Tag "personal"

Roberto Scaramuzza, a piano tuner by profession, a resident of the very porteño neighborhood of Coghlan, got off vehicle 12 of bus line 133 on February 4, 1965 at 22:14 at the corner of Olazábal and Rómulo Naón, stunned after a 45-minute trip from Liniers.

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.

This 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.

On 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”.

My 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.

I 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”.

This 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.

Exactly 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.

Exploring 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.

Cholila 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.

One 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.

I’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.

I 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.

Although 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.

It 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.

I have the immense chance and privilege of being fluent in three beautiful languages such as Spanish, French, and English.

My 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.

I have had three episodes of burnout in my professional life, in three consecutive years.

Note taking is very important to me. I keep everything in my notes, from ideas for blog posts like this one, to code snippets, to web pages, to plans of never started businesses, and so much more.

After eight months of playing with this pure HTML website, the only thing I can say is: why didn’t I do this sooner?

From a Swiss perspective it would be easy to think that the COVID-19 crisis is reaching its end.

I 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”.

Looking inside some old archives I came across my first attempt at a book.

I published my first web page in the server of my university.

The (low) speed of the COVID-19 vaccination in Switzerland is infuriating.

You will outlive IDEs. At some point you’ll find them bloated, slow, clunky.

From 2013 to 2019 I lived in a small town, thirty minutes north of Zürich by train, called Schaffhausen.

In November 2015 I attended the DO iOS conference in Amsterdam.

I have had the tremendous chance of working with incredible programmers through the ages.

Programming 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.

As the taxi rushed away from my old home along Avenida del Libertador, I looked through the rear windshield for one last time.

Probably the single most important skill that has always helped me when dealing with computers is the ability to type without looking at the keyboard.

As far as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by computers.

I was born in Argentina. This fact, all by itself, provides a rather unlimited amount of smiles in every person I meet.

Since August 2019 I took the duty of publishing a weekly series of blog posts called “VSHN․timer”.

I started my first blog in December 2004. But that was not my first website.

This is the presentation I gave at the third App Builders Conference in Lugano, Switzerland, April 17th, 2018.

This is the presentation I gave at the second App Builders Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, April 25th, 2017.

This is the talk I gave at App Builders Switzerland on April 25th, 2016.

I’ve been blogging for 10 years now. From Movable Type to Wordpress.

Our objective is global awareness. It is our ultimate goal.

There’s this common but, in my opinion, largely unfounded idea among Mediterranean people that Nordics are “cold,” so to speak.

I’m not the kind of guy that enjoys talking to strangers.

I’m looking for the face I had, before the world was made

I hate flying. I hate airplanes. I hate airlines. I hate crews.

When 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.

This is probably one of the most mysterious and beautiful videos on the web.

During 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.

viejita, te fuiste durante la mañana del 15 de marzo del 2010.

en suecia, al menos en göteborg, hay luces en cada ventana.

I’m blessed. This post is about life, about the tiny little things that make our current world a great, truly enjoyable experience.

A small compilation of quotes I’ve put below the header of this blog during the past few years:

I’ve sent the final version of my dissertation to the University of Liverpool.

What amazes me most about democracy is that: Most people associate it with just “voting”.

It always start with a white space, like this blog post.

I am subscribed to quite a few podcasts and screencasts here and there.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/ifstoneinterview.html Homer calls them akosma. This is the negative of kosmos, whence our words “cosmetics” and “cosmos” derive.

I have been a big fan of Dr. Dobb’s magazine for years.

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 wife Claudia and me (courtesy of South Park Studio)

I’ve got a couple of books on my desk that I’m craving to read!

What’s the hot word these days? Virtualization. Even December 2006’s issue of Dr.

So 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.

All of a sudden you happen to be browsing some weirdo’s website, plenty of blogs and some of them speak about software development.

It 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: