Google Wave invitations
I’ve got several Google Wave invitations to hand out, so if you want one, send me an email (you should know my email address if you’re my friend 
).
[ Home | Articles | Account | People | Projects | FAQ ] Google Wave invitations
I’ve got several Google Wave invitations to hand out, so if you want one, send me an email (you should know my email address if you’re my friend ).
Social services clients
All the social services (Facebook, Twitter, etc) client apps I’ve seen (Gwibber on the desktop, Mauku on Maemo) fail in the same way, which is:
The only “thing” that does it correctly, from what I’ve seen so far, is yoono, a Firefox extension, which shows all the messages from all the services you configure it with, allowing you to remove messages you’re not interested in or have already read, or keeping messages for future reference. Also, it gets you to the right page at Facebook when you click on one item, and also allows you to comment directly to the messages right from yoono itself.
It’s true though that it would be great to have it not tied to Firefox, as an independent application, so /me dreams about gwibber/mauku implementing something like yoono.
PHP Help
Dear lazy web:
How do I make PHP not run out of memory when doing thumbnails of large images? I’ve got this code:
$href = $path . "/" . $file;
$tn_file = "thumbnail-" . $file;
$orig_file = $full_path . "/" . $file;
/* generate thumbnail if it does not exist */
if (file_exists ($tn_file) == false) {
$im = @imagecreatefromjpeg ($orig_file);
if (!$im) {
$im = @imagecreatefrompng ($orig_file);
if (!$im)
continue;
$is_png = 1;
} else
$is_png = 0;
if (imagesx ($im)
It works great for most of my images (as you can see here), but it doesn't for big images (2592x1944 pixels, like this one).
I've been trying all the solutions mentioned in this page, but none seems to work for me 
I am assuming it's an out-of-memory problem, but could it be something else?
The dream comes true
Two years ago I started dreaming about driving a Yamaha XT660Z Teneré. At that time, the motorbike had just been announced, getting to shops a few months later. Then, when available, I started trying to sell my previous motorbike (Aprilia Pegaso 650 Trail), which was hard because of the crisis, but some weeks ago, a nice guy from Coruña came here and got it (quite cheaper than what I could have got if there was no crisis though), so right after that, I went to the Yamaha shop and, finally, ordered one. After 3 weeks waiting (I wanted the 2008 model, which has that khakhi color as an option, not available in the 2009 model, so it took a bit to get it from another Yamaha shop), a few weeks ago I could finally get it.
After 1200 kms with it, I can only say it’s the best motorbike I could have bought, since it’s perfect for daily usage as well as for off-road, specially after having changed its tyres yesterday:
Now all the mud, snow and tracks around here are nothing I can’t deal with
Syncing Evolution contacts to Ubuntu One
The other day was about Tomboy notes, today, Evolution contacts syncing to Ubuntu One!
For the basic setup, see this tutorial. So, once you have contacts in the Evolution CouchDB Ubuntu One addressbook, syncing to Ubuntu One happens automatically:
The same contacts show up automatically in the Ubuntu One web UI:
Now, we just need to get mobile devices (N900, Android, etc) to sync contacts there also, and your contacts would be everywhere you need them!
Enjoy it!
Syncing Tomboy notes with Ubuntu One
Lots of people keep asking the same question (how do I sync Tomboy notes with Ubuntu One?), so, since there is a nice tutorial already, posting it here to get to a wider audience: the tutorial.
Since this is also my first post about it (didn’t want to make it too public until it worked great), I wish to give special thanks to Sandy Armstrong, Tomboy’s super hacker, whose help in making this work has been very valuable. Not only he helped us in all the problems we found, but he was very receptive on our suggestions for changes in the syncing protocol. So, every time you sync your notes (to Ubuntu One or a Snowy server), please save some money to pay him (and me, if possible) some beers 
Valley of Benasque
A couple of weeks ago I was in the Valley of Benasque (Huesca, Spain), for some trekking, and just had some time to upload the photos, so here they are for your pleasure, since it is a very nice place. It was the first time I was there not in winter, so had the chance to visit some places that, in winter, are almost impossible to visit (unless you want to take the risk of an avalanche).
Specially nice was the Glacier of the Aneto peak, the highest peak in the Pyrenees (from the distance, we didn’t have time to get to the top, since it takes many, many hours):
Also nice to see was the water from the Glacier disappearing into the rocks (and appearing again, by magic, in the Valley of Arán, on the other side of the mountains):
I took more photos, so go here to see the rest.
GCDS summary
After an exhausting week at GCDS, a similarly exhausting weekend partying in Pamplona for San Fermín, and an again exhausting return to day to day work, just found some time to write some notes from last GCDS.
That, along with Mistelix (a DVD authoring tool) might change radically the way my friends and family enjoy my photos and videos. ), but he really deserves anything we can do to show him our admiration to the best hacker I’ve ever worked with. But yeah, even with me not playing, Bastien lost again 
Last but not least, as always, meeting again all the people I already know and making new friends is the best part of this kind of events. It makes you feel again part of a great community.
And to finish, a big thanks to the people that helped in the organization. They already had a big round of applause at the GNOME Foundation Annual Meeting, but I’ll say it again here: thanks a lot!
GCDS expectations
With just a few hours before I leave to Gran Canaria, here’s a list of things I personally would like to get from the conference:
) ). Other Canonical staff will be around also showing these (and other) technologies, so if interested, just ask.Only bad thing is that I’m going to miss the first few days of San Fermín festival in Pamplona, but well, since I’ll be back home on the 10th, I’ll have the chance to enjoy the last few days of it. As I said other times, please use other dates than July 6th to 14th next year!
See you all in Gran Canaria!
Mapping Gran Canaria (call for help)
For all of you attending Gran Canaria Desktop Summit next week and with fancy gadgets like Nokia’s N800/N810, cell phones with GPS, etc, please take the opportunity for helping out the OpenStreetMap project.
How? Very easy, just make sure you set up your gadget to save tracks and have it recording your itineraries whenever you move around the city/island (no need to record your walks around the conference center ). With so many people with gadgets around the city for the week, I think we can improve the current situation (not bad, but lots of room for improvement if you compare it with the Google Maps version).
To save the tracks correctly, make sure to search for your device at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/, and follow the instructions on how to set it up for good recording of tracks. The most important thing is to setup a good interval (I use every 10 meters or every second, whatever comes first). If you use a very long interval of saving track points, the tracklog would be mostly useless. Also, if you want to do more than just saving tracks, have a look at the map making techniques page. But please, just saving the tracks is enough for helping, so there’s no excuse if you have a gadget with GPS.
And then, when you have the tracks, just send them to me, if you don’t want to bother anymore, or, if you want to bother more, join the project and help editing the map.
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!
