I have some photos of last week’s protest marches over on my Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffbarry/. Take a look at social activism in Buenos Aires!

Technical comment on Flickr: I’ve been playing around with the Flickr service today for the first time today. I probably will eventually just put most of my photos on my own hosting space here at elsur.org but I wanted to examine Flickr’s functionality. I do like their slideshow tool but Flickr has at least one major problem. It doesn’t seem possible to place photos in a specific order. Flickr has an organizer tool that looks like it should allow you to order the photos as you like. However, everytime I tried it, the photos just went back to the original order. Apparently, the photos are in random order, not even by the order in which they were uploaded or by filename. Now, come on Flickr guys, this isn’t that difficult to program….maybe I missed something, but it should have worked easily. Also, as a librarian, I wonder how the tag structure is going to hold up over time over whether it will collapse under its own weight. But, there seem to be a lot of momentum behind unstructured tagging these days, e.g., technorati. Yet, that’s a topic for my Endless Hybrids blog. I’m not writing much there these days….

Last night, Sunday, Ceci and I went out to eat dinner. We had finished off her 3 days of birthday celebrations on Saturday night with a party of friends, locro, and a lot of vino. Sunday evening, we went out to eat early, about 8pm. So, the restaurants were just opening for dinner. I was in the mood for bife and we walked over to Av Corrientes, one of our favorites areas in town. Rather than going to one of our regular spots in that area (Chiquilin or Palacio de Papas Fritas), we tried calle Montevideo called Las Cañas, which is right across the street from Pippo and just half-a-block from Chiquilin. The meal was very good, though the restaurant had a slight touristy feel to it, but not too bad. However, at $44 pesos (US$15) for a dinner for two (w/o wine), we thought that it wasn’t comparable to either Chiquilin or Palacio de Papas Fritas, neither of which are that much more expensive. Indeed, during the week, Palacio de Papas Fritas has a nice set menu for $34 pesos. So, considering the options in this area, we doubt if we we will be back to Las Cañas.

Looking around Buenos Aires it becomes obvious that not everyone here is of Spanish descent. That’s not a new phenomenon, as Argentina has largely been a country of immigrants. In 1914 one-third of the population was foreign born. At that time, an additional 80% of the population was descended from immigrants that had arrived since 1850. The late 1800s constituted a major wave of immigration, mostly Italian and Spaniards, though Eastern Europeans as well as Turks, Lebanese, and Syrians arrived during that time also. [Source: Argentina, 1516-1987, David Rock, pp 166.]