Advogato blog for csv

Thu 2008/Jul/24

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:12:07 GMT

On how we blew up the place during the GUADEC cocktails party, I can only say...

Original picture by Mario Gonzalez

From left to right, Edward Hervey, John Palmieri, Lucas Rocha, me. Kudos for the others as well!

Sun 2008/Jul/20

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:12:07 GMT

I uploaded some of the pictures I made in Istanbul during GUADEC. See the flickr set for some of them. This one, taken near the New Mosque, is one of my favorites:

Tue 2008/Jul/15

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:08:39 GMT

Let's try to summarize activity for the past two weeks.

Monday 30th: Picked up from the A Coruña airport by Juanjo and Calvaris. Went to the A Grela offices, met the Igalia crew again. Had lunch with some of the guys. Some work done. During the evening, took a walk with Eva through Ciudad Vieja, the beaches, and the Calle Real. Andres joined for some tapas.

Tuesday 1st: Picked up from the hotel by Juanjo. Went to the Uni da Coruña, visited the CITIC offices. Met there Mario, Jota, and Montse. Back to A Grela, conference meeting with Alex. More work done. Lunch with the guys, during the afternoon more work and meetings. Went to Mario's parents house for a churrascada. Met there Edu, Chema, and other Igalians.

Wednesday 2nd: Picked up from the hotel by Juanjo, gone to A Grela. Some work, planning, organizing the travel to Fuenlabrada with Berto, Mario, Victor, and Felipe. During the evening, made some pictures on the beaches, the Calle de hercules. Met Calvaris and Laura at the Praza do Maria Pita, went for some Turkish advices to the local Kebab restaurant. The good Turkish there told us a lot about Istanbul and places to visit. Nice Dürüm, by the way.

Thursday 3rd: Picked up very early by Mario, checked out, taxi to the airport and off to Madrid. Flew alone but waited in Barajas for Mario, Berto, Felipe and Victor. Took the metro to Nuevos Ministerios, there Cercanias to Atocha, and then to Fuenlabrada Central. Arrived at the GUADEC-es venue right in time to attend Germán's talk on GNOME and Innovation. Great stuff; I'd really love the GNOME people to listen Germán's views on innovation. Met Garnacho, KaL, and all the old spanish friends. During the evening, guided visit through Madrid downtown. Later, dinner with all the people. Met the good Jorge González and the Majadas siblings. At Midnight, traveling voodoo in order to make it to Fuenlabrada. Two hours later, at the hotel.

Friday 4th: More GUADEC-es. Finished my talk on eog plugins. Emotive recognition to the translation work by Javi Serrador, nice to see him fine and to see his mother proud. Later, met Loreto at Atocha. Happy to see Luca again, he is growing up fast! The Igalians joined Germán, Domingo, and Garnacho for some tapas at Madrid's downtown. Back at the hotel right in time to pick the last cercanias train to Fuenlabrada.

Saturday 5th: Left pretty early in the morning direction Barajas with Victor. Terminal 2 is a mess, had to do voodoo in order to check in in time. Good flight to Vienna, bought a book in german in the Schwechat airport. Flight to Istanbul, overflew Budapest, a bit of nostalgia to see the Danube and some of the islands again. Met Philip Van Hoof and some Nokians (Karl, Ivan, Rodrigo, and others) in Atatürk airport. Taxi with Mario and Philip to the hotel in Sirkeci. A small walk through Sultanahmet area, dinner, and pictures. Istanbul is awesome! Met some gnomies at the bar besides the hotel, chat with Hub, Bastien, Hughsie, and others. It already feels like GUADEC!

Sunday 6th: Left the hotel early in the morning with Mario, some tourism at the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Sarayburnu. Had lunch, then visited the Basilica Cisterna. Met Philip and walked through Sirkeci, Eminönü, to Kabataş. Back to the hotel really tired. Dinner with Alex and Dape, who arrived during the afternoon. Had fun listening a fellow hacker chatting with a gorgeous ukranian girl about free software, linux, filesystems (!), network protocols (!!), reiser fs (!!!), and the Hans Reiser's story. Juanjo, Antía, Sergio, and the other igalians arrived later.

Monday 7th: GUADEC starts, nice to see everyone again. The Bahçeşehir Üniverstesi is a bit apart from Sirkeci, tram + 20 minutes walk do fine. Lunch at the uni cafeteria, sadly, no Turkish coffee but nescafe crap. Had some meetings. During the evening, dinner somewhere near the hotel.

Tuesday 8th: More warm up talks. The schedule is a bit messy and I couldn't attend some talks, but things are fine. Lunch at a restaurant recommended by Germán. Cheap but nice food. No Turkish coffee. During the evening, welcome party in the Taksim area. Nice to talk with André, Jens, Ádam, and others again. Back to the hotel in a race-taxi at god-knows-which-speed. Arrived safe, fortunately.

Wednesday 9th: Core days start. After so many days sleeping so few, it gets hard to stay awake. Nice talks, better networking. Excellent keynote by Leisa Reichelt. During the afternoon, set up the equipment for the Drooling Macaques Band at the roof of the University building. Practiced some songs with Garnacho, Lucas, Chris Lord, Edward Hervey, John Palmieri, and others. Awesome jam with Volkan, one of the finest drummers in Turkey. During the party, played with the guys some nice rock tunes and blew up the place. People seemed to like my guitar skills more than what I would have expected. Back to the hotel, dinner with Lucas, Germán, Pedro, and the Igalians.

Thursday 10th: I finally didn't bring my laptop to the University anymore. Pretty unreliable internet access and not many places to plug the laptop, so I better use the n810 for basic stuff. Really good keynote by Kris on GTK+, (un)surprising proposal by the GNOME release team about GNOME 3.0. More talks. Lunch with Pedro near the Uni, good talk about GNOME Chile and some upcoming events. Federico told me where to find Turkish coffee! Awesome keynote on WebKit by Alp Toker. Love to see what they've been doing. Had dinner with Antía on our way to Kabataş, to the party by Collabora in the Lüfer boat through the Bosphorus. Totally scared about the icecream deathmatch -- I would've feel totally crappy if something would've been wrong (as I'm guilty for having recorded the previous edition), but everything went well.

Friday 11st: Last core day, some good talks. Loved the lightning talks and totally regretted not to have prepared one. Enjoyed the foundation's AGM, and later the interesting keynote by Federico. Foundation announced next GUADEC to be held in Canary Islands --sad that it won't be in A Coruña, but at the same time, confident that Alberto and the canarians will do a good job. Closing party in the Ghetto in Taksim was a blast. When kicked out from it, found another place with many others. Party until pretty late.

Saturday 12nd: Afterhours day. Decided to visit the Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazzar; and skip the morning talks. Went with Germán and Ivan. Bought much more than what I thought I would, including turkish coffee, Çay (turkish tea), some souvenirs for friends and family. Dinner near the Spice Bazaar, back to the hotel, and then to the University. Good talk by Alberto on GTK+ marketing, good points on what GTK+ people is doing wrong to advertise GTK+, but ironically, no GTK+ hackers around. Not their fault, nor Alberto's fault: this talk was too good to be an after hours one. Later, went to Üsküdar with Alberto, some Igalians, and Germán. Saw a nice turkish musician play live at a cafe while drinking some apple tea. Back to the hotel, enjoyed the last waterpipe and beers, slept one hour.

Sunday 13rd: Wake up at 4am, picked up by a taxi, and off to the Airport with Juanjo, Alex, and Germán. Flew to Munich, but didn't have enough time to have a walk in the city. Breakfast, slept in the airport, flight to Madrid. Met Germán at the Oso y Madroño. Had some food in the Cafe Comercial. Went to the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, but too late to get in. Off to the airport right in time to take the plane back to Chile. Had an good flight, and for the first time, I could sleep during most of the flight. You can imagine why, don't you?

Mon 2008/Jul/14

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:06:02 GMT

Yesterday, I woke up in Istanbul, Turkey; had breakfast in Munich, Germany; and had dinner in a nice bar in Madrid, Spain.

Today, I write this at my desktop in Santiago de Chile. The interesting bits from the two weeks on the road, pictures, and more, in the near future.

Fri 2008/Jul/11

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:07:09 GMT

Dear Rob Bradford: If you can't accept promptly people's requests to be part of the GUADEC 2008 Flickr group, then pretty please, make it a public and non moderated group. We all really want to upload pictures and watch those from others. Thanks.

Thu 2008/Jul/10

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:08:06 GMT

I definitively haven't had the energy to write anything during the last week and a half. The days in A Coruña, Madrid, and now Istanbul has been one of the most wonderful experiences ever. And there's still a lot of things to do during the next days.

A Coruña is a pretty nice city. The first day there, Eva took me to the Ciudad Vieja and gave me a pretty interesting lesson on Galician history. We ended the evening de marcha, having some tapas with Andrés.

The next days were composed of work, meetings, barbecues, and pictures. That, until Mario, Berto, Víctor, Felipe and I flew to Madrid for GUADEC Hispana '08. The conference was pretty cool, as usual (thanks to KaL and the others for the fine work they did).

Now I'm in Istanbul, Turkey, attending GUADEC. But this is material for other day, as I'm deadly tired right now.

Tue 2008/Jul/01

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 14:11:48 GMT

This is how A Coruña welcomes its visitors:

Sat 2008/Jun/28

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:12:09 GMT

It's that time of the year again. Tomorrow, I'll leave for a pretty tight but extremely exciting trip in Europe, from one corner in the west, to the other in the east of the continent. Really tight, but I'm sure it's gonna be a hell of fun.

First stop is A Coruña, where I'll meet the Igalia crew for a few days, in order to get to know them a bit more personally, learn a bit more about the company and my future home, and of course, a little bit of work.

Next stop is Madrid, where I'll attend the fifth GUADEC Hispana. This year's conference will take place in the Fuenlabrada campus of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, and it really promises interesting days. I'll give a small talk on how to extend the Eye of GNOME Image Viewer, so if you are interested on having fun with images, metadata, and that sort of stuff, you're more than welcome.

You probably imagine my final destination: Istanbul, in Turkey, where most of the GNOME people will gather for GUADEC, the GNOME Conference. I'm really excited, because I always wanted to visit Istanbul, and mixing together a bunch of good friends, the project I love, and one of the most beautiful cities in the world, can't possibly be bad at all.

It's gonna be like nine flights in less than 15 days. Not bad, uh?

Fri 2008/Jun/20

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:08:56 GMT

Since a few months, my dad has been using Ubuntu in his new desktop computer. And he is a happy user.

He had been using Windows 98 in his old computer for quite a long time, so it wasn't a difficult task to convince him that Ubuntu wouldn't be difficult to learn for what he was used to do: write documents, prepare spreadsheets, play Tetris and Freecell, and listen music. So, when we got his new computer ready, I downloaded and installed Hardy Heron on it.

The experience has been really pleasant. Now he fully understands what GNOME is, and what do I do with my free time. He also jokes a lot every time something doesn't work immediately for him and tells me he is going to call Pedro to complain. I laugh everytime at that.

He now listens to his music with Rhythmbox. He was used to the good old Winamp, but once he understood the library organization of music in Rhythmbox, he told me that this is far superior. I've also helped him to set up a Last.fm account, and now he scrobbles his listening habits. Also, he listens to the Last.fm streams with the Last.fm client. Last but no least, he is an avid Gnometris player.

During the first weeks, I had to help him installing the software updates. I insisted to him that it was important to run them regularly, so that his system becomes more and more stable. Yesterday I realized he hadn't asked me for assistance in a long time, and asked him about it. It was really pleasant to hear him tell me that he's been doing all the software updates without needing my help at all.

When I think of all this, I realize how far we've come. People may think that GNU/Linux is only for geeks, but seeing my dad, enjoying using his computer without worrying about viruses, without being afraid of messing with the system, and actually being able to do his daily routine at the computer, makes me feel proud. We all should feel proud.

So, what's your story? Does any of your non-computer-literate relatives/friends/significant other uses GNOME or other Free Software environment? I would love to read others' experiences.

Wed 2008/Jun/18

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:06:24 GMT

A few weeks ago I was invited to give a talk about the GNOME Desktop at the Primera Jornada Linux in the Instituto DuocUC, Plaza Oeste. Sometimes I feel that it may become boring for people to attend this kind of talks, but in this talk, when I asked the crowded audience to raise their hands if they had ever used GNU/Linux or GNOME, only a very few did it. That means that there's still a huge amount of people who doesn't know about what we do and who could be potential users – enough motivation to give advocacy talks again and again.
I'm loving my work. Still need to organize better my time – working at home can prove to be really challenging if you don't set your work hours responsably – but I'm improving.