Fernando Cassia is a computer geek, the nerd cowboy of the South American pampas. Living down in Buenos Aires, Argentina, his articles on software, hardware and the Net can be read on the pages of the UK based IT news site The Inquirer. Welcome to his progressive and humanist view of the world.
For the moment -and for the last year or so- I'm running the free Linux distro "blag" from the UK. It's based on RedHat's Fedora Core 6 project, with a lot of stuff removed so that it fits on a single CD, and also a nice look, with custom visuals/login screen/backgrounds.
What it lacks, apparently like Fedora Core 6, is a set of NICE COLOUR mouse pointers. blag includes the default black cursors dubbed "bluecurve" and a white colour variation of the same. I didn't like those. I wanted a big red mouse pointer in Linux and the Gnome desktop.
Well, to make a long story short: I pulled my hair reading all the contradicting and conflicting info on changing mouse pointers. Most of the stuff on the net is seriously outdated. For instance you often find results from XFree86 lists several years back saying that Linux mouse cursors can only be black and white.
Here's how to install beautiful RED mouse pointers in blag 6K, and Fedora Core 6.x or higher for that matter:
I have settled on one of two choices: "red mix" and "Komix". I'll let you guys decide which ones are better...
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 1. As root, from a shell do cd /usr/share/icons
Go to System->Preferences->Mouse Click on the "Pointer" tab, scroll down and find Komix_Red below LBlueCurve. Click on that option. DONE!
3. If you want "red mix" wget http://www.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/5605-cursor_mix.tgz tar xvfz ./5605-cursor_mix.tgz Go to System->Preferences->Mouse Click on the "Pointer" tab, scroll down and find "cursor_mix" at bottom. Click on that option. DONE! /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
There you have, a nice red mouse pointer that you can ALWAYS see, even with the corner of your eye. Enjoy!
Today cartoonist, writer and humorist Roberto Fontanarrosa passed away.
Fontanarrosa was born in Rosario in 1944. Comic-clopedia describes him accurately: "He was a representative of the Argentinan sharp humor cartoonists that made their appearance in the 1970s. A very productive artist, he drew satirical comics and cartoons in such magazines as Boom, Hortensia, and (to this day) on the daily newspaper ClarÃn. Several compilation albums of his gags have appeared ('¿Who is Fontanarrosa?', 'Fontanarrosa and the medical doctors', 'Fontanarrosa and politics', 'Fontanarrosa and Relationships', 'The Sex of Fontanarrosa'). He has created numerous characters, the two most famous are the gaucho 'Inodoro Pereyra' and 'Boogie, el Aceitoso'".
If you are reading this outside Argentina, let me tell you that one of the characters of his comic, Inodoro Pereyra, a lone gaucho traveling the pampas with the companion of his talking/thinking dog, is a classic for argentineans.
I discovered him at around age 12, when I first read "Boogie, el aceitoso" (translated as "Boogie, the oily one" or the "slicky one"). Best described at Everything2, here: "First conceived when the Vietnam war was fresh in the mass unconscious of the world's peoples, Boogie is an extreme caricature of one impression the rest of the world gets from the United States. Since his birth in 1972 to the quiet retirement he faced in the late 90's, Boogie has participated in every major armed conflict that has involved the United States and is familiar with every imaginable form of inflicting pain on his fellow man (and oftentimes woman too). During peacetime, if it can so be called, for Boogie hates the word, Boogie is a professional assassin or a bodyguard, a mercenary. Occasionally, when his usual profession hits a slump, he will also accept other jobs such as babysitter (he'll give the kids plastic explosives for them to craft little animals) or romantic escort (you must understand that although he is a man, that lump you feel when slow dancing with him is in fact his revolver)."
If you read Spanish, you can have a laugh here by reading Roberto´s speech at the Spanish Language International Congress
But if you need any proof of Roberto Fontanarrosa´s genius, here´s an animation of one of his comics, with an embedded anti-war message, to boot... I don´t know about you, but if I were a foreigner, I would learn Spanish just to understand the funny animal names of this comic masterpiece, which reads as a mix of Darwin's theories of the Evolution of the Species, and a touch of "Discovery Channel" documentaries ...
(Too funny!. You can understand the meaning of it even if you don't understand a word of Spanish... he begins describing an imaginary cold dry plain... and the cold winds, and the 'threatening clouds' and then the whole ecosystem in that plain, funny creatures with even funnier names, that are eaten by predators one after the other until... watch and you'll understand :).
If you want to practise your Spanish, you can find almost all of Fontanarrosa's books on Amazon.com.
In short: the World lost one genius today. Goodbye Roberto Fontanarrosa, we will miss you dearly...
[UPDATE]: things are safe at my flat. An engineer was here and suggested the internal / hollow brick failure was either due to poor materials used in a modification of the wall or a water leak before I arrived.
Things are going to be repaired soon. :)
Sleep safe, the building where I live will not collaps@#@#@) ;)
Wow... since about 4:00 PM local time, it's SNOWING -albeit intermitently- down here in Buenos Aires. More precisely in Almagro, as I can only speak about the view from my Windows... :)
How rare is this...? VERY rare. It "never snows" in Buenos Aires. According to what I found in the Net, the last recorded snow wasJune 22, 1918!! The day started chilling cold, and it was only a handful of foreign tourists and myself at the Plaza de Mayo and surrounding areas...
And by later aftenoon, first a timid then full snowfall decorated the tops of the highest buildings
By night, even the international media started paying waking up to the newsworthyness of this ocurrence:
Unless you've been living in a bottle, let me tell you that we had ellections down here for city mayor and the right wing candidate won.
"Moderate" Right candidate Mauricio Macri danced and was carried around by his supporters at PRO
¡Poor joke Mauritzio! ¡Saying that Argentina must get on its feet, with Michetti on wheelchair next to you!! Very inconsiderate of you with your loved Free Trade Agreements expert at the WTO
¡"Speaking less" is "PRO" !
¡Speaking about "not speaking" is even more PRO!
According to "Mauricio" the middle class or "so-so class" as Mafalda called it will be able to "drink mate again in front of their homes" and Buenos Aires will turn overnight, by the power of his "magic" into a city "without security fences in parks, no security bars in shops, no security bars at homes, ENOUGH! Buenos Aires is not our (loved) city anymore!" .
Well, Mauricio, it's your turn now to see how you perform. That assorted bag of leftovers from different right wing factions that is PRO with people from the far right UCeDe, allong with collaborators of former finance minister Domingo Cavallo (or Sunday Horse as I like to call him), succeeded in convincing the -once again- "so-so (middle) class" that a businessman like you is more experienced and more trustworthy than someone from the academia.
And that your work experience "working on dad's firms" after a brief 6 months tenure at Citibank are better attributes than the vast academic experience of Daniel Filmus, someone with a remarkable background.
¡Thank the heavens your campaign manager Rodriguez Larreta was "very succesfull" at handling Social Security and even your conservative colleagues remember him!.
I'm sure you will turn the city upside down and that Utopian vision of grandmas drinking mate in front of their homes (with the door open behind them as was the earlier XXth century image), will become real. Yeah, right. I specially like your compaign promise about the parks without fences and the shops and homes without security bars at windows.
¡If you believed Mauricio's empty promises above, let me tell you I have bridge I could also sell you!. No city as big as Buenos Aires is without crime. That simply does not exist. For some reason (I suspect the reason but I'd be accused of being a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist) the local media seems to have established the notion that "the crime wave doesn't stop" assuming that it's even possible for crime to "stop". IF that would be the case, there would be cities around the world with no police, and that doesn't exist.
In fact, crime has been going up in the US of A in the last few years...
----- Violent crime up again, more murders, robberies - US http://news.monstersandcritics.com/usa/news/article_1313133.php/Violent_crime_up_again_more_murders_robberies
"The report showed that murders in big cities jumped last year by 6.7 percent. Robberies, an important indicator of crime trends, increased 6 percent nationwide. Cities with big increases in the number of murders included Orlando and Miami in Florida; Oakland and San Diego in California; Phoenix, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Reno, Nevada and Little Rock, Arkansas.
Even though the higher violent crime numbers had been expected, they still represented bad news for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has targeted violent crime as a top priority for the U.S. Justice Department. A department study released last month of 18 metropolitan areas cited more violence by local gangs or street crews, a greater prevalence of guns in the hands of criminals and younger, more violent offenders as key reasons for the rising crime rates. ------
But I digress...
¡Here comes the New Politics that is "non-partisan" ! ¡The new "sweetened" right! ¡Hooray for PRO! Hooray for the UceDe! Alvaro Alzogaray must be smiling in his rotting grave...
Two weeks ago I received one of those e-mail chain letters, forwarded by someone not too bright that I know, the kind of person who cannot send e-mail with bcc: and always copies his entire list, in plain view to everyone who receives each message, you know the kind of middle-class "so-so class". The mail content was 100% anti-Kirchner and had by subject line "I don't give a damn about politics!" and called upon the reader to "vote for change" and babbled about the 'new politics', pointing the blame on the K administration for everything from 'drugs and pickpockets' to car accidents and 'soccer hooligans'(!)".
But hey... we cannot ask the average Mrs. Jane Doe to distinguish between the current Mayor -who was not elected to the post but rather "landed" on it after Ibarra was ousted- and Kirchner's candidate.... Mrs. Jane Doe was ANGRY, angry at...well... something... and she voted for "Saint Mauricio!".
I end this analysis with a quote I've seen on the Net, used as forum taglines...
"In this town 5% are fascists, 30% indifferent, and 40% not interested in politics. Total: 75% of fascists." From "The school of Barbiana."
¡¡So, let's enjoy the coming "City without fences" headed by the "New Politks" which are really oldskool rightwing!
Two years ago, I read this interesting comment about an unknown plant dubbed Stevia. I saved the post.
I was surprised this week to read that Coca Cola is going to use it as natural sweetener to replace controversial/unhealthy artificial sweeteners like Aspartame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2005: " Why not a STEVIA coke.. its about time these large companies got on the back of the FDA and got stevia legalised... its a sham that i dont have the choice to have that natural sweetner in products i like. Call your congressperson!"
Coke teams up with Cargill to launch new sweetener "Giants of food and drinks aim to develop their own natural rival to NutraSweet and sucralose, to meet health demand"
"Originating in Paraguay and Northern Argentina, Stevia is produced in the country in industrial scale only by the Tobbaco Cooperative in the province of Misiones, which in 2004 used 100 has of land for the plant, and plans to produce about 500 tons. This co-operative associated with a laboratory from Mar del Plata for Stevia post-processing". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So... I would start investigating this Stevia plant if I had a piece of productive land. Since I don't... I'll leave this exercise for young entrepreneurs like Mike... :). Who knows, maybe this natural sweetener without the health problems of Sugar or Aspartame could be even used in Cookies!. ;-)
Good for people like me with bloody chronic liver disease... my doc told me to avoid artificial sweeteners whenever possible, and it's harder to do every day as the profit-hungry companies are starting to add it to more products every passing day, from cookies to 'flavoured water' to gelatin (even the non-Diet ones, damn you, Royal!).
PS: This is the closest to an admission about the dangers of artificial sweeteners (if those were safe, why would they need to change to something "healthy"?.
If you think that artificial sweeteners like Aspartame are 100% safe over long term use... you are not aware of all the material casting doubt on artificial sweeteners.
I have to recommend two blogs from Americans who have settled down here in Buenos Aires: Frank' s Sugar&Spice -check out his cookies!- and of course Mike from "YanquiMike.com.ar".
¡Gracias por sus posts inteligentes!.
EstarÃa bueno que EE.UU. los tenga de embajadores.
Last time I did a BASH (linux shell) script was, I think, back in y2k. I ran Caldera Openlinux in an ancient underpowered 233Mhz Pentium I, and the desktop was then bloated KDE. Nowadays, I run Blag, based on RedHat's Fedora Core 6. But now I was fed up with having to manually seek, download and install "pptpconfig" to get a friendly-easy to use PPTP VPN applet. (Blag includes PPTP but for some reason pptpconfig is not included).
So, I spent a couple hours tonight reading -once again- about bash scripting HERE and HERE, and thanks to a great tutorial on Gnome desktop integration at RedHat's site HERE - I was able to code a simple script which downloads the required RPMs from Fedora repositories, calls the YUM system updater, and installs everything required for PPTP VPN networking into blag, creating a default launcher with nice icon in the desktop. It's a pretty simple script, but nobody had done it before. So here it is. I have released it under the GPL, for what it's worth.
WOW,I can still code stupid little shell scripts!. What an ego boost!. ;-)
Specially since my attention defficit personality usually makes me leave my programming projects incomplete at the first sign of trouble... this time that didn't happen and it was kinda fun, reminded me of my first babbling with OS/2 Rexx...
He must be on medication, I mean God, look at the blurred pictures! -or perhaps he was sweathing and shaking in fear while walking the streets with his armed bodyguard expecting an attack at any minute!!- LOL
I nominate Mr Oracle expert as the laughing stock of the Year!!!
"Buenos Aires is a city of contrasts, with virtually no middle class"
"Argentina has a history of civil unrest and the wholesale killing of foreigners dating back for centuries." [!!!]
" and let's not forget the Americans who were tortured and killed in Argentina over the past decades. " [huh? maybe he means the 30,000 disappeared thanks to Mr. Kissinger's attitude towards Latin America and the U.S. supported military coup in Chile and later the U.S.-tolerated military government in Argentina?]
"Buenos Aires has lots of police, but many are veterans of the Falkland invasion, so don't expect too much sympathy."
[huh?? Military =! police!! 90% of the soldiers who took part in the 1982 war were 18 year olds doing the mandatory draft]
"Simpson's re-runs are on the local television stations constantly and the translations are true to the English originals, and you can recognize Marge and Lisa even though they are speaking Spanish."
[Gee, has this guy ever heard of globalization and the concept of the international TV? Guess it' s not the same in every other country around the world huh? Only Argentina airs the Simpsons dubbed into the local language?? I have news for you: we grew watching "Knight Ridder" and "Get Smart" in the 80s, shocker!]
"Buenos Aires is plagued by “Ladrones”, local pickpockets who are found in all major tourist areas." [No, stupid. Ladrones is spanish for Thiefs. What you are referring to is "pungas", local slang for pickpockets]
" Puerto Madero was built in-response to the complaints from the Buenos Aires women about all the streets of Buenos Aires having all-males names." [AAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ROF,LMAO!!! Yes, the women complained so much that we created Puerto Madero just because of their complaints... LOL] ===
I will leave aside for a moment the stupid and inaccurate references to the Falklands/Malvinas issue, but suffice to say that: a) it was a stupid act ordered by a military dictatorship trying to stay in power and supported by Washington at the time, b) the invasion of the islands was completed on April 2nd, 1982, with ZERO deaths on the part of the islanders, and one Argentine soldier dead. All further deaths were caused months later in the fight by the UK forces to retake the islands.
A couple months ago, the nice folks at Neodigits were kind enough to send me a sample Helios H4000 upscaling DVD player for testing.
The small black H4000 over a Philips DVP9680
I'm holding out my review publication on the INQUIRER until I see if they release firmware fixes or not (I already emailed them some of my suggestions).
Another design win: vent holes!
However, that doesn't prevent me from wholeheartedly recommending this DVD player. If all you need is a DVD player for DVD movies and MPEG4 avis (DIVX or XVID) which also is capable of doing High-Definition (HD) upscaling to 1080i over component video, then look no further!.
Surprise: a VGA out!. You can hook it to a SVGA monitor, projector or anything with VGA input!
The H4000 is well constructed, has an internal 5.1 audio decoder (no need for an external box!), a nice, big remote control with keys that glow in the dark (hurrah!), and ... get this... a POWER SWITCH in the back. This means you can actually turn the device completelly off, it cuts the AC power from the power supply!. No need to waste power in "standby" mode!. It also protects the unit from power fluctuations when not in use.
A built-in 5.1 audio decoder, to boot!
The player works flawlessly. It played every Region-1, Region 2 (Europe), and Region 4 (South America / Australia) that I threw at it. No need to enter region codes, the player arrived as "Region Free"!.
The H4000 hooked to my HD-ready 29" Philips CRT TV which notably lacks HDMI inputs, so HD over Component is the only way. To my knowledge the H4000 is the ONLY DVD player capable of bypassing HDCP and doing HD over CVI.
So, do I recommend it? Yes.
Are there things that could be improved?
Yes. If you plan to use it for mp3 playback or if you have audio in .ogg (Vorbis) format, or if you plan to look at high-quality (2MP and upwards) photos with this player, be advised that these features leave a lot to be desired.
The Helios boot logo. Notice how the Philips TV shows HD 1080i mode!
R.E.M. DVD player in 1080i mode
For instance, photos look as if they are reduced to 640x480 then displayed (with visible dithering). MP3 and general data cd-r or dvd-r file browsing is limited because it doesn't support long filenames (Joliet). The names are shortened to the first few characters.
That's why I'm waiting to see if they fix these issues via a firmware update.
However, if all you want is a DVD player that does HD 1080i or 1080p upscaling via component video outputs, this is a must, get one while you can!.
This card supports dual displays, and HDTV TV-Out!
The nice folks at VisionTek sent me one of the company's X1600 PCI graphics adapters for review.
While I AWAIT (until hell freezes over?) for Microsoft to ship me a sample media evaluation copy of Vista, I want to give you a sneak peek of this impressive graphics card.
Front View. Yes, it' s PCI bus!.
In a nutshell, if you need to use Vista (I prefer Linux, yet I understand that people have no choice for work reasons), and want to experience "Aero" (the 3D interface eye candy), I suggest you get one of these cards. At $210 [Updated June 1st : $154 at TigerDirect, here!], it' s a LOT cheaper than replacing your whole motherboard, graphics card, and probably RAM as well.
I have used it and it works very well. Vista Aero works beatifully, on my 2.4 Ghz P4 (800Mhz FSB) in the Supermicro P4SCA mobo. 3DMark scores and screenshots will be published on my INQ review. I would have published this months ago if it wasn't for the Vole. [Hello? Anyone reading?].
In short, if you have a machine with no AGP or PCI-X, just plain old PCI bus, I suggest you get one of these cards. I had no previous experience with this company, but from the way they communicated with me, the firm looks top notch!.
www.visiontek.com, and also www.froogle.com. Use Google, it is your friend!.
I mean... STOP ADDING SPANISH LINGO that is written in Spain's Spanish. Try to use a more "neutral" Spanish (ask the guys who do TV and movie translations, they do know what a "neutral" Spanish translation is... that is, one free from Iberic terms and South American words).
It all started when I suddenly found my Blogger interface "automagically" switched to Spanish. Suddently I read "no tenemos mas Beta" instead of "we're out of beta!".
That is a POOR LITERAL TRANSLATION that can be read as "we no longer stock beta". The correct translation would have been "ya no estamos en Beta" o "salimos de la etapa Beta", o "ya no es Beta".
And now, the dreadful "que mola mas que una caja de lapices de colores..." advert, trying to promote Blogger's new customization features. Well, guess what Google? "mola" doesn't mean anything for us down in South America. "Molar" as a verb does not, in fact, exist in our vocabulary.
I guess the original English language text was "what rules more than..." and you hired someone in Spain to do the translation, so it ended up as "que mola mas que.."?.
Joe Born from Neuros Technology wrote something nice about me on his company blog. It's good to see a small company like his listening to constructive criticism from a computer geek like me.
Still... I kinda blushed when I read him calling me " prominent South America blogger...".
No, I don' t mean I want it removed. No, please keep it there. I always need an ego-boost.
I' ve been using computers since I have memory. It all started with a TRS-80 Mod III, so I have quite a lot of memories from every OS and software configuration, from CP/M, Commodore's Basic, AmigaDOS, Workbench, DR-DOS, Windows 3.1, OS/2, the Workplace Shell, Linux 2.2, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Win2k, WinXP, Gnome, JDS Linux, Solaris x86, etc...
So... I have little space in my brain for new stupid acronyms and silly product names. Lately, I've grown increasingly fed up with the silly 3-letter or at best 4-letter names of open source utilities, APIs and products. When they don't name something 'ufck' (I made this one up to mean 'ugly f*ck'), they make up completely bogus names just because they sound 'nice' and giving no idea of the function of the software.
Increasingly rare exceptions are 'gconf-editor' -Gnome configuration editor- or 'gpdf' -a PDF viewer-, or 'system-config-soundcard', which needs no further explanation, and are a rare pleasure.
But that's not the trend. The trend seems to be to 'never name something for the function it does'... no, some developers would never name something 'runasroot' or 'gnome-visualprompt' or 'filesystem-hook', or 'linux-hardwaredetector', no, they create things like Gksu -about whose naming I complained over here, or the Red Hat "new hardware detector", dubbed "Kudzu", the name of which I keep forgetting and just refer to as "that RedHat thing with Japanese sounding name that detects hardware changes".
And if that wasn't enough, here comes yet another Open Source piece of code with a japanese sounding name that is also similar to Kudzu, just to destroy and wreck any chances I could have of remembering which one is the one: Dazuko, the 3rd party library for file-access control.
Couldn't they just name it linux "fileaccess-control-api", "open-filecontrol", "open-file-access api", "log-filesystem-access"?? No... DAZUKO. Sheesh!
I don't know, maybe I'm 32 and getting too old to remember this craziness of Gksu, Kudzu and Dazuko...
I was surprised to find Jerry Pournelle still writing about IT, this time at Dr. Dobb's Journal. [Thanks to JohnO for forwarding me that stack of "dead tree" IT magazines].
I had a great respect for Jerry in the late 80s and early to mid-'90s, when I was a subscriber of the legendary printed edition of Byte magazine. But lately I've read his "Chaos Manor" web page and found that he sounds like those classic right-wing wackos.... half-supportive of the Iraq war ("since our troops are there, we now must support them" kind of arguments), and spreading skepticism about Global Warming, by buying the arguments of -and forwarding them- every article that questions it.
Back to the war topic, for instance on "The view from Chaos Manor" you can read: "The proper way to occupy Iraq is to build a comfortable enclave with good defenses and secure perimeter, garrison that, then bring in a client army to do the actual occupation. The client army should be from a state in which, or near which, we maintain a substantial garrison, so that the homeland is held hostage (although we would NEVER say it that way) to the good behavior of the field army doing the dirty work. There are plenty of countries that would like to rent out their soldiers and would actually welcome a substantial US force in their mids".
I remember that his writing style was always somewhat convoluted and at times hard to follow. He sometimes seemed to trip on his own words and make a long tirade out of nothing, describing everything -down to the hotel he was staying in- in painstaking detail and branching the "line of thought" several times.
But getting back to the point, I finally found something in Pournelle's January 2006 Dr. Dobb's article that caught my eye, because I surely remembered that from some of his past columns: Pournelle's amazing Double-Negatives!.
The last paragraph of his Jan 2006 Dr.Dobb's article reads:
"There is NO CHANCE you WON'T learn something important from reading this book".
Wow. Why not say "Chancesareyou will learn something by reading this book?". Amazing, simply amazing!. ROFL.
I swear there is NO CHANCE I won't save time by NOT READING Chaos Manor ever again!.
