Last year, Ted Williams Show participated in Iguana Rock III, a band play off in Monterrey. To my surprise this morning, there are several YouTube videos of our performance that night, the one above, and another, with better sound, taken from crowd level. See if you can spot yours truly at the keys.

Our band are very excited about our upcoming EP, which is still in production. I’ll be recording the keyboards for it in the following weekends. Tomorrow night I’ll be playing a completely different style of music with my friend Miguel Torres at the José Calderón theater in Monterrey. I hope to post a video of that on Sunday.

Today was a long weekend because of the celebration of the Mexican Constitution on February the 5th, The holiday is moved to the previous Monday to allow for more productivity and rest for workers.

To celebrate, a group of church friends and I rented a log cabin in a place called: “El Pinal” in the eastern Sierra Madre Mountains of Nuevo Leon.

I barely slept there because of the cold, and getting there was an ordeal of climbing steep and narrow mountain roads in rain and fog, in a rental car, because the friend who was driving us there cancelled at the last minute. Precipices thousands of meters high fell away from both sides of the road.

But, even in the stress, we had a lot of fun; in fact our faith was strengthened. At one moment, after the car had started skidding in a particularly wet uphill climb, my friends and I asked God for the rain to stop. Amazingly, a few seconds later it did! After the tense climb and close to the highest point of the road, we asked God to let us see the road, which was very difficult because of fog. A few seconds later the fog cleared enough for us to clearly see our way.

The rain didn’t return until 5AM or so, and in the meantime we even got to do some stargazing. We built a fire in the fireplace, drank hot chocolate, toasted marshmallows, made quesadilllas, played Scrabble and Monopoly, and had wonderful conversations.

The next day we got up late and visited a small canyon. All the way into it we were led forward by trees covered in Spanish Moss, which made them reminiscent of willow trees. I couldn’t help comparing the trees and rock walls to those in the movie Avatar. We met a group of Canadian and Mexican climbers inching up the steep and overhung canyon walls. We also met a Mexican rancher and his son in their Stetson hats and speaking with the characteristic norteño twang.

We had a wonderful relaxing time, ate good food, had loads of fun, one of the best weekends in a long time for me. Here are some of my pictures.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe today became the first president to visit Honduras since Porfirio Lobo took office. During his visit, Honduras and Colombia signed an accord for cooperation in national security, specifically in dealing with narcotics, drug traffic, and kidnapping. Colombia and Uribe’s success in this area is something we sorely need. This is also a slap in the face for narcoterrorists and the governments who harbor them.

I suspect Uribe wanted to challenge Hugo Chavez subtly, whose friendship with the Colombian guerrilla and willingness to use them as a proxy to weaken the US and its allies has resulted in many Venezuelan aircraft laden with cocaine crossing Honduran airspace.

Uribe praised the willingness of Hondurans to act with independence, in a nod to Micheletti’s government, although neither Lobo nor Uribe mentioned him explicitly.

As a developer, I can’t help but be excited whenever Apple comes up with a new product. I have never been as satisfied with a computer as I am with my MacBook. But where will Apple’s new iPad shine? Two things: games and web apps

The app store has seen a flood of games, countless versions of Sudoku, Chess, Solitaire, and others have created so much competition that for a lone programmer, any time spent developing a new game is almost completely wasted. Only large game companies like EA can afford to release games for the Apple App Store, and successfully charge for them. The iPad, with its 1024×768 screen, will give them the capability to make much more satisfying games than with the iPod/iPhone. The multi-touch interface and accelerometers make for extremely fun and novel ways of interacting with software as well.

But in my opinion, it is the web which holds the greatest potential for iPad development. For decades, ever since the web boomed, visionaries have dreamed of using the web as an application platform and operating system. Only last year Google announced that they would be creating a netbook which would store all it’s programs and data on the web.

But web apps aren’t as beautiful as native apps. No wonder Apple is blocking Adobe’s flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight from its iPods, iPhones and now the iPad. These technologies could allow for more aesthetically pleasing and powerful web applications. Nevertheless, the onset of new standards, like HTML5, will soon break Apple’s blockade. Here is where I would invest my time as a developer.

I resent Apple’s benevolent dictator attitude. There is very little customization in their operating systems. Although this allows for more beauty and better performance, I resent having to force my device to do my bidding.

I use the OS X terminal window and resort to Unix commands when I need to do something my MacBook doesn’t want me to. There is no legal option in iPhones or iPods to do something similar, because all content is locked down through a media store, and an app store. The process of getting an app approved is notoriously byzantine in difficulty. But the web is free, and any attempt by Apple to force me to use their services is defeated by the web’s openness.

I predict I will eventually get an iPad, in a few years, when version 2 or three comes out, cheaper and with less restrictions. I don’t expect to get on the App Store gold rush mentality either. As a freelance developer I can’t afford to expend my effort on a program with a limited audience. The web is the future, the web is free, the web is device-independent. Viva la Web!

Pro-Zelaya Activists, Image: Amnesty International

Much as I resent Amnesty International for defending the vandals who defaced and burnt down buildings and set buses and cars alight only to get media attention, I agree with them that President Lobo must begin investigating the police who were responsible for excessive force in repressing them.

I have seen video footage of police breaking down a riot after a football game in July 2009, and using their macanas (batons) ruthlessly in beating up hooligans. I have also seen the photos of wounded people from the clashes between Pro Zelaya protesters and police. My experience with the Honduran justice system before the crisis helps me find human rights violations very plausible.

I do appreciate the fact that they cite 20 human rights violations, not 50, not 100, not more. 20. Mel Zelaya seemed fond of citing hundreds of cases of murder, rape and beatings, and media sympathetic with him would gleefully repeat it without any qualms, nor investigation.

In November 2009 I complained to a reporter, whose article appeared in a prominent Mexican Newspaper. The article headlined Zelaya’s claim of 142 deaths as a result of the Honduran crisis. This was the nonchalant reply:

“Before anything else, I appreciate your email. On the other hand, the format of the piece you mention is that of an interview, which reflects the point of view of the subject of the interview exclusively.”

The politicization of Human Rights organizations is deplorable. I hope Amnesty International will realize that socialist and communist regimes are often the chief offenders against human rights in the world, aside from theocratic ones. Although I concede, capitalist regimes are not far behind.

President Porfirio Lobo Takes Office (Proceso Digital Image)

After a religious service, President Porfirio Lobo took the oath of office in the National stadium, under strict security, in a ceremony attended by the President of Taiwan and dignitaries from various countries, including the US. Deposed president Manuel Zelaya was transported to the airport, and his plane has apparently already landed in El Salvador, his connection to the Dominican Republic.

Much worse than when Obama was inaugurated last year, Lobo has taken the oath of office with enormous challenges. A political battle has dragged the nation to the brink of civil war. The economy is in ruins. Former allies have been alienated, new enemies awakened. The threat of imperialism has reared its hideous head, forcing him to leak political capital even before his term began.

We need to pray for wisdom for Lobo just as much as we did for Micheletti. His job will be almost as difficult. Precisely because he does not have the hatred of the left, and the disdain of the right, he will be tempted to be complacent and waste all the suffering that brought us here. He needs to be bold, honest, and passionate, but instead he comes across as meek, secretive, and cautious.

It would almost be a good thing that the “Resistencia” continue to snap at him, and bite his every move, and seek to discredit him. It would also be a good thing that the press be demanding of him. It would force him to action, and to address the extreme plight of impoverished Hondurans. It would satisfy those who really care for Honduras, not the global march of socialism, nor global corporate power.

The day has finally come, Porfirio Lobo’s inauguration day. Tension is at its peak. Manuel Zelaya has called for protests at the airport where he is expected to board a plane for the Dominican Republic, and then Mexico City. Two students are dead in Venezuela during protests against the shutdown of RCTV and four other cable channels for failing to broadcast a speech from Hugo Chavez.

The video above is from Micheletti’s farewell speech last week.

I’ll be keeping you posted as developments arise.

The President of the Honduran Supreme Court has freed the five commanders of the armed forces of penal responsibility about an hour ago. They were guilty of violating the constitutional protection of Honduran citizens from exile or extradition when they forced Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica.

I was nervous about this. It wasn’t very logical that any other outcome would arise, but the threat of imprisonment might make a real military coup a very tempting offer for the military should they be condemned.

The chief justice cited the presence of about 900 foreigners of Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Spanish nationalities “representing an enormous danger to national security”. Evidence was presented of the involvement of Venezuela and Cuba in the process of establishing a “fourth urn” which was a call to a referendum on a Constitutional Assembly to rewrite our Constitution.

More troubling to me is the rumor of an amnesty-related ruling by congress to be announced today. Should that be the case, many crimes will go unpunished. Is this worth it to regain the graces of countries who repudiated us?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, image: César Bojorquez, CC license

Not content to shut down RCTV on the public airwaves when their broadcasting license expired, by quietly ignoring their repeated attempts at renewing it, Chavez has forced cable TV companies to stop carrying the channel as well. The following CNN report talks about it, in a balanced tone they denied Honduras, when president Micheletti temporarily shut down radio stations were openly transmitting hateful calls for violence and anti-Semitic messages.

I am against any government meddling with the press, either to force them to broadcast the government agenda, or even pay them to do the same. Both carry too much power for the media to be able to remain untainted by them. Furthermore, the government should have the authority to control the public airspace, but not private Cable TV.

The laws Chavez has written in Venezuela allow him to control the media in an almost Orwellian way. Chavez is once more confirming his path to totalitarian dictatorship, twisting the laws he himself put in place during his rule by decree.

Target, by Jasper Johns, image by nostri-imago used with a C.C. license

A troubling chain email that I can’t, unfortunately, ignore, claims that the FARC is planning to murder both president-elect Porfirio Lobo and interim president Micheletti the moment Manuel Zelaya leaves the country, leaving a vacuum of power. Who knows who they plan to put there, Zelaya perhaps? This, like all chain emails, probably is as true as the tooth fairy, but it still makes me squirm, especially as the Venezuelan media published a similar story, which I still disbelieve (for now). This chain mail may just be the same story, beautified into chain-mail brainlessness.

The fear that drips from that email reveals how uncomfortable Hondurans are with the political limbo dance the US state department is contorting us into. How low can we go?

Although I know that it would be wrong, although not illegal, if I were Micheletti, I would arrest Zelaya now, and not allow Lobo to take him out of the country. Zelaya is planning to join the Parlacen, the Central American parliament, a privilege granted to ex-presidents. This means that we would never get rid of him, since the appointment is for life. This would be galling. He is a criminal, not someone I want as a representative in the Central American congress.