Claudio Saavedra

Go forward in time to June 2006.

Tue 2006/May/30

• This is what I call a beautiful example of Theoretical Computer Science applied to the everyday life of non Computer Scientists. With you, How to find a song in an iPod Shuffle, by Peter Norvig. If you have an iPod Shuffle or like randomized algorithms, I recommend you to read it.

Thu 2006/May/18

• Since yesterday, I am not receiving e-mails in my wh8.tu-dresden.de account. I will talk today with the administrator to ask what happens. I use this account only for mailing lists and bugzillas (ie, people please don't write me there), so it is not a big problem, although I would like to know about the status of some bugs I've reported and others that I am working on.

Tue 2006/May/16

• Help the statistics about Linux users around the world: Sign up your Linux box in Linux Counter.

Mon 2006/May/15

• Today, I was waiting for the tram in my way to the supermarket, and noticed a young woman with her little ~3 years old daughter. They were speaking some Slavic language, probably Czech. Suddenly, a German woman in the stop asked in German the little girl about the name of the teddy bear she was holding. I immediately thought, that the little girl wouldn't be able to understand and answer the question, but to my surprise, the girl answered in a perfect German.

  I was completely surprised that somebody at that age can speak two languages so different.

  Then, when we step in the tram, there was people talking in about three different languages. Japanese, Czech, and of course, German. Nobody was surprised. In Dresden is something completely normal. Nobody has ever watched us with surprise, when we speak Spanish or English in the streets.

  I still remember the few times I spoke German in the streets in Chile. Once, Kady and I were giving a tour to Sandra, her German friend who visited Chile a few years ago. When we were in the bus, we started chatting in German, and everyone around us started looking at us with strange faces. Is it a normal situation in Latin American countries? We have in Chile a lot of foreigners, but most of them come from other Latin American countries, where people speak Spanish too. Maybe that is the reason why we are not used to listen people talking in other languages, and even worse, not used to learn foreign languages. I wish this situation could change someday.

• Today I worked a little more on the EogThumbView widget, implementing a lazy thumbnail loading ability. Now, instead of loading all the thumbnails at start up, it only loads those thumbnails that are visible, and frees the thumbnails that are no longer visible on the pane. This way, EOG escalates much better with big image collections, regarding memory usage, and load time. It is cool that GTK+ allows you with a little tweaking to extend its widgets to do very powerful things.

  The patch is attached to the bugzilla bug that is open while we do the transition to EogThumbView. It is based on the evince code, and must be applied against the eog-ng branch. I would thank if somebody can give it a test and give me some comments, specially regarding performance over network connections. Is it worst or better than the old method?

Thu 2006/May/11

• Confirmed: The Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ. Courtesy of Google Trends.

Sun 2006/May/07

• My girlfriend left Dresden a few hours ago, back to the lovely Budapest. We had a great week, a nice spring weather in Dresden, and a lot of meals.

  She cooked on Wednesday one of my favourite dishes, Goulash, directly from the original Hungarian recipe. It was simply wonderful. Full of spice, very tasty, with a perfectly cooked meat and a lot of vegetables. Take a look at the color of the soup to get an idea of the taste.

  

  Goulash has a special meaning in out relationship, because I firstly tried a good Goulash in a international meals party that she organized during the summer German course where we firstly meet. We, the Chileans, made a very good Charquicán, that was only beaten by the excellent Goulash she cooked. I had eaten Goulash before only a couple of times in the Faculty in Curicó, and it was always Real Shit. People in Chile, please believe me: Goulash is wonderful and what you can eat in cheap restaurants as the Menú Del Día is simply nothing.

  Now that she left I am back to the routine. There is a lot of work to be done regarding studies and GNOME. I already fixed some exams and the dates won't let me too much in between, so I have to learn NOW. The German grammar I am learning now is very complicated -- I think it is somewhere in a medium/advanced level, but I still need to work in making my basic grammar stronger. Regarding GNOME, testing, bug hunting, and the EogThumbView will occupy most of my hacking time. Next months will be busy, it seems.

Tue 2006/May/02

• Last Saturday, Nóra arrived to Dresden from Budapest. She came so we can spend some days together in the unstable Dresdner Spring. As a good boyfriend, I cooked at her arrive a typical Chilean Cazuela de Ave that was very, very tasty. My mother would be proud of me.

  

  The only problem with this Cazuela, was that the Pumpkin on it was sweet. Limitations of the German Kitchen, but so it is life. I hope she will have the chance to eat a real Chilean Cazuela in the near future.

  Last night, we made a campfire with Marie and Matthias. The guys were very nice as usual, and Nóra was very happy to meet them. We drank some Unicum, a Hungarian schnapps that Nór brought me. It is very strong and the taste is very special. I think Germans didn't really like it. Better for me, as I will drink more of the bottle.

  As it is obvious, I haven't do any work during these days, and will stay on this rule during the whole week. I will only attend the essential lectures, and will continue the Chilean meals adventure.

Go backwards in time to April 2006.