Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be your mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

Of course, I couldn’t say whether I was actually there in a different dream or just "in the dream I had been there before." I do remember a similar highway, but much bigger and complex, from (possibly) another dream a long time ago…

I was happy and excited to see the Uni, which in this version of Bielefeld was near the train station—an arrangement vagely familiar, perhaps from another dream about Bielefeld. I came in and met some of the people I had been with during that year. We were talking and things would be happening around us. I asked about people, they told me about people…

And then I woke up, and the dream with its vivid colors waned leaving just reality—and I felt very sad at first that I was in Madrid and not in Bielefeld, wishing I had never left…

As I write this the dream is fading away as every dream does as soon as I come back to awakeness. I’m not sad or mad that I’m not in Bielefeld, but the truth is, I haven’t been there since the Erasmus came to an end…

So a few months ago I set up a plan that would allow me to pursue my Ph. D. to end while at the same time exploring the computer side (hopefully) enough to make a decision by the time it should be taken: I would apply for admission to the Master’s Degree program in Computer Science at the UCM, and take a few courses at the same time that I write my thesis. By the end of my contract (April 2009) I would be able to decide whether to jump to a post-doc in physics or to finish studying CS. The financial side of the second option would be taken care of by the interest-free loans the Spanish Government offers for these MD studies.

And then two weeks ago I found out about the (remote) posibility of a one year position available in Paris, which would probably begin right after my contract ends and would allow me to defend my thesis a bit later. Now, if I, as planned, begin the CS studies this year, I might have some trouble even finishing properly the very few courses I would enroll in this year. On the other hand, it would mean another year of guaranteed income. But it would also mean having to put off the “Computer Question” for another year.

Now, stepping out of the academia sounds like a quite permanent step, but lately I’ve been wondering whether to take a deep breath and jump into the void, or whether to stick to more solid–but maybe not so exciting–ground. There are many things I’d enjoy doing for a science career, but right now I’d be stuck to pretty much what I’m doing right now for a while, which doesn’t thrill me that much anymore. But again, there are no guarantees that it will be better on the other side.

There will be answers, eventually…

You are The Hierophant

Divine Wisdom. Manifestation. Explanation. Teaching.

All things relating to education, patience, help from superiors.The Hierophant is often considered to be a Guardian Angel.

The Hierophant’s purpose is to bring the spiritual down to Earth. Where the High Priestess between her two pillars deals with realms beyond this Earth, the Hierophant (or High Priest) deals with worldly problems. He is well suited to do this because he strives to create harmony and peace in the midst of a crisis. The Hierophant’s only problem is that he can be stubborn and hidebound. At his best, he is wise and soothing, at his worst, he is an unbending traditionalist.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Hola X.!

¿Cómo va la vida por aquellas tierras? ¿Te defiendes de los ataques de cuerdas, fibrados, y otros seres temibles? ¿Has trabado ya amistad con los campos gauge? En estas tierras estamos bien. Nos llevamos bien con nuestros polos del plano complejo, los cuidamos, los regamos, y en las noches sin luna les contamos historias de tiempos futuros. Ellos, a cambio, nos dan chocolate y resonancias, y a veces una cerveza.

Espero noticias tuyas, y verte cuando vuelva la luna.

Saludos,

R.

Herman Hesse, Das Lied des Lebens.

Hay cosas que no he superado, y nunca reaccionaré de forma coherente mientras me vea obligado a confrontarlas. Cosas que he decidido no confrontar. No quiero. Es más facil así, ahora que los tiempos grises acechan cada vez más cerca. Quiero pensar que es el invierno, que si logro aguantar un par de meses todo volverá a la normalidad. Es el invierno. Sólo un par de meses más…

Algo me dice que escribir esto es una mala idea.

Mañana dejará de existir este post. Quizá también este blog.
Yo seguiré existiendo, de forma automática, como desde hace tanto tiempo. En mi vida no sucede nada.

• Mac mini (ok, that’s prebuilt) 32bit G4 1.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, ATI Mobility 32 MB, 80 GB IDE HDD, no DVD-RW, prebuilt case.
• Pegasus II, 32bit G4 1.0 GHz, 512 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9250 256 MB, 80 GB SATA HDD, DVD-RW, micro-ATX case.
• AMD Athlon64 3000+, 64bit 1.8 Ghz 1024 RAM, ATI Radeon X300 256 MB (PCI-X), 160 GB SATA HDD, dual DVD/DVD-RW, premium PSU, beautiful case :))

Since one of the things I was eager to do was to finally test a different architecture (I’ve always compiled my kernels as x86 :)), any of the options gave me this thrill, and as I was already a bit tired of endless compilation times in my previous systems, I decided to go for the best performance :)

I finally bought the following:

• ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard
• AMD Athlon64 3000+ Socket 939 (1.80 GHz)
• Maxima OKE Silent 450 W PSU
• Artic Cooling 64 Freezer CPU cooling tower
• Two Kingston 512 MB DDR 400 modules in Dual Channel configuration
• ATI Radeon X300 GPU with 256 MB RAM (PCI-Express x16)
• Seagate 160 GB 7200 rpm SATA HDD
• LG DVD-RW + LG DVD
• M@trix miditower case, black.

Building time was about half day, carefully reading the manuals and testing as many steps as possible. Building a basic Gentoo-amd64 system took about another day, and yet another day was lost to trying to install Solaris 10 (yet without success) and building the GUI and some applications for it. Today is Day 4, and it’s been spent browsing the web in a perfectly running KDE 3.4 and building (yet) some more apps in the background.

Considerations so far:

• KDE builds now in a finite amount of time :) builds are much faster than with previous Pentium 4 2.40 GHz laptop box.
• The CPU hasn’t gone over 40 C yet, the fans are quite silent, except for the chipset fan, which came pre-assembled on the MB and is by far the noisiest part of the box. Still, it’s not too bad.
• Driver support appears to be quite good. No problem with the ATI card, as amd64 is supported by them. Some trouble, however, with the Cool ‘n Quiet technology, which I haven’t got working yet.
• Flash Media Player is not yet available for linux-amd64, so I’ll have to wait on that one.

Overall, it seems to be an excellent system, although a couple of things still lack proper support. Moreover, I could still do a lot more with this setup, as it comes with Dual Gigabyte Ethernet, on-board RAID controller for up to 4 SATA HDDs, PCI-X available slots, support for double core processors, etc. making it a good candidate for a file- or web-server.

(Pictures coming soon..)

Naturalmente, entre semana, cualquiera puede entrar por cualquier puerta, llevarse ordenadores, y salir sin levantar las más mínimas sospechas. Son las peculiaridades de las medidas de seguridad electrónicas.