Unguided Blog

On September 10, the EU will be voting on a vital law against illegal logging. ForestLove is a controversial campaign run by Greenpeace to push the EU’s vote in the right direction. Adoption of the legislation will ensure all timber products placed on the European market are from legal sources and well-managed forests. As the world’s biggest wood importer, Europe has a unique responsibility to help stop deforestation, illegal logging and its impacts on climate, biodiversity and forest communities.

Not only you can watch the video and help Greenpeace get this video to the top of the video viral charts, but you can actively take photos or videos to be submitted to Greenpeace. Greenpeace will edit materials submitted until the deadline of August 31 into a collaborative video that will show the EU commissioners just how much everyone loves the forests…

Watch the video and help promote it.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a good thing we have computers, isn’t it?

A discussion somewhere has taken me back to a long gone era. Since all holes were fixed and sunlight could not get in, my mind kept wandering to a time not known or forgotten by many I should say, alas. To the Golden Age of the BBS’s, the bulletin board systems, so to speak. They all of a sudden flourished all around the world but especially in USA and Europe. Run by enthusiasts in their homes, usually with custom equipment and a modem, they could barely handle more than eight people online simultaneously, and mind you, eight was a good number.

Some of them reached to such a fame and recognition that they had followers calling internationally. And those international calls, being expensive at the time, created, well, the sublime art of phreaking. Those phone charges had to be avoided. Most being teenagers, many did not have the luxury of paying for them.

Apart from those touchy issues above, they created a literature of their own, a unique culture. With their text files, the ASCII art, they were the pioneers of blogging.

I remembered a text-file named “Fun with Unix”. Originally written and uploaded to alt.folklore.computers by Charlie Gibb on 29 Apr 1991, this text-file was a classic example of the era. Of course, some commands will not produce the same results in most modern Linux shells but you are free to give them a try. I have removed the usual prompt with a dot for easier reading. Lines without a dot are the shell’s responses. Kind of cute if you consider all those were done without a mouse in the command line.
Read the rest of this entry »

Many a generation passed, and many a civilization. They survived, losing many along the way; observing the guests through the years. They wonder…

Image: CanS ©2008

Music and passion is a good mix but when it comes to passionate music, my vote goes to Russians (We are talking about classical music, now). Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov… These composers are symbols of unrestrained passion for me. They could not care less for rules and would venture anywhere their passion lead them.

Germans, like Bach and Beethoven on the other hand, maybe too much under the influence of their era, always seemed secretive, as if they were trying to disguise their feelings, not to show their true colors. They were victims of their adherence to the rules. Too methodical.

But no one beats Mozart when it comes to sweetness. Mozart allegedly composed his 11th Piano Sonata in A (K. 311) upon hearing the Mehter March, a tune played by the army band of Ottoman forces, and that is why it is called Turkish March. Think about it: you hear a song which is essentially played to demoralize opponents (Scottish pipes, drums, cymbals) and signals the soon arrival of one of the most feared armies of the time, and you come up with something as if the boy scouts are marching. That is Mozart, sweet, and devoid of passion. I always wondered what would have happened if, for instance Borodin had heard it instead of Mozart (referring to “A Night on a Bald Mountain”). My, that would really be hot!

Alas, no one but Mozart heard! I looked for a version that would at least spice it up, something that will make one (me) say, “I have to get out, I want…”, and found this. Add some Spanish fire, guitar, two players, and… Damn! It is still sweet. You be the judge:

Read the rest of this entry »