Inigo Quilez   ::     ::  
1402 blog posts, written between 2008 and 2016. These are mostly short observations, funny thoughts and word playing. Some are embarrasingly corny, some more deep. I keep it here mostly a little time capsule for myself, organized by month:



<
August 2010
>
it's she!
2010-08-26
did i ever tell you that Amelie is my all time favourite hero(in)?

btw...
2010-08-21
..., on these different viewpoints about facebook, i actually don't disagree with any of them
typical dinner conversation
2010-08-20
there are topics like religion, economics or politics that you can only touch in some reduced set of situations. you probably don't wanna do it in a company meeting, or in your first visit to a girlfriend's mother's birthday party, or stuff like that. however, there are other topics that can make the conversation feel like it was interesting, yet are pretty safe to touch. so it's alway a good idea to have one handy. in this area, the discussion about facebook is always a winner. basic and completely non transcendental.

during the conversation, you will always find a couple of persons who proudly claim not to have fallen into the trap. another three will say that it's a good way to keep in touch with friends, to know about parties. few would say it's a way to feed your own narcissism. few will point out that when living abroad, it helps getting in touch with family without having to pick a phone or write a long email. somebody will do the remark that it sucks cause rejecting a work colleague's request to become friend is politically incorrect yet you actually don't want her/him as a friend who can see your private party pictures that you want to share with your real friends. somebody will also say that there is no like facebook to show off to you girlfriends that you actually do have a successful love life without her/him. and finally, perhaps somebody will even claim that you simply HAVE TO have it.
i am not a hippie, tho!
2010-08-18
that being said, i tend to feel that once knowledge and education is given for free, and once every single person in a society is ready to make good use of his/her creativity (something that in this place people wrongly interpret as "fight"...), there shouldn't be anything fundamentally wrong with doing commercial use of a real new idea, at least for a period of time.

so yeah, i am very open and up for anything that might imply exploiting a great idea. in the end of the day, i need money, and also, now being a bit less selfish, and without necessarily agreeing with it, the fact is that commercializing products seems to be an efficient way to bring improvements to our daily life. well, at least sometimes.
continental bias
2010-08-17
... i guess that thing i just said might be more shocking in the new continent than in the old one...

... supongo que lo que acabo de decir suena más chocante en el nuevo continente que en el viejo...
about giving things for free
2010-08-16
btw, speaking of creating, i am always confronted with these people who believe, and tell me, that i should not give my ideas or little discoveries for free. they say it is a bad idea to give away all the results of so much effort, and they advice me to keep them for myself and/or often encourage me to make some money out of it.

well,

  • first, it's not an effort to do it, not at this moment at least

  • second, i already have a job

  • third, they are pretty useless if kept hidden in a dark corner of my mind or hard disk. it's also dangerous - they both degenerate

  • fourth, the material i give in my website worths nothing cause the real value is in the intuitions and approach one makes about those ideas posted there, not about the ideas themselves

  • fifth, and most importantly, i believe knowledge and education should be for free, and that we should make a huge effort on spreading both of them, cause they are the seeds for our progress and improvement as humans

  • sixth, and lastly, i like to give them for free because in fact i am very selfish: you cannot imagine the amount of inspiration i get back, and how much i learn, from those sending me questions, feedback, alternate approaches and even improvements to everything i published :)


  • síndrome
    2010-08-14

    ...y aunque estoy feliz de ver que mi volúmen de aprender, intuir y crear no decrece y que por tanto sigo sano como un roble, igual que Mario Benedetti en Síndrome, me doy cuenta que el grave problema es que antes nunca me había preocupado el hecho de que el volúmen un día fuera efectivamente a menguar...

    ...and despite i am glad to see that my flow of learn, sense and create doesn't diminish, and that, therefore, i keep healthy as an ox, still i feel like Mario Benedetti in Síndrome cause I realize that the main problem here is that, in fact, never before had this been a concern to me...
    aprender, intuir, y finalmente, crear
    2010-08-13

    como yo lo veo, el acto último que llena al ser humano, el de la creación, resulta del siguiente proceso:

    primero se aprender y descubre,
    después se presiente y intuye,
    y por último, se crea y se inventa.

    y como si del latir del corazón se tratara, que nunca para y que con cada nuevo latido que sigue al último nos da un nuevo empujón de vida, veo que el proceso de aprendizaje, intuición y creación también se sucede una y otra vez, y no sólo en secuencia, sino además simultáneamente en diferentes frentes del intelecto, alimentando y dando vida a nuestra evolución como seres creadores.

    to learn, to sense, and eventually, to create

    as i see it, the ultimate action that fulfills men, that of creation, results from the following process:

    first you learn and discover,
    then you sense,
    and finally, you invent and create.

    and in the same way every hart beat that follows from the previous one gives you a new bust of life, i see that the process of learning, sensing and creating not only happens over and over again, but in fact happens simultaneously in different intellectual fronts, feeding and providing life to our evolution as creative beens.



    hi there!
    2010-08-10
    you know, i always wonder how self-aware are some people. i'm not speaking about their existence, the meaning of their lives, the relevance of their spirit, their place in history or the universe. no. i'm simply speaking about the most basic physical proximity awareness this time.

    i often find myself having difficulties to leave the bart car because some passengers decide to enter the car before letting the ones inside leave before. i can understand some cultural differences in ways of behaving, but still, i mean, can't they simply think about other people? just a bit, thanks? don't they fucking see us? wtf?

    what about the ones in the escalator who, seeing you are in a hurry, are still unable to move to the right side of the steps and let other people move around. they might even be in the front of a huge line of people what is waiting for them to realize about the thing and are there just unable to move forward. didn't they see us? i mean, really? wtf?

    i also have to leave my bike sometimes in that special area reserved for bikes, which you can only access thru a narrow corridor. yet somebody decides to leave the bike right there in the entrance and not let the others put their bikes in the very empty space behind. didn't (s)he see the situation? wasn't (s)he able to predict the most basic type of future or didn't have the most minimal sense of space? wtf?

    lastly, what about the guy that, unlike all the other freaking persons before him, doesn't hold the door of the building so that we can go all in when it is his turn? w.t.f.?

    guess what, i had a bad day...

    i sometimes think that some people are simply self-conscious but retarded assholes.

    ...ok ok, let's be more constructive and self-critic

    that, or there really are physically/spatial/socially blind, unaware people out there. and if so, am i also one of them? am i annoying somebody without even noticing? i really hope i'm not.

    casi todo llega
    2010-08-07
    recuerdo cuando me hice anciano. envejecí mucho y en poco tiempo, la verdad. de chaval, ganar años simplemente significa sumar uno a tu edad, y poco más, pero llegado el momento de pronto con cada año que me echaba a la espanda tenía que renegar de algo grande e importante.

    recuerdo que una de las veces, cuando cumplí 70 concretamente, perdí mi valentía. y así, por ejemplo, cuando iba a la consulta y el doctor me recetaba unas píldoras con un tono de voz dulce y hablándome como si fuera idiota, yo no sacaba el coraje para preguntarle si realmente me estaba dando algo de verdad o si las pastillitas de fresa eran sólo un placebo. poque no perdí mi inteligencia, solo mi valentía. por eso, al final simplemente salía de la consulta con mi receta, y sumisamente me las tomaba cada mediodía, por si acaso las pílldoras fueran algo más que unas estúpidas pastillitas de fresa.

    mira que mantuve el humor, la inteligencia y la pasión hasta el final, que son mis cualidades más preciadas... junto con la valentía. ¡cómo me jodió perder la valentía!
    en la ducha
    2010-08-05


    siempre tomo mis decisiones sobre la vida, desde las más pequeñas a las más trascendentes, en la ducha. y la mayoría de las intuiciones e ideas las genearo, desde las más irrelevantes hasta las más potentes, también en la ducha. es en la ducha donde me relajo y desconectado (aún más si cabe) del mundo real, y donde tejo cada día, sin prisa pero sin pausa, mi entendimiento de las cosas, el fluir de mi vida y mi posicionamiento en este mundo.

    no hace falta decir que mis duchas matinales duran 20 a 25 minutos
    i always take my decisions about life, from the smallest to the most transcendent, in the shower. and i generate the majority of my intuitions and ideas also in the shower. it is in the shower where i can better relax and disconnect (even further) from the real world, and the place where i weave every day, slowly but steadily, my understanding of things, the flow of my life and my positioning in this world.

    no need to say i spend 20 to 25 minutes in the shower everyday
    never forget what you want(ed)
    2010-08-01


    Who didn't want to be a pirate at the age of 10? If you read the Treasure Island there was no way you wouldn't start fantasizing being one day involved in great adventures like Jim Hawkin, fighting Spanish ships and finding hidden treasures behind some rock in a cave somewhere in the cliffs of the island of your own town (yes, I had an island in my hometown). Childhood is so sweet...

    However childhood is not forever, and so does teenage arrive. Suddenly fantasies are replaced by dreams (or perhaps transformed into). The simple act of imagining being is replaced by the desire of doing and becoming. It's a convoluted but very creative period. But then maturity comes, and most people's life goes through the hugest discontinuity their personality will ever suffer - they give up on dreams, and forget fantasies. They embrace a new I.

    I'm not like that. But I'm not a Peter Pan neither. I like to think I am more like Guybrush Threepwood, a Jim Hawkin wanna be, the main characted of Monkey Island, who wanted to become something very badly, and so he fought and did the impossible to become, in the end, what he always was meant to be.

    And this attitude, far from being something naive, is in fact very brave. For what's easier than forgetting, giving up, and never having to work hard and fight ghosts or face disappointment?

    I really like this guy, Guybrush Threepwood. Go go go!