Smile

As many of you know only two days are left now for Guadec and Guadec-es 2009, which will be located this year in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and which will be a “little bit” special this year because it will took place along with Akademy and Akademy-es. Actually, that’s why this year it’s named “Gran Canaria Desktop Summit”.

Thus, even though I had a great time last year in Madrid and Istanbul, I’m sure this time we’re going to have fun as never before and that it will be a perfect environment for sharing ideas, thoughts, knowledge… and perhaps even some beer at the wild parties social events both with the GNOME and KDE guys ;-).

I’m really really looking forward to being there with the rest of Igalia gang to start enjoying “the Guadec experience“… can’t actually believe I’ll be there just in three days!

See you there guys!

Right some days before than my son was born I started to hack a bit on a new and small project to develop a C-based flickr manager for GNOME, as current alternatives out there (which I were extensively using for more than a year), even thought being great applications, were not by all means what I was looking for or, in other words, what I would expect from a GNOME application which would not only allow me to upload pictures, but also to do a couple more of things like re-tagging pictures or managing albums for instance.

Therefore, bearing in mind how my new responsibilities as a father would add an extra level of challenge to the idea of developing an application when having even less time, I decided to go ahead with it and try to write some basic lines of code to see how feasible this could be. And after two months since I came up with this idea, although I could not of course code everyday (not even every week), I decided some days ago to push this forward and to really acquire the commitment of going ahead with the project in my spare time, even thought there’s not too much nowadays

So here I am, introducing this new project, so hopefully someone else could like to join this quest and help me to build a full featured flickr manager for our beloved favourite desktop environment. Have to say, of course, that the project is now at a very early stage (no debian package, only basic features, horrible UI…) but please don’t be scared of it just because of that :-). Moreover, in the other hand I have to say as well that at least it already performs the most basic features I thought of for this stage, which are:

• Asking for authorization inside the user’s flickr account, requesting read/write permissions.
• Loading several pictures to be uploaded at the same time, showing all of then inside a convenient GtkIconView widget.
• Upload all the loaded pictures with just one click, opening a specific flickr URL at the end of the process, to allow specifying some properties for the pictures uploaded: name, description and tags.

As you can see this is not too much, but the plan is follow the “release early release often” approach, so that’s why I’m doing this right now. Later on (hopefully soon) many other features will be implemented, which should make of this app a great tool for flickr fans like me… and I guess the code base to make this a reality is already written so now it’s a matter of implementing one feature after another.

Please take a look to the TODO file in case you’re interested in participate, and if you want a more comprehensive list of tasks I think should be the next ones. And obviously I’m open to suggestions so don’t hesitate to comment, propose or criticism anything you want.

To finish with this, I’d like to leave here some pointers, in case you were somehow interested on this project:

• Website: http://code.google.com/p/frogr
• Mailing lists:
  • General discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/frogr-users
  • Technical discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/frogr-devel
• Source code: http://gitorious.org/frogr

So that’s all I guess. Now it’s time for me to continue the development… and for you to start getting involved ;-).

C’mon, flickr maniac, what are you waiting for?

PS: Thanks Adrian for providing a logo for the project. Quite a nice way to get a first contribution with the project

As some of you might know, up to now there was a 3D version (please let me stress the fact that it was a version, not an official logo) of the the Igalia logo in the Cool stuff section of this blog. Such a thing was the humble result of me trying out blender for an afternoon some time ago, and did not intend to be an official logo of Igalia at all… just think of me being not very original and looking for something easy to try and I think you’ll get the point

Unfortunately, I found out during this years that this crappish version of the official logo was eventually used here and there as if it was the official one, even in banners at conferences or workshops we were sponsoring, which was not actually a good thing, as you can guess.

So, I’ve just removed today the 3D logo and its sources files from the Cool stuff section, so you’ll no longer find it there.

At last but not least, let me ask you that, if you already have a copy of that fake logo and were planning to use it at some point, it would be far much better and really appreciated if you could use the official one. If such an image is not enough for you in terms of size or quality, just ask us and we’ll provide you a better (and hopefully vectorial) version of it if needed.

As it was announced a long time ago, I was about to be a father soon… and look at me, the time has already come some weeks ago, and now I am actually a father since April the 15th. So, after one prudent month to better get in touch with him and get used not to sleep too much, the day before yesterday seemed to be like the perfect day to introduce him to a lot of people, friends and workmates, making the most of the Igalia’s new office opening party :-).

And there we were: Isa, Sergio and me in the middle of a party with a lot of people enjoying a very good time and having a lot of fun talking and having some beers (not the baby, though) both with people I use to see often and with people who I did not know of since several months (even years) ago… and among that personal satisfaction and fun, it was also great to hear a lot of comments like “what a awesome office dude” or “this is a really nice party, thanks for inviting me” all around the office. Some people inside Igalia pushed and worked really hard for this “working paradise” to be a reality and it finally even exceeded all the expectations, so this kind of comments are always welcome and very appreciated. So thanks!

In the other hand, and as it’s obvious (read this with a “tipical proud father voice”), people made a lot of (very nice) comments to me about my son who, by the way, behave incredibly well (very quiet all the time, even being in the middle of ~150  people talking (or shouting, remember we’re Spaniards ;-)) all the time. I only hope he keeps being so good as he’s now in the future, but that’s kind of question impossible to be answered right now. Only time will tell but in the meanwhile I can say he’s just great and that is the best thing which happened to me EVER

Well, and that’s all. Today it was a long day of work and now I need to go to bed to sleep t least, say, 3-4 hours depending on “you know what”

If you wish, and of some other mates already told in their blogs, you can see some pictures in my flickr profile, both just about the new office or about the opening party. More pictures also available in Igalia’s flickr album and Enrique’s picasa gallery.

See you guys!

Just in case you were experiencing, like me, some very annoying problems with your NVIDIA graphic card while using Compiz, here you have a very useful option to put inside the “Device” section in your /etc/X11/xorg.org file:

Option         "UseCompositeWrapper" "true"

After activating this option (available for nvidia drivers >= 169.xx) I found that the problems redrawing windows I was suffering, specially when scrolling (very annoying, for instance, when chatting through pidging), just dissapeared. And it was indeed a very annoying problem, since it used to happen very often and in almost any window (although not in Emacs ;-)) in my system, in a way so any information on it just got screwed up so it was completely unreadable… and the only “manual” workaround I had found so far was just to re-scroll the window or select the text I was trying to read, which seemed not to be a very good idea.

Needed to say that I started to see this odd behavior since I “downgraded” my Ubuntu 8.10 down to 8.04 last week (because of some very specific needs), and this strange problem never happened when using Intrepid, so if you’re now using that version perhaps you can just throw this post away to the trash, because then it would not useful at all for you.

But just in case, here you are my two cents, and to make them even more useful, here you are the full configuration of my “Device” section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which allows me to use a fully accelerated desktop with no problems at all:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro NVS 140M"
    Option         "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
    Option         "UseCompositeWrapper" "true"
    Option         "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
    Option         "NoLogo" "true"
    Option         "backingstore" "true"
    Option         "TripleBuffer" "true"
    Option         "AddARGBGLXVisuals"  "true"
EndSection

Hope this will be useful for you as well :-).

Update: If you’re still suffering these problems even after adding these lines to xorg.conf, you could try to install the nvidia driver through Envy. These steps worked for me (at the end, the annoying problem appeared again, although not so often than before):

1. Uninstall any other driver you had installed before (through the ubuntu “restricted drivers” manager, or the .run script downloaded from nvidia.com).
2. Install Envy: apt-get install envyng-core
   
3. Shutdown X and install the nvidia driver from a tty terminal: envyng -t

After following these steps, and the simple instructions on screen, by ubuntu hardy perfectly booted up with the nvidia driver v173.14, which seems not to present the same problem.

Let’s see if these new advice helps you too

Seen in FOSDEM, in front of the GNOME stand:

It looks like a original and very visual idea to put many ideas and visions all together, doesn’t it? Pointless to say I agree more with the “love” side, of course

By the way, I took this picture today, the second and last day of the conference… so now I’m ready to give a full and complete opinion about it, which is that it just was great: I had a very  good time and a lot of fun being there, and not only because of the talks, which were amazing in most of the cases, but also because of meeting people and sharing visions and comments with all of them.

So, it seems now it’s time to get back home, so now I’m going to bed, since I’m very tired and tomorrow I’ll have to wake up early to take the plane.

As planned, I attended today to my first day at FOSDEM ‘09, and I have to say my impressions are even better than what I would expected: lots of talks, lots of volunteers, lots of resources to get into (I’d like to congratulate the organization for all the amazing work they have done), and lots of hackers all over the place. In fact, it was sometimes very hard to manage to select and attend to some talks (at least for me, perhaps because I’m a “newbie” here as this is my first year here), since parallelization is very high (and needed, if you think on more than 260 talks taking place in just two days) and timetables are sometimes too tight if you want to move around between different rooms.

But… what the hell? That insane amount of talks and hackers hanging around is exactly which makes FOSDEM great, isn’t it? So, no complaints, only good words for FOSDEM!

As I side note about conferences, I’d like to state I liked a lot the talks I attended, specially those ones in the “GNOME developers room”, which were all great. In a more specific way, I specially liked the talk about the People Framework, which is IMO such an interesting project, which could become a very helpful tool for those kind of people that, like me, suffer the typical problems of having several devices or applications with independent (but related) contact list. Keep going on with that awesome work, guys!

Regarding to the Fosdem Beer Event, needed to say it was just great to be there, talking to so many people (some new people to me, and some already “old friends”) and trying so many different beers, which were very tasty indeed, like the “Delirium Tremens” and “Kasteel”, for instance, which I just loved. The only slightly negative point on this was that trying so many beers didn’t help me to wake up in my best shape precisely, but nothing that a good breakfast and some hours of good talks could not fix :-).

At last, as a picture is usually better than too much text, here you are one: me in the main entrance.

Can’t wait for tomorrow!

As some of my mates here in Igalia, I’m arriving tomorrow at Brussels, in order to attend to FOSDEM ‘09. This is my first visit both to Brussels and FOSDEM and I’m very excited and looking forward to arriving there and meeting all the people attending and giving talks in this great event, which I’m sure I’m goint to love.

So now it’s time to get everything ready in my backpack and going to bed soon, since my plane leaves Coruña early in the morning and I’ll need to rest properly to reach Brussels in my best shape. And let’s hope I don’t find any problems in Madrid, where news said they’re in “orange alert” because of the snow (I wouldn’t like to miss my connection or, even worse, to miss Friday in Brussels and therefore the FOSDEM Beer Event ;-)).

See you there  guys!

Just in case you wonder why my personal webpage (formerly at http://people.igalia.com/msanchez) is no longer available, here you are some brief explanations:

• I don’t see the point of having a so simple webpage when the same thing could be easily got by setting up a Wordpress page.
• I don’t like having two different places to make all the stuff I want available for everybody: a blog for posts, and the personal web for the remaining stuff. Two different places also mean, by the way, two different “things” to maintain and keep up-to-date.
• I’m not a graphical designer and, no matter what I do, a webpage made and designed by me (I’m talking about the CSS on here, mainly) never will look as good as many Wordpress themes out there, like this one I’m currently using, for instance.

So, I just decided today to remove my personal webpage from the internet and set up a redirection to this blog (I don’t like broken links either). But first, instead of just throwing away all the stuff I had in my old web, I’ve merged and moved them into the (already existing) About me and the (newly created) Cool stuff pages in this blog, respectively, whose hyperlinks you can find in the sidebar.

I hope this change made sense for you too

As Juan, I’m one of the proud owners of a Linksys NSLU2 (aka Slug) perfectly (and continuously) running the Debian/NSLU2 distribution for more than 6 months, currently featuring the following configuration (both sw and hw), after some slightly changes:

1. Attached 500Gb 2,5″ HD (powered through its USB2.0 connector).
2. MediaTomb uPnP media server, to keep a nice “media center” running always available.
3. Samba filesharing server (to easily share files with any device connected to the LAN)
4. rtorrent bitTorrent client, to use the Slug as a dedicated machine always up and ready to download whatever you want.
5. The ’screen’ command line utility (useful to easily keep the rtorrent app always running and “detachable” ;-)).
6. OpenSSH server (ssh port forwarded in the router to access the Slug from the Internet), to easily manage my Slug from anywhere in the world.

With the exception of the HD (which used to be a 3,5″ 120Gb HD since June to December, when I replaced with the 500Gb one), the rest of the configuration was amazingly working with no problems at all for more than 6 months, as I previously stated. This, along with the fact that this  device is quite small, noise-and-heat-free (no fans) and only needs 8W (it’s the 266Mhz, ‘underclocked’ version) to work, makes it one of my favourite devices I ever had :-).

But all this was kind of “incomplete” stuff until I got a PS3, as a present from my girlfriend during last Christmas holidays, which gave it a new dimension to the Slug, since the PS3 bundles a nice uPnP client for pictures, audio and video which works perfectly with the MediaTomb server installed in this cute device.

The point now is that I no more need to copy the video files I download with my Slug to another device (a desktop PC, a laptop…) to watch them, either in such a device or in the TV (with the help of a multimedia HD)… all I need to do is just:

1. Have the MediaTomb server continuously running in the Slug, watching (through its inotify feature) to the /storage/videos directory for new videos (I want it to index them whenever I copy new downloaded videos under that path).
2. Have the PS3 connected to the local network, either through it’s wired or wireless interface.
3. Move the video files, as soon as they get fully downloaded, from my /storage/downloads path into /storage/videos

This way, just by the moving the downloaded media files as explained in (3), and waiting a couple of minutes for the MediaTomb to index them, I have that media content available to be directly watched in the TV, which is really cool and very handy, by the way

Of course, you can also do the same with regular pictures or audio files (which is very nice also if you have, like me, the PS3 audio output also plugged into a Hi-Fi), but I think you’ll agree with me that watching video files seems to be the best way to make the most of the Slug+Ps3+TV combo :-).

And that’s all, I think… just to mention I’ve written this post while I was listening to a nice Thin Lizzy album (”Dedication“) stored in the Slug, through the PS3 and my Hi-Fi equipment. It sounds good, doesn’t it?

PS: One of these days I’ll post more in detail how to set up the configuration for all the components I’m currently using in my Slug (rtorrent, Samba, MediaTomb…), just in case someone found it useful.