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

I was looking in the Java Language Specification (which is "the definitive technical reference for the Java programming language.") to look up the details of instantiating "anonymous inner classes". "new" is the Java keyword that one would use to instantiate a class. I was rather dismayed when I found that "new" doesn't appear in their index but "Newton, Sir Isaac" does appear in their index. Of course, "new" appears all over the text, but "Newton, Sir Isaac" actually doesn't.

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’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.

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

* Finally, we did it! List of people who attended meet:
1. Hardik Dalwadi (DeepRoot Linux)
2. Kartik Mistry (Magnet, Utkarsh)
3. Isaac Praveen (DeepRoot Linux) We met at CCD near LD College of Engineering around 7 PM yesterday. It was surprise that only 3 people actually turned up at meet (I though of atleast 6/7 people). But, since this was Meeting Zero, Never mind! We discussed lots of things from Debian Etch release to DeepRootLinux. Hardik showed fancy Beryl and Deepofix working. I handed over Debian Etch Multiarch CD, We tried to install it over VMware but couldn’t get it working We also talked about attending some next cool events and involving student in LUGA. For any LUG, it is vital to have student base. Well, we had nice coffee too (Thanks to Hardik/Abhas Abhinav for sponsoring it!) And yes, we had nice BSOD when Hardik tried to show me Windows XP Embedded! I took chance to get its video too!! Pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kartik_m/tags/lugameet0/ So, if you are at/near Ahmedabad or Gandhinagar and care and dare to travel on Sundays, you are most welcome!

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.

The recent goal for Haskell' has been to actually start committing modifications to the Haskell98 report. Well, as mentioned on the mailing list, we've started making changes relating to Pattern Guards. The current draft of the Haskell' report will be auto-generated whenever someone submits a patch. Thanks for setting up the build system, Malcolm! Haskell' ("Haskell Prime") is the working name of the next Haskell language standard. Haskell is the best programming language in the world.

I want a cell phone that runs Linux. I've been wanting one for a long time. Why should I care what OS it runs? Well, I have two main reasons: 1) because I want to support commercial ventures related to free software, and 2) I want to write applications for it, and I don't want to be beholden to some vendor to sell me a development kit, and tell me what I can and cannot write. I want to apt-get install the developer kit, write some code, and upload it to the phone. Rock. I've been paying only scant attention to the cell phone market since I got a Treo 600, which I like a lot. It is _not_ a Linux-based phone. It runs PalmOS, which is a pretty crufty OS, but I've been using it since 2001, so I have a lot of data in there. It should be pretty easy to get the data out, though, so I'm not worried. I really like the Treo's thumb-keyboard; It's qwerty, and I can type pretty fast on it. Numeric keypad based phones are lame. I hardly ever type in numbers anyway. Apple recently announced the iPhone, which I shouldn't even mention because it doesn't allow 3rd party applications, doesn't run on a free operating system, and is probably very buggy since they've never done anything like that before. Enough about Apple. As I poke around the intern-webs, I find that some stuff has been happening over the year when it comes to Linux-based phones, but I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what is happening. It's surprising how little information is out there. Despite this great list of starting places from linuxdevices.com, the rabbit trail never leads to a "buy this phone" button. Look! There's an open Linux-based phone platform called OpenMoko. At least, I think that's what I pieced together from the scant information available on their web site. Maybe OpenMoko is the phone and openembedded is the platform? I had a very nice conversation with some folks on freenode who explained a bit about this really cool project to me. It looks like they even have a phone that it sounds like is going to be released soon, and it's discussed on LinuxDevices.com. That phone looks pretty sweet. It has a GPS built in too. I like the touch-screen idea that I guess it has, based on the pictures, and it's not way too expensive. Maybe that's the phone I'll get. All it's missing is a "buy it now" button. Oh, and "apt-cache search openmoko" doesn't turn up anything. So on to the Green Phone by Trooktech. This looks pretty good, but not as a replacement for my Treo, since the primary interface is a numeric keypad instead of a qwerty keyboard. It looks like you can actually buy a development version of the phone, but it's not overly free; you cannot develop commercial applications on it without paying them a licensing fee. Lamers. According to some folks on freenode, this phone is just a prototype for vendors like this one. (But do you see a "buy this phone" button on that page?) There's a nice article that talks about several of these devices, including the Nokia N800, which is a Linux-based handheld computer / web appliance. I played with one the other day, and it's pretty sweet. Too bad it isn't a phone, or I'd buy one today. So it looks like there's no open, Linux-based, qwerty phone out there yet. If you know otherwise, let me know. Perhaps one is coming out next month. I think I can wait that long.

My Christmas day was primarily spent at home watching Red Dwarf. Apart from that I made new releases of xen-shell and xen-tools. I was suprised to recieve a sudden flurry of bug reports. No less than ten bugs reported by two users in one day! Still I fixed most of them and made a new release. It was nice to notice Isaac Clerencia writing about using xen-tools for automated testing. The idea has occurred to me before: Create a fresh Xen installation of Debian then run a test suite and trash the system afterwards. I even setup a test Yawns builder for a while. Are people finding interesting users for xen-tools? I’d love to have some use-cases, and more user-feedback is always appreciated. Feel free to get in touch or comment here. Personally I use a few Xen guests on my home LAN and I regularly create new Sarge images for building backported Xen packages. Only recently did I move my home cfengine setup onto a domU. In other news I recently received a copy of Programming Ruby from my Amazon wishlist, I’m learning a lot about Ruby and I think I’m in love. The only downside is the mental confusion I experience when I see “@variable” and “$variable” used. I am too wedded to Perl to stop thinking “array” and “string” respectively. I should find a toy project to write in Ruby to get used to it. Right now nothing occurs, but I’m sure it is just a matter of time.