Category — random

Because shoes should only be used when absolutely necessary.

hair is grey
and the fires are burning
so many dreams on the shelf

Skrymta is once again asking me difficult questions. This time his question is: what picture represents the nordic for you? He chickened out himself and ended up describing his mental picture of the nordic in words, so let’s see if I can manage to rise up to the challenge…

For me the Nordic is something cool, quiet, full of light, something made up of clean lines and primary colors, something extremely civilized and mostly decorated in light wood. As the song goes, Du gamla, Du fria, Du fjällhöga nord, Du tysta, Du glädjerika sköna!

And then there is the proverbial dark-red wooden house with white finishings. There is always a flagpole with a national flag nearby.

(Photo: House by *Kitto)

I was looking through my music, searching out those magic tracks that for some reason I didn’t liste to for a while, and I came across this little-known gem that I thought might appeal to some. These guys deserve some wider distribution, anyway.

The band’s name is Смысловые галлюцинации (Smislovie Galiutsinatsii), which translates to something like “hallucinations of meaning”. This track is Вечно молодой (Vechno Molodoi — Forever young), from their album “Album 3000″.

Three of their albums are freely available for download as MP3 on their official site (in Russian). The severely cyrillic-impaired can download directly Vechno Molodoi here (mp3, 2.3 MB). Those more adventurous (or those — gasp — able to read cyrillic) are welcome to explore their lists of audio downloads and video downloads themselves.

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.
– Washington Irving

Skrymta challenges me to write a wishlist. With nothing less than 7 wishes.

Reading his nicely written list I feel inadequate (in short: patience, friends, sleep, debate, a new kitchen, tech that Just Works (TM) and a cool haircut). Sigh. Though I do have a cool haircut. But still.

Ok, so here goes. In no particular order.

• Invest more in my hobbies. And I don’t mean more money, no. I mean more time (and effort?). This means take more photos, read more, possibly blog more. (And maybe code more. Or maybe code less. Dunno.) And strive to do these things better, which hopefully will lead to more satisfaction (and fame and money, of course).
• More time. If only there were more hours in the day to invest in the above stuff. For example, it would be useful to not need sleep. Alternatively, a guaranteed lifespan of at least 3000 years might work (yes, my to-read pile is that big).
• Own my own company. Probably something related to the internet. Maybe a nice cafe with free wifi. Or both.
• An Eames lounge chair.
• Learn German. For all the obvious reasons. See above on having more time.
• Speak and write better English. See above on blogging more. Not forgetting my Spanish would be nice, too.
• Remember to recharge my cell phone. Given that this is the only phone I have, it would be really useful if it actually was on most of the time.

And now, the dreaded nomination moment. Because no blog meme is complete if you don’t inflict it on your favorite bloggers, I’d like to read wish lists from: RinzeWind, Su, Helga (see above on learning German) and dalr. Thanks in advance.

A list by Warren Ellis would be a wish come true, but I don’t think he is reading this. Oh well.

Following the success of the talks we gave last year, a bunch of Spanish Googlers (including myself) will be giving a new round of Tech Talks on Google technologies and culture, followed by Q&A sessions. These are the dates, times and locations:

Monday, November 12th, 12:30
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Salón de Actos
Planta Baja del Bloque I
Facultad de Informática
Campus de Montegancedo
28660, Boadilla del Monte
Madrid
(map)

Tuesday, November 13th, 12:00
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Salón de Actos
Facultad de Informática
Santesmases s/n
28040 Madrid
(map)

Wednesday, November 14th, 12:30
Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña
Aula Master, Edifici A3
Campus Nord
08034 Barcelona
(map)

Thursday, November 15th, 12:30
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Escuela Técnica Superior de Informática Aplicada
Camino de Vera s/n
46022 Valencia
(map)

Drop by and say hi!

Update: You can submit your CV online here. If you want to be considered for the interview round that will take place in Madrid in early December, please submit your resume before November 26th.

Via Boing Boing I find a post on the thoof.com blog where they discuss some interesting stats on their users’ behavior.

Particularly amusing bits:

It seems that Windows users are 20% more interested in stories about religion than Mac users.
[...]
Mac users are 6% more interested in intellectual property law, and 5% more interested in fitness.

According to beenda.com, anyway. Not that bad, I suppose.

Not sure why Hagia Sofia is appearing as a star in the middle of the US, though.

Now let the flamewars on “what is a top destination, really?” begin!

Things like this make me happy in the mornings. And proud of working for such a company. Yay!

I just paid 1.45 Swiss Francs for this one beauty of a tomato. That is 88 Euro cents, or $1.20.

And yes, I mean just this *one* tomato. And no, I wasn’t at a delicatessen store, it was just your run-of-the-mill supermarket. I am scared of eating it now.

Maybe it deserves some special recipe. Any suggestions?

Following, for example, these recommendations from a Squidoo lens.

Must explore Squidoo, too. Looks interesting.

The call for papers for the upcoming Conference on Automated Testing that Google is organizing for September 7th and 8th has been issued! Deadline is June 1st.

More details in this Official Google Blog entry and in this Google Research Blog entry.

I am looking forward to this conference. Test automation for the people!

It looks like people are looking for more information about the talks that we gave last week at several Spanish universities, so here are some related links.

Links to the papers we mentioned:

• The Google File System
• MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters
• Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall

More interesting papers are available on Google Labs Research Publications page.

Blog posts about the event:

• Atalaya: Sauna Google, Sawzall: El lenguaje nativo de Google.
• How To Cook for Forty Humans: Conferencia de Google De Alta Potencia.
• A perfect world: En directo, ¿como funciona Google?.
• Diario hacker: Google en la ETSII de Granada.
• Vaguedades: Cuando el río suena… (Charla de Google).
• Dirson: Charla de Google en la Universidad de Granada (España).
• Espi BlogL Google Day en la ETSIIT.
• Menudo problema: Conferencia de Google, un éxito.
• JoseJimenez.net: Google en la ETSII de Granada, Google en la ETSII de Granada (II).
• E-interiores: Google más cerca de Granada, Más sobre la charla de Google en Granada.

And there is also a bunch of pictures on Flickr from several users:

• jespm
• lordferguson
• azulgadia
• impulsenet
• @alberto

Please drop me a note if I missed something (I probably did).

Thanks to everyone who came to the talks or posted about them!

Just a quick note to let you know that next week I will be in Madrid and Granada. I will be there together with a couple of other Spanish Google engineers from various offices. We will be talking at several universities about how does Google work, and we will also looking for opportunities to meet interesting people that might be interested in working or getting an internship with Google. We of course welcome resume submissions; if we come across any interesting candidates, we will try to interview them at the end of next week. So if you are interested, just e-mail me your CV (update: in English, pretty please) to anau@google.com.

Here is the abstract of the talks, in Spanish:
“El mayor motor de búsqueda del mundo organiza una inmensa cantidad de információn con una rapidez y eficacia sin precedentes. No hay mejor manera de encontrar páginas web, videos, imágenes, o cualquier otra información públicamente disposible en Internet. Google también tepermite organizar tu propia información personal mucho más fácilmente, con herramientas como Gmail o Google Desktop. Todo esto es posible gracias a las tecnologías informáticas desarrolladas por los ingenieros de Google. En esta presentación describimos como estas tecnologías permiten procesar cantidades masivas de datos y como pueden cambiar de manera fundamental el tratamiento de muchos problemas en informática.

Nuestro secreto es un entorno de trabajo excepcional, donde la creatividad y la innovación se valoran por encima de todo. Esto nos permite enfrentarnos constantemente a nuevos retos, para los que siempre buscamos gente que comparta nuestra forma de ver internet y la informática.

Nuestra visita concluye con una mesa redonda donde estaremos encantados de contestar a tus preguntas sobre cómo trabajamos en Google.”

Dates and places of the talks:
Lunes 24 de abril, 12:00
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Salón de actos de la Escuela Politécnica Superior
Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco
c/ Francisco Tomás y Valiente, 11
Madrid

Martes 25 de abril, 13:00
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Salon de Grados de la Escuela Politécnica Superior
Edificio Padre Soler
Campus de Leganés
Madrid

Miércoles 26 de abril, 12:00
Universidad de Granada
Salón de Actos de la ETSIIT
c/ Periodista Daniel Saucedo Aranda s/n
Granada

Attendance is of course free, so just drop by and say hi!

And if you have any questions or comments, leave them here or e-mail me at anau@google.com.

I just made the mistake of entering “paco bello” in the Amazon.co.uk search box. The results say:

We found no matches for “paco bello” . Below are results for “pack bell” . If you prefer, you may try another search.

And neither “nauta” nor “doctor grillo” yielded any results on Amazon. And no results on iTunes music store, either.

This confused me so much, that I went and bought Take That - Greatest Hits. Someone please get me a new brain for my birthday. Pretty please?

Rashmi supposes that if I would participate in something like the Five Weird Habits meme, I would of course not refuse doing the Four Things meme. And, of course, she is right. It seems to be a common female trait, this being right about stuff. But I’m drifting.

Here go my four things, with some new categories thrown in for variety’s sake.

Four jobs I’ve had

• Teacher of Various Stuff
• Programmer
• Teaching Assistant
• Currently, Breaker of Software and Fighter of Sloppy Programming (especially mine)

Four books I recently enjoyed

• “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (Mark Haddon)
• “Accelerando” (Charles Stross)
• “The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures” (Frans Johansson)
• Currently enjoying “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” (Susanna Clarke)

Four places I’ve lived in

• Moscow (don’t remember much, though)
• Madrid
• Gothenburg
• Currently, Zürich

Four sites I visit (almost) daily

• Dragon Go Server
• BBC News
• Bloglines
• Google

Four places I would rather be right now

• In California
• In Madrid
• Skiing somewhere in the Alps
• Exploring Asia

Four pieces I of software I enjoy using daily

• Vim
• Quicksilver
• Firefox
• iTunes

Four albums I have enjoyed recently

• “Speak For Yourself” (Imogen Heap)
• “Beautiful Collision” (Bic Runga)
• “Century Child” (Nightwish)
• “Plans” (Death Cab for Cutie)

Four bloggers I’m tagging

• dalr, because he has previously inflicted a meme on me, and we need to get even.
• Helga, because she needs to make an English-language post from time to time.
• Jon, because it would be nice to see his less computer-geeky side.
• Gonzalo Cotorruelo, because he is been writing all these good content-laden posts lately, and it makes my brain ache.

I’m craving ketchup now. I’d better go to sleep.

Chema has inflicted on me the ‘desktop meme’, whereby I am urged to bare my private computer space to the eyes of the world.

I am a brave girl, so here it goes. Click on the picture to see a bigger, and annotated, version.

Oops, I almost forgot to nominate the next five victims. Here are their names and URL’s:

• Helga
• N?ɬ?niel
• Gonzalo Cotorruelo
• Fer Mart?ɬ?n
• Enrique Dans (por pedir que no quede…)

Last evening finally took place the blogs & beers meeting anounced by Chema (a. k. a. Rinzewind) here. It was lots of fun.

Folks that came:

• Marta, who writes the Tagebuch von Marta.
• Susana, also known as Kobayashi Maru (among other names).
• Chema, who issued the original call.
• Eleder, author of Malinorne.
• Luiyo of Luiyolog?ɬ?a.
• Dani, of In the mood for…
• Miguel, Sanblaster at LiveJournal.

You can see some pictures in my Blogs & beers Madrid set. Susana also took some pics, hopefully they will be online soon.

UPDATE: Su has a detailed description of the evening [es], together with some more pictures.

Just a picture I took some time ago in London.

Reminds me of Agent Provocateur when I see it.

While I work on some other stuff I have in my queue, I want to drop a quick note here relative to yesterday’s bombings in London.

It is terrible, yes. The roots of terrorism must be adresssed, yes. We must be as prepared as possible for these situations, yes. All our hearts are with Londoners today, yes, as they were with New Yorkers four years ago, as they were with madrile?ɬ�os a year ago. As they should be with irakis every other week. As they are and should be with many others daily.

But instead of discussing ad nauseam why did this happen and could it have been prevented, and fretting, and despairing, and getting ourselves more and more worked up, I suggest that those of us who can do nothing to help the ones that now most need it now (i.e. the victims) just go on with our ordinary lives.

Perhaps growing up in Madrid, with my mom’s car getting checked daily for bombs while entering the parking lot at her workplace, has rendered me numb to the terror threat. I don’t know. What I do know, however, is how I approach the ‘terrorist threat’. I approach it as the inhabitants of, say, Florida, approach tornados: sometimes nature freaks out and we can’t do anything to prevent it, and there is very little we can do to protect ourselves from its consequences. We just have to learn to cope with it. Regroup, and continue moving forward.

(The gorgeous picture of Canary Wharf that accompanies this note belongs to Kit Hartford.)

I’m Lisa, who are you? by NoHomers.net

Surprising?

My Flickr schwag arrived today. It consists of three Flickr badges and two stickers.

Now I just have to figure out a cool way to show them off! Yay!

Chema (aka RinzeWind) has issued a calling for a Blogs & Beers in Madrid, on Friday 15th of July. We will meet at the Km. 0 at 21:30. I plan on going.

If you are going to be in Madrid on Friday 15th, please do join! Don’t forget to leave a note at Chema’s official announcement, so that we know to wait for you.

So far, these people are coming:

• Kobayashi Maru
• Ana Ulin (that would be me)
• Luiyo
• N?ɬ?niel
• Gatafunho
• Chema

More information, and commentary thread, at Las penas del Agente Smith - Blogs & Beers en Madrid.

Gorgeous T-shirt. On white background, ‘Baby Doll T’ cut (uhg, I hate that name…) and the smallest size, please.

Inspriringly, Don Blohowiak writes:

What is the leadership lesson? Simply this. People have an irrepressible need to apply themselves. To give expression to their innate capabilities. To use their minds and talents no matter their circumstances.

More at Leadership. Now. - Innate motivation.