The Pop Culture of Gus Lequerica

If you want to be a douche because you think communication, verbal communication is out then you have to open a twitter account where you can tell the world in 200 characters of less and the world will know when you are in the bathroom taking a crap or doing nothing in general.  Texas based company The Global Language Monitor has said that the social network spot took the first used world in the world (geez poor birds the human stook the only thing they could do best “tweet”), second word Barack Obama and third H1N1.

“Never going to give up you up, never going to let you down, never gonna run around and desert you…” those are part of the popular lyrics of the internet phenomenon known as the RickRoll’d or Rickrolling if you were victim of Rick, but what is a RickRoll’d?. Well, there are many theories about the RickRoll, one of them can be traced up to the phenomenon duckrolled which it was picture that showed a duck in wheels or with Bel Air’d which it can be considered as antecessor of the RickRoll’d, but other theories and the most common one as well the most accepted can be traced to the forums of 4Chan.com where the meme started as a joke related to the video clip of Grand Theft Auto IV.

But the truth is that everyone loves to be RickRolled because when you are Rickrolled you want to do it to other person as well, is like a vicious cycle that would never end; although I prefer to compare it to the Ring Virus the only way to take out the curse is to pass it to someone else and thus the “curse” will never end because everyone at the end is going to be RickRolled sooner or later, and well… that is one partial truth, in YouTube almost 30 million people and counting had been RickRolled and because of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade almost 50 million people where massively RickRolled when Rick popped out of Foster carriage. So at the end what is going to happen?, everyone will be RickRolled.

So lately there is a new, or not so new trend among gamers, and that is downloading games directly to their consoles, it can be on almost any home console these days, in my case I will talk about the Nintendo Wii and is download system, the Wii Shop Channel.

The Wii Shop Channel, is an exclusive internet channel for the Wii, that offers content made by Nintendo as well old games, games that you can find as roms over the net, but my question is, due these games that cost US$10.00 each or more are worth of getting them?, my answer is a yes and a no, an odd answer.

Why yes?, why download content from the Wii Channel?, because if you are fan of Nintendo you will find cool things, as Nintendo 64 games (that runs way better in the Wii instead of a computer), and Mega Man 9 ,but at the same time  my answer is no, as Nintendo is offering high prices for NES games as well other console games that you can find perfectly trough the internet. So at the end if you want to download anything from the Wii Shop Channel my final answer is no, there are a few things worth it.

I downloaded recently Mega Man 9 and Ocarina of Time, I spent US$20.00 for both games, since each game cost US$10 on the channel, and US$10 are the equivalent of 1.000 points, you can do the maths. I do not regret of downloading both games, as the reason is both games are cool, but the Wii Shop Channel needs to grow more, as there is not many products still to offer, sure it will be cool to see more games of Nintendo 64, and to download games that weren’t available in America ten years ago, but I know Nintendo will improve their channel, and it will be fantastic.

There is a new radio station on the Internet called Kike’s Radio, is a station that gives the young Latin people a voice to express their opinion, but how we can access this station?, first you need to open your Windows Media Player, then you need to hit CTRL+U and the wrote down this address  http://190.156.48.196:8080, as is a new internet radio station there are some technical difficulties most of the time, but is a nice space and the D.J. Kike Maldonado is a fun individual that always interacts with his listeners in such fun ways.

To describe Kike Radio, is to describe a blend, a mix of different genres, yes you would see the talk show host format but also there is music request live, almost any kind of music and if they don’t have it, they will search it for you and they will play it on the next transmission, the music that is most common is Rock and Roll , but sometimes you can hear R&B, Hip Hop and Vallenato, which is and a Colombian music that mix accordion with social commentaries that goes about global actuality.

If you want to hear something different hit at Kike’s Radio, and express yourself while you hear sweet rock music. Because is you express yourself, if you say a coherent speech you will make a difference and that’s why many independent media are there for, to provide a voice for the people who can’t express themselves freely.

When I started studying Journalism, in our education it was Photography and Digital Photography because is something that every student need to learn at the moment of telling a story is not that you tell a story or a news with words you also tell it with a picture, because a picture is more than a thousand words and a picture can said a lot without saying anything.

At a first time when someone who doesn’t have an idea of photography and electronics, handling a digital camera can be an overwhelming experience because the first thought that person is going to have is “I am going to break this?”, that was the first thought I had, but with the time and experience I started to feel comfortable with a camera and even I started to experimenting with it, at the point I developed my skills, but even when I finished with my courses at college I started to read books and educating myself even further because that is the key when you are taking photos, education with the photography theory.

Before I say my ideas, let me recommend to you a few webpage’s that can enlighten you like photo.net and Daniel Buck; those pages offer a great insight to the photography world.

Well, when you are buying a digital camera do some research first, because you don’t want to end with an US$800.00 camera and have no idea about how to use it; the best is to buy a small camera with less features so you can get use to the deal of taking photography’s and when you feel enough confidence then you can buy a more advance one, remember is not the many innovations of the camera that can produce a good photo, it’s because the quality of the photographer.

If you are deciding to buy a camera I recommend to buy a Konica Minolta camera, there are many to chose but one of my favorites is the DiMAGE Z6, it has a great design that is easy to handle and to store, the interface is really easy to catch up because it doesn’t have too many bottoms and the best of this camera is that you can afford because it’s in the US$300 to US$600 range, so I recommend it to first time buyers plus it has a good guarantee

When you are going to take a photo, always remember to see the direction of the light and to know how to open or close the diaphragm of the camera, but many digital cameras have automatic control so it’s something that you really don’t need to worry if you are a beginner; like I was saying when you are taking a photograph, you need to see where the light is heading because if you take the snapshot toward the light point you will have shades and shadows in your photo unless you are aiming at a sunset or a dawn, another advice I can give if you are photographing people try to aim at a middle plane or general plane but that’s depend on the group of people, and a third basic rule if there is not too much light always use the flash, something that the Konica Minolta cameras have.

Basically if your are starting I don’t recommend using edition applications until you have more experience, I want to say as a conclusion follow your instincts in the first place because with that you will have great portraits and photos, imagine how do you want your photos to look like before you head out and search, well beside those basic concepts that I can give when you are starting to take photos is to think about the camera brand that really fits to your needs, in my case was the Konica Minolta brand because the friendly user interface that gives to every buyer.

In today’s electronic market we see a highly competition with the different manufacturers and we wonder what is the best video system that can fit to our needs, we try to follow the advice from our friends or relatives to buy something but sometimes at the end we feel more confused of what to buy. With this series of articles about the consoles I will try to help you choosing the best console for you.

This first review is about the Nintendo Wii, one of the most controversial and appraised consoles due the originality that is given to the game play because of the innovation in the controls, that brings to the player a new horizon to play because it makes the player to exercise in a low cardio exercises since the games demand to the player to move beyond the couch, so basically with the Wii you make work out while playing the games, plus the compact size of the console is really handy at the moment of traveling because it fits really easy on almost any backpack; but is the gaming system with less games in the market although it offer a nice variety of games with good story line but not real advance on graphics such as the PS3.

The Pro’s of the Wii are that offers a new way of play since it gives more interaction to the player with the game, the games are less expensive than other home consoles, most of the games have really good writing and storyline, the game play of most of the games is really good and don’t give problem when sending the command from the control or interacting with the scenarios, also the Wii is the cheapest of all three consoles in the market, so it can be afforded more easy than a PlayStation 3 or an X-Box.

The Cons of the console are that graphically is less superior than the PS3 or X-Box, there a fewer games than the other consoles and one of the biggest innovations is also one of the biggest flaws, the remote controller, sometimes it can fail due the sensor bar won’t read the movement of a player if he or she is in a far side away, so with that flaw a group of players who are playing a fight game, some of them will have some disadvantage against others because the control won’t react very well at the moment of playing.

If you decide to start playing and want a video game console that isn’t expensive, easy and interesting to play, you can buy the Wii for US$250.00 and extra controls for US$49.00 and I can guarantee you will have many hours of fun.

Sometime ago I heard something interesting that you had the opportunity to transform your Nintendo DS into a small Multimedia Center similar as the PSP but with less capacity, at first I thought “that is so amazing” I researched a little and I found one little invention made by Datel, called Games n’ Music. I did my research based on the homepage of the aforementioned product and it really convinced me, also I expanded my research on other webpage’s to see what people spoke about this interesting innovations; during the weeks before I made the purchase I read good reviews on a few pages around the internet but not really a bad review, so at the end I did a little investigation on the local electronic stores and I found one in my local Wal-Mart, I felt happy when I found it, but later I grew up bored because of it’s difficult to configure it.

 Now I said my story I can start saying the pros and cons about Games N’ Music, first I am going to say the Pros of this home brew device, you can see movies, hear music, see photos, play roms and access to the internet, but all of this comes with many downloads that you need to make from the official web page and other fan made web pages to access the full potential of this flash card, with some effort you can setup the Games N’ Music Card but there aren’t really too many tutorials that explain step by step the setup of this device; and now we are going to speak about the cons of this device, the first is that many of the roms are distorted and the layers don’t fit well on the Nintendo DS screen, so far the only emulator that I could use it without any problems was the N.E.S. one that worked really good with the Nintendo DS engine, the second flaw that I detected it is that Games N’ Music is not compatible with Nintendo DS roms, so you are right by now, you can’t play NDS games with this device; I don’t know why the manufacturers didn’t produce this wonderful device with that future, that would been great because it could make a good competition to the PSP.

So if you are looking for a device to play the Nintendo DS roms I don’t recommend this one by the previously gave explanation, also I want to add that if you are planning to buy this device probably it will cost you around USD$15.00 to USD$40.00 depending on the website or electronic store you buy it, also don’t make too much expectations with the capacity of the Games N’ Music because it only supports up to two gigas and not all the flash cards can be read with this device; in conclusion I say it’s better to buy the R4 and spend a little more money with a device that will fulfill your expectations.