Things from the past

It’s Christmas time and I have some time off work, so Isabel and I drove from Bilbao to our old place in Santiago de Compostela, my home town, where we are spending a few days. Coming to this old home always feels like coming back to a diffent time. Nobody lives in the apartment, just us when we come for a few days like now, so we keep just enough stuff in it so that a couple of persons can survive for a short time. There is no dishwasher and no DVD player, but there are blankets and cutlery and brand new furniture. You may wonder why we keep brand new furniture in this place where we spend no more than two or three weeks a year. Well, we bought the apartment in 2000 and be spent some money in furnishing it and setting it up nice and cozy. Who would know that, shortly after, I would be offered a position in Australia and we would move there for 4 years! Since carrying large things to the other side of the world is insanely expensive, and houses in Sydney are much smaller than here, all the furniture and stuff that we had just bought stayed, and it’s been sitting here since then, gathering dust but still lovely and so ours.

This is why coming to this place feels like coming back to the past. It is amazing how much it can influence me. After two or three days in the apartment, it is like I haven’t ever moved out of it, and Australia and Bilbao feel so distant. At the same time, things look old-fashioned and like taken from a dream, especially the tiles in the bathrooms and the kitchen. But it’s our place.

Latest activity

I have just added a “Latest activity” link to the main menu at the top left of the screen. By clicking there you can see which posts, comments and trackbacks have been added to the blog recently.

The depth of role-playing

I’ve been secondliving for a few months now, so, in terms of Second Life, I guess I can be considered as an adult. I have explored exotic places and met intriguing people. And, precisely, people’s approach to secondliving is what I find most fascinating of Second Life.

When you meet somebody in Second Life, you can see him/her, observe his/her behaviour, and talk to him/her by typing text and reading what they type back. This form of interaction is not as rich as meeting somebody in real life, of course, but is rich enough as to allow for behavioural styles that deserve reflection.

In order to discuss this, we need to clarify some terminology first. A Second Life resident is somebody who secondlives, that is, who lives in Second Life. You perceive residents through their avatars, that is, the 3D, more-or-less-person-shaped little figurines that you see on screen through the Second Life client application running on your computer. Every resident (it is commonly assumed) is “backed up” by a real person, by somebody out there in real life that uses the computer to “direct” his/her avatar to do and say things. This real person is called a user.

Having established the difference between residents and users, we can go ahead with the discussion.

Happy 2

Today this blog turns 2 years old. Happy birthday!

Thanks to all the readers and commenters. Please keep coming.

Promoting engineers

When I was younger and more naive, many years ago, I used to believe that one would be promoted in his/her job over time, getting ever bigger salaries and tackling ever more complex and challenging problems as years passed by. I used to think that this would happen, more or less, for any profession that one would choose. Junior doctors would start helping more senior supervisors and, little by little, start adventuring into their own diagnostics, to eventually be brave enough as to prescribe medicines without supervision. After some years, perhaps, they would be able to detect some health issues of patients by expert judgment, using a well-balanced combination of lab tests, on-the-fly checks and gut feeling. Even later, perhaps as a mature person, our doctor would lead a team, supervising junior doctors who would start the cycle again. Until retirement.

Over his/her professional lifetime, our doctor went from being an inexperienced, passionate, almost amateurish youngster, to being a seasoned, has-seen-it-all, hopefully still passionate leader. But always a doctor.

I was wrong.