It has been said that if noone hates you, you are do­ing it wrong. I must be do­ing it quite wrong be­cause there seem to be a lot of peo­ple who like me, for some rea­son. For ex­am­ple, to­day I was in a dark mood all af­ter­noon. I wrote ag­gres­sive stuff on twit­ter and IR­C.

And what do I get? Peo­ple ask­ing me what was wrong and of­fer­ing help. It's un­fair. Un­fair to them be­cause they should not be sub­ject to the moods of any ass­hole (in­clud­ing me). I can on­ly claim, in the way of ex­cus­es, that my wife no longer works next to me all day.

If she were there, and saw me act­ing like that, she would have slapped me back in­to sen­si­ble be­hav­iour by re­mind­ing me that I am a lucky bas­tard. She does­n't even have to say any­thing, she just has to be there. So, she ar­rived, I no­ticed I am a lucky bas­tard, and I am all mel­low now.

So, if I act­ed like a bas­tard with you to­day, or any oth­er day, sor­ry dude, I am a bit of a bas­tard. But I am a lucky one, and when I don't for­get that, I am, I think, bear­able.

Ser­gio de la Pa­va is Neal Stephen­son with law and bull­shit in­stead of com­put­ers and sword­s.

—Rober­to Alsi­na

But there are al­so swords in A Naked Sin­gu­lar­i­ty!

—Le­vi Stahl

A while ago I fin­ished read­ing "A naked sin­gu­lar­i­ty" by Ser­gio de la Pa­va.

If you have not read it, stop read­ing this now, take a week off and read it first. You may love me for telling you that, or you may hate me with the in­ten­si­ty of a thou­sand sun­s, but I doubt you will find it in you to say "me­h" af­ter you do.

I will try not to go in­to plot de­tail­s, even though it's per­haps im­pos­si­ble to spoil this book. If I told you how it end­s, it would not make any dif­fer­ence. If I told you about the chim­p, or about the Ca­sio Carousel, it may not mat­ter. Or maybe it was a mon­key, and the Carousel is done by Sony. Which it is, in the book. By Sony, not a mon­key. I think.

Re­mem­ber that kid in school that could tell the best jokes, and he did those fun­ny voic­es? De la Pa­va writes in fun­ny voic­es. And he breaks your heart with fun­ny voic­es. His book does­n't me­an­der, it goes straight and quick, de­ter­mined and in a hur­ry right out to the mid­dle of nowhere, then keeps go­ing, goes of­froad, keeps go­ing, runs through a few wall­s, and comes back here, by just go­ing and go­ing. It has a mo­tor, it has a rock­et en­gine, it nev­er blinks.

This book is os­ten­si­bly about a lawyer stray­ing his path. It's prob­a­bly writ­ten about some­thing else. I have this strange feel­ing that most char­ac­ters are imag­i­nary, even though they talk and feel very re­al to me, who am writ­ing this and thus am sup­posed to be more re­al than they are. It's hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry grit­ty re­al­is­m. It's po­et­ic and tech­ni­cal. It's bull­shit as an art for­m.

Which is, re­al­ly, what at­tract­ed me to it. The di­alog, the mono­logues, are to reg­u­lar bull­shit like fine din­ners are to hot dogs. Ser­gio de la Pa­va may be the finest bull­shit-­giv­er in this blue plan­et of ours (take it from one dab­bler in the art), and we are all lucky to have him writ­ing.

UP­DATE: How could I for­get to men­tion that this book, this nov­el, has some of the best box writ­ing since Mail­er? It's an in­cred­i­ble feat, and I just for­got about it be­cause there is so much stuff in it.

And yes, it has swords in it.

Span­ish on­ly, since it's a post about how to buy stuff in Chi­na and hav­ing it de­liv­ered to Ar­genti­na :-)

Hice mi com­pra más grande a DX.­com des­de que em­pecé con es­to: un Mele A1000.

Y ya casi, casi, casi lo ten­go en mis manos, pero se quedó en la ad­u­a­na. Eso nor­mal­mente sería una muy mala noti­ci­a, ya que sig­ni­icaría que me ten­go que tomar medio día del tra­ba­jo, ir a la ad­u­a­na, es­per­ar varias ho­ras, pa­gar y re­ti­rar­lo.

Pero ay­er me llegó un tele­gra­ma que lo con­vir­tió en una noti­ci­a, ni bue­na ni mala. El tele­gra­ma me dice que co­mo llegó un pa­que­te del ex­te­ri­or de un "remi­tente no in­for­mado" (?), ten­go las sigu­ientes op­ciones:

1. Pa­­gar en el correo (cualquier su­cur­sal) los dere­­chos de ad­u­a­­na, y me va a lle­­gar a casa en los próx­i­­mos cin­­co días.

2. Lla­­mar por telé­­fono, de­­cir en qué su­cur­sal lo quiero re­ti­rar, y pa­­gar cuan­­do lo re­tiro.

3. No hac­er na­­da y que o lo de­vuel­ven o será "pro­ce­sa­­do co­­mo aban­­dono".

Además, que si quiero us­ar mi fran­qui­cia an­u­al para pa­gar menos, por fa­vor avise.

Es ge­nial. Es hon­esto. Has­ta me pusieron el mon­to cor­rec­to a pa­gar (50% del val­or, al cam­bio ofi­cial), que no sé co­mo hicieron.

En fin, que de aho­ra en más, com­prar cosas de Chi­na parece que es más fá­cil que nun­ca. Y si com­praste al­go y querés con­tar có­mo te fué, o queres leer so­bre esas cosas que va­mos pi­di­en­do... bueno, http://lo­quemel­le­godechi­na.blogspot.­com

These are the slides (in span­ish) of my "De­vel­op­ing apps with Ubun­tu One" from last ssat­ur­day at Ubu­con­LA. They filmed it, so there may be a video some­day!