Spam

Since some time I recieve quite often spam originating from portuguese adresses, most of them have some legal garbage in them that it would be allowed to spam according to european law. Well, it ain't. Actually, there's a portuguese law (Decreto-Lei n.º 7/2004, Art. 22.1) against it, which implements a european directive. So I tried to find where to complain, but unfortunately the website of the portuguese telecom legislative organ is an unbearable burocratic moloch. What I did find was the address of the OECD Task Force on Spam, so I sent a mail to them.

Today I received a mail from them, stating that they received my communication and are analysing it. It was a simple question: "To whom should I complain?"... If they need a Task Force to analyse this, I fear it will take some time till spam stops. Anyway, let's hope they can do something.

I also complained to the sender of the spam, which is a real estate agency franchising from cascais, which I hope won't do any buisiness anymore soon. I asked them to remove my mail from their databases and send me an acknowledgment that they did so. Up to now they didn't...

Maybe this is a little bean-counterish, but if I can find out the sender of spam, I complain and send them a link to the law which forbids spamming. It won't help, but it makes me feel a bit better.

Dear youth of today,

please memorise the lyrics of bella ciao. I hate it when I am the only one singing revolutionary songs out of tune aloud at Bucovina Club.


Una mattina mi sono alzato,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Una mattina mi sono alzato,
E ho trovato l'invasor.

O partigiano portami via,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
O partigiano portami via,
Qui mi sento di morir.

E so io muoio da partigiano,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E so io muoio da partigiano,
Tu mi devi seppellir.

E seppellire sulla montagna
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E seppellire sulla montagna
Sott l'ombra di un bel fior.

E le genti che passeranno
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E le genti che passeranno
Mi diranno «che bel fior».

E questo è il fiore del partigiano
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E questo è il fiore del partigiano
Morto per la liberta.


This is the german translation:

Eines Morgens, in aller Frühe,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
eines Morgens, in aller Frühe
trafen wir auf unser’n Feind.

Partisanen, kommt, nehmt mich mit euch,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Partisanen, kommt, nehmt mich mit euch,
denn ich fühl’, der Tod ist nah.

Wenn ich sterbe, oh ihr Genossen,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
wenn ich sterbe, oh ihr Genossen,
bringt mich dann zur letzten Ruh’!

In den Schatten der kleinen Blume,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
einer kleinen, ganz zarten Blume,
in die Berge bringt mich dann!

Und die Leute, die geh’n vorüber,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
und die Leute, die geh’n vorüber,
seh’n die kleine Blume steh’n.

Diese Blume, so sagen alle,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
ist die Blume des Partisanen,
der für uns’re Freiheit starb.


And next week: the lyrics of הבה נגילה (Hava Nagila)

Script Foo

In case you want to convert a bunch of eps-files to pdf-files (e.g. root generated plots, as the pdf output of root sucks and the eps sometimes produce strange encoding-effects when converted directly...):


#!/bin/bash
for epsfile in $*;
do
echo "Converting $epsfile ...";
eps2eps $epsfile ${epsfile%.eps}_temp.eps;
epstopdf ${epsfile%.eps}_temp.eps -o=${epsfile%.eps}.pdf;
rm ${epsfile%.eps}_temp.eps;
done


Getting Serious

I think it is a sign of old age when you start cleaning out all those mp3s you never listened too when sober, those party-tracks for which you need at least half a bottle of vodka to like them or find them remotely funny...

Anyway, I got to the letter H tagging and cleaning my mp3 collection. Though it's only legal mp3s it's much too much to listen too.

Die ächte Verachtung haßt nicht,
sie ist reine Ueberzeugung
vom Unwert des Anderen

--- Arthur Schopenhauer

Just to correct the citation I made when standing in front of one of the local discotheques.

Book Fair

Reading
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Today I went to the Leipzig Book Fair. It took about 5 hours by trains (local trains, as I went with the "Schönes Wochenende" ticket) to get there, which was a torture. But it was worth it, very nice fair. More when I got some sleep...

Shaun the sheep

Nick Park is just brilliant...

Flohmarkt

As I had to get up early anyway on sunday, I decided to get up really early and go to the flea market. Most of the stuff they had there was 80ies crap, but I found some nice books, including this handbook for drivers and car-owners from 1914. It explains everything you needed to know to get a drivers licence in 1914, which includes knowing how your car actually works and how to repair it.

I also got an engineers handbook from 1896, which belonged to a railway engineer. It still has a paper in it with a mark from the Königlich Bayrische Staatsbahn, the royal railway of bavaria. Maybe some scans will follow...

Pagecount

As I am getting more and more frustrated and might answer questions on how my thesis is going on in a style which might annoy people you can now find a page counter in the sidebar. It is updated daily, everything more I would tell you would be on the lines "don't ask..."

In case you want to know how I did the counter:
convert -background white -fill black -font Helvetica -pointsize 24 -size 50x label:`pdfinfo $THESIS | grep Pages | awk '{print $2}'` $PNGFILE


Vienna

Cafe Central
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Back from Vienna. A week of conference, on detectors and how to build them. Lots of physicists around, some nice, some annoying; amazingly enough there were some good looking female physicists, two from Brazil, one from Poland, one from somewhere else.

I managed to see something of Vienna as well, I think I have got an overdose of culture on friday after visiting two mueums and the theater...

Pictures will appear on flickr as usual.

Conference

I am off to a conference in Vienna. Luggage: about 3kg of laptop and stuff for the laptop, about 5kg photography equipment, 5kg in beer, 1kg in food and some t-shirts. Hurray for light travelling...

Defenitely looking forward to visit the Esperanto Museum in Vienna (just one floor beneath the globe museum).

Decimal Day (not to be confused with Domino Day)

On the 15th of February 1971 Great Britain switched from a currency system based on the traditional LSD system (yes, it's called that way - Librae, Solidus, Denarii) to a boring decimal system. The old one was much more logical...:

4 Farthings are a penny, 3 pence a thrupence, 2 thrupence a sixpence, 2 sixpense a bob, 2 bob a florin, 1 florin + a sixpence are half a crown. 4 of these half crowns are a ten-bob, 2 ten-bobs are 20 shilling or 240 pence or 1 pound. One pound and a shilling, or 252 pence, are a guinee.

And now: 1 pound are 100 pence. How boring. Anybody could remember that...

And before you ask: yes, I spend too much time surfing wikipedia.

The Wrath of God will come upon you!

Those sinners in Portugal who voted for unchristian and abnormal things shall fear the wrath of god! Todays earthquake shall be a SIGN!

Sometimes nature has a sense of timing which amazes me... Back in the middle ages (and maybe still today in the more rural areas of portugal) this would have made people burning a lot of witches.

Welcome in the less uncivilized world!

Yesterday about a quarter of the portuguese entitled to vote placed portugal on the map of countries being on the way from the middle ages to more civilized times. Though only 43% voted, 59% of those voted for the change of a law, which up to now lead to up to three years of prison for women having an abortion. The law resulted in those considering abortion going to spain (the rich) or doing clandestine abortions (the poor) with horrible conditions, leading to the death of thousands of women each year. A referendum in 1998 failed to change the law, as the supporters of change stayed at the beach and the voters against change were all sent to vote after church by priests who seem to have been stuck in a mindframe appropriate for the year 1100 (and even then considered conservative). (This is my polemic version, your truth may vary...)

Não esta a mim de votar, mas...

Burn!

Yes. Just burn those witches. And their family. And their village. They all are sinners and must go to hell. BURN! BURN!

(For those not reading portuguese: the link is about a bishop stating that not only the women considering abortion should be penalised, also their husbands and doctors.) Middle ages are still alive in Europe.

A disgrace to all craftsmen

Today I wanted to get the battery in my watch changed. It is a swatch, so nothing fancy. It eats standard batteries. So I went to a, well, not a clockmaker, not even a shop who sells watches, more like a shop who tries to sell watches but failing.

The sales drone there was the most incompetent sales drone I ever met. He stared at the swatch as he had never seen one before and then said they don't have that type of battery (which might be true) and he didn't want to change the battery because he didn't know how to do it. Well, changing the battery of a swatch is an artform which only the best craftsmen ever manage. You take a 10cent coin, put it in the slit of the battery compartment and then turn the battery holder about 10 degrees counterclockwise. Then it falls out, you change the battery, put it back and turn the thing in the other direction. That's hard to do. I know. But sometimes people master this craft...

Worse yet, in the house that shop is in Emmy Noether was born, one of the greates mathematicians. What a step down.

Then I went to another watch-shop, a very good looking and nice girl changed the battery in about a minute, chatted a bit with me, set the watch correct and was generally nice. Much better...

Invasion of the Brain eaters

Sometimes modern world just pisses me off. I tried to contact ebay that their e-mail server apperantly has a clock going wrong. All mails I get from them are in no way in a correct time-zone or time. (Well, maybe ebay has their servers sitting in a time bubble which is 5 hours into the future, but I think they only have this at google.)

I got an answer by one of the customer satisfaction bots, made of pre-fabricated sentences. It seems they have a very small pile of these sentences, as they were exactly the same as in a mail I got from them on a different problem. Instead of: "well, we have looked at the mail header, you are right/wrong", they sent me some customer satisfaction brabble, at least addressing me five times by name to get that personal touch. Is it only me or does nobody see that this is not taking me serious? Why do they have sales bots? Just put the emacs psychatrist there, that would at least be some 20 minutes of fun for everybody...

In the fear of not being friendly and unsatisfactory to their clients, they hide behind their shield of pre-fabricated sales-blubber. I very much prefer the way they treat me at local workshops. They grunt at you, they are not really friendly, but they take you serious and take care of your problems. They won't bullshit you with these false friendliness of shareholdervalueoriented companies.

Ah, and ebay wanted me to fill out a survey on how to improve their customer service. Luckily it's all multiple choice questions, where neither the question nor the answers fit to anything I would tell them. And when I tried to fill in the free-form text area, it just stopped working. Yehaa.

25.000 Views

Stylish in Barcelona
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Not on this photo. This photo had only something like 30. But my flickr-stream hit the 25.000 views mark yesterday :-)

Sometimes...

you just should go home. I tried to help cleaning up after this years winter party, being quite intoxicated (still being intoxicated while posting this, so sorry for the spelling).

While I tried to lower one of the speakers from its stand, I moved a cable, which resulted in a lamp tipping over, falling down, hitting the bar, catapulting one of the candles on the bar into the air, which spilled liquid wax all over a friend of mine. While this might look like a comedy, all his outer clothing was full of wax and most probably can only be used in hard weather conditions as a wax jacket again, he also got some of the wax in his face which is as far from funny as you can get. Thank got he did not have any major injuries (at least none were discoverd up to now)... Hope he is alright...

So: Lesson for today: when drunk - leave.