Gunnar Wolf

Thanks to Cripkey! :-D

I frankly have no words to describe what the "artist" had in mind

(seen in Xochimilco, March 2011)

...But something tells me this is not the optimal one.

Umh… More than one strange thing here.

• Adults are forbidden if not accompanied by children‽ First time I ever see such a sign...
• It is common for people to bring several things to a park which might constitute a sign. But, please explain all of the icons…
  • Explain the relative severity of biking (0,0) or eating (1,0) at a park to… Bringing weapons? (2,0)
  • Oh, and of course, they have to be inclusive and list things — So not only it is forbidden to bring food and drinks, but also to serve drinks (3,0), or to cook food (which would have to take place in the non-existing grills) (0,1)
  • Not only they forbid biking (0,0), but also performing athletic competitions including biking (3,1)

  There also several flaws in the iconography used:

  • Is it forbidden to listen to music and to enable cell phones? (2,1)
  • Is it forbidden to use matches to light a lighter? (1,2)

…Seen at a Chapultepec park playground, Mexico City.

If this qualifies as a safe crossing («cruce seguro»)… I should have stayed at home

While swearing at my bank's automated phone attention system, I was thinking that –taking advantage in the fact they already usually say that "the call will be recorded to improve service quality"– call center operators/programmers should record all user activity and, just for laughs, play back the grumbles angry users shout at the system. Of course, at random intervals, on loudspeakers, over the crowded call centers.

Oh, they do it already?

Some years ago, I faced a 900 word limit for the first time. My question to the editor: Can I write the column in German?

Aug 27 06:00:15 lafa kernel: [7218302.960003] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 
        Add. Sense: No additional sense information
Aug 27 06:00:15 lafa kernel: [7218302.960003] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 
        Sense Key : No Sense [current]

My hard drive does not currently make any additional sense.

Online translators are not hot news anymore. Not by a long, long shot. Still, today I wanted to get a couple of words in Latin. And was amazed that Google's translation service does not (yet?) offer Latin as an option, so I turned to Translation Guide's free online translators.

And, as it always happens, I thought, hmmm... and what about the random ramblings on my site?

So on I went to Gunnar Lupus alio domus. Of course, several funny things popped up, many of which I don't think are proper Latin, but still, among lotsa' nonsense, I found that Planet Debian gets translated to Plagiarius Debian — Which possibly explains why many people have complained about other unauthorized planetoids plagarizing their posts!

With due apologies and thanks to my dear and crazy friend UCH:

Once upon a time

Once, because twice would be a repetitive story

A king

One, because two would mean war

Who was married to a queen

One, because two would be drama

They had a princess daughter

One, because two would be a mess

Who was in love with a knight

One, because two would be a soap opera

He was given the task of killing a dragon

One, because two would be a titanic feat

The hero had an idea

One, because two would be asking too much

Using a unique magic sword

One, because were they two, it would no longer be unique

With which, he took the dragon's life

One, because it was a dragon, not a cat

Then they proceeded with the wedding

One, because two would mean bigamy

And they lived happily forever

One, because two forevers would be like two infinites

The end

One, because two ends would be complicated

The bad translation is completely my fault.

I woke up with a loud BZZZT — It happens every couple of years. The electric transformer for the circuit where my house is located, at the Northern edge of Ciudad Universitaria, decided to die (or at least, to take a break… literally).

About one hour later, I decided it was time to wake up and start being a useful person. I gave breakfast to my cats and had breakfast myself, and called the electrical company to report this mishap. They told me the report was registered, and I hope to have electricity soon (meanwhile, I'm sitting at a nearby restaurant, as there is some job to do — Yes, besides writing blog entries). And they told me, as is often told in Mexico, a general anticorruption phrase – With a twist: «recuerde que usted no debe renumerar ningún servicio que realice el personal de la Comisión Federal de Electricidad». (You should not renumber any service done by the Federal Electrical Commission personnel). Yes, remunerado (not renumerado).

This shows once again the power of asking people to read things they don't understand.

Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death, the mythological Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Mexico's de facto president, Felipe Calderón, once again showed his involuntary aptitude for deep political analysis: On Monday, on a State visit to Germany, he declared Mexico has faced the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse (second source, in English). I agree: One year ago, we were facing a health emergency, the AH1N1 epidemic, hence pestilence. Since he took power in December 2006, the president's main action has been the war on drugs, hence war. The country was the worst performing Latin American country in 2009, with our economy falling 6.5%, more than any other country, and prices have been really on the rise, hence famine. Finally, death... official numbers state that there have been over 22000 deaths in the "war on drugs" — And merrily he stated that only 10% of that were civilians. Whatever that meant... But... What about the fifth? Who is he?

A plausible hypothesis is offered by cartoonist El Fisgón in today's cartoon in La Jornada:

«We don't know how he got here, but he is the most effective one»

Now... However good El Fisgón's analysis might be... Lets not get distracted with silly details. Hernández, another of La Jornada's great cartoonists, shows the hidden meaning:

— We are over the apocalypse!
— Does that mean we are facing the Final Judgement?

The coming of the five horsemen of apocalypse can only mean... It is time for the Final Judgement and the end of time!

After being away from home for almost two weeks (and, due to unforseen circumstances, having the longest time away from my mailbox I can recall in almost 15 years), last Monday I met with Pooka and Caro, originally just for lunch, but it evolved into an evening-long work session on the SECO3 project (which I continued long into the night — But I'm drifting into offtopicness).

Caro is now living again in Costa Rica, and to prove it, she brought us two delicious-smelling bags of coffee. Now, I know my cats like the smell of coffee, I know specially Santa loves to completely put her head inside my coffee cup and lick what's left of my espresso's foam…

But this was really surprising. It was not until today, three days later, I had the heart of bringing my coffee to the office where I'll enjoy it.

It is so aromatic that Chupchic and Santa seemed to be taking turns to keep me from claiming the bag — At all times, either (or both!) of them layed on top of my precious. It was not until today, when I gave them their breakfast, I was able to take the (still warm) bag of coffee and bring it to work.

Sitting at my hotel room in Tijuana, about to hit the bed, quite tired because of a nice, long walk I will write more about tomorrow, I have been listening for at least five minutes to a long, stupid infomerciative spam in the History Channel: A fountain pen, a five-point pen, and three other pen-like implements (plus extra and extra and extra things... They are listing a case with 63 implements now!)

Now, what is the hook into getting somebody to call for a classy pen? Elegance, of course! Just for the sake of this exercise, the spam continues to be played. And yes, it's only been two short paragraphs. But believe me, I am very tired, and trying to get some coherent English out of my brain is not as easy as it could.

Elegance, I said, right? Good. How do you convey elegance to TV spam/infomercials? Well, what's more classy and refined than a 30 second sample of Haydn? Man, Haydn is *so* classy that the viewer will not even notice the snippets of blabber have incoherent redaction.

Anyway... Spam goes on. I cannot stand any more repetitions of this 30 Haydn seconds. They are stronger than me. And that old lady says that anybody is writing in their computer now… I will only write with my fountain pen from now on! — I will surely follow her wise advise!

(STOP IT WITH THE STUPID HORN!)

I opened Slashdot's «Looking back from the 1980s at computers in education» article because I am quite convinced of the point some of the commenters argued before me, (and it's good to know others think as you do ;-) ) — When I got close to computers, learning computing for children basically meant learning programming in a fun way.

For years, my hobbies included Logo and BASIC. At age 7 (by 1983), typing TeX and using Emacs at the computer of the institute where my father worked, I started walking the path I took for my professional life. When I taught computing to high school students as my first paid job (which didn't last long, only a semester, as for an untrained 20 year old it is very hard to control a group of kids nearly his age), I tried to teach some basic BASIC programming (which was the best I knew then)... But no, both students and the school wanted me to focus on teaching MS Office applications. It seemed stupid for me 14 years ago, and it still seems stupid for me today.

Anyway, on Slashdot, I came across this beautiful way to explain what computer education should mean:

"computing is no longer taught in schools (parents look quizzical), they are simply 'trained' (parents look like they vaguely get it). if this was sex instead of computing that was taught in schools, would you prefer that your kids have sex _education_ or sex _training_? (parents finally get it)".

By the way, if you are interested in reading a bit of paleofuturism, to feel the joy and excitement with which computer-aided education was seen 30 years ago, be sure to get the Classroom Computer News issue for September-October 1980, linked from the Slashdot article (and copied over here for your convenience, of course!)