Settling down

Oh, the joy of intercontinental relocation.

Today I visited my work place, the European Software Institute, for the first time. It is located in the Zamudio Technology Park, a large garden-like campus that hosts a variery of technological companies and research centres. Zamudio itself is a very small village, with an old church, a pharmacy, a few bars and a video rental shop. The essentials, so to speak. I met my boss and was introduced to a few people, whose names and faces I have already forgotten. I will start tomorrow again.

The weather is amazing. Since we arrived, the average temperature during the day is 5 degrees Celsius, and it rains non-stop. I had almost forgotten the crisp touch of the cold in my face and the soothing sound of rain throughout my whole day and night. As I type this in the middle of rural Basque Country, rain rolls down my window, its intensity sometimes growing and sometimes almost disappearing.

From our window

This is the view from our window here at Ibarrondo Etxea in Larrauri.

View from Window

It was noon and was raining heavily.

Swearing in the lift and other welcome tidbits

We arrived in Bilbao yesterday, after too many hours of flight. Each time I do intercontinental travel I realise (again and again) that economy class is an insult to human rights. Oh well.

The first word that a Basque person said to us after we arrived was “ostia”, which roughly translates as “fuck”. Imagine Isabel and me loaded with two huge suitcases, a trolley and three handbags trying to find our way out of the airport terminal. We catch the lift to the street level and a guy walks into the lift with us. We push our buttons and, in the few seconds that the trip lasts, the guy makes eye contact and says “ostia” with a smirk, surely discharging his frustration at Iberia after a London-Bilbao flight with no free food. Picturesque welcome.

An empty house

The removalists came and went. They yelled at us and promised me that I would never get a job as a volume estimator. They took 9.5 cubic metres of heart and soul with them and left with a frown. I guess they share the vertigo.

I am typing away now in the middle of an empty house, like the guy in the movie who is dumped by his wife and comes home to realise that she has taken everything. Isabel is here (they didn’t put her in one of the 0.120 cu.m. cartons) so this is not as bad. But still feels awkward. I can hear the echo of my typing, and we have to take turns to drink lemon, lime & bitters from the only cup in the house.

I can almost imagine what it must be like living with only a handful of earthly possessions. Not quite.

We are off tomorrow evening. Until then, anorexic living for us. Nunca peor.

You want to know where?

This is where the ESI is in Zamudio (Bizkaia, Spain). You will need Google Earth installed on your computer in order to see what I mean. Just download the location file and load it into Google Earth by clicking File, Open.

Does it work?

I have left the UTS

After three and a half years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Information Technology of the University of Technology, Sydney, I have resigned. Many thanks to all the great people there who have made my experience at the UTS so fulfilling, and especially to Brian Henderson-Sellers. My web site at the UTS is still there, but it is not kept up to date anymore. Also, my UTS email will stop working soon.

I will be joining the European Software Institute in Zamudio (Bizkaia, Spain) on the 1st of December, as a Research Project Leader. My email there is cesar.gonzalez@esi.es.

Good luck to me!

Tabbouleh in Sydney and Un Canto a Galicia

The other day Isabel and I got a taxi from Parramatta to Lavender Bay. After a few minutes the cabbie started talking to us and, since I had given my name for the taxi booking, he introduced himself and asked about Isabel’s name. He soon guessed we were Spanish. Then Isabel asked him where he was from, and he said he was from Tabbouleh. Which means Lebanon, of course. Since we were Spaniards in Sydney, quite a long way from home, he offered to play some Spanish music. After fumbling with various CDs he inserted one in the CD player and voilà, the silky voice of Julio Iglesias, perhaps a bit too loud, invades the taxi. How odd.

The chitchat continued between songs and eventually Mr Tabbouleh asks what part of Spain we are from, to which we reply “Galicia”. He throws his arms around and yells “Galicia, Galicia, yes, listen to this”. And he fumbles again with the CDs and inserts a new one. Again, Julio Iglesias voice assails the night, this time with “Un Canto a Galicia”, which is part in Galician and part in Spanish, perhaps a tribute from Julio Iglesias to his Galician origins.

Mr Tabbouleh sang along until we reached North Sydney, making up most of the lyrics and asking about a few words. He was surprised to discover that “Un Canto a Galicia” is a sad song. Oh well. Surreal.

No evolution in Kansas

BBC news and The Sydney Morning Herald report that

Public schools in the US state of Kansas are to be given new science standards that cast doubt on evolution.

It seems that teachers have been asked to tell students that Darwinian evolution is an unproven hypothesis and that the universe is too complex as to have been created without the intervention of a superior intelligence. Kansas is the fifth state in the USA to make this decision.

Not only that; it also seems that they have extended the definition of “science” to include supernatural explanations of some phenomena.

Stephen Jay Gould, we dearly miss you!

Handling collection key changes

How do you handle changing values of properties that are used as collection keys in a .NET 1.1 program? I’ve dealt with this problem before in a number of different ways, and none of them are completely satisfactory. Now I am writing the business logic tier of an application and I need to decide whether to take a new approach or not. Let me explain.

Think of a class that represents a business object, such as Book in a bookshop management system. The class Book has several properties that correspond to the attributes of books, such as ISBN, Title and Authors. In addition, all business objects in my application have an integer id, so the class Book has an Id property as well.

Great Hackers

As I said, I am reading Joel Spolsky’s The Best Software Writing I. Actually, I’ve just finished reading it, and I like it. Of the collection of essays that Joel selected for the book, however, there is one that should not be there, in my opinion.

Joel says in the Introduction that he will poke his eyes out with a sharpened pencil if he finds another spirited attack on Microsoft’s buggy code by an enthusiastic nine-year-old trekkie on Slashdot. Well, Paul Graham is no nine-year-old, but his behaviour in Great Hackers, the chapter he contributes to Spolsky’s book, is more or less that of a misinformed kid. I have read Graham’s Hackers & Painters and I liked it, although some chapters run along the same lines as Great Hackers does. Great Hackers, however, is surrounded by high-quality writing, and therefore sticks out like a sore thumb in its propaganda and prejudice.

I am going to dissect Graham’s Great Hackers bit by bit, and counter-argue each section to illustrate my point. Of course, my point is just an opinion, and my opinion is not more valid or superior to anybody else’s, including Graham, although I hope to be more objective and provide more backing to my claims than him. In any case, you draw your own conclusions.