The origin and those responsible for this crisis

Two days ago I watched the documentary «Inside Job», a documentary of the crisis we’ve been in for the past three years.

There is one thing that really shocked me: the last part when they show Obama saying before the US elections that the crisis arrived because of a system out of control thanks to the previous deregulation that had took place with Bush, Clinton and so on. Obama pointed clearly out that this had to change, that he was going set up a new regulation system that would prevent new crisis in the future.

But once Obama won the elections, he started to put in the most important economic departments and seats the same people that had provoked the crisis. And the thing is that after three years of Obama’s government, there has been no changes when it comes to economical policies, the market continues not being regulated so the same people that brought us here can keep doing the same thing. And the «thing» is that is getting worse and worse.

Obama is such a disappointment, or maybe not. No public health care, no end for Cuban restrictions, no regulation. Too many expectations were set for Obama, and Obama has done barely nothing. The «Yes, we can» has became a «Yes, they can»: same people are there taking control of our money and our governments. They want US to pay for what THEY did. Justice seems to be useless.

2012 is coming. Wouldn’t it be fun that all these Armageddon theories take place that year after all? Don’t be scared. Armageddon in this case means «a very deep social change». The future societies will look back at us and think that these were crazy times where blindness would be everywhere. Don’t you see it?

Get more with less

Many thoughts come to my mind after reading the article “Just apply yourself” (Barcelona  Metropolitan issue 177, page 58), published in the Metropolitan Barcelona magazine.

The article talks about this new app fever that is surrounding us all with all these new devices and smart phones that allow us to download millions and millions of applications that entertain us, help us in our day to day work or are time wasters.

The article focuses on how to come up with a new app that could change people’s lives and particularly our own life by selling it. As if we could do it.

There are two main ideas that come to my mind when reading things like this:

• First of all, and this is the reason for the title of this post. There are always people trying to sell us the idea that it’s really easy to get rich with the minimum effort. That’s not what the article says, but that’s the idea that stays in our mind after reading it. If you want to get rich quickly and easily, then it is going to be a question of luck. The opportunities you have to achieve this goal are as probable as winning  the lottery. Actually, there are more people that have won the lottery than people that have gotten rich quickly and easily programming a cool app.
• The second thought that comes to mind is related to the part that says:
  

  “In a way, the sheer existence of the app is encouragement to us all to go back to the drawing board in the belief that maybe we do all think differently, so we too might have the capacity to dream up something no one else has thought of”.

  That paragraph is actually telling us that everything that has to be invented has been invented. And our world, our lives, our education is focused on teach us a way of thinking that is not creative at all. Our imagination is clearly bordered by our knowledge, our believes, our way of thinking, our language. Inventing something really breaking new is such a difficult thing that none of us can even dream about it. We’d need to live in a different culture, in a different world maybe. Faucault would say that “we are prisoners of our own language”, and that could be extended that we are “prisoners” of our culture. If we’d like our society to be more creative, then we should start by teaching our children in a creative way. There are interesting projects around the world that work on this, for example, the Waldorf Schools.

The porn I’d like

I can clearly remember the first time I discovered a porn magazine at my brother’s bedroom when I was 10. I can also lively remember the over-excitation I felt (and what came after that…).

It’s been ages now, and I can realize that the porn industry has not changed at all. When you discover «porn» for the first time, it’s exciting enough to see how the «characters» just fuck in a particular position while the camera is almost touching the guy balls. It’s somewhat stupid… but that’s porn and it’s been like that for a very long time. First time you watch porn and the following occasions can be also exciting, but sooner or later you’re going to realize how disappointing it can be: there is no plot, it is only a woman that simulates to be enjoying being penetrated by a «monster dick».

I think that the unreality of this porn can be somewhat harmful for consumers. The gap between actual sexual relations and those you can watch on porn movies is sometimes abysmal. Indeed, we can enjoy sometimes practicing the positions we watch on porn movies in one or another way, but women aren’t that easy, neither are men.

Luckily, thanks to the new streaming porn websites like YouPorn, RedTube, xhamster, xvideos, yuvutu and many more, where anyone can upload their own erotic videos, porn has changed and people now can choose between that «professional» porn and somewhat closer to the real life like the amateur porn.

There is also a new type of porn that is turning into something very relevant: porn made for women. Erika Lust is the main representative director of this new porn. The stories of this porn are different from the classic porn in two ways: firstly, the plot is relevant, so that the movie is not only sex scenes with no sense; secondly, the explicit sexual relations we see are not as fake as the classic porn. It’s actually porn, but it’s also exciting because of the story, the environment, the way they film the scenes…

In any case, none of these satisfy the type of porn I’d like to see.

I want a story, with characters that have a life and are part of an exciting story. And I want them to fuck. I mean, a want a «normal» movie, but with explicit sexual relations. I don’t want the camera just behind the guy balls, I want to see the sexual act as it is, without hiding anything, with no fears. I think that’s exciting. In fact, there have been a few movies that follow this line. One of them is «9 songs». Very exciting…

http://www.megavideo.com/v/89NSM6WJ293eebc7e045c923ddc900abaa07e146

Recipe: stuffed peppers

One of the dishes I “recently” discovered has been Stuffed Peppers. The main ingredients are:

• 2-3 red peppers
• A glass of rice
• 2-3 cans of tuna
• Small shrimps
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 500g of crushed tomatoes (or tomato puree)

Things to do before starting…

• Preheat the oven to the maximum temperature

First, we prepare the filling for the pepper. Pour oil into the pan so that it covers the surface, then add the rice and tuna and mix them with a spoon. Cook for two minutes and in the meantime, chop the garlic into small pieces and add them to the mix, continue cooking for two more minutes. Finally, we add the crushed tomatoes and the small shrimps. We need to stir it all for one or two minutes until everything is mixed well.

This first part is very easy and quick, basically we only mixed all the ingredients for the filling.

Now that we have prepared the filling, we have to rinse the peppers. After that, using a knife, we need to open the top of the pepper. But it is important to do it this way:

If the pepper is vertical, we need to position the knife vertically, and start cutting vertically around the top of the pepper. If you don’t do it this way, then you won’t be able to close the pepper properly and everything will fall out. Save the part you cut because it’s going to be useful to close the pepper after filling it.

Now it’s time to fill the pepper with the filling. With a spoon, just fill each pepper, but not up to the top. You must leave a little space for the rice to grow while it’s cooking. Once you have almost filled each pepper, cover it with the top you cut earlier. After that, you have to wrap the peppers with foil. Make sure the pepper is completely wrapped, it is very important not to let anything get out of the wrap (if not, then the rice won’t cook completely).

The last step is to place the wrapped filled peppers into the oven at maximum temperature. Cook the pepper for 30 minutes laying on one side, then, turn them over and cook for another 30 minutes. And that’s all.

You have to serve the peppers wrapped, each person has to take the wrapping off (you should prepare a bowl to discard the foil). Now you can eat your stuffed pepper! (I like cutting it all and mix the pepper with the rice, not just open the pepper and eat the rice inside).

A quick history of the Free Software (as in freedom)

It was late 70′s when something happened in a MIT laboratory. Programmers there used to share their work with programmers from other universities all over the U.S. They were completely convinced that the best way to improve their work was to share with other people their work, so that these people could review it, find out what parts didn’t work properly and also propose changes to improve or even to customize the program for their own purposes.

One day, the MIT directors decided that the programmers work should not be shared with other people that didn’t take part of each department. Most of the engineers and programmers there showed their disagreement with that decision. One of them decided that he would continue sharing his work with other people around the world, so he was completely sure that that was the right way to make things better.

At that time, this guy, whose name was «Richard Stallman», used a rudimentary operating system on his computer. The base OS was proprietary: he bought that software and he couldn’t analyze the source code. But he started to implement small programs for that OS that he shared with others, and also gave the source code in order to ask for improvements and revisions.

Time went on and the number of these small (and not that small) programs grew exponentially. At that moment they started thinking about implementing a base OS that whose source code could be shared as well. What they wanted was create an OS completely accessible for everyone.

In order to organize this kind of ideology they redacted the principles of the Free Software. Not free as a «free beer» but «free as in freedom». Those principles tried to create the basis of how to share their software while assuring that that «free software» remained always «free software». Basically, the principles were:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

___

Meanwhile, across the sea, at the Helsinki University, there was a programmer named Linus Torvalds that was developing an operating system. At the beginning, he was not sure whether to share with others his work, but the free software movement had already arrived to Europe and most programmers were aware about its philosophy. Finally, Linus decided to share his works with «the community».

The mix of the thousand of programs developed by free software programmers and the linux kernel created by Linus Torvalds created the GNU/Linux Operating System. This was the yea 1991.

The free software development model has been successful across the years. Since everyone can have access to the source code of free software and use it at they wish, a lot of companies started to take advantage of it and founded different projects for their own interests. They were obligated by the four principles of the free software to respect the sharing principles, so everybody was benefited when a company decided to invest on something concrete related to free software.

After 20 years since the GNU/Linux OS was created, a lot of people use it and companies still invest on it. Even though it is not as famous as Apple or Microsoft, GNU/Linux is the main actor on fields like web servers or supercomputers.

How to add facebook like and twitter buttons in magento

This is just a quick note for internal use. It’s pretty easy to add facebook like and tweet buttons to our products.

Navigate to the view.phtml file of your skin (in my case it was /app/design/frontend/default/MAG050047/template/catalog/product/view.phtml) and in that file you can put wherever you want the following code:


<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/ca_ES/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:like href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl(); ?>" font=""></fb:like><br/><br/>
<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal" data-via="serretllibres">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

You can see it in action here.

New TV Show: All about sex

Well, it is new, but only in my mind. If I had to create a new tv show it would have the following name: All about sex.

Every day I come across people with whom I end up talking about sex. I realize that there are too many prejudices and things people don’t want to talk about. Therefore, this TV Show would focus on educating people about sex. Sex is a topic interesting enough by itself and it is clear that everybody is willing to know and learn new things.

However, «All about sex» wouldn’t be a TV Show focused on the «sex» as it is, but also on how our sexuality is highly influenced by our environment: people we actually know and have known and above all, our own family. The show would have three sections: the first one, would be related to the story of that day. Afterwards, there would be interviews and discussions about the topic of that day . Finally, the last section would review sexual practices. This last section would probably not be suitable for children.

The goal of this show should be to educate people of all ages about sexuality in a more «direct way»: sex as it is, why it is so important in our lives and why it is often the main source of our happiness or sadness. A good sexual education for children is the cure for the vast majority of the problems that adults have on their lives when it comes with interacting with other people.

The Catalan educational system

One of the things that I always try to explain to people that come to Catalonia is the Catalan educational system.

The main goal is to get people competent using both Catalan and Spanish languages by the time they finish high-school. In the first stages children are educated basically in Catalan: all subjects (except «Castillian») are taught in Catalan and the Spanish is gradually introduced in the following courses. This has been like this over the past 30 years and almost everyone that has studied this way is able to write and speak both languages correctly (maybe Spanish better).

However, the Spanish superior court has decided that children who ask for it, would have the right to be taught mainly in Spanish during the whole school period. It seems to be logical but what is true is that people that mainly study in Spanish are not competent in Catalan when they finish school.

Then, on the one hand we know that everyone should have the right to choose the language that their children are going to be taught in, but at the same time everyone has the obligation to know both languages. In this case, the current educational system almost assures that everyone will know both languages while people taught only in Spanish won’t.

There is also the necessity of learning English and other international languages at school. Some administrations in Spain are trying to implement the «30% quota» at schools: 30% in Spanish, 30% in English and 30% in the regional language (if it exists). Despite the good intentions of this proposal, it is also barely possible to implement it correctly: first of all, there are not enough people competent enough to teach 30% of the lessons in English and second, there are other ways to help students to learn English: scholarships to go abroad, showing movies in the original version subtitled in Spanish/Catalan and many other ways that won’t imply losing competency in their own local languages.

In conclusion, the conflict has just started and the new Catalan Government has to declare itself about the court resolution. Catalan people are starting to get tired when it comes to explaining to the rest of the Spanish people why they want to preserve their language. In any case, this conflict has always been present to a greater or lesser extent.

When I met Javi

On my 4th year at college I met this guy who would come to class once or twice a week. At the beginning I wouldn’t talk to him at all, but on one of those occasions he sat by my side. At that moment I realised that he had a small tear on his shirt. What I did, instead of telling him about it, was to put my finger on the small hole and laugh.

It was so funny seeing him staring at me and wondering what on earth I was doing, so we started to talk and that was the beginning of a really nice friendship. Since then we started to study together, I would pass him all my notes and he used to encourage me to study (out of class, of course).

The sad thing was that a year later I left college and came to Barcelona to continue my degree at UPC. Even though we were 500km far from each other, we stayed in touch. Furthermore, last summer we did together (and a friend of him)  the Camino de Santiago: at the beginning I wasn’t sure whether to do it or not, but at the end he talked to me into. I have to admit that it was the best experience I’ve ever had.

Now he’s living in Ireland and we email each other from time to time. I barely remember last time we run into each other, but we have had a really good time together.

Bye Mikel Laboa

I listened to Mikel Laboa first when I saw the documentary about the Basc Countries Euskal Pilota. Last night he died…