posts on Lost Among Europeans

If your monitor or TV has a Sharpness control, set it to zero

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:59:29 +0100

The bottom line

The sharpness setting on TVs and monitors produces edge-enhancement distortions to create the illusion of a sharper image. Text characters are almost entirely edge. The sharpness processing messes with font antialiasing, and can harm text rendering and readability.

You should set the sharpness all the way to zero to see the source image undistorted. Even on your TV, the sharpness setting should be turned to zero.

Images of text rendered with sharpness turned ON/OFF

The difference is noticeable when reading a page, and especially noticeable with serif fonts. See a couple of comparison shots, taken with a camera set on a tripod and in the exact same conditions of focus and exposure:

Book Notes: Norman Maclean, Jane Austen

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 18:05:15 +0200

Quotes from two recent reads.

“Young Men and Fire”, by Norman Maclean

University of Chicago Press, Publication date: ‎ January 1, 1993

When Jansson knew Gisborne was dead, he stretched him out straight on the game trail, built the rocks around him higher, closed his eyes, and then put his glasses back on him so, just in case he woke up, he could see where he was.

page 138

Albini was once telling me about one of his projects, which had primarily to do with predicting the speed of missiles, both those missiles made by others which he had only seen and those he was recommending be built. His comment at the end was that “it’s a lot easier to predict the speed of a missile than that of a wildfire.” Generally, he said, “it’s easier to predict the behavior of objects made by man than natural objects.” Having lived long enough to absorb a considerable number of lumps and bumps from whatever hovers around outside under the name of “nature,” I said to him, “That shouldn’t have surprised you.”

Regressions

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 12:26:08 +0200

For some time now I’ve been looking with sadness at the US. I remember back to 2002, when I applied for a fellowship for graduate studies in the US, then got the fellowship. I remember back to 2003, when I got my acceptance letter from Columbia University and moved to New York. 2005, when I graduated and decided to get a job in the US. 2007, when I decided to move to Seattle to join Microsoft, on my second H1-B visa. Those were big decisions to make, and I made them with overwhelmingly positive feelings.

Grab bag–one of several

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:27:39 +0200

Class warfare

I’ve recently discovered Joan C. Williams, who is making the best arguments I’ve seen so far about the current political moment. Her new book Outclassed seems interesting but I’m not about to read it. She has a TED Talk, and for once this is a TED talk I consider “worth spreading”: We won’t fix American politics until we talk about class.

In the talk, Williams uses two examples to illustrate the class divide. One of them is abortion rights. She tells that for her, as for many women in the professional elites, motherhood was something that could be delayed in the pursuit of professional goals. Abortion was an important option to have for them, in contrast to women outside the elites, who were prioritizing raising families.

Book notes: "The Premonition" by Michael Lewis

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:57:10 +0200

The Premonition is my new favorite Michael Lewis book. It’s about a collection of people working in public health who helped shape the response to COVID in 2020. I have liked several of Michael Lewis’s books, but in this one you get a winning combination of fascinating people, reliving the urgency days of the pandemic, and a peek behind the curtain of public health in the US. I read it on Kindle but I’m buying a paper copy to give it a place of honor in my bookshelves.

Winners and Losers

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 18:39:41 +0200

One thing I never got used to in the US was the way the words winner and loser are thrown around in conversation to describe character. I already knew about it before living in the country, but it never stopped leaving me mildly surprised and frustrated.

One day at lunch break with colleagues, the conversation turned to the date one of them, Annie, had had the previous night. “Ugh, he was such a loser” she said. I asked: what does that even mean? Neither Annie nor any of the American colleagues wanted to elaborate.
And really, I understood why. Loser is a non-specific put-down that doesn’t convey anything about the person pronouncing it. If Annie had said “he was ugly”, or “he had rounded shoulders”, she’d have risked appearing superficial. If she had said “he had a low status job”, she’d have risked sounding elitist. And something like “I gave him an opening, and he didn’t take it” would have been risqué.

People who smile when you prove them wrong

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 12:39:41 +0200

There’s this snippet I like in a book I read last year:

Arrogant people who love being contradicted, show-offs who smile when you prove them wrong, dogmatists ready to change their mind in a heartbeat: I’ve encountered this singular attitude only among very good mathematicians.

The book is Mathematica: A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity by David Bessis, which I picked because it seemed to contain material about Alexander Grothendieck.

Good ideas are not enough

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 18:49:21 +0200

Film and music

When Céline Sciamma was making Portrait of a Lady on Fire, she decided she wanted the story (a love story) to have almost no music. There would be music at a pivotal moment, and a lot hinged on getting it right.

“I listened to a lot of old melodies from the [18th century]; some of them we are still singing to our kids to bed,” said Sciamma. “But I wanted it to be kind of a trance, I wanted the [beats per minute] to be very high, and didn’t find something. It was all very instrumental, and I wanted no instruments. I wanted just the voice and the clapping of women.¹”

Finding inspiration from actors

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 10:41:50 +0100

I didn’t use to like Ingrid Bergman. For many years she stayed in my imagination as the romantic movie archetype of doe-eyed, soft-spoken women of little agency.
A few years ago I watched Notorious for the first time, and it changed my mind completely about her. There’s an early scene where her character is throwing a party.¹ After all the other guests have left she’s alone with a man she’s meeting for the first time and is visibly attracted to. As they prepare to go for a drive, he takes one last gulp from his drink, and then she takes his glass and has a sip from it. She’s a bit woozy already, and after taking the sip she lets out a soft groan. “Hawwr”. That little groan, and that scene in general, feel true to me, and I love Ingrid Bergman for it. Now I use the little groan when I want to express wooziness or exhaustion.

Some fragments from "The Iliad"

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 16:48:36 +0100

I’ve just finished reading The Iliad in the new translation by the godlike Emily Wilson.

I had tried to read The Iliad previously and had always given up after not many pages. The Odyssey though, has long been a favorite. After reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey a few years ago and loving it, I was hopeful her Iliad would take me over the hump.
It did.

I’m still partial to The Odyssey. I had to force myself to finish The Iliad. It gets repetitive for my taste, and there are too many genealogies of men fallen in battle.
But there are brilliant moments, and I have found it surprisingly bracing.

Transcendence is for fools

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 22:48:46 +0100

I remember noticing this when I got my first real job: people who felt the need to tell you that they were working in the best company, in the hottest sector. My first boss used to tell us this earnestly, and he was always a bit deflated that I’d often smirk or laugh. It was not that I thought that other companies were better or other sectors hotter, it was just that it was such a big claim to make, and so unnecessary.

Pechuga de pavita con champignons

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 19:30:01 +0100

¡Pechuga de pavita con champignons, siempre pechuga de pavita con champignons!

This tendency to make everything uniform and safe and fungible. It’s not only the relentless march of capitalism but a natural human thing. I spent years rating the songs in my digital music collection, and building a playlist with only the best stuff. I tired very quickly of that playlist.

Falling Trees

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 12:15:48 +0100

Ever since Filomena came in 2021, the trees in the public park in the neighborhood have been brittle. The summers are not helping. The first autumn storms do this:

Timing Toast

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 23:33:28 +0100

This grook from Piet Hein:

Timing Toast

Grook on how to char for yourself

There’s an art of knowing when.

Never try to guess.

Toast until it smokes and then

twenty seconds less.

Clever man, Piet Hein.
Good advice on asking for help,
before you’re desperate.

The Right Level of Detail

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 23:04:23 +0100

A recent video from one of my favorite youtube channels¹ begins talking about the latest installment of the Zelda video game franchise:

More than almost any game in recent memory, my play-through of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was full of moments where I’d just stop and stare in astonishment at what the game was showing me.

…

Tears of the Kingdom is a game not even running in 1080p, chugging along on six-year-old hardware that was already technologically behind the alternatives in 2017.

What happened to Spielberg?

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 12:22:57 +0200

I tend to get impatient when I hear people disparaging “today’s music” or movies, longing for the real stuff that was made when they were young. There are fine works to be found today; not finding any is a mark of laziness or disinterest. But there are ebbs and flows, styles coming in and out of fashion, and especially, artists coming and going. Those of us who grew up in the eighties were lucky to have Spielberg at his peak creating classics like E.T., the Indiana Jones trilogy, and Empire of the Sun.

Preemptive Education

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 19:40:22 +0200

The trick is to read early in life, or in any case, the earlier the better. Choose famous books that have some heft to them. Books that you can silence people with. For instance, Orwell’s 1984, or The Communist Manifesto, or Lord of the Rings, or The Unbearable Lightness of Being (respect for Kundera, who has died recently.)

Then for the rest of your life, whenever you find yourself in a discussion where you want to invalidate someone else’s point, you can hit them with a quote. Right in the nuts.
Let’s say you find yourself in a political discussion, and someone is proposing that some of the market’s excesses should be curbed with greater government intervention. That there is your cue to bring out 1984. Have they even read that book? Ha, you got them. Right where it hurts. See, Orwell talks about Big Brother, which is where your line of action will lead inexorably, friend. (Be sure to say “inexorably”.) Even better, to this same person who has had the audacity to imply the market may lead to bad outcomes in some cases, you can quote Adam Smith. It’s not even necessary to have read Adam Smith. Just mention his name and allude to the invisible hand. There, friend. Our individual self-interest gets translated into progress by the market. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Your poor opponent, having been hit by a double whammy of 1984 and the invisible hand, won’t have a chance to recover.

Teachers

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 19:08:37 +0200

My friend Manuel recently commented that he had learned some Theory of Relativity during his degree, and there were plenty of things that still puzzled him. For instance, the Twin Paradox, where one twin travels in space at high speed, then comes back to Earth and finds he’s younger than his brother. It was difficult to reconcile this asymmetry with the rest of what he had been taught about Relativity.

Iván and I countered with the standard justification that the traveling twin had experienced acceleration, and so the symmetry was broken. Manuel was not convinced, and thinking more about it, I agreed with him. I went in search of a convincing explanation, and though I found several books and lectures disappointing, there was a 5-minute video from minutephysics that left me satisfied, and aware that my knowledge is very superficial. There is a course on Relativity in Brilliant that has been written in collaboration with minutephysics, and I think I’m going to take it sometime soon.

A culture of biscotti

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 13:27:12 +0100

Mom and I have been making biscotti for a few months now. We took the recipe from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis, my favorite cookbook, and we have made adjustments to our process. We have it down to a science.

The recipe in the book is already a fantastic starting point. The ingredients are: a stick of butter (unsalted,) half a teaspoon of almond extract, 3/4 cups of sugar, 2 large eggs, 2 cups all-purpose flour, one-and-a-half teaspoons of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and 3/4 cup of sliced almonds.

Science, and having good conversations

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 13:07:33 +0100

My friend Dmitri, who majored in philosophy, once explained to us the appeal for him: he was interested in having good conversations. Meaningful conversations. How could one go about that? He found good answers and good questions in philosophy; particularly from the pre-Socratics.

I have not been able to find philosophy interesting, despite some efforts. But I do find Dmitri’s comment interesting. And I think it is applicable to science.

In Praise of Snippets

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 17:31:21 +0200

It is funny to see all the angst about social networks, mobile phones and the attention economy as clear one-sided evils that are dumbing all of us down. Is this the future we want for our children!? With the reliance on mobile maps, where have our former survival skills gone? How are we supposed to work on the unified theory of gravitation while our devices distract us with videos of cats?

Late Summer

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 17:31:14 +0200

Video del barquito

The bad name of management and politics

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 13:14:45 +0200

Sometimes I wonder how it could get so bad.

Much of the management I have seen in my professional life has been mediocre or worse. I’ve worked in four countries, in companies from the tiny to the large, from the obscure to Amazon and Microsoft, and have found examples of bad management in all of them. It is no wonder that management gets a bad name. It’s often dismissed as “politics”. Politics, too, is a word sullied by practice. What a shame.

Accents

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 15:17:48 +0200

There is an interview with Naomi Watts where she comments how difficult she finds doing an American accent. Two words she mentions having trouble with, when talking with an American accent: water, mirror.

I have difficulty with the word users. I just can’t pull it off. My accent is half way between American and British, I think. My r’s are American. I have no difficulty with the singular user. The s in that word I pronounce with a non-sibilant z-like sound: uzer. I also usually z-ify my plurals: warriorz.

Why write? Why read?

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 10:10:21 +0100

I’ve been reading Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. I’ve enjoyed it, in no small part because it takes place in the Pacific North West and there are many references to Seattle. But I’ve been puzzled by sections where Guterson develops a hairy topic in scabrous detail, without adding to the plot nor the atmosphere.

For example, chapter 15 contains a description of Fujiko Imada’s intestinal distress at the Manzanar internment camp¹. Chapter 21 begins with lawyer Nels Gudmunsson, who is seventy-nine and has recently been told that his prostate is enlarged and will need to be surgically removed. In his visit to the doctor,

Early Spring

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 02:10:21 +0100

American Vibes

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 21:44:52 +0100

I’ve seen some good movies in 2021. Two of the best discoveries have come from previous years.

Finding Forrester (2000) and The Kindness of Strangers (2019) though very different movies, share a sense of rhythm. A relaxed pace from the characters, who seem at ease just being there without fuss, letting the story flow. These are not watching-the-grass-grow kind of movies. A lot happens in them, but they breathe. Movies of this kind don’t earn awards for their actors.

Golden Hour

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 19:10:21 +0100

Adjusting to remote work has taken time. I did not initially count on some of the advantages. Waiting for the pandemic to subside and for things to go back to “normal”, the absence of commutes felt like a temporary reprieve rather than a permanent feature. The complete independence to set my coffee breaks, my rest times to look out the window and take deep breaths or go read in the sun a while.

Coachable

Sat, 04 Dec 2021 12:38:14 +0100

There’s a lot of modern corporate terminology that I don’t care for, but I do like the use of coachability to describe people. I seem to remember a manager once telling me I was coachable. I hope it happened; I hope I am coachable.

A coachable person, I imagine, is someone who is learning all the time and taking information in. Someone whose ego is not so big they get defensive whenever given feedback. Also, someone who makes an effort to be understandable. I don’t mean psychologically. Rather, making oneself easy to work with.

Autumn Magic

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 12:25:27 +0200

Autumn perks me up. The colors are more distinct, space seems wider. On a cool breeze, my imagination flows. This air is coming from the hills not far West. A mythical creature lives there that makes sure the groundwater flows. This time of the year there is much to do. After the randomness of summer, things need coaxing to set in motion again.

In the field at the edge of town, a cat is crouching, keeping a watchful eye, enjoying the sunset. In the park near the playground, a young dog, a German Shepherd not yet much larger than a cat, is exploring calmly, with elastic movements. The owner holds a leash but stops every few steps to talk to someone or check his phone.
The dog is in control, sniffing and investigating. He watches me a few seconds. He knows something.

Behind Closed Doors

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 11:05:56 +0200

A few years ago, shortly after the end of the Obama presidency, I read an article in The New Yorker, or the New York Times, or some other reputed source, written by a famous journalist with long years of experience.

The journalist confessed sadly that he had had high hopes for Obama, and had been disappointed. He had believed Obama’s campaign trail promises to close Guantánamo Bay and crack down on unethical government behavior towards detainees.

A few bits on communication

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 13:22:04 +0100

Mood’s a thing for cattle and love-play

that’s a quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune. In the under-appreciated David Lynch movie, the line is delivered with gusto by Patrick Stewart.

The book version is:

Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset.

I quite agree. Mood should not be ignored, but some people force their mood on you too often, or at times they should not.

“I wonder what mood XYZ will be in today”, is not a good thing to have to ask yourself often about someone, be that a colleague or a president.

2020, in purchases and discoveries

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 11:34:15 +0100

A few tidbits, rather than a think-piece on the year.

Webcam, ethernet switch

I have the fortune of being able to work from home. Like many other people in the same situation this year, I found it worthwhile to make some small improvements to my conference-call setup.

A simple USB webcam to put on top of my monitor, and use instead of the laptop’s embedded camera and microphone.

A little 5-port ethernet switch so I don’t depend on Wi-Fi all the time.

Wannabe Elites

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 11:02:41 +0100

The last few months I’ve read about a couple of ideas that I found interesting.

Michael Sandel argues that meritocracy has a dark side: If all doors are open to you, but you’re poor, it’s your fault. The center-left parties, in their embrace of meritocracy, have left behind the working class electorate they used to cater to.

I’ve read some arguments around these points before, but Sandel is the first I’ve heard that sees meritocracy itself as the problem, so clearly. In his TED Talk he argues for re-attaching dignity to labor. I definitely agree, though I don’t see why meritocracy is necessarily at odds with dignified labor. Sandel has a book out that I imagine will offer more nuance.

You've got to cheat a little

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 12:50:10 +0200

In the documentary Crumb, there is a scene where Robert Crumb, the legendary comic book author, is with his son, who is making a drawing from an old photo of a woman held in a penitentiary.
Crumb tells his son that he’s missing the defiant look from the photo, and that he needs to learn to exaggerate features a bit, to cheat a bit, in order to capture the spirit of his subjects.

Studying Math

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 15:49:18 +0200

I’ve finished year one (of two) of a Master’s in Mathematics

For years, I had tried to learn higher math on my own. It’s tough going when one works in a challenging industry and moves quite a bit, but beyond that, there were some issues with my approach.

Hurrying

When I was in my early twenties, I hoped I could give myself the equivalent of a full math education. There were so many subjects that interested me. So much to learn. I bought many books. Then in my thirties, after failing in my twenties, I wanted to cram yet more into yet less time. The clock was ticking.

Math Year One (of two)

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 15:37:07 +0200

At last, I have started a Master’s degree in Mathematics at university (Autónoma de Madrid.) After years of longing to do this, the stars aligned enough.

As happened with my Master’s degree in Computer Science, I’ve been admitted despite coming from a different undergraduate degree. The Master’s academic committee required that those of us coming from engineering or physics degrees should take a prequel year to fill mathematical gaps. In my technical blog I go over a summary of the classes I’ve taken this prequel year. In this little post I want to keep things less detailed.

Confinement

Sat, 02 May 2020 11:40:04 +0200

I can’t complain. Very busy, doing both work and math studies over the internet, and with a garden.

When the state of alert and the confinement started in Spain, on March 14th, I decided to move in with mom and dad.

The first weeks were worrying. The nightly news showed rising infection rates and casualties, and over-taxed hospitals. Even with the alert measures. Family were having difficulties coping with the pragmatics of remote work and confinement. Food shopping seemed like something to be delayed, and going to the pharmacy felt risky.

Reading on Screen

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 21:04:10 +0200

In the previous post I talked about choice of fonts for editing. What about for reading?

What makes for a good font choice? This is all personal, and I don’t mean to make taste the topic of this post.

Once you’ve chosen a font, there are several factors that go into the experience of reading it on screen.

First and foremost is size. For some reason, most people set their fonts too small. Try this: write a half-page of text set in 11pt font, say Georgia, in your word processor. Print it, and compare the printed text with the text on screen (both at your regular reading distance). Get them to align, applying zoom as necessary in your word processor.

Fonts for Writing

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 12:09:59 +0200

Often, you don’t get to make a choice of fonts on your computer. You’re browsing someone else’s web page, viewing a PDF, or being asked to collaborate on a word-processor document.

Computer programmers work on code to be read by other programmers, but the font, the formatting, the size, are not sent along with the code. We as a profession are free to choose how (most) text looks on our screens. As a matter of tradition, most programmers choose monospaced fonts [1], such as you would produce with a typewriter.
I don’t buy most of the reasoning I’ve heard to justify that you should only code in monospaced fonts, so for some time I’ve used the Verdana font for programming, and it works just fine.

Getting Things Done

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 22:56:06 +0200

That famous book by David Allen…

I read this book long time ago, say 2009. I found it very useful. It helped me become better organized, at a time when my job was flooding me with lots of little requests and I was having to push myself not to forget—or ignore—tasks. I stopped reading half way through, as I found the writing as dry as cardboard.

Recently I lent my copy to a young colleague at work who was interested in productivity methods. He read it quickly, and told me that the second half of the book was totally worth it, so I decided it was time to revisit.

Book Notes: "The Undoing Project"

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 22:57:35 +0200

Not meant as a review, just as a repository of paragraphs I liked.
Yes, I did like the book.

page 71:

“I’ve always felt that ideas are a dime a dozen,” he said. “If you had one that didn’t work out, you should not fight too hard to save it, just go find another”

page 81:

… He’d been asked to divine the character of the nation’s youth. Instead he’d found out something about people who try to divine other people’s character: Remove their gut feeling, and their judgment is improved.

"Into the Wild", remembered

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 22:04:22 +0200

I recently came across a 2013 article by Jon Krakauer on the death of Chris McCandless, which was the topic of his famous book Into the Wild.

In the article, Krakauer tried to throw new light on how McCandless had died. He seemed to want to defend his honor against criticism that he was unworthy of attention.

But I’ve also received plenty of mail from people who think he was an idiot who came to grief because he was arrogant, woefully unprepared, mentally unbalanced, and possibly suicidal. Most of these detractors believe my book glorifies a senseless death.

Improving net privacy

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 09:45:19 +0100

I’ve been becoming more conscious of my privacy on the internet. It has led me, on one hand, to use the Privacy Badger and uBlock browser extensions, to switch to DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, to review my social networking settings.

But I am also a gentleman website-and-domain-owner, a citizen of the ’net.

I decided to act on the nagging of browsers, when viewing my own website, that it was not served over HTTPS. I had been wanting to address that for years. In the last months, I had to learn how to set up LetsEncrypt certificates for work, and wondered why my web hosting provider (GoDaddy) charged extra for SSL certs that could be had for free.

Back to Basketball

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 22:24:07 +0200

A diet of noise

The first few months of 2019 I was watching lots of news material. The general craziness of Trump America, and shaky times in Spanish politics, had me looking for commentary and tea leaves to read. I was watching Steven Colbert and other political comedy shows of the kind. I also started watching Joe Rogan’s channel.

In May I started to get into basketball again. I hadn’t been up to date with NBA basketball in many years, but little by little some of the names of the current stars became familiar, and I wanted to see them play.

Autumn colors

Sun, 09 Dec 2018 20:50:36 +0100

The strawberry tree flowered at last—its first flowering.

I notice now that many plants flower in autumn. That must mean that there are insects around to pollinate them. In my own garden, some bees are now busy around the ivy.

It is the time of the year to do a bit of pruning. Every year I have to cut down a small tree that wants to grow right on my fence. It’s coming from a neighbor’s tree and it is quite invasive. I’ve noticed that the trunk has grown around the wiring. I respect that.

Grab bag–one of several

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 23:47:36 +0200

Whit Stillman, Forster and Merchant/Ivory, Radiohead, nerd neck, and some science.

Arts

A short article with Whit Stillman and Kate Beckinsale talking about The Last Days of Disco. I enjoy these types of informal chats where people tell you what was going on in their lives at the time they were making some well known project.

There’s this very interesting article on Merchant Ivory adaptations of Forster. I stumbled upon it after getting the urge to watch Howard’s End, and liking it so much that I bought the blu-ray of the recently restored version. The article discusses the humor in Forster, and there is a wonderful quote from Lionel Trilling, of which, here’s a sample:

Adventures in my garden

Sat, 04 Aug 2018 23:47:36 +0200

The year I came back to Madrid and bought my house, 2014, I also planted a strawberry tree (madroño), which I bought from a nursery in the nearby town of Valdemorillo.

Strawberry trees – which don’t yield strawberries – flower and give fruit in autumn, though not necessarily every autumn. The flowers and fruits appear in alternate years, as I understand.

Now, my little tree has been growing well, but has not so far given fruits or flowers. When I bought it, it had none either, while other saplings in the nursery did have fruits. The person in the nursery told me not to worry, and he still recommended this one, which was a bit larger and looked robust.

Art vs. the rest

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 23:47:36 +0200

In the last few years, I have come to think of myself as an artisan, and pretty close to an artist. I don’t mean in the sense that I sculpt or draw or compose. I think of the arts as wider than that: not an occupation, but a frame of mind.

The usual art vs. science divide doesn’t interest me. Scientists and engineers have to deal with places where their current tools and methods break, and they need to devise new ones. Here comes invention, design, speculation, exploration. Here comes a process where one takes steps back, not just forward.

Grab bag–one of several

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 23:47:36 +0200

In my last blog post I explained why I was going to start writing to keep track of what I read or otherwise consume.

Lately I’ve been low energy. Perhaps the spring, or perhaps having begun to run regularly, and with a running club that is pushing me to run hard.

Some things I’ve learned:

Old men looking back

A reference in Twitter mentioned Donald Hall, who had just died. The reference itself was not important, but I read this beautiful article Hall wrote for The New Yorker: Between Solitude and Loneliness.

Keeping track of things

Sun, 24 Jun 2018 23:47:36 +0200

The web is a great and dangerous place for me. Its potential for discovery is matched by its potential of addiction and time waste. I have my ups and downs with these problems. Even during my ups, I struggle with the sheer volume of information I want to read, assimilate, and catalog for future reference. A growing stack of links, references, books, sit waiting for me.

I have tried different ways of of coping, but however sophisticated a system I try, it can’t work, because I bite off more than I can chew.

The Great Evil

Tue, 13 Dec 2016 18:10:15 +0100

2016 has left a lot of political surprises, confused pundits and inflated rhetoric.

That journalists or politicians should engage in the rhetoric and try out punchy messages is nothing new.
It is also nothing new that regular people recycle the punchy messages and the portentous rhetoric. But I’ve been surprised by just how much of that I have seen this year.

I have started asking simple questions about some of the statements I hear in person. Stuff like “what do you mean by populism?”, or “do you truly believe everyone who didn’t vote like you is a bigot?”
I haven’t yet heard any good responses to this type of question.

Humanities vs. engineering

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 19:00:59 +0100

A friend sent me a link to a recent NY Times article written by a humanities graduate working as a computer programmer [*]. It was a reaction against the belittling of the liberal arts in favor “useful” degrees that will get you jobs. I’m very much against this kind of view, which has recently regained momentum, given the global recession.

The best part of my software development job is the fuzziest, the most creative, and also the most frustrating: designing solutions to problems in a way that is flexible and understandable and can evolve. This is where programmers puzzle over tradeoffs, and the beauty of “code” (the name we give to computer programs). This does not get taught in university. Even where there are courses for it, I don’t think it can be taught well. It requires intuition and experience and persistence; it’s not a linear process.

Management by Dignity

Thu, 21 Jul 2016 23:42:07 +0200

Our last few months employed in Wall Street, in late 2007, my friend Mike and I were asked to attend a weekly meeting with the “business owners” of the project we were working on. This was the ambitious project that those people hoped would make them wealthy for the rest of their lives, and that Mike and I led on the software side. We had already both stated that we didn’t want to continue working on it beyond January 2008.

Reading translations of Tolstoy

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 23:47:36 +0200

I’ve just finished reading War and Peace for the second time. I first read it almost exactly 20 years ago, around the time of my twenty-first birthday. It had a large impact on me. Before then, I had considered myself decidedly un-literatury. I had never enjoyed a novel at the same level I enjoy film or music. Since then I have read some good books and authors, but Tolstoy is still my favorite writer.

The Irish Bubble

Sun, 21 Feb 2016 22:36:13 +0100

I’ve been working in Dublin over half a year, and one thing that strikes me about this city is the insanity of real estate. Prices are ridiculously high. For the same amount that afforded me a great two-bedroom apartment in the center of Luxembourg, I can only get shifty one-bedrooms.

One would think that construction would be booming, but it is not. Again, there seemed to be more action in Luxembourg than in Dublin. How can this be? As I get to know a few Irish people, and learn more about the place, I’ve found that Ireland has lived through a bubble in the recent past, and much as what happened in Spain, the bubble affected largely the construction sector.

Migration

Sun, 21 Feb 2016 21:54:23 +0100

This is the first post I write using my new workflow for the blog. I’ve been growing more and more dissatisfied with WordPress, which forces its own idiosyncracies on blog layout, typography and storage.

Last year a friend of mine asked me for help with her WP site. She was doing some fancy layout, and her site wasn’t quite working. I had to wade into the guts of it, and found the whole thing unbelievably messy.

Ego, the yoyo

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 11:27:45 +0000

What a funny, paradoxical thing, ego. I start to recognize it in places where I had not expected to see it.

A few months ago, talking with a friend about my new job, I commented how surprised I was that people very high up the company responded promptly to my emails, attended my presentations, agreed to calls or meetings. My friend asked if these signs of my high responsibility were intimidating me. I replied that they were not, which was and still is true.

Common sense and other nonsense

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 11:35:46 +0000

My hard science education has left me many sequels, some of which I like. Mostly, I’m happy it has given me a healthy skepticism of “common sense.” In science, you learn many things that shock you, and that, therefore, you would not have come up with on your own. Someone had to do the experiments, someone had to go deep into the details, or perhaps, someone had a richer imagination than yours.

A cursed capacity for suffering

Fri, 08 May 2015 19:16:09 +0000

There’s another Doctor Zhivago quote on my mind these days. “Even Comrade Lenin underestimated both the anguish of that nine hundred mile-long front, and our cursed capacity for suffering.” For a movie I don’t like much, it has left a big footprint. I think I need to read the book.

Returning to Madrid after 11 years abroad, I notice sadly that my compatriots suffer in a very Spanish way that combines pessimism, spinelessness and humor. It’s not just about the economic crisis. It’s workers staying long hours in the office every day. It’s the young and unattached who are still unwilling to leave for a job they don’t hate. It’s the people, allowing massive political corruption, and even voting for the same corrupt parties. It’s that old sense of inevitability taken with pride, as if it were a sign of cleverness.

Subtle reasons

Sun, 29 Mar 2015 22:13:11 +0000

I’m not a big fan of David Lean’s “Doctor Zhivago”. It does contain, however, a line I love: “He approved of us, but for reasons which were subtle, like his verse.”

I don’t think one needs to be a poet, nor a Zhivago, for subtlety. Depth of knowledge, routine use, a long history, all lead to subtle reasons and preferences.

Every now and then I’m asked about my experience living in different cities. How was living in the US? Seattle vs. New York? Are Luxembourgish people rigid and cold? Did I experience cultural shock when I came back to Spain? My vague answers tend to frustrate some people. I can only offer anecdotes here and there, and I can only justify preferences with back stories. It’s funny to find people who ask big questions and expect them to be answered with a neat little sentence.

Narrative

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:16:36 +0000

More and more, I am convinced that narrative is the best way to learn, design, carry out. More and more, I reject books or articles that present information statically, as if it were final, as if there were nowhere to go.

In this brief talk, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, idols of mine and creators of South Park, explain how to tell a good story:

Lies, damn lies

Wed, 18 Feb 2015 13:44:47 +0000

It’s not news that there are lots of lies in the news. It doesn’t just come from politicians, nor just from journalists manipulating facts. We live in a world that has vast quantities of research and knowledge, but where everyone wants to fit complex knowledge into bite-sized pills. No room for accuracy or subtlety.

An example: I’ve been following debates in the Spanish media after the rise of left-wing party Podemos. In one debate, its leader defended an increase of the minimum wage. Several of the journalists in the debate protested: “You know, of course, that that will lead to increased unemployment!”. And of course, that’s common sense, right? If the owner of a bar needs to pay more to his employees, he will employ fewer people. But, from the Wikipedia page for minimum wage:

Smarty pants

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 19:10:32 +0000

Ah, Interstellar. On one hand, I like seeing really ambitious movies, like they used to make decades ago. On the other, what is it with this new generation of prestige directors who are not satisfied with understandable plots, because, well, then they’re too simple? Nolan, Aronofsky, M Night Shyamalan, Paul Thomas Anderson, they remind me of teenagers exposed to philosophy in school, drunken in narcissistic intellectual self-regard.

The plot twists from Interstellar remind me of this excerpt from a great South Park episode.

Naturalism in film

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 23:45:21 +0000

Recently I went to see the film Mr. Turner. I had high expectations, what with the positive reviews and my interest in the painter Turner, from my teenage years attempting to learn watercolor painting. What a sore disappointment. I walked out of the theater frustrated at having wasted two and a half hours. I like naturalistic films, and I don’t require a lot of plot or dialog to enjoy movies, so I wasn’t getting impatient with Mr. Turner. I thought something would emerge by the end. Alas, what you get is pretty much surface. When you read in reviews that the film’s titular character communicates by grunting, take that literally—he barely mutters more than five sentences. And calling those grunts communication is being generous. It felt as though watching BBC’s Planet Earth documentaries with David Attenborough’s narrative turned off.

Reading on screen

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:06:48 +0000

I’ve been on typography spree lately, motivated partly by esthetics, partly by my increasing dissatisfaction with reading text on computers. Here are some things I’ve learned:

Font size in points is misleading. There is no standard, and “11pt” may not mean any particular dimension in the font is actually 11pt. By the way, a point is not a dot but 1/72 of an inch. At the same point size, Verdana is noticeably bigger than Times New Roman.

A moveable office

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 20:22:52 +0000

This laptop elevator, and the three-button mouse, are my best computing purchases in a long time.

Progress

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 20:18:02 +0000

Farm milk, from a vending machine. Give me more of this kind of progress, less of 100% online wearable computers.

Required reading

Sun, 03 Aug 2014 10:47:47 +0000

What a horrible expression, “required reading”. I only find it acceptable when it’s literal, such as when teachers include required text in an assignment. I’m sure the world has always had self-righteous idiots wanting to put themselves in a pedestal, but I’m not so wise or detached that I can view this behavior with coolness.

In my area, software development, for example, we currently have some fervent dogma on how one must think in order to write software properly. Amazon brims with reviews declaring this book or that required reading, and this or that practice unacceptable. Mostly transparent self-promotion and back-patting. Unfortunately, some of these people have jobs in good companies, some even have leadership positions, and get to set agendas and “best practices”. It’s baloney, but it gives upper management some reassurance that “things are happening”.

Sensitive or introvert?

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 19:29:56 +0000

I’ve begun 2014 digging into introversion. Recently the concept seems to be getting a fresh coat of paint, especially with Susan Cain’s TED Talk and her book “Quiet”. A slightly different take is offered by the Highly Sensitive Person theory. You can take the HSP test. I like the HSP theory better than plain introversion, but both are similar.

Now, I bought a book on HSP, as well as the aforementioned book Quiet. I mostly skimmed, I didn’t find either too interesting. Quiet, in particular, annoyed me. I wholeheartedly agree that being an introvert has a bit of a social stigma, but Quiet strikes back by attributing to introverts a lot of great victories, from the iPhone to the Theory of Relativity, and to extroverts a lot of resounding defeats, like the 2008 recession. It’s that simple, huh? If Einstein or Steve Jobs were alive, they’d probably be appalled at how often their names are thrown in to justify arguments - as if the name alone is all that’s needed. Incidentally, Cain posits that Steve Jobs was an extrovert, and Wozniak an introvert. I have my doubts.

Listen and repeat

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 16:12:45 +0000

https://youtu.be/O0PCaU6t8Kw

The internet is great at many things, but unparalleled to discover music.

TED tu?

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 22:35:03 +0000

Long overdue critical talk, with snide reference to Malcolm Gladwell incorporated. Nice! Interestingly, this is the first time I see a TED talk where the talker doesn’t get a standing ovation.

Running service

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:54:46 +0000

I’ve been running regularly almost three years. I’ve managed to run 3 to 5 times almost every week, about 10 km. per run. It’s been fun. I’ve made friends thanks to running. I’ve participated in marathons and half-marathons, and have loved discovering cities that way.

There is one negative aspect to all this: you become something of a role model for the many people who would like to be doing more sports. For some reason, people feel a stigma about running in particular. Sure, you hear complaints about not going often enough to the swimming pool, or having neglected tennis. But people don’t just tell me about their failure to run regularly. They want some sort of absolution.

Running fickle

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:11:39 +0000

Once upon a time, I vowed never to run another marathon. I took only two years to go back on my word, spurred by friends who were training, and by wishful thinking that I could train smarter, suffer less and make a great time.

This time I did indeed train smarter. I was set for a big improvement on my personal record, but on the day of the race, I felt tired, and already in the 10th kilometer I knew I would not improve on my 3:41 time. I decided to settle on a bearable pace, and finish, whatever the time. Well, it was 3:59 in the end. Not bad, all things considered.

The time goes here

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:37:29 +0000

More or less in order:

Running.
Wasting time
Cleaning and cooking.
Reading about reading math books.
Reading math books.
Writing down lists of things to do.
Paring down my list of things to do.
Doing things.

Where does the time go?

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:10:04 +0000

Something that often puzzles me is how time just slips away. No matter how much I have, it never stretches as far as I want it to. I compare against old times, and I wonder, how did I ever manage to do things before I quit watching TV? How did I manage when I commuted 90 minutes a day? How did I manage to watch a whole season of Heroes and My So-Called Life, while still keeping an apartment clean and finding time to read?

Occam's razor

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:59:50 +0000

There are a number of objectionable strategies that are sometimes used in discussions. Occam’s razor, properly applied, means that among several competing explanations for something, the simplest is the most likely. In the hands of fools, it becomes a tool for declaring explanations to be true, because they’re simpler than some other possible explanation that they’ve chosen. I have a negative reaction to this type of argument, just as I do with many of the arguments coming from people who describe themselves as rational. “If you think about it …” is thrown around too lightly.

Beyoncé, a Bad Lip Reading

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:32:18 +0000

T’is a work of genius. Let me say I like Beyoncé.

The year in music

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 18:23:52 +0000

I’ve discovered tons of great music this year. Possibly the most exciting year since discovering Aphex Twin and Autechre in 2005. If that was the year of bleak British electronica, this has been the year of retro Canadian electropop.

It all started in January when economist Paul Krugman posted a track from Austra in his column. It was intriguing enough that I checked them out and ended up buying their album, and the lead singer’s previous solo album. Austra, a Canadian electropop band, is led by a singer of operatic power and intonation, and has echoes of Arvo Part.

The year in purchases

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 11:12:08 +0000

It’s been an interesting year for me, 2012. Not always pleasant, but a happening year. Looking back, this year I have bought a bunch of things for the very first time, and they tell a story:

An agenda, in particular, a Moleskine weekly planner. In late 2011, I took an online course, and was dismayed by the professor’s handwriting. It was not that it was ugly or difficult to read. It just seemed the product of a diseased mind. I decided that I couldn’t let my handwriting go to waste like that, and I would use pen and paper more often and more deliberately. I bought an agenda as part of that resolution, and it quickly became indispensable. I tend to keep lists of tasks to do, but the agenda allows me to place some of them in a future time slot, out of sight until then. And writing with a pen, rather than with the staccato motions of typing, is relaxing. I’ve already bought my 2013 weekly planner.

Recent photos

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 11:50:09 +0000

Lately I haven’t felt like blogging, but I’ve been active, certainly. Some photos.

Some places I run by

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:17:18 +0000

The Clausen neighborhood has some amazing corners.

And I love this wall.

Atmospheric city

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:50:06 +0000

I have to say I appreciate Luxembourg. It doesn’t get said enough that it is rare to see a capital city so well kept, and with so few ugly spots to look at. These last days have been very cold, but for some reason this has motivated me to walk out with my camera.

Luxembourg, year 2

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:36:27 +0000

How time flies. I don’t have the feeling of a year having gone by in Europe, and yet so many things have happened. I suppose this means it’s been going well.

So far, the first two weeks of the new year have brought hiking and some good sunsets. I’m glad I didn’t listen to the Luxembourg naysayers. Now for more questing.

Don't eat chocolate on long runs!

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:17:12 +0000

Saturday last week, I took the train to Cologne. Florian and I were going there to run the marathon and half marathon. Cologne boasts an impressive cathedral and several bridges that cross the Rhine.

In the morning I had to go to the marathon expo to get our materials for the race. Florian would arrive later in the day. It was beautiful weather, and I strolled around, impressed by the liveliness and the easy rhythm of Cologne.

Iceland

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:43:25 +0000

This being my first year back in Europe, it remained to be seen if we would manage to make our traditional long hike. We kept exchanging email, and then Guillermo hit the right note - “How about Iceland?”. We quickly settled on the idea. I learned later that Guillermo had simply seen a “Come to Iceland” billboard in Boston. I never think those things work, but there you have it.

Half marathon

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:49:49 +0000

It was bound to happen one day.

In February, Florian and I started running during lunch break on Tuesdays. Maarten would often join us, and we’d run a relaxed 40-50 minutes. One day, Florian told me he had registered for the Luxembourg half-marathon. I thought about it a few minutes, and decided to do the same. We started running in the weekends too, and I even kept the habit when abroad in Italy and Slovakia.

Some recent photos

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:23:38 +0000

I’ve been busy lately. Some photos, though.

Bratislava:

Austria:

Luxembourg:

12 km

Mon, 09 May 2011 20:29:50 +0000

This weekend I ran a 12km race through the city of Luxembourg. Last race I had been in was a 10km in New York, back in 2007. It was fun to do it again, and I was happy that I felt great, and found a good rhythm.

It was really not a serious race, more of a celebration in the city. Every so often, the race would stop as the runners had to climb up or down stairs. On narrow portions of the track, a pair of friends would be running side by side. Onlookers would cross the path at any point. But once I got used to that, it was just fine.

Taming my inbox / Getting Things Done

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 08:57:36 +0000

In my last job, at Microsoft, I had some difficulties managing all the many small tasks I was supposed to handle. Having lots of tiny tasks is not what I’m good at, but that’s a different story. In any case, I wanted to cope better, so, I’ll admit, I bought a self-help book: “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. I found out later that JP had read it and followed a similar methodology, and this was a good motivation for me.

Birds and cranes

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 19:25:31 +0000

We’ve had some weeks of wonderful weather in Luxembourg, and in the evenings I feel like stepping out to the terrace. In my neck of town, there is often a bird show at dusk. There is a crane in one of the nearby blocks, on which the birds love to roost. They arrive in flocks and crowd the crane. Every now and then, a flock will go out for a flight around the neighborhood, then come back. When the days start getting warmer, I’ll sit on the terrace one day, watching, as long as it takes to make sense of things. I think I saw a documentary recently that stated that the purpose of the flock flights in the evenings is unknown.

Running the Ikeathon

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:31:43 +0000

What a disgustingly useful weekend. I’ve been more or less sick since Wednesday. Stomach stuff, bad enough that I left work at 1 on Thursday, and didn’t get back to the office until 12:30 on Friday. Things are getting better slowly, but there went Saturday and Sunday.

Being stuck at home has its benefits. Earlier this week, I received a shipment from IKEA, with a closet and a dresser (I miss the walk-in closets I always had in the US), an extra desk, a table-with-shelves for my under-shelved, under-surfaced kitchen, and an extra book-case. And I got all five items assembled, all without a hitch. Except, I have blisters on my right hand from using the screwdriver.

Marooned

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 14:48:55 +0000

Dark days, dark days. Well, no, I exaggerate. Things are moving along in Luxembourg, at home and in the office too. Little by little I’m getting settled.

But this place makes some things really difficult. All shops are closed on Sundays, and close at 6:30 the rest of the days. Reminds me of the UK. How are you supposed to get groceries after work? Even harder for me, the wifi situation is quite bad. Luxembourg doesn’t ban smoking in bars and restaurants, and the wifi cafes/bistros I’ve seen so far reek of smoke, both new and stale. There are a couple of organic bistros that are saving my Saturdays, but on Sundays they’re closed, so … I’m writing this post from a McDonald’s. I admit it. I need internet every day.

Luxembourg, so far

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 12:02:14 +0000

I’ve arrived in what is, apparently, the worst winter in many years. My journey from Seattle was delayed several hours due to a snowstorm across Europe, which left a 20cm snowfall in Luxembourg, the largest in 20 years. And it has snowed almost every day since then. I’m growing tired of this, and look forward to the traditional Luxembourgish rain with grey sky.

View from my office:

Change of title

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 09:19:13 +0000

You may have noticed the new blog title. This blog is no longer called Lost Among Americans. Now it’s Lost Among Europeans. I arrived in Luxembourg on Thursday night, after the biggest snowfall the country had seen in quite a while—I heard someone say 20 years. This is my new town, here is my new job. The adventure goes on.

It is too soon for me to have a coherent idea of what the past years in Seattle, and previously, in New York, have meant for me. I can say this though: a lot.

A snowstorm before Thanksgiving

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:04:49 +0000

Last week was an interesting one. The weather forecasts predicted snow starting Monday, and very cold temperatures, and indeed they were right.

Monday noon was just cold, and there was already a thin blanket of snow over the city.

But by 3pm, we were under heavy snowfall, and I decided to head home. Not a moment too soon, it would turn out. Seattle is a temperate town, never ready to deal with rough weather. Already after a few hours of snow, cars were skidding on the slopes and blocking traffic.

A hummingbird in winter

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 06:17:06 +0000

Today it snowed in Seattle; or I assume so, because it snowed in Bellevue:

It was a short flurry, not enough to blanket the ground. After lunch, I went for a walk, camera in hand, and caught a glimpse of a hummingbird when passing next to a flower garden. I saw it fly to a near tree, and I decided to wait still, next to the flower garden. After a couple of minutes, the hummingbird came back and started hovering over the flowers. I was able to catch it on High Definition (720p). I need to learn how to shoot video properly with this camera, but here goes (click on image to go to the video):

More autumn colors

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 04:21:51 +0000

Red sky at night, sailor's delight?

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 04:13:27 +0000

Not sure on this one:

Autumn colors

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 06:25:30 +0000

Washington State is known as the Evergreen State, and for good reason. A lot of the trees in this area are perennials, so the fall here isn’t as defined as in the East Coast. Some of the leaves are turning, though, and the Japanese maples are very bright these days, so here are a few photos. Most of them taken with my new SLR camera, the Canon EOS T2i, which I bought myself as a gift for having been a good boy lately.

Rules for writing

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:56:13 +0000

While browsing aimlessly, I happened upon an article on The Guardian on rules for writing. I was completely taken with Elmore Leonard’s advice. Some excerpts:

3 Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue […]

4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” […]

5 Keep your exclamation points under control […]

8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters […]

My thoughts exactly. I’m going to have to read this guy.

Yosemite stuff, overdue

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:42:59 +0000

At last I got around to making videos and putting them on my website. What is two months among friends?

The photo albums: short(er) version full-length.

The videos are in full definition and full length (the hike video is 20 min!). They may tax your browser or your connection. You can press the pause button so there’s more cached footage when you press play. hike after hike.

Weekend in the Olympic peninsula

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:19:19 +0000

JP, JP (yes, two JP’s) and I left work early on Friday for a weekend hiking in the Olympic peninsula. It’s always great to get away, but this weekend also happened to be the hottest this summer. We had not counted on just how crowded it would get. On Friday night we couldn’t find a spot in any of the campgrounds, and had to spend the night at the Holiday Inn. And on Saturday morning, when we went to get our permit, we found out that our desired spot was taken, and had to settle for another spot.

Summer spring cleaning

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 05:19:52 +0000

I spent this weekend tidying up all my papers. The new apartment had been presentable for a while already, but I had an unpleasant feeling about my mountain of papers, which had been growing over the years.

I started working Saturday morning. Opening all my unopened bank statements, rounding up all the warranties that had expired, the instruction manuals for things I had no longer, the loose receipts that were relevant.

Wow-er!!

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:11:43 +0000

Viva San Iniesta, San Iker, San Del Bosque, San Xavi, San Villa, San Puyol, y todos!

Wow

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:00:57 +0000

Yosemite teaser

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:00:14 +0000

I’m back from the Yosemite hiking trip, which has been excellent. For the first time ever, I shot some video. I hope it will provide a good representation of the hike. We’ll be putting a DVD together from the footage, but at the moment, you can see the highlight.

Click on the photo to see the video.

We’ll also be organizing the photos into some coherent album form, but here are a few of my favorites (click to enlarge):

Catalanes

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:30:21 +0000

Not my own material, and not written in English. Here’s a link with a great article: Visca Catalunya

Green

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:10:37 +0000

It goes without saying that this area of the US is heavily vegetated, rich with water and with rainfall. Of the landscapes I see regularly, this is probably my favorite:

No more classes

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 02:43:16 +0000

Last Thursday I had my Anatomy final. The previous Saturday, I had had my last lab, and my last oral exam (about the scalp). I just got my grades, and I’m happy to say that I passed, so that I’m officially done. I suppose I’ll get my certificate soon. I won’t go to the graduation ceremony, in keeping with my traditions.

This one-year Medical Sciences program has been a very good thing. It’s been a different type of study from what I’m used to. In engineering, math or computer science classes, the professor talks in support of two or three major ideas during each lecture. It’s your job to understand what he’s saying, internalize those two or three key points, and do lots of exercises. In these classes, it was your job to remember most of what the professor was saying. No exercises, just quizzes.

You're a guest in our country

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:17:05 +0000

After the ferry back to mainland from San Juan Island, there was an inspection, with ID check. The officer asked for my ID, and I handed her my Washington State Driver’s license. I didn’t have my passport. Not good. I got reprimanded. I wanted to explain that one thing I fear more than being reprimanded is to misplace my visa (and the passport in which it’s pasted) so that I usually take it with me only when I have to fly or cross borders. I wanted to say that in seven years living in the US, ID had never been a problem. But one thing I’ve learned from my few brushes with the law here, is that “but” is not a word they want to hear from you. They just want to make sure you’re aware of what you did wrong, and that you’re not trouble. Say “but”, and you can almost hear their thought: “Oh, a feisty one”.

Long weekend in the San Juan Islands

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 06:51:28 +0000

A well deserved break. I took Friday off and went to Alberto and Kristy’s place at an indecently early hour so we could catch the first ferry, and we all left for a weekend in San Juan Island.

It was a rainy weekend, which made the scenery beautiful. It was also cold, so we were less inclined to leave the house. Not a problem, because Kristy landed us a gorgeous place, complete with a fireplace in which to roast marshmallows to make smores.

My view

Mon, 24 May 2010 05:42:38 +0000

It’s been over a month now since I left the Seattle apartment with the spectacular view. I can’t say I don’t miss it at all, but, as I thought would happen, being able to walk to work is more than adequate compensation, and there are other advantages to the new place. More than anything, what I miss about the old place is how it impressed my guests.

For daily living, all I need is a window where I can see some sky. Trees are welcome too.

Achilles tendon

Mon, 24 May 2010 05:24:59 +0000

I hadn’t run in a long time, perhaps six months.

Last summer I read the very entertaining Born to Run, a book about a group of long distance runners, and the mechanics of running barefoot or almost barefoot. I became interested and bought a pair of shoes with minimal soles. When I felt comfortable enough, I went running with them. Running with a thin soled shoe, you learn to land on the balls of your feet; otherwise, the heel bone feels impact very clearly. This is good running technique, but it puts more weight in your Achilles tendons, and mine were not up to the task. They became slightly swollen, and they ached whenever I did something outside of walking. This went on for months.

People skills

Mon, 17 May 2010 04:09:25 +0000

It happens most of the times I use the ATM in the Bank of America branch closest to my office: an unnaturally eager employee greets me and asks me if she can assist me. “No thanks, I just want to use the ATM”. Sometimes she’ll walk to the door, wait for me and thank me for banking with them when I leave.

On Friday, as I was walking to the bank, I noticed two employees outside. I thought I was in luck, but no. “Can we assist you?” “Thanks, I just want to use the ATM.” Then one of the employees went inside with me to explain that one of the ATMs was out of order, but I could use the other one. While I was making the withdrawal, she asked me if I was happy with my bank account. “Oh yes, everything’s great!”. Again, on leaving, I got thanked for banking with them.

That touch of class

Mon, 17 May 2010 03:56:29 +0000

This weekend, my old landlord, Greg, had a farewell gathering at my (his) old apartment before it gets sold. I was curious to see what the decorators had done with it: in this area, apartments are shown furnished to make them more appealing, even if they are not meant to be sold furnished. A designer or decorator, or someone with certified “good taste”, makes the arrangements.

Greg, on greeting me, told me that some of the decorator’s choices were not necessarily his own. I am of the same opinion:

Animation's new clothes

Wed, 12 May 2010 05:43:36 +0000

Finally I managed to watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which, together with Ponyo and Up, seems to have been one of the great animation films of the past year. It was the one I hadn’t yet seen. The three of them have received almost universal acclaim, and tomatometer scores above 90%, a rare thing. And yet, all three have disappointed me.

Up was very hard to watch whole. After a nice beginning, it went the way all Disney movies seem to go lately: it became a chase movie. The chase, as of late, has become to Disney movies what gratuitous watered-down sex scenes were to the dramas of the nineties. The chase in Up is so exhausting that the villain makes Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction seem pusillanimous.

A couple of firsts

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:25:55 +0000

It was a busy weekend.

On Saturday I spent eight hours in the lab at UW (University of Washington) for my anatomy class. This was where the rubber met the road. The twelve students were divided into three groups of four, and each group got a cadaver to perform dissections on. We had to take out the lungs and the heart and study them. I had been worried about this. About not being able to stand it. I was surprised that all twelve of us seemed to handle it fine, but according to the professor, that’s usual. I’m still uneasy about the next labs: there are parts of the body that worry me more than hearts and lungs.

Failed prophecies

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:45:20 +0000

A random and brief collection of pieces of advice and predictions I’ve been given that missed the mark.

Once you get a job, you will never go back to university.
You will never manage to make an American friend.
You will find Asian people very aggressive.
After a couple of years in Microsoft, you will get rid of all your non-Microsoft electronics.
Once you hear our offer, you’ll decide to stay. (Said by the managers of my previous job)

Awards and statistics

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:37:09 +0000

I’m glad The Hurt Locker won this year’s Oscar. It’s a better film than the usual winner.

I have a problem, though, with the whole idea of a vote certifying film quality. It sends a message I don’t like, that there is a proper taste, and a proper knowledge. Being a film buff, and one who vocalizes his tastes clearly, I find that people are often intimidated by my opinions. They’ll say they liked a film, but “don’t know as much as I do”. Why should anyone accept any judgement expressed by someone with more film viewings under their belt?

Non-fiction

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 10:01:58 +0000

In general, I’m more of a non-fiction than a fiction reader. It’s not that I object to fiction, or genres like sci-fi or fantasy; it’s the writing style that pushes me away. Writers trying to impress you with their command of language, their so-called imagination, or their dense, baroque descriptions. Not that these things affect all fiction, nor that they can’t affect non-fiction, but it happens much less often.

For film, the situation is different. Making a good documentary is difficult. Many of them fail to find a good rhythm, a narrative thread, or engaging interview subjects. Also, some documentarists seem to think that tackling an important topic excuses them from needing to make a good movie. On the other hand, fiction films can be easy to digest, the descriptive element shifted from language to cinematography and soundtrack.

Deadlines

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:03:14 +0000

A few months ago, a friend got me interested in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, and I researched a bit. I didn’t discover anything new about myself, but still I learned something. The test tries to classify people according to four criteria: introvert vs. extrovert, thinking vs. feeling, sensing vs. intuiting, judging vs. perceiving. Judging vs.perceiving has to do with how you like to organize your time. Judgers like schedules, deadlines, and finishing one project before embarking on the next. Perceivers like looseness, enjoy starting projects at any time, and don’t cope well with deadlines.

Who, me?

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 04:56:40 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the relaxed demeanor of people in Seattle, especially compared with the attention-deficient New Yorkers. But people in this area can be infuriatingly inert.

Example 1: driving. Drivers here are bad. Not because they’re too aggressive, too fast or too rude. Rather, they don’t think they need to do anything other than watch the speed limit, and stay in their lane. So what happens when you’re trying to get into the highway, and in the highway lane there is a car just slightly ahead of you, and one just slightly behind, going at your same speed, and blocking your access? Yup, good luck with that. Neither car will do anything about it. It’s up to you to floor the gas or slam on the brake. Or honk like crazy, or just force your way between the cars, and hope for the best. You asshole, see what you did?

Greeting the New Year

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:41:17 +0000

My apartment has such a good view of the Space Needle, I thought it would be nice to have some friends over to watch the fireworks. Originally I thought it would be just my colleague Sahib, but at SeaTac airport I ran into Janet and Changren, realized some friends would be in Seattle, and started to grow the group. It was 8 of us at the most crowded, which was small enough that I didn’t need to rearrange the living room.

Empty office

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:31:56 +0000

I was back in Seattle on January 28th and had four days of work before the New Year’s holiday. The office was deserted, so I decided to bring my camera and show you how the new building (since October) looks.

This is my office. I used to share an office with my friend Jon, but in the new building we all have individual offices. The people who have been long in the company get a window office. I get an office with a view of a window office, occupied by my senior manager. Much better than the old building.

The snow in Spain

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:21:28 +0000

This year, several friends asked me if it would be warm and sunny in Spain, when I told them I’d spend Christmas in Madrid. I’m setting the record straight. The winters are cold. Colder than Seattle, but drier, which is nice. This year it snowed while I was there. So there.

About food

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:44:33 +0000

I just watched the documentary Food Inc. I had been waiting for it a while. Years ago, I read Michael Pollan’s famous Omnivore’s Dilemma, and found it manipulative, though I appreciated the tremendous information it contained. You can read my Amazon review for detail. Pollan has a large role in the documentary, and I like his interviews, they’re much more balanced than the book. The information in the documentary is not as abundant, and not as shocking, but shocking still for people who have not read articles or books about the American food system.

Staycation

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:08:47 +0000

I like this American word. It means a vacation where you stay home. Tomorrow, my Thanksgiving holidays begin. I got tomorrow off in exchange for having worked on Sunday a few weeks ago. Thursday and Friday are off pretty much everywhere in the US. I am not going to do anything for five days. I invited a friend over for Thanksgiving day, to listen to music. I won’t cook. My five days off will be as irrelevant as possible.

Stereo

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:25:09 +0000

I’m not the most obsessive person I know, but certainly I’m above average.

Ever since I got my first stereo and DVD player, I have had the question of speech intelligibility at the back of my mind. You see, very often I need to turn on the English subtitles for the films I watch in DVD, otherwise I lose words here and there. This has been an issue for years, and though I’ve made incremental improvements (I even wrote an optimistic post), it has kept bothering me. For instance, a DVD I saw recently, where I needed to turn on the subtitles, was Gran Torino.

Traffic

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:39:32 +0000

One more for the list of things that peeve me about driving in the US. The other day I was pulled over by a cop in the highway, on my way to work. Though I was going over the speed limit (by a bit only), the reason I was stopped was that the tabs on my license plates had expired. Come again? What are tabs?

Tabs are little stickers in the license plates of vehicles that have a date on them. I had always thought they were simply indicators of vintage. But no, they need to be renewed, at about $100. This can be done entirely over the internet, you can use your credit card (convenient, ey?). Yes, you read right: the car is not inspected in any way, you just have to pay.

Energy

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:02:42 +0000

A few months ago, I had a phone call from my landlord. He had realized he had been paying the electricity bill, which was supposed to be my duty. Neither of us stay on top of our money, obviously. I payed him back for past bills, and set up an account with Seattle Light.

My landlord remarked that I had a very low bill. This was a surprise. A lot of the time I’m home, I’m watching a DVD, or listening to music while playing with my laptop. I had been reading about amplifier technology, and had found out most amplifiers, mine included, are energy-inefficient. I assumed I would be power-hungry, for a single person that is.

Repair

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:37:09 +0000

My New York friends tell me that anything can be found in New York, and they may be right, but some things are easier in Seattle. This is clearly a great city for hikers.

In August, during my Montana hike, I abraded my lower back to the point of bleeding. It made me miss my old backpack, which had been broken for a year. This old backpack is a wonderful French model with a capacity of 60 liters, and I bought it for my very first multi-day hike, in 1996. It has been with me in the Pyrenees, Morocco, New Zealand, the Grand Canyon and many other places. Last year, one side of the belt clasp snapped. I tried to find a replacement part, but the right size wasn’t available. Unfortunately, the other part of the clasp was sewn to the waist band, and it was not something I could fix myself in a reliable way. I bought a new backpack to carry on hiking, and hoped to find a replacement clasp in Spain, in one of the stores that carries French brands. Alas, they didn’t have the size I needed.

Photos in this blog

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:55:15 +0000

I just wanted to mention, in case you’re not aware, that when you see a small photo in this blog, you can click on it to get a larger version. Thanks to the site I use for my photo albums, the larger photo is scaled up to take advantage of your screen.

Here’s an example.

Vancouver weekend

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:50:21 +0000

This weekend, Tom, my old friend from the Bear Stearns days, flew to Vancouver, and I drove to join him. It was my first time to Vancouver, and my first time to Canada too. We had spectacular weather, although it got a bit chilly at times. Hey, what can you expect at this time of the year, that far North?

Vancouver is a great city. It has an enormous park right next to the downtown area: Stanley Park, which is also by the shore, and next to the iconic Siwash Rock. You can see a Douglas fir on top:

A weekend in Mt. Rainier National Park

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:04:44 +0000

My friend Victor, from the IHouse years, flew in from California on Friday. On Saturday morning, we drove to the Northwest part of Mt. Rainier National Park. It was an overcast, drizzly day, but it is always a joy to be out in the woods.

The campsite was only 2 miles (around 3 km) from the start of the hike, so we pitched the tent, left our pads and sleeping bags inside, and had lunch. For a brief period, the sun was out. We were hopeful, but we would need to wait until Sunday for good visibility. We set out to explore with a reduced load on our backs.

Computers, part 1

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:18:17 +0000

I’m back in Seattle after some vacation. I wish I had more.

One of the things I wanted to do in Madrid was rescue the old Commodore VIC20 from oblivion in the garage. I’ve been reading a book on the history of Commodore, and it has stirred some memories. The VIC20 was the first computer we had in our family. I remember being very excited about it. Today, it is a quaint machine.

Montana and after

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:23:33 +0000

The trip to Glacier NP, Montana, happened a week ago. It’s about time I posted the photo album.

Since it feels far away now, I’m not doing a write-up. Know that it was a good, intense hike, and that each of us sustained some physical damage, as happens in intense hikes. We all returned to Seattle in one piece - one piece per person, that is.

Now I’m in Madrid, enjoying idleness and mom’s cooking.

Mailbox Peak

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:36:59 +0000

The third try was the charm. On previous weekends, I hadn’t been able to climb up Mailbox Peak. This time, JP and I met in North Bend in the morning, and reached the top by lunch time. It was four hours round-trip. The inclination is impressive: 4000 ft (1200 m) of elevation gained in the space of 2.5 miles (4 km). Surprisingly, there was a trail all the way, and we didn’t need to use our hands.

Pest

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:48:58 +0000

For the first few months of this year, and the last of last year, I was having an infestation of pigeons in my terrace. It all began innocently enough, with pigeons roosting on the railing. Then more came, and stayed often, while the weather was getting colder. They liked to roost on the large window frame, as you can see in this photo taken in April:

I thought it was nice to host birds, and although they would make a lot of noise sometimes, I was fine with that. Up to five pigeons at a time would come. As the weather started warming, and I wanted to spend more time in the terrace, I noticed the whole place was filled with bird excrement. They had gone too far. My landlord came to the apartment one day, and suggested that I get bird spikes. These are spikes you put on birds’s roosting spots to make them uncomfortable.

My new toy

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:15:56 +0000

For the last few weeks, I have been enjoying my new toy, the Kindle DX. The DX is a version of the Amazon Kindle with a larger screen. This is a wonderful device, and all the more wonderful, for me, because I got it as a very special gift.

The dimensions are more or less similar to those of a regular hard-bound book, larger than a soft-cover.

The fonts are crisp and clear, and although the grey background doesn’t provide as much contrast as a white page, it provides plenty. The font rendering is better than that of many soft-cover books, which can be chunky. A good hard-bound book still has superior fonts. In this photo, I recommend that you click to enlarge, zoom in, and move to the bottom of the photo.

Mount Si climb

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:02:08 +0000

A great thing about living in Seattle is how easy it is to leave the city behind and be surrounded by mountains or water. On Saturday, JP and I went over to Sahib’s house in North Bend. It is very near Mount Si, one of the best known hikes in the area. Mt Si is a continuous ascent for 4 miles, and the trail is wide (for a mountain trail) and in good state. We were surrounded almost all the way by very impressive trees.

New Zealand re-scans

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:27:22 +0000

At last, I got around to sending the negatives from my trip to New Zealand in 2003 to be re-scanned. As happened with the Grand Canyon photos, the re-scans are a substantial improvement over what I had. The colors are looking more realistic, and dark exposures are respected. It is easier to realize, now, that a given shot was taken at dawn or in bad weather.

You can take a look at the full album on my SmugMug page, but here is a selection of some favorites (you can click on the photos to enlarge):

Time and transport

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:04:08 +0000

The first five months of this year were very hard for me. I worked too much, worried too much, and ended up getting sick. I decided to take measures to stop this.

Of course, measures, like new year’s resolutions (which I never make), tend to be too abstract: stress less, have more time, enjoy more. Yes, of course, but saying it does nothing. One thing that has been helping, though, is that I’ve been very tired. Not really able to drive myself to exhaustion right now. But little by little, I’m getting my energy back.

Please like me

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:31:32 +0000

I’ve been reading the book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, in an effort to get myself back to shape after mental exhaustion. Very often, I get into the same situation when inquiring into areas where I’m ignorant: I buy a well liked popularization book. Almost always, I end up disappointed. Why does the book dumb down the concepts? Why the profusion of silly jokes? Why the pop culture references?

Photos from Utah, Virginia and DC

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:15:17 +0000

It will be a while before we pool and geo-tag our photos to make the official albums. In the mean time, here are albums with the shots from my camera:

More Seattle skies from the balcony

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:38:12 +0000

What I work on

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:33:06 +0000

I generally do not to write about work in this blog, but it is the first time that I can point to some publicly available software to which I have contributed.

If you catch any news on Bing: that’s the group I work in.

As to my personal contribution: it reminds me a bit of that scene in The Ten Commandments where Charlton Heston is building a monument city for his father, and watches an obelisk fall into place, then says:

A hike and a wedding

Tue, 19 May 2009 01:15:11 +0000

I’m back in Seattle now, after a great vacation in Utah, Nevada and Virginia. I’m exhausted. The four-day hike across Bryce Canyon was great. When Guillermo gets back from his honeymoon we’ll be pooling our photos together, geo-tagging them, and making an album. In the mean time, here is a little teaser:

After the hike, Guillermo and I were off to Virginia, to prepare the wedding. It was fun, but hardly restful. Both Guillermo’s and Caroline’s families are great, and the friends from Barcelona, and several other places, were wonderful. Being a best man in an American wedding is quite a responsibility. You will be happy to know I didn’t lose the rings, and delivered my speech sober.

Cartoons

Thu, 07 May 2009 06:39:00 +0000

In two days I’ll be going on a hard-earned ten day holiday to hike Bryce Canyon and see Guillermo get married in DC. I am in desperate need of the vacation, I’m almost there in my mind.

Nothing much worth writing about in the last week, but a friend sent me a link to a youtube video. It’s an electronic song that someone made almost fully out of sound fragments from the Disney movie Alice in Wonderland. I’m completely mesmerized by the music and the video, I’ve watched it several times. I almost want to rent the film now. I was thinking about animated films. In late years they have become much less interesting than they used to be. Alice’s expressions in the video are more natural than today’s overdone 3D faces that grin constantly. Another thing I can do without is the celebrity voices. And the pop-culture references. Cartoons are for children, Hollywood, children! And adults who enjoy children’s entertainment.

Sickness and DVD

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:13:32 +0000

Howdy, I’m back!

These last four months have been just hard and stressful. I made all my deadlines last week, and then got sick. This is typical for me: apparently, adrenaline protects me from sickness while I have work due. A shame. This Monday, after a whole week of headaches and mild fever, I went to the doctor, and now I’m on antibiotics, for a sinus infection (sinusitis).

The past week I was not up to leaving the house, so I’ve been watching lots of DVD - especially since I disconnected the TV signal in March. I was in the mood for a series, so I rented My So Called Life. I had never seen it nor heard of it (apart from being recommended by mom). Watching Claire Danes suffer through adolescence is very entertaining, and although sometimes the show got repetitive and clichée, and although I developed a dislike of Bess Armstrong, who played Claire Danes’s mother, overall I enjoyed myself. It’s funny about teenage: we never completely leave its struggles.

Audio obsession

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:03:24 +0000

The last two months I’ve been busier than I like at work, it’s been tough. At the same time, at home, I’ve been consumed by audio, to the point of not being able to get a good rest. Of course, that was just the time for a thorough tidying of the apartment. I’m an obsessive person, and every now and then I get into these periods of feverish activity.

The audio obsession has a long history: for years I’ve been annoyed by the lack of clarity in dialogues in DVD in my system. I’ve tried many tweaks, and even replaced some equipment, and still, I often needed to turn subtitles on. I’d be following dialogue normally, and then some sounds would just seem to disappear, and I’d lose sync. Since I have no problem understanding English speech in real life, needing subtitles was a bit of a slap in the face.

Toilet business

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:36:29 +0000

This is recycled from an email I sent my running group in NY this morning:

One of the areas where I was greatly surprised in this country was restroom behavior. Back home, when using the urinal next to another guy, it was rare to talk at all. If you were next to your friend you’d sort of joke about it, try to be funny: “So, how’s it hanging?”, “What’s on your mind?”.

Pet peeves

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:16:57 +0000

This is a collection of sentences, or behaviors, that immediately raise a red flag in my mind. Some of them are not necessarily bad, but in my experience, they have been associated with stupid people.

Ample use of emoticons - things like :( or :D - in writing: almost always it’s someone silly.
Ample use of exclamation signs: nobody can be that excited about things. I find it dishonest.
“I’m a realist”: what they usually want to say is “I’m more intelligent than you”. Unless, they do believe there is one reality, and they grasp it, in which case they’re deluded.

Hardware

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:28:08 +0000

My iMac and my MacBook Pro had been running out of memory and disk space for some time now. After some research online, I found that, even though a hard drive replacement in a MacBook is risky, I could handle it myself. It was fun to buy the screwdrivers and the components. I like doing manual work now and then. Aside from a short, tiny scare, it all went smoothly, and I enjoyed seeing the bowels of my machines.

Manners

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:20:07 +0000

When I travel home to Madrid, I always dread that first intense exposure to Spaniards, in the airport lounge. I feel ashamed, I wonder why they (we) are so loud, have such a flock mentality, find it so difficult to wait in line. Oh, those boring conversations about media personalities, those old jokes; everybody rehashing the same opinions, dispensing advice to people that didn’t ask for it.

Why can’t we be more reserved, more independent, more perceptive?

Snowstorm

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:10:34 +0000

Seattle was not prepared for the onslaught of snow this holiday season. There are not enough snow machines in the city, and the airport is similarly optimistic about the weather. This season gave us the worst weather in many years. Some say 17, some say over 30.

All of this happened during the days I was traveling home. Now it is fun to remember the chaos: spending the night before my flight in a hotel by the airport, navigating a SeaTac brimming with people who needed re-ticketing, missing my connection in Newark and having to spend the night there. On my flight back, having to make a stop to refuel and defrost, waiting over an hour for baggage, waiting again over an hour to get a taxi. All throughout, dealing with the harried airport staff, who often displayed good intentions, but had been outwitted by the events.

Working from home

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:32:48 +0000

Advantages of not being customer-facing. The snow got real this time.

My first Seattle snow

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:25:09 +0000

On museums

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:30:13 +0000

This weekend I went to the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) to see their exhibition of Edward Hopper. I don’t usually go to museums, but I like Hopper, and I thought I would give the SAM a fair shot. Fortunately, it was a small exhibition, and I was done quickly. I wandered around, and found some beautiful pieces. All in all, I was out in under 45 minutes, which, if you ask me, is the right amount of time for museums. Any longer, and my knees start to hurt. Museums are cruel, as are churches. I can walk five hours with a heavy backpack, I can run for an hour and a half, I can play two full games of basketball back to back, but I cannot stand still, or amble around a room at snail’s pace, for more than 40 minutes.

Raw yogurt, at last

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:01:01 +0000

[Note: if you want instructions on making yogurt, without the story, go here]

Today I bring you one of those stories about the triumph of the human spirit that Hollywood is so fond of.

In my previous post on yogurt, I had described the whole process I used to make yogurt, and some of its limitations. To sum it up:

If I used ultra-pasteurized milk, I didn’t need to heat it before incubation, and the yogurt would have a uniform, custardy texture.
If I used raw, or regularly pasteurized milk, and I didn’t scald it before incubation, the yogurt developed an uneven texture, and leaked whey, which gave it a bad taste.
I had no way of controlling the incubation temperature.

You might have thought that, having found that ultra-pasteurized milk produced consistent results easily, I would have been satisfied and concluded my research. However, I am an obsessive fellow. My friend Tom once told me that all the computer programmers he knows have some form of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and I think he had a point.

Grand Canyon, remastered

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 09:55:53 +0000

On Tuesday, when I got back from New York, a box was waiting for me at home with the rescans of my photos of the Grand Canyon, which I took in the summer of 2004, during a ten day hike along the Tonto trail. Perhaps my most difficult adventure to date. Back in 2004, I asked the lab to scan my negatives to CD-ROM. Then, Guillermo, Elisabeth and I pooled all our photos together, filtered them, added narrative, and built a website for our journey.

Old friends, old town

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:49:42 +0000

Thank God for Thanksgiving. There are not enough vacations in American jobs, and not enough national holidays. The stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas is the one time of the year when (some) jobs take themselves less seriously.

I spent the whole week of Thanksgiving in New York, which I hadn’t visited since moving out in February. I don’t feel like a detailed account of all that happened during that week. There were good times with old friends. I got to stay in Lara and Andrew’s new house in Brooklyn, helped Lara prepare Thanksgiving dinner (her successful debut), went for a run with my team, went ice skating for the second time ever, caught up with Andrea. I’m not interested in the details, but here go a few photos:

I like blogging

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:24:09 +0000

When I started this blog in May, I had no expectations. The balance of these six months writing posts is very positive. It has been a good way of communicating, but it has had a small audience. Aside from family, not more than four friends ever check the posts. Consequently, I still get asked the silly question “How’s it going in Seattle?”, which I was hoping to preempt.

I wouldn’t call the blog a failure, however. Quite the opposite. Aside from communicating with a small audience, this blog is helping me improve my writing, and sort out my thoughts. Seeing my arguments typed and published and replied to, gives them new life. When I read old posts, I notice patterns I don’t like, and I take care to avoid them in newer posts. It is also nice to keep a record of thoughts and events.

On the home stretch

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:20:17 +0000

I love this time of the year. The gray skies, the crisp air, the warmth of bed.

Next weekend I’m going to New York, where I’ll be spending the week of Thanksgiving. I haven’t been there since February. Then, Christmas and New Year in Madrid. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, work should be a bit less stressful than it has been in the last months. The year is winding down, and it’s been a busy one, closing shop in New York and moving to Seattle, with the Nepal trip in between.

This sporting life

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:17:06 +0000

Last Wednesday, a couple of my colleagues from the office were trying to recruit people to play football (they call it soccer) for their team, as they were short. A few of them had tried to get me interested before, so this time I offered to play with them, on the understanding that I’m no good. It was fun. I hadn’t played football in many many years. After the game, we all stayed for a couple of drinks, chatting and watching other teams play. A fine way to spend an evening.

Trick or treat?

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:39:39 +0000

Last Friday was Halloween. At work they took this seriously: the assistants printed out sheets of paper that said “Treats available in this office”. People who had sweets pasted those sheets on their office doors. At 3pm, the children of employees started showing up in their hunt for candy. It was cute to see their parents trying to teach them manners: “Now say Thank You!”.

My colleague Jim has very nice children. The older one was dressed up as Spiderman, and I asked “Wow, are you dressed as Batman?”. He said: “No, Spiderman!”. I said: “Oh, yeah? Well, where’s the spider?”. To this he froze, not knowing how to answer. He probably hadn’t considered that Spiderman was related to spiders. His mother chuckled, asked him to say thanks for the candy, and pushed him on to the next office.

Location, location, location.

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:13:01 +0000

I need to remember not to underestimate the power of convenience.

Last week, the power chord of my MacBook finally died. I had to rely on my iMac, which was at the other corner of the house. It made me realize that I had an inconvenient electronic setup, and so, I reorganized. Now my iMac, and my desk, are in the living room, next to the window. The recliner looks towards the window, and the sofa is oriented North. Not huge, but now I make better use of space, and better use of the windows.

Friends of friends (photos from last weekend)

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:57:24 +0000

Again, work was intense last week and I didn’t have energy to update the blog. I don’t like it when that happens.

I don’t feel like writing a proper post about last weekend this weekend, but I did take some photos I liked, so here they go. As way of explanation: Guillermo’s good friend in Boston, Dmitri, was in Seattle for work, and we decided to meet for the first time on Saturday. Dmitri’s colleague, the aptly named Nice, drove from Vancouver, where she had been sent for work too, and joined us. After a disappointing excursion to Snoqualmie Falls, we went to Discovery Park, and then Green Lake, where we spent a while conversing with a group of friends. Dmitri has been in the US since age 7, but you can tell he’s Russian by his directness and audacity in discussions, and a clear disregard for conventional wisdom. All qualities I like.

America the Great

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 09:21:24 +0000

These days the news media has become terribly boring, more so than usual. For a while, I was riveted, following the crisis in Wall Street. There were some interesting articles, and a lot of questions. That quickly gave way to a dialog in the media over whether we were witnessing the demise of the American Empire. Were these the last days of Rome? What would America do with a financial sector in crisis? The New York Times’s lead writers, Dowd and Friedman, wrote, as they always do, silly articles explaining exactly what was happening, so that their silly readers could make silly sense of things. Dowd’s piece was entitled Are We Rome? Tu Betchus!. For those of you who haven’t been bombarded: “Tu Betchus” is a Latinized version of “You betcha”, which Sarah Palin famously overuses. Haha.

How I shave

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:59:28 +0000

Following last week’s post on yogurt, here is another one about a minority craft. Shaving has become an enjoyable task for me, in the last few years. It wasn’t always one.

I was the first boy in my class to shave. Mom, ever obsessed with cleanliness, told me, when I was twelve, that I had a shade in the mustache area, and needed to start shaving. After the first few times, the novelty and the excitement of growing up had passed, and had given way to razor burn. At one point I had a large red mark above my lip for a week. I hated shaving, and started doing it less and less.

Paul Krugman wins Economics Nobel

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:25:33 +0000

He’s almost the only reason I keep reading the New York Times. I find their other lead writers, like Friedman and Dowd, both sanctimonious and unimaginative. There is another writer I like, Dan Schnur, who worked for McCain’s campaign in the previous election. Schnur, like Krugman, is willing to speak clearly, and ruffle feathers inside his own newspaper and readership.

I’ve bought five of Krugman’s books, including his textbook on microeconomics (which I haven’t yet read). He’s a whistle blower, warning of America’s economic and social maladies even at times when others say everything is Great. His last, The Conscience of a Liberal, was scathing. I’m happy he won; I consider him my personal economist.

Fun with milk

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:54:27 +0000

[Note: if you want instructions on making yogurt, without the story, go here]

I’m about to begin a discussion of the parameters in yogurt making, and get into technicalities. You may want to skip down to the paragraphs that surround the photo, unless you enjoy food geekery.

The basic process of making yogurt is pretty simple:

Boil the milk (this is optional, as I will discuss further down)
Let it cool to room temperature
Add the starter cultures
Let it incubate at a warm temperature

Here is a detailed guide on making yogurt.

My yogurt, my diet

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:36:47 +0000

Today I wanted to write an article about making yogurt. When I started to write it, I realized I wanted to tell the story of how I came to make my own yogurt. It’s not a pretty story, be warned, but it’s been important for me, and it may be useful for people who are led to this post by search engines. I’ve put the gory story in this post. The next one will deal with yogurt making exclusively.

Parental visit, time management

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:41:09 +0000

Mom and dad were here last week; their first visit to Seattle, or the West Coast in general. Parental visits are the time I usually take things a bit easier. Luckily, a period of extreme busyness at work had just come to an end, so I was able to relax this time around too.

Most of the time I feel I should be doing something more. I should be learning a new subject, trying to meet more people, tidying my papers, cleaning the house, or any number of things that I tend to postpone. I’m often frustrated in this respect.

Evening skies, or the little camera that could

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:54:15 +0000

One of the advantages of my neighborhood, and my apartment, is that I have an enormous, uncluttered view of the sky. I need big skies; one of the reasons that in Manhattan, I could only stand living near Central or Riverside Parks.

Very often, when I get home from work, there is a beautiful evening sky, and I take out my cameras: my beloved Canon EOS Rebel XT (aka EOS 350D), and my new, little, Fujifilm Finepix fd100. I bought the pocket camera to take on social events, or any time the EOS would be conspicuous or cumbersome. Of course, this being me, I did obsessive research into pocket cameras before I settled on the Fuji. I always had a good feeling about that company. They used to make my favorite film (Fuji Superia Reala), and now they’re one of the few innovators in digital cameras.

Portland weekend

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:26:01 +0000

Phew, I’ve been busy! Sometimes I let my job get in the way of important things.

This post is about last weekend, which happened to be Labor Day Weekend (Monday was off). Tom came over on Thursday night, and we drove to Portland for three days. Tom is my old colleague from Bear Stearns. He’s also a computer programmer, also a fan of photography, also an outdoors person, and also has become a bit tired of New York. He’s thinking of moving to the Northwest, hence the interest in seeing Seattle and Portland.

Olympic misunderstandings

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:43:00 +0000

Two curious anecdotes from the Olympic games.

The first: after the women’s gymnastics team competition, the New York Times had an article which compared the lives of the Chinese gymnasts to the Americans. The Americans lead relatively normal lives, and keep going to school. The Chinese, on the other hand, are plucked from their families at an early age, and don’t get much of an education. The article went on to make the following comment:

License to, um, drive?

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:42:48 +0000

At last I have received my Washington driver’s license on the mail. I was supposed to get one in my first month in Seattle, but the paperwork to be done was too rigid.

The process to get a driver’s license here is very different from Spain, and it doesn’t make much sense. First, the eye exam, which allowed me to pass without my glasses, even though I failed to read several characters in the first row. I think you have to be legally blind to fail this test. Then the knowledge test, about 20 multiple choice questions, about 16 of which are absolutely idiotic. Then about 4 ridiculous questions to justify that not everybody can pass.

Impostor

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:05:49 +0000

I didn’t do, nor will do, much of anything this weekend, so here goes another random post.

Now and then I have days in which I feel like an impostor. Everything seems arbitrary, and I don’t want to leave home, because every action I know I’m going to take, and everything I’m going to see, seems fake.

I’ve had days like these for a long time. I remember being a child and having days in which I didn’t want to go to school for this same feeling of artificiality. They have never bothered me, and on them, I have still gone to school, or parties, or work, and behaved as usual.

Adventures in the rainforest

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:37:49 +0000

Every now and then, things go wrong the right way.

This weekend I had organized a hike in the Olympic peninsula, since the hike JP organized two weeks ago went so well. The Olympic peninsula is about a three hour drive from Seattle, so I wanted a two-night stay, to make it worthwhile. My idea was to leave on Friday around 1pm, and hit the mountains in the North, or the rainforest and the coast in the West. Over the week, email went back and forth with different ideas, and in the end we left Seattle around 3pm, still with no final decision about where to hike.

European or gay

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:27:56 +0000

Years ago, when I got the news that I had received the fellowship for graduate school in America, my friend Guillermo (the one from Buenos Aires), who was then my flat-mate, gave me a stern warning: “Jaime, you see how you’re sitting right now, with your legs crossed? Don’t ever do that in America, or they will think you’re gay … or European”.

The “or European” part was good enough for me, so I’ve continued to cross my legs in this country. I’ve asked some friends, and they have confirmed that Guillermo was indeed right. There are many other examples of things that are common in Europe, but taboo here. One is smell. I’ve made some American male friends very uncomfortable by asking them what their favorite cologne was. “Cough. What?… Me?, I never use cologne. I just slap on some aftershave!” they would retort. Describing smell is seen as womanly, unless it is to prove your knowledge of wine or food.

On browsing, or how I find my music

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:49:02 +0000

Last Wednesday I came home from work exhausted and in a bad mood. The only thing to do for me in those cases is to have some alcohol, and medicate by watching TV or listening to music. I ended up watching a rerun of Futurama, a series that the creator of The Simpsons made years ago. It has something of a cult following among nerds, but I’ve only seen it a couple of times. The episode turned out to be very good, but especially, at the end, there was a song that stuck in my head, and I had to listen to it again.

Camping trip

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:26:27 +0000

At last, my first camping trip since I moved to Seattle. In fact, my first camping trip in a long time. My friend JP from work asked if I was interested, and of course, given the great weather we’ve been having lately, I was. He also hadn’t gone camping yet. He bought a book on hikes in the area, and narrowed the choices to a few, and then we decided to go to the Cascades because of the short car trip, only slightly longer than an hour.

Long patriotic weekend

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:19:44 +0000

I wish all weekends were this long. I had Friday off since it was the 4th of July. To celebrate, in the evening Emily came to my place with her friend Christina. I hadn’t seen Emily since Andrea’s wedding a month ago, so it was great to catch up.

We mainly had cheese, ice-cream and berries with white wine. I had made sangría, as we were expecting a couple of people more, but we ended up not having any. We sat in the deck watching the fireworks in Belltown and Gasworks, a park on the North end of Lake Union. Lake Union itself was crowded with people out on their boats. Seems like a good way to celebrate Independence Day.

Eurocup

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:46:47 +0000

Even in America, a lot of people were aware that Spain got into the final of the Eurocup, and today, at long last, won.

Yesterday I went for a long walk looking for a bar that would show the final, but nothing convinced me too much. As I was getting home, I decided to check the bar closest to my house, which is just one block away. It’s a small place that I can see from my terrace. Yesterday, it had a sign saying they would be showing the game. There were three tv’s in the place, so the decision was made.

My office has a great view

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:45:06 +0000

Just wanted to break the monotony of my all-text posts, and make you envious.

Fire with fire, Apple with Apple

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:44:58 +0000

In the last couple of years I’ve become more and more dependent on my laptop (a beautiful MacBook Pro). Before, I used it to program, do email and surf the web. Now, in addition, I keep all my music in it. I don’t even buy CD’s any more, I buy directly in electronic format. I also use it as my photo lab and database (with Aperture), as my video-conferencing tool, and of course, to write this blog and keep track of other blogs.

Green fatigue

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:37:12 +0000

It goes like this:

(someone) I see you drive a Prius, that’s great!

(me) Thanks!

You will find that people in Seattle are very concerned with the environment, unlike in other places.

I found there was a high degree of environmentalism in New York.

Oh, really?

And sometimes I read stupid things like these:

You should never eat meat, and become a vegetarian. Do it for the environment.
Bottled water is evil. Filtered tap water tastes great, anyway.

Yay for Spain!

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:37:02 +0000

If you don’t know, and no matter if you don’t care about football (soccer, for Americans): Spain beat Italy, to advance to semi-finals in the Eurocup. This is historical: we hadn’t made it this far in over 20 years. Next, Russia. I’ll definitely find a place to watch!

Growing pains

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:36:49 +0000

Lately I’ve been very busy, working like a dog. Unlike other times of overwork, I do see the purpose here, and it’s helping me learn, and encouraging me to work smarter - an expression I don’t like, but it fits.

Some times I get into a pattern of small failings: nothing spectacular, just a steady stream of tiny disappointments with myself. It’s very frustrating, but I tend to find these episodes useful. When I haven’t had one in a while, I start to think I’m going stale. These days I’m finally getting irked into action, into organizing myself better at work and out of it, and into doing the things I’ve been postponing.

Too much for the body

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:53:35 +0000

It was a storm of a weekend. I went to Buffalo for Andrea’s wedding, saw Niagara Falls, and put up with the airlines…

My flight was supposed to get to Buffalo on Friday at midnight, but got delayed a couple of hours. I ended up getting to my hotel room at 2:30am, was restless for a long while, then crashed. It had been a hard week at work and I was already falling behind on sleep.

Lunchbox hippie

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:31:00 +0000

Last week I started bringing my own lunch to the office. I’m using a funny little lunchbox they sell at Whole Foods.

It all started after my office-mate Jon brought his own utensils to the cafeteria. I thought it was a good idea, and started bringing my own too. We wondered whether they would serve us if we brought our own porcelain plates. The answer was no. Fairly typical in America that cafeterias use disposable plastic plates, cups and utensils. Fairly typical, too, that the food is not good. The decision to pack lunch was only a question of time. The thing is, I want to eat properly, nothing like making a sandwich, or a … salad (boring!).

Unboxed

Mon, 26 May 2008 09:18:00 +0000

Thank God for Memorial Day weekend - one of the bad things about America is the scarcity of holidays. Today I was able to finally settle in and get rid of all the boxes.

On Thursday I took the knowledge test for driving. I can drive with my Spanish license, but I’m legally required to get a WA state driver’s license. Anyway I thought the process was a scam. The vision test: I asked to be tested without glasses first. In Spain I only just made it without glasses, but that was ten years ago, and although my vision hasn’t declined by much, it has declined. But here: “Please read the top row”. I read the first four out of eight letters, but can’t even guess at the rest. I’m ready to put my glasses on, but the lady tells me to continue. “Is the yellow light inside or outside the red box?” - “inside”. “Where are the flashing lights coming from?” - “left and right”. “OK, you passed”. The knowledge test was so silly, I felt stupid for taking the time to read the manual the night before. I’m very happy I’m not required to wear glasses to drive in the US, but this reinforces my impression that anybody is allowed a license here, which is not reassuring.

Homes and numbers

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:55:00 +0000

I moved into the new place on Thursday, and since then I’ve been arranging my things little by little. Of course, the most important for me were the electronics. I sat down on the sofa and listened to music as soon as I had my hifi set out. I also watched the first DVD of Michael Palin’s series on the Himalaya, which is promising. I sorted my kitchenware pretty quickly, and my clothes, um, are coming along.

Discovery Park

Sun, 11 May 2008 20:49:00 +0000

The search for an apartment is over at last; I’ll be moving out of temp housing in the next days. This weekend I was so tired, I decided to stay local, even though I no longer have the sword of Damocles over my head, and I still haven’t visited Vancouver nor Portland.

Seattle is a good place to walk, and, being a small city, you can cover it easily. On Sunday I drove to Discovery Park, a beautiful and unkempt place in the westernmost tip of Seattle. I’ve previously gone there to run. One of the bad things about Belltown, the neighborhood where I’ve been living, is that there are no good parks nearby; I’ve been driving to parks to run - I don’t like running in the streets.

Driving a hybrid

Wed, 07 May 2008 01:46:00 +0000

The easiest thing I’ve done in Seattle so far is get a car. I just walked into the Toyota dealership and told them I was interested in a Prius. Within 20 minutes, I had taken a drive, and decided on a color from the cars they had available right away. I thought I’d need tons of documentation, but no, just a photocopy of my Spanish driver’s license and insurance were needed. We took care of insurance there, and all that was needed for that was my Spanish driver’s license! I find it funny, considering how hard most other things are, such as visas, job background checks, or renting apartments. But please, a car for everyone!

On housing in Seattle

Tue, 06 May 2008 03:06:00 +0000

I’ve been in temp housing about a month now, and want to have my own place so I can take my things out of storage: my hi-fi set, my flatscreen, my bike, books. I’m nothing without these!

The search for a place is so far less stressful than it was in New York (everything here is less stressful), but very frustrating: it’s almost impossible to find places with hardwood floors in the area. It’s always carpet wall to wall, apparently for noise damping as well as economy. I’ve only seen hardwood in a pair of condos in concrete-and-steel buildings. Some of the places I’ve seen that advertise hardwood floors turn out to have hardwood only in the kitchen. The kitchen? That’s where I would NOT have hardwood. What is wrong with these people?

Joining the blogosphere

Tue, 06 May 2008 02:59:00 +0000

Ah, my selfless motives to join: it was already difficult to keep my friends and family in Madrid well informed, but now that I have left New York to go to Seattle, I have so many more people to give updates to! I find myself writing the same things, more or less, in many different emails.

In one of those strange actions that are meant to be lazy but will probably entail lots of work, I’ve decided to start this blog. Next time someone asks “so how’s it going in Seattle?” I can point here, maybe.