The last of my sci-fi tales! This story is not directly related to the previous ones, although there are some links, as always. Anyway, it can be read separately, but I mean it to be a closing chapter.

I am also readying an Epilogue that will go in a single file with the rest of the stories, in case you want to get it printed on paper or something. I'll let you know when it's ready.

Surrealitales

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I finished writing another Surrealitale. The stories are coming to an end, so this story is quite dependent on the previous ones. So I recommend you read the previous chapters before reading this one

Anyway, I've tried, as always, to make to story self-enclosed, but because there are many recurrent characters this time, I didn't spent much time in explaining their backgrounds.

I hope you enjoy it! Please send me your comments

Surrealitales

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I finished reading another great book today, Children of Gabalawi. The late Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz wrote this book in 1959, and it seems it's still banned by Islam… The book is very well written, with a dynamic style, and the allegories it contains could be considered as provoking for the time as "South Park" would be today. It is, of course, not so grotesque for today's standards ;) The synopsis from Wikipedia: "The story recreates the tied history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), allegorised against the setting of an imaginary 19th century Cairene neighborhood. Gabalawi being an allegory for religion in general, the first four sections retell, in succession, the stories of: Adam (Adham أدهم) and how he was favored by Gabalawi over the latter's other sons, including Satan/Iblis (Idris إدريس); Moses (Gabal جبل); Jesus (Rifa'a رفاعة); and Muhammad (Qasim قاسم). Families of each son settle in different parts of the alley, symbolising Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The protagonist of the book's fifth section is Arafa (عرفة), who symbolises modern science and, significantly, comes after all prophets, while all of their followers claim Arafa as one of their own."

Readings

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I finished writing another "tale". Actually, I wrote it some time ago but I thought it was a bit lame and I didn't feel like transcribing it to the computer... Anyway, better lame than nothing, so here it is:

Surrealitales

Tell me what you think of it!

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I've created a page with a list of some stuff I've made, like small games or applications. It's more like a historical record, kind of fun to remember. The list is not exhaustive, but I'll try to find more stuff in old drawers and keep it updated.

Here is the list: Works.

P.S. the style switcher is not working yet on Safari 5.1. It seems is a bug of Webkit, so I think I'm gonna just wait until they fix it (apparently it is already fixed, but it's not yet in Safari).

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I added a new style to this web page. You can switch between the old and the new style by clicking on the horizontal bars below the logo. The web will remember your preference each time you log in.

Unfortunately, it seems that the style switcher script stopped working in the newest versions of Safari. At least it doesn't work in Safari 5.1.1 It still works on Firefox though. I haven't checked any other browsers. I'll check it when I have some more spare time and I'll try to fix the problem with Safari.... arrr... too many browsers to maintain...

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I had no idea what this book was about. I just knew it was from a Basque author, and that it was originally written in Basque. I have no idea of Basque so I read the Spanish version, of course. The book has also English and Japanese translations. The title means "The ones from Obaba" in Basque, and it's a collection of short stories around an imaginary Basque town called "Obaba". The first 100 pages are short stories related to kids, and I think they are the best of the book. The later were loosely related one to another, but I would have preferred they were not, because this connection makes you expect more than what you get in the end.

Anyway, I recommend this book to everyone

Readings

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I just realized the RSS feed was broken due to a bug on the parsing of the blog.... orz... I'll try to fix the bug ASAP.
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It's been a while since I last read a novel. And it seems I picked to right one to restart!
This is really a page-turner! I couldn't stop reading the book! I finished it in a couple of days. I think it's far better his next book, "Digital fortress". Perhaps it's because I was more familiar with the topic in "Digital fortress" and it seemed absurd… The only bad thing of the book is that the end is "too much"… In this sense, is similar to "Digital Fortress" and "Da Vinci's Code", where a very good guy is suddenly a very bad guy. It turns out to be very predictable, plus the negative effect that making the character that "very bad" suddenly gives an almost comical turn to the story… On a side note, it's been years since I last read a novel in Spanish. The translation was quite good, although the last joke about "mass" I couldn't get it without mentally translating it to English…
Readings
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I finished reading Ariely's books on Irrationality. Readings
It's interesting to find out how many of our intuitions are wrong. However, once you read about how our mind works, it makes perfect sense. It seems even obvious. That's why I'm tempted to read next "Everything is obvious... once you know the answer".
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