Dearest friends and family,

It has been a long time since the last time I wrote to you. Sometimes I saw you in a flash while trying to keep things coherent during the last 10 weeks… I started a new path, a very interesting one that I would try to explain in three parts. There are so many things to tell you and I know that like in a book or when you tell a story you need to start from the beginning of things, to the end, which is kind of different for me as you know me… It is like one six year old boy told me; ‘My heart controls my brain. My brain cannot control my body. My heart does’

Today I have a blurry vision; I feel my eyeballs are cooked… I am sure I am partially deaf because I needed to listen to music so loud to keep me awake… I feel good…extremely good… It is a sensation that occurs after a competition, and whatever is your place out of the podium, in this case, the sensation of accomplishment is there, and no matter what, nobody can take that away from you.

I went to a convention for the pipes for the Web. Yes, a very specialized field. It was a six day event with people from many countries… It took place in the Los Angeles Convention Center which is part of a building complex that among other venues it has the Staples Center. So from eight in the morning to six in the afternoon all of us were immersed in the fascinating world of the OFCNFOEC of 2012 were the future of optical communications was approached with conferences, an exhibition, live demonstrations, a Symposium, forums, programs, videos, poster presentations, a summit for providers, job fair… It was an instant world full of optics. Why is important?  Because you use it every day even for your cell phones… Milo Medlin, the Vice President of Access Services for Google, put it in a wonderful way at the Plenary Session where he talked about Bandwidth, Optics and the Age of Abundance. The link of his presentation is at the end. Also we had the privilege to hear how Japan was able to restore their communication system after the biggest tsunami and earthquake they experienced.  Isao Sugino, Director of the Research and Development Office, Technology Policy Division, Global ICT Strategy Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan spoke too; it was a very emotional moment, his voice spread around the hall in a solemn silent air with all the minds in a state of profound, deep attentiveness. I couldn’t find the presentation on the web for the general public, is only available for the participants. Just let me tell you that it was very efficient, super fast and ready to communicate in a very short period of time, with very innovative and practical approaches to take into account for future Mother Nature aftermath situations.

A language is a way of communication, is a set of rules established among the speakers to transmit information. A programming language is the same but the machine that is going to give us an answer is only capable to understand ceros and ones. A language is alive as long as people use it and it evolves in time, some thousand words are added to the English language every year especially in the technical field and other languages have acquired them as is in a natural manner. A code for a machine has some plasticity so you can have your own code to express yourself in your own way, which code is better? It lays on the eyes of the beholder. I took a course to learn Python and it was full of witty happy anecdotes, silly words and jokes, History remainders for me and very complex tasks and homework to do. I said for me because there were thousands of students all levels of knowledge and learning abilities, so for some, it was a matter of an hour to finish the final and exactly the opposite for others. There was a forum for you to ask questions and to find questions from others and interact.

Can you imagine a world just spoken by the masculine side of humanity? The unimaginable part is that basically all of us learned to speak from our mothers. Most programming languages have been written by men with the exception of COBOL as far as I know. The point is that it happens in other fields, like symphonies or Architecture… and Engineering in general…sigh!

I could see, touch, write, play with the code for the Programming a Robotic Car course. I saw the car in action!!! The code is like when you see a written music and you know that they have the answer of the sounds of a beautiful Bach or Vivaldi concert… it is pure art.  In the forums of this course there were the most amazingly skilled guys… suddenly I felt transported in the arena of The Ultimate Fighter event situation there were people expressing their emotions with a very hard and deep exaltation… the phrase I loved the most was something like… you can click the down button until your fingers bleed … and I was feeling as emotional as him… the worst part is that I went to the kitchen to eat something during one of my breaks out  of the computer and I cut my finger while cutting a lime and I did not notice it until there was blood on my keyboard!!!

It was a thrill this first trimester of the year… I LOVE UDACITY… I ♥ YOU ALL !!!

I wish with all my heart that you can join this wonderful place to learn.

links:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=d586adfbbb9c0371&resid=D586ADFBBB9C0371!5462&parid=root Silly pics for the time being

http://youtu.be/95oMDjieSOQMilo Medin from Google