El nom­bre es me­dio ra­ro (un por­tal pa­ra mi­co­s? Un port ál­mi­co? ni idea), pe­ro que miérco­le­s, des­pués de unir­me al gru­po fa­ce­book que me su­ge­rían, pos­tear en su mu­ro que man­dan spam y sali­r, em­pe­cé a pen­sar...

¿E­xac­ta­men­te qué me mo­les­ta de es­ta gen­te? Y de­ci­dí en­trar a su por­tal y ver que ha­bía cru­zan­do las puer­ta­s.

Apa­ren­te­men­te le es­tán dan­do mu­cha ma­ni­ja a 2012. Sin em­bar­go no es­pe­ran el fin del mun­do sino un "des­per­tar cós­mi­co" y di­cen que es­te even­to es "im­por­tan­te pa­ra to­da la ga­la­xia". Es­to pa­re­ce ser por una pe­cu­lia­ri­dad del ca­len­da­rio ma­ya. Guau. Y yo pen­sa­ba que los de Sto­p, unix ti­me! es­ta­ban exa­ge­ran­do!

Me tien­ta pre­gun­ta­r, si los ma­yas eran tan asom­bro­so­s, co­mo es que su ci­vi­li­za­ción era se­me­jan­te de­sas­tre? [1]

Pe­ro el pro­ble­ma no es ése. Éso no es lo que me mo­les­ta. La ado­ra­ción bo­vi­na de po­bre gen­te que hi­zo lo me­jor que pu­do pa­ra pa­sar sus vi­das ha­ce 600 años no es al­go tan te­rri­ble, (tam­po­co es lo mas as­tu­to de la tie­rra). Lo que me mo­les­ta es la cre­du­li­da­d.

Vea­mo­s...

• Ka­r­­ma?

• Rei­­ki Tra­­di­­cio­­­na­­l?

• An­­ge­­le­s?

• Pla­­to­­­nis­­mo Clá­­si­­co? [2]

• Atlan­ti­­da? Le­­mu­­ria? [3]

• Reen­­ca­r­­na­­ció­­n? [4]

• Un chi­­co que ha­­bló a los 8 me­s­es, y psi­­có­­­lo­­­go­­s(!?) que di­­cen que in­­ten­­ta­­ba in­­te­r­­pre­­tar las au­­ra­s?

Es di­fí­cil en­con­trar un post en el si­tio que ten­ga me­nos de 8 pun­tos en una es­ca­la del 1 al 10, pa­re­ce que to­dos es­tán más o me­nos de acuer­do en que es­tas co­sas exis­ten o son ver­da­d.

De he­cho las úni­cas co­sas que se me ocu­rren que na­die ahí pa­re­ce creer es men­sa­jes ocul­tos en la To­rah y pie gran­de, pe­ro ca­paz que no bus­qué bien.

Así que aho­ra creo que sé que me mo­les­ta. La fal­ta de gus­to. Si creés to­do, no creés en na­da en par­ti­cu­la­r. Si acep­tás to­do, no es­tás bus­can­do la ver­da­d. Si to­do es lo mis­mo, na­da es es­pe­cia­l.

La perspec­ti­va de un mun­do don­de to­do pue­de ser ver­da­d, to­do va­le lo mis­mo, to­do es lo mis­mo me re­sul­ta ... des­es­pe­ra­da.

Es­ta gen­te sue­na des­es­pe­ra­da. Sue­nan per­di­dos en el ma­r, tra­tan­do de afe­rrar­se a ca­da ra­mi­ta que pa­sa, sea un cris­ta­l, un con­ti­nen­te hun­di­do o un char­la­tán.

Que­ri­dos ami­gos de por­tal­mi­co: la úni­ca co­sa que ha­ce que la vi­da val­ga ser vi­vi­da es la gen­te. Sí, gen­te. No dio­s, no una pro­fe­cía ma­ya, no un án­ge­l. La gen­te.

Sal­gan. Co­noz­can a al­guien, ten­gan una lin­da vi­da. Lo que pa­se des­pués de eso, si es que pa­sa al­go, va a ocu­rrir igua­l. Sean bue­nos con la gen­te, y con­fíen que dio­s, (si exis­te) va­le al­go, y les va a dar la bien­ve­ni­da a un lin­do ran­cho, por­que si no­... si no no va­le la pe­na ado­rar­lo, que tan­to.

Me pa­re­ce que sal­go de es­ta zam­bu­lli­da en el sin­sen­ti­do con mi men­te más cla­ra, aun­que un po­co más tris­te. Sí son spa­m­mer­s. Sí, creen cual­quier co­sa. Oja­lá se me­jo­ren.

I am not sure if this is good or bad:

On one hand, I have more sub­scribers than ev­er, even con­sid­er­ing when this blog was in plan­etkde (BTW: maybe I should add my pyqt feed there again? Nah, I don't qual­i­fy as "ac­tive KDE con­trib­u­tor")

The dip in the last three monts was be­cause I just post­ed noth­ing, and now I am post­ing again, it's do­ing well.

On the oth­er hand, I am at 50-­some sub­scriber­s, which is a bit pa­thet­ic for a blog that has ex­ist­ed for over 9 years ;-)

On the grip­ping hand (Lar­ry Niv­en FTW!) I am hav­ing more fun with the blog than I had in quite a while, so I would post even if noone read it.

And in case you are won­der­ing what that peak of over 6000 reach (the av­er­age is un­der 100!) it's this. That post had over 12000 vis­i­tors. My sec­ond most pop­u­lar sto­ry had on­ly 3800.

Here's the most pop­u­lar con­tent in the last 2 years or so, se­lect­ed from 783 posts (784 with this one) and 47 longer sto­ries:

1. 12228 vis­i­­tors: Win­­dows: My eX­Pe­ri­ence

   So I wan­t­ed to see what win­­dows looked like. Don't wor­ry, I feel bet­ter now.

2. 3797 vis­i­­tors: Mak­ing Lin­ux sys­tems that don't suck. Part II

   A rant on cron and at. I nev­er imag­ined this would be num­ber 2.

3. 2968 vis­i­­tors: BOP: Ball Ori­en­t­ed pro­­gram­ming

   I am rather proud of this one: a pyqt-based graph­i­­cal, an­i­­mat­ed in­­ter­preter for FLIP, a lan­guage based on balls :-)

4. 2888 vis­i­­tors: Good News: Lin­ux gives life to old hard­ware. Bad News: Maybe in some cas­es it should­n't.

   Sil­­ly, yes, but a cool pic­­ture :-)

5. 1870 vis­i­­tors: Py­­Cel­l­s: The Python Spread­­Sheet re­­dux

   My sec­ond or third at­tempt at writ­ing a toy spread­­sheet us­ing python. I have been at it for about 5 years, ap­­par­en­t­­ly.

   This is pop­u­lar... even when the code it de­scribes is based on a com­­plete­­ly bro­ken li­brary!

6. 1841 vis­i­­tors: Squid au­then­ti­­ca­­tion via POP or IMAP

   This was al­ready about 4 years old when I start­ed coun­t­ing, so I have no idea how many vis­i­­tors it re­al­­ly had. It is a handy scrip­t, I still use it some­­times!

7. 1813 vis­i­­tors: The Lin­ux Boot­ing Process Un­veiled

   I re­al­­ly ex­pec­t­ed this one to be much high­­er. It's even linked from wikipedi­a! Ev­ery day it has 2 or 3 hit­s. Then again, the first 3 years are not be­ing coun­t­ed ;-)

8. 1706 vis­i­­tors: Queue Man­age­­ment for Qmail

   While the tool it in­­tro­­duces is lame nowa­­days, the ideas are sound, and it ex­­plains a re­al prob­lem.

9. 1548 vis­i­­tors: Cus­­tom wid­gets us­ing PyQt

   Very ob­­so­lete, noone should read that.

10. 1505 vis­i­­tors: How to make your own dis­­tro in 3 not-­­so sim­­ple steps

    Oh, this one. It is wrong. It gives bad ad­vice. Yet noone seems to no­tice ;-) Not my best idea, not my best ef­­fort, still get email about it ev­ery month or so.

On my lat­est dis­ap­pear­ance, this blog turned 9 years old. I start­ed it (in ad­voga­to, where you can still read it, BTW), on Jan­u­ary 17th, 2000.

It is cur­rent­ly my longest-run­ning pro­jec­t, since at the time I lived in a dif­fer­ent province, have had sev­er­al girl­friends (and a wed­ding), I had two or more job­s, start­ed one com­pa­ny, went through about 9 pres­i­dents, and of course, there's my boy Juan:

BTW: his grand­fa­ther took that pic­ture. Looks a bit dan­ger­ous, does­n't it? It prob­a­bly was. But that's ok, there's like an inch of sand in case he fel­l. I need to talk to him ;-)

All things con­sid­ered, awe­some 9 years. I need to ac­tu­al­ly re­mem­ber for the 10th aniver­sary.

I moved to Buenos Aires (BA) al­most ex­act­ly 8 years ago. For those who have nev­er been here, let me tell you some things about it. It's large. Do you know Sao Paulo? A bit small­er. Much small­er than Mex­i­co DF. About the same size as New York. Twice the pop­u­la­tion of the Rand­stad. About the same as greater Paris or Is­tan­bul. So fig­ur­ing out a way to move around it was im­por­tan­t.

The way most na­tives do it is by bus. There is a pret­ty ex­ten­sive and ef­fi­cient net­work of bus­es which will take you any­where. There are maybe 150 dif­fer­ent lines, but if you don't know the city, spe­cial­ly the place you are try­ing to reach, they are a recipe for get­ting lost, be­cause you can (will) miss your stop and end any­where else.

To make it worse, I get dizzy on bus­es. The brak­ing and start­ing makes me re­al­ly sick. I can con­trol it, as long as I look out the win­dow, or straight for­ward, and breath re­al­ly care­ful­ly.

So, since I don't drive, and cabs are rel­a­tive­ly ex­pen­sive, I al­ways pre­ferred the sub­way, or, as it is called here, the subte. Plus, on trains and sub­ways I can even read and not get dizzy. I al­ways tried to live close to a sta­tion, I had al­most one hour to read while trav­el­ing and we got along great.

The subte is pret­ty old. The first in Latin Amer­i­ca, and still the on­ly one in a few mil­lion near­by square miles. But it's al­so ... quirky.

For in­stance, I lived in Bel­gra­no, close to the D line. Which had ja­pa­nese cars. How did I know they were ja­pa­nese cars? Well, they had all these things writ­ten on the win­dows in Ja­pa­nese. Sad­ly, I can't find pic­tures of that, and in a re­cent trip I did­n't see them, so it may be that af­ter maybe 20 years some­one de­cid­ed to rub them of­f. That's a pity. I al­ways imag­ined they said in­ter­est­ing stuff, even if they prob­a­bly said "keep your hands in­side the car, you id­iot".

There's al­so the bo­letería-kiosco. A kiosco is a sort of mi­ni drug­store, where you can buy can­dy, a so­da, maybe a com­b, or con­dom­s. A bo­letería is a palce where you buy tick­ets to ride the subte. And in some places, you can do both things. Be­cause they turned the tick­et booths in­to kioscos.

Tere is the line at Re­tiro sta­tion, in the C line. There's 4 or 5 bo­leterías. When you get there, of­ten there's 40 or 50 peo­ple in line on the first one. And you can walk just be­side them and buy a tick­et in the 4th or 5th booth, where there's noone wait­ing.

And of course, a clas­sic, the one ev­ery tourist sees. The A line. The orig­i­nal BA sub­te, opened 90 years ago or so... and still us­ing the same cars. Yes, you can ride an­tique, wood­en cars to work on that line. With in­can­des­cent bulbs on glass tulip­s. With man­u­al doors (man­u­al open­ing on­ly, they close au­to­mat­i­cal­ly with bone crush­ing force).

Sure, it's hot. There's no air con­di­tion­ing, and BA can get pret­ty hot in sum­mer. But it's nice in win­ter! It's fast, you can't get lost, and it's just so BA.

La pa­té­ti­ca fo­to es cor­tesía de mi ce­lu­la­r.