Liopic – Page 19

Report #5 from Costa Rica

Today I took a bus to Monteverde (actually Santa Elena town). The weather is quite different here in the mountains than it was in the jungle+beach in Corcovado (Drake bay). Warm but peaceful. I did canopy this evening, which is moving among the trees using a rope and a pulley. It was interesting, but more an attraction than a really nature observation.

Tomorrow I’ll cross Arenal lake, to go to a lodge near Arenal volcano. I’ll spend my last 2 days in Costa Rica taking pictures of that incredible volcano… I saw it today, far away, and it was really big.

And, “finally”, I’m a bit tired of doing tourism non-stop during 2 weeks. I’m eager to come back to Europe, and enjoy some jet-lag while discovering new tomatoes in my balcony. And organize more than 400 pictures from Costa Rica.

Report #4 from Costa Rica

I took a airplane from San José to Palmar, then a car to Sierpe, and then a boat to Drake Bay (near Corcovado natural park)
… and then I arrived to the Paradise. I mean, the real paradise.

We had some heavy rain while in the boat, and the captain said “welcome to the rainforest”. When we jumped out the boat directly to the beach (no piers around), a couple of “lapas” (the local name for scarlet macaws) where flying over us. Those were some of the thousand of animals we were going to see. From thousand of colorful fishes, to a big tapir. From hermit crabs to dolphins. From hummingbirds to congo monkeys (which roar like lions). Animals everywhere!

“The most biologically intense place in the Earth”, guides say. That’s honestly true!

Of course there are some problems in the paradise: mosquitoes and other insects are really working hard to bite you. It doesn’t matter how strong is your anti-mosquitoes spray, they really succeed! I even discovered some ticks on my legs, ouch. And the guide told me about a fly that inserts a worm under your skin… scaring. Moreover the weather is hot, really sticky hot. The sun burned my back the first day, while snorkeling, as well. And finally, no electricity (well, just 2 hours per day), no mobile connection, cold water showers… but some local people had Internet satellite connection at home. I told you, a real paradise. I could live there and work as freelance web developer, hehe.

I saw animals, I rented a boat to travel on a river (with the perfect temperature for swimming), I read “the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”, and I enjoyed the jungle enormously.

Report #3 from Costa Rica

I came back to San José, after a quite long trip by bus. My stay in the jungle was… intense.

I took the opportunity to meet with some Go players in San José. They were so kind to invite me to have dinner, while playing some games. I was a bit stronger than them, so I tried to show them some trick moves, and different move ideas.

Today we (my host family and I) went to Irazu volcano, and later we went to a nice place in the mountains, to fish trouts. I tried to fish, but my skills are really bad on this issues. Anyway they fished some big trouts and ate them.

My agenda for next days is: Corcovado 5 days, Monteverde 1 day, Arenal volcano 2 days…

Report #2 from Costa Rica

Today we took a boat to move along the rivers and channels of Tortuguero national park. We saw a lot of different birds, monkeys, some alligators (really close to the boat… I mean 1 meter) and some undefined animals (I can hardly remember all those names). Of course, I took pictures non-stop. All the tones of green were being pictured as well.

I went walking down the beach, 45 minutes, to arrive to this curious Internet access point. Between the hotel and here, just jungle… endless jungle. But the real reason to come to use Internet is not my net-addiction… the reason is that one of my programmed trips for the next week (Easter) was canceled, so I’m looking for alternatives. I hope I’ll be able to take a small aircraft to arrive to Corcovado, the original canceled trip destination, and stay there in another “hotel”.

Meanwhile I’ll relax sleeping on an “hamaca”, listening to the bird’s singing and the hits of the ocean’s waves.

Report #1 from Costa Rica

Mr Columbus took 3 months to arrive to America. I took 11 hours, in the stomach of a giant ship.

One day later, carrying some jet-lag, I took a bus and then a boat to arrive to Tortuguero, a small town among big rivers and an endless jungle… a place without cars and traffic lights. But surprisingly, with a small house which offer Internet connection and AC… unbelievable!

Is Google better than Sex?

Trying to “blow up the Internet”, I wrote “Google” in the search box of Google… next I tried with “Sex”. I’ve got surprising results:
· Google: Results 1 – 10 of about 1,930,000,000 for Google
· Sex: Results 1 – 10 of about 638,000,000 for Sex

So, is Google at least 3 times better than Sex? 😉

The last week of winter

This is (hopefully) the last week of “my” winter. Next week I’ll be in Costa Rica, taking pictures jerkily to all those details of the green jungle. And when I’ll come back to the Mediterranean, 2 weeks later, the Sun will have done its homework.

It would be nice to live 6 months in a warm place, during winter, and the other 6 months in a cold place, during summer, wouldn’t it? Something like winter in Malta and summer in London. Any company can offer me a job with this flexibility? I’ll sign it, even for the legal-minimum salary.

Small things are the key

Last weekend I took part in the Barcelona’s Go Tournament. As every year many people from Europe came to enjoy the nice weather of Barcelona, while playing some tough games. Three Koreans took the top positions, and among them, my Go (or Baduk) teacher, Lluis Oh 6 dan.

My score was 2 wins from 5 rounds… quite bad result from what I was expecting to. I beat a French in the 1st round, with somehow good style. In the 2nd round I played with Jordi, a local friend who is overrated. I was winning the game easily, when I made a stupid mistake, and lost a quarter of the board… luckily I still won by 1.5 points. From that point on, I started to made unbelievable mistakes, removing my possibilities of winning. I played with Sergio, a guy from Alicante, in the 3rd round… despite I killed a really big group (the black one in the picture), he decided to continue playing, and I was too calm and confident about my win. This led me to disaster: I lost by 0.5 points. On Sunday I played the last two rounds, making big mistakes that force me to resign both games.

The lesson learned (I hope I learned it) is: “small things are the key“. My teacher says I’m at least 1 dan… because I know a lot of theory, I have good intuition, etc. But I do fail in small problems, like easy-solving situations. I’m speaking about these kind of situations where I must solve them at sight, without doubts. How can I advance if I don’t solve easy situations? Concentration, read out all the movements. I must practice more, and improve my concentration, my brain skills!

“Hello World!” is too hard to program

10 years ago, when I saw for the first time a Java program, the classical “Hello World!”, I thought for a moment “booo, it’s counterintuitive… you need to create a class just to say Hello”. Later I used to do all the nasty work with classes.

But I never imagined something like the following:

Malbolge, invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, is an esoteric programming language designed to be as difficult to program in as possible. The first “Hello, world!” program written in it was produced by a Lisp program using genetic algorithms.
– from Malbolge description

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A PDA with Linux

I’m used to read PDFs while in bed, on my Acer PDA. But its tiny resolution (320×240) didn’t help a clear reading, therefore I started to look for a bigger device, it must be easy to hold but not too big. So I avoided those e-readers, and focused on PDAs with bigger resolution. And then I stumbled upon a Nokia 770 review… it is supposed to be a “Internet tablet”, but the thing that caught my attention was its screen resolution: 800×480. Luckily I have a friend who owns one, so I had a look at the device… it was interesting indeed.

I thought “Ok, I can use a N770 to read PDFs, and my Acer n50 for the rest of things (do sudokus, see pictures and record Go games)”… because I read some comments on Internet saying “it’s just a web browser, not a really PDA” (really?). I found a offer on ebay, and bought it for just 102 euros.

What a machine! The default factory configuration was a bit short of features (I reinstalled the lastest OS), but then you configure some program repositories, start to add open source applications, and discover the real power. The OS is a version of Debian. This means you can have an xterm with most of the usual commands. Moreover the graphical system can hold GTK-based programs with an easy porting. I installed some games, CGoban to record Go games, and some utilities (including a Last.fm player).

The cons are that its CPU (252 MHz) is too slow, so sometimes it stops to respond for a while; and the battery lasts less than a normal PDA (actually, similar to a laptop, around 3~4 hours). So its a device for patient users (or if not, try its successor, the N800 and N810, with double speed CPU and webcam).

I can even play a game of Freeciv!