O Blog do Gustavo Felisberto

- Diz lá, querido, tu não gostas das “burrinhas”, pois não?

- Oh, não - respondeu Mersault.

Continuaram a andar, e Mersault conservava a mão entre os cabelos quentes e a nuca macia de Marthe.

- Gostas de mim? - disse ela, logo a seguir.

Mersault, mais animado, respondeu com uma gargalhada:

- Ora aí está uma pergunta muito séria…

- Mas responde…

- Ora, vejamos. As pessoas da nossa idade não se amam. Simpatiza-se, mais nada. É mais tarde, quando nos sentimos velhos e impotentes, que podemos amar. Na nossa idade, julgamos que gostamos. Mais nada.

“…and I shambled after them as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirious of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”"

Today i decided to upgrade this server apache 1.3 to apache 2.0. And why should i do this? Because this semester i want to have a bunch of people (12) accessing my server to checkout and commit stuff to a svn repositorie, and i did not want to have to open a bunch of accounts.

I could use scponly but it is a very strange (and badly documented) software. So i went the apache+dav+subversion way. I’ll probably have to write a small module for mod_auth_pgsql to use the accounts already defined in the bugzilla system (and so save some extra accounts managment).

So it is going to be a “fun” rest of afternoon (it is 18:23) so i hope to have this done by……….today

Descobri uma página com mil e uma informações sobre o grande músico Jorge Palma. Deixo aqui mais como bookmark para o futuro.

People of the CyberWorld, wake up!

It’s Monday, the sun is shining and the weekend has left a panoply of flavors, sights and sounds carved onto my senses.

Yes, it’s been hectic. Friday night started with dinner at a Japanese restaurant in San Giovanni. My first time at such a place, with a group of 10 friends. A crowd, as international as they come. 2 Portuguese, 3 Germans, 2 Italians, 1 Spanish, 1 Finnish, 1 French and 1 Cambodian.

As funny as a Japanese speaking Italian might be, I can’t say the food calls for a quick return. I really didn’t like it and it was funny to see that one of my friends, who doesn’t even like fish, thoroughly enjoyed it while me, a fish lover, had such a difficult time savoring the sushi, the maki and the saké.

After dinner we went to a nearby pub where we had trouble finding room for so many people. After some time, though, we finally got hold of three tables and we ended up meeting a very drunk and obnoxious Finnish couple who I convinced to sing the Finnish national anthem for us. And so they did, kind of…

Bed came at 5 in the morning and the phone rang at 12. Me and another friend had two tickets for the Italy-England 6 Nations Rugby match. The game was only at 5 but we started on at 2 cause we had some intermediate stops and a lot of walking to do.

We left the car in Anagnina and took the metro to Barberini where we picked up the tickets. Then we walked all the way to the stadium, heading first towards the S. Trinitá ai Monti church, down the Spanish steps, into Piazza di Spagna, through Via Babuino and on to Piazza Del Poppolo, incredibly full of beer-drinking, red and white English fans. Then, Flaminia all the way to the stadium.

15 minutes prior to the game we take our seats in the Stadio Flaminio, the teams come in, the English sing “Sweet Chariot”, the national anthems play, God saves the Queen, gli Italiani sono pronti alla morte and it’s kick-off!

55 minutes of a close match and a final strong half-hour by Her Majesty’s players yield a predictable 31-16 victory for England.

The A metro line in Rome has been closing at 9 due to construction works for a long time now. This is a big pain and as we had a restaurant reservation for the night we had to go all the way back to Anagnina to pick up the car. But before getting on the metro at Spagna we took a stroll down the great Via del Corso checking out the movies playing in original language (one of the few places in Rome that does this) and looking for a McDonalds. 7 o’ clock, we hadn’t had lunch, we were starving…

The problem was that my friend had the idea of going into one of the large book & CD/DVD shops in Via del Corso and this is always bad news for my wallet. The end result: 5 new CDs for 55 Euros. I finally bought “Early Days & Later Days” by Led Zeppelin, two cheap albums from The Smiths, “The Singles” from The Clash and a double Jazz CD for 5 Euros. It has Coltrane, Duke, Miles, Ella, Satchmo, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto, George Benson, Dizzie Gillespie, Nat King and Natalie Cole, and a lot more. For 5 Euros, it was a sure buy. I have most of the songs already, but for 5 Euros, what the heck!? By the time we got out there wasn’t even enough time for the burger.
After the uneventful ride back to the car (if you don’t count the lady who got her fingers stuck on the door), off we went back for Pizza near Via Veneto and Trevi. Saturday night Roman traffic is lunatic as usual, and we did see two or three accidents involving motorbikes, of course, but other than that, it wasn’t as impossible as I expected.

The difference between a Pizza SuperTelevisione and a Pizza Televisione is one egg and one Euro. But since the previous evening we paid 5 Euros for a chestnut, an orange and a nut each one filled with icecream and all three trespassed by a stick, one Euro for an egg is quite normal…

I made it back home at around midnight thirty but didn’t go to sleep until three, not sure why. Me and another friend had planned to go skiing early on Sunday morning. I said wake up at 8, he said 9, we agreed. I woke up at 10:30 and got to his place at 11. We headed to Ovindoli, on the way to Pescara, about one and a half hours from where we live, to the sound of Led’s Immigrant Song, Whole Lotta Love and Stairway to Heaven. What sound!!

It was our ski debut and it was every bit as disastrous as “debut” and “ski” in the same sentence might suggest. I soon had to put my snow chains on because I couldn’t move the car anywhere. We parked, went back to rent some skis and found out that the place where we should go was after where we had parked. Walking with skis on your back is not an easy thing and as we passed the car again, we thought it was better to get on it and drive to the always elusive big car park. Surprisingly, there really was a big car park and it was easy to find a spot. We finally started dressing for the adventure and my friend struggled for a while with the incredibly heavy boots. Meanwhile, I took pictures.

I fell getting on the elevator, enjoyed the ride up and fell 10 or so more times after we started descending, only to find out that I had lost my car keys in one of the falls. I guess some people might have panicked, but I’m so used to losing things and/or getting robbed that it’s become second nature and I don’t care anymore. Losing your car keys somewhere in the snow, 200Km from home, probably meant having to spend the night around there or convincing somebody to take us back to Rome where I could go fetch the spare key. And then, of course, going back to Ovindoli, get the car and return. I get tired just thinking about it.

Anyway, one of the things I’ve learned is that when you lose something, the best way to get it back is to look for it. Duh, right? Well, let’s just say that it’s more important than it sounds. I put my skis down in the mountain (just left them there) and walked slowly back to the elevator searching for the key. I didn’t find it. Meanwhile, my friend, unaware of any of this, had already tumbled is way down and was waiting, and waiting some more, for me. I then decided to tumble my own way back to him, tell him of our little problem - which he took rather well too -, finally get the damned passes and work our way up another elevator and down another slope back to where we had started. My idea was to talk to the lady in the beggining to see if she knew anything about my key.

We made complete fools of ourselves in this second elevator. It was one of those you stick between your legs and then just go with it to the top. We never made it past the first kick. We couldn’t balance at all. We were advised to take the slower moving walkway instead. We didn’t even know there was one, otherwise the embarassment would have been saved.

We must have gotten up there at around 15:45 and I went tumbling ahead down the slope to see about the keys. When I arrived, always looking under the elevator, it was past 16 and the elevators close at 16. The lady was already leaving and I again left the skis lying around and started running after her. Of course you can’t really run with those boots. So, I just walked as fast as I could and got to her as she was entering her car. I told her about our situation, she called the main ticket office (where we had just come from) and someone had delivered my key there. She agreed to take me with her on her car and after a very slow trip (driving on snow is very dangerous…) I had my key.

She then tried to drive me back to where my friend and my skis were. In the end she couldn’t because she didn’t have snow chains and the car was thrashing all over the place. I told her I didn’t mind walking the rest of the way (even if the temperature was -6) and we finally said goodbye, as I thanked her for the huge help. In our chit-chat I found lots of interesting stuff about her. Namely, she is the owner of the whole thing (elevators, cabins, you name it) and she prefers beach and sea to mountains and snow and is thus quite fed up with that place. We talked about meeting the next time I go there, which will be soon.

When I returned to my friend and the skis, it was starting to get dark and we knew we didn’t have much time to play anymore. We just tried some more techniques (yeah, right) in a small area and took the last pictures.

We returned the skis and finally ate something in the day, at 6 o’ clock. I had brought some sausages, some bread and some fruit but all of it was either mashed or frozen. We ate it anyway. During the trip back home my friend commented that it was lucky that we had gotten the key back. I argued that luck doesn’t have much to do with it. It’s all about making an effort about your stuff. It’s happened to me several times and when he thought about it, he also had two or three such examples. Finding stuff is the most natural final step after you have lost them.

Back at my friend’s house, he prepared a meat meal for us which landed right on the spot. We then watched some movies I’m not going to talk about and checked some of the Serie A and Winter Olympics results.

At 1 in the morning, I finally managed to beat inertia, get up from the couch and drive back home to my bed, for the most peaceful of sleeps…

The inevitable conclusion is that love is an illusion. That is the conclusion of the history of man.

Growing up taught by that implacable teacher called society, man learns that men are insensitive and women are wells of purity. That men are morally corrupt, sole guilty part of the widest spread of phenomenons: adultery. That women are the passive part in the game of love.

In that grueling period called adolescence, man starts becoming aware of the evident contradictions between his inner, genuine world, his true feelings, and the picture forced upon him. He finds out he has feelings, that the wells of women are more shallow than he might have thought.

Man is then brutally confronted, through one or two heartbreaks, with the inevitable conclusion. The inevitable conclusion that love is an illusion.

Driven by an unstoppable force, he gives himself up completely to the woman he thinks he loves. He writes her romantic words, gives her flowers, makes vows, promises and inevitably makes the ultimate mistake of hastily telling her he loves her. By doing so, he gives up his last power and becomes a puppet in her hands. Only self-respect, self-estime and, allas, time can heal him after the inexorable chain of events thus produced has come to a halt. The halt being the conclusion that love is an illusion.

Introspection takes over. The truth becomes clear. The romantic was after all the insensitive one. The well of purity is empty of it. Full instead of doubt and will for challenge, for games, for a fight. Full not of irrational feelings but of rational choices aimed only at personal interest.

Man, finally convinced that he has always been more romantic than women, is then presented with a dilemma. Remain so, deceiving himself by believing in falsities, and risking a life of ever-returning suffering; or learn and become stiff as a stick, sensitive as a stone. Becoming, rather sadly, what society always told him he was.

Round is the process, round is this essay. For the inevitable conclusion is that love is an illusion.

Les Invasions Barbares (2003) - by Denys Arcand (Le Déclin de l’Empire Américan), with Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau & Dorothée Berryman

Having a difficult time accepting the reality of death and feeling regretful of his past, a man dying of cancer tries to find peace in his last moments. His estranged son, ex-wife, ex-lovers and old friends will all come to him to share his last breath.

Mar adentro (2004) - by Alejandro Amenábar (The Others), with Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda & Lola Dueñas

“When you can’t escape, and you constantly rely on everyone else, you learn to cry by smiling, you know? “

http://www.misteriojuvenil.com/piratas_momentomagico.htm

Se alguêm algum dia se der ao trabalho de percorrer os posts que eu vou colocando nesta casa que se relacionam com paixões e mulheres que vou conhecendo certamente vai achar que eu devo ser bastante inconstante nos meus sentimentos.

É facil chegar a essa conclusão pois ao se ler o que esta casa contem é facil esquecer que as coisas que aqui se podem ler cobrem um periodo de quase dois anos e meio.

- Mas dois anos e meio é tão pouco tempo. - pode o leitor dizer. E até é verdade mas algumas vezes as coisas correm a ritmos diferentes do que achamos normal. Quando eu olho para estes dois ultimos anos mal consigo acreditar que foi tanto tempo

Nesta passagem de ano conheci uma pessoa que
- O não Gustavo que vem ai?

Calma! Ainda agora estou a começar a contar e já me estão a querer cair em cima. Só disse que conheci uma pessoa. Bem como estava a dizer. Conheci uma pessoa interessante e atraente. Ao longo das semanas que se passaram fui conhecendo melhor aquela rapariga de sorriso intoxicante (sim sou perdido pelo sorriso), olhar sereno… maroto… terno… apaixonado…

Ontem essa rapariga disse-me a palavra de cinco letras e um hifen. Hoje voltou a dizer. E é bom ouvir. E sentir o mesmo.

Sinto que conheci uma pessoa muito especial e que sabemos nos fazer felizes… Estamos bem juntos e queremos muito assim continuar. Sabemos que queremos estar juntos enquanto fizermos bem um ao outro e enquanto saibamos como o fazer. Vamos com calma, vamos devagar…. Mas vamos lá chegar enquanto formos a continuar.

I’ve written a nice page with info on Linux on the Targa Traveller 826T so if you have this laptop and want linux on it just go and see the goodies there.

The page will be updated in the future with more info.

Yesterday I received the monthly SF newsletter. It’s quite a long one, but I usually look at the Project Of The Month and the Top 25 projects to see if there’s any major news.

This month’s Project Of The Month is a very useful thing called NSIS - Nullsoft Scriptable Install System and it’s used to create Windows Installers, a task nothing short of impossible if you try to create one from scratch. Microsoft apparently thought that putting a relational database behind every Installer was a good thing…

I still haven’t investigated deep into it but the philosophy is simply:

- write a script in their custom-defined scripting language

- use a compiler called MakeNSIS to compile the script and generate the installer

The fact that there is a custom scripting language implies a learning curve, but considering the alternatives it seems like a very good tool. And Open Source, too. I wish I’d come by it two years ago when I was trying to create a neat installer/uninstaller (unsuccessful in the end).

It’s already being used by popular software like Winamp, eMule, 3DNA and, of course, NSIS for the creation of their installers.

Go right in.