Back in Madrid.

I am back in Europe again, even though my physical body is here my soul is a bit behind (Daimens law of jetlag). The last days in Santiago was pretty good, work-wise it was a much more relaxed trip than it usually is, which of course just means that usually it's insane.

Friday I felt like celebrating, so I went to "Happening" and had a great Argentinan steak. The service and food was as usual excellent and it was sooo cheap. The rest of the night was spent with the movie Equilibrium. I do like the movie a lot, it's a great dystopian universe and Christian Bale does a great role.

For the whole week I tried to figure out what I should do on my Saturday, I ended up just taking an extra trip around the city and not going outside Santiago. So I started to walk from the Hotel over to Domino's (the Santiago hotdog company) and had a Completo. A completo is a Chilean hotdog with avocado, mayo, tomatoes and onion.


After that I took a stroll up the San Cristobal as I have done so many times when I lived in Santiago. The smog was pretty bad that day (as you can see in the pictures) so the city was pretty clouded. It's a pretty intense walk upwards the "Hill" (In a country where the Andes is always visible, a 800m high mountain is considered a hill).


That evening I went out with Sergio and Jenny (old colleague + wife) to a old favorite restaurant "Como Agua para Chocolate", as water to chocolate. The place is mexican type of place with beautiful decor, great food and great presentation of the food.


The trip home was uneventful, I got upgraded to first class because of space problems in economy, I didn't complain much about that. Since I got the "sapphire" status in oneworld the "random" upgrades seems so much more frequent. Not a coincident if you ask me. I couldn't sleep on the plane though, so now I am in for a world of jetlag changes that I hate.

And oh, I am getting my N800 in a couple of hours. :)

Two days ago, I woke up ... under water ...

With "Crossroads" by mind.in.a.box we return to their intense electro-world. With cool vocal effects, multilayered soundscapes and addictive melodies this is nothing but a masterpiece. If you never heard a mind.in.a.box album before you'll need to know that they are thematic records with the protagonist "Mr. Black". At the start of this record (chapter three in the story) Mr. Black wakes up in the water and cannot remember who he is. The first songs deal with his memory loss (amnesia, into to the night) and then mr. black manages to figure out who he is (the song identity), but things spiral out of hand and our "hero" realizes that he is not alone (songs fear and stalkers). I won't spoil the rest of the story for you, you should listen to it yourself! The CD comes with a booklet that contains a small story written by the Austrian sci/fi author Andreas Gruber that takes place in the "crossroads universe".

I must say that I love the idea of not just writing cool songs, but also add to a wholeness, like NIN did with Year Zero. This gives you something more than just music.

I recommend everyone that like electronic music to get this record, listen to the stories and read the booklet, you won't be sorry!

Absolution Gap

Last night, while eating excellent mexican food at Taqueria El Rancho, I finished "Absolution Gap" by Alastair Reynolds. It was my second (or third, if you count that I just finished half of "Revelation Space" before it was destroyed by rain) Reynolds book. The whole book was very captive and the pace was incredible. From the start you follow three different settings in different parts of the universe, after half the book it merges into just two stories you follow. And in the last three high paced chapters all the loose ends tie up and you get eject into a reading frenzy that is unavoidable!

In Reynolds universe every book add to the details and it feels richer and richer all the time.

But this book is not for everyone, it's "hard" science fiction with a lot of reference to physics and space science. Reynolds has worked at ESA so he probably know more about physics than most people. His books are very careful to not break any rules of natures, even though they bend them pretty far in some cases (see the Hypometric weapons for example). The books also challenge the reader to follow at least three different story-lines.

I am looking forward to my next Reynolds book (I need to surf amazon I guess :)), in the meanwhile I will finish Gibsons "Pattern Recognition".

Nokia N800

I am seriously thinking about getting a Nokia N800. All the mobile phones with built-in webbrowsers and stuff has always let me down. But I would like to be able to go down to starbucks, read some webpages, update my blog and chat without having to bring the laptop. The lack of a keyboard is a bit unsettling, but I have heard that the on screen keyboard works just perfectly.

So maybe we will see a maemo xmms2 client soon? :)

Chilean...

It's funny how different the Chilean Spanish is to the Spanish Spanish. I almost forgot how funny and unpronounced they speak here. Some of the language changes I can understand, Chileans has a lot of indian (mapuche) words mixed in their Spanish, for example "Palta" for avocado which is Avacata in Spain. But there are things I never really got my head around... in Chile they never ever use "Vale", an expression for Okey in Spain and they look very funny at you when you say it. They do use "listo" instead (even though they can't pronounce it so it becomes "litto"), which brings us to the way the brutally remove 's' from words...

Anyway... I am still enjoying the fact that I am back in Santiago. Went downtown around lunch today and had some lunch at that place I "always" had lunch when I worked right next to it. Took a stroll around Plaza de Armas and used the metro, it all feels so familiar. Also, I miss the ensalada chilena in Spain, why don't people do it proper but here?

I am thinking about next weekend, maybe I should take a trip up to the andes or go out dancing at the disco place? Dunno yet...

Santiago 25-26th of August.

I am in Santiago for a week doing some work, but it also gives me some times to enjoy the city again. I really really like Santiago even if it shitty cold here right now (around 3-10 Celsius). It feels a bit like coming home again, the streets and houses all look very familiar.

Saturday:
I left Madrid late Friday (or very early Saturday) and arrived Saturday morning in Santiago. I could sleep ok on the airplane and I only had to kill 3-4 hours in the end of trip. I took a cab to the hotel and I had a flash of recognition when I rode the taxi into the city. The rest of the morning was filled with me checking in, unpacking and taking a shower.

I went for a walk from the hotel where I live on Richardo Lyon up towards Tobalaba and my old apartment. A bit of nostalgia hit me when I went up my old stream (Callao). By now it was time for a bit of lunch, so I went to my favorite italian (Tiramisu) and had a pisco sour :-) It was very good, haven't had any in a long long time. After enjoying this very nice meal I took a long walk to Parque Araco. I planned to kill some time by watching a movie and do some shopping. It ended up so that I had to kill some time until the movie started. So I went shopping, got a new pair of trousers, a music dvd with hooverphonic and a nice bottle of wine.

I watched transformers again, it was my second time. I selected that movie mostly because it was the only one that wasn't dubbed to spanish and was somewhat interesting. I still find it a OK film. The action is great and the humor is very funny. But it's not a film that sticks or leaves a impression. After the movie I went and picked up some sushi to take with me to the hotel.

Went home to eat sushi and sleep. I slept well.

Sunday:
Today I just had a walk to Los Leones, had some lunch at Subways and then walked over to a coffeplace and had a dount and coffe. Rest of the afternoon I have spent online. Tonight I will go out for dinner with my friend here in Santiago. Be back with more reports later on :-)

XMMS2 DrJekyll, Esperanza 0.3.0 and more.

Today I uploaded the final of XMMS2 DrJekyll and 0.3.0 of Esperanza.

There is a lot of changes in both. Noteworthy changes for XMMS2 includes:

• Collections. After almost a year in development (it was last years SoC) the API is pretty stable and very usable. I was amazed how much you could do with it when I started to convert Esperanza to it.
• Playlist plugins are available again. Lot of people have asked for that.
• WAF. We switched build system from SCons to WAF and it has helped us a lot (also created new wondrous problems).

The noteworthy changes for Esperanza is the following:

• Medialib browser.
• Collections API conversion.
• Stream browser.
• Lot of stability changes

Now I will probably go a bit silent within XMMS2 for a while since I am going to the WGT festival in Leipzig, Germany (drop by and buy me a beer!) and after that to San Francisco (drop by and buy me a glass of wine!). Hopefully this summer will give me some time to make some internal changes in Esperanza.

Enjoy the releases!