The Vineyards

Pode parecer que o Vineyards agora tem banner de propaganda, mas não é o caso, absolutamente. Ora, se eu colocasse propaganda aqui, quem clicaria? No caso de ter alguém pra clicar, certamente não seria propaganda de concorrente de Viagra. Seria do próprio!

Sim, e vacas voam (tá, eu sei que voam, mas “vacas voam” soa melhor que “porcos voam”). A propósito:

A vaga vaca vaga vagamente pelo vagaroso vagão vago.

Essa frase espetacular eu criei há um bom tempo numa noite quente, na mesa da cozinha, depois do jantar. Mas pode ter sido no quarto da Flines. Afinal, a mesa da cozinha e o quarto da Flines são os dois melhores lugares da casa pra falar esse tipo de coisa. No meu quarto não acontece isso, nada de engraçado é dito aqui. Acho que é porque a Flines só vem aqui quando está brava, enquanto eu vou lá sempre que não tenho nada pra fazer. Meu quarto deve estar cheio de energias negativas por causa disso. E também porque o fax fica aqui, e extratos do banco geralmente são tirados por fax (sorte que fax é só preto; se imprimisse a cores, acabava o vermelho no segundo extrato). Extratos de banco são conhecidos causadores de grande discórdia – no meu quarto.

Voltemos ao banner ao lado. Outra noite estava procurando torrents de The O.C. para a Flines, sem saber que a série está em pausa e não há episódios novos no momento. Naturalmente, não encontrei nada e, não encontrando nada, me distraí olhando ao redor da lista de torrents. Diversas seções e subseções, uma lista de notícias variadas, um campo para login, e esse banner, piscando em toda a sua Flashice. Li uma vez, não entendi nada. Li de novo e comecei a rir.

A conclusão a que cheguei é que o Engrish chegou ao português. Não consegui dar nome à coisa, mas achei “portunglês” bonitinho, embora pareça algo da mesma família do portunhol.

Tirei um screenshot e resolvi colocá-lo aqui, para compartilhar com meus leitores que falam português esse marco histórico, o momento em que o português e o inglês trocaram de lado no Babelfish.

O único problema é que um banner vertical é muito alto, então tive que escrever um monte de desnecessariedades pra não ficar só a propaganda sozinha com uma notinha do lado. Aliás, essa é a primeira imagem que posto no próprio texto, acho que deveria fazer isso mais vezes.

Engraçadíssimo. Hilário!

I was asked two questions in the comments to the two last posts. So, to answer them.

First, Courtney. “Where would you rather live? Seriously, realisitically, where can you see yourself happy?”

To that I say I have very little idea.

I believe (and/or fear) any country I decide to live in that is better than this one will treat me like a second class citizen. I will get the worst jobs by definition; if I am really good and get a good job, I will be guilty of “raising unemployment among native residents”.

My first name sounds awful when pronounced in any language other than Portuguese or a comical variation of it (such as Spanish). My last name might work in Italy; for any other country, I would be better off using its original spelling, which would be easier for everyone to understand but would differ from my documents. My middle name (which is unknown to many) would bring giggling fits to any English speaker that heard it.

People would try to speak Spanish to me when by some odd chance they did not understand what I was saying, and that would ruin my day. Whether I like it or not, I lived a long time in a warm climate, and it would take years to adapt to a colder one (especially if I have to measure temperature in Farenheit – not to mention inches et al, of course). My trusty milk’n'coffee and bread’n'butter would not be readily available as they are here, nor would nearly anything else I am used to eating. Depending on the circumstances, I might have to serve in the new country’s army. Some countries think they are so superior for keeping kids in high school one year longer, they will not consider my degree (obtained after five years of college) valid. Those who did realize I am not a Spanish speaker would then ask me about carnaval and Ronaldo and Brazilian beaches (three subjects I know nothing about). Other Brazilians living in the country would talk about how they miss carnaval and feijoada and expect me to join them in samba at every opportunity.

In essence, life in most countries better than this one would have plenty of negative sides, because I was born in this one. But it is two steps from becoming a communist dictatorship, so I should consider that carefully, indeed.

So, to answer the question, I believe I would do quite well in Belgium or some parts of the United States with less hispanics (so I am not confused with them). The US does not seem to want me there; no worries, they would think I was Mexican anyway (even though I do not look like one). So, Belgium. But what in the blazes would I do in Belgium? Set up a codfish restaurant for tourists from Portugal? Be an international representative in the European Union? Bring a canvas to the park and paint during Spring and Autumn, then spend Winter locked home, and Summer trying to sell my paintings?

Therefore, I hope those two steps are not taken for a long time.

Then Estara asked this: “What are your favourite songs, Etienne?”. I hoped saying the opposite would be good enough, but alas, there is always someone to ask that.

I cannot answer that question satisfactorily. I tried to answer it a dozen times in the last few years, and I got a dozen different answers. I will, however, give a small list that should be more or less indicative of what I could consider a “favorite song” next week – for the heck of it, and so maybe people will take pity on me and finally do something about it, or lose all hope.

Let me see, now. In no particular order, honestly.

Bobby Goldsboro, “Honey”. The cutest song I know. Easy to imagine the protagonist telling his tale to someone willing to listen, perhaps a stranger in a bar or on a bus stop. The story of his life with the lovely Honey is not a crescendo: it begins adorable, continues adorable and gives the impression each day is just as happy as the one before with that sweet innocent girl; then, for no reason, “when she was there and all alone”, she dies. It is such a devastating, unfair ending to that sequence of cute scenes, and that is very quickly reflected in the song itself, which becomes a lament. Seconds later the protagonist recomposes, dries his tears as to not embarass his audience further, and goes back to the happy suvenier left by Honey: “But see the tree, how big it’s grown…”

Jewel Kilcher, “Painters”. Pretty much for the same reasons as “Honey”, but in a completely different environment, much more fantastic, much less innocent, this time from both the girl’s and a narrator’s perspectives. They painted a beautiful, colorful life together, where the metaphor is so big it is impossible to extract reality fully from it. Eventually it reaches the most dramatic moment I remember in any song: the prelude to his death, followed by the collapse of her dreams. After that come his redemption and a peek into the future showing no complete absolution for her. I always wondered how things would have been if she had died in his place: would he despair and crumble, and carry the memory of her around to the end of his life? Would she go so serenely? The world of “Painters” is so absorbing it allows one to wander around raising hypothesis. I find it very amazing.

Richard Marx, “Hazard”. A much weaker environment than the previous two, but it tells the story well enough, from one point of view only. There are so many holes in what he says: why was that boy not right?, why did his mother move to Hazard and stay there, through that?, what were the rumors and lies Mary looked beyond?, did he kill Mary? These thoughts about this song echoed in my head for a long time before I heard of the two videos it has, both of which just reinforce the questions and give no answers.

Karyn White, “Superwoman”, and Jewel Kilcher, “Foolish Games”. Such a huge irony that Karyn White’s song has the same title as Stevie Wonder’s. These two songs go together because they talk about the very same thing, as if the same script under two different directors: a couple, their relationship very deteriorated, he treats her with indifference and the eventual hurtful comment to which she must give the benefit of the doubt; she tries hard to understand what is going on, what went wrong, to gain him back, until she breaks down. One thing I greatly dislike about Karyn White’s song, however, is a moment during the apex of her breaking down where she has to remind the listener this is just a song and let out a “everybody sing along with meee” – which is my same problem with Toni Braxton’s “How Could an Angel Break My Heart”, where suddenly she goes “Woow!” out of nowhere at the apogee of dramacity.

Tanaka Rie, “Ningyo Hime” (second ending for “Chobits”). I do not remember why, as it has been a long time since I last heard this song (especially with subtitles), but I still remember considering it one of the best songs ever. “If Apollo spoke Japanese, this song would have been written by him,” I recall commenting one time. I wish I remembered why, I would surely give a detailed explanation, as I did for the other songs. Ah, go find the lyrics and translation by yourself and figure out.

Questions answered. Anything else?

Courtney mentioned two months have passed since the last post. I had no idea. I will write a quick post, then, just so no one can say I went for more than two months in silence. Perhaps later I will edit or remove this one and add a few backdated posts so future printed versions of the Vineyards do not have the big gap.

She also mentioned I sounded quite grumpy in that last one. Quite odd: when this is the only pinhole someone has to form an image at me, these images come out distorted. This would be something to ponder and write about, but it feels too much like a deadmemes subject, so I will leave it be. Suffices to say I am not grumpy in general, even if some posts here seem to point otherwise.

Now, let me start by saying

Stevie Wonder’s “Superwoman”,
Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and
Black Sabbath’s “Changes”

are the worst songs ever.

It is not a matter of not liking the genre or the artists. I am not here saying “all hip hop should burn!” or “Britney Spears must die!” or anything like that. If I did that, it would be just personal taste. There are many bad songs in the world, I know this much is true. Most of them, however, are simply “bad”. These three songs, however, are beyond bad, and they are bad beyond my own opinion. They fail in any area: the themes are explored poorly, the melody is uninspired, the lyrics are awful (Gaye’s in special: “I’m horny, fix it”), and the sum of all parts comes out as extremely annoying (here Stevie wins, “Superwoman” stays in the head for weeks).

In face of Stevie Wonder’s “Superwoman”, Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and Black Sabbath’s “Changes”, everything made in the 80’s (“I am a man who will fight for your hooo-nor”), every hypothetically virgin teen diva and every garage band in a coma copying Coldplay is redeemed and forgiven, “Every Breath You Take” by The Police being the exception.

* * *

My innocent mention of that thing whose initials, in Portuguese, are “RPG” turned into more search results pointing here than Gregory Grey ever did. I feel cheated, but also extremely puzzled. I might go back and edit that post sometime to put Grey back in my top 10 search results. GPR is fine and good and I liked it a lot more than gym, but it does not deserve to hold 8 out of 10 search results in my stats.

* * *

I gave up on Midgaard for the time being, because Asgaard needs more attention than it right now. Two out of three boots do not go past the first screen (after the remaining hard disk is detected); very often it shuts down on its own; it takes longer to move a file from E: to C: than it does to copy said file to Olympus (via a http server, because they refuse to acknowledge they are in a network at all, and fail to see even themselves in it, let alone each other); the video card is faulty, which gives everything a strange feeling of frame-skipping and prevents me from watching anime et al; even Firefox makes me wait some 20 seconds each time I decide to scroll a page more than ten lines down. Midgaard, therefore, will have to wait: even if I did manage to run a Ragarok Online server in it, I doubt Asgaard could take the client as it is. Little point.

Three topics, because I had to use the quote that follows the one from the previous post. I am done for now.

As most people in my generation, I grew up watching TV, thrown over (or on, or under) a comfortable sofa. Due to a thing or two, I was always rather shy, and always kept my gaze down. As a result, my posture deteriorated over time. A couple of years ago I started taking it seriously and visited a doctor to see what could be done.

The initial treatment was something called “RPG” in Portuguese, which naturally sounds very funny and results in many jokes, but in English should be something like GPR, “Global Postural Reeducation”. One session or 45 minutes each week, and a year later the doctor said he did not expect such fast and great progress: I was 80% fixed and should not have any problems with that in the future.

All should be well and good at this point, but it was about to turn into the exact opposite. The doctor said, in order to maintain what GPR had done, and get that last 20%, I should start going to the gym.

There are few places I consider lower than a gym, and one of them is a public men’s toilet. Yet, by the doctor’s order, I had to go there at least three times a week, each time taking at least one hour. I found it quite amazing that to fix 80% of my problem I needed 45 minutes a week, to maintain it at that point I needed three hours a week.

Untrained and weak and lacking time and any will to do it, it took me a long time to complete the initial schedule, the first twenty days. Last week I finally reached phase two. Two days of that and now I cannot stretch my arms. I am not aching for being tired – on the contrary, I could run a couple miles right now if it was not hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement. I am positively wounded from the exercise – which now takes at least two hours each day, thrice a week. On top of all that, I fear these exercises might make me “big”, instead of “healthy”, and that I could not tolerate. Of course, they can make me neither big nor healthy if I cannot stretch my arms to do any more exercises.

* * *

Próxima segunda começa a novela “América”, que merece ser um fracasso estrondoso, mas não será. Aliás, todas as novelas da Glória Peres merecem ser fracassos estrondosos e não são. “Vejam como eu falo de temas polêmicos e grupos diferenciados!”, diz Glória, e lá vem transplante de coração com ciganos, clonagem com muçulmanos, e agora imigração ilegal com peões de rodeio. “Vejam como eu encho lingüiça!”, e tome ciganos tocando e dançando, capítulos com três cenas de diálogo e 25 minutos de dança do ventre, e agora eu aposto em várias e diversas demonstrações de controle sobre bois e cavalos pululantes, e música sertaneja. E não esqueçamos o núcleo “gente como a gente”, no bairro pobre genérico do Rio de Janeiro (o Andaraí da vez). “Ah, mas se tem peão é em Barretos, e Barretos é em São Paulo!” Ora, Barretos é muito mais próximo do Rio que o Marrocos, eles podem fazer o trajeto de bicicleta em alguns minutos!

Do muito pouco que vi da “Senhora do Destino”, gerei a opinião contrária ao mundo todo, de que Nazaré foi a pior grande vilã de novela ever. Quero dizer, enquanto todos acham que ela foi “muito má”, eu acho que ela foi uma personagem muito sem graça, forçada. Sua motivação era uma patologia, um distúrbio químico causado por sua infertilidade e as conseqüências disso. Nazaré só era louca. E no fim ficou boazinha e se matou, colocando-se fora do caminho de todo mundo.

Comparemos com Laurinha Figueiroa, cuja nêmesis era outra Maria do Carmo: Laurinha queria destruir a sucateira “porque sim, oras!”, tinha muita classe, se vestia bem, e quando morreu ainda deu um jeito de levar junto a orelha da rival e acusá-la de assassinato.

Uma comparação mais próxima, a Laura de “Celebridade” (ora, Lauras são vilãs, Marias do Carmo são sempre mocinhas), tinha duas motivações: vingança (motivo bobo, vá lá) e ganância (agora sim). Era abertamente falsa, cínica, enganava quantos pudesse, era uma estrategista ótima e sabia exatamente o que queria e o que precisava fazer pra chegar lá – inclusive matar o pai, transformar o outro vilão em escravo e outras coisas assim. Morreu desnecessariamente.

Ah, chega de novela.

* * *

Asgaard had two hard disks. The first was a Seagate 160gb, which is where everything is: the system, the swapfile, the documents, and shared and download folders; therefore, lots and lots of reading and writing all the time. The second was a Maxtor 60gb, named “Storehouse”, because it sat there holding 59.5gb of anime and manga that needed watching and reading someday; it was never touched.

One of them failed. Guess which. I will give a hint: it is the third of this manufacturer I had fail within a year.

* * *

This country is becoming a communist dictatorship in the exact manner Gramsci envisioned it: the communists disguise as good guys, reach the top by accusing their adversaries of doing exactly what they are guilty of, then slowly cut away liberties with one hand while giving the impression of giving some temporary freedom in other areas with the other hand, so no one notices.

Whenever I talk of politics, however, I regret it. So I will stop at that.

* * *

Midgaard seems to be going somewhere, at last. For some odd reason, systems actually install now. They still do not work, though. One installation of Slackware self-destructed after it locked up trying to load the X server and I had to hit reset. One Ubuntu would not let me reinstall the faulty fonts for the X server, until it, too, self-destructed because of that. The latest Slackware installation liked to throw MySQL up in the air and let it fall and die a few seconds later. Each time, however, I seem to progress a bit more. I think I will have it working eventually.

* * *

Flines rules.

Justin recently moved from the city he lived in to Boston, to work for the Free Software Foundation. I was going to post this while he was busy moving and thus unable to respond properly, just to annoy him, but other things got in the way.

The FSF, of course, advocates the use of open source software – which means Linux. After you mention Linux you keep the thought floating around for a few minutes, and later talk about Mozilla. Few more minutes and you can bring up StarOffice and MySQL. From that point on half the audience will stop having any idea what you are talking about – but at least it is free and open source.

Last year I bought a used computer from a friend. AMD K6-2 450MHz, 64Mb RAM, 6Gb HD. Old and rather useless, but it was cheap. I planned to use it as gateway firewall proxy router in the little LAN here, because I am tired of having to keep Asgaard running so Olympus has access, and having to limit and balance download and upload rates on both machines manually depending on the bandwidth usage of each one during each period. So the K6-2 would become Bifrost and do all this stuff for me.

A low-end machine for that purpose could not possibly have Windows running in it, so naturally I went for free systems. An odyssey.

First, Conectiva Linux, a Brazilian distribution based on Red Hat, because I had the original discs here. It installed okay, and came with KDE. That was all. It was extremely outdated, and everything was hard to configure. The manual that came with it showed very well how to use KDE, but mysteriously skipped the part where the user configures it. After much toiling to get KDE running I realized there was nothing else I could do there without getting to the core of Linux functionality and updating the kernel, the ports, the packages, and everything else – which the manual does not say how is done, and would probably not be worth it anyway. I abandoned Conectiva.

My next option was FreeBSD, because Justin was always talking about it, used it on his computers, said it was great and had a better community than Linux, et cetera. Version 5.1-release at the time, installed with minimal problems with a lot of help from him. Ports updated, some things compiled, some obscure settings changed (everything with his help, still), it could get online using Opera – but that was all. Compiling anything else was impossible, returned errors (Firefox and Mozilla Suite included); X was running, but barely. Eventually he said this version was outdated and I would need to recompile the kernel. “But this is what I got from their site, you mean there is one that is not there?” Apparently, yes, if you are willing to take some risks you can use more advanced “-stable” (not “-release”) versions, which are not as visible. After looking at the instructions (one place said “do this”; the other place said “although they say ‘do this’ you should actually do this, this, this and then this, but be very sure to backup first) I politely set it aside.

One day I heard of IPCop, a minimal Linux distribution meant to be exactly what I wanted: a router firewall bandwidth-manager proxy port-forwarder. With very simple and intuitive installation, helpful tips, very easy to configure and maintain. It installed flawlessly, it ran without a problem, it did everything it had to – except find the Ethernet boards in Bifrost. I tried automatic, manual, editing the setup files themselves. No deal, IPCop refuses to acknowledge those two cards (which I am seeing and FreeBSD agreed to exist) are there. A look at their forums showed that problem was not unheard of – but a solution was. Another CD-R forgotten in the drawer.

Months passed with Bifrost forgotten, and forgotten with it was my little private Ragnarok Online server, until I heard about Coyote Linux. I took a look at it, and noticed it could well run in one of those very old boxes I have (Pentium MMX, but with more memory than the K6-2 – I might switch some things around sometime). So Bifrost would be a PMMX, and the K6-2 would become Midgaard, and run the Ragnarok server – because running it on Asgaard is quite troublesome, and on Midgaard I could keep it running non-stop.

For that purpose, then, I would need a light system capable of running MySQL and the server, nothing else. MySQL because I want to abandon the .txt server and its records that can be read in notepad but not edited easily by a php script running on Eris. Time to go back to Linux in the K6-2, now Midgaard, to see where it took me.

“Justin! Give me a Linux distribution that is very easy to install and configure and run and connect to WinXP machines on a LAN but is also light enough to run off an old low-end computer!”, I said.
“Ubuntu!”, he replied.
“Okay, now give me a Linux distribution that is easy to use and has a decent name!”

He chuckled, which probably meant he thought what I said was a joke. Left only with a Linux distribution that is easy to use but has a silly name, I had to go with that. I downloaded Ubuntu and installed it.

Installation did not complete, but it booted okay to a command prompt. “But it is supposed to have Gnome or X-windows or KDE or whatever else by default, no?”, I thought to myself as I tried to start up something that used the old mouse. No deal, needed configuring. An evening figuring out how to configure an X server manually. When it finally started, the mouse would not move. Another two evenings to make the mouse move – with the added bonus of Gnome locking up every time I left it unattended for more than three minutes (which was hard to avoid, as the usual “touch the mouse” feature used to avoid screensavers could not be used and I kept forgetting it). Eventually I made the mouse work! And Gnome could never start up again. “Theme corrupted”, I believe.

I reinstalled Ubuntu with minimal settings – no need for all that stuff anyway, I just want MySQL and some compilers to deal with the Ragnarok server. Installation did not complete on any of the five attempts or the three copies of the CD, made from two different downloads of the ISO image.

Full installation, then, and this time it actually finished, and I fixed the mouse before even going into Gnome, and it did not lock up, and I could see Olympus from it! (I could not see Asgaard because Asgaard is weird and shy and no one sees it in the network – not even itself.) I copied a wallpaper from Olympus just for fun, “Behold!, a Linux system actually displaying a big .jpg file!”. Then I shut it down and went to sleep as the sun was rising, and it never booted up properly again. The next six attempts at reinstallation failed, too.

Slackware. Downloaded, installed. No problems up to that point – they were being saved for later, of course. Login as root, no password asked. Add password, add user account, login to user account. Try to run something: fail. X server, compilers, fetch, wget, nothing. Perhaps it was all misconfigured. Perhaps there was a problem during installation after all. Bah.

FreeBSD again, maybe this outdated version is enough to run MySQL and compile the server. Installed okay, tried to install MySQL and failed. Did a general upgrade of all ports, took a whole day. Tried to compile MySQL and failed. “Okay, I give up on SQL, I will keep using the TXT server.”, which I downloaded and could not use because it was in a .rar file; I tried to install the rar port and it said it was not compatible with that version of FreeBSD. “I can live with that”, and made a zip, got it there again, unzipped, tried to compile. “gmake: Command not found.” Common “make” gave lots of errors. Installed all ports remotely connected to gmake, and still it could not be found. Enough.

I downloaded the new version of FreeBSD and installed it. Went alright, but X will not start at all and not even give me an error message – it just gives me the prompt back. “Screw it”, and tried to install MySQL. “Segmentation fault” on a dozen different places even after updating everything twice. “Screw it again” and went for the TXT server. It found gmake this time – but did not compile. I looked for information on it. “Running the server on BSD”, thread in the server’s site’s forum, many source modifications to compile in BSD, because “BSD is not Linux, so not all things work the same”. Modifications for an older version of the server, not functional anymore. “Damn.”

Now Justin is back on tracks and his latest post says he is using Ubuntu somewhere, instead of his old friend FreeBSD. I suppose I should give it another try – a third download, a fourth CD, a seventeenth installation attempt. But until I build up the courage again (and finish other things that got in the way – school keeps messing up with my education), I have this most unkind BSD prompt staring at me from Midgaard – which is, therefore, kept turned off most of the time.

From all this there is only one conclusion I can reach: Windows XP, for installing on the first attempt, running flawlessly since then, identifying my mouse and my Ethernet boards, managing my network and holding MySQL and the Ragnarok server without a complaint, is better than Ubuntu, Slackware, Conectiva, IPCop and FreeBSD.

Free, open source software is a beautiful goal and I do support the idea of not needing to pay exorbitant prices for a system that can be exploited so easily. But, as it stands, free, open source software is not usable enough for anyone without a degree in Computer Science (or not married to someone who is, of course). It requires initiation, but gives no indication of where one can learn about it. “Which kernel do you want to use?” is the worst possible first question a system installation could ever ask, and Slackware asked me that – I had a far better time with OS/2 Warp, by the gods!

Where are autoexec.bat and config.sys? How do I make a .bat file? Why does this editor want me to type :q! to quit? How much disk space and memory do I have free? Why is the universal Ctrl+Alt+Del not working? Why do they always think I am on a network with a dozen other users and a network administrator and multiple terminals?

The Free Software Foundation will only reach its goal when makers of free software realize people might just want to install a free operating system on their computer, have it recognize their hardware, give them a graphical interface and tell them what each thing does, and why, and how. “What kernel do you want to install?” is nowhere near that.

I will keep on trying, because I want Midgaard and Bifrost working, but the frustration builds up. The only respite I get is the fact that my expenses in all these attempts, other than wasted time, were only a few CD-R. But I honestly expected free software to have more advantages than just being free.

(By the way, if anyone has some comment space they do not want, I may take it, because Justin will surely use up everything I have here and not stop at that. ;) )