Last weekend I had the chance to attend the Open aLANtejo conference, in beautiful vora, Portugal. I went there to give a presentation about Open Source Game Development and had the chance to meet interesting people that I knew through somebody else or just from the community lore To be honest I had a really better time than I expected Some of the speakers were the Bitrock people, Jono Bacon (Ubuntu Community Manager) and Juanjo from Igalia. I’m really looking forward to meet up again. The organisation team was also really helpful and passionate about the event, so if you get invited, don’t think twice about going

I love traveling but I have to concede that having aKademy-es in my own city (and five minutes away from my home) is quite convenient It will be great to meet again with the Spanish KDE crew. As Albert said, we’ll have talks, coding and party, and as a local I’ll try to make sure the latter is properly taken care of See you here!

I have just visited the eBox team room and I have discovered a really nice project they are working on. Jos Antonio Calvo (aka Josh) is creating a really cool suite of programs called ANSTE that allows a developer to define network scenarios and run tests easily on them. We are going to use it to perform continuous integration for eBox, running a test of suites nightly to ensure that every module works correctly, which includes stuff like setting up two separate networks, connect them with the OpenVPN eBox module and checking connectivity through the vpn interfaces or ensuring that the traffic shaping module really does its job. Josh’s work is not this far yet, but ANSTE is already able to read XML scenario definition files like this one and generate the Xen virtual machines as specified, with the appropiate software, virtual interfaces, routes, … as defined by the scenario file. It’s also able to run suites of tests which right now are simple scripts. The next steps are integrating Selenium to perform automatized eBox configuration through a browser (thus testing the GUI too), creating nice GUI tools to generate the scenario files and manage the test suites and writing powerful reporting tools. Of course, ANSTE is free software under the GPL license and you can follow (or contribute to) the development in ANSTE’s Trac.

Some weeks ago we started developing KTrace, a graphical KDE frontend for strace. We quickly managed to have something which worked, but development stalled after that. Today we are holding the first KTrace developers meeting to make some decisions about the next features that will be coded. If you want to propose a feature that you would like to see in KTrace (or just a better name proposal), feel free to write a comment

Wow, the pilot of Californication, a new TV series starring David Duchovny (from X-Files hall of fame), is awesome! Quoting Wikipedia, the show is about “a troubled novelist whose obsessions with sex and drugs interfere with his personal and professional lives”. It was created by Showtime and it will begin airing on August 13th but the preair was leaked some days ago. It’s really cool and full of memorable quotes, I hope the rest of the episodes are as nice as the pilot. Go watch it!

According to the latest news from the Ubuntu camp, Gutsy Gibbon will ship with our beloved eBox, and according to the last post in this thread in the Ubuntu forums, it’s going to be the official configuration tool for services. I went to aKademy with eBox lead developer and workmate, Javier Uruen, and we had the chance to attend to Mark Shuttleworth’s keynote, where he argued about the benefits of having a six-months release cycle for the most popular open source projects (i.e., KDE, Gnome and OpenOffice). I think this release cycle would suit eBox quite well too, and if synced with Ubuntu releases, would make life easier for both eBox developers and packagers, besides enlarging the free software “pulse”. In any case, we’ll continue to provide Debian-based installers where the base system won’t change that often, for those who are not willing to update their servers each six months. Anyway, this is a big leap towards world domination for eBox We are quite happy that eBox made into Ubuntu and we’ll be eager to work with the maintainers to integrate their changes back into eBox. disclaimer: I’m not an “official” eBox developer, so don’t take my opinions as authoritative, they come mostly from pub-talk with Javier

I had been using fvwm2 for some 10 years when around the beginning of this year, I thought it might be time for a change. My config was originally copied from some SuSE templates and then heavily tweaked over the years, but recently broke more and more in subtle way with new fvwm upstream versions, e.g. moving windows suddenly required a different mouse button. Probably the config was just slightly out of spec and fvwm got "fixed", but it was annoying. The "tiled" window managers I had seen on others' desktops made me curious, so I gave ion3 a try some months ago. The overall appearance was all cool, but it tried a bit too hard to squeeze all windows into tiled windows - of course there's the floating workspace, but creating one was weird, and moving windows even weirder. And if only the (default) key bindings were more vi-like... I admit I never really bothered to read the documentation - probably everything would have been much nicer otherwise. Then there was the big license "wtf" with ion, at which point I started looking around further. dwm looks clearly too l33t to be serious, so wmii was the next choice, 3.1 to be exact. vi key bindings, a nicely configurable status bar, easy workspace switching and window moving. wmii doesn't have horizontally split windows (windows are always in columns), and no "tabbed" windows, though. It didn't warp the pointer to the currently active window (something I got used to with fvwm), but some config tweaks mostly fixed that. This time, I read the documentation, but there's only a 10 page pdf beginners document, but there's not much to configure anyway. Then came lenny. Testing and unstable currently feature version 3.6 which is a big disappointment. It is broken (the default config is unusable), and even after fixing that, it looks like they removed all the little details that I liked. The status bar is still there (though with a new location in the virtual filesystem), the color cannot be changed anymore (unless changing some other color as well). The windows used to have slim 1-pixel (configurable) borders. Now they still have, but the border will be expanded if the window chooses a different size - xterm always rounds down to the next character size, so all my terminals have fat surroundings now. The last-active window in a inactive column still had some markup so I knew which window Alt-Left/Right wound return to, now I have to guess. I wouldn't mind fixing my 3.1 config for 3.6, but I don't think I will, given these issues look unfixable. The 3.1 wmiirc file looked like a sh script, the 3.6 uses eval and a bunch of functions that frighten me. On a positive note, it is now possible to create new workspaces by just selecting them, which is much handier than start-program, wait, move-window-over, move-workspace. I guess I will give ion (2, 3?) another try...

I’m currently developing In Your Face, a free software 3d basketball game. I have reached the moment to create an scripting interface to be able to script cool AI’s. After having a look at LuaBind and Boost::Python I’ve decided to go with QtScript. I’m quite happy with it, but I’m facing an issue that I’m having problems to figure out. I’ll probably send it to Qt Interest, but I’ll try to explain it here too to see if I get an answer. I have a whole hierarchy of classes that I want to export. The base class is Action::Base, and there are plenty of other actions, like Action::MoveTo or Action::Shoot. I’m (almost) already able to do stuff like this from JavaScript:

function enter()
  var teamPlay = new TeamPlay();
  var al = new ActionList();
  var mta = new MoveToAction(0,10);
  al.append(mta);
  teamPlay.insert(0,al);
  state.setTeamPlay(teamPlay);
  state.setChanged();

Everything works fine except the “append” call. “append” takes a pointer to the abstract class Action::Base. If I invoke it with a MoveToAction object, I get an “incompatible types” error. I have tried adding a toAction() method to MoveToAction which returned a QScriptValue-wrapped Action::Base *, but I’m still getting the same error. Anyone has a QtScript example where something like this is done?

Several of my workmates and I are regular listeners of technology-related podcasts like Diggnation, TWiT or FLOSS Weekly (which BTW is as “weekly” as the Halley comet). Some days ago we realized that there weren’t similar podcasts in Spanish (or at least we didn’t know about them), so we thought that creating one would be cool. During this week we recorded our pilot, we had some problems with sound and I spoke a bit too fast, but I think it’s nice overall, at least I would enjoy listening to it Trying to emulate people like Kevin Rose or Leo Laporte (in the media business since 1991), who create podcasts professionally, is quite hard for amateurs like us, but we’ll do our best. Be sure to check it at Foocast (sorry, Spanish only, that’s the whole point )

I’ve just watched this awesome video from the Colbert Report about gay people in the military. It bashes the shameful Don’t ask, don’t tell policy in its usual satirical way. Watch it!

eBox has reached an important milestone recently, it has just got its first complete user-contributed module. I guess that’s quite important for a company-backed free software product, meaning that there is really a community out there, and it’s ready to contribute stuff In addition it’s always great to know that you are doing a good work (snippet from Nacho’s mini-interview to the module author):

Quite honestly it s to me the most exciting open source projects I ve come across in some time - the flexibility it provides is remarkable. The developers are great and happy to help. My first experience of coding for eBox has been thoroughly enjoyable. I m looking forward to getting on with my next module now and learning more about eBox!

Privacy International has just issued a report slamming Google on privacy.
Google may indeed be the biggest pool of user data out there, but IMHO they do a decent job at protecting its users privacy in most areas.
Google’s Matt Cutts shares his opinions about PI’s article and talks about Google’s goodness in his blog.

I’ve just come across this article from Marc Andreessen about hiring. It raises some interesting points about the hiring process, which he bases in three criteria. Drive

I like to see what someone has done. Not been involved in, or been part of, or watched happen, or was hanging around when it happened. If you’re a programmer: the open source project to which you’ve made major contributions. Something. If you can’t find anything — if a candidate has just followed the rules their whole lives, showed up for the right classes and the right tests and the right career opportunities without achieving something distinct and notable, relative to their starting point — then they probably aren’t driven. And you’re not going to change them. Motivating people who are fundamentally unmotivated is not easy.

Curiosity

Sit a programmer candidate for an Internet company down and ask them about the ten most interesting things happening in Internet software. REST vs SOAP, the new Facebook API, whether Ruby on Rails is scalable, what do you think of Sun’s new Java-based scripting language, Google’s widgets API, Amazon S3, etc. If the candidate loves their field, they’ll have informed opinions on many of these topics. That’s what you want.

Ethics

Pick a topic you know intimately and ask the candidate increasingly esoteric questions until they don’t know the answer.
They’ll either say they don’t know, or they’ll try to bullshit you.
Guess what. If they bullshit you during the hiring process, they’ll bullshit you once they’re onboard.

He also links to Software Interview, a site which lists questions and answers that several companies use in their hiring processes.

Via Hector:

Debian, Ubuntu and DCCA joint efforts for improving laptop support and for Linux kernel and X11 packaging on Debian -derivative software distributions.

This kind of group effort is precisely what makes the Free Software development model so great and, as this story demonstrates eloquently, it applies remarkably well to corporate software development, even among vendors that are competing for the same market segment. Awesome, isn't it?

Almost a year ago I wrote this:

I ve thought about blogging about the books I read, although I m not sure if I ll manage to do it.

Although blogging about a book requires far less time than actually reading the book, I haven’t managed to do it, not that I actually believed I would be able to do it in the first place. I had thought that I would at least write a raw list of the books I’ve read in these ten months as closure for the “blogging about books” thing. In no particular order, and probably missing some of them:

• The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
• To kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee
• The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• The Cleric Quintet, R.A. Salvatore
• Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson
• Notes from a Big Country, Bill Bryson
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson
• What liberal media?, Eric Alterman
• The Music of Chance, Paul Auster
• True Tales of American Life, collected by Paul Auster
• Best New American Voices 2004, several authors

Past weekend Warp had its first WARPtivity (which, as you may suspect, stands for WARP activity, you know, team building and that stuff). We (including all partners and almost all workers) spent a night and a day in the breathtaking Ordesa valley. I’m quite biased as I love the valley since I was a child and have enjoyed lots of weeks there, but it’s indeed one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately our regional government (PSOE and PAR, kick them out on the 27th May election) are spoiling most of the Pyrenees, I hope there is something left for the next generations. We arrived at Torla (a little village near Ordesa) on Friday evening, had a great dinner and some drinks and played table football. Next morning we woke up quite early and hiked through a nice forest path to the Horse Tail waterfall. After having lunch by the waterfall some of us decided to return by the Faja de Pelay, a higher path above the forest, with awesome sights. As it was still early May, there was some snow remaining in the path, making it a bit dangerous, as there is a 300 hundred meter cliff. Luckily enough we managed to survive and blog it

Hi there! I’m back I spent a really nice time in the United States with my friends. We stayed two weeks in Boston and New York, and basically did everything we had planned to do and more … We visited the MIT at Boston, went to several comedy shows, ice skated in Central Park, spent a whole day in the Barnes and Noble book megastore, went to an NBA basketball game, saw Monty Python’s Spamalot musical, discussed politics with fellow Americans, visited the Delaware Water Gap waterfalls, enjoyed an helicopter ride, even watched The Grindhouse in its first day in the cinemas, and well, did lots of other stuff. Now for the celiac thing … I was somewhat sick during the whole trip, I felt weary the whole day without any reason, so as soon as I got back to Spain I went to the doctor and after some tests that spanned over a week and a quick visit to the hospital they diagnosed me with celiac disease. That means that I can’t ever eat anything containing gluten, a protein present in wheat, barley and rye. It’s quite an inconvenient illness, but nothing more than that, as just following an strict gluten-free diet is enough to keep it at bay. The main drawback is that you have to be really careful when you go out for dinner. I have already been in sick leave for three weeks because I had lost weight and was a bit anemic, but I’m quite ok again, and I expect to be back at work really soon now

We had a good brunch today. Friends Heather, Damien, Niko, Karine, Sarven, Brigitte and John all came over for some quiche, roasted potatoes, green salad, bread, cheese, wine, beer, asparagus, coffee and papaya. All in all a good time. We'd hoped to walk over to our new house at 4690 rue Pontiac with anyone who wanted to see it. The previous owner was packing the last of his stuff today, and we were supposed to pick up the keys this evening. But we hadn't heard from him by 7PM, so we packed everyone off to home and put the baby to bed. Then he called at 8PM, so I drove over to the new house and had a chat with him while picking up the keys. He had a couple of leftover Bor ale Cuivr es, so we drank them while he showed me around the house. I helped him take the last of his cleaning supplies out to his car, and then I went back inside, to our house. Wow. I just walked around for a little while, turning on and off the lights and looking through the windows and trying to imagine what our life there is going to be like. We're not going to move in for another 2 months, so it seems a little remote. The house felt nice, though. It's on a quiet street in a great neighborhood, and I could tell it was a good place to live. I'm excited to get started with it. tags: house 4690 rue Pontiac homeowner keys

Hey IBM Now that OS/2 has reached its end-of-life, it's time to release as much code as you can out of it under a liberal Open Source license. There are millions of lines of code in OS/2, and I doubt that much of the Microsoft code written in the 80s is still there. IBM talks a mean game about Linux and Open Source (see http://www.ibm.com/linux ), and to a large part they've been pretty true to their word. But having a huge codebase available that could very clearly benefit the Open Source world, and that's not being developed further, is a bad idea. Clear the rights, release the software. Abandonware is a terrible thing to waste. tags: os/2 ibm open source

Last weekend my workmate Javi and I attended a Bloodhound Gang show in Sheffield, UK. It was quite cool and we got the chance to see Jimmy Pop and Evil Jared live. I also had the chance to see this amazingly crazy poster at Sheffield bus station. In unrelated news I’m leaving tomorrow towards the United States, I am going on holidays to New York and Boston for a couple of weeks with a group of friends, I hope it to be great

A few days ago Applemania took over Warp HQ and several workmates purchased MacBooks. The MacBooks came with this nice remote thing and I grew jealous. In my way back home I thought that it shouldn’t be very hard to get a kind of remote control working using bluetooth and my Nokia mobile. I had never coded for my mobile so I wasn’t sure about how difficult would it be. In the end it was quite easy to write a simple program that just sent every key press to my laptop via bluetooth, and it only took 113 lines of Java code. Then I spent several hours coding the “receiver” part, in the end I created a little Python app which could load different plugins and created several of these modules:

• System: it basically provides “lock” and “halt”
• amarok: play, stop, next song, raise/lower volume
• mouse control: it allows you to move the pointer with the mobile and do clicks, it’s quite handy for presentations
• video: I’ve a dir with videos and the module shows you a list of the available videos, shows previews of them and allows you to select one to play in fullscreen

There are loooots of things to improve but it works for me , I’ve uploaded the source code (tarball) in case you find it useful.