• I went to the Leonard Cohen concert in Madrid last weekend. It had to be in Madrid because when he played in Dublin, I was still in Spain. The performance was amazing, and let it be noted that it was a three and a half hour concert. That, per-se, is already remarkable. When it comes from a 75-year-old man... well, just another reason to take one’s hat off (perhaps that’s that’s why so many attendants wore one that night).

• The days before going to the concert, I was sick in bed with some pharyngitis, tonsilitis, or the like. I went to the doctor on Wednesday, and I had to pay 55 € for the visit, plus 16 more in antibiotics. Of these, I’ll get a refund of 40 € by my private insurance. This saddens me a lot.

• I think I’m definitely back on track on my reading again, after so many years. Since June, when I picked up The Time Traveler’s Wife, I’ve read 8 books in total, not that bad. As a side note, at the end it seems I’ve dropped Goodreads and gone for LibraryThing; my catalog there is publicly available. They don’t provide a feed of books as one starts reading them; there’s however a feed of additions to one’s library, which comes close.

• Back in June, some of my posts had a PS giving status updates on how I was doing with my exams. I never got a chance to say that I passed the third of them, which was a big relief. This means that now I’m one course away from getting my degree, yay! Hopefully I’ll be done by next June.

• I guess that as a gesture, it can’t hurt that the UK Government publicly apologizes to Alan Turing. However, we’d be all better served if everybody, governments and population alike, would just spend some spare cycles today on saving us from futher embarrassing apologies 50 years from now. For example, the day we may apologize to all those people who we’ve let die of hunger every day for decades, will you have done something within your reach to improve the situation? (Apparently back in the 50s it was difficult for people to believe that a Prime Minister would publicly apologize to a homosexual, let alone that there was something that needed apologizing for.)

• Death at a Funeral: I watched a comedy for a change: very good laughs. (Thanks, Chica con falda roja.)

• Holiday: I have a weakness for Katharine Hepburn, but perhaps this film is superb on its own, too.

• Milk: Sean Penn deserved the Oscar, if only, for biting his fist regarding the Proposition 6 outcome.

• Los cronocrímenes: enticing Spanish film about time travelling which may or may not be similar to the film from 2004 Primer.

• Into the Wild: watch it. (Ah, the time when I was intending to write so much about this film.)

Con esto de la mudanza a Dublín, pero sobre todo porque en casa también se mudan a otro lugar con menos espacio, estoy haciendo inventario y limpieza de todas mis posesiones, y deshaciéndome de todo aquello que no es imprescindible. Me deshago, entre otras cosas, de mis apuntes, de la carrera y también de bachillerato. Me ha costado hacerme a la idea, pero lo cierto es que no iba a mirarlos nunca más, excepto de darse circunstancias en las que —aventuro— más me valdría no hacerlo.

En cualquier caso, en la carpeta del curso 1999-2000, el último de bachillerato, ha aparecido entre los apuntes el siguiente texto. Por aquella época yo estaba obsesionado con escribir, y escribí mucho. Bueno, empecé muchos textos, y acabé pocos (y no son los mejores, I’d say). La mayoría los escribí con el ordenador (¡en el Word!), y no tengo ni idea de por dónde paran todos esos borradores. Éste ha aparecido en papel, y lo comparto aquí antes de mandarlo a reciclar. No lleva título.

Camina entre la gente con su cigarro liado en la mano. De cuando en cuando, una calada. Corta, fugaz, y tragando el menor humo posible: hay que cuidarse. Le gusta el tabaco liado. Especialmente ese día. Llevaba un cabreo muy grande en el cuerpo, y ahora se dedicaba a mirar a la gente poniendo los ojos vidriosos, como si estuviera drogado. Pensarán que llevo un porro, piensa.

En la parada del autobús, la chica que está a su lado se come una hamburguesa. Le viene a la cabeza un insulto contra el capitalismo del McDonald’s. Lo que pasa es que no tiene dinero para comprarse una. Si lo tuviera, a buena hora se metería con el sistema. Se calla el insulto y se dedica a mirar furtivamente a la chica, fumando. Todavía el mismo cigarro: los liados duran más. A su otro lado, un viejo fuma un Ducados. Mismo juego: miradas vidriosas.

Ya llega el autobús. Mierda, todavía no me he acabado el cigarro. Le pega una última calada, más profunda (nota el humo penetrando hasta lo más íntimo de sus pulmones, de su ser). Mientras sube al autobús, expira el humo. Le gusta el efecto que produce: “Macarra de ceñido pantalón...” Hoy le apetece ir de duro.

Update (19:45): Al final he decidido no reciclarlo y guardarlo en otra carpeta que ha aparecido con random papeles, entre ellos un diario de enero de 2000 relatando mis desamores de la época.

I’d like to follow-up to a couple recent posts in this blog, triggered by comments I received via e-mail and other media.

In the first place, I’ll comment on the post that labelled bloodletting and electroshock as “barbaric methods”. I received two comments about this. The first one was from a heamatologist who pointed out that bloodletting per se is not an abandoned practice, and that is still the method of choice, for example, for some pathologies that consist, precisely, on elevated bloodvolume (eg., polycythemia vera). The second of these comments was regarding electroshock, and how it can or is still used to treat long-term depression (and pointed me to this TED talk by American surgeon Sherwin Nuland, who apparently had severe depression himself and was well served by electroshock therapy).

These comments were called for, so I’ll amend and say that only “indiscriminated bloodletting” should have been described as barbaric, like doctors in the distant past used to do as far as I know. For electroshock, however, the fact that it may cure depression doesn’t make it less barbaric in my eyes, at least if the amounts of pain involved in the treatment are what one has been led to believe. So I think it’d belong in the same category as treatments for cancer: we use them despite being horrible because we’re sadly not quite there yet in the “knowing better” ladder of History. (And this is just my opinion, of course.)

Regarding my recent post about Oposiciones, it was pointed out out that the original intent of for-life employment when working for the State is to free such workers from possible politic pressures, and to avoid firing en masse when a new party arrives to the Government, to hire people that will sympathize with their agenda.

And finally, about my somewhat older Meritocracy and entitlement, I was told that —even if the reader would know me relatively well— it was very easy to read the short entry in the opposite way it was intended by me. If that’s the case, let me clarify: my thoughts on the matter are that the more power or positions you get in a project (to which you arrive by meriting them, obviously), the less entitled you should feel.

• Pity is a messy business, I’d say, and I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off never pitying anybody whom we don’t know reasonably well, or who isn’t clearly asking for it. For all I know, the girl in a wheelchair sitting across from me in the library could be way happier than many of us, and the guy with all the looks nearby, unexpectedly miserable (or the guy with all the money, for that matter).

• I come across regularly with Git repositories converted from Subversion with plain git-svn, in which the initial commits are in the typical form:

  commit 1bd799efe798308aed29c95eb08e4cb1c91693c9
  Author: guy <guy@5c8cc53c-5e98-4d25-b20a-d8db53a31250>
  Date:   Wed Nov 29 01:12:13 2006 +0000
  
  
    [...]
    git-svn-id: svn://repo.org/svn/project/trunk@43 5c8cc53c-5e98-4d25-b20a-d8db53a31250
  

  Every time I see one of these, it reminds me of how different people are, for I could not be able to stand such (ugly) commits in my history for eternity (and it’s not as if git-svn does not have the “authorsfile” and “noMetadata” options).

• There’s a bus here that used to do City 1 ↔ University ↔ City 2, so students would pick that line on side of the road A to go to City 1, and on side of the road B to go to City 2. Now they’ve changed the line, and it only does City 1 ↔ University, with side B going to City 1 as well. The sign in the bus no longer shows “City 2” as a destination, but the line number is the same as before. I do wonder if a SONAME bump would have helped here: plenty of people are still taking it to go to City 2, and get very upset when they see the bus do the U-turn!

• If my weak math-fu didn’t fail on me, it should be possible for an ATM to deliver any amount of money multiple of 10 with only notes of 20 and 50, except of course 10 and 30.

• I’ve been trying to eat more fruit lately, particularly more kinds of fruit (for years, I’ve confined myself to Granny Smith apples and watermelon). I now also like grapes, peaches, oranges, and some kiwis.

• A while ago I read with great amusement Rusty is a homosexual.

P.S.: I’ve passed the second of the three courses as well, only one exam left now on the 16th (incidentally the hardest of them).

Publico aquí parte de un correo electrónico que le escribí a alguien recientemente:

Me encanta cruzarme en mi caminar por la vida con personas que sufren algún tipo de problema de salud mental y que aun así luchan y viven y consiguen ser excelentes en lo que hacen —y tú lo pareces—, porque sé por experiencia lo que eso cuesta y la admiración que merece. Yo tengo trastorno bipolar, y las he pasado muy putas en el pasado. Cada día doy gracias de estar ahora mejor, y sobre todo de encontrar cada vez que me caigo las fuerzas para levantarme, sea más o menos grande la caída. (Afortunadamente, no ha habido grandes caídas en los últimos dos o tres años. Antes de eso... tres años sin poder hacer caso a la Universidad.)

En cualquier caso, y por mor de ir al grano, sólo me gustaría decirte las siguientes tres cosas, por si alguna de ellas te parece digna de consideración. Y lo hago, quizá, porque me gustaría vivir en un mundo en el que los problemas de salud mental no estuvieran estigmatizados —como no lo están, por decir algo, el cáncer o la invalidez o la gripe—. Sí es verdad que las cosas están cambiando, pero lamentablemente todavía hay gente convencida de que por ejemplo la gente que se deprime sin motivo en realidad lo que le pasa es que son unos vagos o unos cobardes.

La primera de estas tres cosas que quería decir es que, tenga uno lo que tenga, siempre hay personas en la misma situación, y que a su vez luchan por vivir y por vivir bien y por excelear. Sin embargo, el propósito de esta consideración no es, ni mucho menos, consolarse (no hay nada peor para cualquier enfermedad que tenerse lástima y permitir que otros la sientan), sino encontrar inspiración. Recuerdo que al poco de ser diagnosticado leí una lista de personas notables con las que compartía diagnóstico. Personas admirables por su trabajo (hell, Newton!, pero también p.ej. desarrolladores de Debian como yo) y que, incidentalmente, tenían ese algo en sus vidas también.

La segunda cosa es una frase que proviene (si no estoy equivocado) del cristianismo, y eso que yo no profeso esa religión. Antes de decir la frase, déjame explicar por qué creo yo que es tan potente como idea: porque cuando una persona hace un acto de fe, y la cree, inmediatamente esa persona tiene poderes y fuerzas que no tenía antes. La frase dice algo así como que Dios nunca da a nadie una cruz que no pueda soportar, que sea mayor que él o superior a sus fuerzas. Yo no creo que Dios reparta cruces, sino que simplemente te vienen como parte de la vida, pero estar convencido de que las que tengo conmigo de momento, puedo con ellas, eso es muy, muy empowering.

La última cosa también se podría resumir en otra frase, la máxima griega (?) “Conócete a ti mismo”, y ahora explicaré por qué. En mi mano a mano con esta enfermedad, he encontrado que una de las cosas que más me ha ayudado (quizá, no lo sé, sólo en conjunción con los compuestos químicos) es saber exactamente de qué pie cojeo, y cómo y cuándo y por qué cojeo: a día de hoy tengo el don de verme venir las cosas, de saber cuándo por ejemplo unos pensamientos negativos se están haciendo demasiados grandes y debo abortarlos por lo que pudiera pasar después. En otras palabras, es imposible poder prevenir o aliviar nada si no se ve venir a decenas de metros de distancia.

Y eso es todo. He leído también en tu blog algo de no poder imaginar que tu vida vaya a ser siempre así. No sé qué pensarás ahora de eso, pero yo miro al futuro siempre con esperanza, y con la certeza de que cada vez lo torearé mejor.

In Spain, in order to work for the public administration, you have to go through this selection process called Oposiciones, which are basically an exam and other tests after which candidates are sorted by their combined grade, and available positions are handed out to them in that order. I assume every country has something to the same effect.

In Spain at least, the position thus obtained is to be held for life, meaning you cannot be fired unless you incur in extremely unacceptable behavior (and then, as far as I know, most of the time you just get barred from work for a number of months, after which you return normally). Because of this, many a mother advices their children to prepare for one of these exams, and many people decide to do so particularly in times like these. The people who occupy such positions are called funcionarios, and there’s this même in Spanish society that they all work very relaxedly, to use an euphemism, particularly those in offices. (It must be very upsetting to be a diligent funcionario, and be made the same snide remarks again and again when revealing yourself as one.)

I really don’t understand why this is done this way, and can’t possibly agree to it. Of course, the State above all should behave responsibly and provide with stable employment, but I can’t see why its employees shouldn’t be held up to the same standards of quality as the citizens employed by private companies. Isn’t just «for-life employment» a recipe for people lowering their standards? If there’s no risk of getting sacked, isn’t that an invitation —at least for many people— to performing a sub-par job? (A person I know who’s preparing Oposiciones to be a teacher in Primary school told me that, in fact, such fact would give her much freedom to implement more modern teaching methods without fear of consequences, for they are regarded as very unconventional by most, but my impression is that she’s the exception rather than the rule.)

Speaking of Education, here in Spain there’s a special degree you have to pursue if you want to be a teacher in Primary school. However, to be a teacher in Secondary school, any degree will do, as long as you attended upon completion to a laughable 4-month course on “how to teach”. Because of this, people with random degrees and no interest in teaching whatsoever decide every year that Secondary school is their best bet to a funcionario position, and go for it. Which, I muse, perhaps plays some kind of role in the state of Education around here — but that is going into muddy waters, and I rather wouldn’t. (I’m told that this laughable 4-month course is being morphed into some kind of 1-year Master with exams and grades and shit. Well, I guess that’s something.)

Oh, and by the way, greetings to all the diligent funcionarios out there, including the teachers that live for their teaching and their students: you rock!

• Last week I mentioned Randy Pausch was an Unitarian Universalist. This made me visit briefly the Wikipedia page for this movement, and out of pure curiosity I also peeked at the homepage of the Unitarian church in Dublin (which may just be part of the Unitarian movement, and not the UU one, beware!). Anyway, it has a a reverend, which left me realizing that, whilst I can’t really say whether I’ll ever set foot in a church weekly again, at the moment I can’t really conceive ever going back but to an unconventional one where the speaker would be, each week, a different member of the community, and not an appointed reverend.

• Throughout the history of Medicine, barbaric methods have been used to cure some illnesses. Bloodletting and electroshock come to mind. In the current times, we’re thankfully past such practices, and the reasonable thing to do is to pity those who had to live back then, when science did not know any better. I’m hopeful one day the people of the future will look back at chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the same way we look at bloodletting and electroshock today.

• During this VAC from Debian, my amule package was NMUed by the Security Team. I must ashamedly confess that my first reaction was not very positive, for I was annoyed that the procedures hadn’t been really followed (it was not an RC bug and no advance notice of the NMU had been given). Anyway, whether it was right or wrong is not the point: the story goes that I pulled myself together, slapped self a bit, and decided to send a “Thanks!” e-mail instead, which was very much in order. It’s so magical how a couple hours ater sending it, I really felt grateful and no longer annoyed. The thing I learnt is not to despair when desired traits don’t come naturally, for they can become true just by trying.

• Recently I obtained a copy of the latest album by Corazón, Nuevo futuro. Not having the time to listen to it at home, I transferred it to my iPod, an (old-generation) iPod Shuffle, and hence without a screen. I had read this review of the album that, among other things, said a track named «Vestir santos» was probably the album’s finest. So, when listening to the album in the street, I was hoping I would manage to deduce which track «Vestir santos» was, out of its lyrics. Unfortunately I wasn’t smart enough to deduce it, but when I got home I had the opportunity to get surprised by the fact that track #4, which had become my favourite after a couple listens in the iPod, happened to be «Vestir santos».

I’ve sometimes told myself that I’ll feel the future has arrived when it’ll be possible to enter an IMDB number on my TV, and have a HD version of the movie play instantly, with languages and subtitles available. Current bandwidth is driving us towards that direction, and some invaluable communities are in fact making it almost possible today. (Nevertheless, I’d be happy to pay a monthly quote in exchange for the bell and whistles mentioned above, and for really having practically all movies at my disposal.)

The future likes to arrive in small doses, of course. Today I wanted to write “food time, bbl” on IRC, but I typoed it as “good time, bbl”. This typo made me remember a song from my teen years that I used to listen to all the time, since the video clip was included in the Windows 95 installation that accompanied me through high school (yes...). I found it really futuristic how, after typing exactly three words, I found myself enjoying the video again, and then peeking at the rest of the album. (After that I proceeded to this other video. Wow, I really spent hours playing that game back then.)

I think the appreciation of things like the above is a very good excercise: the world becomes such a much better place when one stops taking everything for granted. I, of course, also have wilder wishes for the future: I dream with the day when singing to self a particular fragment of a song will be enough to trigger it playing in the nearest loudspeakers or headphones. For now, getting one of those players where my whole collection will fit will have to do.

Ésta es la pregunta número 4 del examen de Arquitectura e Ingeniería de Computadores de la Universidad de Alicante en su convocatoria de junio de 2009, al que lamentablemente al final no me presenté:

El año pasado se celebró el primer centenario del levantamiento popular de Madrid del 2 de Mayo de 1808. Suponga (es una aproximación) que los hechos acontecieron del siguiente modo:

De 7 a 9h de la mañana del 2 de Mayo de 1808, una multitud de 300 madrileños se concentra frente al Palacio Real de Madrid (custodiado por unos 200 soldados) para impedir que los franceses sacasen del palacio a los últimos miembros de la familia real. En este momento comienza una rebelión popular que se extiende a lo largo de Madrid y que dura hasta las 0h. El pueblo, unos 3000 madrileños armados con cacerolas, navajas, macetas, agujas de coser, etc., se enfrenta a todo un ejército de 35000 soldados. Aún así, comienza una dura batalla que supone en sendos bandos un número importante de bajas entre muertos y heridos. Aproximadamente unos 900 del lado francés y 700 del lado español. A pesar de que el pueblo de Madrid tiene muchos menos medios para la batalla, su distribución a lo largo de todo Madrid (que podemos abstraer como su disposición para trabajar de forma paralela pero cooperativa), provoca que se cause un daño significativo en el ejército francés.

Nota: El ejército francés emplea 1 hora a partir de las 9h de la mañana para desplazarse y reorganizar sus tropas (tiempo en el que no luchan, pero pueden ser atacados). El pueblo de Madrid, desafiante en toda su extensión, no tiene que emplear tiempo en este cometido.

Se pide:

a) ¿Cuál de los 2 bandos (soldados franceses o pueblo de Madrid) ha sido más eficiente en la batalla? (0.4 puntos)

b) ¿Qué bando ha sido el más productivo? (0.25 puntos)

A mí me parece estupendo.

Yesterday I borrowed The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger from the library. I’m hardly on page 100 by now, and I’m already making plans about whom I am going to give it to for their birthday.

During this first half of 2009, reading has been a painful experience. I already mentioned last week that I’ve been suffering some kind of reader’s block for a long time. It seemed to have gone away late in 2008, when I managed to read several books in a row (my favourite being The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), but in 2009 I’ve already started and given up three others: my “Oh no, I’ve smoked again” moments.

Big part of the problem is my limited ability to choose what to read. There isn’t really much of a library at home, and for now buying books comes below the cutoff line in the budget, so I’m left to sticking to public libraries: it’s really sad to get all excited about a certain book in Goodreads or LibraryThing, and then check that it’s not available in any of the libraries around here. (It doesn’t really help that I insist on reading in English now, in a country where that’s even more uninteresting than undubbed movies. Then there’s the pain that I’m not a fast reader anymore, and the clock ticks.)

Anyway, let’s get back to this non-review of The Time Traveler’s Wife, since the above should sort itself out soon. Imagine, coming from where I come from on this, how empowering it feels to say, a couple tens of pages into a book, this book, to say: “I’m so going to finish it.” (Well, any book can turn out bad, but I’m quite confident this one won’t.) It was a really great feeling.

This book is obviously science-fiction, since it involves time travelling, but I think that’s a wrong label for it since it’s just a love story. One that, precisely because it involves a component one doesn’t normally find in regular love stories (time travelling), becomes such a powerful one: the characters experience situations in a relationship your brain had never conceived, like for example the whole Jason incident, and that’s been for me incredibly moving. (I guess if you’re well into time-travelling stories, you might have thought of such situations. And there are probably some science-fictions books out there that have presented some of them already.)

If you’re thinking of reading this book, and particularly if you’re a regular science-fiction reader, I’m tempted to suggest —with only 100 pages into it, beware!— that you don’t see it as a science-fiction book. Try not to derail into analyzing if the travelling is consistent (which I’ve found it to be), or if the presented philosophy makes sense. For me it’s a book about emotions, and the time travelling is the device that allows us to achieve some very high peaks.

By the way, as far as I can tell, this is going to be the first time ever I’m going to watch a movie after having read the novel, and not the other way around. Let’s see how disappointed I will be!

P.S.: I’ve recently passed one of the three courses I had set out to pass when I went VAC, yay! Only two to go.

I have this recurring experience in my life whereas I’ll regularly be late in my discovery of something. It happens with any kind of stuff, but particularly with with music: how can it be that I discovered this artist so ashamingly late? For example, I only came to hear about Anthony and the Johnsons a couple months ago, in 2009 already... (Clearly some processes in my life could be streamlined.)

Anyway, this is not about music, but some of the other kind of stuff. Through the magic of the intarwebs and by virtue of people who care to compile a list of worthwhile links in their homepages (I should definitely do that some time), I came to know about the PostSecret project (blog, page, wikipedia). The premise is simple: anonymous people send in a self-made postcard with a short message, which must be a truthful secret never revealed to anyone before. Every Sunday, the creator of the project (Frank Warren) will post to the site a selection of the received postcards.

If you visit during this week, you’ll see a themed edition of sorts, dubbed Father’s Day Secrets. I urge you to take a look, now or after finishing this post. I can’t even begin to describe how powerful the experience was for me. Upon introspection, I think it’s because each one of these secrets is a concentrated drop of empathy waiting to hit your brain. If you’re not too keen on empathizing with others, maybe you won’t enjoy the site after all. (And, of course, not all of these drops result equally powerful to one’s sensibility.)

There have been several books published with many of such postcards, which is great since unfortunately each weekly set disappears from the blog upon the arrival of the next one (or shortly thereafter). If you use Google Reader, that’s great because it keeps a history of all posts since 2007 (though the images don’t seem to load for the oldest of them). Alternatively, you may visit the Spanish translation, which displays the original images in addition to their translation, and allows to visit older entries.

Finally, I can’t but help to show a couple here. First, the really sad ones:

Then, a very light one:

And then, this one:

• Spanish having accented letters, it is very easy to get misspelt artist names in Last.fm, and since Last.fm doesn’t do auto-correction for them (only for track titles), you end up with two different pages for a given artist. If you’re an elitist, refrain from enjoying music from artists whose misspelt name has more listeners than the correct one (and good luck).

• The “automatic formatting” feature in Vim is rather useful, since you can edit text mid-paragraph and have it automatically “flow” to the desired line length, like word processors do. I wish, however, it was context sensitive (but I guess only Emacs must be able to do that): using it for e-mail or LaTeX sucks because then you must deactivate it when editing the headers or the preamble. But, alas, a shortcut for easy activation/deactivation is a mess, because there’s no toggling for multi-valued, comma-separated options in Vim AFAICS. (The shortcut can be done, though.)

• I’ve watched recently the two late talks by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who passed away in 2008 due to pancreatic cancer. These are Time Management and, of course, The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. I was profoundly impressed, for I found him to be really, really inspiring. Once I recover from that, I’ll watch them again and take notes. (Interestingly enough, he was an Unitarian Universalist.)

• The stupid riddle in last week’s items was simply a list of middle names for some well-known people (Knuth, Raymond, Stallman, Torvalds and Dijkstra). The addendum was Icaza’s second surname.

• I’m rather fond of top-posting in private correspondence, since I see little value in replying inline and only in few occasions quoting really makes a difference. I prefer my private correspondence, particularly if not technical, to be snail mail-like, with each reply standing on its own. (In that case, it is of course one’s responsibility to ensure you don’t overlook in your reply any of the topics or questions in the original text.)

I’m a fearful person. I haven’t really stopped to think why, but the truth is that I’m always fearing that things will go wrong, eg. that something good that’s supposed to happen in the near future will not happen in the end.

Last year I mentioned being in Dublin for the summer in an internship at Google. Well, that went well, and during this year I’ve been interviewing for a full-time position. See, I kept rather secretive about this, because I was utterly convinced I wouldn’t make it (some kind of pessimism as a defense mechanism, I’ve been told).

Even now, two months after having been told that I made it, and even with the contract signed, I still have fears that something bad will happen that’ll prevent me from starting there in August. But, well, now that I’ve bought my tickets, I think it’s about time to say: I’ll be moving to Dublin in a couple months to start as a reliability engineer at Google. It feels strange buying a one-way ticket, and at the same time so natural.

For me, the part that excites me most about this whole business is —drawing an analogy from the world of video games— finally jumping to the next level in life. I’ve been a student for too long already, and life forced me to move back to my parents’ even when I had supposedly moved out permanently. It’s time for me to move on, and it’s very helpful to have solved «the job issue» already, since I have a lot of (other) work ahead of me.

On the whole debate about abortion, you could say I’ve always been (and still am) in the so-called «pro-choice» side of things. There’s however a recurring thought I’ve been hitting myself with lately, and which I’d like to share now.

For me, the whole «pro-choice» business is based on, well, choice, and the right to choose regarding oneself. I’ve always argued that a country having legislation that allows for abortion doesn’t mean that everybody should be following that path, and pregnant women for whom abortion is morally unacceptable are free not to pursue it.

In a quest for trying to illustrate to myself why «pro-life» people don’t find that argument compelling at all, I came with the following toy dilemma: imagine your country would start to allow for capital punishment if —and only if—, provided that the law says the crime warrants it, the victim or the family of the victim say they’d like for that.

Would I not be campaigning in the streets against this? Why would that be okay, but on the other hand I’ve regarded «pro-life» campaigning as intolerance in the past? Why does self-righteousness come so naturally to everyone of us?

World. Not a simple place.

PS, I’m pretty much convinced that the two posed examples are fully comparable for the purpose of this discussion, yet I find it very acceptable to be «pro-choice». The point is not on the rightness of wrongness of either belief, but on how we regard those who won’t think like us.

Last week I borrowed from the library El peso de la paja, Terenci Moix’s memoirs. I find it intriguing how having his memoirs in my hands only managed to trigger the sad memory of the day he died after some days, and not immediately.

Terenci Moix died in April, 2003. For some time by then, I used to listen to La Ventana, a radio show conducted by (the oh-so-marvelous) Gemma Nierga, where Terenci would share a space with Boris Izaguirre a couple times a week, I think. I remember myself most avid for that half an hour: I found their talk fascinating. (I must investigate some time, or have somebody find out, whether it’d be possible to access to those recordings now. It is something I’d love to have, for those inevitable days of melancholia.) In the preceding months, too, I had started reading some of Terenci’s books: El día que murió Marilyn, Garras de astracán, and also Preguntar no és ofendre.

I clearly remember myself crying in the rest rooms on campus while listening to La Ventana that day. He was probably one, if not the first public character who died while being a dear part of my life, and I was also young and easily affected.

For a long, long time I’ve had some kind of «reader’s block». I used to read an awful lot in my teen years and very early twenties, but somehow all that stopped when I started doing computery stuff and despite my repeated attempts to get back on track. I’ve also elaborated an assorted set of explanations for this. The latest of them, derived from the pleasure with which I’m reading Terenci’s memoirs, that it may be the time for me to look more into non-fiction, which I’ve always neglected.

Cinema was a very strong force in Terenci’s life. Not only he wrote important texts on Hollywood movies from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s (and a History of cinema together with Pere Gimferrer that got stolen and lost forever before publication), it also influenced his views of the world. Early in his memoirs, the following text is found, which I found moving:

[...] solía ensimismarme en juegos siempre solitarios o en la contemplación de unas imágenes que constituyen mi primer recuerdo, el primer signo reconocible de mi vida.

Era la vidriera de la entrada el punto fijo de aquella mi observación diaria, de aquel ensimismamiento. Y no porque a través de los cristales se vislumbrase la calle como punto posible de escapatoria —tan estrecha era que no me permitía imaginar horizontes—, sino a causa de los carteles que solían dejar semanalmente varios cines de la barriada.

Eran pasquines amarillentos, impresos a toda prisa en cualquier imprenta barata de las cercanías. Tipografías tristonas que anunciaban, en letras rudimentarias y carentes de imaginación, los títulos de las dos películas de la semana, amén de las frases de publicidad destinadas a pontenciar sus atractivos. En medio de aquella composición desangelada, aparecían dos recuadros que contenían a su vez dos folletos de colores. Eran los inolvidables «programas», que los demás mortales obtenían de los cines, previo pago de su localidad, y que a mí me llegaban en sobreabundancia y sin moverme de casa.

Permanecía sentado horas enteras ante una de las mesas de mármol, y desde allí fijaba los ojos en los carteles de la vidriera, y muy especialmente en los reducidos programas cuyos rostros, preferentemente yanquis, llegaron a ser tan habituales como las clientas, las vecinas y los familiares. Y aquí me corresponde agradecer con ternura aquella costumbre, hoy perdida, el hábito entrañable de una época que todavía no había descubierto el derroche de las grandes campañas publicitarias. Pues incluso los anuncios más sofisticados eran grises como el ambiente y olían a rancio como nuestras casas.

Los cines humildes de mi ciudad anunciaban su mercancía por las tiendas de los barrios y éstas recibían a cambio un par de localidades válidas para días no festivos. Y a fe que la Granja de Gavá estaría considerada un foco de atracción de vital importancia para que tantos cines distantes entre sí fueran a dejar en mi vidriera sus reclamos y en mi bolsillo sus localidades. Esta concesión me convirtió en un Pequeño Lord de los cinéfilos en gestación.

Cada semana, esperaba ansiosamente al encargado de cambiar los carteles. A primeras horas del lunes, tomaba un minúsculo taburete, que nunca me ha abandonado, y me sentaba junto a la vidriera, atisbando hacia el fondo de la calle, por donde solía llegar el cartelero. Y a veces constituía una espera larga porque, en su reparto, tenía que detenerse antes en otras tiendas o simplemente se entretenía dando localidades por lo bajo a alguna vecina de buen ver. Cuando el hombre llegaba, corría hacia él y me aferraba a sus piernas, suplicando que me entregara los carteles sin esperar a los demás. Y en ocasiones me reñía, porque en la impaciencia por aumentar mi colección arrancaba los pequeños folletos de colores días antes de cumplirse el plazo de exhibición.

Mientras el resto del mundo tenía que conformarse con una sesión de cine por semana, yo pasé mis primeros años consumiendo una sesión diaria. Porque a fin de aprovechar las localidades gratuitas, mis tías casi me obligaron a faltar al colegio todas las tardes de mi niñez. De manera que, gracias a la bendita incongruencia de mi familia, mis días están más llenos de cine que de estudios. Y, así, en lugar de deformarme la Iglesia lo hizo la Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

• There’s stuff that I feel doesn’t warrant a full blog post, but won’t fit in 140 characters either (and I prefer the blog anyway). Because of this, I’ve decided to start bundling such bits together in a single post that’ll get flushed each Sunday if there are any items in the queue (this period could be adjusted later). The guideline is, roughly, “the item fits comfortably within a paragraph”. I think flushing weekly, independently of the numer of items, could be a good idea, because some stuff may perish. I wonder if it’d be worth trying that out for DeveloperNews.

• This comes reposted from Twitter: if you’re mathematically inclined, particularly if only very slightly like myself, I invite you to spend ten minutes reading EWD975 (pdf), «On the theorem of Pythagoras» by Dijkstra. Who would’ve said that Pythagoras’ theorem could be abstracted into something that applies to all triangles and not only right-angled ones? (I hope to blog again about Dijkstra within the next weeks.)

• Here’s a small and stupid riddle: “Ervin, Steven, Matthew, Benedict, Wybe.” I’ll tell you how long it’s been sitting in my computer: 6 years (it shows, too). Here’s an addendum: “Amozurrutia”. (Solution in the next issue.)

• I’ve started wearing a white knot, a badge that’s been campaigned as the symbol of marriage equality (i.e., supporting marriage of same-sex couples). I’ve never worn badges before, and I’d like to salute all the not queer people that support this cause and have even started wearing a white knot themselves from time to time.

• Again from Twitterland, this time Bryan O’Sullivan’s, an article in The Atlantic about a 70-year study of a couple hundreds Harvard students, pursuing some insights about what are the key factors for a happy life. Interesting enough read, at least for this uneducated mind in such matters. A quote:

  [The study director] was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

The world is a complex place, and I always feel easily belittled when talking about its matters. The world is complex, and what follows is a very simplistic approach to things, but it can be surely excused, because the view of this matter as it lives in my head is, after all, very simple.

This is not really about politics, but about the welfare state and some of the comments I occasionally hear or read regarding social expenditure and incremental taxes. Comments in the line of not wanting to pay for others’ benefits, since one’s surely worked their ass out to earn everything they have now, much more than all the lazy people that exist in the world.

I always feel tempted to take out the machine gun and shoot some questions around: think about all the efforts you’ve made to arrive to where you are now, and answer: was being born in a developed country earned by you in any way? Or being born in a family that could provide food and shelter and hopefully love every day of your life? Your family not needing that you would start working at the age of 14? The intelligence that allowed you to make it through college? The money in your family or from other citizens’ pockets that allowed you to do so? The lack of serious health problems that came to disrupt your life, or the magical medicine that saved you from them?

I always feel tempted to take out such machine gun, but I never do: if last night, while making this reasoning to a like-minded friend, my voice almost broke, I can see how things could go very wrong when talking to somebody who doesn’t realize that, for every big effort and hell-like situation they went through in their life, the world had a bigger gift in place for them.

In a couple months I’ll be starting a new job that’s going to pay me well, part of which will be taxated at the highest rate. A small chunk of me wants not to like that, but a bigger part prefers to learn to regard it as a honor and a privilege. A privilege because arriving to such position means that I’ve been immensely lucky and covered with gifts in my life. A honor because it means I could be contributing to a system where people without private medical insurance get the most expensive of treatments without a blink, or get put through college without strangling their following years. It’s only too bad I don’t find it in me (yet) to get rid of half my earnings right away.

Doubt is a constant in my life, in the sense that I constantly challenge the way I act in my daily doings and strive to do better. It is a pure joy, then, and a big gift, that at least some beliefs are in place and set in stone, to act as foundations and not subject to challenge.

Ok, here we go again. I do hope somebody, somewhere is finding these posts of some use. *g*

• Changeling: I’ll confess I’m not very fond of Angelina Jolie, and I watched this movie exclusively because it came from Clint Eastwood. I gave it 5/5, which may be a tad too much, but that’s how I felt right after it finished. It’s not a light movie, but I do think everybody should give it a try when they find themselves in the mood.

• One Fine Day: This romantic comedy doesn’t have much of a high rating on IMDB, and maybe I’m too fond of George Clooney myself, but it pleased me enormously. Thanks to Marc ‘HE’ Brockschmidt for having recommended it to me in the first place, though probably you shouldn’t bother if you can’t stand the genre at all. Ah, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

• Sling Blade: I was left deeply in awe by this movie, and even more so when I found out the director, writer and main role are all the same person, Billy Bob Thornton. One of the things that pleased me the most was the ending, because I found it included a good share of food for thought, particularly regarding how the characters would get on with their lives afterwards, which is not shown. Again, not a light movie, I’ll reckon.

• Sideways: I enjoyed this movie a lot, and I should watch it sometime again, because I think I didn’t scratch it enough. Which is great, because it’s rather difficult combining hilarity with reflection. Viva la escena in the fast food restaurant.

• Tiempos de azúcar: I’ve comitted to watching some more Spanish films, and this one is the more remarkable of those I’ve seen as of late. This is a bittersweet love story spawning more than 30 years, and has Verónica Forqué and Charo López in wonderful supporting roles. I should watch more films of Charo López.

Isaac watched Love Actually recently, and I oooh’ed quite a bit when he told me, because that movie has one of my favourite or should I say powerful scenes of all times for me, and recalling it brings me instant joy and often instant tears. I think these three (spoiling) minutes are so powerful because, albeit they are fully anticipated for the spectator, they come as a complete surprise to both protagonists (obviously to her, but also to him, given the dialog that takes place once she gets down the stairs; that tiny dialog is in fact the most powerful bit of it all).

Habría que pedir datos a Hacienda antes de hacer afirmaciones a la torera, pero si la casilla 4 de la imagen de abajo no es la menos utilizada de la historia, poco le faltará. Casilla que ahora sí me creo que exista.

He oído rumores de que Mercadona ha empezado a quitar marcas conocidas de sus estanterías en favor de sus marcas blancas, dejándolas en solitario. Yo no soy analista de mercado, ni trabajo para Mercadona, y siempre que ha salido el tema he dicho que los de Mercadona han demostrado muchas veces no ser tontos en absoluto (han hecho apuestas muy arriesgadas, como por ejemplo quitar la carnicería al corte), y que si han empezado a hacer esto, es porque se lo han estudiado muy mucho.

Hay sin embargo un efecto o teoría mía que me pregunto si habrán tenido en cuenta. Mi teoría es que a cada persona que compra en un supermercado, le da bastante igual marca blanca que marca pija en la mayoría —o una buena parte— de los productos que compra (y por tanto generalmente preferirá la blanca por ser más barata). Pero cada cliente luego tiene un pequeño número de productos para los que sí quiere determinada marca y no cualquier otra. La clave de esta teoría es que este pequeño grupo de artículos es particular de cada cliente, es decir, distinto en cada caso.

Es muy posible, entonces, que si Mercadona mira las estadísticas de ventas de, por ejemplo, las pastas, vea que un 85% de la gente que compra pasta se la lleva de la marca blanca, y sólo un 15% opta por Gallo. O si mira la leche, un 65% marca blanca, 20% Pascual, y 15% Puleva. Es decir, que es muy posible que la marca blanda le pegue vueltas a las demás para la mayoría de productos en los que compite.

Ahora bien, ¿qué pasa si uno dice: “pues elimino todas las marcas no blancas, y que se joda un 20% de la gente, que seguro que encima la mitad se aguantan y se pasan a mi marca blanca”? Pues lo que pasa es, si mi teoría es cierta, que la afirmación “sólo un 20% de la gente será infeliz” es falsa. Lo más probable es que el 100% de los clientes se molesten, porque prácticamente todos tendrán al menos un producto para el que no acepten la marca blanca.

Yo creo que a Mercadona le gusta jugar a tirar de la cuerda a ver si se rompe, jugando siempre con estudios sólidos detrás para que haya pocas probabilidades de que se rompa. En el Mercadona de al lado de mi casa, sin embargo (y supongo que en todos), la fruta se puede comprar ahora al peso y no por barquetas.

Marga escribe una entrada sobre las palomas de ciudad. Cuenta la historia de cómo erradicaron las palomas de Trafalgar Square en Londres una vez prohibieron dar de comer a estos animales.

En Alicante también está prohibido alimentar a las palomas. Hay unos signos en grande que así lo anuncian, so pena de multa de 601,01 euros. Este curioso número da cuenta de que la prohibición ya lleva algunos años con nosotros: la multa ya existía cuando aún usábamos pesetas, y era por entonces de 100.000 pesetas. Que, escrupulosamente traducidas a euros, son 601,01.

Wow, long time without one of these posts. I actually have material that will have to wait for the next issue already!

• On Golden Pond: Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn play a delightful couple in their late years. He’s old and grumpy, among other things, and she’s kind and just gorgeous. Then a daughter comes to visit (the daughter is played by Jane Fonda, btw).

• Eastern Promises: it’s been one year since I recommended in this very blog A History of Violence. David Cronenberg has done it again, again with the help of Viggo Mortensen. The scene in the sauna is magnificent.

• L’auberge espagnole: a French guy comes to Spain (Barcelona) as an Erasmus student for a year, and meets with some other Erasmus students (and somebody else). Very enjoyable, and has a sequel that I haven’t seen yet.

• The Visitor: I wish I remembered more about this movie, because it left me very pleased; that just means I can watch it again sometime, and says something about the movie too. An ode to people who believe in making good to others, but not a cheesy ode at all.

• The Station Agent: this movie was sold to me on the basis that I’d just be watching life pass by through a small number of people. It really felt that way most of the time, and it wasn’t boring. As it happens, same writer and director than The Vistor above, Tom McCarthy.

Supongo que podría decirse que el principal propósito del arte es emocionar, y que la posibilidad de emocionar a otros con el trabajo propio es una de las características más envidiables de los creadores de arte. Hay muchas maneras de crear emociones, pero en esta entrada me centraré en el arte cuyo propósito es emocionar a base de belleza.

Lo que más me fascina de la emoción que surge sólo de la belleza es su imprevisibilidad. Si hablamos de emociones creadas por el contenido de una obra de arte, es fácil determinar de manera objetiva (o a partir de la experiencia) qué partes de la obra van a crear qué emociones, cuándo y con qué intensidad, al menos para una buena parte de la gente. Sin embargo, si hablamos de emociones creadas por la forma de la obra, ¿es posible determinar en qué instante o posición de la misma va a activarse el bit de la emoción en el receptor?

En lo que llevo de vida he escuchado miles de canciones, y un buen porcentaje me gustan o directamente me encantan e incluso emocionan. Como es natural, a los intérpretes de estas canciones no les sorprenderá saber que alguien disfruta con sus canciones.

Sin embargo, también tengo en mi cabeza (y es probablemente uno de mis bienes más preciados) un compendio de instantes dentro de algunas de esas canciones que me emocionan especialmente, que la voz se pega una carrera hasta mi bit de la emoción y me lo dispara de uno a dos o tres o cuatro.¹

Si yo fuera cantante, seguro que me emocionaría la explicitud de ver a la gente emocionándose con mi trabajo en los conciertos, pero creo que me satisfaría aún más soñar que una o dos o tres o cuatro de mis interpretaciones forman parte de esas colecciones de instantes tan exclusivas y valiosas, y me placería sobremanera ignorar cuáles serían tales momentos.

(¹) Qué maravilla las hipérboles de un solo dígito.

Aprendí mecanografía en el año 94, con 12 años. Haber sido llevado a clases particulares de mecanografía e inglés en aquellos años es algo por lo que siempre estaré agradecido.

En la academia de mecanografía había máquinas Olivetti Línea 98. Mi madre tenía también una, y en casa estuve prácticando con ella durante un tiempo. Al año siguiente (un año antes de comprar el primer ordenador) compramos una eléctrica.

Por aquella época, las máquinas de escribir más modernas (y que recuerdo que un amigo se compró) tenían una pequeña pantalla y memoria para poder escribir unas líneas en ella, y mandarlas «a imprimir» cuando uno estaba seguro de que no había errores.

La mía no tenía memoria, al menos no propiamente dicha. Tenía, sin embargo, función para centrar texto. Para hacer esto en una máquina de escribir es necesario conocer la longitud de la línea antes de empezar a soltar tinta en el papel. Esta máquina permitía, para implementar esto, teclear la línea a centrar al completo, a ciegas, almacenándose en un buffer que luego era impreso (centrado) todo de golpe.

A falta de memoria-memoria, yo me decidí a hacer uso de esta funcionalidad como sucedáneo: tecleaba mis líneas a ciegas, centrándolas todas pero añadiendo espacios al final para obtener alineación a la izquierda, y agudicé la habilidad de detectar si me había equivocado sin mirar al papel.

Habilidad interesante si hubiera acabado de mecanógrafo o transcriptor, pero que hoy he perdido ya, al menos en gran parte.

En casa, a comienzos de los años 90, había una cinta del disco de 1989 de Julio Iglesias “Raíces”. Es un disco de medleys (o popurrís), en el que supongo que el cantante se decide a hacer homenaje a un número de canciones y estilos que forman parte de sus, heh, raíces. Pero bueno, ése no es el asunto.

El tema es que la primera canción que se incluye en estos medleys es Tres palabras, de la que se incluyen los siguientes versos:

Dame tus manos, ven
toma las mías
que te voy a confiar
las ansias mías

Son tres palabras
solamente
mis angustias
y esas palabras son...

Con tal mala fortuna, que en lugar de seguir esos versos con “Cómo me gustas” como en el tema original, el medley salta a la siguiente canción, Perfidia, que dice:

Mujer, si puedes tú con Dios hablar
pregúntale si yo alguna vez
te he dejado de adorar

Lo cual a mí de pequeño, que por no saber no sabía lo que era un medley, ni que todos aquellos versos pudieran existir fuera de la voz de Julio, me suponía (como diría quien yo me sé) un quebranto: ¿qué comino pintaban tres palabras tan importantes siendo “Mujer, si puedes”?

Luego me hice mayor, y conocí la canción en otras voces, y ya se me despejaron las dudas.

Many things could be said about Leonardo DiCaprio. Today, he just deserves an entry in this blog for pulling out, at the age of 18, the character of Arnie Grape, the mentally challenged brother of Johnny Depp in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

Ah, seems the days of posting snow pictures in Planet Debian have gone, and in any case I don’t have pictures, but I’ll blog about snow nevertheless.

It never snows in Alicante, my home town. It’s by the sea in the south-east of Spain, and the winters are very mild there. I had only seen or touched snow once in my life, when I was about 7 and there was an outing in school to go and see the snow in some nearby mountain. I’m told it was crappy snow anyway.

Today we returned from the QA meeting in Extremadura, arriving in Madrid really early in the morning. Knowing this, I had arranged to stay with friends Sunday and Monday, spending the night at agi@’s place.

The house is in some mountain, at about 1800 meters over sea level, and there was plenty of snow. There was also a slope, and a plastic sled, so we did the obvious. It was fun, it made me happy, and I should pay Alberto another visit some other time with more appropriate clothing.

After a summer during which I didn’t get to watch many movies, I’m back on track now. Here we go:

• A Raisin in the Sun: this is a magnificent film, almost a masterpiece. Story of a family when a large sum of money comes to disrupt their lives. You should watch it.

• Happiness: this one is definitely a masterpiece, but it’s quite likely you should not watch it: many people find it very disturbing. If you think you could take it, though, I say go for it.

• There Will Be Blood: it is a good film, and it wasn’t a waste of my time, but I do believe it’s hyped. If you ask me, I think it’s so high in the IMDB list because of its last scene.

• Ataque verbal: if you’re into Spanish cinema, and are fond of conversations, you may enjoy it quite much: a film consisting of 7 conversations. It isn’t perfect, but it’s different and cool (I’ve watched it twice, actually). The director, Miguel Albaladejo, has some other fine films as well.

• The Remains of the Day: England, 1930; Anthony Hopkins is a butler, and Emma Thompson the housekeeper of the house. Ivory at his best.

  I had watched this film a couple years ago; having enjoyed it quite a lot, I went and read the book recently. Reading the book was a wonderful experience, so I decided to watch the film again. It is a very good and faithful script, but I think I enjoyed it this second time better.

  Regarding the book, I wrote some bits about it here; from now on I hope to write something about books I read in this space. By the way, the cover of the book has some amusement in it, see if you can spot it.

Every night I can, I sit with my sister and we read half a chapter of Le petit Nicolas, in French. I read aloud, and she fixes my pronunciation. She says I’m doing well!

I’m also getting to understand increasingly more and more (she helps along the way with that). I’m not sure whether it’s the magic of being written in French, or what, but I’m finding it very nice, and we laugh a lot.

Maybe if I’d be reading it in a language I was fluent in it would not be the same. But, if you ever end up learning French, be sure to give it a try!

I’m practically 4 courses away from finishing my degree (the course I failed in June, I passed a couple weeks ago). 4 courses which I loathe, but that I’ll get done this year. After them, I still have to prepare something akin to a “final project”, but that doesn’t worry me much, since it’ll be something I enjoy.

Apart from these 4 courses, I also have to take a couple non-computer science ones, whichever I want. I’ve decided to go for French lessons, since I’ve always wanted to learn French. I’m very excited for this.

Today was my first day. I had some previous, incredibly rudimentary notions of French already, but that didn’t help not to find it a bit daunting at first: there’s so much to learn. (I can’t remember at all how I felt when I started studying English, but alas, I was a kid, when you’re taught stuff you know zero about.)

I decided, though, to look it from a positive note, and make a pleasant experience out of it: not everyday one has the opportunity to dive into something completely new. I remained excited for the rest of the class, and I’m sure my classmates thought, “Why is this guy stupidly smiling from time to time?” (These are courses designed for freshmen, and I felt out of place. It seems 8 years is a lot of time.)

Incidentally, my sister speaks French, and she’s lent me some books and dictionarys from her time as a student. Some of these were books from Le Petit Nicolas series; I had read all of them during my childhood, in Spanish. I glanced through the French versions, and recognizing every single picture in them as something I had already seen, albeit fifteen years ago, was a very weird feeling.

Here in Dublin I’ve been more “formally” introduced to the world of board games. Back at home, a friend had a copy of Settlers of Catan, and we used to play every now and then, but that was it.

Since I arrived I’ve been attending to weekly “board game nights”, and I’ve had the opportunity to play several more, most of which I liked a lot. I’ve played Agricola, Caylus, and Power Grid, all very nice. I’ve also played Race for the Galaxy, which I didn’t like much at first, but which I’ve come to enjoy a bit more as of lately. (All four are in the top-10 of Board Game Geek.)

I’m going to miss this when I get back, particularly since my friends will most certainly not be up to weekly games. I should investigate to see if some kind of board games club exists in Alicante. If you know of one, or are reading this and would be interested in organizing something, please let me know.

Update (2008-09-24): Since I last posted, I’ve also played Puerto Rico, Imperial, Neuland, and Shadows over Camelot.

Oh dear, more than a month without posting here. Let’s throw in some random updates:

• I’m in Dublin for the summer, doing an internship at Google. I’m not exactly thrilled by the project they’ve assigned me to, mostly because it’s C++, but oh well. We’ll see later about getting a full-time position.

• I’m not going to be at DebConf. Not only I got the “amount unable to fund yourself” box backwards (40% vs 60%), but the money I was hoping to spend in travelling was unexpectedly needed at home. I tried tricking Google into sponsoring me, but as I was told, “In Google we are generous, but not that generous”. This is the first DebConf I’ll be missing since I joined Debian.

• I didn’t fare too well in my return to University. I abandoned most courses, and got my first failure (ever) in one of the few I didn’t abandon. I’ll continue studying one more year at least, but it’ll be hard deciding what to do if I don’t manage to finish by then, because I really, really need to go forward with my life.

My theory is that we humans have faith on stuff in order not to throw ourselves through the window. It is my current belief, though, that one should not have more faith than strictly necessary — I’m not very sure why I think that, though, I just feel it.

Since I’m fine with the idea that there may not be any life after death, or that nobody superior created us, I choose not to have faith in any god, or on the absence of them, nor I follow any form of religion.

However, I do have faith in other stuff. Mainly, I have an immovable (and irrational) faith that, at some point in my life, I will find a life partner. And I do have such strong faith because the sole thought of not finding one would make me, indeed, throw myself through the window.

And I really wish it wasn’t that way.

It’s time for recommending five films again. I’ve also decided that I may reserve the last of the five for films I watched prior to starting these series.

So here we go:

• Au revoir les enfants (Goodbye, Children): just watch it, really. (France, World War II, children in a school run by priests, but there’s a part I’m not telling you.)

• El bosque animado: a superb film that every Spanish person should watch. Magic comedy & drama set up in rural Galicia. Amazing Tito Valverde.

• eXistenZ: yet another one by David Cronenberg, involving futuristic video games this time. Quite a good see, but predictable ending?

• Billy Elliot: the kid who wants to dance ballet. Predictive and linear, but I just loved it, as I expected — maybe you will too.

  The scene where Billy says goodbye to Michael just completely and utterly broke my heart, probably because I identified so much with Michael.

• Now, Voyager: Bette Davis plays an ugly duckling, that obviously transforms into an awesome swan. Superb. Oh, and Bette Davis.

So going alone to the cinema yesterday was not a first, but going alone and being alone in the room certainly was, and an unexpected one.

This was, as far as I know, the premiere in Alicante of Enloquecidas, which is certainly not that of a remarkable film, but which was entertaining enough, and provided some very good laughs.

What is wrong with this city?!

(Update: hm, seems I’m mistaken about the “premiere” bit. Oh well.)

Unlike Steve, I don’t particularly mind going to the cinema alone. In fact, it’s becoming a growing habit for Friday nights, when my friends go to some meetings about their faith I don’t participate in (nor their meetings, nor their faith). I really hate getting home early on Fridays, so I take chance to go to movies I know we wouldn’t be going together anyway.

(Oh, and in case I haven’t said here already, the movie offerings in this “city” suck big balls. Virtually no undubbed sessions, virtually no non-mainstream movies. I don’t think I’ll still be here in a couple years, but boy would I be unhappy if the circumstances forced me to.)

Here in this library, next to a couple computers available to query the catalog, a sign reads:

Do not connect your laptop to these jacks. You may loose all data in your computer.

If I wasn’t a computer-savy person, I’m completely sure I would’ve thought: “They’re bluffing.” And then shit happens, because they’re not.

(Oh, but then of course the sign is not 100% honest either.)

One of the people who most fiercely fought software patents here in Spain and Europe jokingly (?!) uses the word “fag” to insult random people he dislikes. (But so do tons of other people I don’t interact with, of course.)

I used not to be annoyed by this at all, but tonight I felt differently, and it really bothered me (possibly because it was somebody from my community who did it). Life is easier when you don’t care, I guess, but I think it’s a good thing that I care now, since without such caring things can’t and won’t change.

As I mentioned, this week I’ve been in Sevilla as a finalist for the 2nd edition of a Free Software contest. Each participant at this stage made a presentation of their project, and this afternoon the winners were disclosed. I’m happy to share that Minirok won the 1st prize in its category, yay!

Also, Dudesconf was simply terrific — I’m so happy I could attend this year. And, as for every conference, eternal gratitude to the organizers: people from GPUL, you simply rock!!

Yesterday I watched Les invasions barbares, a film by Canadian director Denys Arcand. I came to find it because one of my favourite cinemas in this oh-so-small city was premiering L’âge des ténèbres, the third part of a trilogy started by Le déclin de l’empire américain, and continued by Les invasions barbares above.

I loved Les invasions barbares. I think it’s a very honest film, but for me not only it portrayed a reality and set of characters that I found credible, I also felt empowered by watching attitudes towards life so compatible, if not similar, to my own. Reminds me a bit of some of the feelings I had when watching Juno.

It is also one film more to add to my (smallish) collection of films I’ve watched in French (with subtitles), though I’m intending to fix that: I really enjoy French, as well as enjoyed all Canadian or French I’ve watched in the past. We’ll see how it goes.

Sometimes, I’ll accidentally set my music player into “repeat track” or “repeat playlist” mode while working (my playlists are normally short, btw, one album or so).

The funny bit is the number of times the track or playlist needs to be repeated in order to get me to notice. Not that many, but interesting nevertheless.

Unlike Martin and Daniel, please do call me by my IRC nick in real life, mostly because that’s what I’ve been called by everybody since I was 0.

On writing the long version is ok.

I had never seen a prank upset so many people. On the other hand, almost 50 people (blindly?) said thanks!

Via Planet Warp, Blaxter blogs about MyEpisodes.com. Useful to keep track of your pending episodes to watch and acquire. I like the “All-In-One!” view.

Update: Oh, and as several people mentioned, there is also pogdesign.co.uk/cat, but that’s only a calendar of upcoming episodes, you can’t track your status with it AFAICS. OTOH, it doesn’t require a login, only a cookie.

I’ve decided to blog about films whenever there are in my backlog five films I’d like to mention or talk about. I’ll also mention that, when I moved to ikiwiki, I set up a films.rss feed, and some other stuff. Now:

• A History of Violence: short and incredible. Has flaws but I still give it 4.5/5. I’ll check more of Cronenberg (I loved, ages ago, M. Butterfly and Dead Ringers).

• Bent: gays, nazis, camp. Intense but not overly rough. Mick Jagger plays a drag singer named Greta.

• Elsa y Fred: terrific love story between two elderly people. Magnificent China Zorrilla. Ignore if you can’t stand romance or Argentinian.

• Martian Child: entertaining, has children and dogs, never ever ever ever ever give up.

• No Country for Old Men: oooh. All my friends hated it and told me: “you are going to love it”. And Bardem really steals the show. More below.

You may want to skip this part if you haven’t seen No Country for Old Men, though I won’t be spoiling much. My friends watched it some weeks ago, and I did yesterday (I refused to go with them to a dubbed session).

One of them told me that she had disliked it very much because of the uneasiness she got from it, about how human life can result so worthless for people, and so on. Chatting a bit more, we came to the conclusion that I watch these films differently.

Basically, I can unplug the empathy off from a film whenever (simplifying a bit) violence or cruelty reaches a certain level, and just consider it an entertainment completely unrelated to reality. Sort of, anyway. And I don’t think I could enjoy (some) films as much if I didn’t.

For me, No Country for Old Men had no message in it, and had a single story line: following close the path of a creature portrayed by Bardem, that (maybe not) strangely enough managed to keep me hooked to the screen, not minding the low pace, and finding the end (minus the dreaming bits) very appropriate.

Bus line #23 here starts in Mutxamel, goes through San Juan, reaches the Hospital, and then goes all the way to Alicante.

Many months ago already, a new bus line was created: 34L. This line shares parts of its way with #23, namely from Mutxamel to the Hospital. After that, they diverge.

After all this time, still today (and every other day too) many people mistakenly take 34L thinking it is #23.

And it’s not as if the buses don’t carry a big yellow-on-black sign with their number...

I’m obviously not discovering the Americas here, given the sheer amount of research, theory and whatnot one can find for this topic, but I need to vent. Also, please excuse my terminology and my bias.

In Spain we have two main political parties, the one that advertises itself as the rightish-center option, but is sliiiightly more to the right than that (PP), and the one that wears socialism in its name, but is sliiiightly less to the left than that (PSOE). Then there are some minority parties, like the nationalists, and United Left (IU).

So, ideally, my ballot à-la-Debian would always be:

  [1] IU
  [2] PSOE
  [4] PP
  [3] None of the above

But sadly you can’t vote like that in the real world (?), and can only pick one. Without a fscking second round. So every election I’m left wandering in the cold land of tactical voting.

One last interesting bit: when talking about my wishes for a two round system with a good friend, who also happens to be a PP fanboy, he said: “But with that system PP would never govern!” And I think there’s some truth to that.

Aw, listening to the two first songs mentioned in the previous post almost makes me cry. The songs, here and here.

(Notice the subtle but precious difference between his “in anyone else”, and hers.)

Juno was totally worth my time, I gave it 5/5 stars. When having a prospective look at it, it didn’t seem I would enjoy it much, but I decided to trust Movielens on this one, and that payed off.

Long story short, Juno is a sixteen year old girl that gets pregnant, and then a very appealing movie happens. Then a slightly questionable (rushed?) end comes, but I enjoyed that part the most. I liked the general tone of the movie, and the two youngsters were adorable.

The soundtrack was awesome as well. I loved the song on the opening titles, All I want is you by Barry Louis Polisar (listen here), and the one in the last scene, Anyone else but you from The Moldy Peaches, but performed by the actors themselves.

Update (2008-01-16): Mention track titles in the last paragraph.

Update 2 (2008-01-16): After listening to the soundtrack today, I can’t but highlight Kimya Dawson’s songs, particularly: Tire Swing, Loose Lips, and Tree Hugger.

When talking in Spanish these days, particularly on IRC, but increasingly more in e-mail and even speech, I like being free to draw words from English, either because there isn’t or I can’t think of a Spanish word or expression to mean the same, or (many times) just because I find the result aesthetically more pleasing (!). Some people, of course, find this practice horrendous and something to be ashamed of, but alas, so do some others about other practices in my life, so, there.

Last night with friends, I used the form refraineado, which would be the Spanish participle for the English verb refrain. One of these friends, who did not know the English verb at all, said: “ITYM refrenado?” As it happens, both verbs obviously (?) share the same roots, and they mean the same. This one time, though, I didn’t know the (relatively rare?) Spanish one, so that makes up for a bit of an excuse, but reality is that I cannot promise I will use refrenado and not refraineado the next time I need to use it.

Oh well.

After some romantic films these past days to match my mood, and to celebrate I got back on track today, I watched Glengarry Glen Ross this evening. I was expecting a lot, and a lot I got, albeit not equally divided across the duration of the film.

In the first part, it outstands the brief but intense appearence of Alec Baldwin (youtube link). It is funny because I normally peek at movies several times days before watching them, and normally at intervals of 10 minutes, which is what mplayer gives you for PgUp and PgDown. And at minute 10, I always got the memorable “You can’t close the leads you’re given, you can’t close shit, you are shit! Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it, ‘cause you are going out.” quote by Alec. (Minute 2:16 in the above Youtube link, or here.)

After that it’s was just okayish for me, until minute 48 arrived, and then I could not take my eyes off the screen, not even once to check irc (and, well, that’s just unusual on me), until minute 89 (out of a 96 minute movie). For those who’ve seen it, that’d be the whole while in which the policeman is in the office.

Anyway, give it a go if you’d like, and be sure to check this trailer after you have.

On other news, and all the romantic stuff above which I really enjoyed notwithstanding, I loved El día de la bestia. Pure awesome, but watch at your own risk!

This year, instead of preparing the traditional soup for dinner I’ve been preparing every Christmas Eve for circa 10 years, we spent the night at the hospital instead.

My father had surgery in his bowel on the 18th, and stayed at the hospital until today. Mom and Teresa would spend the day with him there, and I would be there during the nights.

The surgery, though unexpected, went without complications, and dad has been recovering slowly but steady, and was finally sent home today.