Things I Hate

- 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

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

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.

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.

Lady and the tramp.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

She did the doggie.

Doggie style.

A building.

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.

He is.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

Cool baby.

Picture(3.jpg

Picture(3.jpg
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

A new quote

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

More fun

More fun
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

Desk fun in virtual cambodia.

It's fun to work

It's fun to work
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

In "cambodia"

A new quote.

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

Installs are not as easy as one would like.

La libertador.

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

GPL Is not free

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

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.

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

You possibly need a crane for your sugar.

My first posting.

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.