A good friend of mine posted on her twitter this: “Science for Everyone is a very good government program to make common people to get in touch to science”. Well I disagree with her, it is not a good program at all; and I am telling why.

“Science for Everyone”. “Science for Everyone” (La Ciencia para Todos) is a Mexican program that tries to put science on young minds using “disclosure” science books wrote by Mexican scientist. I also have to tell you that my friend is already a scientist, she is a chemical engineer. So, for her this program is great because she is used to read science books. but normal Mexican people barely read; that’s the problem.

My first contact with this program was in highschool. My teacher bring us a list of books and he told us to pick one just by the title, buy it, read it and present a essay for a national contest. First I though “Great!! I will pick a good book about computers”. And then the annoying disappointment appeared; there wasn’t a single title about computer science. WTF!!!

Angry and disappointed, I picked a book about biological viruses; looking for reading something new. The book was advanced, boring and repetitive. It was so bad that I don’t remember the author’s name or the book’s name, so my essay was a total disaster. My first impression was awful: “How do you expect to common people read those boring and advanced books. They are not motivating young people to get in touch with science; you are scaring them.!!!”

Later I have to opportunity to read more books of the same program, from different authors and subjects, and they weren’t bad, but I still think that Is not the appropriate way to motivate young people to study sciences. Mexican people hardly read one book per year, how you can expect that they read some of these books; they only way is to force kids on the school to read them, just like my teacher did.

But how you can put culture and science in the way of every Mexican ? This seems a titanic work, but maybe it isn’t. Mexicans DON’T read but they spend hours and hours watching awful TV programs. Maybe you cannot replace their trashy TV shows but you can put scientific capsules between them; just like these:

Cantinflas Show was one of my firsts approaches to science. If I wouldn’t saw those capsules, when I was kid, then for sure I wouldn’t be chasing a science career right now. So, I sincerely thank the people that worked on those capsules, because they opened my eyes and show me how exciting and fun science could be.

Two years ago I experimented the intense, challenging and happy experience of passing through the Microsoft’s recruitment process. My first impression before being interviewed by Microsoft people was that just the people with great experience with Microsoft tools could make it, but I was wrong very, very wrong.

I pass through tree filters. The first was in ITESM campus Puebla by a few Mexican fellows who work for Microsoft. There I had a little but though interview with one of them. There I was challenged to write a little function to reverse all the words in a sentence that are between dots, just like:  www.microsoft.com  =>  www.tfosorcim.moc. Since that moment my point of view of Microsoft and it’s interview process changed.

I passed the first round and then I face the second interview round. This time I had an interview by phone with another mexican Microsoft employee, his name was Paola and she studied in ITESM campus Monterrey. She asked me several questions about my academic experience, my favorite projects, and also lots of coding questions. 45 minutes later I was litte dizzy, something like an intellectual hang over, but I also feel happy about having that intellectual experience.

The third filter was in Microsoft’s Mexico Headquarters in Santa Fe. It was amazing and It was the most challenging intellectual experience that I had. I faced 4 interviews with some members of the Microsoft Experience team in the same day. Every single interview was tough as hell. But there’s just one guy, who name I can’t remember, that  stunt me so hard with the most simple problem. I fell like he was guiding me to the optimal solution of the problem, when I told him some idea of how to solve the problem he alway came saying something like: “But, Why don’t you look it like…”. I can tell you for sure every single person that works for Microsoft had that out of the box talent that I always tried to grow up in my self. Unfortunately that time I didn’t receive an offer from Microsoft.

Even I didn’t make it. It was amazing having a good time with those guys, who indirectly pointed out my strengths and weaknesses. And also I realize the real reason to work at Microsoft.  It wasn’t because the salary, or perks, or the amazing campus, or the free drinks. I realize that want to Microsoft’s employee to have the honor and opportunity to work besides such a great and intelligent people, who can stunt my mind every day with their creative and out of the box ideas. And for me that will be a dream come true.

And my reason for work in Microsoft kept in my mind for two more years. Now this year I decided to try it again, because I always fight for my reasons and dreams.  Luckily again I have passed the first filter and yesterday I faced my second phone interview, with a gentle Microsoft’s employee called Yoshiko. As always it was very challenge and also a very motivating experience.

If in your work or university you are behind a repressive firewall, you can avoid it easily. You only need two things, a machine outside the firewall with an OpennSHH server configured on a specific port, and Putty a little SSH/Telnet client. This technique is called SSH Tunnel is easy to implement and is almost untraceable for network administrators. This guide will teach you how to install and configure an OpenSSH server on Windows and configure the Putty client, to use that connection as an SSH Tunnel.

First you need install an SSH Server on a machine outside the firewall. I recommend use an OpenSSH server on Linux, but as I said this tutorial will focus on OpenSSH for Windows by youngmug (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sshwindows/files/). Once you have already installed it, then you have to configure the server’s users and passwords to be able to log in.

To configure the users and their passwords first you need a DOS console on:

C:\Program Files\OpenSSH\bin

From there you have to execute this commands:

mkgroup -l >> ..\etc\group

mkpasswd -l -u user_name >> ..\etc\passwd

The first command gets all the groups on your machine and write them on the \etc\group file. The second one writes the user and the encrypted password of  a valid Windows user on the \etc\passwd file. I recommend you to use a Windows user with a strong password, otherwise your OpenSSH will be a piece of cake for any hacker.

After configure the users and passwords you should configure the port where the server will be listen. This parameter depends on the restrictive firewall configuration. You need to find some port in the firewall  that accepts SSL connections like 443, 80 or even 22 the SSH Server default port.  In my case the firewall accepts SSL connections throw the 443 port. To configure the server you must open C:\Archivos de Programa\OpenSSH\etc\sshd_config with the notepad and edit #Port 22 like this Port 443, save changes and excecute  the following program to start the OpenSSH service:

sc start "OpenSSHd"

And that’s all in the server. Now in the client behind the firewall you must install and configure Putty to establish an OpenSSH tunnel to the outside server you have just configured. Open Putty and follow this steps:

Step 1 – Click on Connection > SSH > Tunnel in the sidebar
Step 2 – Check “Dynamic” and type 666 on “Source Port” then click add, you should see D666 in the Forwarded Port box.
Step 3 – Click on session on the sidebar
Step 4 – Type the IP address of your host in the hostname field, and the port number where OpenSSH is listening on.
Step 5 – Click open to connect to your host, login to the host

Finally you have to configure your favorite Internet browser to connect throw the tunnel that Putty had set up. On Firefox click on Tools > Option > Advance >Net > Configuration… check Manual proxy configuration, and then type 127.0.0.1 on SOCKS and port 666; then click Ok and you’re done.

Optional

If your OpenSSH has a dynamic IP number and you don’t want to remember a different IP number every time you wish to connect. Then you could use a Dynamic DNS Free Service like dyndns.org.

To use this service first you need to sign in and select a name for your Dynamic DNS. Then you have to download and install a little client to update your Dynamic DNS every time your computer changes Ip; this tool is provided freely in dyndns.org. The dyndns tool configures it self you just need your provide your login and password. Now every the server turns on it will update automatically it’s IP number on the dyndns service.