32
On Saturday I turned 32. I haven't been able to sit down for ten minutes and
scribble the “mandatory” blog entry, a sign that I'm extremely busy (luckily
not only due to academic and professional reasons; the social part of the
problem is very significant). This year I was gifted with a costumes
Festa de l'Horta being held on the very same day as my birthday, and
it was memorable (in many ways).
Add an unexpected climbing evening on Friday, and getting to see my
fantastic 2 year old niece Vida, who came from Norwich for a visit, made a
great birthday weekend. I feel I'm going through a very, very sweet
stage of my life; I really can't remember the last time I generally had no
big worries or black clouds all over my head. I hope it stays like this for
a while...
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Cabanyal
Today, I was glad to attend the biggest demonstration ever in favour of the
Cabanyal neighbourhood of València, a traditional district populated by the
sea people of the city. After decades of oblivion, the Valencian right-wing
government is trying to execute an old plan to “open Valencia to the sea”,
which means demolishing around 450 traditional houses, many of them under
protection for their cultural and architectural value, to extend a big avenue
until the beach. Patrimonial loss aside, neighbours would be forced to
other areas in the city (sadly, this has been happening for a decade already),
making Cabanyal-Canyamelar the new posh neighbourhood for the richer class,
destroying its identity and replacing it with a new set of skyscrapers.

The local government of PP, led by the infamous Rita Barberá, knows that
getting the anti-riot police in the neighbourhood and forcing very old men
and women out of the houses where they were born isn't what many people like to
see in the evening news. They also know time is their ally; this plan is
many decades old, and there's no need to hurry now, so it's better to apply
silent mafia tactics on the problem. It's very easy.
First, stop investing a single euro in the area and monitor the slow but
effective results of the degradation. Have a bit of patience, and after
quite a few years, start promoting the illegal occupation of the increasing
number of empty houses by marginal collectives which will bring the associated
introduction of drug dealing in the area. This will surely make even more
people leave or accelerate their decease. Keep repeating this process, until
the Cabanyal is really fucked up. Now, start promoting the “rehabilitation
plan”, which unavoidably includes splitting the neighbourhood in two
pieces, and destroying a substantial part of it. Hopefully, many of the
neighbours not directly affected by the demolitions will back the plan, they
can't be blamed for being really fed up after all. Do all you can to confront
those in favour to those against. In the meanwhile, start harrassing owners,
make them end up selling their property at ridiculous prices and as soon as
this happens, demolish it very quickly. Don't even bother with cleaning up the
rubble: an increasing number of sites like this all over the place may be
what makes a few more families give up and leave.
In the end, you either have an empty neighbourhood, or you've managed to
demolish all the annoying houses that block your shiny avenue. However, if a
Supreme Court argues that the remaining houses still have some
cultural value, you might want to consider changing your local law to
unprotect those architectural elements.
Today, many thousands of Valencians marched around Cabanyal to say
“enough!”. From the street, I saw several old women out on the balconies
of their beautiful houses, their eyes wet with tears, while they observed in
silence all that many people who were fighting for them. There's still a long
way to go in the courts until this is all over, but at least these people
have a little more hope today than those in el Carme or La Punta, who ended
up losing similar battles, years ago.
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Dead PowerBook G4
A few weeks ago I was trying to get GRUB2 for PowerPC back to work on my
PowerBook G4 15", and had some problems getting OF doing the right thing.
Not being an OF expert at all, I found myself making things a bit worse,
ending up with an unbootable laptop and, what a classic, unable to boot my
old rescue CD to get yaboot back in its place.
So I googled a bit and ended up deciding that, given the boot parametres
and some other stuff like the system's clock were doing strange stuff,
reset-nvram would help getting things in a better shape that
would at least permit CD booting. So there, reset-nvram, followed
by reset-all, as found in all the OpenFirmware cheatsheets I
found all over the web, and damn it, nothing changed and I was back into the
OpenFirmware prompt. I used the power button to reset the laptop once again,
and that was the last time I saw something functional on the PowerBook.
Now, when I start the computer, all I hear is the Apple startup sound,
followed by the sound of the CD drive (which has eaten an Ubuntu 5.10 CD)
trying to spin up for a pair of seconds, and then nothing. There's nothing
displayed on the LCD, or any other sign of “life”. My searches in Google
indicate this is a logic board failure and you can imagine that is not cheap
to get fixed by Apple support.
I've tried numerous keyboard combo tricks I didn't even know about, and
none seem to work. The computer doesn't seem to be responding to the builtin
keyboard, an Apple USB keyboard I borrowed, or an external display. I'm
annoyed because I've looked after this laptop really well and it was in a
really good condition, so I'm going to see if it can be fixed for a reasonable
amount.
Apple care in València is not an option. They say a logic board (if this
is really what is causing trouble) costs around 500€, so I'll have to explore
other ways. The first one is trying to find out if these symptoms (nothing
on the display, key combos don't appear to work, etc.) really point to a
fried logic board or could be something else. I've tried removing the RAM
and replacing it with my old one, but that didn't work either. So, if anyone
reading this has some Apple PowerPC hardware experience and can share some
of their knowledge and suggestions, I'd be really, really grateful.
Plan B involves hiring a coworker, who I believe is the son of
McGyver, to try to get it repaired for me. This would involve buying spare
parts in eBay or some other place to try to get the replaced. Again,
suggestions, donations and ideas are welcome in this front too. :)
Jose Vicente loves fixing stuff, and right before the Summer he already
showed what he can do with a screwdriver and some patience. Some weeks before,
I had managed to shatter the LCD screen of my Nokia 6500s when I lost my grip
while climbing down a mountain in El Cadí, and the phone in my pocket hit a
big rock. The phone worked, but I all I could see in the screen were some
cracks in random colours. People suggested I should get a new phone, but I
really don't want to generate even more polluting waste when all that was
needed was replacing a cheap component.

My phone during its stay in McGyver's hideout
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Flags and outrages
A bit more than two years ago, two young Spaniards on vacation in Latvia
maybe went a bit too far during one of their night parties and decided to
remove some Latvian flags
that hanged from a post in the streets of Riga. They spent 1 month in prison,
with charges for outraging the Latvian flag.
The Spanish media talked about the disproportionate charges, the ridiculous
and “medieval” laws in Latvia and so on.
Today, we learn that Jaume d'Urgell will
go to prison
due to the “outraging” crime of substituting the current Spanish flag with
the Republican flag of 1931 on the facade of a public building.
So much for medieval laws and institutions like the Spanish monarchy.
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Barcelona
Last weekend I finally managed to travel to Barcelona to visit my
family and some friends. As my agenda was quite packed with stuff to do, I
was unable to find out if any of the Ubunteros had arrived early for UDS,
and I left just after lunch on Sunday.
Unfortunately, I had totally missed that before UDS, Canonical held their
allhands meeting, and it would have been easy to meet them on
Friday night after I got in the city. What a pitty, and sorry about this,
mdz, I would have loved to meet...
:(
In other Barcelona news, I'm sure that UDS attendees will be astonished
(or fed up!) by the football crazyness going on right now. Last night I went
to a culer bar near Woody and enjoyed watching how Barça claimed
brilliantly their 3rd Champions Cup. For someone who normally doesn't care
that much about football, the last few weeks have been incredible.
Today I visited my 96 year old grandfather, and even if he has lost much
of his expressiveness and energy since the last few months, today he was
visibly happy and proud of what his Barça has managed to accomplish this
season. Three titles, plus literally going over Real Madrid in Santiago
Bernabeu. Barça is definitely més que un club, and I'm happy that
my grandfather was able to enjoy it.
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31
So, today I turn 31. Fortunately I've had a year to learn that the
thirties change nothing, and looking back, I can easily say I've enjoyed
one of the best years I remember.
Today, a bit of protesting
in the Plaça de l'Ajuntament against the old menaces of the Valencian
Botanical Garden, and just after that, beer time around the Cedre area.
The amount of email, Facebook stuff and calls I've been getting today
since I woke up is impressive. Thanks everyone! ;)
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Spanish Cup final in València
València is again taken over by football fans, who have come from all over
the Basque Country and Catalunya to watch the Copa de España final
in Mestalla stadium. The city is literally tinted in red, white, blue and
maroon and thousands of supporters (more than 60.000) have flooded the
streets.
If you can't beat them, join them, so for a change, I'm going to
join the crazyness and will go to the
Athletic Hiria to watch
the game in the middle of the leonera.
I can't wait to see how the Basque and Catalan supporters who have tickets
for the game will react when the King of Spain enters the VIP area in Mestalla.
Apparently, more powerful loudspeakers have been installed in the stadium in
an attempt to mitigate what I expect to be the biggest catcall in a Spanish
football stadium since we have a King...
Gora Barça, Visca l'Athletic!
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Words
Some days I wish I could selectively get rid of some memories. I would
probably cut out a small chunk of today's evening, to avoid remembering some
tough words that I've been told. On the other hand, I feel I have lots
of things to learn from these moments, given enough time, after the dust has
settled. El tiempo todo lo cura...
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Calçotada in Valls
It's here! This weekend is again the time to go up to Valls, my friend
Frago's town, to meet his friends and enjoy a new edition of their
calçotada. Like
other years,
this will be a crazy event that will cover the whole weekend. I'm looking
forward to our traditional calçot war, and spending tomorrow's
night around a big fire in the middle of the country side of Tarragona.

Frago and I, after last year's calçot war
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A horrible Valencian tradition
My workmate Pep was kind enough to drive me home back from work today.
Ideally I would have cycled home as always, however today my bike was stolen
again. It's not the
first time or
the second one, not even
the third. My
red Orbea is the fourth bicycle that gets stolen since cycling became
my primary means of transportation more than 10 years ago.
Sadly, in València, the norm is to get your bicycle stolen every few years,
if you need to leave it unattended during work hours. In this case, its even
worse as the bike stays inside the University
campus all day, supposedly guarded by security personnel, and in a place where
dozens of people tie their bicycles, with constant presence of the people
who work in the CPI complex.
This bicycle was given to me by Cherry when she left València, just a week
after the previous one had been stolen. She had bought it to cycle around
the Valencian mountains during her 6 month stay in Clara's lab, and was
immensely kind to give it to me when she learned what happened to mine.
I planned using the mountain bike during the long 9 d'octubre
weekend, but I'll have to see if someone can lend one for this year's cycling
trip.
It seems I'll have to resort, again, to my 29 year old Laida to
move around València, which will need an extensive repair of both wheels and
brakes. Time to visit Benimaclet's bicycle workshop.
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Mouth Freedom
Today I got the brackets attached to my lower jaw teeth removed. What I'm
experiencing now is something like mouth freedom. I mean, I can even move my
tongue around my mouth painlessly!
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