The joy of reaching a milestone

I've been working out and training hard for the past few weeks trying to get to run non-stop for 6 miles. Today, I've finally got there! It feels great and I'm sooo happy I wanted to share my new achievement with y'all.

So, anyway, my first milestone was to run 5 miles. Six miles was my second milestone. The ultimate goal I want to achieve is to run my first 10K race before the end of this year. So now I need to loose some more weight, start running 6 miles more comfortably, have some more margin and then improve my timing --It took one full hour!-- :-)

OK, now that my goal is in writing I believe I have much better chances to actually get there, since I'm more committed to it... We'll see ... :-)

New blog - The Sebastian

I've originally created this blog as a replacement to my old personal webpage, which was no longer online, and to keep in touch with my family and friends and post a few unrelated articles here and there, from time to time.

I've loved the idea, because it would allow me to very easily update the site -as opposite to maintaining a full website-, but then I've found myself trapped because I didn't feel comfortable writing about some topics in this blog --which I know are boring to some of my friends.

So, in the spirit of keeping this site loyal to its original ideas and also having, at the same time, some place where to experiment with writing about other business-related topics, I've decided to create a new blog about Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Technology. I've named it: "The Sebastian".

If you have a technical or heavily analytical brain, think about this as one more of my "Divide and Conquer" experiments :-). If your brain is more marketing-orientated, think of it as "Segmentation and Orientation"! Now that's a good analogy / idea for a post on The Sebastian ... hmm...

So, anyway, if you are interested into reading my business-related posts and ideas, please make sure to visit The Sebastian. If you are more likely to enjoy my personal posts, then keep coming back here ... if you are not sure, then you're probably like me ... just do both! :-)

Seth Godin's blog & Firefox idea

As you already know, I enjoy reading about entrepreneurship. It keeps excersising my brain and at the same time inspiring me with fresh ideas that pop up in my head while going through the text.

One of the blogs I try to keep up with is Seth Godin's blog. Seth is, without any doubts, an authority on the information age entrepreneurship and marketing world.

Having done some open source projects myself, I've particularly enjoyed reading his post with ideas on a social and business model around the Firefox browser. You can check it out here.

I'm not particularly savvy about Firefox software architecture (although I've read a few articles about it), but the technical side of my brain has been wondering if Seth's idea can be implemented through a plug-in. The plug-in could also be configurable. Let's say, for example, what if we can enter the city and state we live in, and so the "parallel" web gets to change completely depending on our geographical location.

Now I'm getting into the business side of my brain. Think about other segmentation rules, such as the sports we like, our profession, age, sex and so and so on.

So then when I go to http://golf.safe, may be I can get the list of local golf shops and courses.

Bottom line, we could think of adding basic segmentation and orientation to the already very original idea from Seth, which should ultimately bring up more value for the end users, the advertisers and the "plug-in provider"? :-)

Tour de Cure - Diabetes fund raising

A good friend of mine is gonna be riding the Tour de Cure, a riding event between Austin and San Antonio, for his second time.

The Tour de Cure by the American Diabetes Association is a great fund-raising event with a very important cause: to help people learn more about the dissease, while at the same time help finding a cure for it. My friend is, naturally, helping rising funds as well. Should you wanna help with a donation, or just simply read more about it, here goes the link:

http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR?px=2165586&pg=personal&fr_id=3264

Lake pics

Two Saturdays ago (Apr 29th), we went to the lake with some of my best friends to start-up the season and enjoy from the beautiful weather in Austin, TX. The lake offers some very inspiring sights, plenty of relaxation and some nice (although just a bit cool in Apr) water to jump on. Sizhu took these pics with his 2MP cell phone camera. Not bad!!

Tu Austin

There is a new blog out there in the blogsphere. But this an interesting one :-).

It's about Arts & Entertainment in Austin, TX. And it is in Spanish. Yes, in Spanish. Written by and for the Latinamerican community in and around Austin, TX.

If you live in or around Austin, then you should really visit Tu Austin.

Jazz piano

I know, I know ... I haven't been blogging for a while. Well, I always come back with a good excuse, right? :-) Anyway...

Its been a few weeks since I've started taking jazz piano lessons with Eddie Hobizal. We've been working on some jazz theory and also on a few bossa tunes like "Song For My Father", "Girl from Ipanema" and some others too.

Eddie is such a great teacher. I'm really excited about all the good progress we're making and practicing quite a bit too. If you like jazz, let me encorauge you to visit his site from the link above :-).

Bootstrapping your business

So I've just finished reading another entrepreneurship book: Bootstrapping your business. The book is loaded with interesting ideas and examples from the real world. It is also quite inspiring.

Since I've liked the bootstrapping chapter in The Art of the Start, I decided to go ahead and read this book, which is 100% focused on bootstrapping. It was interesting to compare the similarities and differences on both approaches, which are non-excluding (one could start from scratch by bootstrapping, and then move on and search for funding to growth further by leveraging on the existing business).

That's it for now. I'm now reading a Golf book, a math book and a Jazz piano theory book. Oh, by the way, I've played some golf last Sat and it was great. Since I hadn't played for a while, it was also a bit rough. Crystall Falls is a really nice course to play at, and its very close from my place, but its also a bit difficult. I'll go back when my playing gets better (hopefully soon! :-) and when they finish working on the greens.