Go forward in time to August 2007.
- Tue 2007/Jul/31
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Sad to read that the SCD (the Chilean society for music authors and composers rights) wants to copy the Spanish canon idea, in which every blank CD/DVD, every CD/DVD writer, and in general, every blank media which may be used to illegally copy copyrighted music would be charged a tax.
Besides the obvious counter-arguments which everyone already knows, this is sad because the people behind the SCD are not showing themselves smart when defending their proposal. The replies from the General Secretary of the SCD to an open debate are really poor and lack consistence overall, so this makes me doubt that they really understand what they propose (beyond the economical benefits). Hopefully, our congressmen will notice this and won't fall into their game.
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- Sun 2007/Jul/29
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Today is the first anniversary of my return to Chile from Dresden. One year is a long time, and a lot of things have happened, many changes, and a lot of differences that mark the way I see things now.
First thing to be noticed is that after having lived a really intense year in Germany, including a lot of experiences, travel, cool lectures and atmosphere in the University, lovely people from all over the world, cooling down and coming back to the routine in Chile, where things move at a different rhythm, was pretty hard at the beginning. It's not that life in Chile is not cool and that things here suck, but when you live under an exchange program in a European country, with a good funding, and a world of possibilities around the corner, life moves too fast, and you get used to it easily. Once you're back to your homeland, you'd love to maintain the same rhythm of living but that's not possible and the change is just too hard. At the beginning, I felt really uncomfortable and had a hard time getting to appreciate all the things I've always loved from my country. After some months, I think things felt much better, and even when I still miss the lifestyle, I'm happy with the Chilean way again.
During this year I've done a lot of interesting things: at work in my internship during the summer, in the GNOME front, with friends and family all around, and that's been pretty rewarding. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about university life. Somehow, I can't feel that the last year in the Faculty has been really productive in any way. The only bits I've felt have been interesting are the hours I've devoted as T.A. of the Logic and Formal Languages lectures. Unfortunately, I don't feel the lectures I visited during the last two semesters were interesting enough and can't feel I've learnt something cool. That's why I'm not loving the time at the uni and would like it to finish now, if possible. Maybe it's a consequence of 7 years of undergraduate education (yes, in Chile you need to study 6 years if you want an Engineering Degree that's not undervalued, plus the year in Germany, that sums 7), or a consequence of having visited only lectures I chose in Dresden, against lectures from the fixed Engineering program here, or maybe both. Either way, that has been the only thing I still have a hard time coping with. Fortunately, it's soon to be over.
Anyway, it's been a year. Cool to say that now, more than deadly missing Dresden, I bear a smile when I think of the time there. My German friend Marie will arrive in Santiago next Saturday, so there'll probably be a lot of things to remember over a bottle of Pisco.
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- Thu 2007/Jul/26
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Monumento a Alfonso XII, Jardines del Buen Retiro, Spain:
More pictures from the pre-GUADEC-es day.
After having uploaded like 500 pictures to flickr, it's kinda silly not to have a pro account. That's definitively top on my wishlist, specially now that almost all my pictures from Dresden have disappeared from the photostream.
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- Wed 2007/Jul/25
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I'm in Curicó again after GUADEC. The travel home was really long (it started on Sunday), but I'm happy to have safely arrived here. The days in Madrid were lovely, I got to love the city, and Lore, Marcos, and Luca were really great hosts. Thanks Pedro and family for everything! I owe you a lot!
Now, how many times in your life do you find yourself waiting for your luggage at the same time than some popular football player? Who plays in your favourite football team? and also in the under-20 national team? which has just won the third place in the world cup of the category? Yes, Pedro and I met Arturo Vidal in the airport. That's a coincidence!
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- Sun 2007/Jul/22
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Things that only happen at GUADEC: A bunch of hackers trying to get two drinks for the price of one from the vending machine at the conference venue. See it!
I'm loving this project each day more.
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Your hero, Vincent Untz, has a child's soul. In this video we discover that he loves ice cream. Once again, things that only happen at GUADEC.
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Tomorrow morning I'm leaving Birmingham, direction Madrid. On Monday, I'll fly back to Santiago. These two weeks with the guys were amazing and both conferences were incredible. It was great to meet again many of the friends, including Carlos Garnacho, Rodrigo Moya, Chema Casanova, Lucas Rocha, Fernando Herrera, Gil Forcada, Silvia Miranda, Zaheer Merali, Bariş Çiçek, Jörg Kress, José Angel Díaz, Carlos García Campos, Izabel Valverde, Roberto Majadas. Specially nice to have finally met some people I had only related through mail and IRC, like Andre Klapper (dude, you are really great!), María Majadas, Jorge Gonzalez, Diego Escalante, Paul Cooper. Also, I met many cool people like Miguel Angel Ramirez, Antia Puentes, Carlos Perelló, Eduardo Lima, Jens Granseuer, Vincent Untz, Tobias Müller, Karsten Bräckelmann, Данило Шеган (also known as Danilo), and probably so many others that's hard to list. People, you really rock!
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- Tue 2007/Jul/17
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Tonight, we'll meet in the Etap Hotel to hack on the Eye of GNOME. If you'd like to join Lucas and me, then find us around 21:00 in the lobby. Bring cookies if you want.
If you'd like to join us but are not in Birmingham, you are more than welcome in the #eog channel in irc.gimp.org. Bring patches if you want. :-)
Update: we completely forgot about the Party that will take place tonight. I think it's better if we meet in the next days to hack. You know, you don't want to miss the party!
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GUADEC has been really nice so far. I'm pretty happy to have met many of the people I've related somehow through irc and mail. To give you an example, I have not met Andre Klapper ;-).
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- Sat 2007/Jul/14
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GUADEC-es is over and I arrived today to Birmingham for GUADEC. It's been a hell of exhausting week and I haven't sleep more than 3 hours a day during the whole week. Overall, it was a great conference and I loved it. Granada is incredible, and it's now on my top cities list, among with Prague and Budapest.
Not really with energy enough to write about GUADEC-es, nor to upload any pictures, will do so someday soon.
Etap hotel, where we are staying now for GUADEC, is nice. I think I'll recover some sleep now in order to be in best shape for the conference kick off tomorrow.
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- Wed 2007/Jul/11
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I arrived yesterday in Granadafor GUADEC-es. The flight was fine, but a bit exhaustive, as I didn't manage to sleep.
Today, I tried Gazpacho for the first time. I liked it! and I'm not talking about the user interfaces designer.
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- Tue 2007/Jul/03
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Last week was a bit exhaustive. My thesis is progressing fine, although I should have more done by the time being, it's not that bad, and I'll catch up during the vacations in August. Yeah, in August, and not in July because...
...finally, all the problems with LAN and Iberia were solved and thanks to Paul and Germán I have my tickets! This means that I'll be flying to Europe to attend the GNOME conferences!
First stop is GUADEC-es, the Spanish GNOME Conference, in Granada, Spain. The program looks very promising and I'm really waiting to attend some of the talks there. Also, I'll be giving a talk about programming with the GNOME platform. I'll try to show how to combine our technologies to have a nicely GNOME-integrated application (that reminds me that I should send my article soon).
Later, with a bunch of the Latin American GNOME hackers we'll have a trip to Birmingham, in the UK, where we'll be part of GUADEC, the GNOME Conference. The conference looks very interesting and the agenda is full of interesting activities and talks. I'm sure one week won't be enough for all what it needs to be discussed and all the things that need to be done. But it'll certainly rock!
On the other hand, leaving the University during the two final weeks it's kinda complicated. I should deliver part of my thesis for review during these weeks and also make a talk about it, and I should write some exams. Fortunately, my Professors have been a little flexible and I won't have major issues with the University. It's my last semester as a regular student (next semester I'll be completely devoted to my thesis), so I hope I won't screw it.
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Go backwards in time to June 2007.