Yes­ter­day I was spammed by a new age por­tal called Por­talmi­co. The name is strange, since in span­ish (their lan­guage) it means "Mon­key Por­tal", but that the heck, af­ter adding me to the Face­book group they want­ed me to join, post­ing they are spam­mer­s, then leav­ing, I start­ed to think...

What ex­act­ly both­ers me about these guys? And de­cid­ed to en­ter their por­tal and see what was await­ing me be­hind the gates.

Ap­par­ent­ly these guys are heav­i­ly in­to 2012. How­ev­er, they don't ex­pect the end of the world, but a "cos­mic awak­en­ing" and they call this event "im­por­tant to the whole galaxy". This seems to be caused be­cause of a pe­cu­liar­i­ty of the mayan cal­en­dar. Whoa. And I thought the guys at Stop, unix time! were over­do­ing it.

One would be tempt­ed to ask, if mayans were so awe­some, how come their civ­i­liza­tion was such a mess? [1]

But that's not it. That's not what both­ers me. Brain­less ado­ra­tion of poor peo­ple who did their best to live their lives 600 years ago is not such a ter­ri­ble thing, (even if it is not the smartest thing ev­er). What both­ers me is the creduli­ty.

Let's see...

• Kar­­ma?

• Tra­di­­tion­al Reik­i?

• An­gel­s?

• Clas­sic Pla­­ton­is­m? [2]

• At­lan­tis? Lemuri­a? [3]

• Rein­­car­­na­­tion? [4]

• A kid that spoke at 8 mon­th­s, and psy­­chol­o­gist­s(!?) say he was try­ing to read peo­­ple's auras?

You will be hard pressed to find a post there that's scored less than 8 in a 1/10 scale, so al­most ev­ery­one seems to agree that all these things ex­ist/ are true.

In fac­t, the on­ly thing that came to mind that noone there seems to be­lieve in is hid­den mes­sages in the Torah and big­foot, but maybe I just did­n't look cor­rect­ly.

So, I think I now know what both­ers me. The lack of taste. If you be­lieve ev­ery­thing, you be­lieve noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar. If you ac­cept ev­ery­thing, you are not look­ing for truth. If you hold all things equal, noth­ing is spe­cial.

I find the per­spec­tive of a world where ev­ery­thing can be true, ev­ery­thing has the same val­ue, ev­ery­thing is the same... des­per­ate.

These peo­ple sound des­per­ate. They sound like they are adrift at sea and try to hold to any pass­ing twig, be it a crys­tal, a drowned con­ti­nen­t, or a char­la­tan.

Dear fel­lows at por­talmi­co: the on­ly thing that make life worth liv­ing is peo­ple. Yes, peo­ple. Not god, not mayan prophe­cies, not an­gel­s. Peo­ple.

Go out, meet some­one, have a nice life. What hap­pens af­ter that, if it is to hap­pen at al­l, will do so any­way. Be good to peo­ple, and trust that god (if he ex­ist­s) is worth any­thing and will wel­come you to his best con­do, be­cause if he does­n't... well, he was not re­al­ly worth ador­ing any­way.

So, I think I come out of this div­ing in­to non­sense with a clear­er, if a bit sad­der mind. Yes, they are spam­mer­s. Yes, they be­lieve child­ish fan­tasies. I hope they get bet­ter.

I am fi­nal­ly pub­lish­ing my Lati­noWare 2008 tu­to­ri­al, in re­vised and ex­pand­ed for­m. It will prob­a­bly be a 10-­part se­ries, and here is ses­sion 4.

This ses­sion in­tro­duces "Ac­tion­s", which means we can now do menus and tool­bars.

See al­so:

• ses­­sion 1.

• ses­­sion 2.

• ses­­sion 3.

Yes, the blog was look­ing old and ug­ly. So I changed it. Hope you like the new style, it's based on plain­txtBlog, from http://de­mo.­plain­tx­t.org/

Not ev­ery­thing is adapt­ed yet, but most places should look much bet­ter now.

The li­cens­ing of all orig­i­nal con­tent has been changed to a Cre­ative Com­mons li­cense (non-­com­mer­cial, share-a­like, see the badge at the left­).

Al­so, few­er ad­s, and a new Do­nate but­ton I strong­ly en­cour­age you to use ;-).

Oh, and I will try my best to al­so post the span­ish trans­la­tions of, at least, the post­s. The code and long sto­ries will prob­a­bly stay en­glish-on­ly for a while.

I am fi­nal­ly pub­lish­ing my Lati­noWare 2008 tu­to­ri­al, in re­vised and ex­pand­ed for­m. It will prob­a­bly be a 10-­part se­ries, and here is ses­sion 3.

See al­so:

• ses­­sion 1.

• ses­­sion 2.

I am not sure if this is good or bad:

On one hand, I have more sub­scribers than ev­er, even con­sid­er­ing when this blog was in plan­etkde (BTW: maybe I should add my pyqt feed there again? Nah, I don't qual­i­fy as "ac­tive KDE con­trib­u­tor")

The dip in the last three monts was be­cause I just post­ed noth­ing, and now I am post­ing again, it's do­ing well.

On the oth­er hand, I am at 50-­some sub­scriber­s, which is a bit pa­thet­ic for a blog that has ex­ist­ed for over 9 years ;-)

On the grip­ping hand (Lar­ry Niv­en FTW!) I am hav­ing more fun with the blog than I had in quite a while, so I would post even if noone read it.

And in case you are won­der­ing what that peak of over 6000 reach (the av­er­age is un­der 100!) it's this. That post had over 12000 vis­i­tors. My sec­ond most pop­u­lar sto­ry had on­ly 3800.

Here's the most pop­u­lar con­tent in the last 2 years or so, se­lect­ed from 783 posts (784 with this one) and 47 longer sto­ries:

1. 12228 vis­i­­tors: Win­­dows: My eX­Pe­ri­ence

   So I wan­t­ed to see what win­­dows looked like. Don't wor­ry, I feel bet­ter now.

2. 3797 vis­i­­tors: Mak­ing Lin­ux sys­tems that don't suck. Part II

   A rant on cron and at. I nev­er imag­ined this would be num­ber 2.

3. 2968 vis­i­­tors: BOP: Ball Ori­en­t­ed pro­­gram­ming

   I am rather proud of this one: a pyqt-based graph­i­­cal, an­i­­mat­ed in­­ter­preter for FLIP, a lan­guage based on balls :-)

4. 2888 vis­i­­tors: Good News: Lin­ux gives life to old hard­ware. Bad News: Maybe in some cas­es it should­n't.

   Sil­­ly, yes, but a cool pic­­ture :-)

5. 1870 vis­i­­tors: Py­­Cel­l­s: The Python Spread­­Sheet re­­dux

   My sec­ond or third at­tempt at writ­ing a toy spread­­sheet us­ing python. I have been at it for about 5 years, ap­­par­en­t­­ly.

   This is pop­u­lar... even when the code it de­scribes is based on a com­­plete­­ly bro­ken li­brary!

6. 1841 vis­i­­tors: Squid au­then­ti­­ca­­tion via POP or IMAP

   This was al­ready about 4 years old when I start­ed coun­t­ing, so I have no idea how many vis­i­­tors it re­al­­ly had. It is a handy scrip­t, I still use it some­­times!

7. 1813 vis­i­­tors: The Lin­ux Boot­ing Process Un­veiled

   I re­al­­ly ex­pec­t­ed this one to be much high­­er. It's even linked from wikipedi­a! Ev­ery day it has 2 or 3 hit­s. Then again, the first 3 years are not be­ing coun­t­ed ;-)

8. 1706 vis­i­­tors: Queue Man­age­­ment for Qmail

   While the tool it in­­tro­­duces is lame nowa­­days, the ideas are sound, and it ex­­plains a re­al prob­lem.

9. 1548 vis­i­­tors: Cus­­tom wid­gets us­ing PyQt

   Very ob­­so­lete, noone should read that.

10. 1505 vis­i­­tors: How to make your own dis­­tro in 3 not-­­so sim­­ple steps

    Oh, this one. It is wrong. It gives bad ad­vice. Yet noone seems to no­tice ;-) Not my best idea, not my best ef­­fort, still get email about it ev­ery month or so.