soledad penadés

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So if you want to contact me by instant messaging, and you still don't have my gmail address, just send me an e-mail and I'll probably will give it to you ;)

My old MSN addresses are still there but I hardly connect to those accounts nowadays. So, I'm not dead or something, it's just you're looking in the wrong place :D

See you… somewhere!

Maybe it's not easy to read (the ink is poorly distributed in the ticket), but it is £6.66 this time. Not a heaven signal, like the other time, but maybe something a bit darker instead.
Luckily today is not 6th of June :D

I just logged to Schism Tracker forum some days ago to report a problem with the CVS version and noticed that Xenon, the spanish musician which I have always seen at BCN party, was also registered in the forum and contributing to Schism with a port to BeOs (or that I understood).

Then I looked at his signature in the forum: "10 years of tracking!".

"Ok" I thought, "10 years! he must have started really early". Then I realized it's going to be 10 years since I did my first tests in Scream Tracker very soon. I can't remember exactly when was the day, but it was something around the end of May and beginning of June of 1996.

Ahhh!… nostalgia arises, those were the times. Just hours and hours spent in front of the pc, with a pair of cheap headphones (even more, the left one was a bit fucked up and the bass sounded distorted). While the other girls were busy trying to flirt with the (so called) most handsome guy in the class, I was trying to find a decent way of saving my songs to a tape and then being able to listen to them anywhere, everywhere.
Tracking in mono and listening later in Cubic player (as that one supported stereo). Creating a little library of samples, ripped from modules from the pcmania cd (later on, I discovered that most of these samples really came from lots of amiga and pc demoscene musicians, such as falcon, purple motion, jester…). Exchanging messages between more people in the samples messages… That was funny.

Then the superprofessional people entered the scene. People started recording their songs with real labels, thus getting serious with the sound quality. Not only they were worrying about their songs, but they also criticised every other song which didn't sound good. If it hadn't been professionally masterised, it sucked. No matter the melodies. It sucked.

At the beginning I just didn't give a fuck about that. Who cares, I'm not studying for being a musician, I'm not going to earn a single penny with music, I just want to have fun with this. Then I somehow became serious about that, I tried to understand cubase and all that, but it was quite impossible to do anything without a midi keyboard and the computer I had (a pentium II) wasn't able to cope with soft synths. So that and the fact that the demoscene musical scene was as annoying as it always is for newcomers, made me quit the music for a while. I didn't do anything for almost two years.

Then I rediscovered demoscene and did some more songs, learned new styles and techniques: chiptunes, how SID works (even if I never finished a song, but I had several attempts in goattracker), listened to and understood md, dune, and all that kind of intelligent dance music tunes, etc… I also started playing a bit with Reason, with the new laptop I got, but…

…I really don't feel comfortable or inspired. I have the feeling that I have already made all what I had to do, and any new song I do sounds to me like my previous songs. I think I'd better celebrate the 10 years with a good pause. Or do you have any suggestion for these moments of mental vacuum? :D

Me pasa todos los 23 de mayo, me acuerdo de una chica que conozco, y de que es su cumpleaños. También me pasa el 12 de septiembre, el 9 de junio, 5 de abril, 13 de mayo, 18 de diciembre… y así hasta aburrir. Por alguna razón que desconozco, tengo demasiada buena memoria para los cumpleaños, incluso para los de gente que ya no trato desde hace siglos.

Al principio trataba inútilmente de mantener el contacto y seguía felicitándoles. Postales, cartas, llamadas de teléfono o sms's (cuando nos hicimos modernos), la mayoría de las veces sin respuesta o con una frialdad tal que te helaba hasta los sentimientos más candorosos. Por supuesto, ni hablar de recibir una felicitación por mi cumpleaños :D
Así que decidí pasar, o eso intento, pues no hay forma de que se me olviden esas fechas. Es un desastre.
¿Les gusta ser engreídos y que les hagan la pelota, no sé, para sentirse importantes, solicitados? Quiero decir, a mí si me mandan una postal o carta, tengo la necesidad de responderla; aunque no sea por ese medio - bien liados vamos de normal, así que es probable que acabe enviando un e-mail o un sms. Pero al menos tienes el detalle, te preocupas. No como una obligación, sino como un placer, el placer de comunicarse y mantener los nexos fuertes y renovados.

Luego me divierte cuando me encuentro con alguna de esas personas y esperan que salude con una sonrisa de oreja a oreja. Se decepcionan si no es así y los recibes con la misma cara con que te puedes leer un periódico en chino: que ni fu ni fa, sino todo lo contrario. ¿Y qué pueden esperar, si han cortado la comunicación?

De modo que el hecho de no felicitar a la gente, al tiempo que soy perfectamente consciente de que esperan que les feliciten, no sé si tomármelo como una pequeña venganza o como una forma estúpida de colaborar en un asesinato comunicativo. Y ante la duda… ¡quiero ser desmemoriada!

Aunque sea un poquito sólo… porfis…

I'd wish lots of people understood and appreciated "Code smells" from Coding Horror. I wouldn't have to deal with stinky smelly code almost every day; life would be so beatiful and pleasant… 8-|
Anyway, the article reminds me somehow of that song that Phoebe sang in Friends, Smelly cat, and I thought of a bit more technical version:

Smelly code, smelly code, what are they adding you?
Smelly code, smelly code, it's not your fault…

They won't take you to the deb.
You're obviously not their favourite app.
You may not be the latest trend,
and you're no friend to real smart.
Smelly code…

Yes, my song composition abilities also stink. Please be benevolent, I'm not native english speaker ;)