I always loved sports. I didn’t played a lot because I was too bad and I had no teacher who drived me right. Like most of Spanish boys, I loved football, and I soon began to suffer with the curse on the Spanish national team (and enjoyed with the evolution of Deportivo de La Coruña). So, when this summer Spain reached the top of Europe playing football lovely and wining, I blowed up with happiness.

Now I’m enjoying with Spanish sportmen in Beijing. But I can’t forget the Olympic Games where time for peace. And  there is not peace without justice. I hope Olympic Games help a bit to China to open to democracy, even when the goverment became more oppressorto show a nice face to the world, even when the people that decided Beijin seven years ago had another intere$$$t$$$.

Ther is no peace too when one player in the Games invades the territory of another player, causing hundreds of injured and killed. Russia justified with a possible Georgian attack against civilians, but it’s difficult to prove this when some journalist died trying to show the reality to the rest of the world.

Visperas and Benji got married in June. They celebrated the marriage in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid. Alcalá was the first planned university in the world by Cardinal Cisneros in the XV Century. Everywhere in the  city you can find cared buildings of stone and brick that evoke the Golden Age of Spanish literature. You can see some photos I took in that gallery.

About the marriage, I’ll preserve the intimacy, but I must write it was  one of the most emotive ceremonies I have attended ever The baquet  had some romantic and geek details too. You can see in the photo an amount of sparse all-around-the-world geeks joined because our past in  GPUL. We were sitted at the Linus Torvalds table. Visperas’ telecom  engineering friends were at the Graham Bell table, and Visperas and Benji were at Alan Turing table

Good luck for the young family

I have not too much time to update this blog. Really, I never had time to do it, but now I’m aware of this fact but I’m not going to give up now. Last months were very hard but results where positive: I passed more exams than ever, and, in two months I’ll begin to work in my final degree project as I’ll try to pass the last subjects.

There was another reason to be busy: I began to work in the Territorial Studies Lab. I’m updating the databases of the provincial GIS. We use GISEiel, a derivate of gvSIG (so it’s free software), against postresql databases. It’s not a very complex work but it’s very interesting to familiarize and reflect about how the territory was built.

Some of the following posts are about the lost events and thoughts in this ending summer.

Around 410 Spanish credits (not ECTS) and many, many years, today I received my last class in the School. Civil engineer Álvaro Vázquez Herrero from Exconsa Ltd. talk us about foundations, project management and the life.

Of course, today I remembered my first lesson and the professor who taught it.

As I had arrived to Segovia at night I missed great part of the Castilian landscape. Back to Galicia by car, I could appreciate its plainness and I could imagine the field of gold it becames in Summer.

(yes, this photo is very similar to a well-known wallpaper ;-))

We crossed too Duero riverside and Bierzo vineyards, and we could see how the Civil Engineering overcame the Piedrafita do Cebreiro pass to build a highway that joins Galicia and León.

Castilian towns are different than Galician ones (concentrated vs. scattered land occupancy). I could prove it along my route, and I could see it in situ when I arrived to Segovia.

Segovia is well-known because it has one of the most importan Roman aqueducts. But there are more treasures: Mozarabic architecture in the streets, the church where Isabel the Catholic was crowned, the late-gothic cathedral, and the wonderful Alcázar.

Last weekend I went to Segovia to visit my friends Belen, Quico and their little children Carlitos and Julia. That was a fast, intense travel.

I got the Talgo train at La Coruña the Friday morning. The Talgo is one of the great products of Spain. It’s a confortable, fast and versatile train. It has only a fault: it has double glasses, so I had some problems to take photos. And I had reasons to take lots of photos. One, there is a beauty transition to see between the Galician mountains and the plateau of Castile. The other reason is all the great works (bridges, tunnels) for high-speed train and highways. You are lucky if you are a civil engineer in Galicia nowadays.

The top of the world: last Jan, 11th Edmund Hillary died 88 years old. Everest he conquered is 88 Hm. high.

The top of the mind: last Jan, 17th Bobby Fischer died 64 years old. The chessboard he owned has 64 squares.

Honour for them.

It was by coincidence. Today I had a nice dinner with my friends of the Civil Engineers School Raquel, Olga, the two Silvias, and Nacho (Silvia’s boyfriend) who is an Industrial Engineer. We didn’t meet all at the same time and place since a year ago. In fact, today we missed Juan in the meeting.

They gave me some presents because they couldn’t meet me in my birthday. One of them was the book “Bruce Springsteen on Tour 1968-2005″ by Dave Marsh. It was a meaningful present for many reasons.

Today I celebrated a rare anniversary. 15 years ago, I register for first time to the Civil Engineers School.Too much time.

If it was a mistake, it’s too late to lament. Of course, in these years I didn’t choose the easy way. I rebuilt my mind, and I made lots of experiments following new routes. So I delayed my degree. I hope in 15 years I’ll write they were useful.

But I will never lament the good people I met in these years, in my School, among our neighbourgs of the Faculty of Computer Science, and my mates in projects of the Cooperation and Volunteering Office. It was not wasted time only for meeting them

Because family issues I passed the last 4 weeks very stressed, angry, sad and busy. I wrote some fast posts, but I’ll try to recover in the next days some missing questions before the year ends…

Let’s look for things that join us. Then let’s shake our hands. And then, let’s pray for the World.

Peace, Justice, Love: God’s Kingdom.

Even when I heard the morning news in the radio actually I listened in my mind the fuzzy experiments of Thelonious Monk Himself, and Bill Evan’s Alone too. Yes, alone, having a double cup of coffee and a smoking a Camel cigarette maybe can be a strange way of celebrating my 33th birthday. But, in fact, it was only a moment to think about this point of my life.

It’s simple. A year ago I wouldn’t imagine me studying for the December tests. I wouldn’t imagine me leaving the laptop at home all the day, and trying to forget anything but Civil Engineering (with the exception of the Portiño educational project, of course). Ok, as computer addict I fall in temptations too like creating the Hermes Project (I’ll write about this later). But it’s only an exception.

The best sypmtom that demostrate I’m trying to drive on new highways is my social life. A year ago I easily would get bored in a party in my Civil Engineers School. And I would fear to be alone going out in Coruña. But Thursday night and yesterday I went out until the sunrise and I had no moment of loneliness. Really I met with a great amount of good guys in my School And, thanks to “a new hazard in Milano” Fran, I re-discovered a new temple of non-jazz music, the Playa Club.

So, what is the moment I get the blues? Maybe, thinking about her. My love dances around me, my love walks by my side, my love flies away from me…

Today when I went off the train in the evening, it began to rain. I had 1 km. down to home, so I put my headphones and shooke off the glasses.

The water drops run on my face, but I didn’t hear the rain. Rather I didn’t hear that rain. Because it was sounding in my ears “Here’s that rainy day”, then “A time for love”. These are the first tracks of “Bill Evans Alone”(1968).

The rest of the album… well, with a nice mug of tea, a cigarrete and… sneezing a bit But I felt free in that lonely walk…

Today began the Summer for me. Since the morning to the sunset, grey clouds opened to the sun, then they went away.
I’ll be hidden underground until I can feel again the rain drops in my face, in October.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched c-beams … glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate.
All those … moments will be lost … in time, like tears … in rain.
Time … to die.”

Via Slashdot

Today I went at the sunset under the rail bridge over the Eume river. I was very tired. I had some hard, bitter days, and I needed to walk by the promenade.

I sat down on the river side, and I began to observe how the waves on the water were created and destroyed by the wind. I was hearing “This is my truth, tell me yours” by the Manic Street Preachers. My thoughts diluted with the waves and music, and I felt free for an hour.

Then I remembered Wayne Wang’s “The Chinese Box“. If I can select a place to die, please, give me that peace.

Abstract: Next May, 27 Spaniards will elect our council representatives. Next two post are fast thinkings about Pontedeume, the town were I live, and Coruña, the city where I am volunteer. Both cities are governed in coalition between socialists of PSOE and Galician nationalists of BNG, and, in both cases, there are reasons enough to throw out them: in Pontedeume, the unlucky town planning policy; in Coruña, the difficulties to our project of children-in-risk education in the Portiño that they didn’t solved in four years.
Updated, May 22th: As Emilio comments, in Coruña PSOE governs alone, as they have the majority (I thought they had lost it in the former election). Anyway, nationalism sucks: no frontiers, no flags, one world, no nations!!

Se acercan las elecciones municipales. Al contrario que en las elecciones generales o autonómicas, en las que mires a donde mires sólo encuentras basura, las elecciones municipales suelen llamar más mi atención porque, evidentemente, el resultado me afecta directamente, y porque además, siempre encuentras personas y grupos, pequeños, interesantes y con ganas. En concreto, en Galicia este año parecen despuntar con fuerza nuevos partidos a escala autonómica (aunque a veces con viejos conocidos de la política). Este hecho, junto con el de la cantidad de pequeñas agrupaciones de carácter local, parecen dar el mensaje a los partidos políticos de toda la vida, de que estamos hasta las narices de ellos. (more…)

Thanks to Berto, I got aware today is the 25th anniversary of launching of the ZX Spectrum. The age of 8 bits home computers marked us a generation of computer enthusiasts. Snif, snif :’-)

I still have my Spectrum 48+ with rigid keys, the machine in which I began to program. Some years later I intercepted a classic model unit with rubber keys, like the units we had in my school (we had 16k and 48k units, those machines incited to hack :-)).

The new at slashdot.

Updated, april, 25th: Another interesting post at The Register.

The DUDES conference ended a week ago, and I still have no time to write about this until now. It was an exhausting experience (but we have a lot of fun).

The differences with the Guademy were clear: the DUDES would be a brainstorming about the Debian project, in general, and the Spanish section in particular.

Requirements to one of the gratest geeks gathering I ever saw were clear: good Internet connection, a working room, a rest room, and feed to charge batteries (people’s batteries). We had everything during the Guademy, but we must do some adjustments.

The first problem we had was the net. The f*ck*ng net service of the UDC needs more than 10 days to activate the net sockets (yes, you read ok, 10 days, 240 hours). On Thursday, while we were trying to make easier the arrival for Ana (Guerrero), Quique, Clint and René (Celso came by car from Pamplona =-)) I was desesperated because they only promised they would try to activate the connections on Friday. President Emilio was not worried: In the worst situation, we have very long wires. (more…)

Today my Grandmother reached the venerable age of 80. And this is my proud tribute to her.

My Grandmother Carmen (‘Carmucha’ to her friends) is an exceptional woman. She was born in the family of a Galician emigrant. She passed her childhood between Spain and Cuba, until her father lost an important part of his business because a cyclon. So my Great-grandfather Gonzalo stablished his family in Pontedeume, north Galicia, the same place he left at the age of 17 towards Cozumel (Mexico).

Her childhood and teenage years was influenced by Fath. Baltasar Pardal, a priest chased in the II Spanish Republic. He worked hard in a poor dstrict of Coruña during the Spanish Civil War and took care of orphans. He also founded the school where my Grandmother studied later. Today ‘Don Baltasar’ is in beatfication process. (more…)