congratulations to Alonso!

Congratulations to Fernando Alonso, the youngest ever F1 champion! I am so happy for this guy, it is such a pleasure seeing him drive. Well done!

More info about my favorite F1 driver's performance this year at the official F1 web.

And remember: don't drink and drive.

funny bycicle riders

I was coming back home yesterday night in a taxi with some friends when we stopped at a traffic light. Then five, or maybe six, vey young guys (I actually thought they were junior college students) start crawling past us in bycicles followed by a police van. We started saying things like "my God, I've never seen anyone riding so slowly" and "my grandma would do better" and so on until the taxi driver smiles and says... "They are the Police". At which point we all stopped laughing and someone said something on the lines of "well, yes, the van, of course, but who are the cyclists?". And to our amusement, the driver, trying not to laugh says "Oh, they are policemen too, they are training". To which riotous laghter follow. Jeez, I've seen aunties do better than that. Those guys have a long way to go...

G'night all.

-fprefetch-loop-arrays

Another optimization option in gcc that improves the speed of my code. A reduction from 8 to 6 minutes of running time only due to this! Very impressive, especially considering that I didn't use any architecture-specific optimizations...

Ah... some days things just work...

Night night.

anime

Today my friend D. lend me Appleseed, an anime movie based on the comic by Masamune Shirow. Good argument, nice animation and great soundtrack. Veeery nice... If you liked Ghost in the Shell don't miss this one.

G'night all.

silly poster competition

Today I had to participate in a technical poster competition. Not that I wanted to enter, but if the boss "arrows" you for the job, as they say around here, there isn't much you can do. Anyway, I obviously didn't win (otherwise the title of the post would be more cheerful), but this is what pisses me off... The poster that won the overall competition was written in RED letters on a GREEN background. Now, I'm not colorblind, but there is a 12-20 percent of the male population who is, so that is not a good idea. Apart from the fact that the letters were so small that they couldn't be read from beyond 75cm of distance.

Also one of the judges comes, looks at my poster, and says "oh, I can't vote for you, since we are collaborators". People have a funny idea about what a scientific collaboration is. I haven't met with this guy in 2 years and we have never done anything together! I merely sat at a couple of meetings where he was as well. I must be too thick to understand this kind of collaboration.

Oh well, the iPod nano will have to wait. At least one of the PhD students in my division got the first prize in te student category...

iPod nano

This new tiny mp3 player looks too good to be true... If it had an FM radio I would consider it perfect, but I guess you can't have everything! Ars technica did a great test that shows the tiny device is also pretty tough . I can't wait to get one...

special people

Has it ever happened to you that you find a person that understands you fully? No, I'm not talking about a teenage thing with someome you barely know, I'm talking about living with someone you feel can understand your deepest thoughts even before you speak them out.

When I was doing my PhD I used to share house with this girl, N., and we used to pour our hearts out over hot cups of tea a couple of times a week. I still have to find someone that understands me better. When I listen to La Oreja de Van Gogh -like now- I still think of you, my basque friend. I hope you are fine and your dreams have come true...

G'night brothers.

on laziness

I just got back from a trip to Europe and I have discovered that, not only do I have to give a talk this friday (who needs time to prepare these things anyway, huh?) but the research planning that I had been organizing for my division now has a single project rather than three. How is this possible you will ask? Let's ignore the last minute talk for a moment, since this is quite common and I actually couldn't care less about it. It is the research planning that is driving me insane.

It turns out that the other 3 people in the group working on this research planning (a set of proposals for research in promising fields in our division for the next 5 years) must have thought that bothering to look for some information about three different projects would be too much. Not only that, but their great work for the last week is an A4 piece of paper with four scribblings that essentially reproduce ONLY one of the projects that I detailed in a report I gave them as a starting point before leaving for Europe! Now, when your boss gives you the opportunity to propose a few research projects in an area you like, you should take advantage of it. Believe me, it doesn't happen very often. And yes, it is a pain in the neck to do the background reading and the filtering of interesting but not promising or promising but not-so-interesting topics. But for God's sake, all these guys have done is to screw up the setup I left for them last week! How can people be so lazy?

Talking about laziness. About the time I left the IT guys sent an e-mail asking everyone to change their e-mail password every 6 months. As the good employee that I am, I changed mine as soon as I got back. From that very moment I couldn't log in or read my mail. I call IT support and I get told "not to worry because more people have the same problem and we are working on it". They are working on it. Nice. But I can't read my mail AND they have not sent a general e-mail telling people not to change their passwords until the problem is solved. Is this laziness or plain stupidity? I can't even decide.

Lord, give me patience...

unbelievable

... is the reaction of the federal government in the US towards the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Apparently troops with supplies are starting to arrive now. Now? When CNN reporters have been there for 3 days?

I understand that weather phenomena are difficult to predict, and that preparing assistance for a million people is a difficult task that may have serious political costs if the alert comes to nothing, but the Major of New Orleans ordered an evacuation of the city, for God's sake! Federal agencies should have had an stand-by plan to act im-frigging-mediately if the damage was as bad as expected. And I don't consider 5 days pushing paper to be immediately. I consider it blatant NEGLIGENCE!

Why has Mayor Ray Nagin to cry in outrage for the Nation to help? This should not be necessary! The army should have taken over the organization of the relief effort and avoided much of the unnecessary death and suffering. How come the reporters got there before the federal help in what can only be described as the worst catastrophe in US history? Outrage does not even begin to describe the anger I -and many others- feel at this lack of action.

I hope the people in New Orleans will show their true strength in this moment of need and help each other survive this disaster. My thoughts are with you.

And to the people in positions of responsability in teh federal government I would like to quote Major Nagin "Get off your asses and let's do something".