On the lesser side of things my hard drive died, and it was bad, my laptop died too, it was old. I recovered some of the data that wasn’t on backup but not all. Have put in place more aggressive backup policies, but nothing is failure proof. But with the bad comes the good, and things have been getting better, several projects my company is working on, have picked up, and there is a bright future ahead of us, so that’s really good.

I have many unfinished posts in my draft folder, I will start churning those out in the days to come. I have a Emacs related surprise plan for some of the readers of this blog, hopefully it will leave to my expectations.

Last weekend met with tamgo, we met at Toys ‘r us and he bought himself a PS3 (I had nothing to do with that decision, though he says I do.) Bought a few DS games, and basically have spent a small fortune on games for my family (the wife, and kids are into gaming), Also bought a Wii for my son he’s a Nintendo fan boy, had to get a refurbished unit though, with full and extended warranty, because it’s difficult to find that damn system.

Today I have been confined to be inside the house due to very bad weather.

I also upgraded my desktop machine, to a new Dell XPS Intel Quad Core machine, with a 24″ HD display, and a wonderful Raid 5 system.

I have decided to not waste money on laptops, they break to easily and too much for my pocket, so this machine will keep me happy for a while. I have to admit, that if it weren’t for the fact that the new LED 15″ Mac book pro, were not in stock, I would have walked out with one last Friday, from the Fifth Av. Apple Store.

I’ll be going home next week, though New York is an amazing city, I can’t wait to get home.

In the process, I have been trying out several distributed revision control systems. So far I have tried:

• Bazaar
• Mercurial
• Darcs
• Arch
• monotone
• svk

I think they are all good at what they do, and picking one above the others, is really a matter of personal preference.

I liked bazaar, git, and mercurial the most. I decided on Git, because of the ability to interact with svn out of the box, it’s svn integration is really good. I actually liked bazaar the most, but it’s svn support is not as robust as git’s. Now let me be clear I hate git’s command interface, but it’s growing on me. The fact that there is a emacs vcs mode makes it a lot simpler for me.

With this I’m not suggesting ditching svn for a distributed system. At work we use svn and it’s not going to change any time soon. If it were not for the fact that I have the bad habit of using svn branches for development, I wouldn’t care about merging all that much, while merging in svn it’s not really as bad, as some people make it sound, you do have to be careful, and svn it’s not very helpful with conflict resolutions, besides that, the fact that I don’t have to run a server for my local repository is a wonderful thing. I also like the simplicity and multiple methods for publishing my Git branch.

If you haven’t tried a distributed revision control system, and you are a svn user, I suggest you start with bazaar, as it’s user interface is very much like svn so the learning curve is really small, Mercurial is also a nice system to start with, though a bit different than svn.

If you do try them out, I would love to hear about your experience.

* This has nothing to do with warez keygens, it’s part of the validation process of our software.

It all started as a normal Tuesday morning, it was actually a beautiful morning. Things were looking good, I had finally come up with a sane design, and a proof of concept for some cryptographic work I’m doing. I was ready to start implementing the libraries; I was happy, no I was actually ecstatic. Woke up my laptop, the screen stays blank, no sweat, will do a cold reboot, so I do that.

The laptop starts booting, all is good, I log in, start working and notice my screen is flickering! WTF? suddenly it goes black! I start trying to revive it, and to make a long painful story short, I spent the morning disassembling the laptop, and on the phone with a Dell sale rep, to see if I could get a new LCD screen, I was told they had to check availability and price, he asked me to call back in a few hours. hanged up, went back to my desk, sat at my new chair and ended sitting in the floor! the damn thing broke! Now I was getting a bit pissed, just a bit.

A few hours later I grab my cellphone to call Dell, and the damn thing is dead! it’s unresponsive, does not turn on. At this point I’m really pissed it’s a new phone! Is someone pulling a prank on me or something? Because this does not hold to Murphy’s law, I mean the law is clear, if there are multiple things that can go wrong, the least expected is the one to occur, but man I mean three things! that’s a variation to the law, and not a fun one at all.

When I finally talk to Dell they quote me a whopping $US 1,000.00 for a new LCD screen (My laptop’s warranty expired) plus shipping and insurance.

Next up, get a call from my wife, the family vacation we were planning, had to be canceled, due to her vacation being postponed by her boss! now this is just ridiculous, all in one day! One long, long day.

In short, I have to buy a new computer (because it does not make sense to pay 1k for a screen when I can get a new laptop for that money), a new chair, and my phone is still being repaired, because they didn’t want to exchange it, even though it’s less than a month old!

So if you have any horror stories of Murphy laws or it’s variations, please feel free to share, I’ll feel better If I know I’m not the only one with this bizarre events happening.

I arrived at his office, he was running a bit late, so I sat with the other four patients that were waiting, it wasn’t all bad he has a nice waiting room with WIFI and TV and current magazines and news papers. He got in a few minutes later, and the first thing he does, is notice my swollen hand, and starts questioning right then and there; Was I playing the guitar? Was I over using the computer? What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened I had to change a tire, that’s what happened. He immediately injected something or other to reduce the swelling, and told me we needed to wait a bit, to see if the swelling goes down, to do the treatment.

So here I am, in pain, real pain, when this guy near me try to start a conversation:

The humble guy: Are you a musician?

Me: Yes.

The humble guy: What do you play?

Me: Guitar and Piano.

The humble guy: Who do you play with?

Me: Myself… I don’t play with anyone, I can’t play due to my condition.

The humble guy: You know, I’m a very humble person, I’m so humble that I’m going to tell you something you might not know.

Me: Ok……..

The humble guy: I’m the best guitarist of this country.

Me: Trying not to laugh my ass off. Really? How nice, good for you.

The humble guy: If you need lessons or anything contact me, here is my card.

Me: Thank you, What type of music do you teach?

The humble guy: Bachata, what else? There is nothing better!

Now I know this was really happening because I was quite in a bit of pain. I’ve seen this type of thing a lot, not only with musicians also in the IT field, there are quite a few people that have incredible egos, my experience is that 99% of them are full of manure, but of course I have no prove this guy is in fact full of it, for all I know he can be the Carlos Santana of the Bachata.

It was quite funny though, specially his facial expressions, and when he started mimicking guitar lines with his voice that was precious, I’ve never been so desperate to get on with the treatment (which consist of cortisone injections, not nice I tell you), I also have never seen a room empty so fast in my life! 

To start I’ve become formally unemployed, I say formally, because I am freelancing, and I’m trying to start a company. On the time I was working for my last employer I was physically and mentally exhausted, so much so, that I’ve spent the last month and half being poked in every way a living human being can be poked (Well almost every way, no prostate exam for me yet. yay!).

One of the things that really made me happy, was that I was able to play guitar again, I had to stop due to tendinitis, as I reduced my computer use quite a bit, it seemed to be better. Sadly it only seemed, because tests discovered that my tendons are in very bad shape, and the Doctor recommended I stop playing, as it was hurting not only my tendons, but I had pinch nerve, which cause occasional discomfort, and I had developed a triggered finger, which didn’t manifest itself while playing, but if I used the computer right after playing, my index finger would start dancing on it’s own, not fun I tell you. The doctors advised that if I needed to use a computer, to use a ergonomic keyboard which I have, but don’t use (I use my laptop 100% of the time, so that’s is a bit of a pain to have an external keyboard) and to get an ergonomic mouse, to alleviate trigger finger (which can cause focal dystonia) *sigh*. There other medical issues but those are under control for the most part.

Now this has made me think and study the way I interact with a computer, you see this days we are mostly mouse driven, most application don’t have key bindings for the most important features, and when they do, they can be quite uncomfortable. The web is basically mouse driven, with the exception of gmail, and google reader, that have sane key bindings, although gmail key bindings could be a bit more extensive. I’m sure there are other sites, that have sane and useful key bindings but those are not among the sites I use. Their are a few firefox plugins that make firefox to be more keyboard driven and that is nice. Windows for the most part is quite usable with a keyboard, ironically Linux with gnome and kde, are not as keyboard driven or friendly, and can be a pain to navigate sans mouse.

As I dabble with programming I have come to really valued the old editors, I’ve always been a big fan of both emacs and vi (yes that sounds weird, but I believe they are both good, and they are both worth learning) this editors were made at a time where computing was keyboard oriented, so they have amazing keyboard support, you can make your own key mappings, or re-map the existing ones (which I’ve done in emacs, to avoid doing chords).

On the whole, I’m happy, I have time to play with my kids, I have little to no stress, and will do everything I can to keep it that way, It would had been nice not to have the tendinitis, and be able to play, but as they say you can’t have everything.

So in conclusion I am in fact alive for those who care, and for those who don’t well, you know ……….

I’ve been reading a few books, of which I hope to post my review in a few days. My to read queue is getting larger every day; I really should stop adding more books to it, but what the heck life is short, and there a few things better than reading a well written book –well maybe writing one.

I’m planing on writing a few think pieces. As usual I know nothing about nothing, so don’t be surprised, if or when, I end up with my foot in my mouth. I’m working on the first piece, the idea is to create a discussion, not necessarily a scholastic discussion, so it’s of no relevance to me what your qualifications are, I know mine leave a lot to be desired, so hopefully everyone who feels the need to speak up will do so.

What makes blogging difficult for me is that I have a few nagging doubts in my mind like:

• What I’m going to write about?

• Why would people want to read what my opinion is on a specific matter?

• Why on earth would I want to make some of my opinions and deep thoughts (42) public?

• At the end does it really matter what I think?

There are quite a few more, but that’s not really important. What is important, is that no one should feel bad about expressing his thoughts, it matters little if they are unconventional and widely frowned upon, we have a right and a need to free ourselves of self imposed and sometimes psychological impositions, and speak our minds freely.

Since the start of our life we are told what to say and how to say it, and this needs to stop, now of course I’m not the first one talking about this nor the last, but you see we all want to speak our minds, and that’s why blogging is so useful and popular because you can actually speak your mind without actually forcing others to listen – read – your thoughts on a subject.

There are how ever quite a few people that take offense with what one say and they have a right to tell you the same, and that’s fine you have the right to disregard or apologize if you feel incline to do so, but still the principle of true freedom is present.

So what does all this has to do with me not being a good blogger? It’s very simple, all of the above is what I feel, or felt until now.

Now it’s simple if you don’t like what I say that is good, you shouldn’t like or agree with what I say, make a civil comment and we can discuss it, otherwise I don’t care and will ignore you etc.

This post is long enough so let me quote Douglas Adams – “So long and thanks for all the fish…” – and with that I enter a new phase in my life.

No really I’m really a boring person, not much to say about myself –don’t like talking about myself– and don’t know anyone interested enough.

So this is basically a place where I will say what ever I want to say, basically most of my post will be about things that interest me:

Anime, Music, Technology, Programming, Books

I hope you enjoy the ride, and if you don’t, well just remember it’s free.