Search Results: "Tiago Bortoletto Vaz"

14 January 2016

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: "Des pas sur la neige..." Orchestration

Des pas sur la neige ("Footprints in the Snow") is a beautiful piano piece from Debussy which I had the chance to orchestrate in the context of my music composition program at the university. I've received a few critics and some kind words about this work, so last year I decided to publish it somewhere. Then I completely forgot. Then this week I watched Youth, from Paolo Sorrentino, who's known for chosing lovely music for his lovely movies, and Debussy was there. I've got then some motivation and after a few adjustments here and there I uploaded the final score here. I've been using MuseScore, a free (libre) software for all my music work, even for less traditional notation.

26 November 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: Birthday as in the good old days

This year I've got zero happy birthday spam message from phone, post, email, and from random people on that Internet social thing. In these days, that's a WOW, yes it is. On the other hand, full of love and simple celebrations together with local ones. A few emails and phone calls from close friends/family who are physically distant. I'm happier than ever with my last years' choices of caring about my privacy, not spending time with fake relationships and keeping myself an unimportant one for the $SYSTEM. That means a lot for me.

14 August 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: c3video for debconf #5

This is a follow-up to my previous post related the DebConf videoteam using a new software stack for the next conferences: http://acaia.ca/~tiago/posts/c3video-for-dc-take-4/. This is about the encoding step from C3TT, mostly done by the script named D-encoding. We can have many different encoding templates in the system. They're XSLT files which will generate the XML needed to create the local encoding commands. We can have more than one encoding template assigned for a conference.
/images/c3tt_encoding.png

XSLT encoding templates

A general comment: each meta ticket (say, the original ticket with meta info about the talk) will generate two children tickets over time, a recording one and a encoding one, with their own states. If things go wrong, a ingest ticket is created. More details can be checked here.
/images/c3tt_children_tickets.png

Children tickets

So I've got the proper encoded files in my Processing.Path.Output directory. The ticket is marked as encoded by the script. There's also a postencoding step, executed by E-postencoding. As I could understand, it's intended to be a general post-processing hook for encoded files. For instance, it can produces an audio file and make it available on Auphonic service. As we won't use that, we may want to set the property Processing.Auphonic.Enable to no. The next step starts from the operator side. Just going to the Releasing tab in the web interface, choosing the ticket to check and doing a quick review in the encoded file:
/images/c3tt_releasing.png

Releasing tab

Then, if everything looks fine, click Everthing's fine:
/images/c3tt_check.png

Check encoded file

From this point the ticket will be marked as checked and the next script (F-postprocessing) will take care of pushing the video(s)/audio(s) to the target place, as defined by Publishing.UploadTarget. I had to set myself the encoding template property EncodingProfile.Extension. We can optionally set Publishing.UploadOptions. (keep that in mind, seems not documented elsewhere) So I have now the first DebCamp encoded video file uploaded to an external host, entirely processed using the C3TT software stack. We may also want to use a very last script to release the videos (eg. as torrents, to different mirrors and other onlive services) if needed. This is script-G-release.pl, which unlike others, won't be run by the screen UI in the sequence. It has some parameters hardcoded on it, although code is very clear and ready to be hacked. It'll also mark the ticket as Released.
/images/c3tt_released.png

Released!

That's all for now! In summary: I've been able to install and set C3TT up during a few days in DebCamp, and will be playing with it during DebConf. In case things go well we'll probably be using this system as our video processing environment for the next events. We can access most CCC VoC software from https://github.com/voc. By having a look at what they're developing I feel that we (DebConf and CCC) share quite the same technical needs. And most important, the same spirit of community work for bringing part of the conference to those unable to attend. DebCamp was warm!

13 August 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: c3video for debconf #4

This is a follow-up to my previous post related the DebConf videoteam using a new software stack for the next conferences: http://acaia.ca/~tiago/posts/c3video-for-dc-take-3/. As mentioned before, C3TT provides a set of scripts which will work in background for most reviewing and video processing tasks. The first will just check if the talk is done and mark the related ticket as recorded. The second script, B-mount4cut, does a nice job by mounting a custom fuse filesystem providing the following files (more detailed explanation here: uncut.dv: full original dv file used as input file for the final trimming. project.kdenlive: Kdenlive project file for the operator. Once it's saved with the trim marks, fuse-vdv will do a parse on it and use the marks for cutting. cut.dv: contains only the frames between the trim marks extracted from project.kdenlive. cut-complete.dv: contains the frames between the trim marks extracted from project.kdenlive, plus a prepended intro and an appended video. Paths for these files should be previously set in the web interface as properties Processing.Path.Outro and Processing.Path.Intros. The outro file can be, for instance, an appended video file with a common thanks for sponsors. The intro files is usually an individual frame for each talk, being a colorful presentation poster. We can also set the intro duration in the Processing.Duration.Intro property. cut.wav: demuxed audio from cut.dv Note: in fact, fuse-vdv provides virtual video files as a concatenation of original input files, so avoiding copying large and redundant data. Ideally, these fuse mountpoints will be shared over the network for operators via glusterFS, but I'll skip that for now. After adding the trimming marks and saving the project using Kdenlive, the operator should go to the web interface and mark the ticket as cut:
/images/c3tt_cut.png

Mark ticket as cut

Note: I've been able to do the marks in Kdenlive using double-click in the video, then editing the crop start/end options. The buttons "[" and "]" didn't work in my Kdenlive version for some unknown reason. In the current DebConf video environment I had to make a link builder for translating the path/file names to the C3TT format. So, for the Amsterdam/2015-08-13/09:57:02.dv we should have a amsterdam-2015.08.13-09_57_02.dv symlink. From now the system will delivery the next tasks to C-cut-postprocessor script. This script will just check the marks from the Kdenlive project file and do the cutting job. So far it has worked perfectly here for the first video sessions in DebCamp, with zero hack in the original code, wow! Next post will be about the encoding script, named D-encoding.

12 August 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: c3video for debconf #3

This is a follow-up to my previous post related the DebConf videoteam using a new software stack for the next conferences: http://acaia.ca/~tiago/posts/c3video-for-dc-take-2/. An outdated documentation for current subject is available at https://wiki.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/streaming/projekte/c3/28c3/crs/pipeline. Although the system may work differently nowadays, the basic idea remains the same. A newer, but incomplete documentation can be found in https://repository.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/trac/c3tt/wiki. Btw, CCC people from #voc at hackint.eu have been very kind and supportive. I've set an instance of C3TT for DebConf15 in http://c3tt.acaia.ca/. If you want to play with it just ping me in #debconf-video at oftc. As you can see, we can keep a single external C3TT server for all Debian events, without much work left to the local side, doesn't it sound amazing?
Setting a new conference Go to Projects, then Create. In the project area we'll need to import the Tickets. Tickets will come from the schedule file, which is a XML as generated from frab. With a minor hack we've been able to make the schedule XML from DebConf Summit quite compatible to it (kudos cate!):
/images/import_tickets.png

Importing tickets

By importing the schedule from https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15.xml we'll be asked from which rooms we want to import the events. Usually those that have video coverage will be selected:
/images/chosing_rooms.png

Choosing rooms

Then, we may want to exclude some talks that we won't provide video:
/images/chosing_talks.png

Choosing talks

We're also required to adjust some Properties for a given conference. An example with some explanation of these properties is availabe at https://c3voc.de/wiki/c3tracker. For my initial tests the ones below seem to be enough:
/images/c3tt_properties.png

Setting properties

The backend: basic understand The screen UI mentioned above will run a set of scripts in background which will automate most of the tasks, preparing videos for cutting to deploying them in different online services. Tab 0: A-recording-scheduler Each 30 seconds it will check if there's any ticket in the state scheduled or recording. It's based in the start/end datetime of the talk, so the ticket will be kept as scheduled (current < talk start), or marked as recording (start => current =< end) or recorded (current > end). Tab 1: B-mount4cut Each 30 seconds it will check if there's any ticket in the state recorded. That means the talk is already finished, and the raw video file is available in the path which has previously been set as a property (Path.Capture) in the web interface. For each ticket marked as recorded it will try to find the related video file in the capture path. The file format should be <room>-YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.<extension>. The script will then use fuse-vdv to create a custom filesystem with some needed files for human interaction (fancy stuff!). Here's an example of talks in a room called Heidelberg, after being recorded and auto-mounted by the B-mount4cut script:
/images/c3tt_fuse.png

Mounting custom fuse FS

The human interaction is just a short review process using Kdenlive. The reviewers will access these files via a glusterFS network share. There's even a Debian Virtualbox image provided for that, including all the necessary tools. I'm going into this right now and will report what I get in the next hours. Hopefully the following scripts will also be covered, very soon-ish :) Tab 2: C-cut-postprocessor Tab 3: D-encoding Tab 4: E-postencoding (auphonic) Tab 5: F-postprocessing(upload) DebCamp is fun.

11 August 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: c3video for debconf #2

This is a follow-up to my previous post related the DebConf videoteam using a new software stack for the next conferences: http://acaia.ca/~tiago/posts/c3video-for-dc-take-1/.
Installing C3TT scripts There's a video (in German) which gives an idea about how the C3TT works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-KHbAcTo9I It basically gives the volunteers a web interface to cut and review the recordings, wich communicates with a set of scripts running in background which will automate some tasks. "Installing" the set of scripts is just a matter of placing them in a common directory and installing some Perl dependencies, mostly which are already packaged for Debian. First check it out from the svn repository (fun fact: the web interface is coded in php in a git repository, the scripts are mostly written in perl with a little of bash, in a subversion repository. Both the conference and media system is are in ruby :)
$ svn co https://subversion.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/repository/cccongress
$ mkdir /opt/crs; mv cccongress/trunk/tools /opt/crs/
A few libraries required:
$ apt-get install libboolean-perl libmath-round-perl libdatetime-perl libwww-curl-perl libconfig-inifiles-perl libxml-simple-perl
$ perl -MCPAN -e 'install XML::RPC::Fast'
In the web tracker create a project, go to all projects => workers and create a worker (I'll try to explain it later). Go edit the worker and we'll see the token and secret that should be used in the scripts to talk to the interface.
cd  /opt/crs/tools/tracker3.0
Create a file tracker-profile.sh with the follow lines (using our correct values):
export CRS_TRACKER=http://localhost/rpc
export CRS_TOKEN=2q24M7LW4Rk31YNW4tWKv8koNvyM3V4s
export CRS_SECRET=5j8SyCS35W2SBk2XIM4IWeDUqF9agG1x
We also need to build and install the fuse-vdv package from trunk/tools (if working with dv files, otherwise fuse-ts package). Next step is run the scripts. Fortunatelly a nice UI has been done using screen with multiple tabs, which can be alternated using a <Ctrl+a> <number> combination.
cd  /opt/crs/tools/tracker3.0 && /start-screenrc-dv.sh
We'll get the following:
/images/screen-c3tt-dv.png

Screen tabs from C3TT

In a next post I'll try to explain a bit of how the web system work together with the scripts and how to do a basic setup for a real conference. I hope to get there soon!

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: c3video for debconf #1

Some context DebConf has provided live streaming and recordings from talks since 2004. We used to work with a set of scripts which worked together with Pentabarf for most of videoteam tasks, including volunteer shifts coordination, reviewing process, encoding and deployment. Things has changed since DebConf14, when Pentabarf was replaced by Summit as the conference management system. Without those old Pentabarf features and hacks we had to invent new ways of dealing with the video workflow in DebConf. We gave veyepar a try in 2014, and we will probably do it again in DebConf15. However, for a long term solution we are considering the software stack from CCC Video Operation Center, which so far I see as a free, solid and community-oriented mix of Debian-friendly tools. I will be reporting the progress on setting up and testing the CCC software strucutre for DebConf. Having the opportunity of being in DebCamp together with other videoteam folks will certainly make things easier :)
Setting up the CCC Ticket Tracker C3TT is a ticket/tracker system used by CCC for reviewing/encoding process. The web side of C3TT is written in PHP and can be cloned from http://git.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/cccongress.git. Some documentation is available at https://repository.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/trac/c3tt/wiki and from https://c3voc.de/wiki/c3tracker. What I've done so far to get it working: Installing some dependencies:
$ apt-get install postgresql-9.4 php5-pgsql php5-xsl postgresql-contrib-9.4 php5-xmlrpc php5 php5-curl
Creating database and users:
$ su -s /bin/bash postgres
$ createuser -DRS dc15
$ createdb -O dc15 c3tt
$ psql
postgres=# ALTER ROLE dc15 WITH PASSWORD 'xxx';
Basic site config using lighttpd:
$HTTP["host"] =~ "c3tt\.your\.host"  
  server.document-root = "/var/www/c3tt/Public/"
  alias.url = ("/javascript/" => "/var/www/js/")
  url.rewrite-once = ( ".*\.(js ico gif jpg png css)$" => "$0", "^(.*?)$" => "index.php/$1",)
   
Running the installer script:
$ php -q Install/install.php
This will ask you some questions, then will create the config file and populate the database. At this point you should be able to access the ticket track system from your browser. The set of scripts from C3TT doesn't need to be installed in the same host as the web side, they communicate via XML/RPC. In a next post I will report the installation and initial setup for these scripts.

17 July 2015

Simon Kainz: DUCK challenge: week 2

Just a litte update on the DUCK challenge: In the last week, the following packages were fixed and uploaded into unstable: Last week we had 10 packages uploaded & fixed, the current week resulted in 15 fixed packages. So there are currently 25 packages fixed by 20 different uploaders. I really hope i can meet you all at DebConf15!! The list of the fixed and updated packages is availabe here. I will try to update this ~daily. If I missed one of your uploads, please drop me a line. A big "Thank You" to you. There is still lots of time till the end of DebConf15 and the end of the DUCK Challenge, so please get involved. And rememeber: debcheckout fails? FIX MORE URLS

9 June 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: Zyne is now in Debian

Zyne is a modular synthetizer written in Python. Anyone can create and extend its modules using the Pyo library. Zyne's GUI is coded using WXPython and will look nicely in GNU/Linux, Mac and Windows systems. It's written by the same author of Pyo, and together with Cecilia and Soundgrain is part of an amazing set of libre tools for sound synthesis and electronic music composition.
/images/zyne-screenshot.png

Zyne loading 6 of its 14 default modules

Zyne package is result of a successful one-day event called MicroDebconf Brasilia 2015, being created during a track about packaging and QA leaded by Eriberto Mota and Antonio Terceiro.

14 March 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: MuseScore 2.0 is great, try it!

A bit of context: two years ago I joined an undergraduate program in electroacoustic music composition at the Universit de Montr al. Fortunately the faculty has decided to use mostly free software in the classes. They recently moved from Max/MSP to Pure Data to teach algorithmic composition. OpenMusic has been used for computer assisted composition classes. On acoustics classes, Sonic Visualiser is the recommended tool. For everything related to audio processing and sound synthesis we mainly use Python pyo library and Cecilia, both developed by the professor himself. Other many free softwares are used for building digital musical instruments in the courses: Arduino, SuperCollider, OpenCV, openFrameworks etc. So far I touched two proprietary softwares for my classes. First it was Reaper, a sequencer which has been recently adopted in replacement of Pro Tools in some grades. Reaper has a less unfair distribution model compared to Pro Tools and despite being a closed piece of software it somewhat looks like a community-oriented project, being developed by a small team of free software enthusiasts. Being an amazing, complete and still lightweight DAW I hope it goes free some day in the future (I've read about this possibility somewhere in a forum that I can't find now). Anyway, after some months playing with Reaper I went back to Ardour. Because it's free, not because it's better (Reapper still seems unbeatable here). The other was Finale, an alternative to MuseScore for music notation. I used it for three compositions mainly due to its playback capabilities. As a middle-aged music student I don't have the internal ear enough developed to listen orchestral textures, articulations and other details provided by expensive VST stuff. However, I found editing with Finale a pain in the ass. It's so bugged that I thought I were using a sort of alpha version. Basic editing is much more logical and elegant with MuseScore. After all, these first experiences with Finale didn't convince me that such realistic playbacks are adding any value to my music. I suspect that moving back to soundfonts or even composing with no playback at all will probably force me to exercice more critical/analytical listening whenever I need to understand the effects of a specific instrumental gesture and instrument combinations. So, I'm back to MuseScore. Not only because it's free, but also because it's better (at least for my current needs). MuseScore has allowed me to easily edit music scores in a free operating system, using a small and not so powerful laptop. Unable to donate money to this amazing project I've been happily giving some time to it, by testing new releases, reporting issues, translating to portuguese and making available unofficial Debian packages while the current maintainer prepares the official one, which seems to be coming very soon. If you're a Finale/Sibelius user and don't strictly need that universe of orchestral VSTs samples for your music work, please give MuseScore a try. Have a quick look at its online handbook and in a few minutes you will be able to experience the real pleasure of music scoring using a computer. You can try different soundfonts, including the so nice Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra. Below is a screenshot of MuseScore 2.0, which will be released very soon. You can download the RC version for your system in the MuseScore website.
/images/mscore2.png

MuseScore 2.0

11 March 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: Freeing myself from flickr

A flickr standard account gives you a free as in facebook service (I really wanted to reuse it!!!). I don't know about the pro account, but I don't believe it will give you much respect. Anyway, I realized that my photo albums in flickr are still online. And I'm currently unable to access my photos locally. I needed to download all them, then I decided to give flickrbackup a try. I started coding it a few years ago because at that time there was no free tools available for that. And then I abandoned it, too bad I feel. But for my surprise it worked without issues! And that's all I needed in my Debian box:
$ apt-get install flickrbackup $ mkdir myflickr $ flickrbackup -o myflickr/
(this will open a default browser for authentication and will automatically get the API key, then I just need an ENTER to start getting all my albums) I'm not sure whether there're other free tools (as in freedom) for that, but before paying for a license or trusting an online service for downloading your sets please give flickrbackup a chance :) I'll probably set a piwigo instance in a vps. But I fear php. So, suggestions on web galleries are very welcome.

4 February 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: Raspberry Pi Foundation moving away from its educational mission?

From the news:
"...we want to make Raspberry Pi more open over time, not less."
Right.
"For the last six months we ve been working closely with Microsoft to bring the forthcoming Windows 10 to Raspberry Pi 2"
Hmmm... From a comment:
I m sad to see Windows 10 as a selling point though. This community should not be supporting restrictive proprietary software The Pi is about tinkering and making things while Microsoft is about marketing and spying.
Right. From an answer:
"But I suggest you rethink your comments about MS, spying is going a bit far, don t you think?"
Wrong.

6 January 2015

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: A few excerpts from The Invisible Committe's latest article

Just sharing some points from "2. War against all things smart!" and "4. Techniques against Technology" by The Invisible Committee's "Fuck off Google" article. You may want to get the "Fuck off Google" pdf and watch that recent talk at 31C3. "...predicts The New Digital Age, there will be people who resist adopting and using technology, people who want nothing to do with virtual profiles, online data systems or smart phones. Yet a government might suspect that people who opt out completely have something to hide and thus are more likely to break laws, and as a counterterrorism measure, that government will build the kind of hidden people registry we described earlier. If you don t have any registered social-networking profiles or mobile subscriptions, and on-line references to you are unusually hard to find, you might be considered a candidate for such a registry. You might also be subjected to a strict set of new regulations that includes rigorous airport screening or even travel restrictions. " I've been introduced to following observations about 5 years ago when reading "The Immaterial" by Andr Gorz. Now The Invisible Committee makes that even clearer in a very few words: "Technophilia and technophobia form a diabolical pair joined together by a central untruth: that such a thing as the technical exists. [...] Techniques can t be reduced to a collection of equivalent instruments any one of which Man, that generic being, could take up and use without his essence being affected." "[...] In this sense capitalism is essentially technological; it is the profitable organization of the most productive techniques into a system. Its cardinal figure is not the economist but the engineer. The engineer is the specialist in techniques and thus the chief expropriator of them, one who doesn t let himself be affected by any of them, and spreads his own absence from the world every where he can. He s a sad and servile figure. The solidarity between capitalism and socialism is confirmed there: in the cult of the engineer. It was engineers who drew up most of the models of the neoclassical economy like pieces of contemporary trading software."

20 November 2014

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: Things to celebrate

Turning 35 today, then I get the great news that the person whom I share my dreams with has just become a Debian member! Isn't beautiful? Thanks T ssia, thanks Debian! I should also thank friends who make an ideal ambience for tonight's fun.

4 November 2014

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: A few words on the recent Brazilian elections

The Brazilian presidential election was exceedingly intense this year. Among many inferences that we can make by following the news and investigating data from the voting results I'd like to share this one, which in my opinion reflects quite well the vote preferences in the country. First, let me introduce you "Bel gua", a small town located in the Northeast region of Brazil. It has 6,524 habitants, 3 buses and 2 hospitals. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the income per person in Bel gua is $146 BRL (or U$59) per month. Believe it or not, it used to be much less. Actually, the city reported in 2013 the highest economic jump in the country, rising more than a thousand positions in the ranking of GDP per capita (from position 4,991 to 3,849). This recent growth was consequence of the social welfare program of the Brazilian government, which also boosted artisanal and manioc flour production. This federal assistance is called "Bolsa fam lia", which benefits 1.814 families in Bel gua.
"Bolsa Fam lia currently gives families with per-capita monthly income below $140 BRL (poverty line, ~$56 USD) a monthly stipend of $32 BRL (~$13 USD) per vaccinated child (< 16 years old) attending school (up to 5), and $38 BRL (~$15 USD) per youth (16 or 17 years old) attending school (up to 2). Furthermore, to families whose per-capita monthly income below $70 BRL (extreme poverty line, ~$28 USD), the program gives the Basic Benefit $70 BRL per month." (from Wikipedia)
Contrary to what many of my middle-class friends believe, and as you can calculate yourself, this little amount of money does not offer anybody a luxury life. It does not make anybody stopping working, nor stopping looking for paid job (but yes, it makes people to start saying NO to forced labor, which is amazing, right?).
/images/belagua.jpg

Bel gua, where Dilma got 93.93% of votes (photo by Clarissa Carramilo / from G1)

Also, Bel gua has no much physicians around because doctors in Brazil usually wouldn't live in a such city. But now Bel gua population can be treated by foreign doctors imported by the recently launched program "Mais M dicos" (More Physicians for Brazil), which hosts two Cuban doctors 15km away. Finally, Bel gua people have light, due to the "Luz para Todos" ("Light for All") program. It's not surprising that Bel gua has re-elected the party which has motivated these changes. For 2014 presidential election, Bel gua people gave 3.558 votes (93.93%) to Dilma Rousseff (candidate of the current government, from a left-ish party), against 230 (6,07%) to A cio Neves (from the right coalition), being the city with the largest amount of votes for Dilma, proportionally, followed by "Serrano do Maranh o" (93,75%), which is located in the same region. On the other hand, the city which gave, proportionally, the largest amount of votes for A cio Neves has a population of 5,564,635 habitants, where most of citizens are not Brazilians, not yet. Miami, located in US, was the city where Brazilian residents would elect A cio by 7,225 votes (91,79%), against 646 (8,21%) for Dilma, followed by Atlanta/US (89,47%) and Houston/US (89,22%).
/images/miami.jpg

Miami, where 91,79% of Brazilians voted A cio (photo by Marc Averette / from Wikipedia)

It's so clear that we do what people call "selfish vote". In general, we don't care about which party has better proposals for the society as whole. Rich people will go against any serious social equality proposal, which will necessarily be followed by higher taxes on their fortunes. As middle class citizens, we care about dollar rates, because we want to get cheaper iStuff from Miami. We're also very upset by the fact that new apartments are being built without that small room in the back, which has been used to accommodate a subservient housemaid who, until last year was not even legally considered a worker. Those people from Bel gua, who used to live in extreme poverty for decades, serving as slaves, they mostly care about having something to eat. Now they eat, so they can think better, they can work, they can sell what they produce in their little yard. And like middle-class and rich citizens, they will give their vote in exchange of what they think is better for them. The big difference here is, if we ask Bel gua people why they voted for Dilma, with no embarrassment they will make it very clear, that's because her government has provided them lots of benefits. Asking the same question for most Brazilians in Miami, Atlant, Houston or S o Paulo, you'll get not only a bunch of allegedly moral/altruistic reasons, but they will also try to delegitimize in many ways the votes from those marginalized citizens. You'll never get the real reasons from them. They will even try to convince you that whoever receives federal assistance should automatically lose right to vote. Such a statement may seem ridiculous, however it has been very present recently. Actually, such hate speech is happening right now. While I'm writing this post about 2500 people are protesting in S o Paulo streets, asking for an immediate military coup because they don't agree with the elections result. These people keep pushing the limits of ridiculousness. Dilma won with 51.64% of valid votes, a very tight result. The country is clearly divided, mostly by hate, unfortunately.

24 August 2014

DebConf team: Full video coverage for DebConf14 talks (Posted by Tiago Bortoletto Vaz)

We are happy to announce that live video streams will be available for talks and discussion meetings in DebConf14. Recordings will be posted soon after the events. You can also interact with other local and remote attendees by joining the IRC channels which are listed at the streams page. For people who want to view the streams outside a webbrowser, the page for each room lists direct links to the streams. More information on the streams and the various possibilities offered is available at DebConf Videostreams. The schedule of talks is available at DebConf 14 Schedule. Thanks to our amazing video volunteers for making it possible. If you like the video coverage, please add a thank you note to VideoTeam Thanks

8 August 2014

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: New gadget

/images/supercoffee.jpg

Solid, energy-efficient, nice UI, wireless, multiple output formats and hmm... can you smell it? :)

17 July 2014

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: HOPE X ical for schedule

As Adirondack (train line MTL-NYC) is not Internet-friendly for RSS feeds I can't profit of my ~11h travelling to check this huge schedule in the way I want to, (= having a timetable view including room, description and speakers). HOPE X has just released a pdf and a xls (wtf??), but these contain only titles and room. So I've coded an ics generator to process their feed. The result file is available at http://acaia.ca/hopex.ics and should be up to date with the original RSS.

17 June 2014

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: Little garden project

After three years living in Montr al we're still amazed by the fact that here we have er... seasons!! I believe that things have a special beauty when they don't last the time we want them to last, and seasons are all about it! (some people will exclude winter here) Anyways, taking pictures may give them more lifetime without compromising too much their beauty. And sharing them here and there is somewhat sharing our happiness, which might be a good balance in the end :)
/images/01.JPG

At the time we moved the garden was just a single white thing...

/images/02.JPG

then we realized that it provided some chairs, a table and a compost container, yay!

/images/03.JPG

But the grey ground was something to be fixed...

/images/04.JPG

so we hacked it and got some land :)

/images/05.JPG

Few months later and it's finally becoming chard, beets, carrots, spinach, berries, cheries, okra, tomatoes, basil, potatoes, sage, agastache and a saskatoon berry tree!

30 May 2014

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: On losing contacts with old friends

In 2010 I decided to stop using my google account. In 2011 I decided to leave facebook, twitter and other $cool stuff. This was a hard decision. Not because email migration was annoying, nor because I liked to do social networking. It's hard because most of friends depend on either google or facebook to chat. Since I moved to another country, phone calls and presencial meetings have been substantially reduced. So we keep in contact by using IRC and XMPP. I have good friends who use IRC, mostly Debian people, which is great. I also have lots of friends and contacts not using IRC. In the past they used ICQ, then moved to MSN and now they are using google talk and facebook. I used to explain them that we could talk by using their google account and my Jabber account due to an open standard called XMPP. I enjoy having short conversations in random times, which sometimes takes hours and helps us to keep affectionately connected. It used to work so well. Now it seems to be gone. I've noticed that I can't connect anymore with contacts using google talk, probably because google has finally put into action their decision to abandon open standards for instant messaging. I'm not going to list here all the good things that happened in my life when I stopped using all this crap services. But I have to admit that it really hurts to see my contacts disappearing day by day, feeling like my friends are being devoured by these companies, with zero critical sense. You'll say that good friends won't disappear like that if they are good friends. I agree, but the convenience of having people from one-click distance in random hours a day makes a difference, mainly when physical distance is a blocker.

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