Too much time on my hands

Skyrim. That is all.

2011-11-14T04:03:00.001-06:00

I doubt there's any other game as absorbing as Elder Scrolls. It's just a HUGE GAME. I think the only reason I'm going to stop playing is because in a week and a half, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is going to be released, and as a die-hard Zelda fan, I must play it. But once I'm done, it's probably going to be Skyrim again. I hope I don't finish it soon! I love neverending games.

About nails and nail care

2011-11-08T00:36:00.002-06:00

I've always liked to take care of my nails. It's in fact the only make up I enjoy - I hate putting stuff in my face, but when it comes to nails, almost anything is game!

My nails are normally rather thin, and really brittle if I'm under stress. When I was in the university, any length I achieved during the semester would disappear at the end of it. Stress is not good. Also, I used to bite on them when I was a teenager, but then again, who doesn't/didn't? But after proper care, my nails have become pretty firm and fast growing. It's amazing!. I still don't dare to open a soda can with them though heh.

Anyways, I wanted to share the tips and techniques I've learnt through the years, to keep good and strong nails.

Find your shape. There are different types of nail shapes. Some say that the square or square-oval (or squoval) are the strongest and most stable, but it all depends on the person. Find your own style. My nails naturally grow oval so I keep them that way. A nice rule of thumb is to follow the shape of your cuticles or nail beds. That way the nail looks symmetric. If your nail beds are not symmetric or all random, just choose what you like the most. Round nails are the best for people who work a lot with their hands and need to keep short nails.

Nail shapes (Source: www.fashionmap.com)

Use the right tools for the job. The next thing is to have the right tools for nail care. Cardboard files are cheap and sold almost everywhere, but they're not the best for the job. They get dull fast and sometimes even bend or break. Invest in stronger files. Glass files are an excellent choice. Same goes with nail cutters. I know it's tempting to buy cheap tools, but believe me, you get what you pay. Following is a small list of essential tools you should have for proper nail care:

Nail file, with different grades for heavy filing, trimming and fixing details.
Nail buffer, a coarse one to buff down imperfections on the surface of the nail, and a softer one to make it shine.
Cuticle remover. This is only if you really need it. Some people have little to no cuticles showing, others have huge tough ones. Choose a product that satisfies your needs, and follows the instructions carefully. Some cuticle removers are a bit abrasive, so leaving it on for a long time is not a good idea. Most of the time, you can actually push your cuticles back after a shower, when they're nice and soft. Do not cut your cuticles unless it's really necessary. They protect your nail beds, so if you damage them, you can get fungus or infections in your nails and fingers. So, if you do have to cut them, do it far from the nail bed. Tuck the rest in with a cuticle remover.
Nail/cuticle cream. I'm a recent convert of this one. A cuticle cream keeps the cuticles and nail beds moisturized and soft. I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm quite sure it helps with nail growth. My nails definitely grow faster. This also helps to keep your cuticles in line, and not all over your nail.
Other products like nail strengtheners are a good idea if you think your nails are too brittle. Also, an orange stick is always a good tool to have around, to push those cuticles back or to clean under your nail.

So you have your tools, and you've chosen what shape you want. Time to do some work!

Prepare your cuticles. You can skip this phase if your cuticles are very small. Otherwise, use the cuticle remover and push your cuticles back with your fingers or an orange stick. Wash your hands afterwards to remove the product.
If your nails are too long, file them down with the most coarse grade of file. If it's possible, do not cut them down. Cutting them down makes them chip easier. Also, only file in the same direction all the time instead of back and forth, that also reduces the amount of chips you can get on your final nail. Once you've reached the desired length, use the finer grades to finish your filing. The end result should feel smooth. You can run the nail against your skin or a soft cloth; if you feel like it gets stuck, you still need to do more filing.
Buffer your nail surface with the coarse buffer, to remove imperfections and ridges. If your ridges are too pronounced, it might be caused by fungus, so I suggest you visit a specialist. Don't buffer your nails every day, or your will end up leaving them too thin. Once a week is more than enough. After you're done buffering, use the soft one to shine them. This will leave the nail looking like you're using a clear top coat, shiny and soft!
Once you're done, you can apply your cuticle and nail cream.

After doing this after a while, your nails will start to be really strong, and look like you go to the manicure every week. I suggest you to take your time with this, it will pay off!

Next time, I'll talk about nail polishes and such. Till then!

Hey, what is this? blow dust everywhere COUGH COUGH! Oh, I had a blog!

2011-10-14T13:10:00.000-05:00

So yeah, I guess I could pick this up and post again. I always have a tendency to abandon blogs. I guess I just struggle to have interesting things to share lol. I'm a boring person, what can I say!

Anyways, random people stumble here sometimes, and might as well give them something to look at instead of a dead blog. I'll try to improvise!

This made me laugh so much...

2010-10-04T02:49:00.000-05:00

This was the funniest video I've watched lately on Youtube, and considering I'm a FFVII fan and I love Sephiroth to death, I have to say that a cloudxsephiroth is always amusing. Enjoy!

Germany vs Argentina?

2010-07-04T01:38:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah.

(I do not claim property of this image, it was forwarded to me by an unknown source)

Half Life

2010-06-19T08:05:00.003-05:00

I usually don't like FPS games, I find them mindless and shallow. But sometimes a game comes around that completely absorbs me, and that was the Half Life series.

Due to my long standing addiction to WoW, which has subsided on the past month or so (raiding is boring, I still arena but I'm mainly waiting for the xpac), I never played many other games on the side. I have an obsessive-compulsive behavior when it comes to gaming, and I usually pour myself into one and only one game at a time. And when that's an MMO, well, I miss out a lot of other games. But I'm trying to correct that right now.

Half Life has that one feature in games I'm most interested in: storyline. Being a hardcore RPG fan, I'm a sucker for good stories. I don't even care if the controls are bad, or if the graphics are lame. If it has a great storyline, that's all that matters. And so it was with HL. I enjoyed the games very much. The story is compelling, and made me want to keep going just to know what would happen to the main character and the rest related to him. The weapon choices were fun, but they weren't a defining factor (but I did have a fav. weapon, the standard, trustworthy shotgun, nothing more satisfying than annihilating living people AND undeads in their faces with one shot). The gameplay is also satisfying, it rewards smart moves and tactics over mindless, careless "rain of bullets", although I did resource to that a couple of times. Having a quick save/load helps a lot too haha.

I'm not going to go through the storyline here, because if anyone who's interested in playing reads this, I want him/her to do the discovery on their own. I'm just going to say that is completely worth it, and there's a reason why this game is part of the "must play" list.

And in a more personal view, Gordon Freeman is hot. Despite the fact that you NEVER see him in the game, and he never, ever talks, he's still a physicist researcher who kicks ass with weapons. Like a jock with brains. I bet he's as fast to kill zombies as he is to solve difficult equations. If I was Alyx Vance I'd have screwed him the first moment I had the chance. Ok, I'll stop.

Football World Cup 2010!!

2010-06-11T21:09:00.001-05:00

I'm not a very assiduous football follower (and yes, football, cause THAT'S WHAT IT IS DAMMIT), but I always look forward to the World Cup. Everybody gathers around to watch these games, and they're entertaining no matter if you are with the teams that are playing or you don't care about them. The matches are interesting by themselves. And I have to add, a bunch of cute guys too heh.

In my case, it has an extra meaning. I'm a chilean living in Texas. Football (soccer) isn't common here. So watching it makes me feel at home again. Specially watching it in spanish. English announcers don't have the spark and the familiarity that latin american announcers have. So I've been following it on the spanish spoken channels they broadcast here. And I just get a kick out of the comments and jokes and the always expected long shout after a goal. It makes me feel in Chile again. And of course I'm waiting for those matches in where my country's team plays. I'll be up no matter what time it is, cheering for them!

Good luck to all of the countries participating in the World Cup!

PS: Go go nordic teams and their blond players! :P

Dragon Age Origins: Awakening

2010-06-03T18:30:00.002-05:00

I just finished the xpac for Dragon Age Origins. Good story. You can pick it up with the character you played with in the original game, or make a new one. Of course is not as long as the original game, but it adds nice content and it has alternative endings depending on what paths you chose. If you get DAO, you should get the xpac too!

Dragon Age: Origins!!

2010-05-29T10:02:00.005-05:00

I haven't posted a thing lately, because I became totally obsessed with Dragon's Age: Origins. Ahhh, good old RPGs, they always get me. I won't say a thing about it because I don't want to spoil anything, but is a great great game and I recommend it!

All I have to say about it, is <3 Alistair!!

There are a lot more at Aimo's DeviantArt website, visit it for a good laugh! (All of the work posted here and on that site belongs to Aimo and I claim no property whatsoever of it)

Necklace

2010-05-11T01:03:00.000-05:00

I made a necklace, more specifically a choker, and I added my beloved dragon to it. Check it out

Computer support!

2010-05-09T03:38:00.001-05:00

And that's, indeed, the whole science of it

(From the xkcd webcomic website: xkcd.com)

Humankind in space, a vision of a man, and the hopes of a species

2010-05-06T16:11:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Pale Blue Dot, a vision of the human future in space, written by Carl Sagan. Right now Sagan is kind of a hero of mine, he's a huge source of inspiration, and I love the way he walks you through mathematical, astronomical and biological issues to show you the shortcomings and potential of this species called humans, in relation of spacefaring and exploration of new worlds.

Right now, I believe we're amidst a crucial moment in our history, as Sagan writes in this book and many others. We have the technology, the science and the power to change so many things for better, and yet the same tools can be used to completely wipe us out of the face of the Earth. It is up to us as a collective consciousness, to "wise up" and not destroy ourselves, to leave aside petty greed and lack of long term planning. But would that ever happen? Humans are clearly known for repeating the same mistakes over and over through history. Will we ever learn? It makes me think that the key for us as a species to actually get out and explore/colonize other planets is not only technology, but surviving ourselves.

It is also interesting to think about the subject of other intelligent beings out there in space. I'm a 100% sure they do exist. I refuse to believe we're the one and only intelligent (and I also question that) species in this vast universe. There are millions of stars in this galaxy, and there are millions of other galaxies. A lot of that large number of stars have planets around them. Why only us? it doesn't seem logic.

But leaving that aside, and assuming they do exist, and they're more advanced technologically than us, if they found us without us knowing, what would they do? Some days ago I was watching Larry King on CNN, and Stephen Hawking was there, talking about this same subject, together with several other specialists in astronomy (Mishio Kaku was there too, a theoretical physicist that I also like very much because of his ways to approach "common" people into science). He suggested that we should be careful about approaching other intelligent beings, because they might actually be a threat to us. Although I don't intend to fall in the naive view of that extraterrestrial beings will come here offering us peace and love, I also don't buy the idea of them coming to Earth, kill us all and take our resources. That's so, SO, human to do. WE do that. WE are very well known to have done that in the past, in the present and possibly in the future. Other beings might not. The Earth doesn't offer any resource besides biological life, that other planets with no population might have. Isn't it much better to go somewhere else and NOT deal with earthling natives for resources? I feel that's a much easier and logical way to do it. Or if they discover us, and they just feel like studying us, they really don't need to meddle with earthly affairs. We might not even find out they're around.

Or on a third scenario, they might just take one look at us, and conclude we're so backwards and messed up as species, that they'll just leave us alone and go other ways. Right now, the only threat we pose to others is to ourselves. If extraterrestrial beings can travel through space and actually get here, then they're way more advanced than us. What are we to them? Probably nothing. Probably just a funny thing to watch, like a space soup opera, waiting to see if the drama kill us all or we redeem ourselves.

There are many other issues mentioned in this book, and I don't feel like writing an essay, but I suggest anybody with a little sense of adventure, thirst of knowledge and imagination, should pick up this book and read it.

Interesting .gif

2010-05-01T04:54:00.003-05:00

Courtesy of StumbleUpon and Gifbin

My first experience with henna

2010-04-30T15:20:00.000-05:00

I use this system, StumbleUpon, to browse random webpages when I feel like looking at different things online. It's very fun and sometimes I find amazing websites. One of them was Henna for Hair. They were showing different experiences with people who used body quality art henna (the one you use to make tattoos on your skin) to dye their hair. The color of the dye from henna is always red.

Dyeing your hair with henna is different than dyeing it with the regular chemical dyes. First, it's not full of, d'uh, chemicals. Henna is a plant. The henna you use is this very plant made a fine dust. Second, henna doesn't "paint" your hair. It is somewhat of a "transparent" dye. Henna is red, and it combines with the color your hair has to create a new one. So if you have dark hair, henna won't make it red, but it will give it shiny red highlights. If your hair is blonde, it will make it orange/copper.

With that in mind, I thought about trying this. I've dyed my hair red for almost 10 years now. Right now I found a nice dye that leaves the hair the color I like, but after a couple of weeks it fades. They always do. So I thought, maybe this would give the hair back the color I love, since I'd be putting the henna over red color.

The experience was fun. What you do with the henna is, they ship you the dust, you combine it with whatever you want, following certain guidelines (check the website). You end up with a mud! and you put that mud in your hair! Luckily I had help to apply it hehe. And let it sit in my hair under a shower cap for 3 hours.

The results: I now have a VERY shiny hair, with a deep red color. I love it. Under the sun, is SUPER bright. The sad part is that I still have to do my roots with normal dyes because henna won't turn my dark brown hair red. But at least now I know what I can do to revitalize the color!

This is the result:

I have absolutely nothing bad to say about henna. I will use it again, definitely.

Stupid puzzle!!

2010-04-25T19:18:00.001-05:00

So I finished my 1500 pieces jigsaw puzzle, only to find at the end that it's missing a piece. MISSING A PIECE. Nothing is more frustrating than building up a nice big rather complex puzzle (lots of green and water reflections) and then find out it will never be complete because it came with one piece less. And it wasn't my fault! I didn't drop any pieces, the place where I worked on it is pretty clear and there aren't many places a piece might have fallen and hid. No, this is not my fault!!

I really hope the next one doesn't have this problem =/

Happy Birthday, Hubble!

2010-04-23T15:10:00.001-05:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope. In their website, they have tons of awesome pictures of the Cosmos, and several of them are available for downloading for wallpapers and other purposes. Check them out!

http://www.hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/

May it stay there for 20 more years, showing us what our eyes can't see, showing us how small and unimportant we are, and yet, so unique in this inmense universe.

Rekindling your love for... maths

2010-04-19T14:34:00.001-05:00

I didn't enjoy maths at the U. I surely didn't. But not because I hate maths. I hate TESTS haha. Seems like I just don't perform as well under pressure, I forget things, and then my test results don't show what I actually learned. I also used to study for the test and then forget. Which is not very good.

But I've always liked maths. I think they're the most perfect discipline in the world, and that makes them beautful. And you can do maths just for the sake of it, it doesn't really need to have any applications in the real world, but ultimately they always find one in the several other sciences that rely on this tool. Physics allowed me to understand math more.

With that being said, I'd like to share a link I found in one of the forums I read often. If you feeling up to the task, you can get the open math course of the MIT, is free to download and it has class, assignment and results, so you can study, practice, and compare results.

You can find it at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/index.htm

Conformism and the task of moving people

2010-04-17T19:16:00.001-05:00

A bit ago I got some kind of "15 minutes of fame" in my current server in WoW, because I wrote this big wall of text about what I thought was very wrong in the guild, and I posted the link on several forums for the "public" to read. I did it moved by a need to vocalize what several members of the guild (my ex guild now) were feeling, feelings that I shared with them. That same night, I had a big talk with one of the officers, and then I felt that the purpose of the post was met, and I took it down.

The biggest problem was that these group of people never approached any officer about their concerns and troubles. I understand them because until a bit ago, I thought they just didn't care. At least one of them do. So in the light of this new discovery, I told my ex guildies to talk to him and explain the situation, now from the inside point of view, instead of my outside voice.

But it seems like they just won't do it. They either prefer to leave it as it is, and let it build up until it explodes (or implodes) by itself and everything falls apart, or they don't have the courage to stand up and say "I think this is wrong". I honestly tried to make them move, to stir them up, to give them a little push so they would get things right since I couldn't do it myself anymore. I don't see it happening. And it makes me sad. I feel like my effort just wasn't enough.

Conformism is not something I'm keen with. I agree that I probably should be more aggressive on some issues that affect my real life, but well, I choose my battles. This one was one I was willing to face, but it kind of faded away. Maybe I don't have the leadership skills to rally them up and fight, it might be possible. I wish I did.

In any case, I learned a lesson. If I want to do something like this again, I have to do it from the inside, not from the outside, where my word might be questionable.

An interesting study

2010-04-01T16:46:00.001-05:00

One of my friends linked me this poll from Gallup:

Evolution poll

Amazing how it changes with education, with religious activities, and with age. The theory of evolution is not a theory anymore, there are enough facts that prove it. It's just called that way because it's how it has always been.

If this doesn't demonstrate that the US needs to pick up its education, I don't know what else could.

One day, in the future...

2010-04-01T15:49:00.001-05:00

... I'll go back to the university and fulfill a dream of mine: study astronomy. I don't care if I fail, because at least I tried!!

Parenting guide

2010-04-01T15:44:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Lyran for this one :P