Using the Blog in the English Class

This is the last task that involves writing in the blog for the english class. So as a finishing work we are supossed to evaluate this precise activity: to use this blog as a tool for learning and practicing english.

How do i feel about it? I think it is a great way to improve our learning, because when you write you have to check yourself using dictionaries or translators to be sure that you are writing in the right way. It is your task to assure that you are doing it fine, because the teacher will correct it once you have finished the post that you have been indicated to write. It is like having little tests every week, but it is not that hard (you don't have that much pressure on you). It is, indeed, a great way to practice your english writing, to make sure how to write all those words that you know only by how it sounds, and definitively to win some confidence in how much english you mannage, because when you practice with your classmates, i usually get to know them and lost my shame of not having a perfect english, but anyway i will feel embarrassed talking in english to people i don't know, or that i know they speak perfect.

Another thing that i like a lot about this kind of activities is the fact that you have to visit some websites with really interesing topics, like that TED webpage with all those short videos with an incredible ammount of information, or that crazy futuristic view of perfect life you can find in the Victory City's website.

It was a fine experience, i think. Simon should keep this activity in his future classes and find new ways of making the new learners more confident about their capacity to understand and speak the language.

The New EVO X GSR

Well, this is the new version of the Mitsubishi Lancer EVO X (one of my favourite cars in the world), that arrives from Japan, with a distinctive name: GSR Premium Edition. It has a lot of improvements and changes in equipment and aesthetics, keeping the original engine from the GSR model (the 2.0 turbocharged engine with 291 horsepower).

In the exterior, besides the style that gives the great painting job in black, it has 18 inches BBS wheels, anti-fog tinted lights and little details painted in the body color.

The most interesting of this special edition is to be found in the interior, in both equipment and aesthetics. Recaro seats, satelite navigator, curtain airbags and a Rockford Fosgate audio system with 9 speakers.

The price in this country should be something between 30 - 32 million pesos, depending if you choose the five speeds manual gear, or the SST gear, with double clutch and six speeds. Unfortunately, this edition will not leave his homeland. Bad luck for us (or the people that has the money to buy it).

TED: Rethinking the Music Video

Jakob Trollback is the one speaking. Rethinking the music video is the talk i choose from the TED website.
Jakob Trollback is a pioneering designer that works in the New York-based creative studio Trollbäck+Company, a great referent in the world of motion graphics, movie title and credits sequences, music videos and a bunch of other audiovisual design. Trollback is besides a designer, a musician and a dj, so he speaks in his talk about how we can merge the world of the music and the video into one that works naturally and organically.
The idea of the whole thing is how a music video functions only as a conceptual vision of the music, making dissapear the feeling of watching a movie where music lost importance. The music video he shows integrate graphic interventions in the perfect moments, exactly when the sounds need it, boosting the feelings and the intentions of the music, rather than diminish them.

A film you enjoyed: A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly is a movie written for the big screen and directed by Richard Linklanter, as an adaptation based on the novel of the same name, written by Phillip K. Dick (author of other stories that have been turned into a movie like Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report).
I saw it for the first time maybe around june or july in 2005. I was watching on the internet some pages about design, about portraits made of superposed layers of solid color in the computer, when i found that in this movie was used this technique, along with another animation technique called rotoscoping, in which animator trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use mainly in animated films and publicity.

The story is set in the near future, where a powerful drug know as substance D has become a great problem in the United States, a drug that makes split the conections between both user's brain hemispheres causing multiple personalities. In the movie, the main character is an undercover member of the police who is directed to spy his friends, being all of them included the cop, substance D users.
I like it a lot because of the visual treatment and the great story that has, you should watch it sometime.

Beautiful Chile: Death Valley

One of the most beautiful places in Chile i visited in my life is the Death Valley, near San Pedro de Atacama. I went twice, once about six years ago and the other about two years ago. Both times i went with my family, but the last time, besides my parents and my brother, my cousin Camila went also. That time we went sandboarding to the Valley and was awesome so we spend hours and hours there. The sand dunes were soft and so high that when sandboarding we pick a really great speed.
The landscapes are amazing, the Death Valley is made of a mixture of orange sand and gigantic spacelike brown stone. The rocks and the cliffs have forms that have been twisted through time by the winds of the desert and the sunsets are a beautiful sight indeed.
I recommend this place to everyone, it is located less than an hour from San Pedro and it's one of the places that is still free of charge to visit. To acces most of the other famous places in the area now you have to pay some money because of some laws about national patrimony and tourism. So that's it about the desertic north of Chile.

A Work of Art: Roger Garland.

Two Trees of Valinor is the name of his piece of art. The Artist name is Roger Garland, a great fantasy artist who painted some art rellated to the J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth novels. He collaborated around 1980s in some illustrated calendars and some say that he has a style in his drawings that look pretty simmilar to what Tolkien himself imagined when he wrote books like The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and The Hobbit. This painting i posted is one of those used in the calendars and precisely in one of this calendars i saw it maybe about ten years ago in the annual book fair that takes place in La Serena, in the fourth region. It brings to my mind those times when i was little and went to the book fairs with some fammily and spent hours watching from here to there, trying to decide wich book to buy, because unfortunately in Chile books are really expensive.
Well, back to the picture,this one is basically about this two sacred trees that are suposed to be in a paradise lost in time and place at the beggining of the times. I really like the colors in it, they give to the painting that sort of "being dreaming" effect.

Catching Up: The City of the Future

Victory City is just crazy!!! I mean, it's all right with the incredible organization of the space, the really clever ways to improve life quality of the people who are suposed to live there and how the city works on maximum efficiency... but what will happen if entire cities dissapear. I am not talking about the buildings, i'm talking about the population. If this "small" Victory Cities can hold so much people, suddenly a great percentange of an old city's population will be gone. I think that will affect deeply the economy of the old cities, because of the sudden lack of workers or professionals, the hospitals and other public services can not afford to be understaffed. Besides, i don't know if it could be a beatiful sight to live in a city that is different to another Victory City as is different one mall from another. The particular character of a city will be replaced with a beatiful and sterile picture of life. I maybe prefer to live in my old and scratched city.