January 2011
17 posts
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“This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich,...”
– Francis Ford Coppola reminding us that it’s only a few hundred years that artists are working with money (Hat tip: Kottke).
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Cicadas
These last two weeks the soundscape has been invaded by cicadas, sometimes deafening, sometimes slightly highlighting the silence. I am not used to them and the surrounding humidity; it is forty three and a half degrees South!
How do I explain this? I am at the Guaitecas’s latitude, but in the middle of nowhere. I can travel to the West for thousands of kilometers over water, pass below...
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On point of view
Often times we experience mental paralysis: we can only see a problem, a situation or a person from a single point of view (mea culpa). Some times the single mindedness of our view point becomes so bad that we inexorably drift to complete silliness. This is the case when one keeps on insisting on a point that has been shown to be, how to put it, wrong.
Photography is a fascinating hobby. I think...
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On pizza
I like pizza very much but I have to be clear; I do not mean that stuff sold at Pizza Hut or Domino’s that it is—for some bizarre reason—also called pizza. I mean that type of food made at home, where one happily and carefully puts the ingredients together: warm water, yeast, honey, salt and oil; waits until the mix is bubbly and then adds flour. This is followed by some kneading and leaves...
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“Brillando mientras el dulce olor
de canelos y laureles
subía hacia los cielos...”
– ‘El habla de los ríos’ by Elicura Chihuailaf.
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On rain, a ukelele and Luis Alberto Spinetta
It has been a wet day in Christchurch, one of those slow and ever present rains that lead to remembrance with a touch of melancholy. We needed the rain or, at least, our yellowing lawn and dry soil were due for a watering and received a good one. Rather than water what touches me is the constant grayness, the not having an idea of the time because 10 am looks pretty much like 5 pm. But we...
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On numbers and ukelele
I was born in 11110101111 which, besides being binary palindromic, turns me in to 44 years old (decimal palindromic) in 2011. Forty-four does not seem to be a particularly interesting number; Wolfram Alpha reminds me that it is also the sum of 3 squares (2^2 + 2^2 + 6^2), but that is nothing to write home about. I find this numeric plainness unsettling: call it a mid-life crisis.
Crises call for...
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On writing
I started writing using pieces of scrap paper. I had, maybe still have, a fixation with getting the most out of paper. I would practice calculus solving exercises using a blue pen and then use the same page with a red pen. It was not a matter of extreme poverty—I was able to afford more paper with my very basic income—but a fascination with using every space available. I then moved to drafting...
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“Some people have had changes in behaviour, mood or thinking including anxiety,...”
– On the plus side, you may stop smoking. From Champix’s list of side effects.
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“I am a solipsistic conspiracy theorist.”
– Mouseover of XKCD 842.
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“At the temple, there is a poem called “Loss”, carved into the stone....”
– Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha.
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“Luz azul
seres
anilina”
– Spanish palindromic poem.
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Very good analysis of the mobile landscape →