Then I was reading Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel, but halfway through the book I noticed 40 pages were missing. So I went to the store where I bought it to complain, and they offered to exchange it for another book since The Caves of Steel were now sold out. So I brought I, Robot also from Asimov, and it has been interesting so far. A particular episode, 'Reason', is a wonderful parable on how religion can have unsavoury consequences, as it explains how a robot, assembled aboard a space station, refuses to believe Earth exists, starts considering himself superior to his human creators and in the end rallies all other robots aboard the station, starts a cult and locks away the humans. Fun reading.···

The other day I finished reading Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, apparentely the 7th best sci-fi book ever according to this. The problem is, I think it pretty sucked. In fact, I think it was the worst book I ever read from Arthur C. Clarke (being 2001 and Imperial Earth the ones I liked best). Perhaps it has something to do with Childhood's End emphasis on paranormal phenomena, and the fact that the story is a bit like this (spoiler alert): 1. Aliens descend into Earth. 2. Aliens start a benign dictatorship. 3. Mankind is quite happy under the Alien dictatorship — war and famine become a thing of the past. 4. However, those Aliens are actually harvesting the human race so that it gets assimilated by the Overmind. 5. Children are assimilated by the Overmind. 6. Everyone else decides to commit suicide. 7. The Aliens leave Earth. 8. Earth Explodes. The End. Although parts of the book were entertaining, in the end it just tasted like bad sci-fi. You might argue that it was one of ACC's early books written in the 1950s, but so were Asimov's masterpieces. So, please avoid Childhood's End.···

"I went out this evening and found that the temperature had dropped somewhat. If I had been wearing more clothes I might have felt a little warmer. If I had been wearing less clothes I might have felt a little colder."

Worth a few laughs: The Dullest Blog in the World. It's funny how some 'serious weblogs' seem even more dull than this.···

My friends at Monocromatica have some new MP3s available, the best so far are Polar's, Boards of Canada-ish IDM from Portugal.···

And via Adrift: Time-traveller from the 23rd century arrested for insider trading. This guy started with $800 and made 350 million dollars in two weeks at Wall Street, apparentely he intended to make lots of cash and take it back to the year 2256. After being arrested, he even proposed to disclose the cure for AIDS or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. This is the sort of thing we sci-fi fans would like to be true, specially since it means Earth will still exist by 2256. Still, there's something I don't get: How would he take all that money back? If one makes a deposit in a Swiss account now will the money still be there 250 years in the future?···

The Manager points out an American soldier changed his name to Optimus Prime. Funny. Still, I'd like to see a soldier called Wile E. Coyote doing an ambush on Iraqi soldiers.···

Loads of new stuff today. Finally, if you browse the web using Mozilla this website will look even better than in Internet Explorer. I finally ironed out the Mozilla bugs and it happens I like the way dashed borders look in Mozilla best. Anyway, this website still uses tables, still doesn't run under MT, and still has a crap RSS feed. And somehow, unlike many gurus say, this website works.···

The Ten Second Films competition has announced its winners. I was already offcourse in the first rounds of competition and there were many entries better than mine, but don't these winners seem a little strange? I mean, New York, New York and San Francisco in a worldwide competition — it is so like the Bloggies — people who seem the hippest win. No, no film students (such as your humble narrator) or bedroom editors ever win: the winners are always interesting people with interesting CVs and that work at interesting cutting-edge media think tanks — you know, the kind of people that appear on Wired advertisements. Do us real nerds ever have a chance?···

Some brazilian scriptkiddie cunt hacked Cafeína, defacing it as seen here. Fuck. I was at college when The Manager sent me a SMS warning we had been hacked, so I went to the computer room in the afternoon break and made the website inaccessible. When I got home I started my investigations and found out that the 'Ironic Crew' bastards exploited a PHPNuke vulnerability I should have noticed before. What to do? With PHPNuke, it seems each version fixes a number of exploits only to open even more vulnerabilities and besides, I'm not liking PHPNuke's interpretation of 'free software', as its author started to ask for cash to anyone interested in betatesting as well as he stopped using Sourceforge. So as I'm not willing to upgrade the software, I went searching for patches and fixes. I apllied a few fixes, and now hope this sort of thing doesn't happen again.···

Are you feeling down already? A friend of mine told me about a mind exercise you should avoid unless your self-esteem is quite high. Take a blank sheet of A4 (or 'letter') paper, and divide it in twelve collumns (one for each month) and seven rows (one for each of the last seven years) — you can also use a spreadsheet program, but it isn't romantic at all. Anyway, after you have all those 12x7 cells, start filling in your major personal events of each month of each year — trips, achievements, disappointments, things you recall as big timewasters in that month (such as World Cups or Olympic Games). No cheating — no peeking on your diary or your blog — you have to do it by heart. Then you can start melting down in frustration as you realize half your life has vanished, unless you have really good memory. Just take a look at my chart:



Somehow I notice a pattern, as Winter months seem much more forgettable (with the notable exception of Winter 99-2000). And there's a strange void in the middle of 1999, perhaps because I was a robot being fed HTML and other Multimedia Technologies stuff during that year. I just can't remember anything special about all those months I left blank. All that time, surely wasted in habit and routine.···

I don't have a girlfriend — I'm a virus writer. I'm quite a sensitive person — I'm gay. And now, since I quite often use public transport — I'm a creep and a weirdo, at least according to the nice gentlemen at General Motors (incidentally those responsible for bringing an end to public transport in parts of the US). Aren't companies and governments that insult its citizens deserving a big barbed-wire pole up their arses? What next? Lexus telling me my Fiat Punto is a bastard's drive? Apple telling me my PC is a wanker's computer? Microsoft telling me Linux is for lonely sociopaths? Googlecorp forwarding my searches to companies that come down and insult me? Advertising can be quite competitive and sometimes abusive in Europe, but it seems that Americans are always looking for new prejudices now that black people are generally accepted. Sad world this we live in, where the best we can hope for is that this quarter-billion high-school playground wins the war. How many years and how many wars will it take for Americans to elect a government that puts people and ecology ahead of corporations?···

The dusty Vietnam: So now it's starting to hurt! I sincerely hope that now the United States dragged themselves and most of The West to this war in one way or another, they do win the war, as a retreat might be the thing that some Arab nations need to go bezerk in triumphalism. And it is not looking good, now that Americans start to realize that people do get killed in a war, and technologically advanced weapons still won't save a soldier if he's shot in the head with a 50s Soviet rifle. And they really could shut up about their precision weapons. Bagdad is a city roughly the size of Los Angeles, and I want to see what happens once Iraqi soldiers battle in the streets and hide in civilian apartment buildings — will they choose to avoid such targets then? Stop being hypocrites. Now that most Americans were stupid enough to support their officials past the point of no return, at least win the damn war!···

By the way, I went to see Spirited Away the other day. It is a great animé film, using mixed techniques and with quite an entertaining storyline and characters. However I came home with the feeling I had lost something as I don't know any of Japanese mythology. Nice though.···

The Oscar winner list is quite acceptable, if you pass Chicago (typical wartime Oscar winner) and a couple of awards. Nice: Adrien Brody and Chris Cooper as best actors, Spirited Away as best animated film, Roman Polanski as best director, Lord of the Rings getting technical awards, Gangs of New York getting zero awards. Not so nice: Nicole and Catherine as best actresses, Chicago, Adaptation not getting the Best Adapted Screenplay. As for the rest, I'm perfectly neutral.···

In the meantime Police freed Robert del Naja and dropped all child porn charges. Strange. How can we believe this wasn't a conspiracy to harm 3D's reputation and put him off air until war started, considering his involvement in pacifist groups? (via Adrift)···

Somehow I missed this: Since I don't have a girlfriend, I fit in the virus-writer profile (via The Null Device). Right, and then they wonder why us Europeans hate Americans, I mean, those Americans who are constantly inventing artificial prejudices against those who don't fit in the little misanthropic High School World of theirs. What's going on? It seems if you don't fuck every once in a while, it means you are a mad sociopathic type. Why can't people really be free to live without such pressure? I haven't got a girlfriend at the moment and it's been years since I last had one — then I was stupid enough to spend a couple of years in love with someone without getting anywhere and without looking sideways. And now I know that although some women are nice persons (and I have good friends of the opposite sex), there isn't such thing as the women saints we expect — those only exist in fiction. Women are trouble and disappointment — that's my pessimistic, I mean, realist optimistic view. So I rather have a good surprise in the future — if I eventually do. In the meantime I'll write viruses start massive flamewars do nice websites then.···

Shock and Awe? What is that? Would you go watch an action movie called Shock and Awe? Can't they see Desert Storm was a much more elegant name? Anyway, it appears BBC also broadcasted Bush getting his hair fixed, and the White House demanded an apology from the TV channel. Oh, so they did shit, and now they are demanding an apology? Right, that's the Nicest, Most Tolerant People on Earth for you. Still, The Smoking Gun has video of the thing, I just wonder for how long.···

Boavista is also through to the semi-finals after beating Malaga 1-0 and then 4-1 on penalties. At least football brought some joy to the beginning of spring. Anyway, FC Porto will now play Lazio of Rome, while our crosstown rivals play Celtic Glasgow. I hope we meet Boavista in Seville.···

Publico has a piece on yesterday's 'mistake', when RTP aired images of Bush reharsing his speech while a make-up stylist did her job. Apparentely the White House made a mistake and started their satellite broadcast too early, and RTP and Euronews were the only TV channels in the world that decided to put that broadcast on air while most channels decided to ignore it. I hope someone kept cool enough to videotape this — I don't know why I couldn't think of it instead of reaching for my digicam: I'm stupid, stupid!···



Yesterday circa 3 AM I counted fifteen channels broadcasting the same person. From top left to bottom right, we have: RTP-1 and SIC Notícias (Portugal), Euronews (EU), CNBC, Bloomberg and CNN (USA), BBC World and Sky News (UK), RTL (Germany), TV5 (France), RAI-1 (Italy) and TV Galicia (Spain). Photos of SIC, TVI (Portugal) and TVE (Spain) are missing.···

Nicer news in sport, however. FC Porto is through to the UEFA Cup semi-finals, after reversing last week's 1-0 home defeat against Panathinaikos with a 2-0 extra-time win in Greece. That was nice.···

Anyway, war reports are for journalists. I rather post about SpaceMonger, a handy and tiny app that graphs your hard drive contents, so you why is all free space gone.···



Portuguese television aired a CBS video feed of Bush practicing the announcent of war. Take a look at the make-up stylist standing behind Bush in the first picture. I quickly grabbed my camera and took a few pictures, and luckly the camera worked this time.···

Just in: 'Opportunity target?' It'd be funny if they killed Saddam with their first shot. It'd be the biggest war anti-climax ever.···

Gulf War One introduced that green 'night shot' look to the world. And it seemed cutting edge. The portuguese journalists on Gulf War Two now present the pixelized videophone look, the latest in war coverage fashion. And it looks like the apex of futurism.···

Handpainted movie posters from Ghana. Not many years ago, before the mall megaplexes arrived and forced the closure of nearly every movie theatre in Porto, many had giant handpainted posters in the outside walls. I still remember watching an old man painting one of those posters outside the Julio Deniz theatre nearby when I was a kid — one of the few that hasn't closed, now it specializes in porno movies.···

Just to keep the suspense, we have to wait two more days before GW II is on television. The whole matter somehow reminds me of this, five years ago.···

How many types of parking garages are there? This and more at Polar Inertia.···

Can't wait for the world premiere of Gulf Wars season 2 tonight on television.···



Here's a tiny screenshot of my first ever webpage, as of its last update on November 24th 1997. Thankfully that website isn't cached anywhere, as it featured really bad and embarrassing poetry, some naive film reviews including an awkward praise for Titanic, the most irritating links page ever, and worse than all it included a pretty sad and narcisistic description of its author. It also included demo reviews, game tips, and the Porto guide depicted in the screenshots, one of the few sections of the site I don't feel embarrassed about showing.···

Some friendly spam in the mailbox today, pointing me to Artiste Inutile, a french (so you americans should avoid it) webpage featuring nice scanned artwork, a technique I'm quite fond of. Pity the page is in french, a language that has always frustrated me (and this has nothing to do with the zeitgeist).···

Lately my blogging routine has changed. I used to blog when I got home in the evening, just after a roundup of what's going on in the internet. Now I tend to blog later at night, just before going to bed. Which brings me some doubts. Should I change the date to yesterday's (as it is past midnight) or blog as of today? I've already had two different dayheaders in the same day a couple of times, so I need to try to avoid those mistakes. Anyway, enough blogging about blogging. It's rotten business.···

Let's see if we can bring back Pax Ifthenelsica. Enough playing with the shit catapult.···