New year 2010 post, bye bye 2009

This was the year of friendship. After living almost 4 years in Japan this year I had the opportunity to increase the number of friends, and specially people that I can trust. That is the most important achievement for this year and the most valuable thing that anybody could ever desire.
So I want to dedicate this 2009 to the friendship and the real interaction that has a value in this life: the human-to-human open, simple and sincere relationship.

This was also the year of the social networking. I’ve been always an active participant of almost all social platforms out there, but for some reason this year was the most active in these platforms. The value of the social aspect of Internet still is not well understood by many users and companies.
2009 is my social year from all points of view. The evolution of social networking already reached a special momentum that changed the traditional and wrong vision of “Internet human interaction will make you an antisocial” to the more realistic one “If you get into social net, your physical social live will increase as well”

Twitter, facebook, flickr, posteorus and all other platforms that share a similar philosophy are making possible to share my life as a stream of events. Don’t think about it as a loose of privacy. I share what I want to share and that’s the point, the constant daily training myself in the action of sharing knowledge, experiences, ideas, photos, thoughts, simple actions, everything. It’s a streaming of information that gets feed-backed by followers that are doing the same. This will have a huge impact in the near future, especially by the fact that the way to use social networking is evolving beyond our imagination.

This was also a year full of events and a good opportunity to meet new people and see how many communities in Tokyo are increasing in size really quickly. The social aspect is complicated in Japan due to the close nature of its culture. But that is changing, and over this year I could see how the number of Japanese participants increased beyond expectations which is really good!
I also joined the Tokyo Live Bloggers which is a nice initiative of my friend Danny to merge the daily life of bloggers living in the Tokyo area.

Check on their web sites. If you are in the Tokyo area next year, I hope to see you around :)

Tokyo 2.0
Tokyo CGM Night
TLUG Tokyo Linux Users Group
Tokyo OpenSolaris Community
Startup Weekend Tokyo

Photography!! That thing this blog talks about. This was the year that this blog moved completely to photography, art, design and everything related to this wonderful world of colors, lights and cameras. There is still a lot of work to do and many things will be online for the next year. The opportunity to express myself through images and what I see everyday is the way I find my peace in mind and happiness. Every time I go to a photowalk looking for something that will bow my mind back to some timeless moment that deserve to be recorded, is a refreshing opportunity to thank the existence of a world like this, and to remember us the huge importance that this planet represents for our life and future.

This year I had, not for the first time, the opportunity to confirm again that quality is expensive and sometimes it’s necessary to do invert resources to achieve a better result. I’m talking about purchases, products that can make our life easier or harder. Akihabara is a wonderful place for a tech geek and the perfect place to find tons of products for a reasonable price, sometimes extremely cheap ones. Starting in 2006, I accumulated a huge amount of servers, pcmcia cards, cheap notebooks, and a lot of electronic junk that later became really painful to live with, specially because Tokyo’s houses are really small. So I decided to spend in quality and get rid of all the useless material. It was a painful process, you can check here how I dismantled one Sun E-250 and it was just one of them. In Tokyo the regulations for the trash are really strict, so never buy a server that you will not use. Even if it’s extremely cheap and powerful.

The star of my purchases for this year was my iPhone 3GS! I cannot regret anything about it! It’s a wonderful mobile device and actually I cannot find any other device with similar capabilities. I hope to see soon some competitors. The iPhone gives me the possibility to be constantly online with all my networks, webs, feeds, email, blogs, followers, comments, messages, pictures, everything. It’s the Swiss knife of any person that wants to have a social networked life. It’s a little more expensive than other phones, but it is worth paying that money. Here you can read the reason I switched to the iPhone and I don’t want to change :)

Anyway if you have the opportunity to find a Gundam scale 1:1 for a reasonable price, don’t think twice and take it!! Maybe it will be hard to bring it to home, but you can always try to live inside of it :)

I learned that the amount of people living around have no relationship with the feeling of loneliness. Even surrounded by millions of people in a huge city like Tokyo, you can feel really alone. Find the right people to share our life is more important than any material possession.

Tokyo is an amazing city and I will stay here the next year for sure and I think that many others. I have no plans for the future and what I learned this year is that a plan for the future is useful and can give you a guide in the path. But forcing yourself to follow it is a big mistake. Let it be, do the path instead of following the path that maybe others suggested you to do. Listen to people, learn from the mistakes of others but, at the same time, follow your heart, even if everybody around you tells you that it’s a mistake. If it comes from the deepest part of your soul, you have to do it!!

I want to say thank you to the people that, in a way or in another, are giving me their support, advices, suggestions and constructive critics. Thank you all of you for your help, thank you to be there and thank you to stay together the next year also. Some of you are far away and some just a couple of stations from my home, but it doesn’t matter, the link is the important thing, and to keep that link stronger every year.

Recomendations for the 2010:

Alvaro Correal, David Santo Orcero, Jose Maria Atencia and José Moreno
You guys are far far away from here, but the distance doesn’t make any difference. I know it’s a unbreakable link :)
Alvaro I hope you don’t work so much for the 2010, please!!
David 頑張って！ I know you can achieve your plans for the next year.
Jose Maria don’t forget your talent for the design!
José Moreno I hope that your reborn in Photography doesn’t disappear again! :)

Jim Grisanzio You are a working machine and one of the best communicators I know. Take care for the 2010 and let it be :) @jimgris

Steve Nagata if you are now the mayor of Akihabara, I hope you to be the president for the 2010! :) Thank you for your advices and support. I hope you the best for the 2010! @stevenagata

Paul Papadimitriou I was lucky to meet you this year my friend. I hope to see you soon. Don’t forget that you have a second home here! @papadimitriou

Danny Choo You are a constant source of inspiration. Take care for the next 2010 and please at least one day let me go to the Death Star! :) @dannychoo

Jonny Li Hey matey! :) 頑張って頑張ってand頑張って for the 2010! You have all my support and help! @jonnyli

Oren! I hope you can finally paint the whole World in RED! I’m sure you will! :) @Oren_The_Red

Derek Your photos are a source of inspiration, you are my Black and White master! @iMorpheus

Setsuko Harada It was so good to meet you! I hope you the best for the 2010 and 頑張って！@ami_harikoshi

Ramón I hope to see you soon the next year and you enjoy in your next adventure. @bapho

Francesco Fondi You always make me feel I’m in Italy again. Felice 2010 e in bocca al lupo! @FrankieBit

Kyle Hasegawa You can find him at any IT event in Tokyo :) @KyleHase

Andrew Shuttleworth Thanks for organizing such amazing events!! @ashuttleworth

Philippe Valdois Next year for sure that beers in Shibuya!! S&F! @pvaldois

Gohsuke Takama Next will be better I’m sure! My best wishes! @gohsuket

Dean Fujii Thanks for your photographic ideas. I will implemented it next year! :) @Doc_MacPro

Masafumi Ohta Thank you for your advices. You are my OpenSolaris master! @masafumi_ohta

Jesslee Cuizon Don’t forget the photowalks for next year! :) @J3SSL33

Thanks also to TLUG guys:

Edward Middleton I promise to assist to more TLUG nomikais next year! :) @E14n

Alberto Tomita Next year you will find it!

Tim, Henri, Josh, Keith, Mauro

And thanks to all the other people that I didn’t include or I still don’t live in the network or that I don’t know your links. Thank you for your support!

My most special thanks goes to @tangerinejp without your support nothing would be possible!! :******