“trivia”

Sergio (MdC), one of my best friends, went last sixmonth to Ciudad Juarez^WP for a paid internship he got through his school. He went there with a schoolmate that went for the same reason. This roommate, I learned a couple of days ago, turns out to have Gael Garcia^WP as a cousin. Gael Garcia dated (dates?) Natalie Portman^WP So You → Me → Sergio → Roommate → Gael Garcia → Natalie Portman makes for five degrees of separation. Which is a deep, marvelous fact about the world that you should ponder at length.

(Five degrees is only an upper bound^WP. You, dear reader, could be even closer to Natalie—if so, please detail in the comments. You could even be Natalie herself—if so, my cell number’s on the left. Thanks!)

There was a fire tonight in a warehouse a couple of blocks from the house. Everyone was pretty scared because it was just a stone-throw away but it seems to be contained now. The warehouse, on Mariano Otero Street, turned out to be from the uncle of one of my little sister’s best friends. Weird, that.

Anyway, I went as closed as I dared and took many a picture (until a drunkard started harassing me for taking his picture). Most turned out to be crap—my camera totally sucks at night-pictures—but I gathered the best in this photoset.

And here are two short videos. The first from my very street, the second from Mariano Otero.

I bought them New Year’s Eve at Vallarta^WP and they’re ugly and cliché, I know, but they’re uncannily comfy (almost like a second skin or a squishy crust) and I’m still amazed at how happy some silly Naussica-ish shoes can make me.

...a delicious dinner makes.

The tide brought with it a berry, which I can’t wait to hack, and the final book-batch^ELZR, which I can’t wait to read. Good times.

Back when I was a serious download freak, always looking for that little app that’d make it all right, Nonags was one of my favorite haunts. They listed only freeware and well-behaved, no-nags shareware. The design was accordingly simple and unobtrusive (though quirky). How weird then that now when trying to download something you’re taken to one of those infamous “Your-download-should-start-automatically” pages, full of Google ads that don’t stand a chance of being remotely relevant (relevant to what? the “invitation” to join Nonag plus?). Worst, the cheapest, lowliest possible kind of popup (party poker! your computer is at risk!) creeps underhandedly (that is, hides beneath your current window).

The black background of this website was dropped because I realized recently that some relatively old displays can be configured, by tweaking brightness and contrast, to better display black text on a white background (and it makes sense to do so, most text comes like that) but doing so would turn black elzr.com into garbled chicken scratches.

That was utterly unacceptable.

Two people had complained of such problems before but it was only until I experienced how bad and frustrating it was that I realized it really had to change.

I loved black^EE: it was distinctive, easier on the eyes, allowed for exploration of an entirely different color scheme, and it looked absolutely gorgeous (luscious) on my Dell Ultrasharp.

But I must think of who’s reading my website.

Blogger’s own (lousy) spellchecker says blog’s a spelling mistake (and helpfully suggests bloc, Bloch, blows, or bloke instead). Ironic, ain’t it?

Btw, haven’t you felt Blogger has been pretty much abandoned lately? It’s feeling untended and clunky lately, not that it ever was particularly elegant—it’s just that obvious errors aren’t being corrected, obvious improvements (webcraft advances by the minute) aren’t being implemented.

I can’t believe it has been almost 20 megaseconds since I started this blog (so long already?) and I’ve never talked about them:

Well, if you must know they’re simple cookies I got quite obsessed with some years ago. An acquired taste^WP, they’re way too dry for the uninitiated but just perfect with constant (cold) sips of Arizona Lemon Tea, Bonafont Levite, or milk. They come in several flavors but for chocolate all of them are to be avoided like the plague. They’re advertised like energy biscuits (“bizcochitos de poder” for the in-crowd) and I say the label’s fitting, though in my opinion not so much for any energizing properties they may or may not have, but because they can quickly, cheaply ($1), and somewhat healthily fill your stomach and let you go on with your late night spree (remember Bere?).

A small bakery from my city^WP, La Integral, makes them, but I’ve had reports they now sell them (in your nearest OXXO) as far as Monterrey^WP (near the US border) and I like to think I had a tiny wee part in it. ;)

(I’m only linking to the products’ websites out of some sense of customer loyalty, the pages themselves are as lousy as you can get—really, truly, blatantly hideous.)

Por diversos avatares del destino tuve hoy que imprimir incontables resmas^RAE a doble cara y me sorprendio mucho que fuera una extraña odisea. Desesperado acudi a la red y lo unico que encontre digno de destacarse es este articulo de HP España confuso, rollero, y comercialoide (“Impresión a doble cara en Microsoft Word 2000, por los árboles, por su espalda, por su dinero”). Para colmo, ni un pinche diagramilla perdido. Despues de muchas iteraciones y mucha hoja perdida, le haye el feeling a esto, asi que aqui va, por todo aquel que venga: