first GUADEC!

Following the meme…

Not for me nor for Sílvia of course, but for Ona!

She even attended some talks! :)

Ona on a talk

Sadly we only stayed for some days, more to catch with some of you[1] and the weather was quite hard for her.

All in all a short but intense GUADEC!

It was really nice to meet all of you again. Hopefully by next year Ona is going to speak some so she can send her first paper :D

[1] Now we know that Patri and Calvaris will take care of her for next GUADEC :)

GUADEC tip of the day

As everyone attending GUADEC is right now enjoying the party at Fléda, and Sílvia and me are missing it for a good reason :) let me give you a tip for the remaining days:

Are you feeling hungry and looking for a delicious place to eat some arabic/vegeterian food here at Brno? Look no longer Kupé is what you are looking for!

Not only the food is great but their stuff is really helpful, they speak perfect English (and the menu is also available in English) and the smoothies are awesome!

Oh and as a late notice:

I am attending GUADECI am attending GUADECI am attending GUADECTriple as for me, Sílvia and Ona :)

Have you ever smelled a newborn?

That’s what the midwife asked me 20 minutes later after Ona ((ocean weave in Catalan, and a friend also told us that means beautiful in Euskera)), our first daughter, was born (on April 3th).

lil-IMG_8179

More photos if you wish :)

And, no, I haven’t smelled any newborn, but man, they smell so great!!! ((no wonder why cosmetic companies go after placentas…))

Both mama and kid are doing fine, circa usual newborn issues :)

To cope up with all advices/tips that everyone is giving you about rising kids, we found a great book ((advised by my sister)): Kiss Me!: How to Raise Your Child with Love. Which is the English version of this other one (in Spanish and also longer): Comer, amar, mamar.

It’s amazing!! :)

On javascript events

One thing that always get on my nerves with Javascript is that it was a pain (until today for me) to get from an HTML element to the actual javascript that runs once you hover, click, etc that element.

I’m a visual kind of guy so my rationale was:

  • I see a button on a webpage that does something that smells like javascripty
  • I open firebug and select that element
  • I expect to have some kind of panel/hint about the events that are registered for that element without success :S

Today, tired of it, I start looking for a solution, and I found an amazing one, let me introduce you visual events 2!

It’s a bookmark that you place on your browser and if you click on it the page gets blue rectangular overlays on all elements that have a javascript event handler!

But not only that, if you hover over one of those boxes you will see what I was expecting from the beginning: the code that is executed and where it lies (which file and line).

Brilliant!

i18n dreams, eventually, come true

And even better!

TL;DR; Praise Nicolas Delvaux every time you see him, then go check Deckard. An online tool to test translations in Gtk+ (and Glade) based applications. As a translator you can imagine how cool is that!!

You know the scenario: you are at GUADEC talking discussing about how to conquer the world make GNOME even better and then you realize a great idea: what if gtranslator was able to allow you to open glade with the current UI that you are translating with the translations that you are making (( Just like the synctex gedit plugin updates evince to show you formatted LaTeX))?

Half a year later, you don’t get that, but something really cool, a web based version of that!

Wherever you are Nicolas, if we ever meet, be sure to ask for your beverage of choice, you are more than invited!

Translators out there, be sure to spread this amazing news into your teams!

 

Current voting system doesn’t work

Warning that’s a rant about Spanish voting system, skip it if not interested.

First of all the facts:

  • in Catalonia there were elections this past November 25th (2012)
  • as we are currently living abroad (Germany ((Google Maps says ~1900km by car, and a flight takes 2 and a half hours from Barcelona to Berlin))) we need to register in a special census to be able to vote
  • the last day available to register on that register for those elections was October 15th (I could make it, Sílvia couldn’t)
  • I got within a weeks time a confirmation letter (you know that dead tree thing that postmans deliver every day) that I was successfully register and that I should because starting from October 30th to November 3th I was supposed to get the actual envelope and all the papers and forms to be able to cast my vote from Berlin itself
  • … (yes, that’s a fact I was just waiting, waiting some more, and then even some more)
  • elections where held, people living in Catalonia could vote as usual, but not me
  • lots of Catalans living abroad complained that they didn’t get the envelope and forms to be able to vote, some got their envelope and papers one or two weeks after the actual elections date ((You are supposed to cast your vote, when living abroad, at maximum nearly two weeks before the elections are held, so that your vote can be counted as well)) )
  • fast forward to January 9th of 2013 ((nearly two months after I should got the actual envelope and forms to vote)) I got a new letter (another dead tree thingie) saying something random about the elections, but was still not the envelope and forms to vote!

So looking at the facts… should I still have some hope left that one of my new years resolutions (be able to vote) will come true?

As a hacker and computer literate I know that it could be feasible to do electronic voting, or even going to the embassy ((<sarcasm>Nice and friendly btw. the ones on the Spanish embassy in Berlin, </sarcasm>)) or even keeping the good old post system, if there was any interest in using it.

The most amazing thing about it is that nowadays, and we have done that already quite a few times, we wake up on the morning in Berlin, take breakfast, pack some stuff in our backpacks and within 4-5 hours (just 2:30 hours of plane) we are in Barcelona chatting happily with our family and friends.

How come the voting envelope hasn’t still arrived at my home in Berlin?!

</rant>

one time is not enough!

Catalan's blood bankWe went back to Catalonia for Christmas to visit our family and friends (and who doesn’t do it :) and while on Vic ((SPAM: a really small and nice city, if you ever happen to go to Barcelona take a train there, it’s well worth it)) I found the bus for blood donation on my way to buy the best chocolate croissants ever ((I go there from Berlin itself just to buy them!!)).

Whenever I’m around Catalonia ((I still haven’t checked the German blood donation system)) I try to give blood (4 times a year allowed for men over 18 years and more than 50kg), but this time some ideas came to my mind:

  • People was making huge queues on the public lottery office in front of the stationed bus ((There’s a huge lottery on both 22th of December and 6th of January)). In contrast, there was no queue at all on the bus. In fact it took me less than 20 minutes to enter and leave the bus. Still without blood on the hospitals, no matter how much money you get on the lottery…
  • Just after giving blood and about to leave, one of those security money vans that take money from banks, lottery offices or so arrived and a couple of strong guys came out of it to take the money from the lottery office. Again, money needs gorilla-like people to take care of it, while the blood bags already filled where lying inside the bus on my arm reach.

Anyway, just as the Catalan blood bank system says: “one time (giving blood) is not enough!”

Times they are a changing

Last year around this days I was still living near Barcelona (Molins de Rei actually), some days later, on the November 4th I took a flight from Barcelona to Berlin my new home as of now, and since then, things have happened in a quite fast peace…

We (with Sílvia obviously!) went there as I got a job offer from der Freitag, a newspaper, where I help building their website. With such a big move, packing, unpacking, moving, legal stuff and so on kept ourselves busy for quite some time. Thankfully I stayed ~one month with Kat and Dave (million thanks again!!) which helped a lot in getting papers sorted out and finding a flat where to stay :)

German classes started on January (12h per week plus 40h work) and a wedding in Catalonia on June  30th was the new thing to keep ourselves busy.

Right now German classes are still undergoing, we are going to make a late honeymoon to Japan ((advices to what to see/do are welcome :) )) and we are starting to get ready for the next small thing: we are expecting a baby!

We are really excited about it! All these ultrasounds and 3D images that nowadays doctors do and everything really get you the (obviously not like the future-to-be-mom) feeling that something is being cooked in your wife’s belly :D

Surely times will keep changing from now on! :D The baby is expected to be around early Spring so (s)he ((We still don’t know the gender)) will not get frozen by the Berlin’s winter which their parents are still not used to :)

Looking back before coming to Berlin looks really far far away and it’s been only one year!

any WebKitGTK+ hero out there? FIXED

I had a draft of this post since two days, as a way to make a call for action to fix the offending bug once and for all ((A bug about not being able to update the POT file needed to be able to update and generate translations from a module)).

Fast forward, and thanks to my personal new hero of the day, Martin Robinson, we, the GNOME Translation Project community can finally start translating in a reliable way WebKitGTK+!

I don’t have the honor to know him, but, please, if you happen to see him, buy him his beverage of taste and let me pay the bill, I will gladly do that!

A lot of credit also goes for Chris Leonard who has been tirelessly chasing this bug.

Since yesterday the translation world is a bit more shiny :)

Thanks a lot Martin and Chris!