This corner of life

En route to ubuntu 8.10

2008-10-31T21:05:00.001-04:30

Books that never made it

2008-10-20T22:58:00.001-04:30

From the "books that never made it" list.

"100 musical baby names", Nina Haggen & Frank Zappa

The mac shop

2008-07-26T13:06:00.001-04:30

Is open

What happens

2008-07-21T11:58:00.001-04:30

When you fall asleep at the wheel

Processed guitar

2008-07-05T18:00:00.001-04:30

Yes so far it's a dirty hack. But it works real well. This is a friend's and it's basically a dissassembled digitech rp-50 glued to a guitar.

Four years

2008-06-30T09:28:00.001-04:30

Since my last ponytail

What the bloody fuck

2008-06-28T21:58:00.001-04:30

Ok i'm at the store right now so i'll edit this latter but can you tell me what the bloody fuck did portishead did to themselves?

Today we're burning

2008-06-21T18:33:00.001-04:30

Meat

New toy

2008-05-08T21:46:00.001-04:30

I have more life now.

2008-04-21T13:58:00.001-04:30

1 up

Tool Poll

2008-04-20T17:52:00.005-04:30

Hi friends, readers and sufferers.

I post this one today to ask on your advice and views on a particular topic.

I'm trying to find and decide on a nice set of software and hardware to use as an organizing and data moving system for my work and life.

So far, the ideas of Getting Things Done, to which foucist introduced me, have worked pretty well for me. I'm not an organizational expert and I'm still kind of a walking mess, but these ideas have permeated my brain somehow and taken hold, and I'm trying to organize.

As far as organizing myself so far I rely on Google Calendar for appointments, which I enter on my phone via Opera Mini, or in my Palm on the calendar and then sync with GooSync. Then the calendar warns me of upcoming meetings via SMS (thank the gods SOMEONE can use SMS to my country, unlike twitter). For actions I need to perform, code and such, I post them on Vitalist.com via either Opera Mini on the phone, Email from the phone, or Firefox on the desktop. And then when I'm sitting and have nothing on my brain to do I check it either on Firefox or the Phone via the web.

I do all these centralizations on the internet because I have two jobs. I work with around 3 computers a day, and you never know when I need to be out of the office.

The only drawback is in the remote case I lose all connectivity, which hasn't happened yet, and which I think would anyhow send me into a panic attack (I live more than half my life online so far) so it wouldn't matter.

What's my problem so far? well firstly, typing is slow on the phone and worse on the palm. T9 helps a lot but it's not perfect, and it specially hinders bilingual people like me since we constantly switch between languages by context and it's a slow process with T9. And on the palm even with tealscript which helps, writting or virtual-keyboarding stuff is agonizingly slow, specially when I have to correct missinterpreted letters from the graffiti...

So far I was opting for carrying a small paper agenda onto meetings to annotate in pen (blue and red to denote importante), basically capturing stuff there that I latter need to enter into the computer sites and catalogue, since writting on pen and paper is much easier and faster than the phone's T9 or the palm for me. The troubles are varied. First I've noticed it's much easier for me to capture and organize actions at the same time. If I capture them on paper and then I have to sit and organize them and type them again it's not only a waste of time, but I offer subconscious resistence to it, so I actually "forget" a lot to enter stuff to the web pages from my paper agenda.

The other is that every time more I see that in meetings I need not only enter data but seek data too, when I am asked certain stuff I need to check my numbers, my online stats for some services and Knowledge Base (I have created an In-Office mediawiki KB), so the paper Agenda serves me to enter stuff but not to search existent, real time data to share during meetings.

So I think I need a new digital solution. And I'm trying to look for something.

HARDWARE

Hardware wise I'm very constrained by money right now. As some might know or not, to avoid economical bleeding my coutnry has established an exchange embargo, in wich we're able to obtain a certain ammount of foreign currency every year, and nothing over that for anything that is not importing goods for sell and that would require lots of paperwork.

Considering this, my dream machine right now would be a CloudBook machine. You see it's not much much larger than the paper agenda I already carry around, and for the reasons I mentioned before I want a real, usseable keyboard. No on screen keyboards, not even the iphones which I've tried and is good but not confortable enough yet. And stuff like T9 and thumbboards are completely out of the question since so far I've tried a few and typing on them is hell.

Now I do have two devices that might help now, a 12" G4 iBook, and a Palm TX, the good thing about the iBook is the power, but even it being 12" it's too heavy compared with the agenda, and it's beautyful white is a little too enticing though a skanky folder/bag could disguise the machine. I could also get a bluetooth keyboard for the Palm, after all I have LOTS of bought software for the palm, and using it to it's extreme would be helpfull, the trouble there is that the palm is kinda slow and at the top of it's limitations in some areas, specially network wise, I'm very limited with my browsers in the palm, even the great Opera Mini runs slowly and barely on the Palm.

So I'm thinking of trying to save and somehow getting dollars, and buying either a cloudbook or an EEE, both are small enough, very powerfull, and most importantly linux based. I'm thinking the cloudbook since it's battery life is better afaik, and the HDD capacity makes it great for carrying even live apache based services on the road.

The rules basically are. cheap, if possible using what I have. It must have a keyboard a real keyboard, and it must be small. It must run only Linux, OS X, anything but windows/windows ce. and if possible symbian since all versions I've tried are terribly slow.

SOFTWARE

This is a particular need for software. For organizing so far I'm very happy with google calendars, and vitalist, both work well and both I can kind of sync around. My trouble is capturing stuff that will not become an action or a date. I need an efficient way to capture data for reference. Now I've learned the lesson, a lessom mom once thaught me. As a professional translator one of the worse days in her work life was when she was forced to move from Wordstar in DOS, to Word in windows. You see when she was typing fast (and she typed REALLY fast) it broke her stride to have to go to the mouse to select an option or command.

Likewise I've realized that while typing captured data it would be a real break to go for the mouse, doubly so if I am using a laptop pad to try and graph a diagram. So what do I think I need? I need something that can translate simple text to formated stuff, very much like a wiki works, using asterisks for unordered lists, and other wiki type.

For diagrams, something like built in graphviz, with a few more options, I've tought long ago that for a programmer like me it'd be easier to graph stuff on the fly programatically uwing the keyboard than trying to draw pretty diagrams by hand.

My trouble and where I want you to help me, is that I want all this in a standalone program, something I can drop on my usb pen drive, and run from Linux, OS X or even windows. And do this in a manner easy to save and search...

I'd preffer a native program rather than a Java based one, for speed reasons. I might even end up having to code my own in Qt4 for the 3 platforms, but I'd preffer not to. still. Well.

All in all those are my questions, and your feedback is very welcome and expected.

Our walled gardens, and other interop hurdles

2008-04-20T17:01:00.002-04:30

Well. It's finally happened. The other day I finally had to sit with the "MS Guy" and work with him on providing access to calls on my system via SOAP.

And now, SOAP that once held hope for me, holds only sadness and despair, Let me explain why.

Some time ago I chose not to base myself on Microsoft products, not because I truly hate Microsoft, I DO hate Microsoft's marketing and selling tactics and politics, but being, or trying to be a pragmatic person and developer, I try to use the technology that fits the best for the requirements, but as many technical experts would know, and as most Perl developers hold to heart "there's more than one way to do something".

So when several solutions would apply equally, or near equally well to the problem, it's up to the developer's taste (in cases where he makes the call, as is always the case for me, I like making the calls so I look for jobs where I can make them) to decide which solution to use, which of course can be degraded in some cases, I think we all know about people forcing the frameworks or systems they know into a project however bad a fit it is for the project.

This hasn't been much of a problem to me since my biggest ability has always been learning new stuff rather than becoming a deep expert into one topic, it's a double edged sword but it's how I work and function and I'm not going to change it now.

Anyhow before this evolves fully into a rant. What I intend to say here is that we all have a style of working, a platform and a set of tools we feel most confortable in, and a personal vision on how stuff should be. And I'd call anyone who pretends to be entirelly agnostic or pragmatic a liar for I don't think we humans are able to attain pure objetivity.

So what the hell does this has to do with SOAP? Well there's a guy working for the company as a consultant developer trying to install a new, local "enterprisey" costly and powerfull invoicing system called Profit (Personally I've always found enterprise and powerfull solutions to be... well unmanageable do-it-all wannabes that require too many years of training to atain a pitifull performance, but that's MY vision as a agile programmer).

So, this system is coded in Visual FoxPro, and we've been trying to figure out a manner on communicating, I wouldn't allow him to plunge into my PostgreSQL Database (He almost sneered at me not using MS-SQL) for I fear for the integrity of my data and my DB has always been a sacred thing for me. I'll rarely allow anyone to drink my DB without some kind of protecting API wrapped around. So finally we decided on SOAP.

Here I hit the first hurdle. SOAP in itself is overkill, I agreed so before doing this (even without having done it before) and I agree with it now. As a pure solution I preffer json-rpc since I like the syntax of JSON a lot, and it's unhindered by all the layers of crust. But try selling a .NET guy on REST or on JSON-RPC, it's near impossible. So with the intention of being able to work together, we went the merry SOAP road, after all it's a well defined standard by now, and .NET has in theory (I don't use the product) very good tools for dealing with SOAP... Well the first hurdle I found was the disagreement from my ruby on rails peers.

For starters, DHH (it seems, this hasn't been verified by me) has decided SOAP is in many respects too inferior to REST, so the soap serving package, ActionWebServices has been dropped from the main rails code. It's relegated now to the disterred repository and not afaik too actively maintained by the core programmers... it IS maintained, but let's just say that I personally find it lacking in some areas, and installing it alongside a normal rails install was a fight. It was such a fight that I haven't been able to make my staging environment work with AWS yet, only my development box, and that's incredibly frustrating since debugging my staging is not so easy, more so considering no ammount of logging has helped here and it seems I'll have to remotely debug the code step by step.

Then, when my SOAP services where coded and returning nice XML responses that seemed to my inexperienced eye to be perfect, I tried hooking with this guy... and it took us all a night of work to get it to function.

First of all, in his version of Visual FoxPro, the "Professional tools found in .NET for SOAP services" turned up to be a soap script library glued into VF by this guy, and whose correctness I still suspect but being not an expert in either SOAP or VF I can't assure. To make a long story short, the guy is expecting a form of structured XML as a response, it is in a way an XML representation of a data table, with an embeded schema in XML and all. I could pass very basic types to him via AWS and soap, stuff like strings, dates, and integers. But when I tried to send a structured type, all he got was "garbage" he couldn't understand. And sending back an array of an atomic type like :int caused AWS to construct a custom complex type, and from this type the VF library was able to correctly obtain only the first element in the array (And wathever the guy said to me I still insist I'm sure there's a way to iterate the array on his side).

So for the two calls that we use what did we do?

Well for the (single) structured type I'm composing and sending him back a :string with semicolon separated variables... ugh... and for the array type I'm using REXML to construct a very basic copy of an example XML table structure taken from the VF help, and then embeding the resulting XML as a :string onto the SOAP response, which he parses into one of his XMLData objects to parse it.

Now it's entirely probable that %100 of our troubles have to do with the fact that both the guy and me are newbies at SOAP, hell the guy couldn't even understand he needed to hook into my WSDL definition URL rather than trying to hook onto the API access URI with his library until I pointed it to him from seeying the debug he was performing.

But there is also something very distinct here, while I perused SOAP documents, prior, during and after doing this first test run with him (we'll continue workign together until release and somewhat beyound), I saw a distinctive pattern. All SOAP materials where highly language and toolset centric.

That is, every single SOAP text I found explained SOAP not even generically but in the proper terms of the language and toolset it was geared for, and testing the results was even performed in those tools and languages as well!! This, in my view, for a protocol designed specifically to interconnect heterogeneous systems is more than a terrible practice, it's practically poison.

So, that's my first point against SOAP. Everyone seems to be doing a "universal" conduit in their own manner, or even not doing it at all... that does not bode well for a universal conduit's future.

The second point is complexity.

SOAP is horrible. I glanced over the W3c specs and I almost developed skin sores, the thing is large, horribly large and convolute. What's the problem here? well I think SOAP was infected by the EAV people. And don't think I have always been against that, I once was an EAV kid myself. I once thought "My programs need to be able to deal with anything, anytime, without my intervention, forever" so I designed for example a CRM with enough expandability in it to be able to also be used to calculate the distribution of sugar cubes in shipments to mars if it was necessary someday... of course these systems grew horribly complicated and unmaintanable, and very terribly innefficient at what they originally HAD to do.

With time I grew over it. And I know that the more lean my programs are, the easier it'll be for me to maintain them. And the more custom fit they and their data sets are to the application, the more solidly it'll run... and it's not like deploying a new version has to be a transparent even always, and even for those cases where it has to be I have planned a certain type of program that will help me a lot to perform them and of which I'll tell you more latter one day.

So still it seems the SOAP group was contaminated by people wanting it to be ready for anything and do anything. Say I for one would've been completely happy to have a parameter type akin to the capabilities of JSON which I think will cover all my basic needs, without complicating things too much, instead of that ComplexType abomination SOAP relies on....

But it gets worse, regarding databases and XML I was looking around, and it seems so far that what Ruby understands for a complex type is not the same C# understands of it and it's not the same VisualFox understands it to be... so, let me recap, the SOAP group produced a too varied, too complex definition with a minimum common denominator that I consider to be anything but minimum, and still SOAP is easy to use only between homogeneous systems? so heterogeneous system engineers still have to sweat blood and fight for the communication to work....

And then what are the alternatives? XML-RPC? JSON-RPC? or better yet in my view REST? well the problem with that on my mind is when you work with loosely fit teams on both sides or with no communication at all... the complexity in SOAP comes from the process of creating an universal standard with every side adding details they deem necessary or vital, and which all eventually end up agreeing on. So if SOAP being a standard in all it's complexity, sometimes fails misserably to interconnect heterogeneous systems, what would happen if you rely on a standard or half standard that is not backed by a giant like the W3c and pushed by behemots like Microsoft? it'd be worse, much much worse.

At least with SOAP, if I want to, say for example use Google's API over SOAP and there are some incompatibilities between what they produce and what I expect, I can juggle them and handle them on my side, as long as they conform to the SOAP standards, without any help from Google, so I don't need to interact with them.

But if I where to try so on a more laxly designed or regulated standard, or semistandard, it would eventually end up with me being unable to use the published API, or being forced to interact with the publisher or team to be able to make it work.

So the short, short conclusion is. Everyone is doing everything from their viewpoint, and in their manner... do you guys think it will be ever ever ever possible for systems and companies to exchange data and APIs in a universal form, without it becomming an overcomplex behemot that makes things more difficult, and without each person/company's policies and views poisoning the communicating pipe?

The cup

2008-03-25T11:55:00.001-04:30

No girls. Just the cup.

Caraquismos

2008-03-21T22:52:00.000-04:30

2008-02-23T20:06:00.001-04:30

In the street

2008-02-22T12:12:00.001-04:30

Street

2008-02-21T09:46:00.001-04:30

This is my form of twitter.

In the street

2008-02-20T14:49:00.001-04:30

Street art

At home the other day

2008-02-20T14:44:00.001-04:30

A friend was visiting and this was our combined tech pile. 2 ibooks a macbook a macbook pro and a lousy hp (imagine it. A combo laptop/tablet pc without a touchscreen!)

In the street

2008-02-20T14:36:00.001-04:30

One can sometimes find some interesting stuff

The last question on science, knowledge and life.

2008-01-31T23:49:00.000-04:30

If we put Chris Crocker in a treadmill that can run at infinite speed, would I get a bigger penis?

What the fuck

2008-01-06T22:37:00.000-04:30

Fuck it all, fuck everything

And no, I'm not fucking emo.

Long lines

2007-11-24T13:39:00.001-04:00

Everyone here is waiting to buy pig for xmas. And powdered milk.

A test

2007-11-21T18:49:00.001-04:00

A test of the send to blog option of my phone. To see how it works. I'll send the picture of the kid that made those structures latter.

I love XML

2007-10-16T22:17:00.000-04:00

SO WHAT?

It seems the general response about XML among programmers is always a groan or disgust, just like how text based editor lovers (vi,emacs) react about IDEs.

And I still admit, now openly, that I love XML. And why is that? because it's text and a buzzword. Yeah I'd love it a little more if my adored JSON would've become a similar buzz word, but it happened to be XML since it had the W3C's name behind it.

And what's so good about it? specially about buzzwords? first let me recognize that buzzwords are something that can cause a lot of hot air masses moving around corporations, but let's be frank, if we'd take buzz words from the kind of managers that like them, they'd still find another way to be useless, it's not the word's fault.

Anyhow I recognize XML has been abused, I do NOT see XML as a database killer, I see it as a message passing form, and as a configuration form (and configurations can take many forms like a document expressed in XML).

Well what I love from XML is that it is human readable, AND strictly defined enough to be safely computer readable. True it might not always be the easiest to parse XML in code, and XPaths can be hard for the non lovers (it's close enough to regular expressions that I actually like XPath some). But it is both computer and human readable. Which means I can write my programs to interconnect via XML, and if I want or need to check that they're interconnecting correctly, or to issue a specific order by hand, I can review or create XML to do this with no special tools other than an editor and my brain. As both a sysadmin and programmer I've found myself in emergency situations where all I had was a shell with all missing commands but an old vi and a few calls, so one gets used to try and work with environments and technologies that require the least amount of components possible in case something goes wrong.

So I prefer a file format I can check or throw together quickly with an editor.

And why a buzzword? why I would've been happier if JSON had become the buzzword (it IS less verbose than xml and still very readable for programmers.), well that's because when something becomes a buzzword, everybody suddenly HAS to implement it, they need to use it. And in this case, this has brought forward incredible things, like XML-RPC... and wether you like XML-RPC or not, you have to admit we have a level of interoperability between vendors and programs that we never had before XML.

Today, no matter how antagonist a company is about integrating with others, or with another company, or how oblivious they are about letting people stick things to interoperate with their code, if they support a decent XML communication system (be it via files, pipes, commands, databases, etc) then integration is at worst a complex XST away. It's possible with a DTD or simple reverse engineering on the XML file, to work with a program with which it wasn't possible to work before without a clunky API or worse, having to pay for the API's spec, or worse yet, the program was APIless.

So what I say is, XML is a great tool for the hackers, and since I am a hacker at soul, I try to use or support technologies who help people like me, and that is the high value of XML to me, a guy without a penny or a few bucks for his own project or his companu's project now can push and pull data in and out of large and diverse applications and systems where he had no luck or possibility before.

P.s. As I said, I like JSON's syntax better, it's still programmer readable, and it's much less verbose than XML, the sad part is that it's not a buzzword and thus not so universal.

And, for my Rails and Ruby friends, I say JSON and not YAML because I do not like that easily visible structural delimitators in YAML are optional. I think that leads to troubles trying to identify a failure point. I like visually striking block delimiters like JSON's curly braces.

How Leo Laporte made me love a fat man I hate

2007-10-14T17:51:00.000-04:00

Welcome to another issue of the all new! Improved! ... no, nevermind.

Anyhow onto the post....

This is of course, all about John Dvorak, A man that it seems all love to hate. And a man until very very recently I used to hate myself. Hate as in I hate Tom Cruise, where I personally refuse to see any movie where Mr. Cruise is featured so that he wont get by any mistake any of my money or "love" at all.. Same with Dvorak... but let me explain a little.

I recently discovered the place, and beauty for Podcasts. Originally I listened to a few podcasts, 2 or 3, on saturdays morning while I cleaned the house. In fact I never listened to podcasts as they originally where intended to, since instead of downloading them to my iPod nano 1st gen ( a blog post on this soon), I added the rss URLs to Kinoma on my Palm TX and streamed them live over the wireless at my home while I did my household chores.

Originally I did this only for the Ruby On Rails podcast, and it had the unfortunate side effect that this particular podcast moved me to code and do some work, while I was otherwise busy cleaning my home, so I'd have an idea for a project, or want to do some code on an existing project and I'd tell myself "I will do this when I finish!" and of course forget all about it. Which is good since otherwise I would've spent all my weekend coding and doing work.

So what happened is that I got a new job, a second job but which feels to me like my first (and best) job so far. For many reasons, which I will not enumerate here, it is easier for me to commute to my first job and from the first to the second, via the local Subway, called the Metro.

Anyhow, the first few days, and to isolate myself from the stupid masses (hey anybody who is not me, has a big chance of being stupid, and there ARE masses in the Metro at peak hours, you should see it, it's amazing. But I digress again). I used my iPod with the music in it to isolate myself a little and make the trip more enjoyable. Eventually, I had a brilliant idea and decided to set my iPod to sync podcasts (Why I dont sync stuff to my iPod automatically in a new installment soon), and so the latest episode of the Ruby On Rails podcast was copied over to my iPod and I tried listening it on the way to the office.

It was love at first sight... or at first listening. It was perfect. a short podcast would cover me the commute from home to Job 1, and a long one would cover that plus the commute from Job 1 to Job 2 (a short commute).

But there was a problem, podcasts, all podcasts I like, are when lucky, weekly (Leo if you ever see this, please try to convince the FLOSS weekly moderator to do more podcasts soon, I miss it.). So, to cover two commutes a day, 5 weeks a day I'd require a lot more podcasts. And thus I shoot out looking for more podcasts on directories, and off course asking my friends and colleagues on ##offrails to suggest their favorites... amazingly the only one who seems to podcast in there is Bryanl, but he offered me his OPML list, and about 60% of the casts I listen to came from him.

Now, Security Now with Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson. It has all I like in a podcast, not only a topic that I'm interested in, as a do-it-all professional, but also people who know the topic they're talking about and treat it at a decent pace, not wandering thorough the bushes doing useless dissertations and full stops (I've heard podcasts where the show hosts have had a full minute of "huh"s and "yeah"s.... it drove me absolutely insane.). Anyhow these two guys seem to know what they talk about, they can sound a little arrogant sometimes, maybe, maybe not. but instead of just reading off PR material or listing off their knowledge, they discuss the topics and analyze them, so it serves for a good reading (or listening).

Anyhow, one of the first podcasts I found for my iPod was the Cranky Geeks podcast. And I kind of enjoyed the half episode I listened to on my commute to job 1, so I checked out the podcast data at work, and found out with growing weariness that one of the hosts was Mr. Dvorak. I sighed a small sigh, and deleted the podcast from my directory altogether. Like with Mr. Cruise, I was going to give no brain-time or publicity "dollars" to Mr. Dvorak.

So up to now you might have three reactions. For 90% of programmers or people involved first hand in technology, the natural reaction, from what I've seen in the population I surround myself with, will be "He's useless". For the other %10 I've seen they don't know the guy or don't really care about him. I've not found someone yet who outright said he liked or admired John. And of course for people outside the field he'd probably be an unknown name, probably not so much. But, I'm thinking than rather than trying to explain Dvorak to the non-tech group, I'd love to try and explain Dvorak to ALL of the people who read me. Tech and non tech. even those that know him.

So what happened is this. Security Now, drove me to TWiT. Since it was done and created by one of the hosts (Leo Laporte) of a show I loved... And now TWiT is one of my 4 Favorite podcasts ever (The list at the end of this post). So, I had the "luck" of chancing an episode where Dvorak, who is part of TWiT as well, was out and not present at the show... this prepared me, since it let me fall in love with the show without prejudice, and when Leo mentioned Dvorak was out I distinctly remember thinking two things. The first thought was "Uh oh. I hope Dvorak is not a host, but an eventual guest." and the second one was "Hmm, Leo seems to know about technology in general, (and while I wouldn't call him an expert in anything, he normally gets the wide picture many technologists or companies don't, and he approaches as a very power user, which has advantage neither the users nor the engineers have, being narrow sided to their fields or positions) Why would Leo make a man like Dvorak a part of this show?".

So I listened to the show, and then downloaded the next episode, where Dvorak was not only there, but was there in full force. It was I think Ep. 112 or 113 where he took the position of the bad kid or antagonizer. And it was in this episode while listening at Dvorak AND Leo and the other guests working the podcast and interacting, that I got to see Dvorak in a totally different light, my appreciation of him changed... and now, I must admit, I like him, even if he does make me cringe sometimes.

So, what's the fuzz? well he's been famous, or infamous for a long time for coming up with hare brained or completely odd and crazy ideas, like mos famously saying apple should drop OS X in favor of Windows.

Well the problem is, I, like everybody I know who has a negative vision on Dvorak, used to take him seriously... And I don't even know how he'd react to this post if he were to ever see it, since he might sometimes say he IS serious... but now, I think he's not...

See I think what Dvorak does, is to look for sensibilities in people, and poke at them until they squirm and lash out in anger... now this could be seen as something a bully would do, or negative behavior, but I see it as very positive, for several reasons.

The most important one, is that when you rest in your own laurels, or you're single minded on following a path, having someone say something so outrageous about your work or company could work as a wake up call to what you're doing, even if what was said has no sense at all.

So now, I consider most of what Mr. Dvorak says, not to be literal, or true, but, like some sort of comedians that will tell you an outrageous joke with a straight face, or like Asimov who wrote his famous scientific "research" on Thiotimoline, I see Dvorak's works as a form of serious irony, a way to critique a system or technology by taking a route about it that's almost so outrageously wrong to be possible.

And with this, once I changed my view on him, I think he's a valuable tool, even when he touches topics I'm sensitive on, I try now to see beyond what he says, discard his solutions or opinions in part, and try to analyze what points he's attacking, to try and decipher why.

So, I still listen to TWiT, and I will continue to, not only with Dvorak being in it, but also because he's in it. (And with Leo, a guy that almost drove me insane when I saw a video of him using a t-shirt with a Tux in it, and who acts as a counter balance to Mr. Dvorak).

So I ask of you this. try to see beyond the mere words, and try to see the intention behind them, what I perceive to be the true intention. Maybe it'll change your vision too. Maybe not, I'm not an evangelist, I just want to share my discovery.

And, as promised, here is the list of the 4 podcasts I could NOT live without right now:

1) TWiT: This Week in Tech, a weekly dossage of trends in tech, basically the news you read about in boing boing, slashdot and other sites, commented upon by some nice people including Leo Laporte

2) Security Now: A weekly review not exactly on oopses or common mistakes, but more centered on technologies, and general ideas in security, specially as applied on your digital life, more oriented to power users and developers.

3) Escape Pod: A weekly sci-fi podcast, reading one sci fi story every week. The moderator has shown to be very similar to me in tastes and ideas, and it complements my nightly reading with some good weekly stories, some of these are or should be classics of the genre.

4) Software Engineering Radio: Incredibly technical and deep for a podcast, even bordering on reading code on the air. They treat topics central to programmers with guests who are experts on the topic. Very enlightening and as a programmer, something I really enjoy and learn from.

Steer My Deer

2007-10-07T15:15:00.000-04:00

Ok, mini poll comming up.

Let's say you're a friend or an aquaitance.

Let's say you've been forced to come here and respond. (I wont fool myself about self volition visitors. not yet.)

Let's say you've idly read around the blog some.

So, say to me... what do you want to see next? I mean, I'm about to try and revive this blog since carter and tshine for wathever reason in hell told me I should write more...

Well ok I will... my question is.. should I continue on pointless rants about society here?

Should I just show my odd self with my quotes, things I like and things I hate? should I go more to the programming side, show technical articles on stuff I'm doing or into? should I become both? a raging Dvorak frothing at the mouth about technology and trends?

Leave me your feedback your choices on the comments.

I am a very varied person, so wathever you may want I might be able to provide. Yeah even perverted and scary stuff though it's not what I enjoy sharing the most with unknown people whose shock I can't enjoy.

See you all. And leave comments.

Quotes

2006-11-13T00:46:00.000-04:00

"it was 300 something BC, they where all crazy" -- Me explaining Alexander to Juan

Tell me when

2006-10-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

WHEN!! WHEN!!!!!

Read this news item and then tell me:

HAVE YOU ALL GONE FUCKING INSANE OR WHAT?

I mean, we're even talking fucking Jimi Hendrix here! What a great irony, a man of the 70's, set for peace, love, understanding..... and suing the fuck out of everybody that liked his music? Go to the fucking hell already all of you american record industry.

I severely pray that you all crash down, that all this mindless shit returns to you threefold and eats you alive, to see you in the street beggin for mercy and a few coins.

But no, that happens to decent people who are too good to stab others in the back and to earn their money by fucking people repeatedly.

Fuck you hatemongers, pigs, leeches, useless shit, I hope you starve, I hope humanity excecrates you from our ranks, and lets you to rot under the sun.

Nothing, NOTHING can justify idiocies like this, nada, no ammount of RIAA propaganda will justify that a fucking bunch of assholes steal the music of a talented and giving man, rip it off it's meaning, twist it, and then use it as a weapon to pillage decent people from their livelihood.

I don't know what else to say. Go to hell, get out of my view, you're not human, you're not animals anymore, you're just reflections of pure evil incarnate into roting moving bodies. Fuck you.

Picture(96)

2006-06-17T12:35:00.000-04:00

Picture(96)
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

2006-03-24T00:07:00.000-04:00

Aquel, que robare a quien nada tiene, doblemente maldito sea.

He, who steals from whom that has nothing, doubly cursed be.

Pull the plug.

2006-01-23T23:54:00.000-04:00

Ok I've lost my head over many things, many times, but each time more and more I find myself loosing my head over corporations and policies in USA.

And I think it's time to pull the plug. I seriously think it would be possitive to start emigrating decent people from USA to the rest of the world, and let the country rot into nothingness.

Want to know what pissed me off so much now? you can even ignore www.alternet.org for a while if you wish, what about you read the EFF reports some? people are not people in USA, they're shit, Corporations are good, corporations are god, soulless entities are good, and individuals are shit, to be stepped on, spitted on, used, repressed and then thrown in to a ditch to die.

Stuff like the push into all devices by law of a technology you can't see or have public acess to. It's beyound dvd and css, you could always say "then do not buy DVDs" and you'd be right. But then under the cry of "Piracy!!! piracy!!! LOOK stop staring at the kids dying of fucking hunger in the streets, stupid as a wall because there is no education, instead see that I SAY and thus it's the UNDENIABLE TRUTH that if we don't force at gunpoint every person to purchase lots of media shit from us and pay us each single time they watch it over and over addicted to the USELESS SHIT we produce then it'll be the ruin of all persons and the country!!! quick!!! all the population wants to steal all the money in the country! ban ALL technology but the one we produce!!"

it's pure shit.

What's the trouble for all the rest of the world with this? since I live away from madmerica? Well because A) Many countries hold madmerica's word to be law, and follow it with eyes closed, thowards the cliff.
B) Given madmerica's short history of prosperity and economical bounty they hold a sizeably big ammount of the technology being made in the world, and the rest of the technology makers usually follow suit to madmerica to be able to access the ample market.

Given this, it's what I say, we need to salvage every worthy mind we can from USA before it implodes into complete stupidity, so that the world doesn't looses all the technological potential it means when it comes down.

.....
You know, I feel sad.
Once I used to enjoy Jhonen Vasquez very much for it looked to me to provide a caricaturized exageration of what I hated in the world so I could laugh at it.

I am not sure it's an exageration anymore, it's turning more and more scaringly real. What the hell is going on here? I mean, they're fucking directed thowards a "Brazil" (Gilliam's movie) society, eyes closed, mouth smiling, and screaming "I wunts my reality tv, fried chicken and freedom to shoot my neighborgh now!!"

Go ahead, sue yourselves into extintion.

The madness of corporations

2006-01-18T18:27:00.000-04:00

A new meme, the madness of corporations, this should be an easy topic, the larger the corporation, the harder it is to keep it under any semblance of order or logic.

As an example, this is a conversation between two persons (a friend and an aquaitance) I just presenced on IRC:

g1powermac> well that just sucked

Plugh> what, g1powermac?

g1powermac> I got a notice for UPS who can't find the street address either

g1powermac> and whatever the package was got sent back

Plugh> That's nice. :-(

g1powermac> some samples I ordered were shipped back, but I have no idea what samples

Plugh> How did UPS ever manage to let you know stuff was sent back?

g1powermac> got a postcard from them

Plugh> They can't find the address so figure they can't deliver the stuff but they still send something to this "nonexistant address" to let you know what they did.

g1powermac> yup

Plugh> Does that sound as stupid to you as it does to me?

g1powermac> yup

* Plugh shakes his head

Need I say more?
...

Things I Hate

2005-10-02T17:38:00.000-04:00

- People who call our tech department, because they need the help of a tech, and then proceed to disbeleive any response you give them, or, once you are finished they insist to keep half an hour reciting random icons in theyr system, in the chance that you forgot something "vital"

New topics

2005-10-02T17:36:00.000-04:00

From now on, You'll see a few new repetitive topics on the Blog, they will all be titled the same, and work in a similar fashion. These are:

- Things I hate
- Things I like (To balance the previous one).
- Things that happened (funny or weird stories).

Moby

2005-08-15T18:45:00.000-04:00

Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby,

Did I say Moby? no? damn, I tought I said Moby.

Anyhow, are you Moby? If you are Moby, I just wanted to let you know that your Journal, and the writings in your CDs have inspired something in me that has needed inspiring for a long, long time.

Thanks dude, you're cool.

And if you're not Moby, I'm sure you're cool as well, but saddly I don't know it.

Why don't you tell me how cool you are?

And so I sit to write.

2005-08-13T00:11:00.000-04:00

And so again, after a long time of saying nothing to the world, I sit down to write on my blog. At times I do ask myself if there is any logic to this, any ulterior reason that justifies siting and pouring a long, convoluted and hard to read rant on electronic media (and beleive me, this entry will be a rant as well, but the ideas in my head are half baked as of this point, so I'll cook them while I write them down), back to the topic of usefullness... Well, who knows, maybe nobody will ever visit this blog, maybe I'm writting in the wrong language since my closest friends in real life have a poor handle of english, maybe someone will stumble on this, or many someones, maybe I'll inspire, or maybe I'll leave no glory behind in these bits.

But someone at google decided to gift me some bytes in a metal plate, coated with a magnetic component that has been researched and built by humans for a long time, and well, I'll use these bytes they've given me.

And just as I write, I sit and think, I'm thinking many things, in an effort to legalize our collection of music and still be able to enjoy MP3s on the go, Juan and I are buying CDs in the legal, used, at Amazon and similar by the bulk. And today we received a bunch of CDs including Moby's hotel, and reading the booklet I discover something very interesting, and that is that I agree with Moby in many points and ideas, what he exposes in his booklet has meaning to me, makes sense to my mind, and besides being thoughts that I have nurtured and fed maybe under diferent faces but with the same soul, I see I share many things with Moby, and there are boud to be a lot of other details and aspects I do NOT share with Moby.

And there are a lot of tastes and aspects that I share with my friend Ray from IRC (hey there, I plan to send you this link when I finish this. So you can enjoy to see yourself mentioned somewhere in the internet again, and taking some more bytes for communicating your existence to the world.), and there are a lot of ideas and things I do NOT share with Ray, and this repeats with every one of my friends, and with many if not all of my admired figures among the stardom in all it's forms and manners.

So what's the message here, after a long and winded rant around it? well that for most of my childhood and a good part of my adolescence (or however the fucker is spelled, no I'm not going to spellcheck it.) I felt alone, uncomprehended and weird.

One thing that I tend to do is forget things, I've forgotten I'd pressume to quantify, about %80 of my childhood memories... Only a few remain to me, hidden under the rubble that is my conscious mind, and these I recover from time to time, not necesarily when I search for them in an act of self volition, but in a semi random manner when theyr indexes are triggered by a similar memory that links to it. One of the memories that I have just temporarily recovered, and that I will loose again until in a fit of boredom and forgetting ONCE AGAIN to read "the joy of tech" in my idle moments, I come back here trodding these hallways of memory, and reading this (if I get down this far) I'll remember this memory again, and the memory is, ladies and gentlemen, that I spent a long time in my childhood, as far back as I have a recollection of rational tought, trying to piece, to explain to myself why as a rational being I was unable to share feelings, toughts, emotions, and basically why I lacked a mental conection with other human beings. In these times I felt a lot of despair, I tought I'd never be comprehended or understood in full or even in part, and I basically felt like I was surrounded inexorably, and unbearably by an invisible barrier, a wall that separated me from the rest of humanity.. And I wondered if anyone else experienced what I did, if anybody else felt similarily shrouded, secluded, left behind... Uncommunicated...

And these days, having forgoten this very important column of my being, this that once took so much of my awarenes, that drove me so powerfully emotionally and rationally, I look back to my week, to my month, and I notice that more and more I've been having an increasingly recurring event of finding myself not so unique anymore, not so shrouded or separated, but that there is actually a glimmer of hope that some people if not understand me completely, at least understand some notion or idea behind me, or some part of my mind is shared with them, in a close enough manner that I feel at long last, that I am not alone.

Now I only need to sit down one day, and repeat this to myself, until not only I beleive it, but until I internalize it, and it becomes a common feeling more than tought, something that accompanies me daily, at every moment....

Afterall, remembering at long last the long anguished moments in my childhood I spent so earnestly hurting about the idea of being alone forever, trapped in my mind not being able to connect with anybody else and share it.... I can tell you, being alone sucks.

And not being alone is great.

My only problem, is that once again I take this too far. I read Natasha's wonderfull expressions of everyday life (See her comics here), and more than sharing the feelings and feeling wonderfull for sharing so much with her daily life and ideas, I feel desesperate to open my mind, and to somehow let her feel, know how much I appreciate not being alone, once again I wish I'd be living in some form of unified Ghestalt society, so much like Asimov's idea of Gaia, as exposed in the dying spasms of his Foundation saga.......

At leats I have my pup, Juan, whom I feel I do share a mind with, whom I closer to than anybody else on this world and who is my cane in moments of difficulty, and whose cane I sometimes expect to be and be able to help...

I'll keep trying to find a balance between sharing everything, and just paying company... afterall, trying to open your mind completely to someone is in a form, selfish, since your toughts get precedence over that person's, and more than an interaction between humans, you get one trying to impose his whole mind on the other....

Well this rant has gone long enough, and has begun to twist in the corners and get confusing and abstract, until my next time, be well, and, might you find your own happyness as well.

Lady and the tramp.

2005-07-23T22:31:00.000-04:00

Lady and the tramp.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

She did the doggie.

Doggie style.

A building.

2005-07-16T16:51:00.000-04:00

A building.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

I dont know why, but i liked this building, so i snapped it and i share it with you.

He is.

2005-06-12T19:39:00.000-04:00

He is.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

Cool baby.

Picture(3.jpg

2005-06-10T21:30:00.000-04:00

Picture(3.jpg
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

A new quote

2005-06-07T10:48:00.000-04:00

"I have a green thumb, everything on my fridge is moldy." -- Me

More fun

2005-06-03T16:10:00.000-04:00

More fun
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

Desk fun in virtual cambodia.

It's fun to work

2005-06-03T14:20:00.000-04:00

It's fun to work
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

In "cambodia"

A new quote.

2005-05-20T16:30:00.000-04:00

So, I was reading quotes from "American Beauty", remembering how good a movie this was for me, and thinking about buying it on DVD, when a new quote came to my head, I think it's a good quote so I'll blog it:

"Life is good, if you remmember you're gonna die" -- Me.

If you've watched the movie, and paid any attention to it, you'll know why I say so.

Be well.

Sometimes

2005-05-19T00:02:00.000-04:00

Installs are not as easy as one would like.

La libertador.

2005-05-16T14:10:00.000-04:00

Even if dirty this city is my home. So ill post pics of it from time to time.

GPL Is not free

2005-05-12T08:25:00.000-04:00

So, after all this time of using Linux and loving the GPL I've finally come to understand that it is esentially flawed, it is in fact not free.

So here is what it is about, at first as a yound idealist I tought GPL was noble, a way of protecting the source and making sure a corporation won't come and dominate others, kill the code and get away with it, now I realize how wrong I was, there is nothing NOTHING GPL can give us over other OSS licenses like BSD for example, here is the point, GPL is not free, they are trying to enforce a "Perfect world" THEYR perfect world, the GPL idealists like Stallman think (or at least say with theyr license and actions, because I can't penetrate theyr mind to read it) that ALL the source should be free and that everybody who ever does anything with any kind of source must make it free as well (free as in speech not as in beer mind you, I'm not one of these closed minded guys who think GPL means non-sellable) anyhow, in the outskirt this seems very noble at first, they want to help everybody to share, but if you sit one second and think about it, you'll see they're not actually helping everybody to share, they're forcing them to share, using THEYR style.

So basically what is going on is that the original developers are FORCING theyr view on anybody who intends to use theyr code for any means other than end user ussage.... How is this any different from an EULA from Microsoft that tells you how you can use the software you've licensed from them? it is not different, it's a diferent form of regulation, of limitation, but it is nonetheless a limitation still, imposed by the developer onto everybody else.

That's not my idea of fair.

Let me tell you why I got so much into Open Source at the start. I've had many passions in my life and I still do, I've choose to study and follow computing out of pure chance I think, I could've been a number of other things and many other areas of interest and many of them I still follow as a hobby, That is also how I started confronting computing and programming, as a hobby.

Now, doing something as a hobby means among other things, that you do not apply so many resources to it, being that time, money, effort. Since applying too many resources to a hobby will divert you from your normal life and supervivence which is bad. This made me understand something pretty quickly, with computing as with all complex jobs getting started is not easy and not cheap at all, not unless you find a mentor, a guide like in the old times when since childhood and if you were lucky, you aprenticed with a master of the trade you loved, and learned from him, earning your keep and study under theyr wing. And so it was that I found my mentor, my mentor was Open Source.

Each time I needed to learn something new, to programm something new, to try to understand a concept I didn't have to go out and buy expensive books, take long college classes which around the world are in general very expensive, and try to piece it out that way, I only had to download source code under an OSS license and read it, read the commens, the commands and learn from it... I first learned Java by reprogramming a simple Chat applet somebody else had done while checking out Sun's openly available API docs, I learned C by looking at a miriad of diferent GNU tools, I first learned Perl by reading the old Form Posting CGI script top to bottom until I understood every single line of it, and I always tought that of my programms when I ever release one (I code only in-house programms so far, but I have three on my mind right now that when i have some time I'll get down to coding and make) would be licensed in an open source manner to give another kid the opportunities I had, and it's not that I am saying all kids who affront this world do so as hobbists, what I say is that not being able to apply all your resources to a complex trade is similar to not having enough resources to apply to it, so yes, I'm speaking about poor people, about kids who had to skip school to work or due to lack of money or any other miriad of troubles.

By being unable to apply enough resources at this career on it's beggining I understood how it felt to be UNABLE to get all the resources you need to start it no matter how much you want them...

And I will still license all my code under an OSS license, just It will not be the GPL, because I will leave it to the kid's conscience and rationality to decide if and when they will do the same with theyr products and code when the time arrives, I want to give them a choice, not an obligation.

Now, there is another point to this whole discussion and that is that there are several flows of work being done in the industry, there is the research flow, creating new computing ideas, paradigms and methods (like for example the so hyped models), and there is the economical flow, companies make software to sell that clients purchase because they find it usefull... I agree sometimes the software is overpriced, but it's still a natural process of humanity, you make something others want and they pay you for it... in this licenses like BSD offer more balance than GPL does, since developing new specifications or functionality over any kind of existent code requires an economical inversion on the part of a company things like paying staff, equipment, electricity and so on, it's not only unfair but also unlogical to preted that a company that INVESTED money to perfect a product, to share it in such a means that makes it easy for other companies who have NOT invested money in the development to take such a program and profit from it.

Now let me clear things up a little on the last topic... many people (and I was one of these) feel very oddly about the BSD license, the feelings divide basically in two type of feelings, the first is that if the company bases on existent code done by someone freely to make a commercial product it's unfair since part of the authors (the original author) do not receive any kind of economical reward while the company does...

Still then you had to admit the company invested in the program, adding code the original author did not and investing time and money in it, as such if some people find use in the program and not in the original code it's more than fair that the company receives a monetary retribution for the new program. And that they protect the program and theyr retribution.

The second feeling is a feeling of stealing, of possesion, that someone took your/theyr code and changed it to make a commercial program sometimes can make us feel like the program was stolen, or taken away from us....

Nothing farther from the truth... possible the happiest day of my life as a programmer came when I did the realization that I could license a program in something BSD like and have as many people copy it and reuse it in ANY manner they want... my copy is still MINE I am the Author of the copy I posses (and registered... always register intellectual property for this reason, not to avoid people using your program but to avoid them saying it was originally theyrs and taking it away from your control for real). And if I see any feature I like implemented by others over my code, I am completely free to implement it myself to be used even under the BSD.... as long as it's not patented... and there lies the only hurdle in the road, like many people (it seems nowaday) I think the idea of patenting software is flawed, yes patents might be awarded but NOT for ideas, specially NOT for basic ideas, only for IMPLEMENTATIONS which is NOT the same.

So, the closing idea behind this all is, that GPL can be as unforgiving as the worst of licenses out there, and that the license that says to "Protect Freedom" actually is taking the freedom of protecting yourself from your own hands, and taking it on theyr hands, that's not free.

And this doesn't means that I will dump Linux inmediatly, it doesn't means I'll switch OS and change my whole system. But it does mean I'll think things twice before recommending systems at work now, and I will think things twice as the time of choosing the license my OSS will be released under comes near.

At 28, nearly 29 years old I get to know Microsoft is not the only "evil" corporation in the game..

Boy I was naive.

It all began

2005-04-25T00:27:00.000-04:00

In the sea.

I have several positions that might be hard to understand to some people who end up reading this blog, or hopefully, they will ring true to some, at least some.

One of these positions is that mysticness and science are rather than antagonist, a need for eachother, you can see it the plain banal way in the idea that science must be moral or at least fair and not cold and unfeeling, but I think it goes beyound.

Well among those mystic beliefs, I do beleive in elements, yes I agree it´s a human made concept, but the same way we make up ideas to categorize and understand this world, these ideas can have an influence on us, the same mechanisms that create the analogies and constructs, gives the constructs which do have a phisical manifestation the power to externalize emotions and the power to influence us emotionally and logically.

As such I am convinced my biggest two elements are fire and water, how I am convinced I will leave out of this discussion, and it's very propper that I am specially connected to two opposing elements, being myself a complex person who can swingle from one aspect to an opposing aspect during inclusive the course of a single day.

Anyhow, of the two elements I'd be hard pressed to choose, but if I had to, I'd possibly say my favorite one is water, I've often said that I'd be happy working in water all day long (be it sea, a lake, rivers, or similar.... no, being the lifeguard of the kiddy pool does not count.) and as such the realization I made tonight while watching Ep. 17 of Lost (great series, I really really really like it.. it could be more, but it's enough, and I like Loke a lot for I identify myself with him greatly), well the realization is that it all actually came from the sea, from the ocean.

Yes if theories are right, and I think they mostly are (we need to fine tune the details and discover a few secrets biology has managed to keep from us so far) all life on this planet originated on the sea, that means it all came from the sea... and yes I mean ALL even if rock did not originate in the sea properly (though some volcanic magma cools as rock under the sea) there is not a single centimeter in the surface on this planet that hasn't been shapper, altered or changed by a life form, not limited to us humans.

So how does this make me feel? well, for one my love for the sea has become deeper and stronger (if such a thing is possible), but it also sent me thinking, thinking that I need to share this with all of you (few) who read this blog ever, share it because it's obvious, too obvious... in our daily lives we tend to forget the obvious, to put it aside. We worry for the tasks and jobs we have over our shoulders, and we forget these universal truths that are behind everything, truths like "it all began, in the sea", and I think it's important to keep them conciously active in our minds, because they form a basis of ground or universe in which we stand and in which we place all the objects surrounding us to understand them and interact with them....

And if we're missing an important backing to our internal scenario, or a few important floorboards then our own scenario will be crooked, and the image we get of life and the universe will be twisted or unbalanced as well...

And I think that unbalance in our vision of this existence is the source of many of the current social, ambiental, emotional and political troubles.

Simply put, we need to remember our roots and our universal truths more often, to be able to form a healthier vision of the world, and to be able to interact and survive in a much more efficient and less harmfull way for us, the planet and all other living beings in it.

New adiction in the horizon.

2005-04-21T20:51:00.000-04:00

So, my time has come and finally after many struggles with destiny I
am becomming a Mac Addict.

It all started when the BF managed to get his hands on a PowerMac G3
B&W ZIF version, rev. A which we promptly upped to 1Gb of RAM, which
created an increible speedup in OS X (It came with Panther, in
American English). Well, I've used Macs before, and I once blindly
installed OS X for a friend in his copper keyboard powerbook (he is
the kind of guy that freaks out when faced with anything new, and
instead of learning the laughingly easy process of installing OS X
over 9.1 in that machine, handed it to me and asked me for help....
can you guys beleive this is a person who works as a netadmin? a Cisco
certified engineer!!! holy gods.)

Well anyhow, back on topic. Originally I was instantly in love with
the old Mac, specially with OS X, being a buff of User Interfaces I
liked what I saw, but for some reason the cache pushed the exitement
of it faaar back into my memory, possibly it was a defensive meassure
it being at the moment impossible for me to afford a Mac to play with,
much less a powerfull enough machine to substitute my daily
workstation needs... I told of this affiction to the BF but we both
forgot it quite fast... that is until "Azulita" ("Little blue one" in
spanish (female) ) entered our lives thorough a friend.

All I can say is that we're both delighted and have started spending
more time together... gathered around the Mac, hehehe. What can I say,
I find OS X to be the smartest UI anyone has ever put over a run of
the mill Unix system, my other big love.. And the BF being a musician
(a group that benefits markedly well from Macs, tought expensively so)
and a lover of design has fallen in love for the little details and
eye candy this machine comes with.

Now let me clear up a little about my last paragraph, I REALLY love
this machine's UI, there are several kinds of UI reactions I get..
Normally I'm an UI buff altough for some reason, shortmindness or
similar I've not perused the field professionally or read anything
about it yet, I am basically a wilder, and what I like to do is to
look at user interfaces and analyze them.

On the side of the bad interfaces there are two basic types, these
interfaces that are so counter intuitive that my primary reaction upon
laying eyes on them and watching them work is disgust or even outrage,
and then there are these interfaces that are usseable, but whose long
term use ends up either reprograming you into a different manner of
thinking, a more obtuse one, not a better one.. or ends up tiring you
to the point in which using the artifact becomes a chore and not
simply a moment in your life or even a pleasure.

As examples of these interfaces I can give i'd assign Motorola phones
to the first type, Motorola cell phones are the best built phones in
the market, and I think no other phone is able to whitstand so much
abuse with elegance as a Motorola can, not even a Nokia which comes
close..... But after only two minutes of grabbing any Motrola phone
(there has not been a SINGLE exception yet) I have the primal urge of
smashing the thing on the floor and jumping on top of it until all
that there's left of the phone is the sole memory.

As an example of the second case, I'd think of Nokia Cell Phones. Yes
I'll use only Cell Phones as my examples, what can I say, they're
gadgets I love, and they possibly have the strictest UI troubles to
address out there in the market (disregarding 80's and 90's musical
synthetizers which usually had to manage an interface understandable
to a musician using only an 8x2 to 20x2 LCD matrix and a few
buttons... my gods that was a load of work). Anyhow, Nokia phones are
really nice phones too, and unlike Motorola Phones everything seems to
have been placed in an arragement understandable by humans and logical
enough, But... it has lacking and tiresome errors, even in the newer
phones capable of matrix menuing the menues feel archaic, no matter
how many colors, animations and icons they shove into the devices,
they're still longer to navigate than is necesary, and some features
are practically inmentionable. It might be true many of these are due
to my lack of knowledge on reconfiguring the phone (well, lack of time
spent doing so actually), but providing a logical interface to the
user at DEFAULT STATE without having to reconfigure the device and
it's functioning is part of what a good UI is, the UI should be
logical by default, not forced to be so after a long battle with
options and tweakings.

Well, resuming my long talk, on the good side of user interfaces I
also can identify two interface types... first these that are just
logical, have a smooth flow, are quick to learn, and work under
basical human concepts and tought patterns that liberate the user from
a long learning process or the task of memorizing dauting lists of
strokes, menues, entries or similar items. A phone that would fit this
category easily is the Siemens line of phones... the Siemens line of
phones have several disadvantages (as a long time owner of several I
should know) but something they do stand appart in is in an almost
perfect UI, confortable, quick, unobtrusive, inspiring, all in all a
great Interface.

The other type of the possitive UI is that which complies with all of
the previously mentioned points, but which with intensive use (and I
mean intensive, not incidental) show you even newer and more
incredible treasures, the interfaces that are streamlined and
confortable to use in general, but that when you intensively use and
learn show you time saving options, confortable strokes, and advanced
shortcuts, and little secrets that once learnt (saddly being advanced
points they mostly do not come naturally) expand your world by two,
these interfaces make using the device a joy, for you do not only get
a responding easy and confortable device, but you get almost limitless
learning from it, discovering which is one of my most marked traits (I
love to discover), in it jewels all the time, it's like never ending
fun...

A phone that matches that last part is the Sony-Ericsson phones, from
the first baby the great t68 (i/m) to the newer phones, they always
have something more in store for you. Don't get me wrong, the UI in
these phones is not perfect, there are little details in them that do
not show in Siemens phones or even in other devices like Sagem (a
Siemens lookalike but with a much shallower interface). But the SE
phones never reach a limitation in theyr possibilities, you could have
one for years, and still discover new ways to work in them, new
confortable ways. It's like a ladder, step by step even the first step
is usseable and great, but the higher steps into the stairs offer new
possibilities to the learned one opening theyr horizons, the only sad
point with said interfaces and phones is that all learning experiences
comes from interacting with more advanced users, since the manuals
provided by the manufacturer are always shallow and lack depth and
teaching.

Mac OS X beats that and goes beyound it... inclusive many of the
tricks of the OS X are intituively learned by someone used to User
Interfaces, no need for manuals, teaching, or searching... I've always
ALWAYS been able to decypher an UI intuitively, and learn how to use
it (not meaning I can automatically learn what some values in the
interface represent and how they are calculated or affect the outcome
of things, since these are the terrain of the type of work the device
does and not the terrain of the UI itself), but with OS X it's the
first time ever that i've been able to not only learn an interface
intuitively, but to also learn it's tricks and secrets intuitively!!!

Bravo Apple, Bravo.

What can I say... I'm sold... we're both about to save for a Mac Mini
for the common tasks, and cpu upgrades to convert Azulita into a
studio workhorse.

For a big coffee

2005-04-21T18:10:00.000-04:00

You possibly need a crane for your sugar.

My first posting.

2005-04-21T17:09:00.001-04:00

Another blog, another start, where will this all end? when will it all stop?

My guess is possibly when I find a place where I feel at home, and where the tools actually help me rather than encumber me. Well, lets try this, and pray for the best.

Hi all.