weekend-in-florence
Mon Feb 22 00:04:18 2010
I just visited Florence, a city I really like, for a third time. Here are some recommendations for my friends in Zurich, should they plan a similar trip:
- Buy your train tickets from SBB. I had to pay 278 CHF for a round-trip ticket going through Milan, which takes short of 6 hours. I left early on Friday to arrive in time for lunch and came back on Sunday's late afternoon, to arrive late in the evening.
- For landmarks, I'd recommend not missing the following, in order of importance:
- Duomo and it's Battistero. I've heard that the climb to the tower is well worth it, but I haven't done it myself. I don't find the church that impressive on the inside, but I find it extremely beautiful on the outside.
- Ponte Vecchio. I took a photo of it.
- Basilica di Santa Croce.
- Piazza della Signoria.
- Piazza della Repubblica, on which, by the way, the Edison bookstore —that, with a relatively good offer of books in English in the top-most floor, I find rather charming— is located.
- Supposedly, the Piazzale Michelangelo, has a very nice view of the city. I haven't been there.
- Giardino di Boboli, a large park relatively close to the city center, with nice views of the city.
- I don't have much recommendations in the way of restaurants. We had very good pizzas in Yellow and an OK meal (good albeit pricey) in Paszkowski. The Ora D'Aria restaurant seems potentially good, but you'll probably need a reservation (which we didn't have). Don't forget to have a good ice cream.
- For a hotel, I recommend the Gran Duomo, which I think is well worth its price. The service is excellent, the rooms spacious and the building in perfect shape. If you're considering a room with a view over the Duomo, it won't disappoint you: it looks exactly as in the photos on their website. You can have breakfast in your room right across the street from the Duomo or, as we did, buy a bottle of wine, some hams, cheeses, bread and olives and enjoy a nice dinner.
- In addition to the many gelaterias, Florence seems to have a lot of leather and relatively good stationery shops. You may want to buy stationery or bags here, if you're into that.
- Make reservations for the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Galleria dell'Accademia in their official site. There seem to be many other websites that seem to sell the reservations for a slightly higher price. In summer, having a reservation may save you from having to make long queues (this wasn't an issue when I visited in February, but it certainly was when I visited in both August and October).
- In the Galleria degli Uffizi you'll see very beautiful Renaissance works by painters such as Botticelli, Raffaello and Lippi, for which I'd encourage you to reserve at least 2 hours, possibly 3. You may have a light lunch at the museum's café, overlooking the rooftops.
- In the Galleria dell'Accademia you'll watch mainly Michelangelo's David and his unfinished sculptures. There are also a lot of religious paintings (and a collection of religious art from Russia) and a small yet interesting museum of musical instruments. I find the Uffizi museum a lot more significant than this one, but the David is impressive.
- There's also the potentially interesting Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, telling the history of the construction of the Duomo. You can just buy the tickets for that one on site.
- If your time allows, you'll probably want to visit one of the nearby cities in the Tuscany. I've been to San Gimignano for a day and to Siena for three. I found Siena significantly more charming, so I'd generally recommend that one. Whichever you pick, you'll probably need at least one full day. Another option, which I haven't taken, would be Pisa.
Discussion (2)cain
Tue Feb 16 10:35:12 2010
Lucifer sabía bien lo que hacía cuando se rebeló contra dios.
Leí el Caín de Saramago en el avión de Zürich a Niza y me gustó mucho.
Me parece que el libro, —bastante entretenido, interesante, breve y de fácil lectura, que si no fuera así un proyecto de estos podría resultar aburridísimo—, hace un muy buen trabajo en señalar varias de las contradicciones morales de la Biblia. Andaba yo en estos días tratando de ser un poco más tolerante con las payasadas de personas que le rinden culto al dios corrupto y de dobles morales que la Biblia, —a la que Saramago de entrada se refiere como el “Libro de los disparates”—, describe, pero haber leido este libro no me ha ayudado: me ha hecho muy difícil ignorar el absurdo de esta clase de creencias y la gran capacidad de ver sólo lo que se quiere ver y no ver lo que no conviene que se requiere para hacer caso omiso de ellas y adorar al dios que pintan.
Algunas de las historias en las que repara, como la de Abraham e Isaac (que, increiblemente, alguien en algún momento trató de justificarme con el hecho de que un ángel detuvo la mano paterna), siempre me han repugnado mucho, pero había otras que no conocía muy bien, —como la ridícula historia del libro Job, en la que Dios autoriza a Satanás para matar todos los hijos de Job, y causarle muchas otras desgracias, simplemente para mostrarle, a Satanás, la fidelidad de Job—, o en los que no había reparado en ciertos detalles, —como lo que sucede al regreso del monte Sinaí de Moisés con las tablas de los mandamientos, cuando se encuentra con la adoración del “dios falso”, del becerro de oro:
32.25 Y viendo Moisés que el pueblo estaba desenfrenado, porque Aarón lo había permitido, para vergüenza entre sus enemigos,
32:26 se puso Moisés a la puerta del campamento, y dijo: ¿Quién está por Jehová? Júntese conmigo. Y se juntaron con él todos los hijos de Leví.
32:27 Y él les dijo: Así ha dicho Jehová, el Dios de Israel: Poned cada uno su espada sobre su muslo; pasad y volved de puerta a puerta por el campamento, y matad cada uno a su hermano, y a su amigo, y a su pariente.
32:28 Y los hijos de Leví lo hicieron conforme al dicho de Moisés; y cayeron del pueblo en aquel día como tres mil hombres.
— Biblia, Éxodo
Tres mil hombres muertos sólo por adorar otro dios, hay que ser muy hijueputas. Cuesta creer que haya en la tierra tantas personas capaces de adorar, aún hoy, un dios de semejante calaña y de describirme la Biblia como un libro “lleno de sabiduría”.
En fin, como dije al comienzo, Caín me gustó bastante: es agradable seguir la historia que Saramago le compone a Caín e interesante recorrer, a cierta distancia, los disparates que la Biblia propone.
Discussion (18)no-estar-solo
Wed Feb 3 08:50:54 2010
Al amor lo encontré hace unos años poco después de que dejara de llover en una tarde de primavera paseando entre los árboles a la orilla de un río cuando menos lo esperaba.
Cuando era chiquito mi familia iba a la playa cada año, en enero. A mi me sentaban en la arena a jugar cerca del mar. Las olas iban y venían, iban y venían, estrepitosas e incansables, ocasionalmente empapándome las piernas e inundando los pozos de mis castillos de arena.
Cuando era chiquito solía dormir la siesta con mi cabecita recostada en el pecho de mi papá. Había muchos sonidos, —el palpitar de su corazón, el tic tac del reloj en su muñeca y los infrecuentes gemidos de su estómago—, pero el que más recuerdo era el ruido incansable de su respiración.
Mi papá era un gigante enorme. Su pecho se elevaba y se hundía lentamente, se elevaba y se hundía, y mi cabecita se movía de arriba abajo con cada exhalación. Escuchando los silbidos del aire al entrar en su cuerpo y los silbidos del aire al salir yo cerraba los ojos y evocaba el mar. Trataba con frecuencia de respirar al unísono con él, pero me era difícil, mis pulmones entonces pequeño remedo de los suyos, y pronto me cansaba y desistía.
Mi papá, mucho tiempo después, me dijo que uno de los momentos más felices de su vida fue cuando durmió por primera vez conmigo, poco después de mi nacimiento, en su pecho.
Ahora que soy adulto, cuando me despierto en las noches, escucho al amor respirar a mi lado. En la oscuridad su respiración es el viento que se enredaba en las ramas húmedas cuando la conocí. No estar solo, he notado, es tener a alguien que al respirar te acaricie. Ahora, cuando me despierto, intento respirar al unísono con ella, pero mis pulmones son demasiado grandes y me cuesta respirar tan rápido.
visual-explanations
Thu Jan 21 23:36:07 2010
I read the second Tufte book I bought, Visual Explanations. I previously wrote my thoughts on The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
It's second chapter, Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions, is probably the best. It illustrates how having good displays of evidence can be vital for making good decisions and thinking about problems, with two particular case studies:
- the cholera epidemic in London in 1854, where John Snow performed and outstanding job in finding the source of the disease, and
- the failed launch of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which exploded shortly after launch because the temperatures in the day it was launched were outside of the normal operating parameters of some of its parts.
While the analysis of both cases is interesting and well researched, it didn't really convince me. It's overly simplistic to conclude that Snow succeeded and the NASA officials failed simply because of the use or lack of use of good graphs, rather than because of solic scientific thinking. I think the author is somewhat aware of that, but that doesn't stop him from implicitly attributing success and failure to the use of “good” graphs.
I also was annoyed to see the author criticising Feynman's presentation —it describes it as “deeply flawed”— totally missing its point, but I suppose this is not very important.
Then we find a chapter coauthored with a magician, going over diagrams of books describing magical tricks. While at first this may seem an interesting idea, I found it also relatively unconvincing. I see little point to this, which I found pompous rather than rigorous.
There are other chapters, all unremarkable. The last one, Visual Confections, is specially bad, just a potpourri of different drawings from different centuries —from the beginning of the XVII century to some computer screens— with some almost-arbitrary positive or negative criticism with very little point or underlying structure.
Even though the book is well written and the effort that the author put in making the form of the book friendly (such as repeating a drawing so you won't have to go back to the previous page to see it again) does show, I struggled to finish it. In the end, I think it:
- lacks an underlying structure or theory, being just a random assortment of images and comments which, while compelling at first, quickly becomes boring, and
- just plain isn't very convincing.
I wouldn't recommend it.
Menaggio, Italy
Thu Jan 21 23:02:40 2010
Discussionthe-visual-display-of-quantitative-information
Sun Jan 10 20:28:24 2010
I've just finished reading The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Tufte.
Roughly half of the book is dedicated to an interesting analysis of the origins and history of charts. This includes extensive surveys of charts from widely different (in epoqué, scope, topic) publications, to display examples of both good and bad charts.
The second half is devoted to a theory —a small set of guiding principles— on how to produce useful graphs to explain data. The text continues to show interesting examples and revisits a few common types of graphs to suggest some generic improvements that can be applied to a large number of graphs.
Before I started reading the book, I was expecting it would contain a complete and in-depth catalogue of interesting techniques for displaying different types of data, but the theory falls way short of that. The principles are as basic as “Above all else, show the data”, “Erase non-data-ink” or “Revise and edit”. I don't have anything against simple principles, but these are far more generic and obvious, less concrete, than what I was expecting.
All in all, it's a relatively “light” book, that you'll probably read in just a few hours. It is well written and pleasant to read. You'll probably get a few interesting ideas out of it. Not a bad book, but not specially good either.
feliz-navidad
Fri Dec 25 00:30:53 2009
En el edificio en el que me estoy quedando en Bogotá están limpiando todas las ventanas y paredes de ladrillo por afuera. Esta mañana me despertó el ruido que hacían dos manes al otro lado del vidrio al limpiarlo. Estaban conversando animadamente. Los edificios en Bogotá no bloquean nada el ruido así que no sólo se escuchaba todo el ruido que hacían con sus manos, trabajando, sino también todo lo que decían. Ahí colgados de unas cuerdas en un cuarto piso estaban hablando de el señor y la fé y los milagros que dios les ha hecho, de la vez que a uno se le jodió la mano en un accidente, que tenía que ir al hospital, pero que en lugar de eso se puso a rezar y a rezar y su mano sanó, su mamá no podía creer, quedó super sorprendidisima, al ver como se le había mejorado la mano. Mientras escribo esto ahí siguen, trabajando al otro lado de la cortina, y no me dejan dormir, malditos.
¡Feliz navidad!
chasm-city
Thu Dec 24 01:23:13 2009
After reading The Prefect, I figured I'd follow up on Reynolds's works with Chasm City, which I also borrowed from Christoph. I read it mostly in Colombia and on the airplane from Paris. I liked it a great deal.
It's hard to describe why I liked without giving away parts of the plot, so I'll refrain from mentioning some of the main aspects. I'll simply say that I thought it was very well executed. It has several stories going on in parallel and it's very well written. I found it hard to put it down before I finished it —all 694 pages of it— as I was very eager to find out what the conclusion of the stories was. I suppose I can say that one important topic is social class differences in a futuristic society with highly evolved technology and science in a post-cataclysm setting, the ways that different social groups relate with different technologies.
I recommend it highly, I thought it was an excellent book.
user-interface-design-for-programmers
Tue Dec 22 21:28:01 2009
Sometimes Google buys books for its employees, which we can take for free. I was checking the available options with Codrin when I found User Interface Design for Programmers. As I find the topic interesting, I figured I'd give it a read. Only back in the elevator, heading back to my cubicle, when it was too late to give it back, did I realize that the book was written by Joel Spolsky. I've read Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity (yes, that's the title of a book, and I guess Joel and his groupies think it makes a cool and hip title) and many articles by him and I have mixed feelings about him. The UI book sat ignored on my desk at work for months. I figured I'd take it with me on my trip to Colombia and maybe check it out here. I just finished reading it.
The book is entertaining and has some funny anecdotes. It does have some interesting ideas and it did help me come up with some ideas for how to improve some of my programs. I almost liked it.
However, somewhat similarly to Time Management for System Administrators, I get the feeling that the actual contents of the book could be presented in just a brief article. It also seems to be full of over generalizations and in some parts I got the feeling that Spolsky was just inventing fancy sounding rules that are just bullshit.
I'll give you an example. The book has a 6-pages chapter around a ridiculous set of “days are seconds, months are minutes, seconds are hours” rules. The chapter includes a summary of a science fiction novel and a fictional company that designs devices to grill marshmallows in the workplace. The entire chapter, however, contains no actual contents other than these:
- Designing aspects of a program that a user will only experience for a few seconds —such as a dialog— usually takes days of work. During the design, don't make the interface overly complicated, as the user only has seconds to use it.
- It typically takes months to produce a new software package; users, however, only have a few minutes to familiarize themselves with the concepts involved. Therefore, make them as simple as possible. Don't add complications, but remove them.
- When users have to wait for something for more than a second or two without doing anything, they get bored. They will complain that it takes “hours” to get something done. To ameliorate this:
- respond immediately to user's requests, giving feedback that acknowledges that their action has been received and will be executed,
- break up long operations and start executing them as soon as possible, while the user is doing other things with the interface, to minimize the longest wait, and
- when collecting user input, you can collect some input, make the user wait a minute, then collect some more input and then make the user wait again, and so on, but you should, instead, collect all the input at once and then tell the user to go have a coffee while the long operation is executed.
To me the first two aspects are just consequences of the same principle, which I'd formulate somewhere along the lines of “when designing a user interface, consider the amount of time that the user will typically spend on it familizaring itself with the concepts required to use it”, and the third principle is something else entirely.
The book is entertaining, to be sure —the stories are well told and mildly funny— and it does contain some interesting tips, but I'm fed of tech writers who think that in order to engage their audience they need to describe “That Really Cool but Top Secret B2A Company”, a fictional corporation founded by “Eeny the Elephant”, or summarizing Robert A. Heinlein's Time for the Stars. I do not want to read a book on UI design to be entertained; I want to read it to think about UI design, to talk about UI design. Conversely, if I want to be entertained, I'll go and read a science fiction novel, not Joel's hogwash.
All in all, it does contain some useful tips and, as I said, it did give me some ideas that I'll probably start applying, so if you don't mind the mindless chatter, go ahead and give it a read. Otherwise, I'd recommend you read The Prefect or Chasm City instead.
the-prefect
Mon Dec 21 17:33:30 2009
I read The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds mostly while I was in Kraków. Christoph lend it to me 8 months before I read it, as we were preparing for our trip to Colombia in April of 2009, but I hadn't found an excuse to read it.
It explores the topic of computer-based forms of consciense following human death, showing them as a form of artificial intelligence. Do simulations of brain activity of deceased persons earn the same rights previously granted to the biological machines that were executing them? They don't in this universe, though there is a bit of debate. It also explores ideas about a global and thin form of democracy in highly developed societies and depravations that it may lead to.
I found it interesting and very entertaining. The story-telling is very good, very enthralling. I recommend it.
Last update: 2008-01-27 (Rev 13448)