30 Years on the WebOn Friday, August 30th, 1996, I published a message on the “soc.culture.argentina” Usenet newsgroup, announcing the existence of a new page on this thing called “the web”: the URL was http://sc2a.unige.ch/~kosmacze and it was my first personal website.
eiPottIn this blog I’ve often mentioned the name of my late friend Bertrand Dufresne, who passed away 10 years ago this year. Despite all the good memories I have with him, I wanted to remember him through an object he offered me once.
Bestseller TalkTen years ago, almost to the day, I delivered what turned out to be the “best-selling” talk of all my conference speaking career, with effects that I can feel to this day.
SOHCAHTOAIn November 1989 I passed the entry exams for the “Bachillerato Bilingüe”, aka the “Bilingual Bachelor”, a parallel study program that existed in my high school, and which gave access to the coveted “Baccalauréat International” degree; turns out my school was one of the few in Latin America that had that possibility, so there I went.
Magdalena TempranísimoDuring most of the 1980s, I woke up every morning at 06:30. By then my mother was already awake, preparing breakfast and getting ready for work, usually starting her day half an hour earlier than me.
20 Years of LinuxAlmost exactly 20 years ago I installed and used Linux for the first time. The distro was good old Ubuntu 5.10, code-named “Breezy Badger” back in the day. The hardware was my faithful Apple iBook G3 bought in 2003, with a PowerPC CPU.
ArturitoI watched the first Star Wars film (aka “Episode 4”) on the big screen of a crappy cinema of Buenos Aires somewhere in 1978 or 1979 (I was 5 or 6 years old).
The UnexpectedTantra and Ch’an teacher Daniel Odier explained in one of his videos how the unexpected is the doorway to revelation. (This is, again, a very personal post, so if you came here for Linux and Cloud Native shit, you might want to skip.)
GymI’ve always been bad at gym. I don’t know if there are many people reading this that know me from primary or high school, but I am sure they would agree that, as good as I could be in other subjects, I sucked at gym, year after year.
Lucky ManI moved back to Buenos Aires in January 1998: merely 2 days before I boarded the last Swissair flight I would ever take, my girlfriend at the time (and, needless to say, one of the major reasons I had decided to move back to Buenos Aires for) called to tell me that she had unilaterally decided to break up with me.
ElizabethtownThe movie “Elizabethtown” is 20 years old this year, and I re-re-re-watched it again recently; it’s not a particularly popular movie, but it’s one of those that I can’t watch without having it leave a deep crater in my heart every time… It’s hard to describe.
My Grandmother Herta SchlerffThe name of my maternal grandmother was Herta Schlerff. She died 40 years ago, when I was 11 years old. She suffered a series of chronic health problems, including a couple of heart attacks and a broken hip, but she died peacefully, in her sleep, one morning of April 1985 at the Clínica Olivos, near the corner of Arenales and Maipú Avenue, in Vicente López, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Car Accident, 1976I was 2 and a half years old, almost 3. My mum had a small dark blue Fiat 600, very common in Argentina in those days. It was a dark winter night (that is, Southern Hemisphere, so around June or July) in Buenos Aires in 1976.
Memories of 1978, Paranoia and PainI am old enough to have memories of 1978, a time that happened 47 years ago; not figments, but scattered fragments, like the pieces of a shattered mirror, and here they are.
Two Thirds of the Way InRemember when I told the story of how I got started in the tech industry? In it, I said that
WFH in 1998The heated “Work from Home” debate of 2024 brought me back memories of my first programming job, when I joined a small “dotcom” startup in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and for the first few months of my employment I quite literally worked from home… in 1998.
20 Years BloggingOn Saturday, November 6th, 2004, I wrote the text what would become my first blog post. It’s in Spanish, and I wrote it on my beloved iBook G3 near a boarding gate at the Ezeiza International Airport, after having spent a long month in Buenos Aires visiting family and friends.
32 Years of PC ConfigurationsI’ve been keeping track of the various characteristics of personal computers I’ve owned during the past 32 years, and here’s a table comparing those data points.
Ancestors from Geneva and BeyondI’ve already written about my grandmother Herta, about one of my Polish ancestors in the 16th century, and about how my four grandparents arrived to Buenos Aires at various points of the early 20th century. Now it’s time to learn about some great-great-grandparents from the side of my maternal grandfather.
Use a BidetOne of the things that I missed the most when moving from Argentina to Switzerland in 1991 wasn’t the meat, nor the alfajores, nor the dulce de leche, but the humble bidet in every bathroom.
AliensSo this is an unusual topic for this publication, I agree. In almost 20 years of blogging I have almost never ever talked about extraterrestrial life, but for various reasons I’ve been pondering about it lately, and here go some thoughts and beliefs in no particular order.
When My Grandparents Arrived to Buenos AiresAn article on the Argentine newspaper Clarín prompted me to visit the CEMLA search engine and search for the arrival details of my grandparents migrating to Buenos Aires, and guess what, I found them.
Do You Feel It?All around me, things are happening at an accelerated pace compared to last year. People I know are changing jobs, taking trips they never thought they’d take, creating new things, starting new ventures, and moving on to new phases in their lives.
The Core Idea of this Blog is MigrationsThis blog, made of writing pieces I published online in various formats since 1996 to today, is the reflection of the various migrations I’ve experienced through my life.
El Imperio ContraatacaOn the early afternoon of Saturday, January 3rd, 1981, my mother took the 7-year old me to the “Atlas Belgrano” cinema in Buenos Aires (near the corner of Cabildo Avenue and Juramento street) to watch the recently released “The Empire Strikes Back”.
1996My life rebooted in July 1996; the day I decided to drop out from college, to get my driving license, to start going out at least twice a week, and to take a sabbatical from everything. Yes, I pretty much took all of those decisions at the same time.
Kosmaczewski's LawI was talking recently with Graham and an observation came to my mind, one that I hereby state as Kosmaczewski’s Law: “The flow of knowledge is inverse to the flow of fascism”.
Serving in the Swiss ArmyThis week it’s been 30 years since I first joined the Swiss Army. Involuntarily, that is. I had just finished my Maturité exams, and had subsequently enrolled as a student of Physics in the University of Geneva.
Memories of WWDC 2008Exactly 15 years ago, on Monday, June 9th, 2008, I published a blog post with a picture taken in the big room of the Moscone conference center in San Francisco, waiting for Steve Jobs to introduce the iPhone 3G to the world at the annual Apple World Wide Developers’ Conference 2008.
The Oldest Web Pages I've Made Still OnlineExploring old backups I came across the links to the oldest websites that I’ve made, between 1997 and 1998, as part of my work at FIS, 25 years ago.
CholilaCholila is a little town in the province of Chubut in the middle of Argentine Patagonia inhabited by around 2000 souls. It is mainly known for its National Barbecue Festival and because Butch Cassidy lived there for a while.
Editorial KapeluszOne day, on a rainy Saturday evening in the autumn of 1989, I taught myself derivatives and integrals. Yes, I know, I didn’t have many friends back then, talk about peak nerd stuff.
The Book I Never WroteI’ve written and published a few books. But if you look carefully online, you’ll find one book with my name on it, even though I haven’t written it. This is the story.
My First PCI got my first personal computer 30 years ago this month. It was during the summer of 1992; I had just finished my first year of studies at the Collège Sismondi, and it was the first summer after we arrived from Argentina that looked like a real holiday.
My Biggest FailureAlthough not my preferred genre, there’s a few business books I’ve read that I reread a few times, and I keep recommending them again and again. “Leading Change” by John Kotter is one of those.
UkraineIt has been hard for me to think about anything else than the Russian invasion of Ukraine since last week; it is also hard for me to write about it.
LanguagesI have the immense chance and privilege of being fluent in three beautiful languages such as Spanish, French, and English. I have studied and worked with all three, and through them I have come to discover incredible cultures and fantastic works of art.
Managing Professional Decline as a DeveloperMy friend Gabriel Garcia Marengo shared a great article by Arthur Brooks a few weeks ago, and it prompted me to reflect on how developers cope with age. This is not a new subject for me; but it is one that, as I approach the glorious age of 50, becomes more and more present in my thoughts.
Radio SilenceI have had three episodes of burnout in my professional life, in three consecutive years. Not the best moments, for sure. This story is about the first episode, less than a decade ago.
No Cookie PopupAfter eight months of playing with this pure HTML website, the only thing I can say is: why didn’t I do this sooner?
The End of the Tunnel?From a Swiss perspective it would be easy to think that the COVID-19 crisis is reaching its end. That’s a rather myopic point of view; the truth is that many places in the world are going through the worst patches at this point.
Vaccines and Software DevelopersI am a bit tired and disappointed by the attitude of many in our industry, people supposedly eager to test new technologies and “move the human race forward”. Yes, just like the Apple ads of the 90s campaign “Think different” used to say.
A Compilation of Old Blog PostsLooking inside some old archives I came across my first attempt at a book. Back in 2009 I compiled many of the articles I had published in my first blog, which I had started in 2004, and generated a PDF with them.
Ham Is to HamstersI published my first web page in the server of my university. It was at the end of August, 1996. It will be 25 years soon. I was about to turn 23, and I had taught myself HTML with Liz Castro’s excellent book “HTML for the World Wide Web”.
COVID-19 Vaccination ProgressThe (low) speed of the COVID-19 vaccination in Switzerland is infuriating. The current graphs show almost a linear progression. Linear, not quadratic, not exponential. Linear. Fucking linear. They say it’s going to accelerate from now on, well, we’ll see about that.
Growing as a DeveloperYou will outlive IDEs. At some point you’ll find them bloated, slow, clunky. That’s good. But there are moments when using an IDE is still better than not using one. You will learn to distinguish when that happens.
PascalFrom 2013 to 2019 I lived in a small town, thirty minutes north of Zürich by train, called Schaffhausen. Where I lived, our neighbors organised every year a gathering, with traditional food and drinks, and where everybody talked to me in Swiss German. Even if I did not always get what was going on, they were so friendly I could not stop smiling.
TeachingIn November 2015 I attended the DO iOS conference in Amsterdam. After the event was over, I had dinner in a pub with my friend Daniel Steinberg, whom I had not met in more than three years, and who had just held a terrific Swift workshop in the event.
MentorsI have had the tremendous chance of working with incredible programmers through the ages. I will not name them all, but suffice to say that:
OpinionatedProgramming is a very opinionated activity. Unfortunately, those opinions are seldom based on facts, and most of them are futile, and lead to stupid arguments on Reddit or Hacker News or the comments section of a blog.
Thirty YearsAs the taxi rushed away from my old home along Avenida del Libertador, I looked through the rear windshield for one last time. My mother barely acknowledged my gesture. She was silent, and most probably did not want to turn around. She hid her eyes behind her sunglasses, trying not to think about what laid ahead of us, in a journey that, a few days later, would take us to Europe.
Touch TypingProbably the single most important skill that has always helped me when dealing with computers is the ability to type without looking at the keyboard.
Programmable CalculatorsAs far as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by computers. But in the crisis-ridden Argentina of the 1980s, buying one was beyond the reach of my mother. Actually, we did not even have a telephone back then.
How to Desperately Suck at ClichesI was born in Argentina. This fact, all by itself, provides a rather unlimited amount of smiles in every person I meet.
VSHN.timerSince August 2019 I took the duty of publishing a weekly series of blog posts called “VSHN․timer”.
RebootI started my first blog in December 2004. But that was not my first website. I published that one in August 1996. At first, just a pure HTML website, with almost no JavaScript or CSS, lots of <FONT> and <FRAME> and <MARQUEE> tags all over the place.
A Quest For A Better WorldThis is the presentation I gave at the third App Builders Conference in Lugano, Switzerland, April 17th, 2018.
The Developer Guide to Migrate Across GalaxiesThis is the presentation I gave at the second App Builders Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, April 25th, 2017.
Sandra(Based in a true story.) I first saw her around September 1969, at the start of my third year of high school. She walked into the classroom one morning, the new student just introduced by our teacher.
On the Kindness of Nordic PeopleThere’s this common but, in my opinion, largely unfounded idea among Mediterranean people that Nordics are “cold,” so to speak.
Talking to StrangersI’m not the kind of guy that enjoys talking to strangers. It’s something quite common and appreciated in Latin cultures, for example to smalltalk about the weather or other inane subject with the person next to you on the bus, or a neighbor, or anything. When I travel alone I prefer single seats, nobody around me, traveling in peace, music, book, writing, thinking. When I walk I prefer silence or music in my ears. When I work I prefer silence. And the respect of this sphere is another of the things that I appreciate in Germanic and Scandinavian cultures, as a matter of fact.
DepresiónEs algo que me sucede relativamente seguido. Es algo que nunca le conté a la vieja, tal vez para no preocuparla. Pero es algo que me costó varias relaciones, canas, arrugas, lágrimas, y que me sucede de maneras erráticas.
Mi Abuela HertaMi abuela materna se llamaba Herta Schlerff. Murió cuando yo tenía 11 años. Encadenó una serie de problemas de salud crónicos, entre un par de paros cardíacos y una fractura de cadera, pero murió tranquilamente, en su sueño, una mañana de abril de 1985, en la Clínica Olivos, ahí en Arenales y Maipú.
I Hate You, Airline IndustryI hate flying. I hate airplanes. I hate airlines. I hate crews. I hate ground handling teams. I hate everything that has to do with that shit. Deeply. Disturbingly. Profoundly.
SwissairWhen I was a student in university, I used to work in Geneva Airport, aka GVA, as a part-time luggage handling employee, an “auxiliaire” as we were called, in a now extinct company once called Swissair.
Tweeting Without TwitterDuring my flight to WWDC this year I could not really sleep, and the 12 hour flight was the source of memorable tweets that will never make it to Twitter. Because of timing and context, and also because of the inexcusable lack of wifi network in some major airlines.
Color Sin Dolorviejita, te fuiste durante la mañana del 15 de marzo del 2010. seguramente la noche anterior cenaste, miraste la television, tomaste tus medicamentos, despues te acostaste mirando la foto de tu hermano charles, y te quedaste dormida. te quedaste dormida, mama, sin dolor.
BlessedI’m blessed. This post is about life, about the tiny little things that make our current world a great, truly enjoyable experience. Grab a cup of tea, sit and relax on your chair, and read. This is clearly a blog post suitable for a Friday afternoon.
QuotesA small compilation of quotes I’ve put below the header of this blog during the past few years:
Olé, olé, oléI just stumbled into this amazing TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert via James Duncan Davidson (@duncan in Twitter) and I want to share it with you with some very personal thoughts below.
MasterI’ve sent the final version of my dissertation to the University of Liverpool. I’ve been doing this Master’s degree since 2005, and now it’s over. It feels good and weird at the same time.
DemocracyWhat amazes me most about democracy is that most people associate it with just “voting”. We can vote, hence we live in a free country.
A Simple Recipe for Podcast SuccessI am subscribed to quite a few podcasts and screencasts here and there. And I’ve come up with a very basic (albeit limited and you could even say irrational) way of determining which to keep listening and which to throw away immediately:
akosmaHomer calls them akosma. This is the negative of kosmos, whence our words “cosmetics” and “cosmos” derive. The word implies disorder and lack of grace.
What Happened to Dr. Dobb's?I have been a big fan of Dr. Dobb’s magazine for years. Until last year. Somehow during the month of June 2006, the magazine changed completely. I have read it since the late ’90s, and I always found it to be at the bleeding edge of the technology; the articles were amazing, and the best of the best developers always wrote good descriptions of their discoveries and ideas. I much prefer reading in paper than on screen, and that’s why I got a subscription to it.
Why do I prefer OpenOffice, NeoOffice, or AbiWord?I use OpenOffice (for Windows and Linux), NeoOffice (on the Mac) and AbiWord (in the three OSs) more often than Microsoft Office, and I many people recently asked me why. My choice has to do with many reasons, that might or might not apply to you:
Craving to Read, Back to Commuting?I’ve got a couple of books on my desk that I’m craving to read! The problem is, lately I’m lacking the time to sit quietly and enjoy them:
Virtually AnythingWhat’s the hot word these days? Virtualization. Even December 2006’s issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal talks about it. Even Jason Dixon talks about it.
Starting a New AdventureSo here we go again. Last week I started my new job, as Software Solutions Consultant for Getronics, in Lonay, near Lausanne (where I live), Switzerland. Yeah, the commune of Lonay has an awful website. Anyway. The good news is Getronics, actually.
NieveAcabo de mandarle este mensaje a una amiga, cuyo novio resbalo en la nieve y se jodio la muñeca:
Who Is This Guy, Anyway?All of a sudden you happen to be browsing some weirdo’s website, plenty of blogs and some of them speak about software development.
AsteroidIt turns out that there is an asteroid (number 15609) named “Kosmaczewski” (well, that won’t surprise many of those who know me too well…) Here’s the story of how it happened, taken from this document:
Escrito en Un Barescrito en un bar, en la esquina de alvarez jonte y avenida san martin, barrio de la paternal, ciudad de buenos aires.
CobaniAyer me tome el tren con Laura, estabamos los dos en Ginebra, y nos volvimos juntos para Lausanne. En la estacion de tren, primero nos asombro la cantidad de canas (en realidad, agentes de seguridad privados, armados y con walkie-talkie) que andaban dando vueltas por ahi. Supuestamente uno se tendria que sentir mejor al verlos. En realidad, como toda fuerza policial, lo primero a lo que se dedican es a cercenar libertades. Pero esto que les voy a contar ya supera toda imaginacion.
A No ConfundirseEn francés es facil equivocarse: una “avenue” no es siempre una avenida como estamos acostumbrados en Buenos Aires; para toda via de transito rapido, con al menos tres carriles por mano, los de habla francesa prefieren el termino “boulevard”, que convengamos tiene mas carisma que avenue. Tiene mas “marketing”, no se como definirlo. Donde estas? Estoy caminando por el Boulevard. Es bastante cheto.
MeteorologíaEl tiempo en estos lares es tan malo durante el año, que cuando sale el sol, despues de varios meses de invierno lluvioso, cubierto y gris, la venta de anteojos de sol explota, tanto estamos todos literalmente encandilados por el astro rey. Y los que no andan con polaroids, andan con los ojos entrecerrados como chinos.
CointrinSix heures du matin. La camionnettte blanche vient tout juste de partir, et un vent froid, puissant, rentre par mes narines. Un bruit de fond, toujours présent, me fait grincer les dents, fermer les yeux. Je mets en place mes oreillettes, ce qui réduit (heureusement) ce flot de décibels qui ne cesse jamais.
CR963 ans. 3 ans de ma vie qui passent devant mes yeux en regardant les gens en ce cours de repét. Des visages, des événements, des souvenirs.
QuestionLe vide. Insondable, mystérieux. Qui creuse les âmes, qui tend la pelouse de notre patience, qui la rend finalement inutile.
Mise à TerreEn Argentine, on les appelle “Mise à terre”. Ben ouais, un peu comme en Electro. On appelle ainsi, familièrement, ces gens qui nous déchargent du stress, qui nous font voir la vie du bon côté, qui nous font rire et pleurer en même temps. Cette personne qui nous aime, à qui nous pouvons faire entièrement confiance.