Hala, ya he emigrado a Mountain View, aunque algunos no se lo creyeran cuando anuncié que vendría (porque lo hice el 28 de diciembre; qué malvado soy, por Dios).

Veamos: una calle con 6 carriles, aceras de cemento... sí, esto es California.

Cuando compré el billete de avión, me fastidió comprobar que Aer Lingus había retirado el vuelo directo Dublín - San Francisco. Es que era un vuelo de 10 horas en un Airbus 340 (fuselaje ancho); salías por la mañana y llegabas a mediodía. Sin embargo, ahora tuve que comprarlo en American Airlines, con escala en Chicago, usando un Boeing 757 para el primer tramo (8 horas) y un MD-83 para el segundo (5 horas).

Por cierto, mirad lo que me encontré en Chicago, al salir del trenecito que me llevó de la Terminal 5 a la Terminal 3:

¡Ay, arsa!

Y bueno, de momento aquí estoy, en California y sin casa propia. Pero que nadie se preocupe por mi, que California es muy buena para los sin techo:

Es la hora de escribir una sola historia con varios breves, que si no, se acumulan:

• Recientemente pasé por el aeropuerto de París - Charles de Gaulle. Si uno se fía de los anuncios que aparecen en la revista de a bordo de Air France, en París sólo hay casas de moda y cabarets — que, según los maledicentes, son otro tipo de casas. Ya sabéis cómo son los franceses con lo del idioma francés, pero cuando se dirigían a mi en francés y yo les respondíá en el mismo idioma, ellos cambiaban al inglés — no suponía yo que mi francés fuese tan malo.
• El grajo voló bajo toda la semana pasada en Dublín, lo que culminó en una nevada el sábado. Que tengo fotos, oigan. Por la noche, la nieve reflejaba la luz de las farolas, con lo que la ciudad estaba iluminadísima.
• El gallo del Death Metal.
  
• En Yahoo! Maps han etiquetado muchas calles y carreteras de Irlanda con nombres de calles procedentes de Brasil.
  
  Resulta interesante ver que ahora a Parnell Street la llaman Rua do Tamborim, o a la carretera N4, Rua Camaquá. Supongo que lo arreglarán pronto. Al menos, yo les he avisado (que no se diga).

No lo había comentado por aquí, pero resulta que en enero me largo de Dublín (Irlanda) para irme a Mountain View (California), para currar en la central de Google.

De momento cuento con tener mejor tiempo que en Dublín, y realmente espero que sea así, porque en el corto plazo me toca abrir una cuenta en un banco, buscar apartamento, obtener el número de la seguridad social, sacarme otra vez el carnet de conducir, etc., etc. Al menos, que el buen tiempo me sirva de consuelo.

Espero que, cuando llegue, Obama haya arreglado ya el sistema sanitario :)

Actualización: A pesar de la fecha, es cierto. ¡Algunos habéis picado! :P

DUBLIN, Ireland — November 5th 2009 — Jacobo Tarrío, a leading Galician software engineer residing in Dublin, today announced in his website the general availability of a press release.

“This press release is a milestone in my quest to write content other people will read,” said Jacobo Tarrío. “Thanks to it, tens and even dozens of persons will know that I published a press release.”

The idea for the press release was born when Jacobo Tarrío read a press release from Apple and noticed that all press releases followed the same scheme. After many seconds spent in research and development, and investments in IT totalling almost one cent, a new press release was born.

“I am glad that this press release went out,” said Jacobo. “Now I can sleep happy knowing that it is out there, possibly being read by someone other than me.”

About Jacobo Tarrío:

Jacobo Tarrío is the leading member of the community of Galician software engineers who live in Dublin near a rail track. He revolutionized the world of press releases when he published in his website a press release about his publishing a press release. Jacobo also makes revolutionary humorous videos when he is not writing revolutionary press releases.

On August 15th I had posted a story saying that I was going to use Windows more frequently, and that I was even going to learn how to program for Windows. Let's see how it's going:

Of all the differences between Windows and Linux, the one I notice the most is the lack, in Windows, of the “primary selection”. That's the technical term for the X-Window feature that allows you to select some text with the mouse and then paste it anywhere pressing the mouse wheel. I use that all the time in Linux, so in Windows I always forget to press Control-C and Control-V to copy and paste.

As I said before, I'm also learning how to program for Windows. At first I had downloaded Visual Studio C++ Express Edition (as it is free of charge), but it has so many limitations that it did actually get in my way. Fortunately, in Microsoft's web site there's an evaluation version of Visual Studio Professional Edition, which has all the features but also a 90-day limit, so I downloaded it (3 GB) and I'm using it now.

The program I'm writing is a Twitter client. Writing this program will allow me to work in many different parts of Windows, such as the user interface, network communications, APIs for interpreting XML and working with graphics, etc. It will be quite hard because I have to learn everything as I go, but I already managed to write a program that displays a window and can download data from Twitter and show it in the window in the same XML format it was received from the server in:

Ah, and I also played (and finished) World of Goo. That's a game about joining balls of goo forming structures to achieve an objective. It was made by four people on a 10,000-dollar budget, and it was very successful. It is truly a beautiful game, and it's worth it. Ah, and it works on Windows, Mac and Linux (and there are demo versions for the three architectures).

I've been using Linux since the end of 1996. At first, like everybody else, I dual-booted between Windows 95/98 and Linux; however, when I bought a new computer back in 2004 I only installed Linux in it (even though I had set aside some room for a Windows partition, in the end I never got around to installing it), so I used Linux exclusively until I bought my new computer, one year ago.

This computer came with Windows Vista. I briefly thought about emptying the hard disk and installing Linux alone, but in the end decided to just reduce the size of the Windows partition and install Linux alongside it. This partition remained essentially unused until a couple of months ago.

A couple of months ago I noticed I had been bored when using my computer. After all, even with an Internet connection, there's a limit to the number of LOLcats one can look at in a day. So I remembered I had a Windows partition, and ordered the Orange Box. The Orange Box is a box, coloured orange (duh), containing several games (three episodes of Half-Life 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2, as far as I can remember). I completed Portal in four hours, tried Half-Life 2 (didn't like it very much, so I never got very far in it) and then started with Team Fortress 2, which I play and enjoy quite a lot.

Right before that, I had also bought a HD camcorder, to make all those little videos I post every once in a while. It turns out that all free video editing software for Linux sucks, but there was Microsoft Movie Maker in my Windows partition, which also sucks, but at least it works, so I could edit my videos, even if I could not do a lot of things.

Between those two things, I found myself using Windows quite a bit. Not quite a lot, mind you, but a fair bit nevertheless, so I wondered: “What would it be like using Windows more?”

One of the things I would like to try is Windows programming, so for an “authentic” experience I went and downloaded and installed Visual C++ Express, which is free (as in beer). In search of a tutorial to get me started, I opened the online help and clicked on a link promisingly titled “create your first Windows C++ application”, and sure enough, it was a page full of instructions on how to build a program that displays a window and shows “Hello, World!” However, the link for “Next step” wasn't titled “Add a button to the window” or “Make your application interactive” or something like that, which would be the obvious second step for a tutorial, but something like “Use the CLR from C++”.

I think I hit one of the differences in philosophy between the “Free Software” camp and the... well, the rest of the world. I'm assuming that there's a lot of companies publishing books with titles like “Learn Windows programming in 24 hours” or “How to study for your MSCE exam”, and they would get mightily upset if Microsoft included a comprehensive, free tutorial in Visual C++ Express.

So I caved in and bought two books: “Windows via C/C++” and “Windows Internals” (I'd prefer to do systems programming). I haven't opened them yet (there are still 350 pages left to finish “War and Peace”), but soon will.

I'll report back when I have more experience in this Windows thing.

A couple of weeks ago I started doing press-ups. Now I've gone from I-can-barely-do-five to I-can-mostly-do-ten, which is actually a lot of progress.

I feel like I've acquired a superpower. When Clark Kent walks around Metropolis, he thinks “if a supervillain came, I would be able to jump that building”. When I walk around the office, I think “if a drill sergeant came, I would be able to drop and give him twenty”.

Some superpowers are humbler than others.

(No necesariamente en orden cronológico).

• Un día inusualmente veraniego. 21 grados, según The Weather Channel. Vaya peste de buen tiempo. ¿Para esto me vengo a Dublín?
• Festival marítimo en Docklands. Con música (bah) y puestos de helados (!) y dulces (!!). Me tientan. He de resistir.
• Hoy ha salido a la venta la quinta temporada de Battlestar Galactica. En una tienda, 36 euros. En otra, 60. Creo que sé de una tienda a la que no volveré si puedo evitarlo. (Al final la he comprado en Amazon, que allí sale por 28 euros).
• Chavalines en trajes de neopreno zambulléndose en Grand Canal Docks. Corren más peligro de morir intoxicados que ahogados. Supongo que no tienen problema mientras no traguen “agua”. Si vieran el estado del canal sólo dos compuertas más arriba, no nadarían ahí ni locos — supongo que la mierda da menos asco cuando está más disuelta.
• Un Hare Krishna de esos intentó ofrecerme un libro. Se ve que no emito un campo de mal rollo lo suficientemente intenso. O tal vez sí: fijaos en que he dicho “intentó ofrecerme”, no “me ofreció”. (A pesar del campo de mal rollo, bastante gente me pide indicaciones para llegar a una calle o a un sitio. Se ve que tengo cara de saber adónde voy).
• Un tío pagó por su comida con una bolsa llena de monedas. Ninguna blanca, bastantes amarillas y un montón de ellas rojas. Una de tres: o era un mendigo (aunque no tenía aspecto, pero te sorprenderías aquí en Dublín) o había robado el cepillo de una iglesia o acabo de ver el nuevo sistema de distribución de dinero adoptado por las empresas de seguridad para evitar asaltos a los furgones blindados.
• 6 km y medio.

Desde que escribí un artículo describiendo cómo funciona el método para resolver las raíces cuadradas con lápiz y papel, tengo un montón de visitas de gente que llega tras buscar “raíz cuadrada” en Google. Resulta que todos esos quieren saber cómo calcular raíces cuadradas, no cómo funciona el método para hacerlo, así que desde hace tiempo tenía pensado hacer un vídeo explicativo, ya que por escrito iba a resultar en un artículo largo y difícil de seguir.

Recientemente compré una videocámara, así que hoy intenté hacer el vídeo; sin embargo, he visto que, al principio, cuando lo presento, me parezco más bien a José Tojeiro (también inclino la cabeza y hago gestos raros con la cara). Lo mejor va a ser dejarlo de momento, y practicar hasta que sea capaz de salir en un vídeo comportándome con más naturalidad.

Me estoy dando cuenta de que hay que esforzarse bastante para ser natural :)

Some people don't rest until they ruin everything.

Today, spammers have posted some 30 comments in my blog full of links to Viagra stuff. Of course, I removed them as soon as I could, but several of those comments were visible for a couple of hours.

Obviously, I don't want any spam in my weblog, but I don't want to remove the possibility to post comments either. Many people would install a “captcha” (one of these images with distorted characters you have to write in a text box to post a comment), but I hate them because they are hard to read for a human (and impossible for someone who cannot see well or at all) and easy to circumvent for a spammer.

Instead, I have installed a system called “hashcash”. Basically, it consists of having the browser perform some calculations before submitting the comment. This, in theory, slows down the rate spammers can send their material (as the calculations take a bit of time to perform) and ensures that it's an an actual browser that sends the comment, not a spam program. The problem is that it uses Javascript and, therefore, whoever doesn't use Javascript won't be able to post comments.

I'm very sorry, but that's life. I know that this is not the final solution to the spam problem (the reasons are so many and so varied, if I started writing them I wouldn't finish today), but it is the best I have right now. Obviously, if someone over here refuses to use Javascript and wants to complain, just post a comment ;)