Help TuDiabetes Help More People Touched By Diabetes

Please help us at the Diabetes Hands Foundation so we can reach out to more people touched by diabetes and continue to raise awareness about diabetes.


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If you want to contribute money, you can do so by clicking on the "ChipIn" button in the widget at the top right of this blog.

1) Add the TuDiabetes Fundraising widget to your blog or web site, to help us raise funds.
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3) Join the Volunteer Group: through it you can welcome new members and help spread the word about TuDiabetes.com by reaching out to new members or contacting media about the community.
4) At all times, please participate actively in the contests we organize. This helps everyone in the community as our contests are meant for empowerment as well as for raising diabetes awareness.

Thanks for your help and, if you have questions on how to donate (online or offline), please check our Fundraising page.

Sigur Ros: The Best Album of 2008

The naked people on the cover aside, I had a mixed reaction when I started listening to the "Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust" by Sigur Ros. The opening song was just not like your typical Sigur Ros: it was too... pop.. I was confused: was this Death Cab for Cutie? Had I clicked on the wrong MP3 on iTunes? "Gobbledigook" turned out to be a poppier track, indeed, but even at performing pop they rocked!

From the second track, you go back into familiar Sigur Ros territory. The main difference (besides the opening track) this time around is that the band gets more intimate, with acoustic guitar-based tracks, such as "Gódan daginn" and "Íllgresi," and quiet piano-based tracks like "Fljótavík," the closing "All Alright" and "Ára bátur" (which later evolves into a majestic epic that only they could have recorded).

After 8 listens, the album keeps growing on me. There is only one other album that could be as good this year (though it most likely will be in second place: "Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow by Hammock." Otherwise, Sigur Ros did it again and make any wait for their music worth every minute.

The Last Lecture: a great read!

"The Last Lecture" is largely based off the video by the same name that you can catch on YouTube and many other websites. However, that is only part of the story.

The book (a few hours to read), unlike the video (under an hour in duration), lets you become one with Randy and his process of preparation for what appears as a certain death as he goes from diagnosis, through treatment and determination to accept his fate of being a pancreatic cancer patient.

My dad died of liver cancer, so Randy's story resonated very strongly with me. However, my dad did not have the chance to prepare himself (or his family) for his passing. Randy has chosen to live the rest of his life on earth preparing things so that his young children will know what his dad was like... this is a father who loves his kids, no doubt.

Instead of rolling on the bed or complaining about his fate, he embraces it fully (with humor, often) and gets as much out of him as he can, so that his children will have a vast testimonial from which to learn, even though his father won't be around.

As he paves the road for their future, we benefit from his effort and, if we open up enough, we are bound to learn from Randy like we learned from Morrie in the now-classic "Tuesdays With Morrie."

The Road to More Compelling Presentations

Chuck, a friend of mine from Orlando, recently launched a very interesting service. It's called Deckware.BIZ. His goal is very clear:

Our goal at Deckware.BIZ is to help our members and customers create compelling illustrations and overall communications in a time-efficient manner. You can try our pre-made slides to get you started on many common illustrations, or check out our forum for advice and ideas. If you are stuck, and don't find your answer already there, feel free to ask. The community is there to help.

He also set up a network on Ning to complement his Slide Store. In this network, members can help each other out with ideas and tips while getting a presentation ready for the road.

Today is such a fascinating time: we are empowered to solve the needs of others in a way that doesn't take an entire web development crew to put together. A smart guy with a good idea puts hard work into it and the results are inspiring.

Picasso's Guernica in 3D: incredible...

No words needed to describe this... for a better video version, click here.

Sharing Presentation Slides Goes Social

This is a PPT presentation I did back in 2006, titled "Blogs More Than Just Personal Journals". If there had only been Slideshare back then! But things don't happen until the time is ripe for them. Today we have this great tool to share presentation slides.

Their mechanism to share slides (post them) on Blogger was a bit off, but nothing I couldn't fix by editing the post it generated.

June 21, 22: Andreina's Art Show in Danville

This coming weekend (June 21, 22) Andreina will be participating in the much anticipated Danville Fine Arts Faire. She will be stationed in booth 145.

If you print this post and bring it with you, you will get 5% off on any purchase.

Below you can see a sample of some of the works Andreina has in progress that will be displayed and available for sale at the show. We look forward to seeing you there.

How High Gas Prices Can be a Good Thing

Ouch!!
Originally uploaded by Manny Hernandez

This picture was taken today at a Valero Gas Station between Palo Alto and Mountain View. The sad thing is that it was the CHEAPEST gas I could find in the area.

You start thinking a lot before driving these days, which is a good thing for the environment and for saving and exercising more. A good thing, overall.

Somebody was telling me at a dinner I went to last Sunday that gas prices actually may be the best thing that's happened for the US health system, since more people will be walking and biking.

New Sigur Ros Album, June 24

Today I learned about the upcoming Sigur Ros album, which will be available June 24.

I am VERY excited about the news of any music produced by this Icelandic band: they are one of my all-time favorites ensembles.

Selling Home Using Facebook Marketplace: Help Me Spread the Word!

In our latest attempt to sell our BEAUTIFUL 3B+DEN HOUSE IN ORLANDO (the caps were intentional to capture your attention!) I have listed it on Craigslist (again) and also gave a shot to Facebook Marketplace. I had no clue you could sell things on Facebook (I know: silly me!)

If you know anyone looking for a house near UCF in Orlando or Oviedo, FL, PLEASE let them know about this listing on Facebook. I don't say this because I am the one selling the place: the house is a great deal for what it is. It's VERY reasonably priced.

LaLa: Better than eMusic and iTunes

Earlier this week, LaLa.com came out with the new service they are offering. They used to stand out for being the coolest and least expensive way to trade your CDs online for "karma" that earned you the right to receive the CDs you wanted from others who were done with them.

Now, LaLa offers something that seems better than eMusic and iTunes combined, to me. Their interface is not too different than iTunes, but it's all web-based, which means you get to play your music anywhere you want where there's an internet connection. Thanks to their Music Mover Application, you can "upload" (read, synchronize) your music library with your collection in LaLa.

This is not all!
-You can find music and listen to the whole track once for free (not 30 seconds, the whole song).
-Quoting them: "If you like what you hear, add the web song to your Lala collection for 10¢. Now you can listen to it online as much as you want. The first 50 web songs are free." YES! 10 cents!
-For 79 cents more (plus the previous 10 cents this is the same prize that Amazon is selling MP3s), you can download your MP3s.

To me, this is a genius combo that will position them to disrupt the online music delivery scene.

If you haven't tried it yet, I recommend you register with LaLa: the first 50 web songs are on them.

UPDATE: I just finished running the Music Mover on my computer. Out of the 9,226 songs in my iTunes library, LaLa matched almost 40%. The rest of them I can let the application upload one by one (which will take a while, admittedly) OR I can sit back and enjoy the 3,433 tracks that it DID match. ;)

3000 Members in TuDiabetes.com

Today we passed the 3,000 member mark in www.tudiabetes.com, a social network for people touched by diabetes.

3,000 folks touched by diabetes. 3,000 people that are sharing with others about they go through, about what their loved ones go through every single day... it's quick to say but we all know it's not quick to go through.

This family keeps growing and the warm and cozy feel is still here. Each of you make it possible, when you welcome a new member, when you answer people's questions about diabetes in the forum, when you share a story, a photo or a video. A diabetes community that feels like one big family.

Thanks to each and every one of you: we should all feel proud of this important milestone!

Malcolm Gladwell: the challenge of hiring in the modern world

Not a quick watch, but well worth looking into Malcolm Gladwell is writing about now. Bottom line: our strong need for certainty about our decisions...

In hopes for hiring the perfect professionals for the openings we have (in Sports, among teachers, lawyers or the US president) we leave out some people with potential. Seems like a problem of identifying what makes a good professional.

Thanks to Henkel for the heads up about this.