Coffee, IT and music therapy
Looking glass
Life is like a box of chocolates…
Oct 23rd
Pretty, isn't it?
A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for.
Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. You’re stuck with this undefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there’s nothing else left to eat.
Sure, once in a while, there’s a peanut butter cup or an English toffee. But they’re gone too fast, the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits, filled with hardened jelly and teeth-crunching nuts, and if you’re desperate enough to eat those, all you’ve got left is…is an empty box, filled with useless, brown paper wrappers.
I am a bit too jaded at times, aren’t I?
Love and other psychotropics
Oct 16th
From time to time I remind myself of this blog and feel guilty for not writing more in it; the truth is that, between a busy and fun start of the year which continued through summer and doing most of my writing on Twitter, I haven’t had much to write to the world about.
But now I’m back in the UK and, as usual, I’m in that mushy feeling state of mind. My whole view of living in the UK for the better part of the year tended to oscillate between “I’m not really living anything behind so let’s go go go!” to “Is it really worth leaving?” over the years, mostly being in tight connection to whether I had a special someone and if she was coming with me or not.
As you can guess, now I’m in the latter of the two mind sets, which makes this post have some sort of context that was missing before.
Love is that pair of sneakers you just can’t part with; you’ve been through everything in them, shared the ground beneath your world at every step and even though they may now look old and battered and broken they’re an part of who you are. They represent you, they’ve “grown” with you and every dent, tear and spot represents a shared memory, a shared act.
Yes, I can also see that Romanian saying “a fi calcat in picioare” (“to be stepped on”) forming in your head after the whole shoe analogy and you know what, it’s a valid thought! Love always represents a gamble, you’re always taking a risk when you allow yourself to say those three words that can make or break a moment or more, but in the end it’s a risk that’s worth taking; sure, you can end up being used and abused and stepped on, but hey, it’s a learning experience, right? It’s a risk that needs taking towards being happy. Sure, there are people who are happy and content without love, but I’m not one of them.
Cory Doctorow asks an interesting question in Eastern Standard Tribe: “Would you rather be smart, or happy?” this being closely tied to one of the themes of the book which is betrayal: the main character, Art, is used and manipulated by his girlfriend for her own gain. Art is generally a smart person, but he lets his guard down when love gets in the way which ends with him locked up in an insane asylum (no, that’s not the end of the book, I won’t spoil it for you) – happiness, even though fleeting and maybe fake, leads to his almost destruction.
I think that this, smart versus happy, like almost everything in life is a balancing act; you’re high on your wire, the lights on you and the crowd holding their breath while you make your way across, well, life, trying not to fall – keep everything in balance and you’re good, healthy and possibly more successful, don’t and you fall to your doom (sorry, life rarely has safety nets).
You might think that everything I’ve written so far is a cliché, but you know what?
The biggest truths aren’t original. The truth is ketchup. It’s Jim Belushi. Its job isn’t to blow our minds. It’s to be within reach. - Jeff Winger
In the end though, every time I think about love I fall back to a thing I once read (and for the life and deep regret of me I can’t remember where):
Being in love, truly in love, means renouncing all possible lives except the one shared with the person you love.
Future Shorts One – The Afterthoughts
Feb 5th
In case you don’t know, Future Shorts is a worldwide event dedicated to screening good short films on one day in over 90 cities from around the world; the screening is usually accompanied by other multimedia elements including live music and rescores, performers and installations.
In fact, their motto is ONE event. One beat. ONE audience… ONE worldwide. which nicely fits the concept on which the event is built on.
Going back to the event at hand, this was the second global edition for 2011 but the first one here in Romania (as far as I know), and took place in the Artexpo hall in the Bucharest National Theater. The place was a nice choice as it provided enough space for the audience, even though the main room was split in two smaller ones, each with its own screen for better viewing and distribution of seats; the downside though was that the room was somewhat chilly, especially if you came unprepared and hoping for a cozy atmosphere. The audio and video quality were good overall, even though at times (especially during the last film, Goodbye Mr Chu) it was a bit too loud and thus noisy for my taste. More >
The move
Dec 5th
As some may know I’m spending most of my year in the UK being a nice chap and doing all sorts of weird things, such as going to Uni (well, not this year) or working. Well, I’ve decided to take my work with me and go back home this year, so I guess it’s goodbye Britain, I’ll see you again in October!
This may seem like a dumb move at first: why in hell give up a cozy office, proper tea and the English lifestyle in favor of noisy, somewhat dirty and weird Romania?
The first thing that came to mind was the money I would save by working from home: cut out paying rent, transport, utilities and a major part of food and I look up at saving around £300 a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. This alone is an important enough reason in itself, but coupled with the rest that will follow will make the decision sound more rational.
Regarding my work, all of it is tied to a computer, so it doesn’t matter that it’s the PC from the office or my laptop; the truth is that most of the time I already code on my laptop even while at work because I want to have my environment just so and my tools already there and set up to my exact desires without having to go & get approval before installing a specific utility I’ll end up using only once. As for my coworkers, we already do 99% of our communication via internet (email, IM, VoIP) because we want and are required to have a paper trail, so that won’t change much in our interactions. I also work better when I’m alone as I’m able to focus better at the task at hand. More >
And again… and again… and again
Dec 3rd
Some of us are a weird bunch. We like running into obstacles time and time again, pushing forward no matter what the costs and no matter the risk of failure; we fall to the furthest depths just to climb up again, take the most foolish risks just for the thrill of the conquest and when things go to shit we take a sip of bitter failure, smile, and get right back on that unstable chair at the edge of the flaming pit.
Some say we never learn, or that we’re stubborn and stupid for making the seemingly same mistakes over and over, not seeing the small changes made in hope of a different result. They expect us to take new paths without realizing that a new path can be almost identical to the old one. But we do get better, we learn from our mistakes and each new step is an iteration, not a leap; despite everything we play it safe even though the appearances may defy that. And when we jump we’re miles away from where we’re expected to be, as it would matter to us what is expected by others. More >
x out of 10
Nov 21st
I don’t usually use this to share images and videos (I have Twitter for that :D ) but I ran over this on Matilda’s blog and thought it was worth sharing with the world.
According to that list I’m mostly fucked, and not in a good way.
So, how many out of ten do you mark on that one?
Anti-vaccine nutters
Oct 30th
I don’t get people that are against vaccines because they think it leads to autism; it’s sad to see them stuck in their fear because of a lack of understanding on how vaccines work or because they’re just stupid (in the end you can cure lack of knowledge but not stupidity).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about moderation and don’t support getting every vaccine available just for the hell of it, but there are some I consider good to be had, especially the early ones they give you before/in school. I also don’t have anything against people who have rational reasons to not getting vaccinated; the only problem I have is with irrational people. More >
Fanboys
Oct 29th
Let’s talk a bit about fanboys, shall we? Especially about Apple fanboys versus Microsoft ones – yes, we’ll leave the Linux people out of this one. Thing is, I haven’t really seen that many MS fanboys out there and that, infused by a couple of tweets, lead to this post. I can’t say that it’s very coherent due to the hour it was written at but I said I won’t draft thing anymore or else they’ll never get published so here it goes.