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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Captain Nemo, #2)

2011-01-05 00:00

Cover for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Captain Nemo, #2)

Review:

The prose is not easy to read, be­cause of the book's age, but it's what it is, and it's a clas­sic tale.

Should a kid read it? No. He should prob­a­bly try a mod­ern­ized or abridged ver­sion if there's any good ones. But some old­er kids may en­joy the im­mer­sion in an­oth­er era that comes from it.

Al­so, it's writ­ten pret­ty much like a blog, if you want to be all hip about it ;-)

A new stage, blah blah blah

2010-12-07 02:48

You sure­ly have seen a mil­lion posts like this one. Hack­er X starts say­ing what a great time he had at com­pa­ny Y/­col­lege/­mom's base­men­t/the cir­cus and how he will al­ways miss the peo­ple there but any­way it's great to look for­ward to the chal­lenge of life at com­pa­ny Z/unem­ploy­men­t/feng shui con­sult­ing/ele­fant ex­cre­ment shov­el­ing.

Well, this one is pret­ty much the same thing.

I start­ed work­ing at Canon­i­cal to­day. Yes, Canon­i­cal. The Ubun­tu guys. You may won­der what a dyed-in-the-­wool KDE guy is go­ing to do there. Well, it's a job, dude, the 90s called and they want their flame­fest back.

I am the new "Engi­neer­ing Man­ag­er for the Desk­top+ group". What the heck is that? Well, my job is to help a bunch of tal­ent­ed peo­ple I like (at least the ones I've known so far ;-) de­liv­er cool soft­ware.

I will prob­a­bly not be cod­ing much, since this is a grownup job, the kind where in­stead of lines of code you are sup­posed to de­vel­op gas­tric ul­cers and re­ced­ing hair­lines while you herd cats to the clos­est cat shed, but I will prob­a­bly man­age to do some­thing, some­times.

This po­si­tion came at a good time for me. My kid is go­ing to be 4 next year and go to school all day. What the heck was I gonna do at home all day then, watch ani­me? Build killer robot­s? Plan how to con­quer the world?

And what hap­pens to my pre­vi­ous job? Well... I still have it some­how. I own a piece of Net Man­agers (http://net­man­ager­s.­com.ar) but I will be step­ping away from the dai­ly man­age­ment and op­er­a­tion of the busi­ness.

So, ba­si­cal­ly, I in­tend to take the mon­ey and dump the work on the backs of my ca­pa­ble part­ners (just kid­ding). In any case, the com­pa­ny can work just as well with­out me since we can now maybe hire an em­ploy­ee in­stead of pay­ing me, so it's win/win ;-)

On oth­er news, I will still work in the same ta­ble as the last 5 years, do­ing some of the same things, with dif­fer­ent peo­ple. It does­n't sound so big when said like that, uh? Well, I will trav­el more, and there are in­ter­est­ing chal­lenges in this new job.

In short: canon­i­cal, lit­tle cod­ing, still own net­man­ager­s, hap­py guy.

Charla: docutils / rst y sus amigos

2010-12-06 18:56

Again, span­ish on­ly be­cause it's a video... in span­ish.

Re­sul­ta que me olvidé que sí habían graba­do mi char­la de do­cu­tils y com­pañi­a. Gra­cias a Ger­mán por hac­erme acor­dar y mostrarme adonde es­taba!

Y ... acá es­tá:

Syndrome

2010-12-06 00:00

Cover for Syndrome

Review:

Some may com­plain about the sci­ence in the book and they would be right. I will com­plain about some­thing else: the plot and the writ­ing.

Not on­ly is the plot fu­eled by co­in­ci­dence in a scale that would make any­one no­tice (ex­am­ples? the jour­nal­ist is the son of the bad guy bil­lion­aire *and* the old flame of the ar­chi­tec­t/­ex­per­i­men­tal sub­ject who is the sis­ter of the bad guys's CFO kind of co­in­ci­dences).

There is al­so the ran­dom de­tailed de­scrip­tion of things that don't mat­ter in the least, but al­so make no sense. Here's the de­crip­tion of Alan the door­man:


"When Ally and Knickers walked into her lobby, Alan, the morning doorman, was there, just arrived, tuning
his blond acoustic guitar.
Watching over her condominium building was his day job, but writing a musical for Off Broadway (about
Billy the Kid) was his dream. He was a tall, gaunt guy with a mane of red hair he kept tied back in a ponytail
while he was in uniform and on duty. Everybody in the building was rooting for him to get his show mounted,
and he routinely declared that he and his partner were this close to getting backers. "We're gonna have the
next Rent, so you'd better invest now" was how he put it. Alan had the good cheer of a perpetual optimist and
he needed it, given the odds he was up against."


Then he pats the dog and exchanges two phrases with the protagonist.

I marvel at the idea of a doorman that's allowed to play guitar on the lobby on working hours. With this introduction you may wonder what role Alan plays in the plot. Well, let me quote the only other mention of Alan in the whole book. It comes very near the end.


"The condominium no longer had a doorman. In hopes of trimming costs, the condo board had sent out a secret
ballot on the subject. By a narrow margin the owners had voted to dispense with that particular frill. Although
she missed Alan and his early morning optimism about his Off-Broadway hopes, she realized the economy
was probably timely. "


I rest my case. The plot is just lazy, the science is contrived, and the writing lame. Not a good book.

Charla: aplicaciones extensibles con PyQt

2010-12-02 12:20

Span­ish on­ly, since it's about a video in span­ish ;-)

Acá es­tá, gra­cias a la gente de Junín, un video de mi char­la "Apli­ca­ciones ex­ten­si­bles us­an­do PyQt", en la que in­ten­to mostrar co­mo de­sar­rol­lar una apli­cación con PyQt y yap­sy.

No es una char­la con la que es­té muy con­tento. La otra sal­ió mejor, pero no se filmó, así que quedará so­lo en la memo­ria de los cu­a­tro gatos lo­cos que es­tábamos ahí ;-)

El resto de las char­las: http://un­no­ba.blip.tv/

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