Sunday. A good day to take some time to myself, and get some much needed excercise. And the pseudo-meditation that comes with it: That's one of the factors I love the most about cycling. It's possibly my favorite way of just idling, of allowing for the time to pass without me noticing, just watching the movie of life, watching the world go around me with very little effort. I just love cycling.
I have posted here several mentions of the Ciclot n: Every month, the last Sunday, our city government closes a ~32Km circuit to make it for cycling (and skating, and walking, and jogging, and other human-powered locomotion) use. Whenever I am in the city and have the possibility, I do the Ciclot n. Two months ago, I even did it twice in a row, for a total of almost 70Km.
But this Sunday was
not the last Sunday of the month! So, why am I writing this? Well, because when I left home today at ~10AM, I thought it was. Only when I reached Circuito Interior and had a this is full of cars moment, I remembered October has 31 days. And next Sunday I'll very probably be in Oaxaca city (for the
Hackmitin 04h4ck4 2010). And I didn't want to miss the fun of a nice Sunday ride!
I don't care if streets are closed just for bikes I am used to riding in traffic. Of course, this meant I would not take the central lanes in Circuito Interior on the way back, taking the ~10 bridges (which are quite tiring, to be honest!). It also meant I was free to make my own route. So, I thought, a nice small ~20-30Km ride will do. I'll just get to Eje 2 Sur or so, and back by another route (i.e. Plutarco E. Calles or so).
But as I got closer to Reforma, I realized that every Sunday (independent of a Ciclot n), Reforma is closed for the "Paseos Dominicales" - Shorter than a Ciclot n, but still a nice way to share the streets with other cyclists. So I headed for Reforma.
Part of Reforma (from the ngel roundabout westward) was closed due to a precisely cyclist race. But from there eastwards we had the street for us. Good, lets head downtown.
The surprise came when I saw that it was not only towards downtown, but passing Av. Ju rez, Reforma continued to be closed just for cyclist use northwards. Great! Lets see how far does it go. The first surprise there: A couple of days ago, it was the "Noche de los Alebrijes". The alebrijes are a beautiful and very elaborated Mexican typical handicraft, depicting psychodelic dragons or dragonic representations of animals. Of course, alebrijes are usually ~30cm long... But here we had huge ones! And verrrry elaborated! How much so?
You tell me.
And as I started off... A nice thing about cycling is that you get to meditate. My body continued cycling, taking care not to run over the kids that are not so proficient, stoping at each red light... At some point, my mind entered back the body, and I realized we were passing by
Tlatelolco (ok, to be honest, the picture was taken when crossing southwards, on my way back), about to cross Circuito Interior on the North, in that symbolically very strange place where Paseo de la Reforma (a long, beautiful avenue named after the war that marked the complete separation between church and Mexican state, in 1860) becomes two streets... Calzada de los Misterios and Calzada de Guadalupe. And, yes, it is among the greatest peregrination routes in the world. On December 12, the Holiday of the Guadalupe Virgin, up to 7 million people go visit her temple.
And also around here, when my mind was busy inside my body, I noticed a pair from the
Un paseo a ciegas (roughly translated,
a blind ride) program was riding just by me. I knew about this program, but had never seen them before So I took the opportunity to get to know this program. Basically: Two people ride a tandem bike. The one in front, as always, drives and steers. The one in the back is a blind person, who gets the amazing sensation of freedom and enjoyment that only a bike gives you.
Un paseo a ciegas is held every Sunday at 9AM
except for the last Sunday every month. And I definitively want to be part of it! They told me the program has been adopted as well in Puebla, and if I recall correctly, it will soon be started in Quer taro and Guadalajara.
Anyway, by then I realized the ride was probably going to reach the Bas lica, a very impressive church I had just visited for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago. And yes we went
all the way up Guadalupe until the place where the street gets impossible to bike on, then left along a small street, and back to the South by Misterios. Then, all the way along Reforma again, saying goodbye to Cuitlahuac,
Jos de San Mart n, Sim n Bol var, El Caballito, Cristobal Col n, Cuauhtemoc, La Palmera, El ngel... And back home. Of course, not without the sight of some
bizarre signs we enjoy so much to find, point at and laugh.
Have I ever told you, my nameless reader, that I love this city? I love getting surprised with so many great things. I love the distances I can safely ride on my bike without ever being far from a bike repair shop (which are only needed when they are far away). I love being surrounded by people breathing their freedom to take the streets. I love the safety of our wide, long streets (and no, I'm not joking here Mexico City is among the
safest places for cyclists I have been to). I love its weather, that allows me to go out and enjoy the street at any time of year. And I love biking in it, one of the best ways to get to know so many bits of the city I would have never ventured into otherwise.
Email. We get a lot of it. We filter out the SPAM. Then if we're well-organized we file it away into folders as it arrives. (To be fair some people use priority settings such that all mail stays in their INBOX until they're "done" with it. I've never had the patience for that kind of behaviour.)
One problem which I often encounter is wanting to have email be delivered, archived, and stored, but I don't want to read it. Yet when I see a folder in my mail client which has unread mail in it I cannot unsee.
In my case I deliver mail to folders as it arrives via either Exim's filter language, or procmail. Procmail blows goats on the whole, but it is common and available everywhere - I just don't trust my own DSL enough to rely upon it (which is a dangerous sign).
So, how do you deliver a new mail to a Maildir folder, and mark it read at the same time? Well you can be na ve and do what I did which is to invoke formail to add "Status: ro" to the header. Unfortunately that's insufficient to mark a mail as read when viewed in mutt.
When an email is stored in a Maildir folder its status is encoded in part of its filename - which is why you'll have files like:
For people who do not follow the 
I launched 
The 
Dear alioth.
Somebody sent me this syslog message.
I don't believe in bottled water. The reason for that should be
obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than just a second, but
in case you can't figure it out:
Kanzepharaz of the one thousand and eight spires. Kanzepharaz capital of the Empire of K'thorv and since the succesful end to the war that led to the annihilation of the Pleiadic Oligarchy in K'threl, the richest and most splendid city in the Middle World. Kanzepheraz whose real estate prices have soared e'en beyond the calculation of the rainbow abacus of Thobis Himself.
Anathomelis, a princeling of the Imperial Clan needs a location for his new and expanded orgy dome. Yet the only available and affordable on a seventh rank civil allowance place left in the city of one thousand and eight spires is the tomb of Pharaz the First and Subsequent, lich-emperor of the Jerelite dynasty and his eldritch retainers. Before the construction-serfs can move in, the tomb must be cleared of its unshriven and non-rent-paying denizens.
As His Principalities' chief swordbearer it has fallen to you to make the tomb of Pharaz safe for gentrification. Treasures and honors await you if you succeed. Aeons of torment in the Planes of Unlife await you if you fail.
it seems I was a bit busy & lazy in the last two weeks. luckily 
Two weeks ago, 
I brought my cat Leo to the house in the hollow a week ago. He settled in
quickly; this was his 7th move. He seems both more kittenish, and more
predatory out here. This was a trial run, I'll bring him back to town soon
for a few weeks. Since early August, I've for one reason and another been
away every other week, and I got tired of worrying about the cat home
alone.
With a cat, and with electricity seemingly sorted, it's getting homelike
here. As the days shorten, I'm being power wasteful with computers and
radio and lights, and the batteries still never drop below 13.5 volts.
Bodes well for winter. All that remains to be done is refrigeration that
does not involve hauling ice, and more water. Winter will help with both.
Still remains to be seen if I will continue bouncing back and forth, or
if there will be an inflection point.
I've regained a tranquility that had been eluding me for ages. It's been a
lot of work, but it seems worth it.
(git-annex announcement soon!)
Dear Gnome people. Is there a reliable way to right-attach panel applets?
May laptop screen and my external monitor have different resolutions, and I
havn't found a reliable way (except making two panels) of getting some of my
applets to stick to the right. I usually keep my launchers on the left, while
vairous system status icons on the right part. But when switching to a higher
resolution, at most one will move to the right end of the panel at the new
resolition, while the others just stay in place (i.e. left-attached at a given
pixel position).
There are so many smart layout managers, GTK pretty much always uses flexible
layout managers, why is the Gnome panel relying pixel offsets?
It has been suggested to me a couple of times that I could achieve this
via gconf. However, since the gconf changes are not reflected at runtime but
frequently overwritten I did not get this to work reliably even just for two
applets.
Thank you. If you have any comments, please email me via 
So I got a 
One big change in the recent 
