Tu vida en 65 minutos

Yesterday I watched Tu vida en 65′, a Catalan movie about three young men who mistankenly attend the funeral of a guy they thought was their friend, but isn’t, and some existential questions follow.

I have posted a comment of this movie (in Spanish) at FilmAffinity.com.

The movie is not bad, but it is no masterpiece. Often times “strange” movies are mistaken for “high quality” movies, and I think that this one slips towards the former, rather than the latter.

This is an unconventional movie, with some skillful use of techniques, shots and photography, but some other ingredients are lacking. The story is OK, but the script is irregular, and some things (e.g. the ending) are difficult to understand. There are very humorous moments, and also sad ones, but they just don’t cut it.

The acting is not academy award-winning, but is correct in general. However, I didn’t like the main actor (Javier Pereira), at all. I don’t know if it was the actor’s or the character’s fault, but he had a frightening wako face all through the film. He had the eyes too wide open, and the face of someone expecting something, like one is during the seconds between asking a girl for a date, and her answer… just Pereira has this face the whole 93 minutes.

I expected more from that movie.

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Symmetry change in Gaussian optimization

Ever have a Gaussian job die with this error?:

Omega: Change in point group or standard orientation.

It simply means that up to that point the molecule had a certain symmetry (for example, it was planar), and the last optimization step made it jump to another (usually lower) symmetry (for example, bend out of the plane). This is regarded as an error by Gaussian, and thus it aborts the job.

However, sometimes we are not interested in mantaining the symmetry, maybe even the high symmetry of the input was just a coincidence! One way or another, we might be interesting in having this job go on even if the symmetry changes. To do so, we just need to include the following IOp in the input file:

IOp(2/16=1)

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Domino

Yesterday I watched Domino, a movie loosely based on the life of a bounty-hunter woman, played by Keira Knightley.

Where can I start describing the movie? Take a look at the IMDb review I link above for a good description. I agree to some extent with that review, in that the movie is like a videoclip/reality show mixture, and the video and music setup is… different. I didn’t like the brave use of the photography they do in the movie, with unfocused shots and a camera movement akin to that of a monkey on crack, but I have to admit it is well done.

The IMDb review says the movie is about attitudes and roles, not about a plot… sorry man, but a movie is a plot. Otherwise it is a videoclip, a documentary or whatever. When I watch a movie, I want a story to be told and understood by the audience. In this regard, Domino fails misserably. There is a story (I think), but one is hard pressed to follow it, not because it is complex, but because it is not well told. I believe it is not the director’s intention, either.

To summarize, a movie I can not recommend. Could make a better use of the action scenes, develop the plot more, and shoot the video more “conventionally”. But then, it would not be Domino.

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Convert PS to PDF

I make extensive use of ps2pdf to convert PostScript files to PDF. As most GNU/Linux tools, this is a simple and incredibly useful one.

However, sometimes it might give problems. For example, I have sometime converted a PS to a PDF that Evince would open fine, but Acrobat Reader would not. I fixed this problem making use of the superb alternatives system present in Debian.

The first thing to know is that most of PS and PDF manipulation (including PS-to-PDF conversion) is done by calling a backend application called Ghostscript (GS). A quick search within the Debian packages shows that most (if not all) of the GS versions mentioned in the wikipedia page are available:

Bart[~/]: aptitude search ^gs-
i   gs-afpl                     - The AFPL Ghostscript PostScript interpreter
p   gs-aladdin                  - Transitional package
p   gs-cjk-resource             - Resource files for gs-cjk, ghostscript CJK-TrueType extension
i A gs-common                   - Common files for different Ghostscript releases
i A gs-esp                      - The Ghostscript PostScript interpreter - ESP version
p   gs-gpl                      - The GPL Ghostscript PostScript interpreter
v   gs-pdfencrypt               -

It turns out I was using gs-esp:

Bart[~/]: which gs
/usr/bin/gs
Bart[~/]: ls -l /usr/bin/gs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Jul  4 09:00 /usr/bin/gs -> /etc/alternatives/gs*
Bart[~/]: ls -l /etc/alternatives/gs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Jul 27 11:26 /etc/alternatives/gs -> /usr/bin/gs-esp

I remember having used different GS versions, and AFPL being the “best”, so I installed it and made the default gs point to it, with the Debian alternatives system (as root):

Bart:~# aptitude install gs-afpl
[...]
Bart:~# update-alternatives --config gs

There are 2 alternatives which provide `gs'.

  Selection    Alternative
  -----------------------------------------------
  * +   1        /usr/bin/gs-esp
        2        /usr/bin/gs-afpl

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:

There, I just pressed “2”, et voilà! Now my default GS is gs-afpl, and ps2pdf makes use of it. Any other GS version one could want to use, the procedure to change it would be the same.

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El buscador de mier… noticias

[Aviso antes de seguir los links de Telecinco que doy: las páginas de T5 están llenas de anuncios, pop-ups, javascript y basura varia. Yo no entraría en ellas ni borracho, sin Firefox con la extensión NoScript.]

Acabo de ver, zapeando, un fragmento de El buscador de noticias de la cadena española Telecinco. ¡Menuda cantidad de telebasura comprimida!

Vídeos “de primera”

Ya he visto algún fragmento en el pasado, y cada vez que tengo el dudoso placer de que ese programa pase delante de mis ojos siento arcadas. El principal argumento de semejante enjendro televisivo consiste en vídeos de burradas varias, enviados por televidentes. Llegan a dar hasta 600 euros, si la burrada que se ve en el vídeo es suficientemente salvaje. Un ejemplo típico de lo que emiten sería un toro corneando a un niño hasta matarlo, una avioneta acrobática estrellándose contra la muchedumbre que asiste a la exhibición, una mujer precipitándose al vacío desde la ventana de su décimo piso en llamas, etc…

Al ver esto se me presentan varias preguntas, que me intrigan e indignan a partes iguales. Una es: ¿cómo cojones justifican que eso sea considerado “de interés público”?. Se supone que el programa sirve para “informar”… ¿¡qué tiene de “informativo” eso!? Su único interés consiste en satisfacer el deseo de morbo de los degenerados televidentes, no proveerlos de alguna clase de conocimiento vital, que sin el programa no tendrían.

Lo cual me lleva a la seguna pregunta: ¿Somos los espectadores realmente tan burros y sádicos? He de admitir que ese tipo de vídeos (desde la época del infame “Impacto TV”) generan un morbo al que yo tampoco soy inmune. Todos reducimos la velocidad si llegamos a la altura de un accidente de coche, más que por las señales de los agentes, por el morbo de “ver algo”… Pero esto es un instinto bajo y ruín. Deberíamos “civilizarnos” e intentar superar estos malos sentimientos, no revolcarnos en su barro como cerdos.

Mi tercera pregunta es, ¿No será esto una actitud de criminal irresponsabilidad por parte de la cadena? Suena ridículo sugerir que alguien vaya a causar un accidente aéreo para sacarse 600 euros con el vídeo… pero, ¿es realmente ridículo?. Tomemos el show Jackass (otra pila de basura, cuyo valor reside en que el espectador se divertan viendo a idiotas haciéndose daño estúpidamente). También suena ridículo, pero hay múltiples casos de gente que se ha hecho daño, incluso matado, imitando dicha serie. Por ejemplo: un adolescente que atropella a un amigo en Cincinnati y lo graban en vídeo, o un gilipollas de 15 años que se prendió fuego tras rociar su camiseta con alcohol.

Que no se me malinterprete, no quiero decir que solamente el programa de televisión sea responsable. Esos chavales eran absolutos gilipollas. Pero el programa ayuda a generar la imágen de que “el riesgo es guay”, igual que “El buscador de noticias” hace apología de reirnos de la desgracia ajena, e incluso buscarla, si no provocarla.

Chicas del Este

Pero el verdadero detonante de esta entrada del blog ha sido el mega-reportaje de (ciertamente) gran interés: una sesión de imágenes (y creo que entrevistas, pero ¿a quién le importa?), de “Chicas del Este” ligeritas de ropa. Por lo visto la revista MAN ha hecho un fotoreportaje de las chicas “más guapas” o algo así, y ha llegado a la sesuda conclusión de que las más guapas son las de países del este de Europa. El ínclito programa de T5, obviamente, tenía que hacerse eco de semejante notición, así que ha puesto una ración de culos y pechos mal disimulados tras exiguas prendas de ropa interior.

Tampoco quiero que se me malinterprete: el erotismo me parece tan atractivo como a cualquiera, e incluso puedo “perdonar” el machismo ultramontano, el usar a las mujeres como objetos, o el poner esas imágenes en un horario inadecuado (por ser demasiado pronto, de 19:30 a 21h). Todo esto es discutible, pero pase.

Lo que veo inaceptable es el reclamo de chicas “del Este”, identificándolo con “objetos sexuales”, habiendo los problemas que hay de inmigración, matrimonios a cambio de nacionalidad, trata de blancas, explotación sexual etc., principalmente con mujéres del este de Europa. No se puede bombardear con semejante propaganda a la ciudadanía, y luego querer que esta esté concienciada del problema de prostitución de rumanas, o la compra de mujeres (poco menos que esclavas sexuales) rusas por Internet.

Y no, no es mezclar churras con merinas. El “reportaje” de T5, con cuatro cambios superficiales y un número de teléfono 806 atravesando la pantalla bien podría ser un anuncio de una agencia de “modelos” ucranianas. Todos somos conscientes de que una empresa puede pagar millones por 30 segundos de tiempo en TV, anunciando unas lentejas con un 10% más de uranio enriquecido, porque dichos anuncios animan a consumir, y salen rentables. Pero por otro lado, ¿insinuar tal relación entre la trata de blancas y un (pseudo)programa de TV es demasiado descabellado? No lo creo. No acuso a T5 de connivencia con mafias de trata de blancas (con un canal creado por Berlusconni, ¿quién sabe?), pero desde luego sí de irresponsabilidad.

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Line breaking in LaTeX

I guess every LaTeX user has found herself in a situation when LaTeX would refuse to split a word in a way the user knows correct (but LaTeX doesn’t), and it has caused some kind of trouble in the formatting of the paragraph (or not). It is worth mentioning that LaTeX has a very good knowledge of how to hyphenate English words, and anyway will almost never split a word incorrectly. When in doubt, it won’t split it at all.

When such a situation arises, the user has (as usual with LaTeX) more than one way to fix it. We can tell LaTeX explicitly where it can hyphenate the word. Using an example from Leslie Lamport’s 1985 “LaTeX: User’s Guide & Reference Manual”:

LaTeX does not know how to hyphenate gnomonly. We can write the word like this: gno\-mon\-ly, and then it will know that the word can be splitted at the places where \- appears (the backslash is not an error, it is required).

However, it is an ad hoc solution. We might find ourselves writing gnomonly quite often (well, not really that often), and having to write gno\-mon\-ly all the times gets old after a while (for me, the second time). To avoid this MS Word-ish solution, we can add the following statement in our preamble: \hyphenation{gno-mon-ly gno-mon}. From that moment on, LaTeX will know how to hyphenate gnomon and gnomonly. However, it will still be unable to hyphenate gnomonic (for that, you would have to add that word to a \hyphenation statement, too).

A related problem can happen when long words or expressions appear at the end of a line. It might be impossible to split the word in such a way that the line containing it is not longer than all the other lines in the same paragraph. In such a situation, LaTeX issues a warning of overfull \hbox. To understand the problem, let’s see how LaTeX manages the linebreaks.

The user (through the page settings and style, and all the stuff in the preamble etc.) tells LaTeX six things about lines in paragraphs: desired line width (page width less margins, if it’s a one-column text), desired inter-word space, and minimum and maximum acceptable values for both. When LaTeX writes a text, it does the following:

  1. Choose an interger number of words, so that they are equally spaced by the desired inter-word space, and make the line have the desired line width.
  2. If it is not possible, it tries the least obstrusive fix that gives the best result, from the following:
    • Increase/decrese the inter-word space (within the acceptable limits) untill an integer number of words makes a line of desired width.
    • Split the last word in the line, so that the non-integer number of words makes a line of desired width.
  3. If none of the above yields a perfect line-width, test if it is within the acceptable limits.
  4. If the width of the line is not acceptable, print it anyway, and cast a warning (overfull \hline if it was too wide, underfull \hline if it was too thin, whatever is less incorrect).

Usually ill-sized lines are very ugly on the eye, even for small deviations, and so it would be interesting to fix these errors. It is important to understand that LaTeX’s standards on what inter-word space range is acceptable (and what line width range), are quite strict, and it prefers to stick to them and produce a line that is too wide, giving a warning in the output. Usually this is sensible, but often times we would rather override its standards, and make the freaking line fit in the fixed-width paragraph.

To do so, we can enclose the paragraph between \begin{sloppypar} and \end{sloppypar}. For example:

\begin{sloppypar}
This text that I am writing is in fact astonishingly and utterly incommensurably acojonantemente chungo to fit correctly in a line.
\end{sloppypar}

The sloppypar environment is such that the text within it has a much wider acceptable inter-word space range. This gives it a bigger flexibility in the point 2 above, so that we’ll hardly ever fall to point 3.

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SATA HD plus IDE CD under 2.6 kernel

You can read in my troubleshooting page what problems I had with my CD unit in a computer with a SATA hard disk (under Linux kernel 2.6, not 2.4).

Basically it boils down to: if / is mounted on a SATA HD, the libata kernel module must be loaded at boot time. When libata is loaded, it “hijacks” not only the SATA interfaces, but also the IDE interfaces. When, later on, ide-generic and other IDE kernel modules are loaded, they don’t see the IDE ports, so the CDs/DVDs or other IDE HDs, are not found! Moreover, they can’t ever be found.

This can be overcome by loading some IDE modules before libata is loaded, as I outline in my “Troubleshooting” page. However, I recently discovered (with kernel 2.6.15), that an IDE module (precisely ide-generic would, conversely, hijack the SATA ports, making libata not find any SATA interface, and generating a kernel panic at boot time, because / could not be mounted.

Now, it seemed like I had no way to fix it, because if I loaded ide-generic first, I would get a kernel panic, whereas if I loaded libata first, I would have to make do without access to the CD. Luckily, I tried to find out how to load one of the modules without having it hijack the interface that it shouldn’t hijack. To do so, I used the modinfo utility:

Bart:~# modinfo libata
filename: /lib/modules/2.6.15-1-686-smp/kernel/drivers/scsi/libata.ko
author: Jeff Garzik
description: Library module for ATA devices
license: GPL
version: 1.20
vermagic: 2.6.15-1-686-smp SMP 686 gcc-4.0
depends: scsi_mod
srcversion: 54ECB7B28C0FB6028983484
parm: atapi_enabled:Enable discovery of ATAPI devices (0=off, 1=on) (int)

Then I tried to load libata (“load” means to put it in /etc/mkinitrd/modules), then running mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-1-686-smp.custom 2.6.15-1-686-smp, then rebooting) with the atapi_enabled=0 parameter, so that it wouldn’t hijack the IDE, and it failed again :^(

They say that if you can’t beat an enemy you should join her, and that I did: I tried libata atapi_enabled=1 with the intention of having libata handle the IDE device properly (if I couldn’t make it ignore it), and it worked! The CD is emulated as a SCSI device (a /dev/sga0 device was generated), but it works.

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My first use of a backup

Well, probably not first, and not a big “use” either, but still…

Yesterday I mistakenly deleted an important file, and hadn’t noticed until 10 minutes ago. I make daily backups, using rsync, as I mentioned some time ago, in this blog entry.

The “bad” part is that, since the error was made yesterday, the last backup (made last night) was “corrupted” (had the file missing). The good part is that I make incremental daily backups of the last seven days, then weekly of the last 4 weeks, then monthly of the last 6 months (son-father-grandfather backup). I just checked the backup of the day before yesterday, and there it was the deleted file!

You can make an idea of the efficency of incremental backups if I say that I keep 15 backups of my home/ directory (1 “current”, 7 daily, 4 weekly, 3 montly, because I started 3 months ago) in two different machines (appart from my own, of course), which would amount to about 43GB in each machine, were they all complete copies. Being as they are incremental, they actually fill up 5.9GB of disk space in either machine (more than 7 times less).

For an idea of what incremental backups are, read this link of my blog entry. Actually, I also started a Wikipedia entry for “incremental backup”. Maybe you can watch it before someone sensible deletes it (it was a redirection to the backup rotation scheme” entry, but I do not think they are the same thing). You could even add something to that entry, to make it more complete.

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Scary Movie 4

Yesterday I watched Scary Movie 4. Yes, it is not the kind of movie I’d choose in ideal conditions, but first there wasn’t really much to choose from, and second I went to the cinema with a friend who was less than willing to watch something like The road to Guantanamo, or The assassination of Richard Nixon. So Scary Movie 4 be it.

At this point, I guess everyone knows that the Scary Movie series satirizes the horror movies in general, making parodies of some selected ones (for example, for that one they chose War of the worlds, The Village, and Saw I and II). Not only they poke fun at some movies, but also to popular characters as the stupid scientology advocate Tom Cruise, and the incredibly inept and fanatic George Bush, elected head of the UN “for his genuine wit”, as they say, ironically, in the movie. These two persons were elected among the five dumbest persons in the USA last year by their fellow citizens, by the way.

As for the movie itself, it is funny, but not wicked funny. It has a couple of really good spoofs, but they try to make so many jokes, about so many movies/characters, that 75% of the jokes are a bit flat.

Not a bad movie, but definitely perfectible.

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Bob Dylan in Donostia

The times, they are a-changing…

Indeed they are! The Dylan I saw and heard in the concert he gave yesterday in the Zurriola beach was not the one who earned his glory, but one living of his glory.

His voice has always been singular, but yesterday it was just degradated. He never let the camera get closer than a certain point, and we were so far away from the scenario that the giant panels were our only hope of catching a sight of his face. We never did.

He also made the whole performance seated in front of the piano, didn’t even introduce himself in the beginning, and actually said nothing during all the concert, except near the end, when he gave a brief speech of which I understood nothing.

I am no fanatic of Dylan, but I do like his most famous songs (“Blowing in the wind”, “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “Knocking on Heaven’s door”, “Like a rolling stone”), but also some others that are not that famous (“The times, they are a-changing”, “Don’t think twice, it’s all right”, “It ain’t me, babe”, “Maggie’s farm”…). However, yesterday he sang such twisted versions of them, that no one managed to identify half of them. He began with, The times, they are a-changing and Maggie’s farm, if I recall correctly… and I identified them by the lyrics, not the music. When he played Mr. Tambourine Man, the song was 3/4 through by the time people would recognize it.

Before Dylan played, Mikel Laboa did. He is getting really old, and it shows. He sang quite correctly (faithfull to his particular style, that not everyone understands), but his mental and physical health are deteriorating. Anyway, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy his songs. Some more than other, but all in all it was fine.

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