Quantum Forest

There is a saying in Spanish that says¹ ‘El hombre propone pero Dios dispone’, which loosely translates² to ‘one can plan, but God makes the final decision’. I had planned a couple of very tight deadlines, but on Friday 9 I got sick and on Monday 12 I underwent surgery. Final result: all deadlines are ridiculously off time and I will need to finish some work from overseas.

It was my first time having general anaesthetics, so I was a bit worried about waking up or, rather, not waking up. I had a good conversation with the anaesthetist, who was very understanding. I had been told before that people start a countdown from ten, and normally they are sleep by five. However, nobody asked me to count; and the only thing that I remember is thinking ‘Hospilite: what a lame name for hospital lights’ while looking at the ceiling of the operating theatre. Next thing someone is asking me ‘Are you in pain?’, and I was saying ‘Yes, a bit’ before receiving some morphine. This was one hour and a half after thinking about Hospilite.

Coming from surgery feels strange. It has been painful, but not terribly so, and tiring. The first few days after the event, I was quite emotional. I do not know if it is the realisation of one’s own mortality or ‘just’ the effect of anaesthesia. At the same time I am very grateful to Marcela, who has managed to take care of everything and everyone while I have been slowly moving around.

I still have four more days of medical licence, and I can certainly say that I am glad to still be around!

¹ I found the origin of this proverb explained as:

Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit. Así se lee en la Imitación de Cristo de Kempis (libro 1.º, cap. 19, vers. 9.º), aunque tal vez sea una nueva versión de la sentencia de Publio Siro: Homo semper aliud, fortuna aliud, cogitat (Siempre el hombre piensa una cosa, y la fortuna otra). Parecida la frase que comentamos es la de L’homme s’agite, Dieu le mène, (El hombre se mueve. Dios le guía), que con frecuencia ha sido atribuida a Bossuet, pero que pertenece a Fenelón. En las Sagradas Escrituras (Proverbios, cap. 16, vers. 9.º) se lee: ‘El hombre elige su camino y Dios conduce sus pasos’.

² The previous note in Spanish makes reference to Proverbs 16,9: ‘In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps’. There are alternative versions of this verse available.

A few quickies before the weekend:

• Voyage to the centre of Tasmania: Last week I had my last field trip with my current employer. The destination was Tarraleah (Latitude 42º 18’ S, Longitude 146º 26’ E), which is around 50km away from the geographic centre of Tasmania (Latitude 42° 01’ 17” S, 146° 35’ 36” E).
• Got my new Mac mini (with superdrive, apple keyboard, mighty mouse and 1GB RAM), so I will be setting it up and installing some software on it during the weekend.
• I had to endure a long sales pitch over the phone just to cancel one of my credit cards. Are you sure? Would you cancel it if we throw in 2,000 reward points? etc. What a pain in the back!
• Quote of the week:

I am an old man and have a great many troubles, but most of them never happened—Mark Twain.

That’s all.

Last week I had my fourth trip to New Zealand in less than a year. Apart from almost being fined NZD200 for forgetting to declare a pair of boots in my luggage (I got away with a warning about the dangers of soil attached to boots) and missing my domestic connection the trip was OK. Air New Zealand is upgrading its planes in the Melbourne-Auckland route, and this time I flew in a Boeing 777-200 with an ‘on-demand’ entertainment system. It is nice to be able to pause the movie (any of the 40 ones available) if one wants to go to the loo.

And the perils of presentations

Every time one goes to meetings PowerPoint makes its appearance, and one gets endless bullet points, people reading slides (the teleprompter approach), chart junk and obvious recycling of old presentations. It really annoys me when someone is going over dozens of slides skipping the ones that are not useful for the current presentation.

I do enjoy presenting and most of the time spent quite a bit of time thinking and preparing:

• Who are the members of the audience and what do they know about the topic?
• What is my core message and the best way to deliver it?
• Then I write a little ‘script’—which is also the basis for the handout—and then I create some slides. By the way, when I say handout is not that ‘cute’ printout of your slides, but text actually written to support the presentation. This time was 9 slides for a half an hour presentation.
• I always remember something that I read in A Ph.D. is not enough by Peter Feibelman: ‘never overestimate your audience’ (page 28). I read that as always provide some context so even people that have little idea about the topic can get something of my presentation.
• I do not use a specific style for all slides (like, for example, the Takahashi Method of few large words, or the Kawasaki method, although I use few slides), but I combine them. I use as little text as possible, almost never in bullet point form, tend to use good quality pictures (taken by myself, from istockphoto or, if lucky, I get a freebie from stock.xchn). I do use simple diagrams and sometimes one or two slides with just one number or word.

A good resource for presentations—not necessarily PowerPoint— is Presentation Zen.

I was writing a Python prototype of DogSim, an inheritance (sense Mendel) mode simulator, happily coding and brushing up my Python coding. I usually listen to energetic music while coding, and this time was the Red Hot Chili Peppers turn. First was Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik, then ‘Californication’ and then ‘By the way’ (my least favourite album). But no, wait a minute: ‘By the way’ would not play at all in my laptop. Tried again, and the disk was not recognised. What was going on? Quick Google search and then discovered that the Australian released CD had ‘copy protection’ that would not allow it to be played in a computer.

I understand that artists may not like someone making a million copies of their CDs and selling them for a profit. But from there to denying a legal user the possibility to play a CD in a computer… that is way over the top. Over ninety percent of my listening is in my computer while working, the other ten percent is listening children’s music in the car. So, what happens when I am faced with that situation? Well, I just have to circumvent the protection, so I can make a copy of the CD that plays in my computer to listen to the bloody thing, so I can justify spending the money in an overpriced piece of plastic.

My web search found a reference to IsoBuster, a data recovery software that mounts the CD and ‘shows you all the tracks and sessions located on the media, combined with all file-systems that are present’. So it gets around the typical double table of contents problem that renders CDs unplayable in a computer. Then one can copy the music contents to the hard drive and then back to another CD. The funny thing is that I did not manage to mount ‘By the way’ in my crammy Matshita UJ-820S CD drive—so I need to try in my desktop computer—but I managed to get a copy of the enhanced version of Portishead’s Live: Roseland NYC. The latter has given me grief for many years, always trying to use its special player to play in the computer, not letting me do any other thing.

What is the point of the whole exercise? Commercial piracy will not be deterred by some lame form of protection, but end users will be really annoyed. May be music companies should read Cory Doctorow’s presentation on digital rights management.

P.S. By the way, a lot of this copy protection issues are completely side stepped in my mac.

A few years ago I obtained my Australian citizenship and simultaneously—at least in theory—I lost my Chilean one. Last September the Chilean congress approved law No 20050 (PDF version in Spanish) reforming 54 aspects of the constitution including:

• Recovery of citizenship and accepting the principle of ‘ius sanguinis’ (acquisition of citizenship through descent—textually, by right of blood). This would give my son access to Chilean citizenship.
• Elimination of designated (non-elected) and lifetime senators.
• Reduction of the presidential period from six to four years.
• The president can now remove commanders in chief of the military and security forces, without requiring the consent of any external authorities.
• The National Security Council (Consejo de Seguridad Nacional) has its role greatly reduced, minimising its interference in public affairs.

Finally, after fifteen years of recovering democracy (year and a half after a famous plebiscite), there are substantial changes to the political system eliminating several of the vestiges (but not all) of a dictatorial system.

This is a bilingual post, sort of. Everything started when I was studying Forestry at the Universidad de Chile, where I asked for a student loan to pay for my studies. The conditions of the loan included two years without paying after finishing my studies, followed by ten years paying the loan. The debt was set in CPI Units—which include the value of inflation—and a one per cent interest rate on top of that. There is no problem up to there, but Have you tried to pay this loan from overseas? Frustrated by the eternal problems, I decided to write a letter to the university Vice-Chancellor. In spite of my low expectations, the Office of the Vice- Chancellor contacted the Loans Office of the university and my debt was recalculated. We are not talking about millions of dollars, but I do expect good service even for a small loan. Below is a copy of the my letter to the Vice-Chancellor (in Spanish). Some times it pays to be a bit insistent.

Mientras estudiaba Ingeniería Forestal en la Universidad de Chile, solicité crédito universitario para poder financiar mis estudios. Las condiciones del crédito incluían dos años de gracia al terminar los estudios (sin necesidad de pagar), seguidos por diez años para pagar la deuda. La deuda estaba especificada en UTM—que son unidades que incluyen el valor de inflación—con un interés de uno por ciento anual. Hasta ahí no hay problemas, pero ¿has tratado de pagar este crédito desde el extranjero? Frustrado por los eternos problemas, decidí escribir una carta al rector de la universidad. A pesar de mi desconfianza, la oficina del rector contactó a la oficina de crédito y mi deuda fué recalculada. No estamos hablando de millones de dólares, pero incluso por una deuda pequeña espero un servicio razonable. A continuación va la carta que envié al rector:

Estimado Rector,

Soy un exalumno de Ingeniería Forestal de la Universidad de Chile. Estoy orgulloso de mi educación universitaria, que me otorgó buenas herramientas para después completar mi doctorado en el extranjero. También estoy orgulloso de ser miembro de la tercera generación de mi familia que ha pasado por esta Universidad.

Debido a dificultades económicas en el tiempo en que fuí estudiante, pude pagar mis aranceles solamente porque tuve acceso a crédito universitario. Siento que es mi obligación pagar este crédito para que otros estudiantes se puedan beneficiar de estudios en la Universidad de Chile. ¿Cuál es el problema entonces? se preguntará usted. El problema es que la Universidad hace extremadamente difícil efectuar declaraciones de ingresos desde el extranjero.

Estoy cansado de cada año tener que ir sobre las mismas discusiones, recibir las mismas amenazas, tener que explicar las mismas cosas a empleados de la Universidad de Chile. Estoy cansado de gente incompetente que no puede entender que vivo en el extranjero, de formularios que ni siquiera permiten escribir mi dirección o número telefónico o país. Estoy molesto de recibir cartas con plazos ya vencidos, urgiendome a visitar oficinas a más de 10.000 km de distancia, de amenazas de retenciones de mis pagos de impuestos en Chile. ¿Cómo es que nadie en la oficina de crédito se da cuenta de que no puedo ir a Diagonal Paraguay, o que yo no pago impuestos en Chile, o que mi declaración es en dólares Australianos y no Norteamericanos?

Como eterno optimista cada año espero que la situación sea diferente. Cada año sufro la misma decepción y el 23 de Septiembre de 2005 nuevamente recibí una carta con los mismos problemas detallados en el párrafo anterior (ver documento adjunto). Adicionalmente, empleados de su Oficina de Crédito Universitario me informan por email que desean que mi declaración jurada de ingresos esté certificada por el consulado chileno en Australia. No hay consulado chileno en Tasmania, los consulados chilenos en Australia no aceptan trámites por correo, no tengo documentos de identidad chileno (me nacionalicé Australiano hace años) y no voy a viajar en avión solamente para conseguir una firma. Mi declaración jurada ya fue firmada por un ‘Justice of the Peace’, situación completamente normal en Australia. ¿Qué más quieren?

Representantes de la Universidad de Chile muchas veces se quejan de que los exalumnos evitan pagar su deuda de crédito universitario. Si gente como yo, que quiere pagar su deuda, enfrenta innumerables problemas para efectuar un pago, ¿Cómo espera la Universidad que gente que no quiere pagar lo haga?

Agradeceré que representantes de la Universidad de Chile tengan en consideración las circunstancias que acabo de explicar. Espero que esos mismos representantes puedan modificar el procedimiento para hacer declaraciones de ingresos desde el extranjero y que me permitan pagar una deuda que deseo pagar.

Se despide cordialmente de usted,

Dr Luis Alejandro Apiolaza
Ingeniero Forestal (U. Chile), PhD (Massey, New Zealand)

After our 1998 expedition to India, we gained a bit more appreciation of Indian food. Hobart has four or five Indian restaurants, with Annapurna being probably the best one. Anyway, we have not had Indian food for a while and we decided to order this time from that Tandoor and Curry House (101 Harrington Street, Hobart). The food used to be very good and this time we ordered simple and mild dishes: Lamb Korma and Palaak Paneer. However, it seems that they have changed chef or something like that; the food was pretty ordinary, the Palaak Paneer quite spicy and we both got heartburn. Not recommended anymore.

And the movies

Last weekend was—as any weekend—horrible on terms of TV programs, so after putting Orlando in bed we just started watching our copy of the twentieth anniversary edition of E.T. the extraterrestrial Twenty three year later the movie is still magical for me and, embarrasingly, I still get emotional when E.T. say goodbye.

On Sunday I decided to watch The girl in the café, which was broadcasted by ABC. The previews of the movie promised something a bit different and funny: it starts with a socially disfunctional public servant (Bill Nighy—for some obscure reason I have a weak spot for him) meeting a mysterious low-key girl (Kelly Macdonald) in a café, with the background of G8 summit negotiations. Unfortunately, as time passes the movie becomes a propaganda medium and very incredible. The movie promised much more than it delivered.

This reminded me of some (relatively recent) movies that I had really enjoyed, in no particular order:

• American splendor: a mix of fiction and reality portraiting the life of comic book author Harvey Pekar. Paul Giamatti does a superb job as Harvey. Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.
• Sideways (link to IMDB): another movie with Paul Giamatti, this time working with Thomas Haden Church. A drama with comedy overtones, or a comedy with drama touches. Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link
• Being John Malkovich: interesting, funny, weird. A real treat. Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.
• Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind: I find Jim Carrey really boring as a comedian, but I think he does a great job as a ‘serious’ actor. A very intense movie about the value of our memories and of each part of our lives, even the most painful ones. Would you erase parts of your life because they were too painful to remember? Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.
• The Royal Tenenbaums: A very funny and carefully made movie. The cast is great and really matches the characters. Incidentally, the use of Futura font across the movie is excellent. Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.

I should probably prepare a list of older movies that I still like (coming one day, maybe soon).

Working with Tim and quote

We have almost finished adding content to Tim’s web site, including a PDF version of his book. We have implemented the whole site using Textpattern. Yes, this is a shameless plug to get Tim’s site indexed by search engines.

Finally, the quote of the week:

Rehab is for quitters—Unknown.

Today I informed my employer that I am leaving at the end of the year. After some thinking I have decided to take an exciting and challenging offer from a group of very good people.

A week without much happening on this site, but plenty of things happening on the background. Thus, no posts but plenty of emails and me quite busy and dealing with ‘should I go for the next big thing or not?’. Decisions, negotiations, decisions…

Some interesting things that I have seen:

• Dick Hardt’s presentation on Identity 2.0 nicely done, good overview and very entertaining.
• I have installed the Web Developer extension for Firefox. It is a very nice tool for debugging CSS styles for web pages, and I do need to clean up the styles of Plus Tree, Quantum Forest and the Wiki part of this site. Have a look at The Tao of Mac for a good list of Firefox extensions.
• I have posted a few new words to the Alpha Agora, including hypergraphia, slapstick and bahuvrihi.
• Quote of the week (follow the link for a .wav file with that part of the movie):

Ah-Ah, I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya punk?—Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

This weekend is family time and helping some friends with a bunch of cows: it does not get more removed from the web than that.

I was reading Things that baffle me posted by Gail Armstrong, mostly nodding in agreement, but sometimes completely disagreeing. So, I came up with my own list of baffling things.

Furry toilet seat covers, instant coffee, instant juice—in fact almost anything ‘instant’, Chihuahua dogs, drug addictions, people using ‘affect’ instead of ‘effect’ (or vice versa), email spam, $1,000 shoes, car stereos more expensive than my car, bad wine, rich kid environmentalism, totalitarian ideologies, beer + ice, people who misspell my name (L-U-I-S, easy), mimes, one-ply toilet paper, fat women in hipsters, rap, hip-hop and related music.

Things that baffle her but do not baffle me: trigonometry, black & white photos in art books, and socks + sandals (that I love).