Mahound’s Weblog

Just added OpenID support to the weblog. I’ve disabled registration, so that everybody that doesn’t still have an account has to go through OpenID in order to login. I’m sick of phony users and spam bots…

If you don’t have an OpenID, create one… it’s quick, and it works for lots of websites.

The landscape in St. Genis-Pouilly(GEO:  46.245616, 6.028238) was like this:

Falling asleep to Mike Oldfield’s rendition…

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008).

Yes, now this blog is part of the Linked Data community. Thanks to triplify, all the posts and comments contained in this blog can be exported as RDF (N3 or JSON-encoded). The source is http://weblog.zarquon.biz/triplify/ (default: N3, use http://weblog.zarquon.biz/triplify/?t-output=json for RDF/JSON).

The output is still a single graph (much like a dump), but I’m confident that the triplify guys will soon start using different contexts, and make the URIs browsable.  In any case, it’s already possible to link these data with, i.e. FOAF info, using  foaf:mbox_sha1sum.

A very interesting concept… I’ve been playing a bit with it: http://groups.google.com/group/xoperator/browse_thread/thread/11397420fb298dea .

• Project page: http://aksw.org/Projects/xOperator

is probably one of the most irrational concepts developed by the human being. And it gets even worse when we convince ourselves we have the right to “correct” it.

• Digg - 107,000 demand Wikipedia remove this image of Muhammed

I won’t even waste my energies commenting on this…

Tags: blasphemy, muhammad, wikipedia, digg, picture, iconoclast, medieval, stupid, insane

I’ve just finished migrating zarquon.biz to the new server. Everything seems operational. If you find any problem, just tell me.

Tags: migration, new server, zarquon.biz

… no, I’m not going crazy… and it was not through iTunes. I was looking for interpretations of the opus “El Maestro”, from the renaissance spanish vihuelist Luis de Milan, which contains some beautiful vihuela + voice portuguese, spanish and italian songs. I hapened to find it at magnatune.com, performed by Jacob Heringman and Catherine King. I listened to the album once, using the mp3 streaming option available from magnatune, and got convinced. Magnatune allows a “make your price” scheme, being that the minimum for an album is 5 USD. I ended up paying 8 USD, which is the default price, since it’s roughly the same as 5 EUR, a round price, something that I would pay for a promo CD in a regular store. Then, I downloaded it in FLAC (magnatune offers WAV, FLAC, AAC, MP3 and OGG). I got the artwork, in PDF, as well.
The license allows me to share 3 copies of the work with my friends - that’s great, since it promotes sharing (I like to share my tastes with my friends, and I end up listening to some of their suggestions). And there’s no DRM, so… no big brother or bad policeman around, fighting to restrict your rights.
It’s obvious you won’t find mainstream audio at magnatune. However, the available genres span from medieval music performers to electronic composers, jazz, metal and even some pop. And I got very surprised with the quality of some of them. Well, you can listen to them for free… just give them a try.

Tags: renaissance, luis de milan, magnatune, drm, music, freedom, creative commons, el maestro, vihuela

As I placed my foot on Portuguese ground, at Sá-Carneiro Airport, Porto, I felt finally relieved, and thanked my parents for raising me in an average country, with moderate policies and gentle ways.

It all started when I planned my trip home: one week at Portugal, traveling  from Geneva to Porto through London, where I would attend the Dream Theater concert at the Wembley Arena. My sister (coming from Porto) would meet me there, as well as my good friend Pedro (at the time visiting Scotland). It all went very smoothly: my sister had never been in London, and she enjoyed it a lot, and the concert was wonderful in every sense.  But when things happen exactly as planned, the probability of disaster increases substantially… On Sunday, the 14th, we took the London underground in order to go back to our hostel, in Stamford Brook, get our bags, and travel to Stansted Airport, through the coaching service which departs Victoria station.  The subway took longer than we expected, and we didn’t make it to the coach station for the bus we were planning. However, we managed to get to Stansted airport by 17:40, 50 minutes before the flight. We checked in immediately at the Ryanair desk, and noticed that some people even checked in after us. After this, a series on nonsense happened:

• We picked the wrong security queue: it was slooooow… they were almost stripping everyone down to the bone. Ironically, one of the x-ray machines was closed, unused, while hundreds of passengers tried to get to the boarding gates before losing the plane;
• The english paranoia is amazing: besides this nonsense of the liquids, that we have to handle everywhere we go, our english folks love inspecting shoes, checking everybody with metal detectors… I mean… do they really think this will keep them from doing a terrorist attack if they want to? I guess next time they’ll be waiting us with a transparent tube and latex gloves…;
• The airport personnel sucks… “Hey, I’ll miss my flight…” “The queue is the queue… sorry, there’s nothing I can do!”;
• People from International flights are mixed up with domestic flights… why? I had people flying to Newcastle before me in the queue… I mean… I’m thousands of Km from home!  And they were late as well! I couldn’t go before them, because they were desperate as well!
• Pedro got to another queue after me, and was out 20 minutes later… i took 50 minutes! 50 minutes? For security verification?
• I ran as fast as I could towards the boarding gates, but…
• “Sorry sir, shoe verification…” Damn! Why? I won’t blow a plane that I will most certainly miss!
• Finally, got to the gate, 10 min. after the departure, and… the plane was still there, but a cranky and arrogant Ryanair lady warned us that we wouldn’t make it, since we were late 10 min, bla bla… Her colleague, a much nicer lady, decided to go check, and brought the bad news that our luggage had been returned, bla bla…;
• Meanwhile, the cranky arrogant Ryanair employee decided to start yelling with an Italian lady that did not understand English: “Are you deaf? Can’t you hear what I said throght the speaker? It’s gate 43! I hate when people don’t listen to what I say!” I couldn’t stay silent, and I politely told her that she was being an asshole because the lady didn’t understand english, and even if she did, nothing would give her the right to yell at a passenger. I told her to learn how to behave before trying to work with people, and went back to the check-in area;
• Of course Ryanair had to rip us off in the end. They’re the only ones in Stansted flying to Porto, and I had to pay the extremely inflated amount of 340 GBP for the two of us (me and my sister) to get back home;

Lessons learned: Ryanair sucks - their service is expensive when compared to other lowcost companies, they won’t help you in any way if something out of normal happens (there are cases of people who see their flights canceled for no apparent reason), and they will try to rip you off in any way they can. Personnel ranges from friendly to extremely rude, as I had the chance to witness.

So, conclusions:

• Terrorism is used as an excuse to limit our liberties: I don’t want to see my deodorant and toothbrush inside a plastic bag, and I feel revolted for not being able to carry my own water to the flight. And how many terrorists were caught until now, through the use of these paranoid security verification methods?
• I’m an EU citizen, but that seems to make no difference for the UK authorities: they didn’t subscribe Schengen, and they’re happy with it: they’re able to hunt imaginary terrorists this way;
• Ryanair is the typical “purely capitalist” corporation:
  • They fire people for belonging to worker unions;
  •  They have no social concern;
  • They are incapable of assuming guilt or placing themselves in your position;
  • They’ll rip you off as much as they can;
  • They don’t care about  you and your satisfaction, they don’t even have an on-line complaint form! There’s even no e-mail to send complaints to!

Of course, I have no hope about receiving any compensation, since the system is made in a way that the fault always falls on the passenger. However, I’ll at least complain about the service, and demand the identification of the rude employee.

I’d like to call your attention for the magnificent work of Robin Rimbaud, also known as Scanner. His album “Messe” is a  great piece of art, blending sacred music with the noisy patterns of the quotidian.

Status Quo:

• Reading: “Weaving the Web” (T. Berners-Lee and M. Fischetti) , “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (P. K. Dick)
• Willing to watch:
  • “2001 - A Space Odyssey” (S. Kubrick)
• Recently watched:
  • “Kin Dza Dza” (G. Daneliya)
  • “Water” (D. Mehta) - a must see…
  • “Irréversible” (G. Noé)
  • “Banlieue 13” (P. Morel)
  • “The Maltese Falcon” (J. Huston)
• Currently listening to:
  • Scanner, a.k.a. Robin Rimbaud
  • Aphex Twin