Uri Nieto

Albert Comerma and Micky Vega, both ex-Sargon, started this new musical project called Tao Pai Pai. Here you have the first clip, really good shit. Congratulation titans!

Los políticos Españoles se han unido en una armonía sin precedentes a favor de la separación de nuestro reino cristiano. La derecha con la izquierda, los falangistas con los nacionalistas bascos, los ciutadans con los republicanos; hoy todos luchan –y muy fuerte– por la independencia.

Gracias al cambio de poder, gracias al haber destrozado todas las promesas electorales, gracias a potenciar la industria de hostelería inglesa, gracias a que han desbaratado los planes terroristas de los estudiantes de ESO, gracias a las facilidades fiscales cuando tienes la sangre azul, gracias a la excitante experiencia de conseguir marfil gratis; los políticos y los altos cargos han conseguido que hoy todos los Españoles pidan al unísono la independencia.

Gritos de “quiero irme de aquí”, o “quiero dejar de ser España para empezar a ser Islandia”, o “por favor Francia, invádenos”, hacen eco en las calles de nuestra patria unida por una fragmentación inminente.

Tanto los nacionalistas catalanes como los bascos dan su más ferviente soporte a la nueva petición de la comunidad de Madrid para empezar a ser un estado independiente dentro de la Unión Europea. “Madrid is not Spain”. Nacionalistas Manchegos, Castellanoleoneses, o Extremeños, también luchan y se manifiestan para salir de España.

Los políticos han conseguido que la gente diga basta. Que la gente no quiera formar parte de esta putrefacta nación que todavía huele a dictadura. Que no quieran vivir en un país carcomido por la corrupción, los bancos y la caspa. Un país donde la iglesia y la monarquía tengan preferencia ante la educación y la sanidad. Donde se premie la picaresca y el enchufismo ante el esfuerzo y la dignidad.

Hoy los Españoles, más unidos que nunca, se quieren independizar de este reino que se ha convertido, gracias a nuestros mandatarios (y a todos los que les han votado), en una puta mierda.

Menuda locura la que se ha armado en las redes sociales con esto de que Su Majestad el Rey ha decidido irse a cazar elefantes. Que si maltrata animales siendo presidente de honor de la WWF, que si el país está en crisis y el campechano pasa de todo, que si ojalá el elefante le hubiera quitado la corona, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Pero lo curioso es que aquí parece que nadie se acuerde de que Él es El Rey. Ergo, puede hacer lo que le salga de sus cojones reales.

Un rey no es un Rey hasta que no mate, se vaya de putas, y se regocije con las penas ajenas. Por eso S.M. Robert Baratheon era un Rey con mayúsculas. Un Rey caza Dragones. Un Rey como Dios manda. Yo, como siervo Español, me sentía defraudado por tener un monarca que la única vez que había enseñado su –hasta entonces dudosa– virilidad hubiera sido cuando mandó a callar a un presidentito de una ex-colonia suya.

Así que me satisface saber que, finalmente, S.M. Elefant-Slayer Juan Carlos I, ha demostrado su hombría cazando paquidermos 7 veces más grandes que él. Dando ejemplo. Sí señor. Ahora sí. Ahora ya empiezo a sentirme un poco más donde me merezco. Ahora ya lo llevo fino. En un país corrupto, donde la monarquía finalmente hace lo que debe: pasar de la plebe, y matar de vez en cuando.

Don’t worry, you’re just a pale blue dot

Some experiments I did last year as part of a failed audition with Swingset Committee:

I quite like this song though. The older I am, the gayer I become.

Oh, the voice was recorded here at Jarl’em All Studios. This Rode NT1-A mic is all you need to make a decent vocals recording. And so cheap! Alrightht

A couple of videos from yesterday’s Spanish general strike.

Some shitty citiziens:

Some shitty police:

As always, shit’s everywhere.

Vaig escriure aquesta cançó a Califòrnia ara fa més de dos anys. Com passa el temps per Déu. La volia gravar als estudis Jarl’em All, i aquest és el resultat:

Alright.

It is fascinating to find this kind of paragraphs in classical probability literature by Laplace:

Nearly all our knowledge is problematical; and in the small number of things which we are able to know with certainty, even in the mathematical sciences themselves, the principal means for ascertaining truth -induction and analogy- are based on probabilities

Philosophers (some call them scientists now), the real predictors of the future.

OS X comes with a Python installation that I find a bit confusing and misleading. What I present in this post is a guide to remove the default Python from your 64 bits OS X (i.e. Snow Leopard or Lion), install its latest version, and set up a nice environment to work with (e.g. iPython + MacVim). The only requirement for this process is to have the latest version of XCode, that you can get from the App Store.

Uninstall Python

I couldn’t find any nice and clean uninstaller for Python in OS X. So we will have to remove all files by hand. Here is the code:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Python*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Python*
cd /usr/local/bin
sudo rm -rf 2to3 idle idle2.7 pydoc pydoc2.7 python* smtpd.py smtpd2.7.py
cd /usr/bin
sudo rm -rf 2to3 idle idle2.7 pydoc pydoc2.7 python* smtpd.py smtpd2.7.py


(if you have another versions of Python installed (e.g. 2.6, 2.5), just change 2.7 for your version number when removing the files. However, that is not really that important, just so that you don’t have that much garbage in your computer).

Install Python 2.7.x

Now let’s install the latest release of 2.7.x for OS X. You can see the latest releases here. When writing this post, the latest version is 2.7.2.

Once you have run the installer, edit your ~/.bash_profile file. To edit your file, use your favorite text edito (vim in my case):

vim ~/.bash_profile

You should now have the following lines (add them if you don’t, but the installer is supposed to add them for you):


# Setting PATH for Python 2.7
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH


Now let’s add the compiler flags for 64-bits and the Python Path for the modules. This is important, otherwise your easy_install will probably fail. Add the following lines to your ~/.bash_profile:

export PYTHONPATH=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages
export CFLAGS="-I/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk/usr/lib/"
export ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64"

(note: change MacOSX10.7 to MacOSX10.6 if you’re using Snow Leopard in the second line)

Notice that all your modules will be installed here:
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages. It’s kind of important to remember this path, so you may want to add it to your sidebar in Finder or create some soft link.

Close your file and restart your bash so that the new environment variables are available. Check that you can now run python from the new terminal.

Install most common modules

I usually use easy_install to install new modules. You can get it from here (the module is called setuptools).

Download it, decompress it, and type the following from it’s folder:

python setup.py build
python setup.py install

Now you can use easy_install to install your favorite modules. E.g.:

easy_install numpy
easy_install scipy
easy_install matplotlib
easy_install ipython

If you’re running Lion, I highly recommend the SciPy SuperPack, which will do all the work for you.

Setting up your programming environment

This last section is completely biased due to my eternal love to VIM. I know some heartless people who use Emacs, or even Eclipse (I was one of them, and it was a terrible thing!) to code in Python.

If you’re a VIM lover you should already know about MacVim, but if you don’t you should definitively get it.

In any case, you should choose your favorite text editor (in case you want to use VIM -everybody wants to use VIM, but unfortunately some people don’t know that-, here it is a nice python module), and then I highly recommend using iPython instead of the classic Python console. This is especially useful for debugging and plotting. iPython is life changing, really.

To run iPython with matplotlib already running in the background just type:

ipython --pylab

Finally, here is a nice screenshot of how my programming environment looks like (iPython + PyLab + MacVim):

Beautiful isn’t it? : )

And finally, for something -not that- completely different: Happy programming!

Probably one of the best descriptions on Neal Stephenson’s work I’ve ever read (extracted from the NYTimes):

Let us say that novelists are like unannounced visitors. While Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow pound manfully on the door, Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith knock politely, little preparing you for the emotional ferociousness with which they plan on making themselves at home. Neal Stephenson, on the other hand, shows up smelling vaguely of weed, with a bunch of suitcases. Maybe he can crash for a couple of days? Two weeks later he is still there. And you cannot get rid of him. Not because he is unpleasant but because he is so interesting. Then one morning you wake up and find him gone. You are relieved, a little, but you also miss him. And you wish he’d left behind whatever it was he was smoking, because anything that allows a human being to write six 1,000-page novels in 12 years is worth the health and imprisonment risk.