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I know, I know, I've been lost for a looooooooooooong while now, yes. It's a little bit more than seven months since my last post. What prompted me to write here again? Mainly I re-visited the whole site after the new version came out, just a couple of days ago. (And now that we're at it, I still do not know what the new features are).

It's not that I've been so busy that I was unable to post. I did have some time to post every now and then, although I've been busy. I've been working on interesing personal development projects, full of bleeding-edge technologies like AJAX. I've also been enjoying my new computing environment sooooo much you just can't imagine.

I am still on Ubuntu Linux Dapper 6.06 full-time, and I can't feel better at it. It is stable, friendly and enjoyable to the point that I have a hard time whenever I have to use that other OS that almost everybody use. I am developing web applications on Linux using jEdit as my main IDE. Aptana, of which I talked about in my last post coincidentally, turned out to be too resource-hungry, even though I have a modern PC with 512Mb RAM and 3.0GHz CPU speed. I've been using Firefox as my testing and debugging platform (Sorry Opera, but Firebug has no equal when it comes to test and debug a web application using JavaScript and AJAX heavily).

Thunderbird is still also my choice when it comes to email. Opera still does not have WYSIWYG email editor and other minor but handy features that I need. Opera continues to be my day-to-day browser for my web surfing needs, and OpenOffice, Gimp, ImageMagick, Beagle, Liferea, Gaim, Gnome, Vim/Cream, MPlayer and MPD do the rest. I've been also using Ruby's and Python's scripting power to automate some tasks in my working environment.

I've also been vey busy following the socio-political events that have happened in Cuba, my country, in the recent months, almost all related in some way to the illness of the president Fidel Castro and the temporary transfer of power, and how this has impacted our society. I know some people get more interested in this blog because of my nationality than for my interests and the topics I write about. Feel free to ask.

Anyway, I'll see if I can make the time to talk here again every now and then, mainly about the technologies I am using and how they make my life easier.

It was amazing but perhaps understandable how the US media diminished Cuban baseball prior to the beginning of the inaugural edition of the World Baseball Classic. And I say understandable because although it is true that Cuban baseball has mostly succeeded in amateur international events, Cuba had never before been in front of rosters loaded with major league all-stars, like Team USA, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. US media didn't know about Cuban players, so they assumed they were not as good.

But after the clear and outstanding role played by Team Cuba in this unique event, it is really sad that most mainstream media is still referring to it as the great surprise in the event, while some going as far as still saying that Cuba was extremely lucky to be where it is now: in the final game against Japan.

US Major Leagues cannot stand that except for two Japanese players, no other of their "super players" are in the finals. They wrote this Hollywood ending for the event, with the Dominican Republic against Team USA, but they failed. And this unexpected final game promises to be as exciting and interesting as anyone could expect. It gives more merit to the event, a higher level of entertainment. And the fact that the final is celebrated in US soil makes this even more interesting.

I never liked announced finals, I've always preferred the unknown and unannounced. And if this also means having my country there, defending the title of my favorite sport (and my country's national sport too), and doing so in the most tough event that ever existed, the pleasure and joy is infinite.

Cuban path to this final was anything but easy. They won key games against strong rosters such as Venezuela (7-2), Puerto Rico (4-3) and the Dominican Republic (3-1). And the myth is over. Even most Cuban people thought Cuba was not at this level, and they were proved wrong. Cuba deserves to be where it is, and the odds to win tonight are high. Both teams are just as strong, and both will do the same great effort, tributing to what will surely be a beautiful game filled with emotion. And in the end, baseball will be the winner. Global baseball, world baseball, and not just US major leagues.

Before I finish, I would like to refer you to the one piece of article that I really enjoyed. It gives an interesting overview of the two finalists, how different and yet how akin they are. It's a sincere and genuine point of view very dissimilar to most of what I've read. It is titled The world is shrinking, and I will end quoting a piece of it.

So no matter who wins Monday night, the World Baseball Classic will have taught us an invaluable lesson:

They can play this game as well as we can play it. Their leagues might actually be just as good as our leagues. And we can learn as much from the way the Japanese and Cubans play baseball as they can learn from us.

It was worth holding the WBC just for that lesson alone. Wasn't it?

I recently got some feedback from Belkys, the author of one of the Cuban blogs I found, as reported in my previous post. She pointed me some other blogs, and even a directory of Cuban blogs. This is what I found in a quick glance. Unfortunately the results of my rapid research were not so good, but anyway, is better than what I thought a few days ago.

http://blogueroscubanos.blogspot.com/2005/02/directorio-de-la-comunidad-blogs-de.html
Pretends to be a directory of Cuban blogs, but many links are broken. There is no information about how some other Cuban bloggers like me can register their blogs in this self-claimed directory. Also most links don't match the text of the link with the URL.

These are the blogs I found, and the apparent current state. None of this data has been verified and no blog author has been contacted. This is purely visual information taken out of each of the main blog pages by me. Some blogs listed in the above directory do not appear in this list, mostly those that gave me broken links.

http://bettyculturales.blogspot.com/
No posts since February 17, 2005

http://ilberto.blogia.com/
No posts since April 15, 2005

http://cubatrabaja.blogia.com/
No posts since November 11, 2005 and previous posts very far from one another in time.

http://georginatorriente.blogspot.com/
Currently active, but is more like an echo of some newspaper rather than original writings of the author. All posts are like headlines and articles of news related to Cuba. Mostly political news. It doesn't have the natural flavour of somebody writing naturally about what he/she likes.

http://imaginados.blogia.com/
Currently active. Some posts like georgina torriente above, but it's more natural and fresh.

http://venezuelavive.blogspot.com/
Currently active and very young blog about Cuban doctors experiences in Venezuela.

http://cubanisimo2.blogspot.com/
No posts since April 11, 2005. It's like georgina's blog above too.

http://cubasiempre.blogia.com/
Only two posts, and the last one was on February 21, 2005. No comments.

http://mundocubano.blogia.com/
Apparently active, but is not updated so often. It's mostly about the Cuban five. The articles seem too lengthy though, and they seem to be copy-paste from news articles in cuban newspapers and news agencies.

http://havanaonline.blogspot.com/
A single post on February 17, 2005.

http://dcuba.blogia.com/
Three posts, the last one on February 24, 2005.

http://encuentro.blogia.com/
No posts since February 23, 2005.

http://denesleonardo.blogspot.com/
No posts since February 17, 2005. Three posts overall.

http://jrgreguera.blogspot.com/
Four posts overall, all of them the same day, February 16, 2005.

I won't claim this to be an exhaustive coverage but I draw two conclusions from all these. First and most important, didn't you noticed the great amount of blogs with just a few posts, and dead since around February 2005? Well, most of the blogs listed in this directory are the result of some seminar given in Havana around that date about blogs. The seminar was given to journalists and most of the authors of those brief blogs are Cuban journalists. It seems that they started with some excitement, but it lasted for short. This is not my idea of a blogosphere.

The second conclusion is that many of these blogs were limited to copy/paste news articles from Cuban media sources. This conclusion is subjective and not verified at all, but it's my perception.

Although it was more active than I though, specially a year ago, in the end is disappointing. The Cuban blogosphere has a long way to go.

You can call it whatever you want, but every once in a while I feel proud of being from this lovely country. And sometimes even while browsing the Internet, I accidentally find readings that remind me of these feelings. Ahoracuba.org was the first blog I found to be friendly and honest about this island. Is written by Steven Mansour, who reportedly visited us last summer, and he's currently writing his journal and impressions during his trip.

And what really prompted me to post about it is this small review about an individual journey around Cuba. The genuine hospitality, the friendliness and the honesty offered to these and many other foreign visitors is a live image of what this people is, a live image of what we are. Thanks to all of you for your sincere postings.