Simple web

My only mexican friend told me about this web, Craigslist. It's a good thing to look at its design, and think whether a fancy design is always necessary to build up an excellent webpage. I am working on an employment website at my company, and couldn't help
being really attracted by Craig's simplicity. Our website is so much more complicated! So, maybe we could build our own craig for Barcelona, um? What do you think, mexican and southern spaniard (Granada is also accepted, I'm sure the government will fund it if it's for southern Spain :) )?

Bush's turkey

Again from Wired Furthermore (i'm not very creative today, i must say :)
"You know that picture of President Bush serving a big, fat turkey to the troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day? It was a fake. Not the photo, but the bird. Turns out the succulent-looking gobbler was merely an attractive centerpiece -- provided by a subsidiary of Halliburton, no less -- concocted to make Bush look like the consummate host. According to the Washington Post, the soldiers were served slices from a much more modest bird, well out of camera range."

And I say: politics is just another form of advertising.

The last dinner

That's from Wired Furthermore:
"Fattened for the Kill
Texas executes prisoners about as often as some guys change their underwear, but you can't say the condemned don't check out without a square meal. Until a recent redesign of its website, the state's Department of Corrections routinely posted the last meals of those about to die, which ranged from the simple to the extravagant. John "Jackie" Elliott, for example, requested tea and cookies before his execution last February. Then there was Richard Head Williams: two chili cheese dogs, two cheeseburgers, two orders of onion rings with French dressing, a turkey salad with fries, egg rolls, chocolate cake, apple pie, butter pecan ice cream, one peach, three Dr. Pepper sodas, jalapenos, Ketchup and mayonnaise."

I find it disgusting. Can you feel the absolute indifference to those who died? What the hell this journalist thinks he is writing about? Is it just irony, or... can you be ironic about that?

More on flying

By the way, I know a very easy way to fly.

Flying

So it turns out that yesterday it was a 100 years that the first plane actually flew.
Some guys spent a long time building an exact replica of the plane the Wright brothers
first used to fly, and a celebration was prepared with 35,000 people waiting to see
the plane fly. Even Bush was supposed to go, though he finally didn't. Well, the thing is
that the replica of the plane, such an exact replica, did not fly at all. Not even the 36 meters of the first Wright brothers' plane. 100 years ago, 3 people were witnessing the Wright brothers experiments. Yesterday it was 35,000, but it didn't work. America is not what it used to be, not anymore? Great things always happen among few people.
(read about it at Wired)

Nice nickname

Monday Dec. 15, there's this comment I really like, specially because of the nickname of the person who wrote it. He (or she) is: "criminal mind trapped in a geek's body". Is it you, José? I really doubt it. Fascinating things await us. Geekhood. Geekness.

A word for Jose

José, today I read the work "geekhood". I thought you would be really happy to know that such a word exists.

My pupil

There's a friend of mine who is reading this blog in order to learn english. Joaquin, you can start laughing.
(Joaquin is the nasty mexican that thinks that my english is not good, and tries really hard to convince me that my english is really bad. Joaquin is like that, you know.)

The idea

The idea is: I write a novel which is inserted into a diary. In the diary, I talk about people who appear in the novel too. Now the problem is to make everything coherent, specially the story.

Changing your history

I just saw that you can actually insert postings with an old date, so that it is possible to modify your own blog history.
For example, I could write that the last 7th of November I saw a policeman and he told me "stop writing your stupid blog, or you will end up in prison.". I don't know, things like that. Virtual history is changeable.

Pot

Yesterday night I was completely high, and thus had lots of brilliant ideas to write on the blog. Well, I forgot almost all of them. That's the pity about pot. You forget brilliant stuff, just right after you think about it.
Sometimes, when I'm high, I play this game: I try to remember what I just thought of some seconds ago. Sometimes it's really hard.

What?

What could I write for the last four minutes of my lunch break?
Just that: I found the perfect place in Barcelona to listen to good live music. It's the Taller de músics jazz&blues club (click on club, that's the bad thing about frames: get it, jose? ... I don't even ask Joaquin, I know he doesn't know about this kind of stuff).
Every day they have a different jam session devoted to a particular style: jazz, blues, latin jazz, flamenco jazz, etc.
There are two floors, so you can sit upstairs for a perfect view, and to avoid being hurted by a flying bottle of beer (just like in Prague, joaquinsito).
You can smoke as much pot as you want.
If you bring in your own instrument, you can always play.
Voice is also considered an instrument.
And it's just two euros, beer included.
Ok, that's all. Work again.

Dilbert

I already enjoyed Dilbert's cartoons a lot, but now that I have a job and I work in an office,
I even enjoy them more. You know, some business professors use Dilbert's cartoons to explain
some organizational science stuff... You can find some of his cartoons at Dilbert.com. I recommend
you subscribe to get one every morning.

Mexican and Spanish

Today I received a job offer to work as a proofreader. The funny thing is they ask for the following: "native spanish speakers (spanish and mexican)".
Since I am a Spanish native speaker of spanish, should I apply for it?
P.S. Please Joaquin do not add a comment saying that you as a mexican are so cool that can apply for the job because mexicans know spanish and mexican and bla bla bla... Ok, please add it.

Jose Alfredo says

Jose Alfredo says he can't post any comment. And if he can't do it, I wonder how the mexican, much
less skilled than Jose Alfredo in computer science stuff, can do it.
Conclusion: I hate you guys, I hate you guys so much.

Letters

I am becoming so lazy and terribly untidy that I loose the letters I have written yet not sent to my friends. I guess I'm used to click send and have it sent. But a letter.... the envelope, the stamp. I can't believe I'm saying this. Better change to another thing, butterfly (typical spanish expresión, "a otra cosa, mariposa". Popular slang is very weird sometimes.)

Woody

Yesterday I saw his last movie at 0:45am, at the cinema, of course.
Then I went back home and started writing a novel. It's about a guy
who is obessed about writing a novel that Woody will adapt to the big
screen. And he does it. Now what do I put in the other 200 pages?
Writing is too slow to be good, or too good to be slow.

The geeks

I work for an online company, I say.
In the hidden corner, far away,
is where the computer geeks stay.
It is no work and all play
with all these geeks in a tray
ready to work until May
whenever I say something like hey.

Yeah, poetry is nice, but the truth is the geeks end up doing whatever they want. All work and no play is what I get.

How does it feel?

Well, nothing to do with the lyrics of "like a rolling stone" (did i tell you that i am preparing a version of this song,
like rolling stoned"?)
Anyway, ever asked yourself how does it feel to write your blog from work? Well, I'm doing it now, and I don't feel specially guilty. I will, one day, probably, when they send me all the webpages I have visited and then put it as an excuse to fire me. But when one is commiting the crime, one cannot feel guilty.

One bourbon, one scotch, one beer

Dear Joaquin, I bought two Coronas and two good Spanish beers to have a nice night watching football down here in Barcelona, and then hopefully write something worthwhile. I am home alone, so happy, and so sad.

Chuck Berry

This is the name of the famous rock and roll man... but Chuck Berry started, like almost everything in this world, with the blues. I recently found this purely blues CD of his, Run Around, and can't stop listening to it. There this song, Sweet Sixteen, a fine, simple, austere, exact, elegant blues, a real blues after all, that goes something like this for the first part:

Sweet sixteen
Sweet sixteen
Sweet sixteen
Sweet sixteen
You're the sweetest little babe
That I've ever seen

Chuck repeats "sweet sixteen" four times, one for each blues phrase, and it is just perfect. There's no way someone else can play it. It's his voice, it's his soul. This song is just made for him, he is just made for this song, for this two words that from Chuck's mouth become the highest form of art. Better than art, feeling. Feeling that you can feel deep inside your bones. Sometimes, a CD track comes back to remind you what life is capable of.

Being serious means you can't be funny most of the time

Yeah, that's a bad thing... you get your money at the end of the month, but you leave the things you like (friends and blogs, friends and beer, etc.) for the weekend. Exactly what I am doing now.
I remember that I hated my first teenage job as a shop assistant until I received my first weekly paycheck... Suddenly, I found myself with 100$, Saturday night, after working 60 hours, ... no time to think I was so tired and I was being paid so low...

I am a serious man now

Yes, I am a serious man now, and still can figure out whether I like it or not.
Well, so, my "seriousness" is just that I got a serious job, first one in my life.
So you see, I'm 25 and I have a job with no exact title... I work at the Operations
Department of a dotcom company that creates all these websites to find employment and masters and postgraduate courses...
I think it's funny that, after using all these tools to find a job online, I end up working for a jobs website...

What the prince knows

Today I read an interview with this cool aristocrat named Jose Luis de Vilallonga... he had a life like I would like to have: plenty of money because he has some noble title, and a life devoted to acting (they say he even made it with Ava Gadner), writing and eating. Anyway, he is a kind of "alternative" spokeman for the king. When he was asked about the imminent marriage of the prince and a "middle class girl", he said it was good that the prince married a girl who knows how much is a bottle of milk and a metro ticket. Cause the prince doesn't know, he said. I liked that.

Joaquin the bad boy

Ok, now I see, it was just Joaquim who posted the comment of the 7th of November. You see, he always likes to be misterious, but the IP address is always there. What I still can't really imagine is that, because of my blog, he lost his time looking for the domain of Letizia on eBay. I certainly have a strong influence on his personality. That's how I am.

A ticket to California

The other day I was waiting in the line to buy a ticket in the train station. The guy before me was young and quite nervous, he asked me a couple of times whether he was in the right line to buy tickets. His girlfriend was by him. Finally, it's the guy's time to buy the ticket, so he tells the ticket seller: "A ticket to Galicia" (Galicia is a region in Spain, where Joselito's past remains, kind of like saying "a ticket to California" in the US). I thought it was cool. "A ticket to Galicia". So the ticket seller answered: "So you want a ticket to ALL Galicia at the same time, or to a PARTICULAR place?". Then the guy realised his mistake and everything became quite boring, just usual ticket selling.

I forgot the title in the last post

Well, the title could simply be "shit", which is always attractive.

Shit! Look at the first post of the 7th of November (so the last one when you scroll down). Somebody posted a very funny comment. How the hell did he/she ended up in my page? Is that because I added some meta tags with "Letizia Ortiz desnuda" (Naked Letizia Ortiz, Letizia Ortiz being the next queen of Spain, if nothing turns out wrong) as keywords? Or is it just dear old Joselito, geeking around? I don't know, but I'm kind of impressed (and I have the flu too, still!)

Now it turns out you can put the title

See? It's too long since I didn't mess a bit with blogger... that until now I haven't discovered that there's a title feature. So there it goes. I'm known for being an excellent title finder.

Well, for the last couple of days I haven't moved from home. Apparently, I have the flu. A professor I had once used to say that the shot to prevent you from getting the flu was a thing of the powerful so you never skip working days cause you're ill with the flu. A sort of marxist interpretation, I dare say. He went on to say that actually having the flu is "healthy", because you have time to relax home, reading in the sofa, and with all the aspirins and stuff you don't really suffer much from fever or body pain. So I should be happy, then. Yeah, I'm happy to have the flu. Screw the capitalists that want to shot us with the western medicines so we don't get the flu. I'm happy, I have the flu, and all my muscles hurt, and my head aches, and my body's hot, and I can't read a page without getting tired.

This days, you have to include the following sentence in your webpage in order to get in the first page of google: "fotos de Letizia Ortiz desnuda" or "Letizia Ortiz en top less" or "Todo sobre la vida de Letizia Ortiz".... you might have guessed that Letizia Ortiz (some people write Leticia Ortiz) has something to do with it. Well, it does, I mean she does, because it has just been announced that she will be the next queen of Spain, I mean she is going to marry the prince of Spain, and then when the king dies and all this bla bla bla...

I am of those who thinks that technology can't bring you anything unless you use it properly in the proper context... Last week, the put in prison a guy in China because he published his essays on the net... Is that the "information society" we are all so proud of? Where is the supposedly inherent freedom of the Internet?

I have a dream... I have a dream, yes I do, that one day Bernardo's crappy page will be the most visited page in the Internet.

So today I did something quite cool, or maybe not. I bought a domain name! Yes, that's what I did, it's the first time I own some kind of space somewhere. But it's not the "owning" what makes me happy... (well, maybe yes, maybe i am a neoliberal) because actually i put it on sale right after i bought it (which makes me even more neolineral, damn it!)
Anyway, as an internet surfer, you know, i have the dream of doing something here sometime, so i started with a capital of 6 euros to buy a domain name... And the name is.... is..... www.areabarcelona.com
I hope to fill it with something with it really soon... maybe i will just start by putting this weblog there, keeping the fruitman blogspot, of course! (a fruitman never gives up!) So ideas are welcome, as always (and everytime i write something like this i know my message will at most get to joaquin or jose... Am I right??? Ok, in the meantime do not forget to visit Bernardo's crappy page.

Man, things happen. Take it as you want.

Should I focus this weblog on something? It was pretty interesting to read the blog of this berkeley girl, where she writes everything she overhears in the streets of berkeley. Well, you see, she has a focus, and I don't.

By the way, I would like to know whether any of you has succeded in creating a business online... I don't mean you're making a lot of money with it, just interested in experiences you had, both good and bad. Usually, one only reads about the great success stories, but I think there are lots of little successes in the internet, and I would like to know about them, if you don't mind.

Today I started a novel... or sort of. It's a book about the inhabitants of a building, several stories which at some point cross with each other. Kind of short cuts, but with more formal freedom... I want to put all sorts of texts there... let's see, cause I have started some books before, but it's difficult to be constant... A way would be to do it online with a weblog, which is something I'm thinking about.

Everyday the catholic church goes worse and worse... now they say that the
condom is not a tool to prevent AIDS, but that AIDS can go through the condom.
Therefore, because using condom encourages having sexual relationships, condoms actually help AIDS to spread.
But don't worry, the catholic church only says that in the third world.

so fonally, after almost one month, i am back
i don't know whether that's good news to anyone,
i don't know whether that's something to anybody,
but it's a fact, you can't deny it if you're reading it.
i am back, with dsl.

Well, I kept reading about the penis enlargment pills thing, and (don't miss it!) it turns out that the
main ingredient of the pills is some plant called "Horny Goat Weed"... I can't help laughing either.
Here's some more literature:
"Horny Goat Weed was discovered centuries ago when Chinese goat
farmers noticed all their male goats, young and old, experienced a kind of sexual rejuvenation after
eating the Epimedium plant."
I am even thinking of ordering this thing, seriously, this guys rock :)

By the way, the quote in the previous post is from http://www.nudrivescience.tc/grx/?inks&veri
I don't want to be accused of high literature plagiarism.

So yes, I decide to click on one of this spam ads that comes through hotmail so often...
and I was struck by this sentence: "Penis enlargement as we know it will never be the same"
I am gonna start reading this emails more often... they are much more fun than some of the
emails from my friends :)

What about www.toblogornottoblog.com .... here's a thought
(again, nothing else to do :)

To blog or not to blog, that is the question
(sorry, I got nothing else to do)

Ah, and leaving London makes me think that I also say bye to super broadband access from campus... back to
good old dial up access... well, actually crappy dial up. I hope this blog doesn't suffer much from this change... :)

Tomorrow's the big day, or sort of. Actually, not a big deal. I am leaving London, the place from
which I started this blog, and in the last two months, a place of big happiness too... I never
thought I could miss London, but certainly I have to say that it's a great place.
I'm quite glad I changed my mind about London... you know, when I live in a place, I like
to leave it with some sort of melancholy and regret... otherwise, it would be like I wasted
my life this year...
So if you plan to go there, drop me a line and I'll tell you some places to go... Start with Covent
Garden, on a Saturday's evening, having a beer and watching people walk by... and the following
day, greet your eyes with some Regents Park, and the bookstores around.
Bye, London.

Lately, my eye's been hurting quite a lot, since I've spent long times before the computer.
Does anybody know how to get rid of that? I can't imagine working all day in front of
a computer if I'm to go with this pain forever...

I don't know about this terrorist market thing...
There's an article here by UC Berkeley information economist Hal Varian defending the Pentagon's project, something not easy given all the attacks it has received.
To me, it is just the proof of what some economists would like the world to be. They study a theory that says that markets converge to equilibrium eventually, and then there you have them wanting to set up markets everywhere. But there's a limit to what a price can tell. And there's information asymmetry as well.

I really like the pictures in Oates from Tanger photolog. I can't believe he can get such quality with such a small camera.
Check out this one, quite funny.

I just read an interview with Santiago Lario where he claims that there seems to be a gene responsible of love... (the interview's in Spanish, so you'd better get learning Spanish if you haven't done so before :)
It looks like recently there is an interest among scientists to explore issues traditionally left to poets and thinkers in general. Just yesterday, I read another interview where another scientist, Francisco J. Rubia, claimed that spirituality has its origins in some mechanism of the brain.
I welcome these approaches of science to the more human side of humans. While I do not completely agree with a radical rationalization of the sentimental, I think that science has interesting things to say here. At least, it opens new ways to explore such domains, ways that widen the metaphorical fields of literature as well. So, if it wasn't clear enough, I guess literature cannot ignore science anymore, and vice versa.
Some might say it's another proof of the post modern era that we are supposedly living in. I say it's a celebration of knowledge about the human, far more interesting to me that seeking to explain the movement of planets. As interesting as this is, I like to think of scientists that for a while stop to think about humans rather than rocks.
But let's not forget the words of Spanish poet Becquer, who once wrote "as long as there is a mistery for Men, there will be poetry". Nice verse. Will anybody try to explore the brain mechanisms responsible for the creation of beauty through words? I'm sure there is one, already.

I wrote that the other day, kind of like it, specially the last sentence:
"In the airports, there is a line where passengers have to separate from
their relatives, friends or
whoever went to say bye to them. "Acompañantes", we say in Spanish. I don't
know what's the word in English. There is a clerk there checking passports,
and many times the persons accompanying the passenger ask the clerk whether
they can continue a bit more, maybe until the boarding door. Systematically,
the clerk has to answer "no". Then, the passenger and their relatives, maybe
the significant other, hug and kiss and even cry, and pronounce these words
that are always pronounced in such moments. And they do as if they say
definitely bye, but then hug again and try to make the most of 30 seconds
more...
I wonder what the clerk thinks. I am sure he/she has to see the same scene
at least 20 times a day. I wonder whether they feel sad, or they don't feel
anything at all.
Yesterday, I looked at the clerk, and she seemed to say something to me with
her eyes. She seemed to say I have to see that everyday, and I don't like
it. She seemed to feel the same impotence I felt, the same "things are like
this, not that they are reasonable, they are just like this, and you, you or
me can't change anything at all."
A border, like a cementry, is a sad place to work at."

More from Wired Furthermore, this one really funny (with all my due respect for those involved in the story)
"08:29 AM Jul. 30, 2003 PT Vincent Canby, esteemed film critic for The New York Times, wrote a fine appreciation of comedian Bob Hope, who died the other day at 100. In it, he dutifully recounted Hope's long list of accomplishments and the salient moments of his long life. Of course, Canby must have written it a while ago, since he himself has been dead since October 2000. No doubt Canby, and the editors of the Times, expected the critic to outlive the comedian. Canby was a mere 76 when he departed this mortal coil. "

This is from Wired Furthermore, 31st July
"The highway to hell has just met its maker. That's right, New Mexico's Route 666, aka "Highway to Hell" or "Satan's Highway," was formally re-christened Route 491 on Wednesday. "After 77 years of concern and discontent we have finally removed any reference to the devil from this highway," said Gov. Bill Richardson. The infernal stretch of road runs through mountain valleys for just over 100 miles in the northwest part of the state, and has some of the highest fatalities per mile of any highway in New Mexico. Most of the 666 highway signs were stolen after the name change was announced in May. Officials blame thieves looking for souvenirs. Or was it the devil?"

Now there's this guy from New Zealand, Peter Lynds, who apparently has published
a paper as important as Einstein's 1905 one. Ah, and he only went to university
for six months. That's why some physicists wouldn't let him publish the paper because he
didn't have a degree. Really, I hate this academic world. There should be another way.

Today I smoked again in my room. I can still see it now, the smoke claiming his mastery over the air of the room,
which now looks delicately pale, forming spirals that rapidly change to forms with no name.
No need to say why I started smoking again in this little piece of land that I call my room. Like the smoke and its
nameless shapes, my life looks again for a name, for a space.

I tell you, this last month I've been trying to wake up at 6am, work until 2pm and
then have the rest of the day free... I did it once. It was great. But I could only
do it once.

i am planning to buy a digital camera and start one of this
photo bloggers... but first i need to get a job :(

ai ya...
this paper is driving me crazy...
well, i suppose that's what happens when you come back from
holydays: work is always there waiting for you

Well, about my holydays, just one conclusion: holydays are great.

So I come back from my holydays and I find all this Kelly stuff...
fishy, fishy,... to some (me included) the confirmation of something obvious.
Day after day my Mr Blair becomes a little bit more disgusting to me.
Poor Giddens, the man had to stand being the "academic branch"
of this bastard.

The New York Times is reporting on a new method increase brain power. Through a technique of transcranial magnetic stimulation, you can become a savant for a short period of time.
After the short period of time, you become a sucker again. Good method to pass exams, though.

today i smoked an indonesian cigarette: anybody out there knows how they look?

the g key of my keyboard is failing... gggggg... mmm, i can feel it every time i press, it's about to die
poor g key, i pressed you again, and again, again, again (no end to that, hope you understand the joke, a very subtle one, by the way)
i am proud of myself, i am impressed

that's just a comment i posted in quackin (by the way, master quacker, congratulations for adding the comments feature to your blog), and then i thought i'd publish it here too:

"oh, i really wish i could go to moe's and read every day... here there are no bookstores like moe's. but come to think about it, where is there any bookstore like moe's? what i found is a very old bookstore that has a secret stairway to the basement, where they have the complete penguin collection of paperbacks... it really stinks down there, but i felt really british surrounded by the wisdom that the penguin collection holds in its endless pages. shit, i'm gonna put that in my blog!"

moe's is THE bookstore in Berkeley.... and the penguin collection, well, you'd better know what it is.

While I am away, you can choose to read the excellent stuff that my quacking friend
has in his brand new weblog: Quackin
Enjoy!

So it looks like I haven't posted for a while, and that I won't be able to do so in the next week as often as I would
like. Several pressures around me, all of them quite pleasant though... For what is better, a life in the real world
or a life in the virtual interstices of blogger? I leave the question in the air...

Q: What is big and red and eats rocks?
A: A big red rock eater.
Here is an excellent variation on this joke, from the five-year-old kid who prefers not to disclose his identity:
Q: What is big and red and eats sand?
A: A big red rock eater on a diet.

"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
Benjamin Franklin

The BBC places this piece of news just next to the one I commented before:
"A woman prodded her partner with a kitchen knife to get him to clean their flat - and cut a major vein in his thigh. The 47-year-old man died after suffering "catastrophic bleeding", a court heard. "
I think it's a bit ironical from the BBC, and now also from me, who used it here.
But, irony appart, let me add this additional comment: editors should be more sensitive
about where to place certain links, even though the key words might relate both pieces of news.

"US researchers say survey results show those children who have seen their fathers
help out around the house have more friends than those who have not.
They are also less likely to get into trouble at school and less depressed or withdrawn."
So I guess the ideal would be then to have gay parents :)

So the "Matrix Reloaded" has been banned in Egypt because it's "too religious".
The censors say that, "in spite of the technology and spectacular special effects, the
movie tackles themes such as existence and creation". The movie "tackles the issue of
the creator and his creations, searching the origin of creation and the issue of compulsion
and free will," it said. This could provocke a "crisis" in Egypt, and strike its "social peace."
What annoyed the censors the most is that they really enjoyed the movie, but were outraged
when they discovered it looked into the origins of "free will". Obviously, religion is sustained by
the anihilation of free will, which becomes only a choice for God.
Quite frankly, if Egypt, Islam and their "social peace" can be threatened by the cheap philosophy of
The Matrix reloaded, then their social peace cannot be very strong.

A really funny site, The gay test
Just that, it's a test of your level of "gayness". There's one for every gender and
sexual orientation, and as far as my results are concerned, I think it's quite accurate.
Good luck, whatever result you expect!!! :)

Here's a simple but sincere weblog, Caylin's life, sort of dirty realism stuff.
If I was Caylin, I certainly wouldn't complain that much about the dissertation, as I did before. It may sound like what everybody
says, but one should always look at things from bird's eye, rather than ant's eye (if you know what I mean)

Yesterday I came across some websites dedicated to provide you with topics you can deal with in your blogs.
I thought it was curious, and then I came up with the following question: "what would be your ideal job?"
I will write about it some day... briefly, it would be something like getting paid for writing some bullshit here :)

Well, not much to say today.
I've been all day in university, trying to find out what to answer in my masters dissertation.
It's kind of frustrating that I am spending so much time looking for a good research question to answer.
But as a friend once told me, "writing papers is all about coming up with a good research question. Once
you have it, the rest comes easy". However, sometimes I wonder whether I enjoy creating trouble in my life.
Seems that's what I've been doing so far...

By the way, I'm not into leather :) As a matter of fact, I don't know how the hell I came across the link I gave before.

Check this out: leather blog project
It's a project to get 100 weblogs (quote) "as an attempt to create a greater sense of online leather community,
debunk porn images of how leathermen live, and record the lived experience of leatherfolk".
You see, there's a blog for everybody.

By the way, Written on the body is good stuff.
I love its desing, specially the drawing of the written body... where can i find it?

This is from Written on the body.
"I work for lots of reasons, but being able to pleasure my culinary senses is perhaps the biggest reason of all."
I fully agree with that, Caitlin, except that I still don't work and yet manage to have excellent food.
But this won't last long, unfortunately.

Ok, now for a bit of thinking...


Ok, here it is, a thought: "that the internet is truly great"
Yeah, not very original, you might say, but you have to understand that my precious child is starting to become visited by other people than my friends and my sister (to whom, by the way, I say hi) ... and this simple things can make a guy like me happy.

So I go prepare some dinner, but before start a new kind of post... "Cooking posts" I will here explain what I eat, and more importantly, how I prepare it :)
It would actually be great to maintain a blogsite with cooking recipes... here's an idea, for the ones looking for one. And for the others, here's what I'm going to prepare now:

"The Fruitman pasta"
---------------------------

Fry in a pan some onion (the violet one is great, but others will do), and add before it is brown some chopped mushrooms and crougette. Then some bacon in little pieces. Let everything cook together, slowly.

Boil some pasta (I usually eat 200 grams, but my ex flatmates think this is enough for two people... anyway, the fruitman pasta demands that you get really really full, so sink the 200 grams in the water)

When the pasta is cooked, remove the water and put it again in the pot. Immediately after add the stuff from the pan, which by now should be well cooked, and a raw egg. Mix everything with care, but effectively. The egg should slowly start to become compact. To ensure that this is so, I usually mix everything with the pot still on the hot stove.

Some black pepper and salt, and the fruitman pasta is ready to eat. Enjoy!

Ok, I'm back, and with great news, at least for me.
Just two days after setting up the comments feature in the blog, I receive one.
It's from blogger Mr Nath, who says he likes the site and is going to link it to his
page, Bingtek.com, What's that you say.
Needless to say, his page is very good, specially the links section ;)
Seriously, it's cool.

Some apologies first for not having written for so long... let's say there was a "family business" that kept me too far from a computer.

That's from Calpundit weblog:

"TRANSLATION WOES....Remember those games where you electronically translate something into Japanese and then translate it back into English? Lotsa laughs.

It looks like that happened for real today. Here is a report in Die Welt about Paul Wolfowitz commenting on the difference between Iraq and North Korea:

"Betrachten wir es einmal ganz simpel. Der wichtigste Unterschied zwischen Nordkorea und dem Irak ist der, dass wir wirtschaftlich einfach keine Wahl im Irak hatten. Das Land schwimmt auf einem Meer von Öl."

The Guardian picked this up and translated it thusly:

"Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

This makes it sound like we went to war to secure Iraq's oil, but here is the DoD transcript of the original quote in English:

"Look, the primarily (sic) difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil."

Wolfowitz was obviously making the point that he feels we can bring economic pressure to bear on North Korea but couldn't do the same in Iraq. The only question is: did the Guardian deliberately slant this, or was it a case of a really incompetent translation? And who screwed up the translation, Die Welt or the Guardian?

Are there any fluent German speakers out there who can read the Die Welt article and compare it to the DoD transcript? If so, leave your remarks on the accuracy of the translation in comments."
---------------------

Personally, I say .... and so what? What if Wolfowitz said this or that? The point is he defends war because you could not make Irak starve. Basic guy, straight to the point: either you ruin their economy or you bomb them. Nice way of understanding international relations. Thanks God, Wolfowitz is such a nice guy! (obviously I am being ironic)

"For if we don't find the next whiskey bar, I tell you we must die" Bertol Brecht

So I've been trying to advertise my weblog around, with three results:
--The lasts posts have been really boring, so please ignore them and scroll down for real fun at the expense of Naked Cowboy, my new urban hero
--It's 634pm and I still haven't worked at all
--There are two new icons in my blog page, one of them kind of annoying, this blogchalk thing
So please scroll down

This is my new blogchalk:
United Kingdom, London, Southwark, English, Spanish, Pere Rovira, Internet Writing, Politics Jazz Blues. :)

So now you can post comments to my posts. A very nice and easy to use tool provided by Skawkbox.tv, for free. The only bad thing of these guys is the complicated name they gave to their website. Ah, when you make your comment, check out the emoticons, they are really funny.

Ah, if you want to see the naked cowboy, check this out:
-his webpagewww.nakedcowboy.com: didn't work when i tried it, maybe it does when you do
-pictures of him with a can of beans. It turns out that there's a website, Beans around the world, with the educational mission of presenting pictures of beans in the most peculiar places of the world. Certainly naked cowboy is one of them.
-finally, a priceless quote from him: "At the University of Cincinnati, a friend used me as a visual aid in speech class, then I went through Teachers College and the Engineering building. I got ushered out and told not to come back. Good thing I have my degree.”
What sort of visual aid can nakedcowboy be? Anyway, as he wittingly says, he's got his degree.

Well, not that I am a fan of north America, but certainly I am of New York and San Francisco, the two most fascinating cities in the world. Read the following story, and you'll know what I mean.
New York City is a natural habitat for a new kind of urban cowboy: a singing, guitar-strumming man driven by a naked desire to become "the most celebrated entertainer of all time." The siren call of celebrity has brought 32-year-old Robert John Burck, aka the Naked Cowboy, to the streets of Times Square, where he performs in nothing but cowboy boots, a 10-gallon hat and tight, white underwear. Burck, who has lived on tourist tips for the past three years, says he makes from $700 to $1,000 on an average day. "I am the epitome of what America is," he says. "It's about personal initiative. It's about ingenuity … this is like the extreme of what you can do in America."
So that's it. Naked cowboy makes $1000 on an average day. Well deserved!

"Blogging and demonstrating go together in a certain way. Blogging is partly based on hyperlinks, reinforcing the feeling that you are part of something bigger. Demonstrating is also based on human hyperlinks, materializing the need for fraternity." That's what the author of Fraternet says.
What is true is that new tecnology is becoming more and more important in journalism. A person with a minimal interest, can compare several accounts of an event in the internet: mainstream newspapers, more independent ones, and finally "individual newspapers", i.e. blogs.
In the last G8 summit people where sending pictures to websites with their cellphones, which have become an essential coordination tool among the protesters. So essential some say authorities will try to block the wireless network in the next massive demonstrations.
In the future, 3G wireless will mean that people will be able to send video directly to the net from wherever they are. Hence, you won't need to watch only what CNN news has to broadcast. People in the very same place of events will be able to broadcast for the world.
Anyway, up to now blogsites are not much more than geeky corners, but everything has a start... how many people used to read newspapers in the internet 10 years ago?

Check Fraternet for a live account of what happened during the G8 summit, according to one of the protesters. Updates were as frequent as every 30 minutes.

Yesterday, 39-year old protester Shaw, from London, fell from a motorway bridge after a policeman cut the rope he was hanging from while trying to hang up a banner. There was a brief paragraph dedicated to him in The Guardian today In the Spanish El Mundo, the piece of news was a bit longer. For instance, it explained that the man broke one leg and rib, and is still in hospital. It also explained that a girl also hanging from the bridge could be saved by her mates before anything happened. Finally, it explains that the policeman declared that he "didn't know that somebody was hanging from the rope". Could he be more sarcastic? It's quite easy to know when somebody is hanging from a rope, it's just more tense, and therefore easier to cut. A loose rope is very difficult to cut. But looks like the policeman did not know that, and probably his excuse will be enough to let him free.
Because, will we ever know anything else about this policeman? We know the answer, even though his methods sadly reminded me of Reservoir Dogs. Cut the rope. Like a bad guy from a holywood movie.

Again I go to sleep with London getting up from the nightmare of its night.
The birds are singing more quietly today, like distant flutes.
And you are just somewhere where I can't see.

Man, just thought that this blogger thing can get a lot of time from your life... imagine the guy I was talking about before, maintaining both a text blogsite and a photolog... Is that altruism or not knowing what to do with your life? I think it's rather wanting to be read, or seen...

I found this wonderful blog site, Oates for Tanger
The ingenious thing is that it's a photolog, a blog site with pictures rather than text. The design is really smart, and some of the pictures are great, like this one. The author takes all the pictures on his way to work, in Strasbourg, with something called Pen Camera, 1.3 Megapixels. It's amazing the quality he gets with such a small gadget with such a poor resolution. So maybe I don't need a 6 Megapixels one....

A piece of what you can find in Salam Pax's blog:
"Pool side at Hamra hotel. Where every journalist wishes he had a room reserved. If they sit long enough there they could just forget that there was a war going on outside the hotel fences. Jennifer Lopez squeaking out of the speakers and cool $5 beers with over priced burgers and salads. “Please put these ICG reports aside I would rather work on my tan”. Stuff like that. They come in carrying cameras, sound gear or big folders with a red cross on them. Minutes later they are sipping on a beer wearing as little as they can."

It reminded me of an excellent novel by Arturo Pérez Reverte, Territorio Comanche. In English it means something like "War territory". It's about the experience of the author (who used to be a war reporter for Spanish State TV) as a war reporter in the Bosnia war. Very short, very sharp, straight to the point. The whole novel is told by a journalist waiting for a bridge to be bombed.
There's no English translation, but you can try watching the DVD of the movie (by the way, and English translation would make a hell of a lot of sense nowadays) Reverte is quite famous in the US, actually I saw him in person for the first time when he presented a book in a library in Berkeley. Quite funny that me, a Spaniard, had to met Reverte in the US.

Here's the link to the blog of Salam Pax, a guy who writes from Irak, about Irak. For what I read, I think he's good. "Salam" means "peace" in iraki, as well as "Pax", in latin. There's a quote by Samuel P Huntington which I found particularly illuminating:
"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion,
but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.
Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Today I went back to Tate Modern, this time to actually see what kind of art they have there.
I saw some sculptures by Henry Moore, not bad, but I prefer Rodin, honestly.
Then I watched this videoart, a guy that says that made a sculpture out of natural elements. He goes up a mountain with a truck, and films
what leaves behind: that's the sculpture. The concept is that art is in nature, in rocks, in lakes.... anyway, I kinda felt sleep, but it was not bad.

Just to end a day that should have ended way before: check this article
It explains how venture capitalists are not backing innovative technology companies anymore, because they are afraid of being sued. Investors put the Napster case as the example: innovative technology to swap files, ruined by the following lawsuits. The same is happening with lots of other companies, and for reasons you wouldn't believe. Check it out.

A look at the always interesting page of Internet and Law expert Lawrence Lessig
lead me to an equally interesting project, Creative commons. It is set to be something like
the software development method of Open Source Software, but extended to a wide range of domains: music, photography, cinema, literature,
scholarship, etc.

No more swapping on Itunes, or at least that's what Wired says. It turned out that the so much publisized Apple Itunes online service, a service to download songs for 99 cents each, actually turned out to be a very effective way to swap songs online, very much in the line of Kazaa, but with Apple's infrastructure and coolness :)
I wonder how long will it be until they discover that their service has been hacked again.

After some writing it was time for some reading.
Check this out:
apple and network economics
It's an article asking how come Apple has survived even though it goes against
the most basic principles of network economics. If you like it, you might want to get
a look at the author's webpage, Bradford DeLong's webpage. Scroll well down the page to find lots of stuff,
really lots of them, about economics, information technology and political economy. There's even
his celebrated book on macroeconomics there, almost all of it

Today I took a walk around my neighborhood. Exams are over, and so I am a normal person again. Normal, I mean, in my sense: that is, a person without nothing to do but walking around his or her neighborhood. People should be allowed to be like that, I mean everybody should have the chance to walk around a nice neighborhood once in their lives, for at least one year. Until then, every social democracy is but an utopia.

Anyway, judging from what I saw, there is quite a lot of normal people in my neighborhood. I live in Southwark, south of the river Thames, London. I took some streets leading to Tate Modern, can’t say which ones, because in London there are signs everywhere telling you where to go. That’s one of the reasons why I started loving London, being as I am quite a disaster with directions. And the funny thing is that as a child I was a sort of living map, I could spot the way to any place within a glimpse at the map. Now it’s all the opposite.

My purpose was clear: go to the Tate Modern, and have an ice tea in the balcony in the fourth floor, facing the river and the weird disposition of buildings along Bankside. And read, the breeze and the voices of tourists and locals the only elements of distraction. Before getting into the Tate, however, I spotted the Globe Shakespeare theatre. A friend of mine had told me about it, so I was curious to see what was it. And it’s that: a theatre just like the ones in the time of Shakespeare, where for 5 quid you can watch a play by Shakespeare standing. As one of my flatmates put it, it’s worth it just to see whether you can stand the whole Richard III. Stand, in the literal sense ;-)

I was tempted to buy a postcard and send it to my father, with the text “see dad, maybe we were wrong about London, maybe London is actually nice. Can you imagine something like that back home, a theatre build just to play Shakespeare?”. That’s the good thing about big cities: there’s public for everything, and so you can find everything. Anyway, I didn’t buy the postcard finally. Instead, I went upstairs, ending in a room where supposedly there had been a sort of private reception not so long ago. There was a balcony, and so I went there, quite afraid that somebody would tell me soon that I could not stay there. But it didn’t happen, and so I found myself right in the balcony of the Globe’s façade, I think some tourists captured me in their pictures in front of the building. Somewhere, someday, somebody will ask somebody else why didn’t they go up to the balcony and take a picture there, like the guy standing there, that is, myself.

After leaving the room, I spotted what looked like a bottle of some kind of alcohol. The thought passed through my mind of getting hold of it. Even while I was walking downstairs I thought of going back and taking it home. But finally I didn’t, you know, this ridiculous conscience made me think that it was actually nice that you could go all around the Globe, and nobody would tell you anything, and bottles of alcohol would stay there for me to grab them. English civilization, and after all I don’t want to change it.

Here goes the story, let's call it "The thought":

Berry woke up and stared at the room: there was the dry chicken skin in the plate from last night’s dinner, an ashtray full of disintegrated cigarettes floating like corpses in a brownish water, and loads of papers and books taking over the table with a disorganized but yet effective strategy. Then he remembered.

Ok, Joselito, more things will come after Tuesday,
maybe one of my amazing short stories. That way
you might find other interesting things in my page
than the link to Bernardo's crappy page. I am afraid
it won't be easy, though, his page is really crap :)

That's what José had to say about my page:
"... the best...
... is the link to Bernardo's crappy web page :)

--José's humble opinion in the Daily Web Reader"

i just got a call from joaquin, on his trip to the lake
with Alyosha, Gabor, etc... the complete set
should i say that? where are the limits of privacy?
well i guess nobody will read this crap
ah, jose called before, of course

grace thinks it's boring, because there's no fancy stuff
i say SHE is boring

i am talking to grace in the messenger now,
demonstrating her that this blogger thing
is so fast to publish stuff on the web!

I added some changes to the sidebar... quite easy
Unfortunately, I only thought of adding the link to
Bernardo's awfull webpage (although according
to him it provides the necessary information)
But he will work on it... Joaquin's one is kind of crappy too,
but there's a nice text about his late dog, very emotive
José had a great webpage, but suddenly changed it for this
very modest one... though he put one of my jokes there.
Alyosha's an example of what a personal webpage should be, plus
it has nice pictures.

So today I start this blogger thing... the day of my 25th birthday.
Maybe it has something to do with the feeling that I am getting
old, a quarter of a century... so I want to keep some sort of record
of my life.
And to make it even better, I am talking to Bernardo now. He had
to be in my first post.