the need to do something different in order to stimulate my creativity and to experiment. Well, I did discover a lot of neat stuff on WWW and books and I started to plan where to spend time on my vacation. But honestly, I don't want to start doing a bunch of things that will not lead me anywhere. My focus was to gather all these ideas and connect them. There is a reason for me to want to visit new places, not only to enjoy the good moments. It is all related to this goal of mine.
The first step was already given by creating an open window that allows me to publish anything on the web. Not only publishing but tying information altogether. There are still a lot of things that I want to publish and update, it all depends on the priority and the time that I have available to dedicate myself to them. In this journey I discovered many interesting tools. The most useful of them is the Google Reader that makes it possible to create an online personalized magazine with real time feeds from all over the world, such is the power of the web. I even shared the news that I find interesting but I highly recommend the creation of a personalized set of subscriptions.
Still, the flame of creation burns inside of me. I want to use this flame to fly higher and to be challenged by new opportunities. Life is too short to be wasted, there are many living dead dragging people to their coffins. I admit that my flame is not red, it is blue. It is intense and I am glad it is my own. I believe that in the world that we live now we need to constantly reinvent ourselves. There are so many things that died in this country and it is like a burden to us all. But as things die, new opportunities arise. To be able to change is a proof that you are alive.
New relations are being formed all around us. The iPhone, that is much more marketing than innovation itself, joining what people was seeking (including the name Apple) into a product. Madonna that created a new format of business with Live Nation where records sales were doomed by the era of mp3. Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, eBay and many other web applications that changed the world of business. The ability to understand the customer relationship is the key to reinvention, a step further to automation , identification of opportunities and definition of strategies, in my opinion.
I am watching this world to change really fast and I am a part of this world. It is like opening the eyes with the feeling of wonderment. This feeling makes me want to explore not only what is outside, but also what is inside of me. I do respect my own time, it would be foolish to be contaminated and manipulated with thoughts that are not my own. We need to keep connected to the world, it is very important to bring us joy.

This weekend I watched two movies about little penguins. Happy Feet (2006) and Surf's Up (2007). Coincidence? Maybe, I guess there are penguins in my life. A coincidence like this happened before when I watched several movies related to time-space in the same week... Well, regarding the first movie, my driving instructor had bought and showed me the DVD cover. My sister also watched this one. The second one is on the big screens right now, and that's where I watched it.
This is the first one, cute little Mumble:

Happy Feet/Warner Bross - 2006

The movie is all white. Ice everywhere. It will teach that there are some differences that may be good. It tells about how strong one can be to prove oneself in an environment filled with traditions and prejudice against the new. It was a good way to say: "Hey, I am different but I am no less than you.". The easy way would be to crumble and give up, but this stubborn Mumble was happy against all odds and ended up dealing with his difference and proving that he was no less. And he was not alone, he had a little army of friends that believed in him. Another message in this movie was about protecting the nature, because humans are destroying it...
The other movie is about the cool young Maverick:

Happy Feet/Sony Pictures - 2007

Instead of a depressing-all-white-scenario starring a penguin that we want to pity, this movie had this crazy penguin rocking with the sound of Green Day. Instead of a cold place, there was a tropical paradise. The water effects in this movie are amazing. The computer graphics are beautiful. Well, the story of this movie is very similar to the other, about a different being trying to prove his talent. But the personality of this other one is different. Its like "Hey, I am different so what?". Oh, almost forgot, the other cool characters from this movie are the Big Z, Lani and Joe. They are a bunch of weirdos rocking with their peaceful lifestyle.

This weekend I moved all my web site to the Blogger format. But I did not do it alone, Google was there to help me in this task. I was trying to avoid moving my stuff to the world of the Web 2.0 or at least use it as less as possible. I like to be in control of everything, I don't like the servers to handle the information I create. It was not even my intention to move my garden to Blogger, I was just testing some stuff in Google Docs. I was surprised to see how easy it was to edit a document. Then I found out that every document that you create can be published in the WWW. And even more, they can be published in some blog servers. Then I gave up and created a Blogger account using my Google account and started to publish my old posts.
I had to face some challenges like how to deal with the dates. Most of my posts were from year 2006. I had to keep the consistency of the dates. But no big deal, you can do it on Blogger. The next thing was how to deal with the layout. It was not easy, but Blogger has a very cool template editor where you can edit its widgets. You can have almost the total control of the layout you create. So I used one template available and spent a whole day to customize it to make it look the way I wanted.
Well, Blogger is not a place to host web sites, but to host web logs, so it is not like you can build your home page in there. You don't have the control of individual pages, just the control of the template you will use. And since Google is smart, there is a very nice integration with the Google Docs. Every post I make is created and edited in the Google Docs. I have to say that this integration is not 100% perfect. I could not specify the title of the posts and the label to use. I created directories in my root folder to organize the documents and I also added dates in the names to organize the files in this folder. This file is called "071021 All About Me" and it is stored on the folder "Diary". The contents will be exactly the same when I publish on Blogger, but I will still have to edit the title and the label manually. I hope Google can automate this stuff in the future, it supports it but doesn't seem to be good yet.
To store images I am using the Google Pages. I cannot use the Blogger to upload image files, so I had to upload them in my Google Page Creator. I will probably be using the Picasa Web Album to manage my photos. So with these Google tools I created a mini portal to manage all my Zenith Garden. There is also YouTube where I post and link to videos! And Google Language Tools to translate my pages to any language, but this tool does not seem to work well too. Google Analytics gives me an incredible detailed report about visitors. It surprised me.
(...)
I have to think about it, Google knows all about me. iGoogle knows what I search on the web. It knows about my deepest curiosities. Although I do not use it too much, Orkut knows about my relationships. Gmail knows about the contents of my emails. Now Blogger/Google Docs will know about my posts, opinions and stuff that I decide to publish on the web. Quite amazing. Google rules all the text ads and with the acquisition of DoubleClick it will rule almost the entire virtual publicity out there. Google is now in the stock market so people will want money from it. I do hope that my privacy stays with them, although I know that they have the means to know a lot about me. At least in the real world it can't reach me yet.
Anyway, I am very happy with the power of the Web 2.0. The hard work is reduced a lot, I only have to worry about the contents and the layout. The rest, the hard and boring stuff, I will let Google to handle.