I have just completed the last piece of the puzzle. The Picture Gallery Browser module is finally up and running! :-)

alobbs.com is running Cherokee and a Python based application server I have written explicitly for my site (including blog, photolog, content editor, picture galleries, statistics and so on).

It performs way much better that the PHP applications I used to run, and besides I'm much more confident about the quality of the code - if you have read some of the most extended PHP applications nowadays, I bet you know what I am talking about.

So, from now on, this is my web stack:

The yellow components are applications I have written and that I am currently maintaining.. which means that if something goes wrong with the website, I won't be able to blame anyone but myself. Rock on!! :-)

• OpenSolaris Peru
  It seems that people liked the latest talk I gave in Peru. The Peruvian OpenSolaris community has been founded a just couple of days after the conferences ended. Congrats! (The mailing list is about to be reallocated at opensolaris.org).
• TiraEcol on the Microsoft Surface
  Nano tests the MS Surface at the computer electronics show.. LOL.

• The Ten Most Common Photographic Mistakes
  "Here is a quick rundown of the most common mistakes people (like me) make that mess up a good photo or prevent us from taking a good photo."
• Red Hat Rejects Microsoft Deals
  "We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency."
• We will not go to Canossa
  Mandriva also refused to deal: "So we don't believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone."

I have an open question for you guys. I'd like to get rid of a Open Source project mailing list. It has been quite a pain to maintain it the last months, so I have been thinking of moving to somewhere else.

For me, to administer the mailing list is just something that has to be done in order to keep the project up and running. It would be exactly the same if we would move the list to a third party service provider, and I hadn't to expend time on it.

My first thought was Google groups: their spam filter is good, the administration interface is easy to use, and it allows web posting (what you could understand as some sort of forum integration). So far everything was pointing me to migrate the list over there.. although I had a couple of problems when I tried to migrate the archives and subscriber list.

First of all, it doesn't support to import the previous mailing list archive, which in this case is a quite important issue. Of course, I thought it was not such a big problem because, at the end of the day, that is something that twenty lines of Python could easily solve.

Anyway, it seems that there was something that I didn't take into account. Long stories short: Google groups didn't like my importing script, and it banned me because I was supposed to be spamming a mailing list with a single subscriber (myself). Cooool!

The second problem was to import the subscribers list. It doesn't allow you to import the subscriber for security reasons (which is something I can understand). The big problem was that, when I submitted the list for their approval, they rejected it.. which, again, looks pretty much like a stopper for the migration.

It is clearly a push and pull situation what we have got here. It is up to them whether they want to take advantage of our content for displaying their advertisements. The thing is that, even if the service provides some pretty cool features it also lacks some basic functionality that we would need for the migration.

So, do you guys know where could I move the mailing list to? Which mailing list provider do you like the most? :-)

The very few pictures I took during the OpenSolaris "2nd Birthday" Picnic are now on-line.

My Spanish sense of time made me arrive when people were already leaving the picnic; but well, at least I managed to get there and greet some of the Californian OpenSolaris folks.. and eat some birthday cake. :-)

So, for the next picnic, I know that it does begin at the time it is supposed to begin, not a couple of hours later as I expected.

The pictures that I took during the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit are now on-line: first, second and third day.

In a couple of hours I will be uploading the ones that I've taken today at the OpenSolaris "2nd birthday" Picnic. :-)

OpenSolaris Picnic

Today I will be heading to the OpenSolaris Picnic (held at Baylands Park in Sunnyvale) where we will be celebrating the OpenSolaris 2nd birthday and having a good time.

If you are around, do not hesitate to join us. I bet, it's gonna be fun! :-)

DebConf

Another really interesting event is begining today. This year, the Debian Conference is being held in Edinburgh. It's quite far away from where I currently am, although that will not stop me from attending. Tomorrow morning I will be heading to Scotland for joining all my dear Debian fellows.

There are a million things I'd like to discuss with the Debian community guys related to OpenSolaris and the Indiana project. Call me crazy, but I still think that both communities have lot in common and that, if approach it from the right direction we could accomplish many great things together... so, guys,let's talk! :-)

By the way, if you cannot make it to be there, you can always watch the Live Streams.

Two great things have happened today:

• First of all, OpenSolaris turns two years old. Congratulations for all the great things that have been accomplished in the last year!!
  
• 4 Front has released the Open Sound System as Free Software. It has been released under two free licenses: GPLv2 and CDDL, which should make everybody pretty happy. (Remember that GPLv3 doesn't exist yet).

  A few minutes ago, Dev Mazumdar showed me a demo of OSS v4 mixing a few virtual devices using different sound formats (5.1, Stereo, etc), setting individual volume levels and mixing all of them in the same sound stream (without using any sound daemon!). I have to say I'm very impressed, there is a huge difference since the last time I used it.

Flight to San Francisco

My flight to San Francisco was quite a bit of a disaster. Everything was going alright at the beginning. My flight from Madrid to New York was smooth and arrived on time, I had lot of luck with the US border officer that checked my immigration form (I cannot say he was friendly, but at least he wasn't as unfriendly as some of their colleagues with whom I had deal previously).

Everything changed when I was waiting in NY to take the plane to San Francisco. Basically, there were some congestion problems and the plane that was supossed to be departing in an hour time wasn't in New Your but in Chicago.. so well, long stories short, I had to wait for about 6 hours before the boarding was open.

Linux Foundation: Collaboration Meeting: Day 1

The Collaboration Meeting has been really good event so far.. even if there have been many reveling short presentations the best thing has been to hang out with so many interesting people. 

Here are my pictures of the first day.

Today's HUGE news

Huge news!! A few minutes ago, 4 Front has released the Open Sound System (OSS) under GPL!!

Less than twenty four hours after arriving from COMSYS, I am leaving Madrid again. I'm heading to the forth Desktop Architects Meeting held at Google's Mountain View Campus in the Bay Area.

It's gonna be really interesting! :-)

Back from Peru

I have just arrived from Peru a few hours ago. Even if it has been an awful long flight, it definitely worth attending, COMSYS has been an interesting congress.

During my conference I spoke about the FOSS movement, OpenSolaris and why developers ought to make wise decisions on which platform they use to base their applications on.

I'm delighted about how people caught the message. Even if Peru has been a place ruled by Privative Software and non-standard formats, there are clear signs of an upcoming change. Good for them! :-)

Eating in Peru

In Huancayo (Peru), there are plenty of places where you can have lunch (soup, main course and desert) for 3 Soles, which is about 0,7 Euros. It is quite impressive. For instance, check out this picture:

By the way, Peruvians don't understand pollón as Spanish do. ;-)

Cuy

And speaking of Peruvian food.. I did it again; I ate Cuy!! (Guinea pig in Quechua) :-)

Cherokee bug

There is a bug in the IOcache class of Cherokee-Trunk that I have been trying to fix for quite some time. So far I haven't had enough time to sit down and work on it, but hopefully I will manage to fix it up within the next days.

As soon as the bug is fixed I will release the Cherokee 0.6.0-Beta2. It will include a bunch of improvements over the previous version (many of them thank to ADF).

Arrived to Lima

My flight to Lima was quite smooth, even for being 12 hours long.

The only thing I thought a million times was that I will buy one of those laptops with a extra long battery live. My current laptop battery lasts only between one and a half and two hours, which definitely doesn't help in this sort of trips.

Catalan

The only thing that drove me nuts during the flight was that Iberia displayed a film that was half spoken in Catalan. Does it make any sense?

I mean, in a plane flying from Madrid to Lima you can suppose half of the people on it to be Spanish. Now, let's think how many people speak Catalan in Spain: there are 45 millions of us and 6 million Catalan speakers, which is 13% of the population.

So, supposing a plane with 400 people, of which half are Peruvians and only 13% speak Catalan, that would let us with 375 people out of 400 who couldn't understand the dialogs!! (actually, even more because as I said the flight departed from Madrid).

It's quite sad to be forced to listen a Spanish movie doubted to English. It was very kind of Iberia and the pro-Catalan lobby, indeed.

If you are Catalan, do not get me wrong, just change Catalan for Vasque and you would feel what I felt.

Interviews

I'm going to have a pretty busy day. The conference organized arranged a couple of interviews for the Peruvian press here in Lima, and after that, we will head to Huancayo, where COMSYS begins tomorrow.

I am packing again. Tomorrow morning I'll heading to Peru for attending COMSYS, a computer science congress that invited me over for giving a keynote on Free Software.

Last time I went to Lima was for giving a talk in a huge IT event. I have to admit that I was shocked when the event organizers told me that there were more than one thounsand people attending my speech.

I am not sure whether I will enjoy another of those huge and crowed conference places like the last time, but I do know that it will be interesting. It seems that I am one of the very few speakers who will support the Free Software approach. The rest will be talking about privative products (mainly Microsoft and Cisco products).

Ahh.. I will also be meeting with some of the Free Software community developers in Peru during the event. :-)

Woww! it's great to see how many people will be attending the forth Desktop Architects Meeting. I'm really looking forward to it! :-)

Second Desktop Architects Meeting (orig pic)