Older blog entries for csv (starting at number 198)

Wed 2009/Nov/04

• I read the other day in a Finnish newspaper that the Chilean musicologist Alfonso Padilla was awarded by the Student Union of the University of Helsinki as the best international teacher.

  Of course, this is not very relevant to be in the Chilean news. We all care much more about Pellegrini's career in Real Madrid, and whether he is fired or not after every match.

Syndicated 2009-11-04 12:59:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Tue 2009/Nov/03

• Arrived in Helsinki yesterday evening after a rocking Igalia Summit near Padrón in Galicia. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it with me.

  This is the third time in a row that my luggage doesn't make it with me (same happened when I came back in August after spending two months in A Coruña and on my trip to Amsterdam for the Maemo Summit in October). Downside is not having things I need with me, positive side is that it's comfortable to get your luggage delivered to you instead of having to carry it all the way from the airport. Of course it would be nice if this would be predictable, in order to have the important stuff in the hand luggage instead.

  Hopefully, it will arrive safely as it did the other two times.

Syndicated 2009-11-03 12:47:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Wed 2009/Oct/28

• Do you see anything harmful in this chunk of code? You can read the GTK+ docs but please don't look at the implementation of the called methods.

  GtkTreePath *path;
  GtkTreeIter filter_iter;
  
  for ( /* an iteration on all iters in a GtkTreeModel */) {
    path = gtk_tree_model_get_path (base_model, &iter);
    gtk_tree_model_filter_convert_child_iter_to_iter (filter,
                                                      &filter_iter, &iter);
    if (gtk_tree_selection_iter_is_selected (selection, &filter_iter)) {
      /* do something with path */
    }
  }

  The code looks harmless, but it's not really. Looking at the implementation of gtk_tree_model_filter_convert_child_iter_to_iter() you'll see that the actual conversion is done by obtaining the GtkTreePath for the base model iterator and calling gtk_tree_model_filter_convert_child_path_to_path(). Similarly, gtk_tree_selection_iter_is_selected() internally calls gtk_tree_selection_path_is_selected(). So, you are calling gtk_tree_model_get_path() three times in total when you only need to do it once. Just use the GtkTreePath equivalents.

  Is this obvious for everyone but me? I mean, without looking at an oprofile callgraph and/or the GTK+ sources. I am not so sure.

Syndicated 2009-10-28 17:19:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Fri 2009/Oct/02

• One thing that the N900 is missing is a way to scrobble the listening habits to last.fm. Since I am sort of addict to last.fm scrobbling, I couldn't wait for someone else to do it and wrote myself a last.fm scrobbler for mafw, the Media Application Framework used since Fremantle in Maemo.

  After a few weeks smoke testing it and fixing things here and there, I released today mafw-lastfm 0.0.1. This is the initial release and it does the basic stuff quite well: playing-now status and scrobbling. It has several rough edges but it was working good enough for me not bother to work on them. Releasing, I guess, is a good way to push me to do it, when anyone complains.

  The git repository is in gitorious, there's a garage page with some resources for those curious, and I pushed binary packages to Fremantle's extras-devel repository. Happy scrobbling!

• In August I took a few weeks off from work, and spent a wonderful time with Maria in Paris and Fontainebleau, in France. Paris is a wonderful city but it has just too many things to see and do, so you can easily go back home needing holidays from your holidays. To avoid that, we spent several days in the small town of Fontainebleau, around an hour south from Paris. The town is quite small but charming anyway, life is way more relaxed, and it served its purpose of giving us some rest from the crazy Paris experience.

  The crazy Champs-Élysées:

  

  One of the lovely fontaine Wallace, decorating many corners of Paris:

  

  A random restaurant in Fontainebleau:

  

  Yesterday, I managed to finish uploading some of the pictures from Paris and Fontainebleau to flickr. The quality of these proves that I still have a lot to learn about reflex cameras.

Syndicated 2009-10-02 15:55:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Thu 2009/Sep/10

• magit is one of those gems that one always discovers late, and then regrets not having started using earlier. If you are an emacs and git user, this is what you are missing to get those perfect commits.

• Wonderful article on Ricardo Baeza R., my Professor for Applied Math and Linear Algebra back in the Facultad, awarded now with the Chilean National Prize for Exact Sciences 2009.

Syndicated 2009-09-10 20:27:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Thu 2009/Aug/27

• So, now that Maemo 5 has been officially launched and the N900 phone has been unveiled I guess now I can tell my parents what I was doing in Finland.

  

  GTK+, GNOME, and hildon going mainstream. This is certainly an exciting time to be around :)

Syndicated 2009-08-27 11:13:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Sat 2009/Aug/01

• I've been neglecting this corner lately, so I'll try to give a quick summary of what has been going on lately.

• I've spent the last month in A Coruña. Finally sharing a flat with two mates and two cats. I seem to have developed some kind of allergy to two of them -- I still can't figure out whether it's the cats or the flatmates :)

• Weekends since in A Coruña have been pretty active, mostly thanks to the kind Antía, who has been showing me the wonders of Galicia. A few weekends ago, we travelled through Vimianzo, Camariñas, Cabo Vilán, and the Praia do Lago to end up at the festival Cultura Quente '09 in Caldas de Reis, where among others, The Wedding Present was playing.

  

• Last weekend, was the time for the Festas do Apostol, in Santiago de Compostela. I met a good bunch of nice people on the travel there, enjoyed the fireworks burning the Catedral de Santiago, and the tons of bands playing at the festival. The Festas do Apostol seem to be very important and one of the biggest touristic attractions in Galicia, so I'm glad to have been here in time.

  On Saturday, I was planning to attend the religious service at the Catedral, including the traditional Botafumeiro swinging tradition, but the sleeping conditions in the tend didn't allow proper sleep and I overslept and didn't attend it in the end.

  

  The weekend continued with a trip through several small towns and beaches on the Atlantic coast, including Ribeira, Porto do Son (where the great SonCelta festival was taking place), Noia, and the Igrexa at the Rio San Xusto. Galicia is full of beautiful towns and beaches and I guess it would take a lifetime to know them well enough.

Syndicated 2009-08-01 11:53:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Thu 2009/Jul/09

• Yesterday, Berto and I presented the Hildon 2.2 toolkit, during the mobile track of GUADEC at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. The slides for our talk:

  

Syndicated 2009-07-09 11:51:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Mon 2009/Jul/06

• And the party has already started:

  

  Igalia will be sponsoring the GNOME Party tonight. If we are lucky enough, we will have a few music instruments for a jam session. Check Juanjo's blog for more details.

• If you have GCDS pictures, add them to the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit flickr group.

Syndicated 2009-07-06 11:58:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog

Fri 2009/Jul/03

• As all the other cool kids in town, I'm flying to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, to attend the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. In practical terms, this means GUADEC, GUADEC Hispana, Akademy, and, eventually, other conferences/activities that might be arranged during the big event.

  Partly because of laziness, partly because of having really busy weeks lately (both work and life-wise), I won't be presenting anything during GUADEC Hispana, although I would have liked to. However, Berto and I will be giving a talk on the new Hildon toolkit for Maemo 5, during the Mobile Day. Besides introducing the new widgets and UI style for Fremantle, we will also talk about the difficulties we have been facing during this major revamp of the toolkit, which will hopefully serve to clarify some of the doubts spread around lately.

Syndicated 2009-07-03 07:39:00 from Claudio Saavedra's ChangeLog