Congreso Lives! (and is touring in the USA)

The great chilean band Congreso that I recently wrote about, are already playing music again (of course it's the best way to honor their friend).

And now they are performing in the United States, so I warn all my 'merican friends to stay alert and not miss the chance to see this amazing band playing live.

These are some dates (note that in some places they have different shows each night):

• March 1st & 2nd
  Guadalupe cultural arts center, San Antonio, Texas
• March 7th & 8th
  La Peña Cultural, Berkeley
• March 14th & 15th
  Dog and Pony Theatre Company, New Orleans

Enjoy!

Night Blooming

I've been collecting cactii for over 5 years, and as they grow mature, they bloom. Each year I have more species blooming in my collection.

There's one that gives some unusually big flowers (echinopsis multiplex), a bit larger than the plant itself. Normally, when the other cacti bloom, the flower opens during the day, so when I leave for my job the flower isn't open yet. This year, the species in question has bloomed already 4 times during the warm season, and could notice that the flowers were already open before sunrise. These flowers last only one day in full beauty, at the second day they start to wither. I had read about nocturnal blooming cactii, but I didn't knw that I had one. Last night I was able to take a picture at 23:19 with the flower fully open, at the time of the sunset it had been still closed.

All clear now

Correction

The Strangest Night

The southern hemisphere is in mid-summer, the weather in Santiago (my city) is usually hot and dry this time of the year. Last week we had been getting temperatures over 30° C (86° F) but last night, things escaped the normal.

We had a cloudy day and had had some precipitation the day before, but after the sunset the sky was covered with black clouds, by 9:30 pm there was a very unusual luminosity in the sky, some beautiful remainings of a great sunset. There was a mixture of this light and the luminic contamination from the city reflected in these clouds, building a surreal landscape.

I just couldn't resist taking the picture.

Later at night we had some - yet more unusual - lightning bolts, and it rained all night untill after dawn, something unseen for Santiago in January. I don't know why the meteorologists are still reluctant to declare the El Niño phenomenon after all this evidence. It was very strange leaving the house this morning with an umbrella during the peak of summer, I just hope this won't ruin the trip of my friends who are visiting the south of Chile in the upcoming months.

3 landmark passings for the culture of Chile :(

These last days have seen the passing of tree important characters in my country, two of them were great musicians of some of the greatest local bands, the other was a living cultural treasure, a native woman from a nearly extinct cutlure:

Last Wednesday we lost Eduardo Alquinta, lead vocal of Los Jaivas, a great band that was formed during the 60's as the chilean expression of the hippie movement. They soon developed a unique style and became recognized abroad. The band was currently very active, preparing thier 40th anniversary. He fell of a cliff at the beach while enjoying vacations with his family. His voice is hard to forget, and impossible to replace. Story from the news, in spanish.

Úrsula Calderón was one of the only 2 remaining pure-blood natives of the Yamana culture, from the extreme south of Chile, Tierra del Fuego. They had a beautiful culture with a deep involvement with nature, and a lovely oral tradition, she was almost the only one who could still remember part of the language. A few years ago, a sutdent made a great documentary on her and her sister, the only 2 Yamanas still alive. The film is called "La Ultima Huella" (The Last Trail), that was an attempt to rescue some bits of this beautiful, nearly extinct culture. Now her sister Cristina is the only survivor. Story from the news, in spanish.

Jaime Vivanco died this morning, he played great keyboards of my two favorite national bands, Congreso and Fulano. A great musician who displayed loads of strengh and sensitivity in their local performances, I'm happy that I was able to see him play laive many times, one of those times he autographed a CD for me, he was a very kind man too. Story from the news, in spanish.

Happy New Year! in Palm style

On new year's eve I was sitting on the edge of my bed with the ligths off, waiting for midnight to see the fireworks. I was using my Palm pilot as a clock, because of the backlight feature (I don't use wristwatch or have a lit clock in my room).

Just when I was waiting for the numbers to change to 0:00, these cute little fireworks started showing up on the Palm's screen, with a label "Happy New Year" on top.

Ever since i got my Palm I've been impressed by the great design of the operating system (interaction / interface). But this little detail was very touching. It's the first time i've seen one of those "friendly only" features, that's not annoying but fun, and performed in traditional Palm simplicity and grace.

Yet another reason why the Palm OS rules... unless it was my "Big Clock" application, if you know, plese tell me

And hey... you can see the foreworks I saw that night here.

It reminds me of Einstein's phrase

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

--Albert Einstein

Peace, please!

There's an organized, powerful group of people who are working to make a war.

Two years ago a project set up by the men who now surround George W Bush said what America needed was "a new Pearl Harbor". Its published aims have, alarmingly, come true. : John Pilger :12 Dec 2002

The Project for the New American Century, is under the hands of very powerful people from the USA, and they are very bold in talking about talking about "total war", this is very scary, I really don't know what we can do to stop these practically all-empowered people, and defend peace.

El instinto puede ser mejor que el raciocinio

Ayer recibí un comentario acerca de un artículo muy interesante que presentaba una serie de estudios acerca de la forma en que las personas resuelven sus problemas en su trabajo diario. Se explica que mientras más complicado es el problema o situación, se hace más poderoso el uso de los instintos o el subconsciente como herramienta para la toma de decisiones, más que la racionalidad tradicional. Además de presentar ejemplos claros que prueban la teoría y explicar la relación entre la intuición y las emociones, llama la antención que el contexto del artículo corresponde al mundo de los negocios, y refuta la noción básica del capitalismo que plantea que las personas funcionan en forma racional.

Tambén se menciona que existen personas con mayor habilidad natural para escuchar a sus instintos - algue que nos educan a ingorar de manera sistemática - y me vi claramente reflejado al mencionar que este tipo de personas tienen una habilidad especial para formarse una idea de cómo son las personas a partir de su primer encuentro. Todos debemos aprender a escuchar a nuestros instintos y obecederlos con mayor frecuencia.

Blooming Desert II - The REVENGE

One month ago, I traveled to the north of my country with my wife to see the blooming desert phenomenon. At that time, only the early species had already bloomed, and the days were cloudy, we had a lovely time and saw lots of flowers, but it was still somehow frustrating.

Fortunately, I had the chance to visit the same place again last week. One month after the first trip, we started our journey with a group of 7 biologists (my wife included) a baby and me, we went in 2 jeeps (opposed to our compact urban car), so we had much more freedom to travel along rugged coastal trails. We had lovely sunny days and the place was full of flowers, so many in fact that it was hard to believe, it looked like a joke.

We saw easily over 20 different species of cacti, and probably more than 300 different species of flowers. Each stop we made along the road ended up in the discovery of at least 5 new species we had not seen before, we looked up in our books and went discarding the sighted species, there were very few species on the books that we did not get to see, many that we saw and were not in the books. In the end, none of us had enough rolls of film in their cameras to shoot all the different flowers we saw. My film camera broke up on the second day, and I was left with my digital camera only, with one battery and limited memory space. Even if we can gather all the pictures in all our cameras, we will not be able to recollect all the different flowers we saw out there, we were so lucky we saw all one can be able to see in a one week trip. We even found an early 'lion's claw' that normally blooms next month. This second trip was totally satisfying and we got back home with the sweet feeling of having achieved the goal.

This morning, as I walked to take the bus to my office, the city felt very strange to me. I felt like a tourist in my own city, my mind was still full of those wildflower fields, and it all felt different. Spring has officially started here in the southern hemisphere, and the morning was very light and sunny, I still carried that feeling of victory inside me. I guess I'll carry this smile on my face at least for a couple of more days.

In case you're already wondering… of course I'll build a website with those digital pictures, we just need some time to identify each species again :)

Nearly Famous

The Second Edition of Information Architecture for the WWW has been released, It's a great book, with lots of knowledge, I'm devouring it.

The last chapter of the book presents a case study of evolt.org! :), and since I helped Lou contact evolt.org and reviewed the chapter, he was nice enough to put my name into the Acknowledgements page.

It's an amazing sight, the page also shows the names of many great people I admire, and the names of Microsoft and evolt.org in the same line is something very strange :)

Great morning

I've always wanted to share with my foreign friends the amazing view, of a post-rain day from my living room. Now, thanks to my new camera, here it is:

Flores del Desierto

ok, there's the first image...

murphy's law

today in pictures

now i have a digital camera, thanks to the advice from digital photograpy review.

today i took the camera with me for the day following the photographers's n 1° rule:

you have to carry your camera through yor life

finding a superb photographic subject when you have left your camera home is the one of the most frustrating feelings for a photographer.

so today i carried the camera to my job, and now i can show you some of the things i see everyday.

-1-

it's still winter in the southern continent, the frozen grass is still there some mornings, i've wanted to shoot this picture for a long time.

-2-

there's a gas station near my office, we sometimes go there for a pause after lunch, to have a coffe and get some rays of sun for a change.

-3-

the bus ride home, i've always been fascinated by the things that can bee seen in these buses. it's a difficult situation for taking pictures.

Santiago Barenaked

Yesterday morning something very special happened in Santiago:

It's six AM and the sun has not come up yet, a huge group of people have gathered on an extremely cold morning to take their clothes off. They are anxious, they are happy, some can't wait and start taking it all off, jumping to stay warm, screaming in liberation, climbing statues. Then the rest of the crowd got naked, they all put their clothes in bags and went to the park, by the river, right in the back of the Museo de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts). The place was closed through many blocks around, lots of policemen, a chorus of religious protestants pointing fingers to sin, a crowd of voyeurs and the all the press, which had published all kinds of opinions about this controversial art for two weeks.

There's a photographer, who works using collective nudity in a job he's doing around the continents. This morning he is shooting in Santiago, right in the peak of a winter augmented by a polar current that has frozen the water pipes in complete cities of our south. The photographer expected around 400 people, but at 8:00 there were over 3000 people there naked in front of his camera, at 3°C, jumping in euphoria, laughing, carrying national flags. Part of them had just spent the whole night drinking and partying, and probably decided to go to the park a couple of hours before, others woke up early like never before for the event and had properly subscribed, some had traveled from other cities. Euphoria dominated the crowd, there were couples, adults of varied ages, different kinds of bodies, all revealed in the middle of the city. He finally is able to make them sit down, some estimate there's already 4000 people, he shoots the first picture with the crowd looking at the camera. "Everybody move now", to this other street (they all run), "lie down in the (cold) street"… next picture. The photographer waves a small Chilean flag and the session is over. Everybody runs to get their clothes on, all smiling, "the most beautiful experience I've had" was a recurrent expression, it was a moment of complete acceptance, they were all equal.

In the meantime, Brasil won their fifth World Cup, and today's press and conversations were full of these two subjects, but I am certain that the picture will have a longer memory in our city (and country). In a place where people are used to hide their bodies, this shooting became an important landmark in our memory.

Link: some pictures from the press - the flag is flipped horizontally in the first picture.

Gorgeous Winter Morning

The most beautiful days in every landscape come after the storm. This becomes specially true in my city, which is surrounded by mountains that make a beautiful canvas, but at the same time they form a wall that keeps smog captured inside. A couple of weeks ago we were having serious smog problems, but then it started raining... and rain almost didn't stop for nearly 2 weeks, the amount of fallen water exceeded all kinds of previous records.

This morning the sky cleared out, and I could see the mountains with all their tops white-covered in snow, with patterns darkening in downward gradients. Blue sky showing up between layers of clouds and the smell of clean air that lasts only a copule of hours within the huge metropolis.

Welcome Winter

Last night the city was woken up by the hugest thunder i'd ever heard. It was raining and it kept on raining all morning.

I have no clue why everytime it rains the streets end up all jammed, it's something to do with the way it emotionally affects drivers, the electric cherges in the air, or soemthign along that lines. Anyway it's impressive how people het hysterical behind the wheel on rainy days.

I like when the winter starts, I don't like things to be always the same, if it was hot all year I'd get bored of it. Rainy days bring me back memories of a cozy childhood, and make me dream of moving to the countryside, and spend those rainy days next to a chimmeney, in a wooden house in southern Chile.

-

Dan's arival is only a week away, we're all -4- very excited about it. Today we had the chance to clear lots of stuff out through IRC, so it's almost all ready.

Catch up

New Style!

I finally got my ass on movement and changed the colors in the stylesheet.

Choclolate & Blue: I dig that combination, seen it moslty used on womens' dresses, been wanting to try it on a page design for years.

like it or not?

Correction

The song goes... "Whithout amazement, everything looks so sad. Like this, the sun only dies away".

Have a fantastic 2002!

¡Feliz año 2002!

The Power of Amazement

It's amazing how many albums Tony Levin has recorded, and the wide array of musicians he has played for.

It's amazing how many hits this log is getting lately despite fact that i'm probably the world's lousiest blogger.

It's amazing how the Internet gives us huge power for communicaiton, and how it can be both openly public and deeply intimate at the same time. I'm also amazed that it works at all.

When we come to this world, everything is new and amazing, it is one of the most beautiful things about children. We love to watch their faces when they discover their bodies, arms, their shadow, how the face of their mother is back after having dissappeared.

As we grow old, things become trivial to us, and as we start taking them for granted they loose their magic. This does not have to be that way. Artists know this, a big part of their power relies in finding beauty where other people don't see it, this also allows them to be creative.

There's a beautiful song by Congreso that talks about this same issue, one of it's most powerful images says: "Without amazement, the sun only dies away".

When we take everythign for granted, life becomes dull, when we fight to preserve our ability to be amazed by things we feel more alive, life is fresh and exciting.

I think it's very important to preserve our power of amazement, specially in personal relationships. I find amazing how I've come to call my friends some poeple with whom I've only exchanged e-mail messages. This becomes even more impotant with people who loves us, I find amazing that my wife - an incredibly smart woman - is willing to do boring and tedious home stuff when she comes back from her job, only to save time so we can spend a better time together when i get home. And i am certain that the day I start taking this kind of details for granted, our relationship will loose a lot.

I think this openness to amazement is even useful when looking at bad stuff, when I get amazed by how chaotic the distribution of my city is, or how crappy it's transport is handled, it makes me feel more alive, more aware of what happens around me.

my new friend

i love meeting new intereting people, some weeks ago when we started a new list to discuss the future of evolt.org, i noticed one of the most active people there was Madhu Menon. i realized i'd already seen that name in some posts of thelist, and also on the SIGIA-L and CHI-WEB lists.

as our new project kept on rolling, i kept on finding myself nodding my head for everything (almost) this guy said, it looks like we have some common intersts: we're both IAs, we have a strong feeling for evolt.org, we both live in countries very far from the US and with different cultures (language included, he's from India) and we both like to cook - he also published a recipe for white rice - so this lil entry goes to my new friend Madhu :)

Detengamos la masacre

En realidad hace mucho tiempo que tenía ganas de escribir esto, pero ahora me doy cuenta que no soy el único con esta preocupación, unamos fuerzas y difundamos esta información a la mayor cantidad de gente posible.

Desde hace meses que vemos en los espacios publicitarios, sobre todo en las ventanas traseras de las micros una campaña llamada "Bosques para Chile" que proclama: "el bosque es un recurso natural renovable"... el problema es que esta campaña es organizada y auspiciada por los empresarios forestales como una forma de expiar sus culpas, porque saben que esa premisa no es cierta en el caso de sus bosques de Pino que están invadiendo desde hace décadas nuestro paisaje a un costo altísimo: la devastación de nuestro valioso bosque nativo y sus especies endémicas.

Lo grave de esta situación, al margen de la aberración que constituye la aniquilación del bosque nativo para establecer plantaciones de pino, es que el pino es una especie muy dañina para nuestros paisajes, las plantaciones productivas de pino que financian esta campaña son exclusivas de esta especie, no crecen otras especies de árboles entre los pinos, y dentro de pocos meses, los residuos del pino acidifican la tierra hasta que ya no pueden crecer ni plantas menores bajo su sombra, esto además altera la composición de los insectos y animales que habitan el bosque, incluyendo aves, y en todos los aspectos el bosque de pino es un hábitat muy hostil para la mayor parte de las especies nativas. Cada hectárea de pino significa el fin de un complejo ecosistema rico en especies en pos de uno "higiénicamente productivo". Además el nivel de acidez de la tierra generada por los pinos, luego de unos años torna la tierra completamente estéril, tal como lo podemos ver en la zona de Cauquenes, septima región, por ejemplo. Lo que significa que la vida deberá tomar décadas de lento trabajo para volver a ocupar esas tierras enriqueciéndolas para que puedan volver a crecer árboles (quizás).

En resumen el Bosque de Pino es un recurso agotable y devastador que mata hasta la tierra misma, mientras que el Bosque Nativo es renovable, pero es muy frágil y su crecimiento es muy lento, por lo cual frente a esta agresiva campaña de la industria maderera, debemos proteger y cuidar el valioso bosque nativo con más fuerza que nunca.

Relacionado:

• Declaración Pública de la Sociedad Botánica de Chile
• Imagen de una Reserva de Boque Nativo rodeada por el Pino, VII Región
• ORGANIZACIONES LANZAN CAMPAÑA "BOSQUES
  DE VERDAD PARA CHILE" Diario Sociedad Civil
• Bosques de verdad para Chile

Internet me enseñó a leer

Mis padres son ávidos lectores, devoran libros como si fueran galletas, pero todos sus intentos por traspasarme su pasión por la lectura fueron infructuosos. Yo no encontraba ningún interés en los libros, sólo leía revistas, artículos de diarios y un par de libros al año.

Años más tarde pasé a ser un activo usuario de este medio, y comencé a leer cientos de mensajes de correo electrónico al día. La lectura de pequeños párrafos y frases en forma permanente me fue entrenando...

En Internet encontré información de todo tipo acerca de todos los temas que me interesan y otros que no conocía, pronto comencé a imprimir y leer artículos de 10 páginas y luego 30, mis nuevos amigos electrónicos me recomendaron los mejores libros de cada área... actualmente leo dos o tres libros al mismo tiempo mientras pienso acerca de mi próxima compra.

Es algo un tanto extraño o paradójico, pero el medio electrónico logró despertar en mí el interés por la lectura de manera irreversible.

NY :(

it has taken me three days to assume this is true. Despite living very far away from NY, it was somehow a part of me. In the first place, I lived two of my first years in the state of New York, i travelled frequently to Manhattan, and i did visit the top floor on one of the Twin Towers.

i can't imagine how someone can have so much rage inside his heart to do something like this. there is a danger within religious fanatism, people start beliveing that they are owners of the truth and they are closer to god, while all of the others are in sin for thinking differently. this idea has lead many maracres before, including the inquisition and the "civilization" of all America: North, Center and South, and many more.

it's hard to think that the famous Manhattan skyline wil now be quite less unique without the Twin Towers.

i don't want to think about what's going to happen now, the impact this will have all around the world.

i feel very sorry for all those who are suffering loss. this is my humble tribute to all the victims and their loved ones.

Clould it be a generational gap?

Actually the main subject of article i mentioned yesterday was how the way people approach the Web is changing.

The end of the story stuck on my head for the rest of the day. Why don't these kids have any interest for the Web?

Later i found an answer, one which has been pushed inside my head all this time that i've been studying this medium: "content is king".

Isn't it that these 12 year olds simply don't find anything with they can feel strongly enough to hook up to the WWW and go clicking along? If you think of how you were at that age, it's a time when most of your fun comes from doing your own stuff with your friends and anything that comes from grown-ups feels distant and incredibly boring.

If you think about the difference in the context children currently grow in, it's actually quite different from short 10 or 15 years ago. Currently some children take computers for granted -not all have one-, also, the kind of complex input they so properly handle in multi-button game-pads will probably allow them to input 1Kbit passwords in their bank account in 0.0001 seconds...

The leap between generations is becoming shorter and shorter, and this makes it each year harder to try to get into the children's heads and give them something compelling, so probably that's why getting online is something so dull for these children.

I really don't know, it's just something i figured last night, i haven't studied the subject, but i do like the cuestion.

Finally something to write about

Today's gleanings sent a nice article from the NYT about the use behavior of the users on the internet, it touches the subject of my passion: how the medium affects the lives of the users. There's a couple of quotes that are similar to my conclusions for my thesis back in 1996:

"What I worry about when it comes to the Web is that
people are encouraged to drill down into their areas of
concern to such a degree that they get closeted in their
own reflections of themselves," said Joseph Turow, a
professor at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the
University of Pennsylvania.

"A medium can't do any more than its users want or think
to do with it," said Mark Crispin Miller, director of the
project on media ownership at New York University.

I wasn't so wrong afterall!

And then near the end, it gets to another of the points i've always defended as the main use of the web: communication.

...All our major media have come at us
as if from God himself to redeem us from the restrictions
of time and space."

Still, the Web has come closest to actually doing that. And
many of those who make an effort to take advantage of
what it has to offer say that the cultural impact of the Web
lies not in its would-be alternative media outlets, but in
the way it facilitates communication between individuals
who would otherwise never have the benefit of each
other's experience...

Mr. Johnson said. "But maybe it turns out
that what the Web is good for is connecting people."

What really knocked me off my cahir was the punchline, by a 12 year old boy:

"We know how to use the Web," the younger Mr. Dudley
said. "We can use the Web. We usually just don't."

That i don't know what to say about, i wasn't expecting it so soon.

Thank you Christina for sending the link.

Scratch

Some weeks ago the members.evolt.org hard drive broke, and many of the members lost all their data... It reminds me of this song by morphine called "scratch". it's chorus goes "I lost everything I had I'm starting over from scratch"

This may seem sad and depressive, but actually the song is about our capacity to start all over again, and lift fromr the ground every time we fall. That's why i love that song, it reminds us that we really don't need the things that we think we need.

So now my blog is back up in the air of bits and electrons. I'll be out of the city next week, having some rest :)