Category: Life

My first programming book

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Yesterday, while looking for other things in my partent’s place, I found a book I had not seen for a very long time: “Basic para niños” (Basic for children) written in Spanish by Sofía Watt and Miguel Mangada. I was 8 when I got it as the text book for an optional complementary course at primary school, two hours per week, where I was the only one under 12. I was too small and did not manage to learn more than the simple concepts at that time, but it was a lot of fun.

More than two decades have gone away, I have not programmed in Basic for a long time now, but when I saw it again, I realized that probably that small and simple book had quite a lot of influence in what I decided to do during the last decade… study computer science at the university, try to be part of the free software moviment, do my Ph.D. in software engineering, create Igalia with a group of colleagues from UDC… and it will probably have in what it is still to come 🙂

Visited countries map by may 2006

Since the previous post on the topic, more than one year ago, I have only added Denmark and Germany to the list of visited countries. Have been again in Sweden (2 months), Finland (a few days) and Portugal (a week), and have travelled quite a lot inside Spain. For the near future, I have plans for going to Argentina in the autumn (spring there).

If you want to easily create your own map, go here.

Long weekend in Barcelona

Last Thursday we flew to Barcelona for a long weekend visit to two very good friends that have been living there for 5 years now. We normally visit them at least twice per year, and thought that this was a good moment for disconnecting and have some relax.

The city was as awesome as always, and we enjoyed a lot our walks through Passeig de Gràcia and Les Rambles, and our traditional visit on Sunday to the secondhand book market outside the Mercat de Sant Antoni, were we bought again all kind of nice books. We had also time to visit Vic and Girona, both really beautiful cities I had never been at. And even went to a concert of Antonio de Pinto, a very good (and very unknown) cantautor from Madrid.

My next visit to Catalunya will hopefully be by the end of June, in order to attend the 7th Guadec (Gnome Conference) that will take place in Vilanova i la Geltrú.

Concerts: Carlos Chaouen

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Yesterday we went to see Carlos Chaouen playing live in a very small theater close to our place. It was a nice concert, with about 100-150 people attending, where Carlos, one of the classical cantautores in the coffee places of Madrid, played most of the songs of his last album, and also some of the best known ones, like “No me canso”, which is now famous here because of the terrible version performed by the former Mecano singer, Ana Torroja, in her last album.

Ilha das flores

Today, almost 10 years after the first time, I have just seen again lha das flores (“Flower Island”), a shocking, 13 minutes long, brazilian short film.

It can be seen at PortaCurtas in original version (brasilian portuguese). It’s low quality, but if you have never seen it, stop doing wathever you are doing, take 13 minutes of your precious time, and learn more about capitalism with the awarded work directed by Jorge Furtado.