Older blog entries for faw (starting at number 12)

Sorry for the long time without posting. :o)
Now, time for a great post and to keep it more "updated".

Debian - Working with packages

I'm working with Christian Perrier (a.k.a. bubulle), he is helping me and also sponsoring my uploads to Debian of package lifelines.

Christian sent to Debian-Women maillist a pre-RFA (pre Request For Adoption) offering some help in a menotor/mentee model for three of his packages, one of them is lifelines. I'm working with him and today he uploaded 3.0.46-1. There is another version ready to go 3.0.46.1-1 which is considered the upstream stable version.


More Debian Packaging

I believe it is "lucky" for myself, but in the same week, Luk Claes sent RFA's for some of his packages, I decides to adopt two of them (ITA - Intent To Adopt). Packages since and translate-docformat are ready for upload, just waiting for Luk approval, he is going to sponsor me as IANADD (I Am Not A Debian Developer).

The since package is a kind of tail but with "state information". For translate-docformat I also became upstream, it is a shell script to convert between different file formats.


New server, time to organize a little bit my personal stuff

With some friends, we just setup (we are still finishing it) a new server and finally I found a good place to put some of my talks and the Debian Packages that I'm working on.

Past

Since last post a lot of things already happened. The FISL 6.0 was a great event and a great time for Brazilian Debian Community. We took some time to talk about QA in debian-l10n-portuguese and try to get together all Debian User Groups in Brasil. In the last weeks, I configured two new domains for two DUG's, now DUG-RJ and DUG-SC are sharing the machine with DUG-PR.

RJ is Rio de Janeiro, SC is Santa Catarina and PR is Paraná, all of them are Brazilian states. :o)


Future

I'm still working in some Debian Packages that I would like to add to the repository, thumbs is one of them, the other on is tuxfrw and pagode. But I still have to figure out a couple of things and get some spare time. :)

We have to turn on the QA proccess in debian-l10n-portuguese, in the next day we probably have a new release of Debian Zine (a Brazilian fanzine about Debian) and also the report and some nice pictures about FISL6.0 (at least, I hope so). :))


I would like to say "thank you" to caio1982 that certifies me as an Apprentice
It should be like any given sunday, but...
Today was a common day except by one special and very isolated event. I went to the Book Store with my mother, she wants to buy some office things (papers, folders and stuff like that). As usual, while she was checking her list of things to buy I went to look around and visit the Technological Section with books, software (almost only proprietary), hardware and peripherals.

First I checked some book prices and then the new hardwares available. So, I decided to take a look at the games shelf when I found something unusual. Without even stop to think I got the pack, went to check the price in the machine and saw this:

R$ 58,00, special offer for only R$ 2,90

I can't believe! It is an Original Netscape Communicator pack, for just R$ 2,90 (which means about US$ 1,00 or less than "one euro"). Bought it! You can see the pictures. It is a relic, it's not free software, but remember me from the Browser War and the begining of the Mozilla Project based on the Netscape Open Source Code. :o)

linux kernel i18n
Do you remember when I told you about a new project to translate make *config messages? Well, we have an updated status! After acme wrote and sent the patch, he got an automatic answer (that is sent when patch is applied to -mm kernel series) from Andrew Morton. The message from Andrew to acme was posted in br-linux, a Brazilian Portuguese Linux News Site (the article/news is in brazilian portuguese, but the automatic message from Andrew is in english). Thank you acme! And thanks to Fabricio Vaccari that had the first idea and start looking for people to collaborate on the project. :o)

I would like to say "thank you" to otavio that certified me as Apprentice and to mirwin that certified me as Journeyer.

ping... Ok, I'm still alive! :o)

FLISOL2005

FLISOL happened on April 2th in over 100 cities around Latin America. In Curitiba, the event took place on a High School, which is very good, because we could work with teenagers (14-17) to prepare and bring them to Free Software. Yes, kind of: "Come to light side of The Force!" :-)

Back in business

Back to i18n/l10n work on Debian and also trying to reduce my already-big-TODO-list. I'm working on translation and localization effort, specially to put pt_BR up-to-date. And it includes Debian Women website and wiki. I'm playing aroung with dl10n-bot, a perl bot to generate some statistics do l10n teams in Debian. Hope thata I can understand perl a little bit better and implement the HTML feature in a good manner.

I'm also working on Debian Zine a Brazilian eletronic publication about (of course) Debian. We are planning some periodic schedules and resources to make our work easier. I'm also putting as much information as I can about out Debian User Group. After FLISOL we start a lot of ideas and small projects.

In Debian-BR-CDD I'm working on QA trying to check bugs, find more information and close them. Because of that I became interested in help on Debian QA.

At last but not least:

Branden Robinson was elected the new Debian Project Leader, for one year Debian will lead the Project. I hope that Branden could do a great job as Project Leader and, at least for me, there are some special things that I would like to see (and help):
  • Don't let the number of supported arch'es decrease
  • Avoid a dual arch model (first and second class)
  • Bring more consensus on lists, by reducing the number of flamewars
  • More information about how "Debian Works (tm)"
  • Release cycle in the "Best Debian Way (tm)" without taking so long

Good luck Branden! :o)

I would like to thanks lezz that certifies me as Apprentice. And I really hope to come here more often.

Debian i18n
Looks like that I'm in a i18n/l10n epoch. I'm working on po-debconf templates, trying to raise the number of pt_BR translations inside Debian. We are also working with l10n-pt to "load balance" our translation efforts, looks like that we have some improvements ahead.


Debian User Group

Last Saturday (19.mar.2005) our Debian User Group had a meeting to talk about past, present and future, we had a good discussion about a lot of points; it worked like a brainstorming. One of the most important points is our arrangements for FLISOL, a huge festival that happens simultaneously in 13 countries and 100+ cities. We have work to do! :o)
linux kernel make menuconfig i18n

A few days ago, I post a message here talking about a new translation project, the basic idea was, using a wiki, translate the entire 'make menuconfig'. Fabricio Vaccari sent some e-mails talking about the idea and it was published in br-linux (brazilian portuguese linux news website). Better than that was the fact that acme saw the notice and became really interested. He wrote a patch to turn on the i18n capabilities in Kconfig and he also contacted Andrew Morton about the changes. I'm "pasting" acme's mail to kernel_ptBR, (our maillist to this effort) with very good news, Linus approved the idea and the patch of acme should be accepted in the main kernel tree.

Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 12:30:55 -0800 From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Subject: Fw: Re: kconfig i8n To: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@conectiva.com.br>

Go wild.

Begin forwarded message: Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 11:32:50 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> To: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Subject: Re: kconfig i8n

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Andrew Morton wrote: >> I'd hate for them to do all this work and fall afoul >> of your objections.

>> What's your take on the idea?

Hey, I htink i18n for in-kernel is crap, but for the user-level tools I don't care. And I can see how somebody would like to have configuration (which isn't exactly easily understandable, and has no issues with bug reports etc) in some other language. So I don't mind.

Linus

The patch wroted by acme introduces a very good feature and made possible the use of pot files, with this, translation should be easier and faster. I would like to take the opportunity to say thanks to acme and aristeu, they are good friends, good examples and, both of them, certified me as Apprentice. Thanks guys! :-)

I have to tell that I met Arnaldo (personally) just a few days ago and that I don't know him very well, but he is a very good guy, very good hacker/developer and that I hope in the future (in a near future) we can work together in other free software projects. :o)
8 Mar 2005 (updated 13 Mar 2005 at 21:47 UTC) »
Good/Bad News!

The last weeks are very busy. Considering this, doesn't matter if you receive a good or a bad notice, both of them will make thing run faster, in other words, Hurry up! . When it happens, I remember The Matrix (first movie), when they are working to get Neo out and Cypher says: "... buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, because Kansas, is going bye-bye". I would like to say "thank you" for lerdsuwa and Akira, both certified me as Apprentice.

Keep working to put mails in order, translate stuff for Debian, specially now that we are trying to organize our l10n effort. FLISOL is getting closer and we have lots of things to do. Until now we have 74 cities in 12 different countries, I will work on Curitiba .

I have to tell that I received a few "bad news" in the last days but I also received "good news" and if I stop to count, probably I get more "good" than "bad" news. Because of that I'm happy and trying to work hard. One of the special things that I heard in debian-l10n-portuguese about our volunteer work was sent by Fred Maranhao, this simple quote really open my eyes and I start to look to our volunteer job in a different way.

"We are volunteers, not amateurs!"

Another thing that is good to register is a new project started a few days ago, the idea is translate the kernel help messages from make menuconfig and there is a great chance that our idea is just the beginning, which means that we could have i18n for "make menuconfig". (Just "make menuconfig", if you think in printk() messages, stop right now, it is crazy!). acme creates a "pot file" and we are working on it, the idea has a good future.

GOD bless us all! :o)

Life is really amazing!!!

First of all: Happy 2005!

Long time since last post, more than two monthes and the problem is that I want to do a lot of things and then post a lot of very positive results here, but sometimes, it seems that we are in the middle of a great joke.

I finally get Debian Sarge (3.1) running on my machine which allow me to work with debian-zine, that is a Brazilian fanzine of Debian. I also find some time to start working with the structure of our l10n pt_BR team.

But I'm still working with Debian Women translation, in fact I'm a little bit delayed, but I'm pushing hard to finish as soon as I can.

Another task is FLISOL, an international Install Fest event, I'm the technical coordinator in Curitiba, PR, Brasil; and I'm trying to organize (and also motivate people) to do it in other cities of my state.

Today, I will stop here. Probably I'm starting to be more frequent here, trying to "keep" some logs about what I am doing.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my 22th Birthday Anniversary. Considering that Advogato is a kind of "Nerd Blog", I can't miss this day in my diary. [[ :o) ]] As my birthday is very close to Christmas and New Year, is easier to make a good review about last year and I can tell that I'm very happy with 2004, and I'm also expecting even more from 2005. :))

Ok! But what brings me here, besides my birthday, is the fact that I want to write (and register) a little bit about the 2004 Final Meeting of our Debian User Group, it was a great time, we have dinner at a Mexican Restaurant, between lots of "spicy food" we also discuss a lot about free software, specially Debian, and ideas to 2005. In a few days I will have some pictures and I can post it here.

I was very busy in the last two months!

On [4-5].December.2004, I went to a different Free Software event called OpenBeach; it happened in Florianópolis, the main city in Santa Catarina, a South Brazilian State

We had a great weekend, talk a lot about free software and saw some very good friends. You can check some pictures from the event here .

I also would like to say thank you to tiagovaz that certified me as Apprentice.

During this period I worked a little bit with translations/localizations and give some attention to the Debian User Group that I'm involved.

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