Duncan Mac-Vicar P.

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.” - James Michener

“El que ha dominado el arte de vivir, tiene poca o ninguna distinción entre su trabajo y su pasatiempo, su labor y su ocio, su mente y su cuerpo, su información y su recreación, su amor y su religión. Difícilmente sabe él cuál es cuál. Sencillamente busca con afán su visión de excelencia en lo que sea que haga, dejando que otros decidan si está trabajando o jugando. Para él, siempre está haciendo ambas cosas.” - James Michener

Well, Italy is the world-champion, and I must say they did quite good. I am also happy for Germany for the well deserved 3rd place.

I have to say it again. Soccer is dying. Matches are boring. Why not doing a penalty worldcup instead? Everytime 2 players go for the ball you know already the end of the scene, one of them or both grabbing its own leg and simulating pain. Zzzzzzz.

I wonder if EA Sports will introduce Zidane’s new movement in the next FIFA game. If not, you can play here for now.

Weekend trip! We started from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. From there we started hiking till Höllentalhütte (1.381 m). We had dinner (and knew that England was out of the WM2006) and slept there. Next day when waking up we were told about Brazil and France.

The way is pretty cool, most of it by the border of a mountain and the river, with some tunnels and bridges. Next day we went down a little bit and took the way to the Eibsee. We had lunch there and rented a pedal boat and did a round around the lake. Then we took the telepheric to the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany (2.962 m).

Bavaria is beautiful. Green, full of nature and lot of interesting places to visit. Complete photo set here

More pictures here .

On friday, in the need of sweet and hot wein and some food, half dozen of KDE guys took over the Nürnberger Weihnachtsmarkt.

The night was followed by Dunkel Bier and a darts deathmatch. No surprise I won so fast that nobody let my play anymore. Coolo is satisfied with a 2nd place. Dirk still can’t get under 500 points (you start with 501). Will used the Royal Air Force superpowers to get rid of the points, but some random luck worked better. The girl sitting next to the target still has nightmares about Beineri throwing darts to her. It was a fun night.

The night ended with Whiskey at Will’s place. More pictures here

On friday, after visiting the Nuernberg Wiehnachtsmarkt and having dinner with Will and Lisann, I went out with Daniel and Thomas, who introduced me to some new people from Spain and Eslovaquia. We were in like four different places over the night, but we ended in the parkcafe, which I wanted to visit since long time, as it is very close to my place.

I got a Christmas tree, thanks to Will (who is getting a bigger one). My place looks really better with it. I will spend Christmas with my brother, who is coming from Paris after a hard semester studying. But he seems to have *lot* of fun there. I think I am going to visit Paris earlier than originally planned.

I booked a flight for Michael and me to Berlin for new year, that will be really cool.

Today, KDE 3.5 was released, and one of the killer features is webcam support for Kopete. The team has done and incredible work, specially the new younger developers. There is a visual guide introducing the new features here.

My University teacher Jaime, who was my MSc. thesis advisor, sent my this link to the presentation given by Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity. The style of the presentation is really cool. It is worth to see it. Congrats to him!

Today I bought batteries for my guitar digital processor. It has been a long time since I played “plugged”. After my brother opened the effects processor to fix it after it burned throwing white smoke. (putting in practice his new knowledge in electronics by that time), now it has its own life. It turns on/off randomly, shows strange characters in the LCD screen, and you can not turn it off without pulling off the batteries.