:: Omnia Mutantur ::

:: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 ::

There's no telling people's tastes

So we all have our favorites. My personal favorite of the recent photo set, for example, is the image of Hellen walking away while framed in a wall. Photo.netters, however, have practically ignored this image in favor of the attic which, while interesting, doesn't have for me the same pull of the first.

Maybe I'm just out of sync. The good news is, most of those photos were well received.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 11:45 PM [+] ::
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Photography is a control freak's medium

Like no other medium, photography is excellent for making people see things your way. Photographers choose what they will share from a scene, how contrasting it should be, what parts should be out of focus so that they don't distract - or overinform! - the viewer, even what perspective-altering lens should be used.

Sure, writers can decide what to tell and what to keep for themselves. They even choose how to tell it. But while you expect a writer to lie, nobody will discuss the hard evidence of a photograph.

No matter how false it is.

Here's a new batch of my photos, this time taken at an abandoned asylum for tuberculosis patients. Stop by, log on, leave your comments.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 10:22 PM [+] ::
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Want to control software piracy? Inform people about Linux

That's basically the message of a simple but good article called XP Blues, about software piracy in Costa Rica and how Linux could help. Sure, it's not the solution Microsoft would want (everyone using a freely available competitor) but Costa Rica's piracy indexes would diminish seriously even if only the government used Linux and free software - not to mention reduce the budget needed for IT purchases.

That probably won't change the costarrican mindset that you can just copy software, but it would educate people about free alternatives. Why go through the hell - and cost - of setting up a Windows 2000 server with IIS and SQLServer when you can simply install a Linux machine with Apache and PostgreSQL? Why pirate Photoshop of you can have The Gimp?

What we need is education, not enforcement.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 9:12 AM [+] ::
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Meet Hellen.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 11:24 PM [+] ::
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Casting call

If a movie about The Sandman were to be made, Shirley Manson of the band Garbage would be great for Desire. Johnny Depp would be Morpheus himself, and I'd suggest Claire Danes for Death.

You can pick the rest of the characters.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 2:38 PM [+] ::
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Spanish is not a language for expressing condolences

We can't say I'm sorry, and the closest thing that we have is our lo siento (I feel it, or I feel for you), which is absolutely false: even if the bereaved were our closest friends we can't expect to feel for them, to experience their anguish at the death of a parent. The best we can do is sit there and accompany our friends, sorry that something hurt them.

Yes, we are sorry. We are sorry that that we can't say something appropriate and soothing, that we don't know how to express that a friend's sorrow hurts us.

We are sorry that lo siento is cliche, and we are sorry that it's the best we have at hand.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 10:16 PM [+] ::
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Nephilim Third Edition

I've received some questions regarding a possible English release for the third edition of Nephilim, in light of Multisim's recent entrance to the English-speaking market and Chaosium's forsaking of Nephilim.

This was posted to the Nephilim mailing about two weeks ago by Michael Bishop:

Hi all.


I received an e-mail a few days back (just opened it now) containing
the following:


"Hi Michael, Thought you might like to be the first to know (or the first person I tell anyway) that the French version of Nephilim 2nd edition is back from the printers and it looks like the English version is really going to happen."



(Note: I and the person who supplied me with the above info believe that, since there has only been a single edition of Nephilim in English (Chaosium's), Multisim are calling their new edition of Neph "3rd Edition" for francophones and "2nd Edition" for anglophones. Go figure.)


So, it seems there will be a new English-language incarnation of Nephilim after all! Let's hope it fulfils [sic] the hopes of those who care about the game (myself among them).
[ My 2c worth: I maintain that the Emotional Metamorphoses (introduced in COTA) are pivotal to making the essentially alien Nephilim roleplayable as PCs, because they provide basic motivations for characters that players might otherwise find it quite hard to get a handle on. ]
In any case...


Viva Nephili!!
Agarthan

There migth be hope after all.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 12:23 PM [+] ::
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I'm stunned

You know that the industry is going to hell when you read a Microsoft open letter to Sun on Java issues that you actually agree with.

While Microsoft had no right to ship a Java Virtual Machine that went against the Java license the letter makes some pretty valid points - specially on Sun's double standards - such as the horrifyingly:

Sun's idea of choice is that you can have any language you want, as long as it is Sun's version of Java under Sun's control. By contrast, Microsoft .NET supports over 20 languages from Microsoft and third parties, and Java will also be supported as a full-fledged language for the .NET platform. We believe that is a better definition of choice.

I'm writing a thesis on Open Source and its effect on development, and I must say that Sun isn't exactly in ecstasy about open standards and open source implementations of J2EE and the Java Virtual Machine (Mike Loukides put it better than I can, so just read his article). Why that is I can't imagine, unless they are trying to cover the commercial asses of their partners, but it's only going to end up hurting those who can't afford a WebSphere license and who might end up running Apache on Linux or IIS on Windows XP.

Here's hoping that Sun responds to this letter with actions.

:: Ricardo J. Méndez 12:47 AM [+] ::
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