Kung Fu movies

If you were born in the early 80s, then there is a reasonable chance that you were a Kung Fu films lover like me. I remember myself going every week to the video rental shop to check if a new Kung Fu film had arrived.

   

The first Kung Fu film I watched was "Incredible Kung Fu Mission" (Shi xiong shi di zhai chu ma) created in 1979. I watched it by chance when I was about 6 years old and it was in Betamax format. Probably the only film I've watched in such format. This is the quintessential Kung Fu movie, I really like it.

One of the things I like the most about Kung Fu movies are those crazy jumps. They actually have a name in chinese 轻功 (qīnggōng) which is a useful keyword to look for images on Google.

Electric street light switch

When I walk on the street, I often try to spot devices that make our lives easier without us knowing. If I stop for a second and look around, I usually found myself surrounded by a lot of stuff that I don't always understand or pay attention to.

For example, I found this weird looking device inside a cabinet on the street. I took a picture of it to look it up on the internet later. It turns out that this is an electric street lamp switch (called EE switch by Panasonic). In other words, a device that automatically regulates the current that goes through a street light based on the ambient light.

Disassembling a Bluetooth speaker

As you may have noticed from my previous post, I am a fan of disassembling devices with the purpose of learning.

I got this nice Bluetooth speaker as a present from Redhat during a conference in Japan. It works by pairing your phone with the Bluetooth speaker to play music. The speaker provides three push buttons (volume down, play, volume up), a USB interface to charge the battery, a power on switch and a microphone.

The speaker's body is made of ABS plastic and covered by a rubbery silicone wrapper with a nice matte finish. The wrapper has a suction cup to stick the speaker to a surface. Let's look inside.

The body is held together with screws. The speaker and the microphone are glued to the top part. The printed board has pads for an extra microphone and LEDs. I suppose they left them there to customize the final product depending on the price. Finally, the lithium battery is glued to the bottom part.

The speaker is connected to the chip at the lower side of the board, an LTK8002D audio amplifier made by LTKCHIP TECHNOLOGY (ShenZhen). The brains of the Bluetooth speaker are implemented using the AC1533D83234, an SoC (System on chip) made by ZhuHai JieLi Technology (Zhuhai City). From what I could see by inspecting datasheets of similar chips, it (probably) contains a 32bit RISC CPU, GPIO pins, PWM, ADC, DAC and Bluetooth capabilities.

Conclusions: the way the Bluetooth speaker works is quite easy to understand. First, the SoC gets its power from the battery through a voltage rectifier (on the top side). The SoC also uses an external oscillator circuit to generate its own clock signals. The 3 buttons (and LEDs) are connected to the GPIO pins. When the switch is on and we press the play button, the SoC will receive audio data from our phone through the Bluetooth antenna which is printed onboard. Then, the SoC will convert these audio data into an analog signal, adjusting it to the current volume level. Finally, the SoC will forward the signal to the speaker through an audio amplifier. The most interesting part from disassembling this device has been finding and reading the website of ZhuHai JieLi Technology (thanks to Google translate!). I didn't even know this company existed. I wonder how many more companies and chips from China are left for me to discover.

Pinguchan: Let the game begin!

A year went by since I published my first children's book. Today I am publishing my second one: "Let the game begin!".

This book is quite different from the previous one:

• I created it completely on my computer, using Clip Studio Paint.
• The artwork has a very different style and was created under time pressure.
• It contains 34 pages in total (the previous one had 15).
• It is distributed with a free license (CC By 4.0). For example, any individual, schools or commercial publishers can freely modify, print and distribute the book as long as they satisfy the "attribution" condition in the license.
• Anyone can download the book for free in PDF.
• And more importantly, I got the help of many amazing friends who translated the book into their native languages. One of my goals was to get the book translated into languages with a small speaking community. Those languages aren't usually commercially attractive compared to major languages (e.g.: French or Russian) and for that reason, many families can't read books to their children in their native language. If you are interested in contributing a translation please put a comment below this post or send me an e-mail.

Please, download the book in any of the following languages:

• Spanish es_ES (PDF), original work by Daniel Sangorrin
• Japanese jp_JP (PDF), translated by Misaki Sakashita
• Malagasy mg_MG (PDF), translated by Andoniaina Andriamiandrisoa
• Bulgarian bg_BG(PDF), translated by Strahil Pastuhov
• Basque eu_ES (PDF), translated by Borja López Vicente
• Korean ko_KR (PDF), translated by Hee-joon Woo, reviewed by Song-yi Baek
• English en_US (PDF), translated by Patty Tiburcio
• Taiwanese zh_TW (PDF), translated by Liya Su
• Polish pl_PL (PDF), translated by Tytus Wojtara
• German de_AT (PDF), translated by Tytus Wojtara
• Uzbek uz_UZ (PDF), translated by Sherzod Zakirov
• Portuguese pt_BR (PDF), translated by Koichi Aizawa
• Chinese zh_CN (PDF), translated by An Haixing

You can see below a few pictures from the creative process and some initial sketches with characters that never made it to the final book:

I am a volunteer for a local group that promotes multiculturality by reading children's books in multiple languages. For example, here I am reading "The very hungry caterpillar", written by Eric Carle, in the Spanish language.

 Being able to read your own book and see the reactions of children is an amazing experience.

Conclusions: first, I would like to thank my friends for their altruist translations. By comparing different translations I could learn many words and realized that all the effort spent in the translations was really worth it. Second, despite the time pressure, I think I managed to deliver a nice children's book. It is true that I cheated sometimes and copy-pasted some of my artwork multiple times, but overall I think the result is good. I have to say that I am really enjoying the experience of reading my book in front of children and families. Finally, it would be really great if the book was used by schools or individuals around the world. I want to promote the minor language versions as much as I can.

Converting inches to centimeters in your head

While reading a book from the USA about woodworking, I felt the need to find an easy way to roughly convert inches to centimeters quickly in my head. As you probably know 1 inch equals 2.54cm. The problem is that it's not easy, at least for mortals like me, to quickly multiply by 2.54 mentally.

So after a few minutes I came up with this formula:

 cm = in*2 + round_down_to_even(in)/2 + 1

For example, let's suppose that we want to convert 13 inches to centimeters in our head. We apply the formula above and we get:

 13*2 + round_down_to_even(13)/2 + 1 = 26 + 12/2 + 1 = 33cm

While the exact value is 33.02 cm, we got pretty close. I found that this formula works reasonably well for the first 50 inches (127cm) where the error averages to about 0.56cm (see the figure). Unfortunately, the accuracy of this formula decreases proportionally to the number of inches. I link here a LibreOffice spreadsheet that I used to calculate the normal distribution for this formula (see the columns aprox2) and compare the results with other similar formulas that I thought up. If you know of formulas that beat up mine, I'd be glad to know them. Please write a comment.

The best comics of my youth (1998-2008)

Before I came to Japan, almost 6 years ago, I had to face a dilemma. After having been accumulating comics for nearly 10 years and reading them from time to time, I started feeling some intimate links with a few of them. What would you do with your collection of comics if you had to move faraway?.

For example, Las aguas de Mortelune (Les eaux de Mortelune). It was the first comic I've ever read, thanks to a friend from high school (thanks a lot Adrián!). I guess I could have got rid of the ones that I wasn't so intimate about, and just bring the rest to Japan. However, I was very much afraid of discarding comics that could lead me to regrets later on. That was really a nightmare, so I decided to postpone my decision and instead, I asked my father to keep them in his rental garage for a few years until I figured out what to do with them.
Every year I visited Spain I would also take a look at the state of my comics. The garage conditions weren't good for them and made me sad. But on the other hand it was hard for me to send them back to Japan since I didn't even know what my future would be like. Finally, two years ago I decided to take action. During a holiday in Spain I spent hours and hours classifying comics according to how bad would I feel if I threw them away. Really, it was a very bad experience. I can remember myself at night, a rainy night, taking the not-so-loved comics outside of their boxes and throwing them away. After coming back to Japan I felt gloomy. I started thinking I might had thrown more than I should have, including comics that I actually liked or used to, which was as important. To make things worse, it wasn't until last year that I sent them over to Japan. It was a bit of a hurdle since I had to pay more than the actual price of those comics, but it was well-paid money. Now I'm reunited with them and they are part of me. This is what I consider the core of my first 10 years of love for the art of comics.

Imaginario (by Horacio Altuna) was my second comic after Les eaux de Mortelune, and I borrowed it again from my friend at high school. I was instantly a new absolute fan of Horacio Altuna. I read Imaginario several times and simply loved it. The more I read it, the more I paid attention to the details. A few years later, I would have the honor of talking to maestro Altuna and showing him some my early drawings for advice after a talk that he gave in Santander.

On the same high school, the author Alfonso Font came once to teach us how comics were created. I remember his talk very well. Alfonso Font is a great author and I really love his short science-fiction stories.

I lived in a small village so I didn't even know there could be shops that sold comics (this is quite unthinkable here in Japan). But by suggestion from my high school friend I got subscribed to an excellent mail-based comics catalog (at the time I didn't even thought about buying on-line since I didn't even have a computer). One of the first comics I bought was 'Museum' by Fernando de Felipe and I really loved it.

Next, I became a fan of Juan Giménez's drawings and stories. His spaceships and futuristic battles are still some of the best I know. I had the honor to talk to him during a visit to the Barcelona comics festival.

Again, my friend from high school (seen it in retrospective he was a great influence for me) suggested me to try reading a comic called 'Torpedo'. I did as he said, and then I couldn't stop loving Abuli and Bernet, the authors of Torpedo. I also had the luck to talk to them when I visited the Barcelona comics festival and got a small drawing from Bernet. Thanks.

As I read comics, I also practiced my drawing abilities. It was then when I discovered Milo Manara with his perfect women and anatomy. I enjoyed some Manara's comics more than others, but in general there was always a minimum level of quality that was already worth the read. I think my favourite manga by Manara was 'El rey mono' and 'Camino oculto' on which I have a small drawing by him, thanks.

Then, I was about to start University when I found some amazing comic covers in an audio magazine. I had never seen anything like that before, the drawing was different and it was a very clear style I could distinguish from any other comic I had read so far. I placed an order from that magazine and that's how I got my first comic made by the great master Carlos Giménez. Soon after that, I was awarded with the honor to spend one month in Barcelona as a learner in an animation studio called Dibutoonz. During that time, I was able to get hold of quite a few of Carlos Giménez works at Mercat de Sant Antoni, such as Los profesionales or Sabor a menta. Reading all those comics about Barcelona in the 80's while I was actually living in Barcelona was an amazing experience that I will never forget. Years later, new editions of Carlos Giménez works were sold again and I could get some of the comics I hadn't found before such as Paracuellos or España grande y libre. I have read many comics from many different countries, and I believe that Carlos Giménez is one of the top comic artists of all history.

Finally, I'd like to mention Miguelaxo Prado. An artist with an exquisite delicacy in the way he uses colour. I'm glad I could see him drawing during the comics festival at Avilés.
Adamov, Altuna, Font, de Felipe, Bernet, Manara, Juan Giménez, Carlos Giménez, Miguelanxo.. I was really very lucky for having such great masters to lead me in the world of comic. They represent a reference for me and constitute my greatest influence to day.

When I started University, I had to leave my small village everyday for the small city of Santander. It was then when I discovered that comic shops actually existed!. For most people reading this blog it might seem stupid but I was living in a small village and I hadn't had a computer until then. The city of Santander has had at least 3 comic shops that I know of. That's quite more than I would have expected. It was like a dream for me, entering into a shop and seeing thousands of comics around. Comic shops in Spain are usually divided in 3 main parts: European, American and Japanese. Or that's what it looked like the first time I entered to one. Since my background was in European (and south-american) comics, I started buying comics from there. The ones above are some of my favourites, though there are many others I love that I didn't show.

After sometime, I noticed that European comics were quite more expensive than American ones so I gave them a try. I have to admit that I didn't really enjoy most superheroe-related comics (with some exceptions such as Watchmen). In contrast, I started to love the comics that had the brand 'vertigo' stamped on them. Among them, the ones above are some of my favourites. I had the chance to show my drawings to Michael Lark, the artist from The scene of crime, in the festival of comics at Avilés. He told me: try to simplify your lines. I think that's one of the best advice I've ever received.

Once I had read lots of European and American comics, I started getting interested in Japanese Mangas. At the time, it was really hard to find Japanese mangas, it wasn't quite a boom like now. But in retrospective that was again a lucky thing. The reason being that I was able to witness how the Japanese manga boom invaded the comics market and that was very exciting. Some early fans started selling magazines such as the ones above with a rather professional look. I learned a lot from them, thanks!. Then, they started putting modern anime in TV such as Marmalade boy. You could feel that Anime and Manga were the cool thing at that time.

Soon after, the best mangas started arriving in Spain, like the ones by the great Japanese master Taniguchi Jiro (mostly unknown by his own comrades). Taniguchi's mangas were delicate, sophisticated and very human. Another manga that I loved was this one called Tetsujin Gamma (Yasuhito Yamamoto). Unfortunately, it wasn't that popular in Spain and got cancelled (now I can read in Japanese!). Some other mangas I loved were Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo), I''S (Masakazu Katsura), Monster (Urasawa Naoki), Detective Conan (Gosho Aoyama), Maison Ikoku (Rumiko Takahashi), and anything by Wataru Yoshizumi.

I think this post summarizes quite well what my collection of comics looked like during my first 10 years. At some point in the future, I'd like to talk about what types of comics I have read since I came to Japan 6 years ago. Until then!!

Super Comic City - Osaka

The 30th of October of 1998 (Friday) was an important day in my life. La noche temática, a program from the Spanish public TV, emitted a documentary called "La noche de los manga".


Thema Manga, Mangaka - 01/21 - Intro et Sommaire - 1998
アップロード者 Alexkiddmw. - クリエィティブ動画をもっと見る。

The documentary, a co-production between TSR2 and Arte France, had a total duration of 187 minutes and covered in detail the world of Japanese animation and Manga. I was moved by the images, the music and the idea of discovering a new hidden world (am I, after all, another Spanish conqueror? :P). The documentary explained the process of creating manga and animation in Japan. In particular, I recall one scene where thousands of manga amateurs were gathering around in a huge event to sell their self-published material. Back then, attending such an event was a mere dream for me.

Back to reality, a few weeks ago, I was hanging around in Toranoana manga shop when I spotted an interesting book at one of the floors dedicated to dōjinshi 同人誌 (self-publishing) mangas. It was a book about one of those events that I dreamed about a decade ago!! I thought it was time to make those old-good dreams come true!!

And there I was, a few weeks later, in Osaka ready to participate for the first time in a dōjinshi event: the Super Comic City - Kansai 16. The event took place in Intex Osaka, a huge building complex that had plenty of room for the 14.000 stands where Japanese manga amateurs were passionately selling their work. It was organized by Akaboo, a company that prepares similar events during the whole year. It was completely full of people, much more than what I had imagined. Amateur (and not so amateur) artists were selling their own mangas, illustrations, hand-made postcards, badges and even dolls!! Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take pictures inside the building to illustrate it.

Although this time I attended just as a visitor, I would love to attend someday with my own comics. In order to participate as an author you need to fill a form. I found a free magazine called Piggy in Toranoana which includes the forms to apply to many of these events but you can apply directly from Akaboo website. An interesting detail on the application form is that small rectangle on the down-right corner reserved for you to show a catchy cut of your art.

That cut will appear eventually in the event's guide book, which can be bought in advance at the manga shop or directly on the day when the event takes place (the book qualifies as entrance ticket). This is very useful for the attendants to think in advance which stands they want to visit first.

Many of those amateur artists dream of becoming professional manga artists (mangaka) someday. One way to accomplish their goal is to take part in one of the numerous manga contests that are held in Japan. Some of them feature prizes that simply make my jaws drop. For instance, the picture above (extracted from the event's guide book) advertises the Shinjin comic contest, sponsored by Shogakukan, whose biggest prize is 5000000 yen (46572 Eur at 29/Aug/2010).

There are many people that love drawing manga. And many more who love reading them. And of course, "a lot of people" stands for an opportunity for business in a free market society. There exist a plethora of companies to help the artists achieve their goals. From printing companies specialized in amateur mangas to transportation services that can bring your boxes full of manga directly to the building. Inside the building, you can buy all kinds of tools for drawing such as tracing tables, color pens, manga patterns, etc. There is even a service to send home the mangas that you bought.

12 years after watching that documentary, I still feel as if I was discovering a new hidden world...

Study some Kanjis a day!

Just a short post to mention that I recently opened a new blog dedicated to the study of the Kanji. This is the address: http://sangorrin-kanji.blogspot.com/

It is more like the diary of my own study rather than a systematic approach to learn them but I hope it is useful for other people!

Playing soccer in Japan

Although I don't like watching soccer very much, I really love playing it since I was a child when I used to play with my friends Denis Arconada and Francho in San Sebastian.

When I moved to Cantabria at the age of 10, I went on playing almost everyday at the school's breaks (Sagrados Corazones, Argomilla de Cayon). Soon I entered to a local soccer team, the Ayron de Vargas. For many years, I had such a good time traveling with my team Ayron around Cantabria, playing matches every weekend, having dinners. I feel very grateful to all the people at the Ayron club.

I managed to play in the 3rd Spanish league which sounds quite cool when I say it here in Japan, but in reality it was not that hard I think. Unfortunately, when I entered the University I didn't have time for playing anymore. I just played occasionally with friends, and especially with my previous laboratory colleagues.

Note: thanks to Hara-san for her photos of the matches

I got my ankle twisted just a month before coming to Japan, which was really a shame. I have been waiting to play again for several months because I wanted it to fix correctly. Finally, a few weeks ago I played soccer with my current laboratory colleagues in Japan. We played a small league against other laboratories in the University. Although I felt that I needed to practice more to recover my normal level I really enjoyed playing again! :D

My food and work in Spain

I thought it would be interesting to compare my daily routine here in Spain to the one I will have in Japan starting in April 2009. As the title says, this post is about my food and work in Spain :D. Once I'm in Japan for some months I will make the comparative.

Normally I have some sweet breakfast with milk, nesquik and biscuits (on the left of the picture) at around 8:30. Lunch is around 14:50 and I usually have two dishes. In the picture, the first dish would be "Patatas a la Riojana" (right) and the second dish is chicken with ham and cheese inside (left). I use a fork and a knife as you can see and I drink water. I like to eat bread in the lunch, especially with the first dish. In the picture, you can also see some typical ingredients of the Spanish cuisine (olive oil, onion, garlic, potatoes, peppers).


Here we can see another typical dish in Spain: "lentejas" (lentils).

And this is my work office, a laboratory in the University of Cantabria. Normally I work 9:30 - 14:20 then I go home to have lunch and then I come back to work again 16:15 - 20:30. However I have some flexibility because I can enter to the building with an electronic card even when it is closed, so I can work on a weekend or do extra hours and then take some week days off. The important thing is that I manage my time well so I can do my work in time and meet the project deadlines.

And this is my mum, who prepared the "Patatas a la Riojana" haha, and asked me to appear in my blog (maybe she wants to be famous hehe :D).

Japan to-do list

This post is a to-do list for my life in Japan as a Monbukagakusho student (April 2009 - 2011). I'll keep updating it whenever a new idea comes to my mind so I anchored it to the Permalinks menu.

• Learn to speak and read Japanese fluently.
• First 6 months, intensive Japanese language courses.
  
• Improve technical skills on hardware, maths and physics.
  
• Enjoy Japanese manga, anime, movies, music and live performances.
  
• Join a club in the University.
  
• Main candidates: manga, water color painting, zen and football club.
  
• Travel:
  
• Chubu region (Japanese alps, Mount Fuji, ..)
  
• Hokkaido
  
• Walk the 88 temple route in Shikoku.
• Draw comics and illustrations.
• Receive visits from my friends ;)

Songs I like

Probably it's the same with you. During a period of time there is a song that you listen to all the time and never get bored of it. In the next list, I will be updating all these songs that cross my life.

• Joe Hisaishi - The Legend of Ashitaka
  
• Phoenix - Too Young (Lost in Translation)
  
• Basil Poledouris - Anvil of Crom (Conan)
  
• Basil Poledouris - Theology/Civilization (Conan)
  
• Basil Poledouris - The Search (Conan)
  
• Basil Poledouris - Battle of the Mounds (Conan)
  
• Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train
• Dire Straits - Down to the waterline
• The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again
• John Denver - Country Roads
• Amanda Palmer - Guitar Hero
• Black Sabbath - Paranoid
• Dire Straits - Telegraph Road

Note: If any link doesn't work, search the song for yourself :P

Things I like

Things that most people around me seem to like but I don't:

• Going out at night to drink alcohol and listen to too loud music.
  
• Watching football.
• Driving a car.
  
• Living in a fixed place.
• Going downhill (take the easy path).

What I like to do instead:

• Going out at night to see the stars or the lights of the city from the silence.
• Playing football.
• Walking.
• Living all around the Globe.
• Going uphill (take the difficult path).

I had to look for a new Label to tag this post with. At first I thought about something like "Personal" but then I realized that there could be future posts similar to this one where "Personal" wouldn't fit. In the end I decided to use "Thoughts". But the point is that the whole Label-hunting thing reminded me a lot of a "thinking pattern" that I repeat unconsciously all the time: the search for an abstraction. For instance, in object-oriented programming you always try to start from a very abstract class and then decompose it by inheritance into more specific ones. I'm learning C# at the moment and there is a very abstract class there, the root of all the classes, whose name is System.Object. It is an elegant and a very small class (I confess that I understood the meaning when I compared it to void * in C). Yes, it's small, but its the roots of the whole system and if it fails the whole system fails.
Final note: I realized that I started talking about programming so I extended my Thoughts class with the Technology interface ;P.