Tag: Spain

Celebrating Columbus Day …

Just in time for the celebration of the Columbus Day in the USA, kottke.org links to a few sources (one, two, three) that suggest that the guy was not worthy:

Population figures from 500 years ago are necessarily imprecise, but Bergreen estimates that there were about 300,000 inhabitants of Hispaniola in 1492. Between 1494 and 1496, 100,000 died, half due to mass suicide. In 1508, the population was down to 60,000. By 1548, it was estimated to be only 500.

Understandably, some natives fled to the mountains to avoid the Spanish troops, only to have dogs set upon them by Columbus’s men. (Bergreen, 205)

CakeFest 2014 at Madrid, Spain during August 21-24

I am seriously considering going to CakeFest this year.  Madrid is not too far away to fly to.  The event takes place over the weekend, so work stuff can be easily arranged.  And it doesn’t cost too much – a 2-day conference with the 4-star hotel is only $480 USD (early bird prices until July 15th).  That alone is a good deal.

But looking at the schedule, it’s even more tempting.  The upcoming CakePHP v3 coverage, advances queries, testing, debugging, profiling and optimization, using CakePHP with Composer, Twitter Bootstrap, Travis CI, Selenium, AngularJS and more – these are just some of the subjects that will be covered.  And the speakers are on par  including core developers, community leaders, and otherwise interesting people.

Barcelona bullfighting is no more

Via Kottke blog I’ve learned that Barcelona just celebrated its last bullfight. Apparently, the vote has past last year to stop this old tradition.  And as much I am in favor of preserving cultural bits, I do agree that bullfighting falls under animal cruelty and thus should be stopped.  New York Times has a few photos.