Blue21 is a simple and clean theme for Wordpress that I have designed.

It has a pleasing color scheme, nice gradients and a familiar look if you’ve been working with the Wordpress Default Theme, since it’s based on it. It’s also Ad-ready, because the middle column has been reserved for a skyscraper banner, but you can get rid of it if you wish and put more content, or go the other way and put more ads.

While I am neither a designer nor a theme expert, I’ve made some decent works like with my blog and some other Web projects I have, so I finally decided to release this theme.

This theme is based on a three columns modified version of Kubrick by Liew Cheon Fong, and just like the original one, it is licensed under the GPL 2.0 License.

• Download it here!
• Get the Widgetized version here! (Thanks, Ipung.)

After returning from vacation things had to get back to normal. Recently I’ve been preparing my stuff for this school year, which is going to be my last one in HS since I’m now a fourth grader. This is gonna be a tough year for sure; little free time, university entrance exams preparation and other time consuming stuff.

During vacation I haven’t written anything on my blog (except on January but it doesn’t count since I still was on my city), but it’s because I don’t normally feel like doing it except for an specific occasion, no matter if it is important or not.

I don’t even know if I will have enough time to write any thoughtful article during the course of the year, but I’ll try to. This isn’t an excuse or anything, but I opened this blog with many different goals in mind (sharing things, writing a how-to, promoting my projects, networking and earning some money through ads if possible).

I left some little website projects unfinished, but I’ll try to put them online before my schedule gets too tight. As for school… classes start tomorrow.

This weekend I was feeling extremely bored, there was nothing to do outside in the boring and small city where I live, and I didn’t want to pass the time doing nothing.

If I didn’t do anything about it, it was going to be a boring weekend for sure (which gets even more annoying because of the hot summer weather and the lack of a pool to bathe and swim), so I finally decided to play some videogames… but wait, I’m not talking about playing any new games, this time I went for the ones I used to play when I was 4 -10 years old, back then when I had my trusty IBM 486SX PC.

Among everything I played there were many great games, but I’d like to put here some of my all-time favorites:

• Super Stardust ‘96

This is my favorite Asteroids clone ever. It has great visuals, fast paced gameplay, 3D tunnel sequences between worlds and nice techno soundtrack.

You can pick up many different powerups and weapons in the game, by destroying enemies and giant space rocks. Some levels feature unique enemies, and let’s not forget about the bosses.

There’s also a sequel for this game called Super Stardust HD for Playstation 3. I tried it a while ago, and it was as addicting as this one.

• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

I love graphical adventures, and this is the first one I have ever played in my life (as you can see I have it in Spanish, since at that time I couldn’t read English).

It has a fantastic plot, set in 1939 a little before World War II, in which Nazis want the power of the Orichalcum, a legendary metal from Atlantis which is more powerful than Uranium, and of course you have to stop them.

You play as Indiana, the game features great puzzles, action and a lot of traveling… what else can you ask for? At some point in the game you’ll have to choose one of three paths; Wits, Fists or Team. The Wits path has less fighting but harder puzzles, the Fists path is more action-oriented with lighter puzzles and more fighting, and finally in the Team Path you’ll go with Sophia which is involved in the puzzles and gameplay as well.

• Stunts

For a game released back in 1990, this is astonishing. I’m not only talking about the graphics, but the game as a whole because it’s very polished. It features 11 branded cars to play with, many tracks and computer opponents.

The sound isn’t impressive, but in the visuals side it’s quite good… you can even switch camera angles and save your replays.

Still not convinced? Well, the game also has a track builder which skyrockets its replayability value; you can create your own with as many obstacles you want, including bridges, tunnels, sloped curves, loops and much more.

• (Bonus Track) Cyril Cyberpunk’s second level

OK,  it’s a great game and everything… but how can something like this appear on a level!?.

Of course there were many other great games I played, like Commander Keen, Major Striker, Jazz Jackrabbit, Carmen Sandiego, Duke Nukem, Doom, Heretic, etc… but I think it’s enough for now.

The TOEIC test (Test of English for International Communication), evaluates the ability of non-native English speakers in the use of Business English. It’s widely used as a certification tool by thousands of companies worldwide when it comes to measure one’s English proficiency.

Back in November of last year I did that test just for the sake of doing it and while I could see my results online in December, I couldn’t get the certificate until today.

I got 890 points out of 990. Breaking it down into parts, in the Listening Comprehension section I got 430 points and 460 points in the Reading section.

What does that mean? ETS which is the organization behind this test (also the TOEFL and others) host a can-do table which serves as an interpretation of the scores.

This time we had the opportunity to take the test for free since the Chilean Economic Development Agency was paying for it. This is because they want to create a registry of English speakers, in order to attract foreign capital by clearly stating the amount and quality of our human resources. Our data is now also part of a Job Board.

As for me, I’m pretty happy about this… I always wanted to take a test like that, it was for free and I got a good score.

Some minutes ago I was looking for some resources to learn about logo design, but another cool website showed up in Google, Make My Logo Bigger.

The website features a fake video infomercial (which I embedded a Youtube copy here) selling products to make websites and advertisements both print and online really stand out, and one of them is a cream to make the company’s logo bigger. Seriously, watch the video… if you are a designer you may remember something that all your clients say to you, simply because they have no idea about design.

When text just doesn’t cut it and still pictures aren’t enough, video is the answer when it comes to demonstrations and instruction. That’s the concept under the new How-to Video Sites which have been appearing in the last 2 years, taking advantage of this technology in a truly Web 2.0 fashion.

Here’s a little review of my favorite ones:

Videojug: This is the first one I came across. It’s a UK based website with a large collection of quality videos, most of them professionally made by themselves. In case of more personal subjects like dating or lifestyles, many of the videos are acted by people in an often funny way while the explanations are narrated (they are also available in text).

When it comes to more specific things, sometimes they interview experts in the subject. There is content in many categories, and users can also upload their own as well.

Viewdo: This is one of the first, if not the first one that started with this new concept. At first it was like Videojug, with professionally produced content, but then they allowed users to upload their own. It has plenty of user-created videos, and a good variety of well categorized content.

5min: Got five minutes? 5min the Life Videopedia is a great offer too. It features a unique player called the “Smart Player” which allows you to do extra stuff like zooming in or putting the film in slow motion.

Some examples:

• How to be the Perfect Boyfriend on Videojug
• How to Tie a Tie (Double Windsor) on Viewdo
• How Slot Machines Work on 5min

Some time ago a website started to sell stickers that have the following printed on them: “Now slower and with more bugs”. It was just a matter of time before someone did something creative with them: Brad Carter stopped by a Target store, and slapped some of them on Windows Vista boxes.

As for my experience with Windows Vista, I can say that it has been OK except for the performance issues I’m getting on my machines with it. Match or not… Who knows? Anyway, Brad stuck more stickers on other objects as well.

Every day new web applications are released aiming to make our lives easier, which is something you can actually see by yourself by reading any of the thousands of blogs and websites that discuss, review and create buzz around them.

As a person who enjoys reading sites like Mashable, Lifehacker or Downloadsquad, I always wondered about the possibility of making my own web application. Many of them are astonishingly complex, while others are quite simple… still I had no idea about what to do, until I stumbled upon PopUrls some time ago.

PopUrls is a well known mashup of the most popular social news websites, showing the headlines of those sites in a single page. The concept is fairly simple since it just shows part of the content from the RSS feeds that each site publishes, so I started to work on a similar website on my free time.

After a few weeks, Mixalia was finally ready. It’s in Spanish and the content focus is kind of different than in PopUrls, since it also fetches headlines from websites in several topics like general news, sports news, videogames, science, TV & entertainment, etc. On the other hand, this one is simpler than PopUrls since it lacks the interface customization options. The backend was made with the Simplepie PHP script, which makes the feed parsing job a piece of cake.

It may not look or feel like a Web 2.0 site, but some well known websites in Spanish have already wrote about it, driving some loyal traffic to the website.

First off, Happy New Year!

I’ve been wondering about writing my own blog for a while, but schoolwork and other things were taking up so much of my time that I couldn’t.

Now since we just started 2008 and here in the southern hemisphere of the world we are on summer break, I thought it was a good idea to go for it this time.