But this time around I am going to be mentioning something else that I thought was really really cool and that I was rather excited about. As you well know, on this weekly series of blog posts about Gran Canaria I have developed the tendency to share both some pictures and short video clips of various places that have impressed me all along from this island and way at the beginning I was actually making use of DailyMotion to store those videos, well, it looks like things are going to change from here onwards.

No, I am not talking about stopping with the sharing of those videos. On the contrary, I am going to keep it going stronger than ever. For sure. What I am really going to start doing is making good use of the wonderful new feature that the fine folks of Flickr have put together. Yes, video!!!  How awesome is that? Right next to the good bunch of pictures I have been sharing all along I will now be able to add Flickr videos as well and share them as part of the same flow. Love it!

Yes, yes, I know that most people have been indicating how sharing videos in Flickr is a little bit limiting, since you can only upload videos which are 90 seconds long, but I tell you what, that’s just more than enough for me! In fact, most of the video clips I am planning on sharing will be that length anyway, so it makes perfect sense to place them together next to the pictures, don’t you think? And for those video clips longer that 90 seconds? -You may be asking, right? Well, I will continue to make use of DailyMotion, of course!

So let’s get the ball rolling then! Earlier on today I went ahead and shared a couple of short video clips in Flickr in almost no time, with a very user friendly interface and along the same lines of flow you get with sharing pictures and they are both part from a single series I created from one special place in my heart that gives me shivers every time I get to go there.

The name of the place is called Meloneras and is just on the very south of the island of Gran Canaria. It is one of those emergent touristy spots in the area where you will be able to find some of the finest hotels from the south of the island. Definitely, a good place to stay. For sure. However, what it also has is one of those stunning everlasting boulevards that would allow you to take long long walks along the coast enjoying quite some marvelous sunsets, both in winter and summer time! The most spectacular ones are the ones happening during the winter time when the sun sets across the Atlantic ocean. Just brilliant!

The funny thing is that I happen to live about 7 to 10 minute drive from there, so I get to go every now and then with the dog and spend one hour or one hour an a half unwinding from everything else and enjoying just one of those special places that only when you get there you realise the kind of beauty you are contemplating. I tell you, very few things can get better than that! And if not judge for yourself with these two videos I shared earlier on:

What did I say? It kind of makes you think you would want to be there, right? Well, that is just how I felt myself earlier on today a couple of times while I was struggling with a couple of tools. Perhaps next time I should just leave it and enjoy another one of those unforgettable sunsets @ Meloneras!

Want to join me?

Tags: Gran Canaria, Meloneras, Costa Meloneras, Sunsets, Daily Motion, Flickr, Flickr Video, Life, Life Work Balance, LWB, Tourism, Boulevard, Unwinding, Walks

Well, things may change from here onwards, folks. Now it seems to be a good time. I think it is time to revisit it again and continue exploring its full potential within a working environment to help improve the way we share our knowledge and collaborate with other knowledge workers across the border in this distributed world. But to me there is one other special reason why I am going to hang out much more in Second Life this year. And that is my current avatar elsua Gaea. Allow me to explain further.

Back on the 6th of January, and while over here we were celebrating the Three Kings or Three Wise Men, I got pinged by Jasmin Tragas saying that there was a lovely present awaiting for me in Second Life and that I should check it out shortly. And I did. Whooooaaahhhh! I got a lovely new outfit for my avatar, which lately was a little bit left behind. Of course, I had to try it out and lo and behold somehow my inspiration to keep on making use of Second Life re-gained its full energy and commitment. So much so that I already got a couple of community events piled up for the next few weeks and I will be participating as well in a couple of interviews around the subject of social computing!

Earlier on today I actually spent a few minutes with Jasmin hanging out together chatting about a few things around knowledge sharing, social software and collaboration. First time we ever hanged out together in Second Life and before we knew it we went further with a photo shooting session, then we played drums and before we knew it time flew, when you are having fun!

Here are some of the pictures we took:

So, if late last year I lost the connection with my avatar, something that for one reason or another may have happened, I guess that thanks to Jasmin I got it back, not only for her spot on article on Avatar Affinity, but also because she spent quite some time and effort in putting together a really cool outfit for my avatar without asking anything in return. There you have it, the power of social networking and connecting with other knowledge workers regardless wherever they may well be!

And then they may say that virtual worlds don’t help get people together and connect, well, they may need to think about it twice now!

Fancy hanging out in Second Life some time soon? … I am ready

(Thanks ever so much, Jazzydee Raymaker, for the lovely present! It is greatly appreciated!!!)

Tags: Second Life, Avatars, Jazzydee Raymaker, elsua Gaea, Jasmin Tragas, James Dellow, ChiefTech, Wonderwebby, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Virtual Worlds, Metaverse, Affinity, Connections, eLearning, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Fun, Play, Play at Work, Social Capital

Yes, that is going to be my wish for the New Year we are about to get started with. Lots of prosperity and good health, specially for the latter, because, without it, there isn’t anything we can do. Sometimes we take for granted the little things, those that keep us going day in day out. Health is one of them. We always take it for granted and yet we couldn’t survive without it. So instead of wishing all sorts of cool things to happen all over the place and to all those folks out there I’ve been in touch with, I am just going to keep things simple. Stay healthy, be healthy, and the rest will just come along nicely!

That is right! As simple as it would get. Lots of good health for the New Year and hope that everyone gets to fulfil whatever their dreams may well be. Mine is going to be to try to stay healthy, too, so that I can enjoy being in touch with those I love and care for, those who have given me another incredible year without asking for anything in return. Those who care enough to be themselves and allow me to be part of their lives. And, of course, wishing to stay healthy so that I can keep enjoying this wonderful place I live in.

Here you have got some pictures I took yesterday from one of my favourite places in Gran Canaria: Roque Bentaiga. If you have taken a look in the past to the ones I have shared already in my Flickr account, this particular series is a special one, since I got to visit the monolith and climb it as far as it is possible. Quite an incredible experience, I tell you! Here you have got some pictures and hope to share some more later on. And, yes, the place is as mystical as you could have ever imagined!! And quite humbling, too!

¡¡¡Feliz Año 2008!!!

Tags: Feliz Año, Happy New Year, 2008, Happy 2008, Prosperity, Health, Wishes, Dreams, Gran Canaria, Roque Bentaiga, Mystical, Humbling, Flickr, Photography, Photos, Nokia, Nokia N95

Yes, I am talking about the "Belén de arena" that every year takes place in Las Canteras beach, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and which this year is just as spectacular as ever. So in the spirit of keeping things short, so that you folks can continue further with the various different preparations, and, like I said before, a Merry Christmas to everyone out there who may be reading this and to everyone else I have crossed paths this year!!! It surely has been an exhilarating experience, as always! And look forward to an incredibly exciting 2008!

And here you have got some of the pictures I took last weekend with my Nokia N95. The rest of the series you can always find them at my Flickr account:

¡¡¡Feliz Navidad!!!

Tags: Navidad, Feliz Navidad, Christmas, Merry Christmas, Spain, Las Palmas, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Playa Las Canteras, Belen, Nativity Scene, Christmas Tree, Sun, Sunshine, Belen, Flickr, Pictures, Life

Continuing further with the weekly series on What It Once Was here I am again at it. This week sharing with you folks some pictures from one place in Gran Canaria that I have always found very very special. Not just because it is the largest reservoir dam there is in the island of Gran Canaria, with a capacity of 40.288.625 cubic meter (m³) of water, but also because some of its surroundings are just spectacular. Truly spectacular!

It may take a while before the area would recover from the fires, but it would certainly be one place that I will keep coming back and see how little by little it would recover. It is going to be a slow process, I know, but precious gems like this one do leave a mark and always make you come back. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Presa de Soria or Soria’s Dam. One of those magical places that will show you nature at its best in a magnificent and breath-taking surrounding.

I have taken lots and lots of long walks over there over the course of time, and time and time again I keep having that strong feeling I need to come back again. Yes, I know, one of those special places. Thus here I go sharing some more pictures I took not long ago, and before the recent fires created havoc all around the area, so that you get a chance to admire such incredible place while it slowly comes back into shape.

It kind of makes you wonder what people were thinking about when provoking those fires. After seeing some of these pictures, and the whole lot more I have shared over at my Flickr account, I still cannot find the words. Seriously. Still can’t … And here is why:

As I have mentioned in the first weblog post of the series, every week I am planning on creating an entry over here under the heading What It Once Was … to share with you folks some of the different pictures that I have taken over the course of the years from some of the different areas affected by the recent fires here in Gran Canaria, as a way to help remember what it once was and what will be again over the next few months / years. It may be a slow process, it will take plenty of healing, but I am pretty sure that we would eventually get there.

Over the last few days, I have been getting lots of positive feedback comments on this series of posts, specially from folks who keep reading of my weblog(s) and who live in the island, as a way to help  us remember the immense beauty that most of these places used to have and which I am sure will blossom again very soon! So while I understand that this series may not have much to do with the main theme from this weblog, at least, for the time being, I hope you can understand how I am planning to continue with it as a way to help me release some of the pain that we have all gone through, specially for those of us who feel those burnt areas had a special place in our hearts.

One of those places is the area known as Ayagaures, specially the upper part of the area, where you would be able to find a couple of dams and some stunning views! In the past, I have been sharing a couple of weblog posts to detail some of that beauty, but over the weekend I have been uploading some more pictures into my Flickr account from the last time I was there. To me, it is one of those special places from the South of the island, where in less than 15 to 20 minutes you are in the countryside enjoying lots of green, the mountains, the dams, a wide range of different birds stopping by here and there. Ideal for long and extensive walks. And if not judge for yourselves. Here you have got a couple of the pictures I have shared just yesterday:

I am surely going to miss this place for those eternal and peaceful walks, while it starts its slow and lengthy recovery, but one thing for sure is that I am planning to come back, perhaps this very same winter with the first drops of rain, and check how nature has started its healing process, hoping that everyone out there would have become by now much more conscious of the serious damage that just a single match can create in a matter of hours!

Oh, and if you would want to find out some more about the catastrophe that this has been for us all, check out the following YouTube video that Manu Moreno has put together (Perfect combination of tunes and pictures to reflect how most of us feel at the moment) and which I am sure will make people think of the fatal consequences of provoked fires.

Don’t forget as well to check out his photo and video Web site over at GranCanariaFotos, where you would be able to find lots of other pictures and videos about the fires at the same time that you would get to see some other stunning pictures of the island itself with all of its beauty.

Speechless! Yes, that is right, that is the only word that comes to mind at the moment… Thanks, Manu!

As the fires from Gran Canaria and Tenerife continue towards making really good progress and be completely extinguished, still with some minor, completely isolated and under control patches here and there, I thought I would go ahead over here and start something that I have been thinking quite a lot about during the course of the weekend and most of last week as well. During the last few days, there have been a number of folks sharing their thoughts and opinions on the outcome of the fires. And a lot has been said about it whether the catastrophe could have been avoided or not, but instead of just following that thread I am going to take another approach to it all. At least, for the time being. Perhaps at a later time I would share as well my two cents and what I have learned myself from this tragic experience.

However, this new approach is going to be a lot closer to me than whatever I could have ever anticipated. While doing a recap of the recent events, over the course of the weekend, talking to some friends on the outcome of the fires, I realised that quite a few of the emblematic places from the South of the island of Gran Canaria have suffered tremendously from the fires. I get to visit those different places quite often and have got tons of pictures from what they used to look like, but not what they look like today with the devastation.

So what a better way to pay tribute to those special places from Gran Canaria that got burnt than to create a weblog post every now and then over here, and share a bunch of pictures that I have been taking before last week’s disastrous set of events and which I will be uploading into my Flickr account as well as time goes by. I think it would be really nice to share with you why those different places are special, at least, to me, and why I am really looking forward to when things would go back to normal, like a whole bunch of us have been sharing thus far, and see those stunning places come back to an re-energising life, the same one they have always had.

So to get things started here is the first of a serious of weblog posts that I am going to tag as "What It Once Was …", where I will be sharing with you a couple of comments about the particular space and then share some pictures of what they used to look like and, I am hoping, that when the right time comes, I will be able to share with you all the dramatic change, for the better, I am sure, that they would go through over the next few weeks, months, years, etc.

Without much further ado, the first place I will be talking to you about is one of the most emblematic tourist attractions from the island: Palmitos Park. Half zoo, half theme park that used to host an incredible amount of flora and fauna and which, unfortunately, has been so severely affected that it would be about a year before it would open up to the public again. Most of the animals survived the fires, but the different buildings and the flora have been very badly damaged. So this is one of the wonderful places I will be looking forward to when they re-open again. I am sure it would be much better, much bigger, much more impressive and just basically focusing on what matters, the flora and the fauna of not only the island of Gran Canaria, but from all over the world!

Here are the promised pictures…

You can find more pictures from the series related to Palmitos Park and What It Once Was… at the following URL, or look also at a previous weblog post that I have shared some time ago.

So, will you join me when they re-open the place to check out most of the beauty that has been left behind? … And so much more? I surely hope so…

One year goes by lightning fast. I just can’t wait for it!

This is probably one of the very last weblog posts that I would be creating where I would be massively linking to a number of different stories that keep popping up both from within the traditional media as well as within the Spanish Gofiosfera on the recent tragic events where one third of the entire wooded area from the island of Gran Canaria is now gone after the fires have all been under control. And a similar situation, thank goodness, is starting to emerge in Tenerife.

There was a reason why I was linking to a number of different resources, more than anything else, it was all due to the fact that I wanted to share some of the grief that most of us is going through at the moment. That painful experience of seeing how one good chunk of you is taken away just like that in a matter of hours and without any further questions.

Back at the beginning, when I was first writing the initial blog post from this series I mentioned how it hurt, how painful it surely was to witness that tragedy taking place and myself not been able to do much on the subject. Now a few days have passed by and still feel the same, like something that I was part of was taken away from me very abruptly. For good.

In one of my twitterings earlier on today, I realised that most of the pictures from the collage that I have for my Twitter background are actually from several of the different places that are now completely devastated by the fires. Yet, there they are, as impressive and stunning as ever and with a strong message that at one point in time they will be back! Just like in the good old times, but better. Way better! I am not sure if I would be here still that long, but if I am, you bet that I am going to enjoy the time quite a bit where I will be capturing those precious little moments that will remind me of what it all once was and where we have moved on to: onwards!

Because there is no other way to go. Now more than ever we need to move on, we need to learn from our past mistakes, we need to ensure that events like this one would never happen, at least, at a similar scale, of what we have witnessed since Friday last week. I, for one, would be incredibly excited about when that time would come, because I know it will be coming back again, and at that point I would be as much proud as I used to be (Still am very much so, in case you are wondering!) of one of the places that accepted me back three years ago, with no questions asked, like if it was the prodigal son coming back home. Finally! I never left home. I know now. Perhaps too late. The beginning of a new dawn starts now! Want to join me?…

And here you have got a couple of pictures that different folks have been taking thus far:

Courtesy of Canarias7:

Courtesy of tonyatlantico:

And while the reactions and different news items keep showing up all over the place with folks sharing their thoughts on this tragic set of events, it looks like things are starting to become normalised, to a certain degree, that is, because we cannot say just yet that everything is under control. Not yet. The struggle continues. The fight is there, active, more than ever, to try to put an end to it all. And we are getting there, for sure. Slowly, but steadily. Hopefully, one more day. Just one more day. Tomorrow. Fingers crossed. Best of luck to us all.

Weather conditions have improved quite a bit with temperatures around the 30 degrees Celcius and with hardly any wind, at least, from this side of the island. Definitely, not as windy as in the last couple of days. So there is plenty of hope that everything would be back to normal soon, if we could say that because I doubt things would ever be the same again. Not after watching this catastrophe for over 5 days now.

The first evaluations, editorials, extensive opinions and reviews, reservations, etc. etc. are starting to flourish now, and perhaps I will talk about them some more later on, but I just thought I would leave you for the day with something that I have found incredibly amazing and a life-changing experience, for sure.

Check out the impressive Flickr set of pictures that tonyatlantico has been putting together, where he has been covering what Ayagaures looks like after the fire. A place which is just about 20 minutes by car from where I live. Then also take a look at a couple of pictures I took from the same place some time ago in all its splendour.

All I can say at this moment is that it still hurts… and quite a lot!

(Oh, and don’t forget you can keep up with what the Spanish Gofiosfera is thinking about over at Planeta Canarias)

While the news items keep popping up on what has been named as Gran Canaria’s worst ecological disaster in recent history, we can already start seeing some folks coming out of the places where they have been hiding for a while, looking for those who should be responsible for such tragic set of events. Yes, that is right, while we are starting to witness some of the political games coming from various fronts, all of them blaming someone else, probably like it usually happens in these cases (Blame your neighbour, it’s easier), the fires are still blazing away while we all hope that the high temperatures and the strong winds would give everyone a break to finish off the job.

Over the course of the last few hours, there have been a number of different webloggers commenting further on what is actually happening out there and I just thought I would share a few links in here to give you a sense of some of the mixed feelings that we are all going through these tough times:

— Canarias está ardiendo
— Arde Gran Canaria (5)
— Hace fuego
— El incendio de Canarias en la red
— Incendio en Canarias: el fuego arrasa reservas de la biosfera
— Arde Canarias
— Fuego arrasa 65 por ciento superficie “Palmitos Park” y afecta a 60 por ciente animales y plantas
— Special Canariasbruta coverage
— Mi isla se quema

I have been sharing a few pictures already over here on what is going on at the moment, but I would strongly encourage you to have a look and check this weblog post, Pictures, from Isle of Gran Canaria, to see the kind of impact that this disaster is having.

And, like you would not have expected otherwise, the first video clips from YouTube are starting to emerge. So instead of sharing some more additional pictures I am just going to embed some of the dramatic clips put together thus far:

Finally, here is a detailed description of the events as they are happening and courtesy from Canarias7. And thank goodness, it looks like things are starting to improve a bit as mentioned in Gran Canaria tiene “estabilizados” todos los focos tras 100 horas de incendio, pero desconfía de las cambios de viento. Although, still on guard, of course.