No lunch = huge burrito

That's right, it's some kind of ancient rule: no food all day, have a huge burrito.

Enough is enough

All day I've been listening to Madonna, not that I don't like Madonna's music, I do, but give a me a break, she's not that good. :-)

I have the new-toy-syndrome for you should know that for the past week my friend Ivanx, has been bugging me: "where's that Madonna music I know you have?", and yesterday I finally complied, and included a bunch of CDs to my iTunes.  BTW, most of those are Karla's, not mine, but is kinda the same thing: what's hers is mine, err no, sorry, the other way around, so don't tell her I took her CDs.

So there, no more Madonna for me in a couple of days, thank you very much.

Usually music represents no distraction for me, and actually helps me concentrate while working. However, when I'm listening to the same voice for a long time I, inevitably, end up singing along, which ruins work for me, not to mention my cow-orkers, if you know what I mean!.

Never forget what is truly important

If you're like myself, then your week is filled with tons of stuff to do:
the occasional personal project, such as writing that chapter that was due
two days ago for the book you're working on, review your presentation for
that important risk-related project at work, the yearly report on the
computing services, collect, review, and prepare the information needed
for that meeting to present your video-conferencing project, prepare your
operating systems slides for the three one-hour classes, conduct those
never ending group-meetings (BTW, you know you're part of one too many
groups, when you can't have all those meetings on weekly basis), keeping
your policy of no more than two hours in average to respond to any written
or electronic communication your receive, etc., a really, really big et
cetera.

Chances are that you will forget about what really matters, the highlight
of your week, that special, never-ending moment, where space and time
become one, no pain, no worries, no more work for a couple of hours...
when you hold your beer with your raised hand, see your girlfriend, and
friends in the eye, and say: "Salud!". Well, that will happen no more, for
I now have this pretty, non-intrusive, beer-like counter that works itself
up to remind me of that special moment.

Welcome home friday night!

Champ's food

My new policy is to have a late breakfast around 10:30, substitute regular lunch for the champion's food you can see in the picture, and then a late super or dinner.

Works great!, I can work pretty quietly, while everybody is out fighting for decent food: suckers! ;)

Stay in a line

That's right people: stay in a line (staying alive). My friend Manuel thought that the song staying alive said, yes he did!, stay in a line.

Oh, BTW we are at the King's, ex-Celtics. ;)

Almost three hours

In the picture you can see how my PSP looks wasted, it has been almost 3 hours since we arrived to the beauty parlour.

I had my hair done in like 15 minutes, Karla is having something plaster to her hair every half hour. I would have gone, but the traffic is pretty heavy, and I came prepared: book and PSP.

It shouldn't be long now.

Better known as RMS

I've been having more and more fun with my all singing, all dancing blackberry phone later. So, in a very unpolite way my girlfriend is been making fun of me, and how I'm behaving as Richard S. when he was visiting here in Mexico, and how little attention he paid to her colombian? chic, because of his laptop...

The point is that in a conference, somebody presented Richard as the supposedly better known: rms. ;)

(tell this guy that nobody knows what the hell he's talking about, was the general feeling, and it was very funny.)

Anyway, now I'm better known as FSC, but instead of a laptop I have a phone.

On the move

That's right, I just decided to give it a try and post using my mobile phone. It might not look pretty, it might not even be worth reading, I'm sorry for that, however I will be able to write more often.

I'm gonna go the Seinfeld way: a blog about nothing (not that it wasn't already about nothing, mind you, but there you have it).

Vaz: kudos for asking me about this possibility!

Sorry about this message being correctly capitalized, my phone insists on it. ;)

in search of a decent 'pozole'

you know many people here at UNAM goes to that nasty, crowded, hideous, wannabe restaurant whose speciality is 'pozole', according to their own crappy publicity: "the original Guerrero recipe", right?

  well, the point is that today we had a breakthrough, a revelation you might say, and for the first time since voting where to eat on a friday started some years ago, "La Camelia" (one of my favorite restaurant/antro) won!.  wasn't easy, though, and i have to prepare because these guys are gonna try and take us back to the nasty pozole place, which i can't even remember its name, nasty place... AFAIK, the only marginally good thing there is their 'potato tacos', which kinda rule.

 anyway, guys i need your help, please! share with me the name, and address of decent pozole restaurants in Mexico City, extra points for places in the south part of the city. 

Random thoughts on programming

you sure know several books on programming, what they all have in common? what is important, relevant, and what is syntax sugar? abstraction, data, and procedural abstraction.

of course, depending on the type of programming book you happen to read, you may find the abstraction concept closer to the surface. this is the case in many cs 101 kind of books, say SICP, HtDP, or similar. OTOH, if you are stuck with a 'foo language for dummies', or 'foo in 21 days', then you might just be out of luck: abstraction will be there, believe me, but you're gonna have to work harder to find it.

this is really important, once you grasp the basic concepts, and abstractions it is easier to move to higher topics, to other languages. the two books i mentioned before are scheme based, which really eases the translation from concepts to code: first class procedures (or higher order procedures), strong dynamic typing, the whole nine yards. i haven't look myself at any java, c# o c++ intro book lately, but it must be a hell of a lot harder to do without first class procedures, no wonder novice programmers lose themselves in the syntax nightmare.

first...

...let me tell you i used to hang around livejournal as do many of my friends. however, their service didn't quite cut it, so: hello bloggers.

i'll try to keep up with my writing. just so you know, i usually don't read so many books at the same time, but right now i'm eager for ideas for a book i'm working on (work related), and i've been having the time of my life, if you are cs or math inclined, you'll like some of these:

Nonplussed!
Mathematical Proof of Implausible Ideas
Julian Havil
Princeton University Press

The New Turing Omnibus
66 Excursions in Computer Science
A. K. Dewdney
Owl Books

Luck, Logic & White Lies
The Mathematics of Games
Jörg Bewersdorff
A K Petters