EUROVEGAS: IN SPAIN OR IN CATALONIA?

Photo of Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands and Hong Kong-listed subsidiary Sands China. Photo taken 19 June 2010 in Hong Kong at a press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel, following China Sands AGM. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even one of the parties governing currently Catalonia has said some days ago that they long for a state, the Catalan state. I have nothing in favour or against that option but I just want to point out that this also should be told to the American millionaire who wants to build Eurovegas in Spain. He should be told that building Eurovegas in Madrid he can be sure that Eurovegas is been built in Spain. If he builts Eurovegas in Catalonia it may happen that, who knows, in the future, he has built Eurovegas in a state that is different from Spain. I don’t see nothing wrong about if we are really serious about a transition to our own state then the least we can do is to tell that to the ones who want to invest in Catalonia.

Mr. Adelson should also take into account that the language of Catalonia is the Catalan language so that only building Eurovegas in Madrid can he be sure that he is building Eurovegas where people have the words Las Vegas as their own: Castille. Only building in Castille Mr Andelson is building the new Las Vegas where Las Vegas where born … Las Vegas are related to Castille and not Catalonia. Las Vegas is a Spanish name.

Building the new Las vegas in Madrid is like returning to the origins: people who spoke Spanish created a city called Las Vegas and now Mr Adelson may bring back las Vegas to the place where people have the Castilian and not the Catalan as their original language: Madrid.

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JOBLESS … STRIKES … SPAIN …

JOBLESS: Spain is TOP NUMBER ONE in EUROPE in the number of jobless people. No country in the whole Europe has such a great percentage of jobless people.

STRIKES: Today, the unions of the not jobless launch their general strikes around the cities and villages of Spain.

SPAIN: The government of Spain has the dilemma of choosing between making happy some or some …

CATALUNYA BANC SUSPÈN PAGAMENT CUPÓ EN PREFERENTS I SUBORDINADES PERPETUES

Avui és notícia Catalunya Caixa per la suspensió de pagaments de cupó per preferents i per subordinades perpètues. Pel que es veu s’estaria fent un sanejament i s’intentaria que l’entitat es pogués comprar uns mesos abans del que s’havia previst. Desconec si tot això és una gran sorpresa o ja era de pensar què passaria.

SANT GAUDÍ SANDS

In some years Gaudí may become more famous, if that is possible, for two reasons: the first one is that he could become a saint. This is not fresh news, however. The fresh news is that at the same time that Gaudí could become a Saint he could also have a complex of casinos and hotels having his name attached: GAUDÍ SANDS. The owner of LAS VEGAS SANDS may build Eurovegas in Madrid or in Barcelona. If it builds it in Barcelona he may be interested in giving it a Gaudinian look and calling it GAUDÍ SANDS. There would even be a small replica of the skyscraper that Gaudí wanted to build in NY.

Casa Batllò by Gaudi (Photo credit: **Mary**)

 

LITTLEMONSTERS.COM OR THE END OF FACEBOOK

When Internet began one used to visit websites an in each website one couldfind what different people wanted to offer in its websites. That meant that different people offer you different things and in different ways. Then, one sad day, somebody invented an ugly and dull thing called Facebook. Since that day, instead of having an Internet that was a mirror of different people’s styles etc the people had to use a very ugly interface without style or personality to interact between them.

These days Lady Gaga has launched its own social net at littlemonsters.com. I wonder if this would help to go back to the origins and people realizes the ugliness of Facebook. The fact that millions of people use Facebook does not mean it is a nice thing. I have always dislike Facebook. Facebook menas ugly uniformity. I wish that the social network of Lady Gaga means a return to creativity and originality that should had not have been lost ever. I hope more famous people get now its own social network so that Internet is our common home and not a private webpage called Facebook. Facebook should be the personal website of just its owner …

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BYE BYE TO BALDNESS

Male Pattern Baldness (Photo credit: Schodts)

New hope for baldness … Some years ago I hear that if someone wanted to get rich it was very easy to be …: you just had to find a solution to baldness.

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BARCELONA HAS MORE 5 STARS HOTELS THAN MADRID

Casa Milà at dusk in Barcelona, Spain. The building is known either as 'Casa Milà' (the owner's name) and popular called 'La Pedrera' because of its look. Taken by myself with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS lens. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Until now Madrid, the capital of Spain, had more 5 star hotels than Barcelona. Now Barcelona has one more 5 star hotel than Madrid. I do not know if something like that happens in other states around the planet: that a city that is not not the capital of the state has more hotels than the capital. If EUROVEGAS goes to Madrid, however, this may change again and Madrid could have more 5 stars hotels than Barcelona. As it has happened until now. Let’s see …

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THE.CAT IS NOT A US WEBSITE …

Billie Holiday, Downbeat, New York. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

THE.CAT is a website made in Europe and written mostly in Catalan and English. Nonetheless, most of the visits come from the USA so I feel that a bit strange as this website is meant more for a European audience.

But these visits from the US make me realise the weight of the US. It is true that writing in English is not strange that I receive visits from the US but I thought that most visits would come from any country in Europe as a lot of people in Europe can read in English and I write about uropean subjects.

So, seing so many visits from the US I just have thought that maybe I could write more about subjects related to the US. After all, although I try to write in British English and I have in mind more the UK when I am writing in English there are a lot of things that I like from the US: I like its golden cinema from some decades ago. I like Sinatra songs, music from Billie Holiday, The Beach Boys. I like Paintings from Hopper and Pollock.

Who knows, maybe I should get more interested in the US. Anyway, maybe I receive most visits from the US because I am writing about Europe … Anyway I am quite happy with having visits from the US. I just wished Europe also visited the.cat too!

THE NEW IPAD IS TOO HOT

I have read that the new toy of Apple, the new iPad, seems to hot for some of its users. This has reminded me of other gadgets that also get quite hot. I imagine that the problem we have when something is quite hot is that we have the feeling that that cannot be good so that the gadget will last less. So I imagine that the problem with the new iPad becoming hotter than the old one is that one may feel that the expensive gadget will last less.

I have not thought about that but in fact sometimes when I listen to something in a phone it gets a bit hot and I try to stop if possible. Maybe the problem is that we do not know how hot can it get and if we are use to a gadget at a low temperature if that changes the first thought is that something is wrong. I wonder what may happen now with this new iPad.

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MB vs mbps vs bytes vs bits vs …

Some decades ago if you had mentioned something like gigabyte would have sounded as something quite weird. Now it is very common. So common that sometimes we do not know really what we are meaning.

This is a post thought for myself. Here I explained what I have learned these last days about bytes and bits, how to claculate gigas, megas, how to see differences between mbps and KB/s.

All I write is related to things I need to know as I use the Internet.

1 GB

Some companies give you 1 GB or more or less in a month basis. Once you have spent that quantity the speed is reduced. So, what’s that?

1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Normally in computers 1 byte is a 8 bits. 1 bit is a unity of information that can be 0 or 1. So in one byte you have 256 choices! You just have to multiply 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2=256. If I am not wrong then the color of a pixel using RGB needs 3 bytes. So if you create with paint an image and you keep it in 24bit bitmap you are using 3 bytes for each pixel. So if you create an image of 100×100 in Paint if may occupy about 30,000 bytes, about 3K. You can try this with Paint.

By the way, a binary system is used here. 1024 bytes make a KiloByte. I still understand not well why you follow the binary system but I understand the binary system in the bit. And I see that you just multiply 2 ten times to reach the number 1024.

In the same way 2048,000 bytes make a MegaByte or MB. Normally B is used bor Byte and b for bit.

If you have bought a pendrive, etc you may have realised that maybe it says 16  GB in the pendrive but that the computer says it has only14.9 GB. Well, the ones seeling the pendrive mean 16,000,000,000 Bytes and they used the decimal system instead of the bynary system used by Microsoft, for example! From the people behind the International System it seems that the good thing would be to say GiB when we are using binary system.

Another thing to consider is tranfer rate. A rate of 7.2 Mbps 7.2 Mb per second which means 7.2 Mbits per second which means 7200 kilobits per second.  When we download we say sometimes KB/s (KiloBytes/s) so to translate you need to take into account that 1 byte is 8 bits and that 1024 bytes are a KiloByte: 1000 kbps is 122 KB/s.

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