Che Guevara
I've just seen Diarios de motocicleta, a nice movie about the youth of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. It shows an interesting view of how his ideas came about.
Anyway, it whetted my interest in "Che" and I started searching the net for additional info. And it took a while until I've figured that Wikipedia is the place to look in these situations. After reading up a bit, I've gotten to the conclusion that, while "Che" was a great idealist (he wanted to stop the injustice done against the poor people around the world, and especially in Latin America), he ended up doing wrong things. For instance, he executed hundreds of political opponents, which really isn't a thing a real hero would do.
So I remembered that I've been meaning to find out more about people like Mahatma Ghandi, Dalai Lama and, why not Bob Marley (They were all great missionaries of peace). And so, I've found many interesting things, such as the process of finding the next Dalai Lama, how to make dreadlocks and what are the rastafarians all about.
If you haven't seen wikipedia yet, now's the time. Heck, I'm even including it in my links page right now.
posted Monday, December 20th 2004 at 17:46 | permalink
Big Black Buildings
Yesterday I've had to go to Bucharest, the capital of our "beloved" country. It's the largest city in Romania, by far, having more than 2 million people[1]. It was quite interesting.
Being from Brasov, which is a pretty quiet mountain town, even Cluj-Napoca is pretty tiresome sometimes. But Bucharest was an order of magnitude more chaotic. Everyone was in a rush, for no apparent reason. There were so many cars that traffic jams became the rule, rather than the exception. I really doubt that the people using their own car got around faster than those using public transportation.
I went into a bar there, and I was shocked to see how small it was, and how many people were stuffed in it. It was interesting that the people there didn't seem to mind this. They appeared to accept that on a 1.5m x 1.5m the barkeeper put 4 chairs and a table. And in the neighbouring square, another 4-chairs and a table... I guess you get used to that.
Another feature that shocked me was the buildings: they were huge. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hill-billie who's never seen a tall building before, but Bucharest really gave me the felling that you couldn't see the sky anymore. (And the buildings aren't really that tall. They're just really, really crammed together).
The buildings there are a living reminder about the city's past. You have, on one hand the old, massive palaces with statues and stuff, churches, etc. On the other hand, there are the buildings built in the communist era, which all look the same (are mostly gray or black) and have no soul. You can see that Ceausescu hated the Church, because he stuffed those big black buildings around every church, to diminish it.
The whole city looks like an eclectic mix of eras. Bucharest also has the greatest concentration of sex shops I've ever seen (on the Magheru boulevard there was one at every 50m, practically -- were they compensating for some past frustrations? ;) ).
Also, that city seems to change people. They were more aggressive, less friendly than those in smaller cities. For instance: I asked one man for directions, and he didn't even stop walking.
[1] Compare this with the other large cities which have around 300.000 people.
posted Thursday, December 16th 2004 at 18:28 | permalink
About popups...
No, this is not about those pests firefox got us rid of. It's about links that insist on opening a new window for me.
I've just noticed this, while browsing Tudor's page. I got to the "Links" section, an saw that he'd included a link back to my page. "How nice!" me says. In a sudden urge of vanity, I click it. And there it is, in all it's... err... beauty: MY PAGE!
Alright, it's not very entertaining to me, having written it myself, so, I have the reflex of clicking "back", but, alas!, it's grayed out. Why?!?
And then it hit me. Tudor's page had opened the link to my page in a new window! After closing the window with my page on it, I had Tudor's page back in front of me, but my attitude towards it had changed. As Eric Raymond would say: "Stay in your own window, dammit!"
It's stupid to open a new window, even for off-site links. How do you (the web "designer") know I want to open a new window for that link? Maybe I want to open a new tab. Or even worse, maybe I want to get off your f***ing site (no offense, Tudor ;) ) with this click. Trying to hang on to me isn't going to make me come back later. In any case, it's my decision what to do with your link.
Boy, I wish all those spotty teenagers calling themselves "webmasters" [1] would read the HTML hell page and get a clue.
[1] Again, Tudor, no offense this is nothing personal. It's just that your page reminded me who passes for a "web developer" these days. [ Hint: No, Macromedia Dreamweaver, is not going to make you a web guru. Better try with these guys, or even with these other guys. ]
posted Saturday, December 11th 2004 at 13:29 | permalink
