Twelve Years + Two Steps = A Circle

I made the PC to Mac switch last year, and couple of months ago there was another leap, from Safari (Mac's browser) to Firefox. So far my new relationships are going well, the iBook doesn't crash on me with frenzy like my old Microsoft plus Intel Inside did. And FireFox does perform better than Safari blogger-wise. However, the speed difference is not as significant as many have suggested (and it also crashes sometimes without warning).

About 10 years ago my first computer was equipped with Netscape Navigator. Soon I got acquainted with names such as Mosaic, Mozilla and Mac. It was the time when the best web graphics were only 256 colors and DOS was still popular. The books and magazines I read were all about or related to them. Plain text web pages and maybe some with a small picture of the writer at the beginning of the article, simple and yet graceful layout, great content. I played quite a lot of DOS and early Windows games too, no 3D cards required, single player, MIDI sound/music and yet great games with great stories, great time. I've read quite a lot about Mac softwares (mostly from a company called Voyager, don't know if they're still around), for example, I photograph to Remember, All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis. The magazines were exquisitely printed, almost works of art, elegant covers, solid content, delicious smell and all were transformed into sheer weight, feels just wonderful holding one in my hands. It has articles on all sorts of softwares, educational, tool, multimedia, games, etc., and the most amazing thing is that they all looked so attractive. The design and the whole feeling of the magazine was so great that it's almost impossible to find its match these days.

Then few years later, IE made its way into everyone's computer and Netscape lost the battle. Around that time everything changed as well. The magazine seemed to have sacked the old editor and hired a new one, the layout and content turned shockingly unreadable; the internet suddenly seemed to be filled with lousy sites, bad design and no substances whatsoever. So I stop buying magazines and the WWW surfing was tasteless. Happy days were over.

3 months ago I decided that I would start blogging, because I was tired. Then I saw for one more time what was locked inside the attic and long forgotten. Blogger recommended FireFox as its preferred browser. FireFox, as I found out later, belongs to Mozilla. A sense of joy came from nowhere and held me captive under its irresistible charm. A soft breeze that caresses gently the face, I think that's how they put it. And along with joy came an opposite feeling. Mixed emotions. Mozilla, Mosaic, Mac, Netscape, old magazines with articles on those wonderful softwares, with great contents and simple graphics.

Trilogy: Home Made Paradise

Goddess,

man,

impeccable,

biased,

unwavering,

searching,

obsession,
endeavour,

encounter,

light,

over-exposed,
protection,
abandonment,
Elysium.

Ticket to Ride

Finally I got my tickets for Adelaide, I'm leaving the 29th so I guess there will be no more articles after that day till mid September? I don't know, maybe I'll post some tour updates here, we'll see.

Now with only one paper left to be done, I'm feeling sort of revived, but I think the proximity of the trip also works like an elixir for my recent low morale. When the thought of the airport and cycling with my bike loaded out there in the vast land mass just excites me beyond words. However I'm not a big fan of planes, although I like airports, because of the 20k baggage weight limit, and also because I always think that something's going to explode or it's going to fall form the sky or something, well, it's not that I'm afraid of flying, I've been flying innumerable times, it's just that I'm always thinking about things like that. Accidents, you know. Does that mean I'm obsessed with death? Do remember that this blog was made out of this thought. A friend of mine said that I was playing with my life by saying something like that when I called her to say I was going to Australia and if I don't call or write again...you know, but I can't really agree with that. It's just that I don't like to have things left unsaid.

A side note, I guess this year would probably be the last time I go abroad before I finished the army. Bummer, yes, but I need to save some money anyway, I'm planning to cycle from Alaska down to Tierra de fuego or from Taiwan up to Japan, cross Russia and all the way to Portugal. Don't know, haven't decided yet. The thing is that I always wanted to go to Siberia, but I also really want to do the Interamericana, it's a damn dilemma and I can only pick one. But well, think I have time to think. Until then I'm going to have some fun in the outback.

Tempest

My hands are shaking, the uncontrollable rage wells out, found its voice on the door agitated by the sole of the shoes, like ruthless lavas pouring out, hammering down with great might, like cannonballs flying furiously out of the maddened mouth, striking down the unfortunate lot, its prey, like victims under the fallout, endless and silent storm, a cunning hunter awaits, and attacks when the target is out of its den, with precision, without mercy, and ceases fire only when it is out of sight, leave it to bleed, I have no mouth and I must scream.

Uncontrollable, incomprehensible rage wells out of the depth, where came you this fury? Those who call themselves friends who never even write or, call to say hi, who give a ring on the cell and hang up right away so that you can call them to let them talk to you, who act so friendly and promise so much things, who don't even reply after farewell was said, not even once, pretentious, artificial good will, unbelievable, spit at them in the face, o sweet!

The silent life, hypocritical faces and words, the pathetic, me, trashed over and over again, all these years, the cause torrential rain is not, ignites the unstable undercurrent it only does, like a fuse to a dynamite, gas by the fire, exploded, the door takes the place of the mouth, cries without restrain, signs of exhaust appears and it falls to the ground, with a great thump, that's it, enough.

The hands keep shaking, there're people laughing, judging, lecturing, a long and a lone fight, a bloody farce, a surface, les misérables, the humiliation, the destiny, always enslaved, unworthy, well-being is vain, and always fades into nothing, cast me into the fire and there I shall, at long last, scream.

Trilogy: The Pit

The other day when I was working on my paper I came upon the word marihuana, then all of a sudden the light in the room was turned off and I was back on the open and dark streets of Salamanca flanked by towering bulidings, it must be the night that made them actually looked taller. It was around 0200 and we were the few who roamed the city.

No, it's not like what you might have in mind now, there were only 2 of us and we did not smoke that night nor were we drunk, I was just walking her home.

I thought I had forgotten about it completely, but now the images just keep coming back. It's weird feeling. It's not that thinking about the past is weird, but that the feeling the rediscovery of something which one has no conscious memory with brings along is somewhat strange. I always remember the events, but curiously when I tried to remember when and where we met, I just couldn't locate it.

So I put down the books and promptly wrote her an email, but to my dismay, I did not have her address. I sat there staring at those written words and had nothing no my mind. Fuck. That night seemed to be particularly long. The next morning I remembered that she wrote it down somewhere on a paper or on a book I wasn't sure, but one thing was affirmative, no matter where it was it was not with me, in other words, it was back home.

Now how on earth was I able to go back home, in the middle of the final term, just to fetch an email address? Shit. I needed to vent to someone (about something else as well) so I went to Ramón. He suggested that I went home to get it, right now, I'll drive you home. I stared at him with disbelif, your serious or just nuts? I got papers to write! But to my surprise, I couldn't help laughing even though I tried my best to surpress it. So the next thing I knew we were on the highway heading towards home.

There in my LP Cycling France I had what I was looking for. So I dispatched the mail successfully (without the dreadful Delivery Status Notification), which was nearly a week ago. To this moment I still haven't get a reply. But, I guess that doesn't really matter, I've done what I had to and that's it.

That day when he persuaded me to went home was a day worth a celebration because I just crossed the threshold, I freed myself.

Truth Will Set You Free

The following words were written down after I woke up this morning. The name of the addressee is changed. The rest of the correspondence is presented loyal to its original form.

annabell,

this morning i woke up (alright, a few minutes ago) and i remember that i had this dream that in it you (though looked a bit different) came to live in my home. you were with your road bike (a very beautiful one) and something else (don't remember what exactly now, the memory's fading, probably a big backpack or something). in the dreram you were from tajikistan or kyrgyzstan and you were a nomad, namely, you live wherever you go. you came to taiwan to take an exam or something. i don't remember that now. but i was quite happy in the dream.

then came another 2 guys that i had never seen in my life, they entered the house. they were tall and looked friendly, but they were the stereotypes of hollywood petty thugs.

i remember something else, but the images are vague and in pieces. i saw another girl that i met in iceland days earlier to my flight to copenhagen. have i told you about the girl? she was from geneva, but spoke very good english, comparable to my level. we kissed and spent 2 days together walking the streets of reykjavík till the morning that came to take me away.

i remember that i was in your room (or hers?), i don't recall nothing else (i know there were something else, but just can't remember them), you/her were downstairs, i was tying shoelaces.

that's all that i remember. just trying to write it down in case that i forget about it.

schuma

Know thyself, don't remember who the hell said that, some Greek dude maybe, doesn't matter. The point is I subscribe to the theory that dream is a powerful tool to open the door and according to what Stimson said in one of his lectures there're multiple levels and delayed meanings of dreams, so I hope that by writing it down I can review it in later times and probably get a whole new idea from it.

Trivial Matter

Last night when I went back from the library I saw this moth in the elevator.

This morning I woke up late, missed 3 classes, and when the door opened I found the moth lying dead on the floor, motionless.

Tonight when I got back from the library, I found that it was being squashed.

There And Back Again

It's done. The rescue was carried out successfully and now I'm a happy Mac user again. Here's how I solved the problem. Many thanks to Carl Jerris on Apple Discussions forum for giving me some directions.

Because I didn't have any backups of my files at all so after the ambush I hurried to get a 160G external hard disk and an enclosure with both FireWire and USB 2 connecting capabality, hoping that it was still not too late to salvage what was left. I bought the one with FireWire because you can use it to boot the computer while you can't do it with USB in Mac. I was trying to turn off the FileVault on OZ (hard disk) for the backup procedure because with it on all my files are encrypted and there was no way to access them, but after like an hour of waiting it informed me that I did not have enough space to do that.

So I decided to take another approach. After I assambled the whole external HD thing, which took me quite a while because 2 of the screws almost failed and I was at the point of throwing that shit out of the window, but I held the temper back and after I don't know how long of sitting there staring into nothing and cursing I started slowly again, I partitioned the external into 3 partitions: Bootable Backup Disk (37.14G), Althea (37.14G) and Rebecca (74.4G). Then I installed a new copy of the OS into the Bootable, boot the machine with it. When logged into the system with no problem, I cloned the entire encrypyed OZ to Rebecca and disabled FileVault from there. The moment the hour-long operation was done, everything went back to normal, white bar, desktop and Finders just popped back into life and none of my files were hurt. It was FileVault that somehow stopped the OS from reaching the files.

So I erased the whole internal hard drive and cloned again, only in a reverse direction this time. Now the internal's called Siberia. The moral of this post is simple: do backups religiously and keep the FileVault off. Finally I can sleep, and I mean it literally.